Money, Money, Money

by Ed McBain

  “You got me, man.”

  “You seed him today?”

  “Nope.”

  “When’d you get here?”

  “Bout an hour ago.”

  “He wasn’t here?”

  “Nope.”

  “He come back, you tell him I’m lookin for him, okay?”

  “Peace, brother,” Thomas said.

  My ass, Tigo thought.

  Next place he tried was Wiggy’s barber. This was a man named Roland, who cut mighty fine hair and also took in numbers on the side. Or vice versa. Tigo figured Wiggy might be here gettin a trim, New Year’s Eve comin up and all. He could use a trim hisself, matter of fact. Roland said he hadn’t seen hide nor hair—

  “You get it?” he asked.

  —of Wiggy since a week ago today when he last cut the man’s hair.

  “Try L&G,” he suggested.

  L&G was short for Lewis and Gregory, who were two brothers owned a haberdashery on Chase Street. Both brothers were there when Tigo arrived at eleven that Friday. The shop was packed with people returning ties, and shirts and shit they’d got for Christmas and had no use for. Greg told him he hadn’t seen Wiggy since before Thanksgiving, was the man all right? He usually came in here and splurged two, three times a year. Tigo told him Wiggy was fine, just’d been busy was all. Greg said, “Tell him I said happy new year, hear?”

  “I’ll tell him,” Tigo said.

  He was wondering had Wiggy vanished from sight?

  This business, vanishing from sight was always a distinct possibility.

  He tried a bar called the Starlight, which was already doing very good business at a quarter past eleven, two days before New Year’s Eve. Tigo could just imagine what the place would be like on the big night itself. But John the bartender told him he’d seen Mr. Wiggins on Christmas night, when he was sittin here at the bar hittin on a blonde who’d come in out the cold, and again just yesterday aroun this time.

  “Is that so?” Tigo asked. “A blonde?”

  It was too bad the tape recorder wasn’t turned on because first it missed a hair joke from Wiggy’s barber, and now it just missed a thickening of the plot with Wiggy working a blonde on Christmas night. He told John if Mr. Wiggins came in again to tell him he was lookin for him, okay, and then—so it shouldn’t be a total loss—he tossed off a shot of Dewar’s before he went out into the cold again.

  It was beginning to snow.

  No snow for Christmas, but now it was coming down to beat all hell.

  Tigo looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes past eleven. He didn’t know where to go next.

  He tried the pool hall on Culver and Third, but nobody there had seen Wiggy, and then he tried The Corset Lady on South Fifth, which was run by a foxy chick named Aleda who made very fine ladies’ underwears and who used to go with Wiggy, but not for six months or so now, but she hadn’t seen him and didn’tcare to see him, thanks. Then he tried the First Bap on St. Sab’s because believe it or not Walter Wiggins was a religious man who went to church every Sunday, but the Reverend Gabriel Foster hadn’t seen him since, in fact, last Sunday, had anything happened to him? Foster was always looking for something that had happened to anybody in the black community, some cause he could champion on his radio show, some put-upon black he could go march to City Hall about. Tigo was beginning to think maybe somethinghad happened to Wiggy. This business, things happened.

  He finally tried a man named Little Nicholas, who did business out the back of a laundromat he owned and operated on Lyons and South Thirty-fifth. Little Nicholas was about five-feet, eight-inches tall and Tigo guessed he weighed something like three, four hundred pounds. What Little Nicholas did was sell guns. He told Tigo that Wiggy had been in there late last night, and had purchased a beautiful submachine gun called the Cobray M11-9, would Tigo be interested in seeing some very fine banned weapons and silencers that had come in from all over the nation only yesterday? Tigo asked had he seed Wiggy anytimetoday? Little Nicholas said No, he hadn’t had the pleasure.

  It was a quarter to twelve.

  The snow was coming down pretty hard now.

  Tigo wondered where the fuck Wiggy could be.

  WIGGY WAS SITTING at Halloway’s computer up at W&D. One of the Mexicans—he guessed it was Ortiz—came out of the conference room where they were holding the staff, and asked him shouldn’t he be going for the money soon? They had already decided, after some sound reasoning from Wiggy, that he should be the one who went for the cash, in case there was any language problem, not that he meant to be disparaging. He looked up at the wall clock now. It was only twelve noon, and Halloway’s accountant had advised them to allow a half-hour to get there for their one o’clock appointment, which meant there was still plenty of time before him and Halloway had to go out into what looked like a full-fledged blizzard.

  “I got time yet,” he told Ortiz, or Villada, or whoever the hell he was.Whoeverhe was, Wiggy planned never to see him or his partner ever again the minute he got his hands on that money.Adios, amigos, it was very nice knowing you.

  Meanwhile, there was some very interesting information on the W&D computer.

