“I’m not here to say different.”
“Then what you here for? Little late in the game, don’t ya think, to start nosin’ around? All you gonna do is hurt the man.”
“You know the man and I don’t. I’ll give you that,” I said. “But don’t you think he’d trade a little more pain for a chance to find his daughter?”
“He ain’t got much left to trade, mister. He and his wife split. She move down to Florida with their boy. I s’pose you could have his soul, but there ain’t much a that left neither.”
I said nothing. There was no answer to that, no way to dress it up and take it to the prom. As a cop, I’d seen people kill themselves in all sorts of ways. Some more violent than others, but the saddest suicides were the long marches of self-destruction.
I held my hand out to Officer Simmons. “Moses Prager,” I said. “Most people call me Moe. I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. I’m really not the asshole I appear to be.”
“Preacher,” he offered, his hand fairly swallowing mine. “Most people call me Officer Simmons.” A mischievous smile flashed across his face. “And I am the tough-ass motherfucker I appear to be.”
“Preacher Simmons,” I mumbled to myself, something stirring in my memory. “Preacher ‘the Creature’ Simmons? Boys High, 1964 all-city team, right?”
That knocked about half the smile off his face. He was happy I remembered, but afraid I’d remember more. I did. Preacher “the Creature” Simmons had gone on from Boys High to Georgia Atlantic and gotten mixed up in a point-shaving scandal. Unlike Connie “the Hawk” Hawkins, who had, thanks to the ABA, salvaged at least some part of what might have been one of the brightest futures in basketball history, Preacher had fallen off the radar screen. No wonder. It’s hard to spot a man so far below ground level.
“Preacher ‘the Creature’ been gone since before we landed on the moon, Moe. I been jus’ plain Officer Simmons now for near fifteen years. I owe that to John Heaton. He got me this gig.”
“Judging people’s not my business, Officer Simmons. Finding them is.” I handed him a card. “There’s plenty of numbers there you can reach me at if you can think of anything that might help me. I don’t suppose you’d wanna tell me where I can find John now?”
“Wine stores, huh? You jus’ a jack a all kinda trades.”
“I’ve never been great at anything.”
“I have,” he said, his smile having fully retreated. “It’s overrated.”
Ready to leave it at that, I thanked him and turned to go.
“Glitters,” he called out to me when I was nearly out the door.
“Glitters?”
“It’s a topless joint in Times Square. John workin’ there off the books doin’ this and that. Down there, they don’t judge people neither.”
THE THINGS THAT become of people’s lives. That’s what I was thinking about as I pulled my car out of the lot at Mandrake Towers. In his day, Preacher “the Creature” Simmons was as much a legend as Lew Alcindor. It’s sad when the mighty fall or when injury diminishes greatness, but I felt sick at the sight of Preacher Simmons, forgotten by the world, living out his days in a cinder-block bunker. I wondered what would kill him first, the cigarettes or the what-ifs.
Anyway, I hadn’t the heart to argue with him when he suggested too much time had passed to start looking into Moira’s disappearance. If my investigation into the Catskills fire had taught me anything, it was that the passage of time, even sixteen years, cuts both ways. Sure, cold leads freeze over and witnesses move, forget, die off. But though time tightens some tongues, it greases others. As years pile up, perps can get overconfident, sloppy, and alibis rot away like unbrushed teeth. Guilt can set in and fester. But time’s greatest benefit is distance. Distance allows for perspective. All manner of things become visible that were previously impossible to see. The passage of time had helped me get to the truth of the Fir Grove Hotel fire. Whether it would help lead to Moira Heaton, I could not say, but what it had done to her father was clear enough.
Glitters was what the guys on the job so affectionately referred to as a titty bar. Preacher’s calling it a topless joint had been unfairly generous. It was more a bucket of blood with tits and ass thrown in. When new, the dump was probably just cheap and ugly. Now cheap and ugly was something to aspire to. And the stink of the place! Between the spilled-beer carpeting, cigarette smoke, sweat, and cheap perfumes, it smelled worse than the Port Authority men’s room.
