can I call it but connection? Comprehend. Let that mighty magic lightning flow across the gaps of space and time. From me. To you. And back. The way the bolts explode from sky to earth and then bounce again into the heavens and the universe beyond. Going on forever, to the regions where the physicists tell us matter equals time. While in one spot on this single humble planet, a tree is split, a rooftop smokes, a human being sits awake and startled by the miracle of energy and light.
TAPE 4
Dictated January 30, 1:00 a.m.
Friday, January 27
XIV
A. The Murder Suspect
Friday a.m. I was heading in through the revolving doors of the Needle when a young guy stopped me, pockmarked skin and a slick-backed do and a fancy jacket made from the skin of some creature with a two- chambered heart. Familiar from someplace, like an actor you've seen on TV.
'Mr Malloy?' He flipped his tin at me, and naturally I recognized him then, Pigeyes's wormy companion, Dewey.
You guys,' I said.
'Gino'd like a word with you.' I looked in all directions. I didn't believe I could get within one hundred yards of Pigeyes without picking up some sensation of him, like a missile detector homing on infrared. Dewey was indicating the curb where I saw only a rusted conversion van.
I asked what would happen if I said no.
'Hey, fella, you do what you wanna do. Me, I wouldn't fuck with him. You're in a lotta deep doo-doo.' Pigeyes was in a mood, Dewey was saying. There was a vaguely plaintive quality to his address. Life forges all kinds of fraternities and Dewey and I were in one of its strangest: partners of Pigeyes. There were only so many people on earth who could understand his plight, and dogmeat or not, I was still one of them. We looked at each other a moment as the Center City crowd scurried past, and then I followed him to the curb and the van, which looked like a weary delivery truck bearing sclerotic rust marks on its rocker panels and six of those grayed-over bubble-type portholes, two in the back and two on each side.
When Dewey opened the rear doors, Pigeyes was inside, along with a black guy, another copper. It was a surveillance van. No way to be sure how long they'd been watching me; long enough to know I wasn't upstairs. They could have followed me from home or, more likely, called Lucinda and learned that I hadn't arrived. There were video cams mounted on swivels over each of the portholes and two rows of recording equipment in small wooden consoles behind the driver's seat. The entire interior had been carpeted in a mangy gray shag, which had matted and worn away on the floor and was marked here and there with cigarette burns. Guys spent long nights in here, begging each other not to fart, watching whoever they watched, dopers or Mafia dons or nuts who'd said they wanted to kill a senator. There were cup holders fixed to the walls and carpeted benches over the wheel wells. Pigeyes was sitting next to the electronics, wearing one of those short-billed county caps. I suppose this was his getup when he was undercover. I nodded rather than use his name and Dewey took my elbow to help me up. Inside, the van smelled of fried food.
I was impressed by Pigeyes's access to this equipment. Surveillance was a separate department unit. When I was on the Force, they would have shitcanned a request for assistance from Financial Crimes faster than junkmail. But Pigeyes sort of had his own police department, his own affiliations and rules. His cousins were coppers and so were two of his brothers, and he had one of 'his guys' as he put it, in every nook and cranny of the Hall. He could fix up any little problem — leave or sick days, expense money to take care of a snitch. Naturally he'd return favors — outside the Force, too, for that matter. The guys he grew up with, fellas who these days were importing tunas stuffed with brown heroin or gambling for a living, were all the time giving him a holler when they got in a jam and Gino'd always help out. No questions asked. The Pigeyes National Bank of Favors Owing and Owed. The only thing I found disconcerting was that he was spending his markers to watch over me.
As soon as I took a seat on the wheel well, Pigeyes was on his feet. Make no mistake, he was unhappy.
'I know one fucking douche bag, Malloy, who isn't as fucking smart as you think you are.' He waited for me to buy the straight line but I wouldn't bite. 'You knew I was sitting on the goddamn credit card, didn't you?'
I looked at the black copper, tall, wearing a tweed jacket and a wool vest but no tie. He was lurking around near the equipment. The van, I would bet, was assigned to him.
'He's having those visions again,' I said.
'Don't smart around.' Pigeyes pointed. 'That's some story he's tellin, this kid. How much did you pay him?'
'I don't know what you're talking about,' but of course I did now. Pigeyes had been tracking Kam Roberts the same way I had — with the Kam Roberts credit card. Being a police officer, and one in Financial Crimes, he had clear advantages. The bank card people needed pals in Financial, guys who'd maybe visit some deadbeat who was twenty grand over his limit to suggest that a payment was due soon, otherwise this could go down as a criminal fraud. Now it was payback. Every time a transaction was posted to Kam Roberts's account, the computer center down in Alabama would call Pigeyes. He could track Kam all over the planet, and when Kam showed up in the tri- counties, Gino could skedaddle over to wherever, collar Kam if he was lucky, or at least ask where Kam had been and what he looked like and tell the store owner, the hotel manager, if this guy or anyone asking for him popped up again, to pronto give Pigeyes a jingle. That, I now realized, was how he'd set up on me at U Inn.
All well and good, but apparently Gino and Dewey had spent the last day chasing all over the North End, exploring a rash of purchases of CD players, high-top sneakers, Starter jackets and video games, receiving consistent descriptions of a thirteen-year-old Latino who was not a twenty-seven-year-old black man with receding hair.
Dewey was using a fingernail to pick at his teeth as the three of them watched me.
'I didn't pay him,' I said.
'Sure you didn't,' said Dewey. 'He says he took your wallet off you while you're passed out in some Chevy near the projects.'
'Sounds right to me.'
'Not to me,' piped in Pigeyes. 'What I hear, you're on the Life Plan down there at AA. They take attendance?'
I looked pretty clever from Pigeyes's perspective. On the street, everyone knows you use a juvenile to do dirty business, because practically speaking, there's no such thing as jail for a kid that age. The gangbangers employ twelve-year-olds to make dope runs, even as triggermen. Pigeyes figured I gave the kid the Kam Roberts card and told him it was Shop-Till-You-Drop or the coppers come round, in which case here's your story.
'You're buying him time to run, Malloy.' I wasn't sure if Gino meant Bert or Kam Roberts, or if they were actually one. 'What's this guy to you?'
'Who?' I asked.
'Who am I looking for, fuckface?'
'Kam Roberts?' I really was guessing.
He mimicked me, a long face, a bit of Brando. ' 'Kam Roberts?'' He repeated the name half a dozen times, his voice capering up the scale. Then he turned vicious. There was a rheumy turn to his eyes and something inflamed near the bridge of his nose; I could see why people were talking about Pigeyes and dope. On the other hand, he'd always been fast to anger.
'You fuckin tell me right now where he is. Now.'
'You holding paper on him?' I still wanted to know what it was for, what Kam, whoever he was, was supposed to have done.
