Money, Money, Money

by Ed McBain

  “Shit, man,” Thomas said unbelievingly, and began chuckling. “Where you from, man, the planet Mars?”

  “I’ve just never found the opportunity.”

  “How long you been doing this?” Thomas asked.

  “Almost eight years now.”

  “And you never found no opportunity to shoot nobody?”

  “Most people I deal with aren’t interested in ripping anyone off. We’re traders, pure and simple.”

  “I got to tell you bout Wiggy,” Thomas said. “He ain’t such a pure and simple trader, man.”

  “He seems like your average businessman.”

  “He ain’t so average, neither. You know how many peoplehe has found the opportunity to kill?”

  “I’d rather not know,” Frank said.

  “He got the name Wiggy not ony cause his lass name’s Wiggins. It’s also cause he wigsout whenever things don’t go his way. Blows hislid,that’s the second part of the handle, he Wiggy theLid, man. Reason he so tempermennul, is he doped up day and night. This is one man involved in dealing shit who don’t believe shit isshit, you take my meanin? He believes shit isgood for a person. I don’t know how much you sellin him in there …”

  “A hundred keys.”

  “Wiggy goan snort half that fore the week is out.”

  “I know you’re exaggerating.”

  “I am. But the mando like his cocaine. And when he’s stoned, why, man, that’s when he wigs out, that’s when he blows his lid, that is when you has to shoot him first or he goan shoot you dead, man. He shot and killed …”

  “I don’t want to know. Really.”

  “… twelve niggers ony last year,” Thomas said, and shrugged. “It was Nigger of the Month Club roun here.”

  Frank never felt safe when black men—especially black men named Thomas—began calling themselves niggers in his presence because he never knew when the inside familiarity would suddenly turn against him. And whereas he’d never shot a man, he did not particularly encourage situations where gunplay might be called for. He himself carried a Walther P-38. It made him feel like a Nazi in a war movie. They had not relieved him of the gun when he’d come up here. Perhaps because they knew he’d be crazy to attempt a shootout. Anyway, he’d have handed it over in a minute because there was no need to worry about his cocaine failing any test put to it.

  The stuff Frank was selling had been grown in Bolivia and processed in Colombia for about $4,000 a kilo. That came to a growing-and-manufacturing cost of $400,000. The Mexicans he’d purchased it from in Guenerando had probably paid $800,000 for it, and had sold it to him for $1,700,000. He was now about to turn it over for $19,000 a key—$1,900,000. That’s the way it worked. A pyramid with everyone making a profit from top to bottom. Eight hundred large in Colombia, a million-seven in Guenerando and now a million-nine in New York.

  But Frank served a much higher cause than any of these assholes knew about.

  Besides, he had a decided edge.

  WIGGY HAD TASTED THE COKE , and so had Tigo, but tasting it meant nothing because you could get bad stuff’d fool the keenest taste buds. Ony way to make sure was the trio of tests Wiggy called the TNT, for “Tried ’N’ True.”

  First test you got straight from the water tap.

  Opened the faucet, filled the glass with a few ounces of plain water, then scooped a spoonful of shit out of the plastic bag and dropped it in. If it dissolved directly, it was pure cocaine hydrochloride. If any of it stayed solid, the dope had been cut with sugar.

  Second of the TNT was Clorox.

  Put a little in a glass jar, drop a spoonful of the powder in it, and watch the movie. If you got a white halo trailing the powder, it was cocaine, my dear. If you got red following the powder as it fell, the stuff was cut with some kind of synthetic, and somebody was going to get killed.

  Last of the three was the best of them all, cobalt thiocyanate. What you did with the chemical was you dropped it onto the cocaine, also known as the White Leash, or the White Lady, or Lady, or sometimes just plain Girl, or any one of a thousand other cute little names to lure the kiddies in. If the powder turns blue, you’ve got cocaine. The brighter the blue, the better the Girl. Is what they say, man. The brighter the blue.

  Frank’s stuff lit up the sky like neon.

  Wiggy had been taught to distrust every white man in the universe. He turned to Tigo and said in something like astonishment, “Why, the honkie’s honest!”

  But Wiggy also served a much higher cause.

  Himself.

  And he, too, had a decided edge.

  4 .

  OLLIE WEEKS HAD CALLED his sister to tell her he might not be able to make it there on Christmas Day cause he’d caught a leg being chewed on by a lion, and she’d said, “You ought to find yourself another job.” Typical Isabelle Weeks remark, the jackass.

  Now, to make matters worse, here was a dead guy stuffed in a garbage can, with a bullet hole at the back of his head. Your classic Mafia-style murder, except that the gangs up here in the Eight-Eight were all either black or Hispanic. Ollie could remember a time when the Mob ruled this part of the city, and all the Negroes and spics were running around doing the legwork for them while the Wops pulled in all the hard cash. Now it was different. The Wops should have learned to speak Spanish or so-called black English, which meant saying, “I done gone sell some dope to school chillun.”