I guess Glitters was no different than a hundred other places in town, maybe no different than a thousand other places in a thousand other towns. We had a bar just like it in my old precinct.
It was too everything: too dark, too smelly, the drinks too watery, the women too old and too much the victims of gravity. Everything about the place gave credence to the line about all that glitters not being gold. At that place in Coney Island, a lot of the girls turned tricks for drug money. But none of its myriad faults put a dent in its popularity with my precinct brethren. Maybe that was because head was on the house for the local constabulary. As our precinct philosopher, Ferguson May, was wont to say: “It sure beats the shit out of free coffee.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in a topless place. Probably some cop’s bachelor party. What a silly concept. I think the last time bachelor parties served a useful purpose was during the second Eisenhower administration. I’m no prude and no one’s ever mistaken me for a saint, but I’ve never been much of a fan of places like Glitters, even the ones that don’t smell like the insides of my sneakers. Maybe it’s the pretense of it all. I mean, a lot of the performers were gay and were as enthusiastic about being pawed by the patrons as burn victims were eager to receive skin grafts from a leper colony. Maybe it was just the mercenary aspect of it all. Who knows? Some things defy logic.
Even now, standing just inside the front door, as the music blared so loudly I thought my ears would bleed, I could barely bring myself to look at the women onstage. I paid my ten bucks to get in, but that was as far as I wanted to go. I asked the doorman if John Heaton was around. He didn’t quite ignore me. He was distracted, having trouble making change for a twenty for the guy behind me. When that was taken care of, I repeated the question. This time he ignored me on purpose.
The doorman was a real musclehead: handsome, with a store-bought tan and perfectly coiffed hair. He looked strong as an ox but tough as tissue paper. He was the window dressing meant to dissuade the casual assholes from getting too drunk or carried away with the girls. Somewhere, lurking in the shadows, would be the real muscle; a smaller man, an ex-boxer or ex-cop. If any serious trouble started, you wouldn’t see him coming. Maybe that’s what Heaton was doing here, supplying some backup muscle. At this rate, I was never going to find out.
I considered flashing my badge, but thought better of it. Instead, I found myself a seat at a lonely little two-top set back from the stage. As ineffectual as Adonis at the door might be, he couldn’t afford to get caught accepting a bribe. Besides, he seemed to have trouble counting past twenty. A cocktail waitress at a table in a dark room was more likely to be accommodating.
“Dewar’s rocks,” I shouted just to be heard.
The waitress had no trouble filling out her black lace blouse, velveteen hot pants, and nosebleed heels, but she was a little long in the tooth to be up onstage, and the shade of her blonde hair wasn’t on God’s original color palette.
“Eight bucks,” she screamed back, a come-and-get-it smile painted permanently across her face.
“Here.” I threw a ten and a twenty on her tray. “The ten’s for the drink and a tip. The twenty’s for an introduction to John Heaton.”
She sucked up the ten like a sleight-of-hand artist, but put the twenty back on the table. “Listen, mister, my job’s to get you to buy as many drinks as your wallet can stand. My only concern around this place is me, myself, and me. See on the stage up there? For all I care, Marilyn Monroe could be playing ‘Yankee Doodle’ on J
FK’s dick. You catch my meaning?”
She was talking a lot and not saying anything.
“Okay,” I said, placing a business card and the twenty back on her tray. “Keep the twenty as a gesture of goodwill. If you should happen to make some room in there between me, myself, and me for John Heaton, give me a call.”
“I’ll be back with your scotch in a minute.” This time, she didn’t return the twenty.
A different waitress brought me my scotch. I asked her about Heaton just to be consistent. Though equally unforthcoming, she wasn’t quite as chatty about it.
I finished my drink, moved over to the bar, and switched to beer.
“I dated a guy named John Healy once, but he’s dead now,” one of the barmaids said. “He had to lay down his Harley and wound up under a semi. I don’t remember where he’s buried. Why you lookin’ for him, anyways?”
That was the closest thing I got to an answer at the bar. Luckily, the men’s room was downstairs and not too far away from the dancer’s dressing room. I wasn’t stupid enough to try and worm my way in. In the movies it’s all just a lighthearted romp, sneaking into the women’s dressing room. In real life you get the shit kicked out of you. I was nearly two years removed from my last ass-kicking. Call me crazy, but I just wasn’t quite up for another.
