A Tax in Blood

by Benjamin M. Schutz

  “Wisinski.”

  He would, I thought.

  “Anything else?” Rourke slowly unwrapped a butterscotch lozenge and popped it into his mouth. I’ve seen hippos with better teeth.

  “No. Thanks.”

  Rourke nodded and shambled to the lobby. I got up from the table, walked over to the bar and pulled up a stool. The bartender came over to take my order. I only wanted answers.

  “The guy who died here last week, did any girls come in asking about it?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Don’t be an asshole. I asked a simple no-load question. If you can’t answer it, I’d have to become suspicious. And I’d have to tell Rourke about my concerns. We don’t want that, do we?”

  “Nobody’s come in here asking about it.”

  “There you go; that didn’t hurt none, did it.” I spun off the stool and went looking for the doorman.

  Donnelly hadn’t left his room to pick up a woman. So he’d let his fingers do the walking. She’d come in and gone straight to his room. If the whole five hundred was meant for her it would have been an all-nighter and a class act. She’d have been dressed for success and cruised through the lobby like she owned the place. I stopped at the lobby phone and called Ms. Vasquez.

  “Ms. Vasquez, this is Leo Haggerty. One question. Did your husband have an address book?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it there at the house? If so, could you go get it?”

  “Sure. Hold on a minute.”

  I looked out at the street. The Fourteenth Street restoration was underway. The strip joints, topless bars, gay baths, model services and massage parlors were all gone now. Just a couple of adult movie houses and bookstores left. That and the hookers. Hooker: D.C.’s contribution to the lexicon of vice. During the civil war, General “Fighting Joe” Hooker was in charge of the defense of the capital city. The South never mounted a serious threat to the city, so his army squatted here and festered with boredom. Plenty of camp followers collected around Joe Hooker’s bored soldiers. Eventually the army moved on. Hooker’s women stayed put.

  Marta Vasquez returned. “Got it.”

  “Okay. Go through it. Any name that you don’t recognize but it’s clearly male, I want you to call and find out who they are. Any name that’s female or questionable or any number without a name I want you to give to me.” While she went through the book I went back to surveying the streets. The number of working girls out there had tripled since they’d built the convention center. The “trickle-down” theory seems to work for sex at least.

  “Sorry, there’s nothing here like that.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Did you find something out?”

  “No. Just an idea that I had. I’ll let you know if it leads to anything.”

  Before I went out to see the doorman, I made sure that I was prepared to do business with him. He was in full dress with top hat and tails. Hands clasped behind his back he rocked back and forth. A car pulled into the driveway. He hurried to open doors, check whether bags needed to be carried, summon bell captains with the briefest of nods and smile a few welcoming words. I sidled up next to him and began to rock in time with him. He didn’t even grace me with a sidelong glance. I rocked on. “Guy died here last week,” I said.

  “So they say.”

  “Anybody show an interest in that fact?”

  “You mean other than you?”

  “Yes, other than me.”

  “And who would you be?”

  “A friend of the family. They have an interest in his last hours.”

  “I see. Well, I have friends and a family too.”

  “I can appreciate that. Perhaps I can interest you in an idea that I have.”

  I took his silence for interest and began. “I have this idea that the man in that room invited a young lady up to have some fun. Well, she went up and he had this heart attack and died, see. She got frightened and ran away. Maybe she was afraid that someone had seen her and that people might be looking to ask her a lot of questions. So she watched and waited but there was nothing in the papers or on T.V. about it. She got kind of worried. Maybe she works this hotel a lot and needs to come back here. So she shows up one day and asks around. She asks a friend maybe what the story is on the dead guy. He tells her it’s gone down as a suicide and not to sweat it because nobody’s been asking about her. So she says thanks to her friend and relaxes, ’cause there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Interesting story.”

  “Yeah, ain’t it. But is it true? That’s all I want to know.”

  “What do you think?” he said.