  CARELLA AND MEYER were having lunch in a diner on Culver and Eighth, not far from the station house. Meyer was eating a salad and drinking iced tea. Carella was eating a hamburger and fries. Meyer told him that just two days ago, his wife had told him they should go buy him some clothes for the new year.

  “She said we’d have to go to a shop forlarge men, was what she called it. I said, ‘Why do we have to go to a large men’s shop?’ She said, ‘Because we won’t find anything to fit you in a regular men’s store.’ I said, ‘Hey, come on, Sarah, I can buy clothes off the rack at any store in town! Large men’s shops are for men who areobese.’ So she looks me dead in the eye and says, ‘Well?’ ”

  “Sarah said that, huh?”

  “Sarah.”

  “Said you were fat, in effect.”

  “Obese.”

  “In effect.”

  “Do you think I’m obese?”

  “No. Ollie Weeks is obese,” Carella said, and popped a fry into his mouth. “You’re what I’d call chubby.”

  “Chubby! That’sworse than obese!”

  “Well … plump maybe.”

  “Keep going. How’s your damn hamburger?”

  “Terrific.”

  “The fries?”

  “Splendid.”

  “You forgot stout.”

  “Stout’s a good one, too.”

  “You ever have a weight problem?”

  “Never. I’ve always been svelte.”

  “I’ve always been borderline.”

  “Borderline what?”

  “Obese!” Meyer said, and both men burst out laughing.

  The laughter trailed.

  “I’ve got other problems, though,” Carella said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Meyer looked at him. Carella’s face, his eyes were suddenly very serious.

  “Tell me,” Meyer said.

  “You think I’ve changed?” Carella asked.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Am I different?”

  “You seem the same to me.”

  “Teddy says I’ve changed since my father got killed. She says I never cried for him. She says I never cried for Danny, either, Danny Gimp. I don’t even remember if I did. She says I’ve been drinking too much, she says …”

  “Ah, shit, Steve, you haven’t, have you?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I hope not. It’s just …”

  “What?”

  “Ah, Jesus.”

  “What, Steve? Tell me.”

  “I think I’m scared.”

  “Come on. You’re not scared.”

  “I think I am. Teddy’s afraid I might eat my own gun one day. I’ll tell you the truth …”

  “Don’t even say it.”

  Both men fell silent.

  Carella was looking do
wn at his hands.

  “I think I’m scared,” he said again. “Really, Meyer.”

  “Come on, scared. Of what?”

  “Dying,” Carella said. “I’m afraid I’ll get killed.”

  “We’re all afraid we’ll get killed.”

  “I came so close, Meyer.”

  “We’ve all come close, one time or another. O’Brien comes close every day of his life.”

  “O’Brien’s a hard luck cop. And he never had a lion sitting on his chest.”

  “So what are you scared of? Another lion sitting on your chest? Come on, Steve.”

  “He almost had my head in his mouth, I could feel his breath on my face, I could smell his breath. Another minute, he’d have closed his jaws on me. I never came that close to dying before.”

  “And you’ll never come that close again. What do you think this is, the African plains? Come on. This is acity, Steve. You don’t run into lions on the streets here.”

  “I dream about that lion every night, Meyer. Every fucking night, I see that lion in my dreams. I wake up sweating, Meyer, shaking. I’m scared it’ll happen again. And next time …”

  “It’s okay to be scared,” Meyer said.

  “Not if you’re a cop.”

  “We’re all scared.”

  “Cops shouldn’t …”

  “Not only cops. Everybody. We’re all scared, Steve. If you meet another lion, just look him in the eye. Stare him down.”

  Carella’s hands were trembling.

  “Come on,” Meyer said. He slid out of the booth, came around the table, sat beside his friend, and put his arm around his shoulder. “Come on, Steve.”

  Tito Gomez walked in just then.

  “How tender,” he said.

  “Go fuck yourself,” Meyer explained.

  “Nice talk. I can’t find Wiggy. I don’t know where he is. What now?”

  WIGGY WAS STILL AT Halloway’s computer.

  There was a folder named MOTHER, which he couldn’t open because whenever he double-clicked on it, he was told to enter a password. But when he double-clicked on a folder called WITCHES AND DRAGONS—which he thought at first might be some kind of a game—it opened to his touch, and he found a whole list of files with names like ADA and NETTIE and DIANA and EM and TESSIE and RONI and BELA and GINA. Was W&D in the business of tracking hurricanes, or had he lucked into Halloway’s personal little black book of cuties, oh you sly old dog, you! Or were these the names of writers the company published? But then why use first names? And even some nicknames?

  Intrigued now, Wiggy double-clicked on the file labeled TESSIE because that was the name of the first girl he’d ever talked into licking Frick and Frack, a thirteen-year-old high yaller beauty fresh up from the South with her grandma. There wasn’t nothing in that file about girls, mellow or otherwise. What was in there was information about the West Side Limousine Corporation, which it would appear was a subsidiary of Wadsworth and Dodds here, and which made all kinds of trips to and from the city’s two airports and the one across the river in the next state, not to mention a trip to Diamondback on Christmas night.

