Fat Ollie's Book: A Novel of the 87th Precinct

by Ed McBain

  “Herrera,” he said. “Emilio Herrera.”

  Of which there were probably ten thousand in this city alone.

  LUCAS RILEYwas perhaps twenty years old, they guessed, a skinny, blue-eyed kid some five feet, nine inches tall, freckles spattered all over his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, the map of County Donegal all over his face. He was wearing jeans, a Ramsey U sweatshirt, high-topped workmen’s shoes, and a baseball cap turned backwards, the peak at the back of his head, the band on his forehead. They found him at last in the library at Ramsey U, and they asked him to come outside with them, please, and then walked him over to the school’s football field, empty on Sunday except for some kids in jogging clothes running around the perimeter.

  They sat in the stands under a clear blue sky.

  The breeze was mild, the sun was shining.

  But Lucas Riley had swatted a nineteen-year-old girl last Monday morning at eleven-thirty after he discovered she’d spent the weekend with Lester Henderson. And Henderson had been killed an hour or so before that.

  “So tell us about it,” Carella said.

  “I lost my temper.”

  “Twice?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Did you lose your temper with the councilman, too?”

  “I never met the slimy bastard.”

  “How’d you find out about them?”

  “Her girlfriend.”

  “Carrie’s girlfriend?”

  Lucas nodded. “I called her Saturday night, I thought maybe Carrie was there studying with her, she told me she had a lot of studying to do that weekend. So Maria said No, she wasn’t there, and she sounded sort of hesitant, you know, the way people do when they’re hiding something, holding something back? So I said What is it, Maria? and she opened up, told me Carrie’d been seeing this older man since just after Thanksgiving, told me she was tired of making alibis for her, told me Carrie was upstate right that minute with the son of a bitch! I wanted tokill him!”

  The detectives looked at him.

  He seemed to realize what he’d just said, and immediately added, “But I didn’t.”

  “You beat her up instead,” Kling said.

  “I only hit her once.”

  “Where were you before then?”

  “Like say between ten and ten-thirty that morning?”

  “I had an early class.”

  “How early?”

  “Nine o’clock. It let out at eleven. I went straight to Carrie’s afterward. She was still unpacking from her big trip.”

  “Where’d this class meet?”

  “Morten Parker Hall. Room 713.”

  “What’s the instructor’s name?”

  “Dr. Nagel.”

  “What’s his first name?”

  “She’s a woman. Phyllis, I think. Or Felice, I’m not sure.”

  “Does she keep attendance?”

  “I’m sure she does.”

  “What sort of class is it?” Carella asked.

  “Romantic Poetry,” Lucas said.

  ROSITA THOUGHTthese three people were total dummies, and she could not imagine how they’d managed to come up with three hundred thousand dollars, but they assured her they already had the money, and it was now merely a matter of ascertaining that she could deliver the product.

  “How do we know you evenhave the jelly beans?” their apparent leader said.

  His name was Lonnie Doyle, or so he’d said, she never believed any names that were exchanged in drug transactions. She herself had told them her name was Rosalie Wadsworth, which was close to Rosita Washington, but no cigar, thank you. She did not think Lonnie Doyle could possibly be this man’s real name, but then again maybe he was stupid enough to have given her a square handle, who could tell when you were dealing with dummies?

  One sure sign that these people were not playing with a full deck was the way they kept referring to the cocaine as “jelly beans.” They were sitting at a back table in a little cuchi frito joint on Culver, maybe two or three other people in the place, plus the guy behind the counter. There was not the remotest possibility that anyone had planted a bug here, but they were usingcode, anyway, could you believe it! Jelly beans!

  “I will have the jelly beans,” Rosita said. “And they will be very high-grade jelly beans.”

  Jesus, she thought.

  Another one of the dummies, a guy who’d introduced himself as Constantine Skevopoulos, a phony name if ever there was one, asked if these “jelly beans” would be in the quantity specified? He was a twitchy little man with a silly grin. “Quantity specified” were the exact words he used. Dopey little grin on his face. Quantity specified.