  “Oh, I like it as stories go. The family would like to believe it, too. The cops have closed the book on this one. Nobody wants to make any trouble—but you know, a guy dies, the family wants to know for sure how it happened so they can bury their doubts with him. What do you say?”

  “Well, I’ll have to ask my associates.”

  “Of course. Who do you represent?”

  “The Jackson brothers, all three of them.”

  “A well-known family, but wasn’t there a death recently? I hear there’s only two brothers left.”

  He rocked on. First he pursed his lips, then he furrowed his brow, finally he said, “You may be right. Fact is, as I think about it, you are right.”

  “Fine. Give me a name and a description and we’ll shake on it.”

  “A deal, my man.”

  I reached into my pocket and palmed the two prefolded twenties. The doorman and I shook hands.

  “Girl’s name is Fancy, that’s all I know.” His eyebrows rose in the hope that I was a total moron. I squeezed his hand harder.

  “One more like that and you’ll have a permanently green palm. Understand?”

  “Absolutely, brother.”

  I kept squeezing. “One more time, now. A description and her pimp’s name.”

  “Okay, okay. She’s a slope. A chink maybe, who knows? Little bitty thing, maybe five feet, black hair down to her ass, calls everybody ‘man,’ got this gold front tooth.”

  “She work this hotel often?”

  “Nah, that’s why I remember her. Strictly street trade. Hard-working girl. A big earner.”

  “Who’s her pimp?”

  “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you.”

  “Right.” I had enough. Wisinski could fill in the blanks. I released my grip and walked away.

  It was a little before one and I had to be in Georgetown by five to see Nate. Since traffic would begin to clog up by three, there wasn’t enough time to go home or to the club to work out. I decided to get a bite of lunch, knock around downtown for a while, then drop in on Nate.

  I drove up to one of my favorite restaurants. There’s no ambience to speak of, the menu is largely irrelevant since it lists dishes they’ve never served and the service is strictly functional. The decor is of the checked oilcloth, candle-in-the-bottle variety, encased in high-gloss walls so red you think you’re eating inside a fire alarm. But the food overcomes it all. Huge servings of robustly flavored southern Italian food. My kind of place. Nouvelle cuisine unnerves me. I’m uncomfortable around food I want to clap for.

  I walked in, took a seat and the waiter came up, dropped a glass of water on the table, plopped down the silverware and began to recite the daily specials.

  “Okay. I’ll have the white pizza, the osso bucco and a carafe of the house wine.”

  He turned and walked away. When he pushed open the kitchen door you could hear the cooks screaming at each other. The two guys eating in the corner didn’t even look up. Regulars.

  I flipped out my notebook and made some notes. I had some phone calls to make. Maybe I could save some legwork that way. I fooled around with a scenario involving Mr. and Mrs. Donnelly. He calls her from the hotel. Tells her he wants to see her, talk to her. She’s desperate, terrified of his threats. She goes to see him. He lets her in. They talk. She slips the drug in his drink. He dies. She leaves th
e note to cover her tracks, tidies up and splits. Later, Nate tells her she’s out the two hundred grand. A technicality. If they can prove accident they get the money. Proving murder would be doing too good a job. I wrote down some more questions. It would work. I’d find out if it had.

  My food arrived and I worked my way through it. I saved some of the pizza to spread with the veal marrow. When I finished, I paid up. It was quite reasonable for the quality of the food. My next quest was for a phone booth. There was one right across the street. I wanted to call a friend of mine, a private investigator who’d worked these same streets not so long ago. Maybe he could give me a lead on Fancy or her pimp. The phone rang once before he answered.

  “This is John Rankin. I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave your name, telephone number, the time and date of your call and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Begin speaking after the beep. The tape will stay with you as long as you want to talk.”

  “John, this is Leo Haggerty. I don’t care what she looks like or what she’s doing to you, if you’re there, pick up the phone.” Nothing. “Okay, be like that. I’ll be in most of this evening. Call me when you can. Take it easy.”