  He began wondering why a file about a limousine company would be called TESSIE, and then he realized that there were two S’s in the words WEST SIDE, and also a T, and—lo and behold—an I and an E! So what you had here was little old TESSIE all curled up in the back seat of a WEST SIDE limo!

  He double-clicked on the file labeled EM.

  What was in there was an itemized list of drug deals that made Wiggy’s little operation in Diamondback look like somebody selling lemonade by the side of the road. Dates, places, number of kilos purchased, dollars paid for them. He wasn’t surprised that the list existed; everybody kept recordssomeplace, man. In fact, his own transactions uptown were recorded on a computer disc called HAPPY DAYS that could only be opened with the password WW2, which stood not for World War II, but instead for his initials and the month of his—it suddenly occurred to him that WITCHES AND DRAGONS stood for Wadsworth and Dodds.

  What he was looking at here was a record of drug buys the book publishers had made in Mexico over the past two years. And suddenly he realized that the name EM was buried in the word MEXICO, same as TESSIE was buried in WEST SIDE, was in fact the first two letters of that word, reversed, and he began wondering how many of theother girls’ names in the WITCHES AND DRAGONS folder were buried in larger words, hiding there, so to speak, lurking there in the dark for somebody smart like Wiggy to find.

  He kept opening file after file.

  When finally he double-clicked on the file named DIANA, his eyes opened wide.

  He was reading all about Diamondback, which was where he conducted business, the uptown ghetto where Jerry Hoskins alias Frank Holt had come calling with a hundred keys of prime cocaine purchased in Mexico.

  DIAMONDBACK.

  Little ole white girl DIANA hiding up there in the blackest of black holes.

  The magnitude of his discovery made him suddenly want to pee.

  Grabbing the Cobray from where it was resting on the floor at his feet, he went down the hall to the men’s room at the rear of the office complex.

  At that very moment, The Weird Sisters and two very tall, very broad black men were entering the Headley Building through the back door in an alley that was posted with no parking—fire lane signs. This time around, Sheryl and Toni—whose real names were Anna and Mary Jo—wereeach carrying guns with silencers affixed to the muzzles.

  So were the black men.

  WIGGY DIDN’T HEAR any shooting because the weapons were wearing silencers.

  All he heard was screaming.

  The screaming wasn’t coming from the two Mexicans, who were dead within minutes after the assassins entered the conference room. Instead, they were coming from Charmaine the receptionist, and Betty Alweiss from the Art Department. Karen Andersen wasn’t screaming. She was learning how to be as cold-bloodedly unemotional as her boss and sometime lover.

  “There’s a third one,” Halloway said.

  By that time, Wiggy was down the fire stairs and out of the building.

  THE WEIRD SISTERS unashamedly stripped the Mexicans naked and wrapped them in tarpaulin. Their two black associates carried the bodies down the fire stairs, hoisted them into the back of a white ML320 Mercedes-Benz, and transported them to a garbage dump on Sands Spit, not far from the airport. It was Halloway’s surmise that the Mexicans would never be identified and therefore would never be missed.

  At about four-thirty that afternoon—just as Carella was leaving the squadroom—Anna and Mary Jo went up to Diamondback to look for Walter Wiggins. This time, their orders were to kill him.

  CARELLA GOT TO his mother’s house in Riverhead at a little past six that evening. He recognized his sister’s car in the driveway outside the house, and parked just behind it. His mother’s Christmas tree glowed behind the windows fronting the house. At least a foot of snow covered the walk to the front door, and it was still coming down. He climbed the low flat steps, pressed the button set in the door jamb, and heard familiar chimes sounding inside the house. He waited. Falling flakes covered his hair and the shoulders of his overcoat. He was about to ring again when the door opened.

  “Hey,” his mother said, and hugged him. “You should wear a hat.”

  “I know,” he said. “You told me.”

  “From when you were six,” she said.

  “Three,” he corrected.

  “Come in. Angela’s already here.”

  “I saw her car.”

  “Come in.”

  He followed his mother into the house. This was where he’d grown up. This was what he’d called home during his childhood, his adolescence, and his early manhood. Home. It seemed strange to him now, smaller, somehow cheerless. He wondered if that was because his father no longer lived here. Angela was sitting at the big dining room table, drinking a glass of red wine. Another glass of wine was on the table, just opposite her. He remembered when they were kids and
used to hide together under this very table. He remembered Sunday afternoons here in his parents’ house, the pennyante poker games, he and Angela hiding under the dining room table. He remembered his sister once breaking his head with the clasp on a pocketbook she’d swung at him in anger. He couldn’t remember now what had so enraged her. Something he’d said jokingly. He’d loved her to death when they were kids. He still did. She kissed him on the cheek in greeting.