“You keep getting grouchy and you won’t go to heaven.”
“Yeah.” He chuckled for the third time. “You know, seriously, by the time I was raggin’ you about bartendin’ I could already tell it was you. I was just layin’ it on. Now let’s get down to brass tacks. Let’s start gettin’ frank with each other. What can I do for you, I mean personally. Not the whole Detective Division, y’mean?”
“I think you’re getting to the good part.”
He cleared his throat, wiped his hair, and said, “Maybe you need a little information? Is that it? I ain’t a stoolie, but however, I hear things. I like to do whatever I can for the dicks. Youse got it toughest of everybody. Believe me I know.”
“Outstanding.” I pulled my four-inch .38 from my holster and held it in my right hand pointing toward the floor. Sweat formed on his forehead, the way it quickly forms on some people when they first walk into a steam bath at the Y. “Don’t your guests ever put their shooting irons on the poker table?” I asked. “I think I’ll set off your fire alarm and see what tumbles down the stairs.”
“Aw c’mon,” he said quickly.
“Then give me Figaro’s room key.”
“Figaro,” he said with relief. “Jesus Christ. Is that all you want? I ain’t got nothin’ to do with him, the little shit.”
“The little shit’s key, please.”
“He took both of them, I swear.” He pointed a chubby finger at 208 on the key rack.
“Give me your master.”
“We don’t keep no master. My hand to God. That’s common knowledge. And that you really could check with Vice. There’s lots of people like it we don’t keep no master key. It’s what you call a selling point. Y’mean? A guy wants good privacy he takes both keys off the rack. You know, a married man with his secretary.” He winked.
I winked back. “Is he alone?”
“Not unless somebody come from another room, which is possible, but ain’t likely, or flew in the window, which ain’t possible and ain’t likely.” He winked again.
“Is he expecting anybody?” I winked again. “You know, to sit on his lap for dictation and talk about the first thing that comes up.”
“I don’t know…. Ah, well. What the hell.” He leaned closer and glanced over each shoulder before continuing. “He didn’t say who she was. Look, this ain’t none of my business. Seriously. I wish I knew more. He walks in and pays cash in advance for one night for him and some snatch that’s gonna come later. I ain’t no rat, but however, if I knew he was up to somethin’ more than knockin’ off a little poontang, I’d tell you.”
Now it was my turn to glance over each shoulder and lean closer, wide-eyed. “Deep down I know you’re keeping something from me.” I smiled. “And I resent that.”
“I already talked too much. If it was anybody but you, they’d’ve gotten the bum’s rush. Eighty-sixed right outta here. That’s a tribute to your reputation. You know what I mean, Lou. Can I call you Lou?”
“First you have to tell me what you’re thinking about telling me. Does your fire alarm work? You’re not violating the city fire code, are you?” I tapped the gun against the side of the counter. “I can read faces, Janasek. You’re the cat that swallowed the canary. I’ll give you one last chance to tell me what you’re keeping from me.”
“Oh yeah.” He laughed out loud. “You mean the new hundred. I was gonna tell you about that. He was lookin’ real good for him, you know, and then he pays me with a crisp hundred-dollar bill, which I gotta wonder where a guy like that gets his hands on.”
“Did he get his hands on it from a package under his coat?”
“I did see a little bulge, but he had that hundred in his hand when he walked in. It even felt cold.”
“Then he must have carried it near his heart.”
“Hey, I like that. That’s pretty good.”
“Stay put and wipe the sweat off your face.”
“My pleasure.”
I opened the stairway door. The landing on the second floor had a single red lightbulb that glowed above a fire extinguisher, but not much beyond that. I holstered my weapon. The old wooden stairway looked as if it would break from the weight of a pregnant cat. I untied my black Corfam shoes, slipped out of them, and tiptoed carefully to the top, creaking all the way. I opened the door to the second-floor hallway. It was empty. Smack in front of me was 208. I put my ear to the wooden door and heard the nasal high-pitched tones of Figaro wondering why fools fall in love. I stepped back into the red stairwell, doo-wop, doo-wop, and lifted the copper-plated fire extinguisher from the wall. I opened the second-floor door again, cradled the extinguisher in my arms, and heaved; but when I saw the Fox lock plate on Figaro’s door, I didn’t ho. I went back and put the fire extinguisher on its hook, tiptoed down the stairs, put on my shoes, and walked out to the lobby. Janasek gave the impression that he’d remained in place next to the pink cash register.