I waited to catch one of the dancers at the end of her shift. First, I hung out just inside the lavatory door, holding it open far enough to give myself a reasonable view down the hall. Above my head, the ceiling literally moved with the thump thump thumping of the only kind of music that made me rue the evolution of rock and roll. Then I made believe I was on the pay phone for ten minutes. Too bad nobody was on the other end of the line. I was funny as hell.
A woman I recognized from the stage upstairs slipped out of the dressing room and walked past the pay phone. They called her Domino, and she had done this dominatrix shtick to Devo’s “Whip It.” She’d worn a shiny black latex getup, thigh-high boots, and a leather mask and strutted about with a riding crop. Now she was dressed in a halter, jeans, and sandals.
“You’re Domino, right?” I said like some goofy stage-door Johnny. “You were great.”
She yawned. “Thanks, buddy, but I’m tired, and it’s against house rules to mix with the gentlemen.”
House rules! Who was she kidding? This wasn’t exactly the Lonesome Piper Country Club. For a fistful of fifties and a nice smile, you could get anything you wanted in a place like this.
While I figured out what to say next, I took a careful look at Domino. She had been pretty once, maybe very pretty. At close quarters, however, the wear and tear showed. She was on the wrong side of thirty-five, and the fluorescent light wasn’t doing her any favors. I was on that same side of thirty-five myself, but I wasn’t trading on my boyish good looks for room and board and who knows what else. The whites of her eyes weren’t. Yellow was more like it. She had a touch of drippy junkie nose, or maybe she’d done a few lines too many. She’d get older faster than I, much faster if she didn’t get clean. Women like Domino can have short, violent careers, and when things start to go, they go quickly. There’s no safety net to catch you and no ladder back up.
“Look, I need to talk to John Heaton,” I admitted, unwilling to spin too much of a tale. “I know he works here and it’s pretty obvious he’s a hard man to see.” I gave her my card. “Just tell him it’s about his daughter, all right?”
She didn’t answer, but took the card. Her eyes got big as she looked past me. Before I could turn around, a powerful hand clamped down on my left shoulder.
“This asshole bothering you, darlin'?” a gravelly voice wanted to know.
“It’s okay, Rocky. He’s just a fan,” she said to the man standing behind me, then refocused on my face. “Thanks for the compliment, mister. Come back again soon.”
I bowed slightly. “You’re welcome.”
She walked past me, her sandals clickity-clacking on the stairs. The vise loosened its grip on my shoulder, and I turned around to have a look at Rocky. So this was the extra muscle. He was definitely an ex-pug. Gee, a boxer named Rocky, what a concept. Though a light heavyweight now, he’d probably fought as a middleweight. By the look of his face, he’d no doubt been a world-class bleeder. His brow and the bridge of his flattened nose were thick with scar tissue. That and the fleshy reminders of a thousand unblocked left jabs made him look like he was wearing a pair of skin-tone goggles.
“You’re a real fuckin’ pest, chief,” he growled. “Everybody from the doorman to the girls behind the bar say you been givin’ ‘em a hard time.”
I considered arguing the point, but I wasn’t willing to risk even a playful tap from this guy. He may well have been a bleeder, but the thing about bleeders is they’re usually big punchers. It’s how they survive. I’m sure more than a few of his opponents left the ring in a lot worse shape than he. It’s better to stand and bleed than lie glassy-eyed on the mat. I showed him my badge.
“What precinct you from?” he asked.
“Not this one. Listen, I’ll get outta your hair in a minute. I just want a word with John Heaton and I’m gone.”
Rocky gave it some thought. “He ain’t in today.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Rocky, okay?”
“I swear, he ain’t in today.”
I pulled a pen out of my pocket and wrote “Moe” plus a seven-digit number on the wall.
“Tell him to call me when he does get in. I want to talk to him about Moira.”
“All right,” Rocky said, “I’ll pass word along.”