  Ollie loved using the word “Negro” because he knew it pissed off “people of color,” as they sometimes chose to be called. “Blacks” was another favorite, they should make up their fuckin minds. Same thing with the spics up here, which word he didn’t dare use to their faces or they would cut him up and serve him from acuchifrito stand. They didn’t know whether to call themselves “Hispanics,” which sounded too much like “spics,” or “Latinos,” which sounded like a team of tango dancers. Ollie thought maybe they should concentrate instead on calling themselves “American,” huh? and not flying Puerto Rican or Dominican Republic flags from their car antennas. Or marching in Columbus Day parades, the Wops. Or St. Patrick’s Day parades, the Irish micks, getting drunk and puking all over the city streets, while cops got paid time and a half for overtime. Ollie hated all this high-profile nationalism for countries that weren’t the U.S. of A. If they liked Santo Domingo or San Juan or Islamabad or Jerusalem or Dublin or Calcutta so fuckin much, they should go back home instead of leaving dead bodies in garbage cans. Ollie hated everyone and everything except food.

  They had stuffed the corpse in the garbage can feet first, knees up, which was considerate of them. It meant that you could look the dead man right in the eyes. Looked like some kind of sculpture you could find in one of the elite, highbrow, so-called art museums downtown. Ollie could remember a time when a person could stroll along the avenue and buy an artistic landscape in real oil paints for twenty-five bucks. Nowadays, you got a dead man in a garbage can who looked like he was alive and posing for someartiste except that he had a bullet hole at the base of his skull.

  The medical examiner had come and gone, offering his learned opinion that the guy in the garbage can was indeed dead and that the possible cause of death …

  “Possible,” he’d actually said.

  . . was a bullet wound in the head.

  With the help of the Mobile Unit techs—who had arrived some ten minutes ago and were dusting the alleyway as if it would reveal anything surprising about the corpse in the garbage can—Ollie lifted him out, and spread him on the alley floor. He was aware of the fact that in about ten minutes, an ambulance would arrive to pick up the body and carry it to the morgue, where they would cut it open to make sure the guy hadn’t been poisonedbefore he got shot, a distinct possibility in police work, where nothing was as it appeared to be, ah yes, m’dear. Sometimes, Ollie eventhought like W. C. Fields.

  The dead man was carrying a wallet with a lot of identification in it. There was a driver’s license that gave his name as Jerome L. Hoskins (no relation to the disease, Ollie hop
ed) and his address as 327 Front Street in Calm’s Point—shit, he’d have to make a trip all the way to a section of the city for which he had no particular fondness. There was an American Express credit card made out to Jerome L. Hoskins, and MasterCard and Visa cards made out to the same name. There was a MetTrans card for the subway and bus lines in this considerate city, and also a health plan card from an outfit called MediPlan, whose main offices were in Omaha, Nebraska, wherever that was. There was seven hundred dollars in hundred-dollar bills in the wallet, plus three twenties, a ten, and eight singles. A little card said that the person to notify in case of an emergency was Clara Hoskins at the same address in Calm’s Point, who could be reached at 722-1314. Great. He justloved breaking the news to somebody’s wife, mother, or sister.

  A handful of change was in the right hand pocket of the stiff’s trousers, along with what appeared to be a house key, a mailbox key, and a car key with a big gold L for Lexus in a circle on its black plastic head. The luxury car maybe spelled dope, though the vehicle of choice these days was a Range Rover, there being not much difference between big-city dope dealers and Hollywood producers, ah, yes. Strengthening the possibility of the stiff being drug-connected (as who wasn’t up here these days?) was a carry pistol-permit tucked into one of the wallet flaps.

  The carry was for a P-38 Walther, however, a somewhat ancient weapon for anyone in the drug trade, but perhaps the man was merely a diamond merchant who’d wandered uptown in search of black pussy and flirted by mistake with the girlfriend of a Negro warlord named High Five or some such. The gun itself was in a shoulder holster under the man’s hand-tailored suit jacket. He was wearing no overcoat; when you’re about to shoot a man at the back of his head, you don’t dress him for the cold weather outdoors.

  Well, Ollie guessed he had to talk to this Clara Hoskins, whoever she might turn out to be, find out if she was home, and then go all the way out to Calm’s Point to give her the sad tidings, ah yes. He gave one of the techs his card, and asked him to call if he came up with any valuable fingerprints, Fat Chance Department. He also advised them to keep an eye out for a meat wagon from St. Mary Boniface, which should be along any minute now. He could tell the techs didn’t like fat people. Hell with them.He didn’t like nerds who tiptoed around alleyways treating garbage as if it was some priceless piece of evidence instead of the messy shit it actually was.

  “Have a merry Christmas,” he told them.

  “You, too,” one of the techs said cheerlessly.

  A fart on thee, Ollie thought, and smiled in farewell.

  This was now twenty-seven minutes past ten on Sunday morning, the twenty-fourth day of December—Christmas Eve, by Ollie’s own reckoning, ah yes.

