Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery (25 page)

"Yes."

"Pretty knowledgeable guy."

"Sybel doesn't know about that, because she was being held—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

"Let me ask you something," said Sybel. "Suppose Harry Pine decides we're a problem for him. What do you think he'd do?"

"You'd probably go the way of Jay Kiley."

"Yeah, and that would be good for the college boys, wouldn't it? As a way to get to Pine. How do we know that's not their plan? And how do we know that's not your plan?"

"Come on, Sybel, I represent the NYPD, not the FBI. We don't set up our own CIs. See, Pine's got some problems I mean to exploit. There's a drug war brewing between the wiseguys and the spics. Used to be the wiseguys ran that show, but now the Colombian gentlemen are getting too big for their sombreros, and the wiseguys are getting edgy. How's that Pine's problem? Because he's got two Colombian rats in his organization. No, one Colombian rat, now Ricky Ricardo got capped."

"Jones?"

"Yeah, Jones. I want you—wearing my wire—to go tell Pine about Jones. Tell him you overheard the college boys talking about it before they released you. That's how I got it, the fuck-ups. He's going to have to get rid of Jones. Then I get rid of him." Cobb dangled two tape recorders, identical to those taped to our nipples, over the backseat. "You wear these, tell Pine about Jones the rat. That's all there is to it. My guys will be behind you every step of the way. We're not incompetent buttholes like the college boys. Except for Billie's note. You give me that and I'll get her killer."

"We want two things in return," I said.

"Yeah, what?"

"I want you to leave Leon Palomino alone. That's one."

"Why's that? Because he saved your life gunning Ricardo?"

"No."

"That might be tough. Since the college boys put a tap on your phone, they know he burned down the store and about your
meeting at Shea. They set up to arrest him there, college-boy dragnet, only Palomino beat the shit out of three so-called agents and escaped." Cobb giggled almost boyishly.

"Leave Sybel out of this entirely. That's two."

"What are you, some kind of hero?" she asked.

"There's no need for you to go to Pine," I said to her. Then to Cobb I said, "Sybel's going home to her daughter or there's no deal."

"Jeez, you really got me this time."

Sure. I really had him. I leaned back in the seat. Sybel took my hand in hers. "What's a CI?" she asked.

"A CI? That's what you are. A confidential informant."

Artie Deemer, CI, RIP.

TWENTY-THREE

E
VEN BEFORE I opened my apartment door i knew Jellyroll was gone. A dog's consistency ingrains itself in one's consciousness like a familiar piece of music. He should have responded to the sound of my key in the lock with a single bark; then I should have heard him run headlong at the door, skid to a stop, toenails clattering on the hardwood foyer floor. When I opened the door, he should have jumped at my face, attempting to lick it in midair. I would have ruffled his ears to elicit his smile, roughhouse for a while. A dog's greeting is a gift of nature.

"What is it?" said Sybel.

"Jellyroll's gone."

"How do you—? Calabash, maybe Calabash has him out for a walk?"

"No. There's his leash, on the hook." Weariness vanished. "Someone took him," I said. I saw myself trembling, but I didn't feel it. I felt myself stepping over the edge. I tore Cobb's device from my chest and smashed it on the floor.

"Artie—" said Sybel from far in the distance.

I turned and made straight for Jerry's shotgun in the bedroom closet. I flipped dirty clothes and unused sports paraphernalia out between my legs until I got to the gun. I liked its feel, its heft and balance. It felt like a friend. What did I intend to do with it just then? Pump some shells through the mechanism, lend a little palpability to my revenge fantasy? I don't know.

"Artie, careful—" Sybel, I only sort of recognized, was cowering against the wall in the foyer. God, how I wanted to kill the
man who took my dog. Did that mean I was cracking up or was that a perfectly reasonable response?

I heard a key in the door lock. I shouldered the shotgun and leveled it the peephole.

Sybel screamed, "No!"

Calabash opened the door. At the sight of me, he spun away from the doorway and out into the hall, shouting, "It's me, it's me!"

From that same far distance, I watched myself lower the gun and sag against the wall.

Calabash peeked in.

"Somebody took Jellyroll," Sybel told him. Then she came to me, took the shotgun from my hands, and hugged me. Calabash came over and enfolded us both in his arms.

"Okay, we tink dis ting out. I couldn't come back here till the cops left, so that's how they got to Jellyroll. Now you tell me what happened at the jailhouse, you tell me what's what. Den we figure out real calm what we doin'."

The phone rang. Calabash answered. He listened for a moment, then held the receiver for me. "Pine," he said.

"Hey, Arthur, doesn't do a man's business standing in the community a bit of good when his employees get themselves arrested."

"Do you have my dog?"

"You ought to get that dog out of town more often. He's having a ball. Out on the runway right now chasing sticks with Chucky."

"If you hurt that dog, I'll devote my life to killing you and everyone you know."

But Pine just chuckled. "This dog is so sweet he breaks your heart. I wouldn't think of hurting him, but I need a little employee incentive, and he's it."

"Incentive for what?"

"We need to sit down, drink a beer, and figure out where our mutual interests lie. I got a few questions; you name a price for the answers."

"Then Jellyroll and I walk away?"

"Sure, but one thing, Arthur, don't let my affable exterior mislead you. I'm in deep shit. I got feds, cops, and smarmy hoods coming at me from everywhere but up. I'm a desperate old man, Arthur, and I don't want you showing up here wearing wires and other such devices, not Cobb's, not Watson's, nobody's. That clear?"