  I called Arnie next. No answer. Then Marta Vasquez. Ditto. I called Horace Wisinski’s district house. He wasn’t there but he was on duty midnight to eight.

  I still had some time to kill before dropping in on Nate, so I thought I’d indulge myself with a movie. I drove back towards Georgetown and parked near a theatre that specialized in film festival series. The films of Australia was the current program. I looked at the schedule and my watch. Road Warrior was the offering. I bought a ticket and walked into the already darkened theatre. Two white-knuckled, goggle-eyed hours later I stood with Max staring at the sand leaking out of the overturned tanker, stunned but wanting to laugh. Out there alone, in the middle of nowhere, he’d done it all. He’d totalled the vermin. For a truckful of sand. The homesteaders were long gone, hauling the petrol north. Crafty bastards. Walking out of the theatre I couldn’t shake the feeling that what I’d seen was a documentary.

  Nate’s office wasn’t far away, and it was about time to go see him. I started to cross the street when behind me I heard a voice say, “Get out of the way, you honky asshole.”

  I turned around to see a bullet-headed black man standing there with his hands on his hips. Dapper, pencil-thin mustache, about five-foot five. Behind him stood a big white guy. With his long neck, pinhead and big eyes, he looked like an ostrich. Bringing up the rear, an even bigger black guy was cleaning his nails.

  “Fuck you, nigger. Who do you think you are, Marvin Hagler?”

  “If I was you’d be just another great white heap. Now move it before I hurt you some.”

  “Go around me. There’s plenty of room in the gutter.”

  “Have it your way.” He laughed. “Just one question. Where do you want the body sent?”

  “You’re a cocky little fuck, ain’t you, Rev?”

  “What it is, Leo.” The Reverend Shafrath Brown stuck out his hand. We executed a modest street handshake taking into consideration my ethnic handicap. The Rev pointed to his white companion. “You know Mickey the Shark?”

  “Sure. The loan arranger.” There was something odd about his posture. Standing there splay-footed with his wide shoulders held back, he managed the rare feat of being big and bulky and looking dainty.

  “Say it ain’t so, Rev. You aren’t working for this maggot farm?”

  “No. Mickey had a memory lapse. Forgot a court date. We’re helping him remember that the ACE Bonding Company never forgets.”

  “I can’t believe this, Mickey. All that vigorish and you couldn’t go your own bond?”

  The Rev laughed. “Couldn’t rightly. See, he’s down there trying to convince the IRS that he’s unemployed and ain’t got no money at all.”

  “Where are the Pfeiffer twins?”

  “Wardell tied them to the toilet.” The big black guy grinned.

  “You need better help, Mickey.”

  “What you doin’ down here, Leo? The suburbs is your turf.”

  “Looking for a working girl—Asian chick, calls herself Fancy. You know her?”

  “No. But if she’s a slant, odds are she’s on Eldorado Jack’s string. That’s all he runs. Likes that horizontal pussy. Speaking of Asians, is Arnie available? Got some work for him over in Little Saigon.”

  “Yeah, he’s free. Where do I find Eldorado Jack?”

  “You don’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Even for a white boy he’s crazy. A real gorilla pimp. Breaks his girls in with a cattle prod and wet sheets. I hear he’s got a cage in his house for the ones that cross him. They’ll do anything to stay out of that cage. Tell you true though, he ever puts a sister in that box, I send Wardell down to do some missionary work on his head, believe it.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Tall skinny dude, big Adam’s apple. Calls everybody Jack. That and his goddamn Eldorado, that’s how he got his name. Loves that car more than his girls, that’s for sure. Mink seats, bar, T.V.—you name it, it’s got it. Parks that sucker down near H Street and shoots the shit all night.”

  “He’ll be there tonight?”

  “I expect so.” The Rev shrugged.

  “Thanks, Rev. You and Wardell take it easy.” I started to walk away.

  “Haggerty, one last thing.” The Rev wasn’t smiling.

  “Yeah?”