  His jackass sister was probably in church.

  CARELLA’S PHONE DIRECTORY for law enforcement agencies gave him a number for the U.S. Treasury Department at 427 High Street, all the way downtown, close to where the old police headquarters building used to be located. A recorded message told him the offices were closed for the holiday and would not reopen until Tuesday morning, December 26.

  On the offchance that Special Agent David A. Horne might be listed in one of the city’s five telephone directories, Carella tried the Isola book first and came up with dozens of listings for the surname Horne, but none for a David A. Horne. He began dialing, anyway. On his twelfth try, he hit paydirt.

  “David Horne, please,” he said.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Detective Steve Carella, Eighty-seventh Squad.”

  “This is David Horne.”

  “Mr. Horne, we’re investigating a homicide here, woman named Cassandra Jean Ridley …”

  “Yes?”

  “… whom we’ve linked to a man named Wilbur Struthers …”

  “Yes?”

  “Did three and a third at Castleview on a burglary fall …”

  “Yes, I know the man. I questioned him about some suspect hundred-dollar bills.”

  “Related to a kidnapping,” Carella said, nodding.

  There was a silence on the line.

  “Can you tell me which kidnapping that was?” Carella asked.

  “No, I’m afraid that’s classified information,” Horne said.

  “Even to a fellow law enforcement officer?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “This is a homicide, you know.”

  “So you told me.”

  “Well, can you at least tell me how it worked out?”

  “How what worked out?”

  “The questioning.”

  “I confiscated eight thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, checked the serial numbers against our list, and came up negative. I returned the bills to Mr. Struthers that very same day. End of story.”

  “Which list would that be? That you checked the bills against?”

  “I’m afraid that’s classified, too.”

  “Who was kidnapped, Mr. Horne? Can you tell me that?”

  “Classified.”

  “If I showed you the bills we recovered in the victim’s apartment, could you tell me if they’re the same ones you checked against this mysterious list of yours?”

  “Do I detect a note of sarcasm in your voice, Detective Coppola?”

  “It’s Carella.”

  “Oh, forgive me. But this is Christmas Eve, you know …”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “And I’m home here with my family. If you can …”

  “Gee,I’mstill here at the office,” Carella said.

  “That’s admirable, I’m sure. Call me on Tuesday, okay? Perhaps we can talk then.”

  “Mr. Horne, the victim won’tever be talking again.”

  “That’s unfortunate. But I’m certain our separate cases aren’t at all linked.”

  “Then why were the serial numbers on her money being checked against bills paid in ransom, isn’t that what you said?”

  “I said nothing of the sort.”

  “Then it’s what Struthers told me.”

  “A man with a criminal record.”

  Carella could almost hear the dismissive shrug.

  “He seemed to be telling the truth,” Carella said.

  “Be that as it may.”

  “Mr. Horne, I’m trying to find out who …”

  “It’s Special Agent Horne, by the way.”

  “Oh, forgive me. But somebody tossed a woman to the lions the other day …”

  “Is that a metaphor, Detective?”

  “I wish. We’re trying to find out who. Any help you can give us …”

  “I have no help to offer. Our case is, as I said, classified. Besides, the bills we checked have nothing to do with that woman’s death.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I feel certain they’re unrelated.”

  “Then why were you checking them?”

  “Detective …”

  “Please don’t sound so annoyed,” Carella said.

  He wanted to say, Don’t sound so fucking annoyed, okay, Mr. Special Agent Horne?

  “I can subpoena those serial numbers,” he said.

  “You’d never get a court order.”

  “Why not?”

  “Detective,” Horne said, and paused. “Let it go, okay? Leave it alone.”

  “Sure,” Carella said, and hung up.

  He had no intention of leaving it alone.

  CLARA HOSKINS , as it turned out, was Jerome Hoskins’wife. On the phone, Ollie told her he was investigating something or other …

  Actually, he mumbled the words “identification process” so that they were unintelligible, a bullshit ploy that did nothing to quell Mrs. Hoskins’ curiosity.

  “You’re investigatingwhat?” she asked.

  “Routine matter,” he said. “Better to discuss it in person. Okay to come out there, Mrs. Hoskins?”

  “Well, all right, I guess,” she said. “But you’d better have identification.”

  The drive to Calm’s Point took him half an
hour from the North Side of the city to the bridge and over it into a community only recently reclaimed from urban decay. Hillside Commons consisted of low-rise tenements which had been inhabited by runaway hippies during the Sixties and Seventies, immigrant Hispanics in the early Eighties, Koreans in the Nineties, and now—here in the bright new millennium—upwardly mobile Yuppies yearning for a glimpse of the distant towers across the River Dix. The way Ollie looked at it, all those former immigrant residents could move right next door to Hillside Heights, where there were still street gangs and dope pushers and prostitutes and all the other amenities they were used to. Not that he liked the fuckin preppie Yuppies, either, but if an individual couldn’t speak the fucking language, he had no right living in a nice neighborhood.