"Yes."

"And by the way, they had a tap on your phone. My people cleaned it up."

Oh. "Where do you want me to go?"

"There's a yellow cab waiting out in front right now. You just get in, leave the driving to us.
Now
. By the way, Arthur, you should have told me you wanted a bodyguard. That's covered in my employee benefit program." He hung up.

"I've got to go." I related the conversation.

Sybel was leaning against the wall. "He knew about these tape recorders?"

"Both
sets. And the phone tap."

"How?"

"I don't know."

Calabash left the room with a somber look on his face. Sybel was putting on her jacket.

"What are you doing?"

"Putting on my jacket."

"Why?"

"Why? Because we're all going together."

"No, you don't need to do that. Why would you do that?"

"Because I have a feeling you'll be safer in a crowd."

Calabash returned with a battered canvas gym bag full of heavy objects. "Dey ain't seen de mean side to Calabash yet. Let's go"

On instinct I retrieved the Family Snaps and Billie's note from T.S. Monk's record jacket, put them in an envelope, and hid
it in the torn lining of my rain jacket. Then we left, the three of us, together.

There was indeed a cab waiting curbside. Dickie, hair slicked back and greased down, sat behind the wheel with the engine running. Sybel and I got in back. Calabash sat in front beside Dickie, who cowered. "Hey," said Dickie, "I didn't hear nothin' about
all
youse going. It was supposed to be just him. I got to clear it with the boss." A radio was mounted where the fare meter should have been, and Dickie reached for it. Calabash got there first. A wrench, a twist, a final yank, and Calabash had extracted the radio; he rolled down the window and dropped it in the street.

"Hey, pal, take it easy, see, I just drive, that's all. Drive."

"Den do it," said Calabash in a menacing whisper.

Dickie drove. I watched to see who would follow. I detected no one, but they had to be there somewhere.

Calabash reached into his gym bag to remove a big black gun, cocked it ostentatiously and stuck it in Dickie's ear. "You know what I do if tings feel funny when we get dere? De teeniest ting don't look just so, you know what I do?" I think Dickie knew, but Calabash elaborated. "I ask myself where's dat skinny kid wid de shiny hair? Den I shoot your brain out on your shirt."

TWENTY-FOUR

T
HIS TRIP HAD been planned, orchestrated, and choreographed. Tensely, Dickie drove us up the Henry Hudson and across the George Washington Bridge, then north on Route 17, surely one of the tackiest strips on the Eastern Seaboard, also one of the most congested. That was part of the choreography, use the congestion. Dickie bobbed and weaved. Suddenly I noticed we were not the only yellow cab in North Jersey. There was another in front, identical to the one behind. The three began to exchange places randomly as opportunity allowed, a kind of automotive shell game, three-car monte. Without notice or signal, Dickie swerved into the Parkway Diner; one cab followed while the other continued north.

"We change cars here," said Dickie, driving through the parking lot and behind the building, where a big blue Buick waited with driver. The second Checker parked beside us between two hulking dumpsters.

"You drive," said Calabash.

"No, this other guy drives. That's how Pine's got it set up—"

       
"You
drive." Calabash got out of our cab and headed for the Buick, but its driver, a bullnecked fellow, alighted to meet him. "Who the fuck are you?" he demanded.

It was a short punch, no more than ten inches from start to finish. The bullnecked guy's head snapped back, ending further debate. His knees buckled and he dropped in a quivering heap. De mean side of Calabash, who climbed back aboard. "Now
drive," he repeated, and Dickie offered no argument. Wisely, the other cab driver stayed in his car.

After some tricky jinks and turns, we picked up the Thruway at Suffern, but we didn't stay on it long. We took the scenic route to the southern Catskills, and it was somewhere near Saugerties, on an empty country road, that we turned off to the airfield.

East Coast Aviation, said the sign in faded red letters nailed to a telephone pole, flooded corn and stunted alfalfa fields on either side, the mountains up ahead. I squeezed Sybel's hand across the seat. Dickie began to prattle about his limited sphere of responsibility, a service employee not privy to the decision-making process of his betters. Then Calabash asked, "How many men dey got out here?"

"Jeez, I don't know...Pine and Bert. Bert's his mechanic. It's like an airport. People come. Go. Jones came last night. Chucky."

Jones?
Jones was here?...What did that mean?

"Dey armed?"

"Armed? Jeez, I don't know. Everybody's armed now days. I mean, this ain't no ambush. I mean, if Pine wanted you popped, he ain't gonna drive you way the fuck and gone out to his own property to do it, right? I mean,
right
?
"

There it was. The airstrip.

"Slow down," Calabash ordered, replacing the gun in Dickie's ear.

"Aw, jeez—"

Calabash explained the process to Dickie. When Calabash called for a halt, Dickie would get out of the car and walk beside it as Calabash drove the rest of the way. Then Dickie was to serve as a shield behind whom we would walk slowly, directly to Jellyroll. Any divergence from that plan and "You be suddenly dead."

The puddled road curved around the end of the grassy strip lined with single-engine airplanes tied down against the cold, gusty wind. There were two buildings, a low-slung cement one not much bigger than a mobile home topped by a control
tower made of girders like a fire observation tower, with a glass-enclosed crow's nest; nearby there was a large metal hangar painted powder blue. Red letters along the eaves said East Coast Aviation.

As we approached the hangar, Calabash ordered Dickie out, and we covered the last hundred yards at the pace of his stiff walk. There was no one about, but then this was no weather for recreational flying.