Straight No Chaser (22 page)

I pretended to be occupied with my vodka.

“Movies,” Big Bam said, “is one of your scenes. And jazz.”

I said, “Bet you don't know what kind of car I drive.”

“White Volks,” Big Bam said.

“Convertible,” Truong said.

I said, “This's very impressive, guys.”

“You should see what we got in the file on Trevor,” Big Bam said.

“You know about the exam-paper scam at St. Andrew's College?” I said.

Big Bam looked over at Truong.

“No,” Truong said to me. “Perhaps you'd tell us.”

Big Bam waved his hand.

“Stay cool, Crang,” he said. “What's going down here, I like to know where people I do business with are coming from. We only had this afternoon to run you down. Truong made the calls. Basically he got enough background to let you in the door.”

I said, “And, I hope, out the door later.”

Big Bam liked that.

“I love this guy,” he said, spreading his beaming smile on me. Truong had no smile. Didn't he love me? Or was he just sore because his research missed the story about Trevor and the exam papers?

“Well, listen, Bam,” I said, “as long as we're in a biographical frame of mind, I was wondering about something. Your name.”

Big Bam lifted a leg over the arm of his chair and swirled the ice cubes in his drink with a finger.

“Lay the brief version on you,” he said. “The very brief version. A year ago March, there were two posses in this part of town selling coke.”

“Posses?” I said.

“Gangs. Outfits. Organizations.”

“I thought you guys called them triads.”

“Posses,” Big Bam said. “You want to hear the story or not?”

“Sorry.”

“I ran one of the posses,” Big Bam said. “Me. Ng Thai. The other posse used to set up in a restaurant over on St. Patrick. One night I went in the basement of the restaurant. Had twelve sticks of dynamite and a timer. Set the stuff for next day. At noon, the dynamite went.”

Big Bam stopped talking and shrugged.

“And,” I finished for him, “there was the sound of a big bam.”

“Hardly anybody except my parents call me Ng Thai these days.”

“Just curious, Bam,” I said. “But, ah, what hours was this restaurant on St. Patrick open for business?”

“Oh, yeah, the whole posse went up with the place,” Big Bam said. “Except Truong wasn't there that day. He'd already decided to come over to me.”

Nobody in the room said anything for a moment. Big Bam was silent because he seemed to be relishing the ancient triumph.

Truong was just being his inscrutable self. And I was having enough trouble getting the numb feeling out of my brain, never mind my lips. This guy, Big Bam, was a champion killer. Murderer on a mass scale. Fenk, jeez, dusting off Fenk would have been swatting a fly for someone like him.

“One for the road?”

Big Bam was speaking to me. He had the smile on his face, not a trace of menace. How'd he manage that? All he'd done and no sign of it in his smile. In his whole face.

I held out my glass and nodded, yes, I'd have one for the road.

24

I
T WAS CLOSE TO NINE
and the sky was fading to black when I left Big Bam and his hospitality. I walked up to College Street and bought two Coffee Crisps and a tin of apple juice at a variety store. A sugar hit to keep me functioning. Maybe I didn't need the chocolate bars. The day with Big Bam had my energy pumping at a scary rate.

I ate one of the bars anyway and went north on Brunswick Avenue above College. I was looking for a number on Ulster Avenue. Found it. It was across from a small park on the southwest corner of Brunswick and Ulster. The house with the number I wanted was semi-detached and three storeys high. It had decorative woodwork around the top of the porch, filigree almost, and it had a tiny well-tended front yard planted in flowers that bloomed white even in the dark. I sat on a bench at the edge of the park and watched the house across the street.

It was the address written on the piece of paper I palmed after the tall guy dropped it at the Pits. When I handed the paper back to Truong in the booze can, I looked at it long enough to memorize what was written on it. Sometimes the old brain just never quits. What was written on the paper was the Ulster address and, in the corner, a number. Five. The porch on the house across the street was in darkness, but there was a light on in the room to the left of the front door. I figured I had enough stamina to stick around for a couple of hours and maybe find out where Ulster Street and the number five worked into the story.

At nine-thirty, a man in a suit walked down the sidewalk and turned in to the Ulster house. The man was carrying a briefcase and looked law-abiding. He could pass for one of the insurance-salesman types who had dealings with Big Bam at the Pits. He rang the bell at the house. No porch light came on, but a small woman opened the door. She didn't open it far, a foot and a half. She accepted a piece of paper from the man, read it, and handed him a package. The woman closed the door. I thought she was Vietnamese, and very old. The man put the package in his briefcase and walked away. He had a pushy kind of stride. Definitely an insurance salesman. The entire transaction lasted twenty seconds.

I took a turn around the park to stretch my legs. The park had a kids' slide, a small wading pool, and a big rock with a plaque drilled into it. “Margaret Fairley Park”, the plaque read. “A citizen who cared for her community.” Well, Margaret, I thought, standing by the rock, wherever you are, give a care for the house on Ulster Street. It's in your community, and something screwy is going on over there. Something that makes it a cog in the Big Bam cocaine operation. Probably wasn't around in your day, Margaret, whatever day that was. Probably bathtub gin and blind pigs were the scourge back then.

I took up position on the bench in time for another arrival on the porch. This visitor I recognized. No mistaking the jacket. It was black and sharp and Giorgio Armani, and the young person wearing it was the second customer Big Bam had serviced at the park that afternoon. The guy came away from the Ulster porch with a small package in his hand and a swagger in his walk.