I shook his hand and left. After an hour in Glitters, the air on Eighth Avenue seemed almost fresh. Darkness should have been in full bloom, but all the gaudy neon and street lighting fooled the eye. I headed back to the outdoor lot on Tenth and Forty-fourth where I’d stashed my car. The crowds had thinned by the time I got to Ninth, and here the artificial lighting at least gave the fallen night a fighting chance. As I stepped down off the curb onto the crumbled blacktop of Ninth Avenue, I noticed the footfalls of a man walking right up behind me.
“He won’t talk to you, you know.”
I turned. “Are you talking to me?”
“I am indeed, Mr. Prager.”
His short, slight stature was unimposing if not exactly unthreatening. He was impeccably dressed in a gold-buttoned blue blazer, khaki pants, a white oxford shirt, a superbly knotted red silk tie, and loafers. He was an older man, in his mid-sixties, but his gray-blue eyes beneath stylish tortoiseshell glasses were still very young and fiery. His head was tan and bald, and his chin was adorned with a rich gray goatee.
“Who won’t speak to me? You seem perfectly willing to chat.”
“I do, don’t I? But it’s John Heaton to whom I refer. He won’t speak to you.”
“I won’t even get into how you seem to know so much about my business. There seems to be a lot of that going around lately. So, how do you know John Heaton won’t talk to me?”
“That’s easy, Mr. Prager.” My new acquaintance showed me an expensive white smile. “I’m paying him not to.”
“That’s a switch. Most of the people who don’t speak to me do it for free. Maybe I should give them your number. No sense letting their animosity go to waste if they can make a few bucks on the deal.”
“Very good. Very good. Can I buy you a scotch?”
“Not back at that dump,” I said. “I’ve had my fill of tawdry for the year.”
“Oh my, no, Mr. Prager. I was thinking more along the lines of the Yale Club.”
THE YALE CLUB was just west of Grand Central Station, a block or two north of Forty-second. It was a charming old building that was only slightly less difficult to get into than Skull and Bones. There wasn’t a hint of ivy anywhere. No one sang “Boola Boola,” and, much to my chagrin, none of the staff wore plaid golf pants.
My host’s name was Yancy Whittle Fenn, but I was to call him Wit. Everyone called him Wit, so I was told. Though I hadn’t recognized his tanne
d and bearded face, I immediately recognized his name when he was finally gracious enough to share it with me on the ride over. Y. W. Fenn was one of the most famous journalists around. He wrote for everyone from Esquire to Playboy, from GQ to The New Yorker. His forte was the celebrity exposé. Not just any old celebrity would do, however. No, Wit’s subjects, or more accurately, targets, tended to be from among the ranks of the rich and the powerful, particularly those who had landed in the chilly womb of the criminal justice system.
“You know, Wit,” I said as the waiter slid my chair under me, “I don’t see John Heaton as the typical subject of one of your pieces.”
“How very perceptive,” he mocked.
“How are you this evening, Mr. Wit, sir?” asked the nimble, gray-haired black man who had attended to my chair.
“Very good, Willie. Good. And yourself?”
“Same as always, sir. Same as always. What can I get for you and your guest this fine evening?”
“The usual for me, Willie. My guest will have …”
“Dewar’s rocks.”
“Very good, gentlemen. One Dewar’s rocks and one Wild Turkey heavy on the wild.”
Wit and Willie had a good laugh at that. Man, they really got wacky at the Yale Club. Wit waited for Willie to leave before speaking to me.
“Of course I’m not interested in John Heaton as anything more than a source. Actually, he’s a bit of a drunken bore.”
“He’s got his reasons.”
“So have we all, Mr. Prager. My grandson was himself kidnapped and murdered several years ago in New Mexico.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes, well, ‘sorry’ is a particularly empty word to me these days. But I digress. I suspect you have a good idea of whom my piece will focus on. He’s your client, if I may be so bold.”
“I can’t dis—”
“—cuss my clients. Blah, blah, blah. Please, Mr. Prager. Next thing you know, you’ll be telling me you can’t drink whilst on duty.”
“Nah, I’m pretty confident the word ‘whilst’ doesn’t appear once in the ethics code.”
The James Deans Page 4