“What gives?” he asked, turning to me, yawning. “Checking up on me? I ain’t gettin’ involved. You can have the little shit. He ain’t nothin’ to me.”
“We’re all God’s children,” I said. “I’m thirsty. Before the peasants come and nationalize your water supply, would you mind getting me a very big glass of it?”
“You want a little something in it? Four Roses to warm you up?”
“Make it warm water.”
“Tea? I make good tea.”
“Warm water is all I want, Gunga Din, but I want it now.”
He went to an office behind the counter and returned with the water in a sixteen-ounce glass with Daisy Mae chasing Li’l Abner on it. “I heard you was really different,” he said. “You take the cake. Warm water. What next?”
I climbed to the second floor, this time with my shoes on. When I got outside of 208, I called out in a downstate Delaware drawl: “Hey you, drunken nigra. Get away from that door. What you think you’re doin’ pissin’ against that door. You common nigra. I’m ’onna wipe that piss up with your pickaninny ass.”
I poured the water at the foot of 208 so that most of it went under the door on the hardwood floor.
“Niggers!” groaned an outraged Figaro through his nose. “What kind of dive is this anyhow?” When his door opened a tentative crack, I did my ho. His body swung in hard with the moving door. It pinned him flat to the wall like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. I walked in and shut the door behind us, freeing Figaro from the wall. He hunched over, coughing.
“Exquisite taste,” I said, staring wide-eyed at a bed covered with new hundred-dollar bills. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. You won all this on the ‘G.E. College Bowl.’ Come over here, you little Ivy Leaguer, you.”
He stumbled over to me. “I found it in the closet,” he whined. “I figure some hooker musta left it there and forgot about it. I was just gonna call yez. You read minds. I think we better stay here and nab the hooker when she comes back for her bread. I think I know who she is even. She’s pro’ly comin’ later. I bet. I mean I figure. I mean whatta we got to lose by waitin’?”
Despite the nervous chatter, he instinctively put his wrists behind his back, like a dog that knows only one trick and does it all the time. I cuffed him and patted him down. I pushed him to face the wall with his back to the bed and me. I picked up the telephone receiver and dialed the front desk. “Conrad Hilton, report to two-oh-eight, and bring Figaro’s hundred with you. It’s part of a matching set. The little shit’s up here trying to put the blame on his secretary for leaving something behind. Isn’t that just like a boss?”
“Aw, please,” said Janasek. “I can’t get involved in nothin’. Seriously, you don’t need me gettin’ involved against one of my own guests. Aw c’mon, please. Don’t do this.”
“Do I have to teach you social responsibility, or what?”
“I’m comin’.”
In a minute Janasek knocked
on the door and I let him in.
“Cheez,” he huffed, exhaling hard as his eyes took in the incomparable beauty of a bed full of money. He inhaled and shook his head. “To tell you the truth, Detective Razzi, the man did not give me no hundred. I musta made a mistake. He give me a new twenty. Here, you could have it. Take it. Seriously, you know I wouldn’t try to bullshit you.”
“You’ve been picking on me since the second I walked in tonight. Trying to keep out of this by hiding that hundred is not good business. It just gets you in deeper, and here you were trying to stay neutral, like Nehru. Get over near Figaro and face the wall.”
He did so. I took one cuff off Figaro’s wrist and snapped it on Janasek’s. At the time I never thought a thing about it.
“This cop’s nuts,” muttered Figaro.
“What about my nuts?” I asked quietly.
“Tell him, Janasek. Stick to your guns. Like you said, I didn’t pay with no hundred. How could I? Some hooker left all ’a them hundreds in the closet. I think she’s comin’ back to get them. I bet you know her even. Tuh! Where’m I gonna get a hundred? He ain’t got no call bustin’ in on me.”
“Piss on you,” growled Janasek.