  “Thejelly beans will…” Rosita started, and rolled her eyes, and because she knew there couldn’t in a million years be a bug in this place, and since she knew Juanito behind the counter there was a little deaf in the bargain, she said flat out, “The coke will come in tenkilo lots at twenty thousand a lot, for a total of three hundred thousand dollars.”

  The one named Harry Curtis looked suddenly alarmed, either by her having used the word “coke” or else by the enormity of the purchase price, which Rosita had to admit was a thousand more per lot than the going price, but hey these were dummies. Harry Curtis—if that was his real name, which she felt sure it wasn’t—was a huge man. He sat hunkered over the table like a grizzly bear, his eyes popping wide open when he heard Rosita talking about cocaine so openly. The other two looked startled as well, glancing around the room as if expecting an immediate raid, the dummies.

  “So if we understand the purchase price,” Rosita said, “and if we know how manyjelly beans you’ll be buying,” stressing the words, rolling her eyes again, “all we need to settle, once and for all, is where the transaction will take place.”

  “Don’t say the address out loud,” Constantine said, twitching and grinning.

  “Write it down,” Lonnie said.

  “On a piece of paper,” Harry said.

  Where else? Rosita thought. On the wall?

  She opened her handbag, tore a sheet of paper from her address book…

  “Letter it,” Harry said.

  “So we can read it,” Lonnie said.

  Constantine nodded and grinned.

  In a large bold hand, Rosita lettered the address onto the sheet of paper:

  3211CULVER AVENUE

  And then, just to show these dummies they were truly stupid to be worrying about a bug in a cuchi frito joint, she read the address out loud, anyway.

  “Thirty-two eleven Culver Avenue,” she said. “The basement. Be there. And bring the money.”

  The three men hurried out of there as if their pants were on fire. Rosita lingered over her Coke—the soft drink, not the jelly bean—and then left the shop, passing a girl sitting at a table nearby. The girl was wearing a flared skirt and a white blouse, white ankle socks and brown loafers. She could have been your average Irish teenager were it not for the apathetic look that betrayed her for a drug addict. Rosita recognized the look at once; dope was her business. She nodded understandingly, perhaps even sympathetically, and walked past the girl and out of the shop.

  The girl did not nod back.

  The girl was Aine Duggan.

  IT WAS NOTuntil ten past one that Parker realized Rosita had shaken the tail. He debated going into the shop and confronting Palacios with the accusation that he’d aided and abetted the very person Parker was following, but then that would alert the son of a bitch if he and Miss Washington with the swiveling little ass were trying to pull something funny here.

  So he went back to the squadroom and told Eileen he thought the Washington woman had made him, and he suggested that Eileen pick up the surveillance. Otherwise they’d go down that friggin basement on Tuesday night—

  He actually used the word “friggin” in deference to Eileen’s delicacy. Eileen found this amusing; in her many years as a cop, she had certainly heard the word “fuck” in all its derivations. But even if she
weren’t a cop, which she most certainly was, all she had to do was go to the movies on any given Sunday, and she’d get an education she’d never received in church, believe me, Father Mulahy.

  “Go down the friggin basement this Tuesday night,” Parker said, “and find nothing there but cockroaches and rats. I think Palacios may be tryin’a pull something funny here.”

  “Why?” Eileen asked. “No bust, no money.”

  Which was a thought.

  “Maybe she’s paying him more than we are,” Parker suggested.

  “Why?” Eileen asked.

  Another good thought.

  “To steer us in the wrong direction.”

  “You think Palacios would risk that?”

  “I don’t know what he’d do. I just don’t want to look foolish on this thing.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Go down that basement tomorrow. Thirty-two eleven Culver. Check it out. Make sure we won’t be walkin into some kinda booby trap there.”

  “Why don’t you go there yourself?” Eileen asked.

  “Tomorrow’s my day off,” Parker said.

  “Then let’s go there together. Right now.”

  “It’s almost quitting time,” Parker said.

  “It’s only two-thirty,” Eileen said.

