more…. Finally, when the shaken man hit $150,000, Schaeffer nodded.
“Christ.”
When T.G. and Ricky Kelleher had called to say that he’d found a tourist to scam, Ricky told him the mark could go six figures. That was so far out of those stupid micks’ league that Schaeffer had to laugh. But, sure enough, he had to give the punk credit for picking out a mark with big bucks.
In a defeated voice Shelby asked, “Can I give you a check?”
Schaeffer laughed.
“Okay, okay… but I’ll need a few hours.”
“Tonight. Eight.” They arranged a place to meet. “I’ll keep your driver’s license. And the evidence.” He picked up the cash on the table. “You try to skip, I’ll put out an arrest warrant and send that to Des Moines too. They’ll extradite you and
“Oh, no, sir. I’ll get the money. Every penny.” Shelby hurriedly dressed.
“Go out by the service door in back. I don’t know where the vice cop is.”
The tourist nodded and scurried out of the room.
In the lobby by the elevator the detective found Bernbaum and Darla sharing a smoke.
“Where my money?” the hooker demanded.
Schaeffer handed her the two hundred of the confiscated cash. He and Bernbaum split the rest, a hundred fifty for Schaeffer, fifty for his partner.
“You gonna take the afternoon off, girlfriend?” Bernbaum asked Darla.
“Me? Hell, no, I gots to work.” She glanced at the money Schaeffer’d given her. “Least till you assholes start paying me fo’ not fuckin’ same as I make
Schaeffer pushed into Mack’s bar, an abrupt entrance that changed the course of at least half the conversations going on inside real fast. He was a crooked cop, sure, but he was still a cop, and the talk immediately shifted from deals and scams and drugs to sports, women and jobs. Schaeffer laughed and strode across the room. He dropped into an empty chair at the scarred table, muttered to T.G., “Get me a beer.” Schaeffer being about the only one in the universe who could get away with that.
When the brew came he tipped the glass to Ricky. “You caught us a good one. He agreed to a hundred fifty.”
“No shit,” T.G. said, cocking a red eyebrow. (The split was Schaeffer got half and then Ricky and T.G. divided the rest equally.)
T.G. asked, “Where’s he getting it from?”
“I dunno. His problem.”
Ricky squinted. “Wait. I want the watch too.”
“Watch?”
“The old guy. He had a Rolex. I want it.”
At home Schaeffer had a dozen Rolexes he’d taken off marks and suspects over the years. He didn’t need another one. “You want the watch, he’ll give up the watch. All he cares about is making sure his wife and his cornpone customers don’t find out what he was up to.”
“What’s cornpone?” Ricky asked.
“Hold on,” T.G. snarled. “Anybody gets the watch, it’s me.”
“No way. I saw it first. It was me who picked him.”
“My watch,” the fat Irishman interrupted. “Maybe he’s got a money clip or something you can have. But I get the fucking Rolex.”
“Nobody has money clips,” Ricky argued. “I don’t even want a fucking money clip.”
“Listen, little Lime Ricky,” T.G. muttered. “It’s mine. Read my lips.”
“Jesus, you two are like kids,” Schaeffer said, swilling the beer. “He’ll meet us across the street from Pier Forty-six at eight tonight.” The three men had done this same scam or variations on it for a couple of years now but still didn’t trust each other. The deal was they all went together to collect the payoff.
Schaeffer drained the beer. “See you boys then.”
After the detective was gone they watched the game for a few minutes, with T.G. bullying some guys to place bets, even though it was in the fourth quarter and there was no way Chicago could come back. Finally, Ricky said, “I’m going out for a while.”
“What, now I’m your fucking babysitter? You want to go, go.” Though he still made it sound like Ricky was a complete idiot for missing the end of a game that only had eight minutes to run.
Just as Ricky got to the door, T.G. called in a loud voice, “Hey, Lime Ricky, my Rolex? Is it gold?”
Just to be a prick.
Bob Schaeffer had walked a beat in his youth. He’d investigated a hundred felonies, he’d run a thousand scams in Manhattan and Brooklyn. All of which meant that he’d learned how to stay alive on the streets.
Now, he sensed a threat.
He was on his way to score some coke from a kid who operated out of a newsstand at Ninth and Fifty-fifth and he realized he’d been hearing the same footsteps for the past five or six minutes. A weird scraping. Somebody was tailing him. He paused to light a cigarette in a doorway and checked out the reflection in a storefront window. Sure enough, he saw a man in a cheap gray suit, wearing gloves, about thirty feet behind him. The guy paused for a moment and pretended to look into a store window.
Schaeffer didn’t recognize the guy. He’d made a lot of enemies over the years. The fact he was a cop gave him some protection — it’s risky to gun down even a crooked one — but there were plenty of nut jobs out there.
Walking on. The owner of the scraping shoes continue his tail. A glance in the rearview mirror of a car parked nearby told him the man was getting closer, but his hands were at his side, not going for a weapon. Schaeffer pulled out his cell phone and pretended to make a call, to give himself an excuse to slow up and not make the guy suspicious. His other hand slipped inside his jacket and touched the grip of his chrome-plated SIG-Sauer 9mm automatic pistol.
This time the guy didn’t slow up.
Schaeffer started to draw.
Then: “Detective, could you hang up the phone, please?”
Schaeffer turned, blinked. The pursuer was holding up a gold NYPD shield.
The fuck is this? Schaeffer thought. He relaxed, but not much. Snapped the phone closed and dropped it into his pocket. Let go of his weapon.
“Who’re you?”
The man, eyeing Schaeffer coldly, let him get a look at the ID card next to the shield.
Schaeffer thought: Fuck me. The guy was from the department’s Internal Affairs Division — the boys that tracked down corrupt cops.
Still Schaeffer kept on the offensive. “What’re you doing following me?”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“What’s this all about?”
“An investigation we’re conducting.”
“Hello,” Schaeffer said sarcastically. “I sort of figured that out. Give me some fucking details.”
“We’re looking into your connection with certain individuals.”
“‘Certain individuals.’ You know, not all cops have to talk like cops.”
No response.
Schaeffer shrugged. “I have ‘connections’ with a lotta people. Maybe you’re thinking of my snitches. I hang with ’em. They feed me good information.”
“Yeah, well, we’re thinking there might be other things they feed you. Some
“Fuck that.”
“I’m trying to keep it low key. But you don’t cooperate, I’ll call it in and we’ll take you downtown. Then