“He already done that,” pleaded Figaro. “He’ll do anything, this bull. He already killed two guys. Remember Joey Termini? Blam. We gotta stick together. He put that bread on the bed. He took it right out the closet. I didn’t even know it was in the room. He’s gonna frame us both together if he don’t shoot us first. Everybody knows he’s a sick fuckin’ weirdo.”
“Now don’t tell me you’re going to start picking on me, too,” I said. “You keep that up, and you’ll hear from my lawyer.” I picked up the telephone.
“You must be crazy,” Figaro blurted out over his shoulder, gaining courage. “You must be crazy. What makes you think you can get away with this?”
“You must be crazy. What makes you think you can get away with this?” I repeated enthusiastically. “Déjà vu.” I held the telephone without dialing. “Figaro, I just heard that line on the late show last night from the old movie Body and Soul. It’s the next to the last line in the movie. The villain says it to John Garfield. You know, after Garfield double-crosses the mob and wins the fight. I bet you can’t remember what John Garfield answers. C’mon, take a shot. If you guess it, I won’t charge you with sled-kicking. I mean it. The racketeer says, ‘You must be crazy. What makes you think you can get away with this?’…Can you picture them all at ringside with Lilli Palmer on Garfield’s arm…remember the music? Body and Soul? Last chance. Garfield stares him in the eye and says: ‘What are you going to do, kill me? Everybody dies.’ ”
“Listen to him. ‘Everybody dies,’ ” said Figaro, his voice up an octave. “Listen to what he’s sayin’. ‘Body and Soul’! Get it? He’s going after your Body & Soul Lounge in Chester. We gotta stick together. Some hooker musta left that bread in the closet. Ain’t that right, Janasek? You pro’ly know who she is. I bet.”
“Shut up!” boomed Janasek. Figaro jumped two inches straight up and shut up. “What if I could locate that hundred? Maybe I didn’t look hard enough. Maybe I got a little nervous.”
“Maybe you did. When I look I promise not to get nervous.” I dialed the dicks.
“Detectives,” said Tony Landis.
“Louis John Razzi here, remote from the beautiful downtown Janasek. Listen, Tony, I got a bust for you and your Caucasian partner.”
“A crumb for us?” asked Tony. “How thoughtful. What’re you doin’ workin’?”
“I’m not working, I’m playing. I’m going to make the city pay me a little overtime tonight. Do me a favor, Tony, you and Judson sit in Janasek’s lobby and find me the girl that’s looking for John Figaro. I’ll be up in two-oh-eight with Janasek and our favorite member of the House of Figaro. He’s under arrest for trying to make an impression on his fiancée. She might be a Body & Soul girl from up Chester.”
I hung up and the three of us waited. I sat in the only chair in the room and my prisoners stood facing the wall, shifting their feet. I whistled Coleman Hawkins licks on “Body and Soul.” Next I did my rendition of a white male Billie Holiday singing it. Then I switched to some irregular Thelonious Monk rhythms on my song of the day, again not thinking.
In twenty minutes Tony Landis and his partner, John Judson, the tall white bowling pin to Tony’s squat ebony ball, walked in bearing a wiry loudmouthed olive-skinned girl I’d seen around the bars at night. On her elongated lips she wore bright pink lipstick and on her nails shiny polish to match. Her black hair was teased and sprayed into a glossy beehive. At the sight of the money on the bed, her eyes popped and she bellowed, “What?” poking the air with a long pink fingernail. “You got nothin’ on me. I’m here to meet a personal acquaintance. This is a free country.” She surveyed the room and froze when she saw Figaro’s back. “What the fuck you gettin’ me into, you moron?” He jumped, and Janasek snapped him back to attention with the cuff. “I ain’t got nothin’ to do with that little creep. I swear. I don’t even know who the fat fuck is. Who’s the fat fuck, anyway?”
I said to Janasek: “She doesn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“Oh yeah,” she screamed, looking from cop to cop, her eyes burning. “Don’t tell me about feelings.”
2
At the end of a row of army-green metal lockers, our personal lockers in the hallway outside the Detective Division, stood an old oak bench. We cuffed our prisoners to the bench. Lieutenant Elmo Covaletzki of Vice was acting captain while our regular captain of dicks was in traction with a slipped disc. I told Covaletzki what we had.