  “Yeah, but the clock is ticking,” Parker said. “Time we got there, it’d be time we went home. Let it wait till tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Eileen said, and shrugged.

  “What’s that, that shrug?”

  “I’ll let it wait till tomorrow,” Eileen said, and shrugged again.

  “You know, there’s some things you ought to learn if you plan to stay here awhile,” Parker said.

  “Oh, and what are these things?”

  “These things are you don’t try to second-guess your partner, and everything can always wait till tomorrow.”

  “I didn’t know I was second-guessing you.”

  “And you don’t sass him, either.”

  “I see,” Eileen said.

  “Just so we understand each other.”

  “Oh, yes, perfectly. But tell me, Andy. Would you think I was second-guessing you if I checked out that basement right now? Because I have to tell you, the friggin clockis indeed ticking, and I don’t want to walk into a mess of shit Tuesday night.”

  “Be my guest,” Parker said, thinking he’d won the argument.

  “You have the address.”

  “I have the address,” she said, and turned and walked off with a hooker’s strut, the bitch.

  AINE DUGGANwas sitting in the hallway outside Emilio’s apartment when he got back from Majesta at three that afternoon.

  “Where you been?” she asked, rising and dusting off the back of her skirt.

  “All over Majesta,” he said. “There’s no Rêve du Jour Underwear.”

  “Gee, that’s too bad,” Aine said.

  She didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

  “I walked all over the area. There’s no such thing as Riverview Place, either.” He was unlocking the door. “Not that I’m surprised,” he said, and retrieved his key. He swung the door open, and walked in ahead of her.

  There was a mattress on the floor near the windows, an unpainted dresser he’d bought in a junk shop off Leighton, a floor lamp with a soiled and split linen shade, and that was it. Your everyday, garden variety junkie’s pad. His toilet hadn’t been cleaned since the day Julius Caesar got assassinated. Even Aine, who you could bet had seen some fine toilets in her life, was reluctant to pee in there.

  “You running out of underwear?” she asked.

  “No, I got plenty underwear.”

  “So why were you looking for underwear?”

  “I wasn’t. I was looking for the diamonds.”

  “What diamonds?” she asked, and flopped down on the mattress.

  “In Livvie’s report.”

  “Livvie, right.I haven’t worn underwear since I was seventeen,” she said. “No bra, no panties, either.”

  “That’s evident,” he said, and glanced over at her where she lay somewhat carelessly on the mattress. Aine smiled like a blushing maiden, and pulled her skirt down over her knees.

  “You still looking for that bar near a police station?” she asked.

  “I am.”

  “I think I found it.”

  “Really? Where is it?”

  “It’s not called O’Malley’s, though. It’s called Shanahan’s. And it ain’t two blocks from the Oh-One, which as I suspected don’t exist. It’s two blocks from the Eight-Seven.”

  “The Eight-Seven,” Emilio said, trying to place it. “On Grover Avenue?”

  “Facing the park, yeah. But the bar ain’t on Grover. It’s on St. John’s Road, two blocks over.”

  “Too many streets in this damn city,” Emilio said.

  “It’s easy to find,” Aine said. “I’ll take you there, if you like. You ever feel like fucking anymore?”

  “Not very often, no.”

  “Neither do I. Smack’s the best fuck I ever had.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  They both fell silent, thinking about this basic truth, almost cherishing the knowledge that they were each and separately married to heroin.

  “I think there’s a big drug buy going down soon,” Aine said out of the blue.

  “Good,” Emilio said. “How do you know?”

  “I heard these people talking in a cuchi frito joint on Culver. This Spanish broad, she looks Spanish, is selling ten-kilo lots at twenty large a lot.”

  “That’s a lot of lots,” Emilio said, making a joke, but Aine didn’t catch it because she was doing arithmetic.

  “Selling it for three hundred thou, that comes to fifteen lots.”

  “That’s a lot of lots,” Emilio said again, but she still didn’t catch it. “When’s this gonna happen?”

  “That’s the only thing I don’t know,” she said. “A basement at 3211 Culver is where the buy’s going down. A hundred and fifty keys of cocaine.”