  “He carries an Arkansas Toothpick big enough to surf on. Ain’t bashful with it either. You cross that fucker, put him to sleep, cause he’ll do you like that—” He finger-popped a period to the warning.

  “Thanks.”

  Nate’s office was five minutes away. When I walked in the receptionist handed me an envelope. My contract and the retainer check were inside. “Is Nate in?”

  “No, he just left.”

  “Is his secretary in?”

  “Yes.”

  I walked back to Nate’s office. The secretary was still at her desk.

  “Excuse me. Could you do me a favor? I need something from the Vasquez/Donnelly file. Nate said you’d know where it was.”

  “What was that?”

  “The asset search Carmine did for him. I need to check it against something I found in Donnelly’s bank account.”

  “Sure. No problem. I’ll get it for you.” She walked back to the file, slipped the item out, came back and handed it to me.

  I scanned the list. As I’d guessed, Carmine had done this about a week ago. The insurance policy wasn’t listed. She hadn’t been thinking about inheritance at that point. Still it could have been an impromptu thing. Marta Vasquez stayed on the list. I thanked the secretary and went out to join the homebound herd. The drive home seemed to take forever. Every time we came to a halt a moment of claustrophobia passed over me. Especially at interchanges.

  Chapter 11

  The first thing I did when I got home was to call my answering service and see if I had any messages. Samantha had called. Finally. Maybe the rewrite was done and she’d be back among the living. I rang her up and got her answering machine. That wasn’t a good sign. Samantha used her machine to keep the world away when she was writing. I wasn’t sure whether she ever listened to the messages she’d collected or just threw the tape away when it was full and then inserted a fresh one. Either way, when I heard her machine go on I usually just hung up, as I was about to do when I heard her say, “Hold on. Let me shut this thing off.” I waited for the whirring to stop.

  “Hi, Samantha. I got a message that you called.”

  “Yeah. It’s done, over with, gone. I express mailed it to New York this afternoon.”

  “Are you happy with it?”

  “Yeah, I am. I think it’s the best work I’ve done, but then I always think that right after I’ve sent it off. The doubts set in in about a week. But enough of that, I want to see you, that’s why I called. It’s been almost forty-eight ho
urs and I’m going into withdrawal.”

  “There, there. I told you I’d grow on you. It’s taken more than a year but sieges are like that. Do you have anything in mind?”

  “How about dinner at Clyde’s? I have to be over that way to pick up a tape of the interview I did on channel ten. And then …” she made her voice low and husky.

  “Yes, go on.”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Spoilsport. Okay. I’ll see you at Clyde’s in, say, thirty minutes?”

  “Fine. Look for me in the bar first.”

  “Will do.”

  While I changed, I turned on the small set in my bedroom to see if there was any news about the bombings. Out my bedroom window I watched the sun set. The clouds were low and dense as they coalesced. Underlit by the setting sun an inverted landscape appeared. A patch of yellow-green sky became a distant lake. Around it the clouds had become a receding salmon-hued desertscape. Perspective, unmoored by a subtle interplay of light and shadow had put me in Arizona staring across the Grand Canyon. Slowly a Virginia sunset reasserted itself. I stole a glance at the television set. Lieutenant Simmons was speaking. He looked tired and unhappy.

  “We have received the first communication from the group claiming responsibility for the bombing of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. I’m going to read the text of the message we received.

  “‘Greetings to the American People. We, the Standing Committee on World Justice, will continue to remind you of your grievous atrocities committed around the world. For too long you have sought to undermine legitimate governments, have aided imperialist invaders and supported corrupt despots. This cannot and will not be tolerated any longer. America claims it has a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Therefore, we have indicted and found guilty the American people and will continue to strike directly at them until you change your ways. If your government is representative of your will, then you will pay directly for that government and its actions. Your leaders will be strictly immune from attack. If you wish to confer such safety on people who do not represent your true wishes, so be it. Decrees from the committee regarding the guidelines for American foreign policy will be forthcoming. If these decrees are not followed retribution will be swift and aimed at the people.’”