“Tell you what,” Covaletzki said through thin lips that revealed his bottom yellow teeth and released a monotone that rookies mimicked when he wasn’t around. “Let’s save you some time, Razzi, and get you back home to Marian on your day off. I’ll start the questioning with Janasek here while you start filling out your reports.”
“I’d like to question Janasek.”
“Why’s that?” He squinted.
“To see if he gets the right answers.”
“Razzi, you’re a card, you are. I can handle this. You start your reports.” He gave me his one-eye-larger-than-the-other look, then winked the large one at me.
“It’s my arrest, Lieutenant,” I said.
“Captain,” he corrected. “Tonight I’m your acting captain. You understand? I’ve been in Vice a long time, Razzi. I know how to talk to guys like Janasek. Maybe you don’t think I can handle it?”
“That’s not the point,” I said.
“You’re right that’s not the point,” he said. “The point’s these bars on my shoulder.”
“Man, I hate that,” I said, and turned to my desk and began reporting the incident in longhand. I had spent no more than three minutes on the report when Covaletzki came out of the interrogation room and said, “Janasek ain’t seen Figaro in over a year and he don’t know squat about the money. It’s a waste of department time to try to hold him even if he did stiff us out of evidence on that hundred-dollar bill. I got his word he’ll turn it in to us. There’s no reason to bust his balls for personal vengeance. I’m lettin’ him go. He’s never lied to me and he’s given us plenty of good intelligence over the years, a lot of which we forked over to dicks. Go on. Get out of here,” he called back into the captain’s office, and Janasek made straight for the doorway. He avoided me as he went by, and in no time his footsteps faded past our green personal lockers. Covaletzki then told Tony Landis to interrogate the loudmouthed girl, Tina Darvi, while, “to save time,” he’d “work on” Figaro in the captain’s office. Each went his way and shut the door behind him.
“Can you beat all this time saving?” said my first partner, Shy Whitney, from his desk in front of mine, his fat cigar in his mouth and his Tennessee down-home grin wrapped around it while he talked. “Looks from my perch like Covale
tzki wants to part you from your work product. You just going to sit there and let him fuck up your bust? Which he will.”
“Well, Holmes,” I said. “Sooner or later you get enough credit on this job, somebody’ll shoot you. At least according to Mrs. Whitney’s little boy.”
“Shh, don’t tell ’em where you got it. Every sum’bitch’ll want me to break ’em in.”
John Judson knocked on the Captain’s door, and when Covaletzki came out Judson said he’d finished counting the money — there was $9,400 and, guess what, it was counterfeit.
“You mean you didn’t see that?” Covaletzki leered at me.
“I gathered the evidence,” said Judson, “and I didn’t notice it. Lou never touched the money.”
“He must be part of a counterfeit ring,” said Coveletzki, nodding his head, all-knowing.
I said, “Nobody with brains enough to use green ink would be in any kind of a ring with Figaro, but any con man could sell bad paper to a chooch like him. Ask him how much real money he paid for it.”
“I’ll be back out,” Coveletzki said and went back in.
“Shoot, boy,” said Shy. “Don’t tell me I ever taught you anything. You don’t know damn thing one ’bout police politics. You just handed that particularly dumb sum’bitch from Vice the whole case. He could no more figure out sum’in like ’at than a shithouse rat. Don’t tell him no more, you hear.” He blew a big puff of smoke from his Muriel cigar. “Fuck ’im.”
“And the horse he rode in on,” I said and walked out the door and down the empty hallway past our green lockers to the soda machine and brought back a Bubble-Up to drink while I fine-tuned my reports.
Ten minutes later Covaletzki strolled out of the captain’s office and over to the interrogation room. I could hear Tony Landis tell him that all the Darvi girl knew was that Figaro told her there’d be a big surprise and a hundred in it for her if she came right over. “I swear on a stack of Bibles,” she said, coming out of the interrogation room. “You could ask anybody, I don’t lie for nobody. Especially for that moron.” Covaletzki pushed her pink leatherette purse toward her, told her she could go home, and told Tony Landis and his partner, Judson, to get started on their reports. Tina Darvi strutted out the door like a wronged lady, and Covaletzki went back in with Figaro.
The Right to Remain Silent Page 2