  Emilio looked at her.

  “You don’t think all that stuff’s already down there in that basement, do you?” he asked.

  THE BASEMENTwas clean.

  A table, four chairs around it, a wash sink in the corner.

  Door at the back leading to the alley outside.

  Steps coming down from the ground floor of the building above.

  Eileen figured it’d be best to come in through the back door. Bust it open with a battering ram, surprise them at the table testing the dope and handing over the money. Rosita Washington wouldn’t be coming here alone, that was for sure, not if the story about the Miami boys ripping her off was true. Her people would be armed. And so might the three grifters buying the stuff. She planned to ask Byrnes for a full-force raiding party, Kevlar vests and assault rifles, never mind any heroics Parker might have in mind.

  She walked over to the back door, confirmed that a Mickey Mouse lock was on it, looked around the room one last time, and then pulled the chain on the hanging overhead light bulb. In the scant daylight spilling from the narrow street level windows, she found her way to the steps, and climbed them to the ground floor. She listened at the door there before letting herself into the building. A woman carrying two bags of groceries and climbing the steps to the first floor gave her only a backward glance. Eileen walked to the entrance foyer and let herself out into the street.

  A young Hispanic male and an Irish-looking female were just approaching the building. The male stopped dead in his tracks. His mouth fell open. He looked directly into Eileen’s face and said, “Livvie?”

  “Sorry,” Eileen said, smiling, and walked on past him.

  Emilio turned to Aine and said, “It was her, wasn’t it?”

  Or even she.

  THE GIRLSusually started their stroll at nine, nine-thirty, sometimes even later. They’d learned from experience that nobody wanted to get laid too soon a
fter dinnertime. These men were different from the ones who frequented the massage parlors. Those guys went upstairs at any time of day, whenever the urge hit them, some of them for quickies on their way to the train station before going home to their sweet little wives in the burbs. The johns here in Ho Alley were different.

  You rarely saw a man on foot here. First off, it was too dangerous, and secondly you had to accommodate somebody like that with a room, and a room cost money, not to mention all the bother of finding one, it just didn’t pay. The men looking for tail here usually cruised by in automobiles, casing the merchandise, and then drove up to the curb and parked, and waited for a girl to come over, and lean into the window, and talk business. The price of a handjob was fifty bucks. A blowjob cost a hundred. Nowadays, you couldn’t get laid for less than three, and most girls didn’t want to bother with intercourse at all. Most girls found intercourse too complicated, what with having to take off their panties and lift their skirts and place themselves in a vulnerable position on the back seat of a car in case the law showed. A handjob or a blowjob, you could perform on the front seat, sitting like a lady, fully clothed. Besides, most girls found intercourse too intimate. It wasn’t any different on the street than in high school. Nowadays, in high school, a blowjob was the equivalent of a goodnight kiss.

  Except for cops they knew, who were on the take and who would look the other way in return for any quick sex they could get, the girls were ever on the alert for the law. You got some jackass uniformed cop who didn’t know how the system worked, he’d come around like some dumb preacher spouting hellfire and damnation, and next thing you knew you were in a holding cell waiting for night court. Or sometimes even a detective, although most of them knew better, they’d been around a long while, they knew how it worked, they couldn’t care less if you blew the Mayor in broad daylight on the steps of City Hall. It was the young cops you had to watch out for. The ones who still believed.

  The girls on stroll that night spotted Ollie for a cop the moment he entered the street. Maybe it was the arrogant stride, or the know-it-all look on his face. Or maybe it was because, first of all, he was on foot, and next he didn’t seem to be seriously looking for a piece of ass. The hungry, desperate, guilty appearance of a bona fide john just wasn’t there. In ten seconds flat, half the girls on the street disappeared into doorways, or walked around the corner, or simply went home for the night, they didn’t need trouble from a fat flatfoot. The other half were otherwise engaged in parked automobiles all up and down the street. Ollie floated up Ho Alley like an aircraft carrier steaming into the Persian Gulf. He was looking for a blond Puerto Rican cross-dressing hooker named Emilio Herrera.