I got off the bench and intercepted him.

“Evening there,” I said. I was right in front of the guy. “Spare a minute?”

For a flash, the young guy looked shocked, guilty, and nervous all at the same time. But only for a flash. He had a lot of bravado to him.

“What's your story?” he said. “I'm in a hurry.”

“Just checking up on a few points.”

“You a cop?” the guy asked. He was about my height and had squinty eyes.

“Not a cop,” I said. “I'm on the other side. Your side.”

“Didn't think you were a cop,” the guy said. “You don't look ballsy enough.”

I skipped right on over the insult.

“Want to know if you've got any complaints,” I said. “About the way you've been treated today.”

“What're you talking about?”

“The transaction,” I said. “Start to finish. With Big Bam.”

The guy's eyes got squintier, but he started to answer.

“Well, like always,” he said. “Told Big Bam what I was in for this week. He gave me the paper, and I paid the guy with the glasses. Listen, it was like every time I do a deal. I got my other paper, the script y'know, from the two guys in the Datsun, and for this deal it said to come here, which is the only thing different since I never been to this house before.”

The guy stopped.

“I know you,” he said. “You were sitting in back of the Seville.”

“Great memory,” I said.

“So how come you're standing around out here?”

“Think of me as Big Bam's quality-control manager. Just making sure our best customers get satisfaction.”

The guy didn't have an answer for that, and I ploughed on.

I said, “Now you mention this is your first visit to this particular address. That'd be to pick up delivery of the cocaine?”

“Yeah, naturally, but what—”

I talked over the guy. “The paper from the men in the Datsun tells you the address where you go for the coke and the amount you've paid for?”

“Something's wrong here,” the guy said. His eyes had squinted to slits.

“Helps if we run through the entire itinerary,” I said. “Ensure none of our people slip up.”

I'd lost the guy. He was looking over my shoulder and waving at someone back there.

“Petey,” he shouted. “Get the fuck over here.”

I looked behind me. A Trans Am was parked at the corner, and someone was climbing out of the driver's seat. If it was Petey, Petey was a long, lean drink of water, and he had a flashlight in his hand. The flashlight wasn't turned on.

“You've been a big help,” I said to the guy in the Armani jacket. “So thanks and let's call it a night.”

I turned, but the guy grabbed a handful of my shirt. His other hand was busy with the package of cocaine. Petey was closing in fast.

“The fuck you pulling?” the guy said to me. I tried to yank away, but the guy had my shirt too securely. We'd passed the point of negotiation.

“Whap this asshole, Petey.”

The guy in the Armani jacket had real destruction in mind. I pivoted enough to get my right elbow in position and jammed it into the guy's stomach. He made an oomph sound and let go of my shirt. Petey had the flashlight raised over his head. That put it very high in the air and gave me time to dodge. I chose left, and the flashlight whistled past my right ear and clunked against my shoulder. It stung, but things could have been more painful.

Petey went back into his windup, and at the same time the other guy was recovering from the poke in the stomach. He straightened up, but I figured a couple of items put him at a disadvantage. The package of coke and his Armani jacket. Both represented big money, and he'd have it in mind to protect them.

I shot a fist at the package and knocked it out of the guy's grasp. He reached to catch it while it was still in the air. I juked to the right, and Petey's flashlight went by on the left. A clean miss. The other guy couldn't get his hands on the package fast enough. It hit the sidewalk with a small noise.
Pooph.
The package burst open, and white powder dusted the sidewalk. Five thousand dollars in white powder.

“Shit, oh shit, oh shit.” The guy in the Armani jacket dropped to his knees and scraped his hands at the spilled cocaine. His shoulders heaved in something close to convulsions.

Petey wasn't doing anything new and dangerous with the flashlight. His attention was directed to the disaster on the sidewalk. I had the impression Petey wasn't the brains of the duo. I snatched the flashlight out of his hands and threw it spinning into Margaret Fairley's park.

“How's that for ballsy, fellas?” I said, and made a swift departure down Ulster.

At the corner, where the Trans Am sat, motor running, I looked back. Both guys were on the sidewalk brushing the cocaine on to the paper it had been wrapped in. They didn't have eyes for me. I slowed down and walked home.

25

I
'D GONE PAST THE HUNGER STAGE
. It was ten-fifteen. Or maybe a drink would reactivate my appetite. I poured a Wyborowa on the rocks.

A loose end. That's what the episode on Ulster was. It was peripheral to the major issues, which were Fenk's murder and where Big Bam's cocaine cartel blended into it. I took the drink into the living room and didn't turn on the lamp. Peripheral, yeah, but it was satisfying to know how Big Bam conducted his sales force. And now I knew. Resourceful me.

Big Bam wanted to minimize the physical contact he and his staff had with the cocaine. That explained the mechanics of his set-up. Cut down the chances of the cops nabbing him red-handed with the drugs in the course of the dealing. So he concocted a convoluted system of paper and payments and rendezvous.

The way I doped it out, the way it
had
to be, the customer had an initial meeting with the Bam himself. On the bench at Christie Pits, some prearranged place like that, maybe a different designated spot on each day of the week. Known only to the customer. Big Bam approved the amount and the price of the customer's coke purchase. Wrote it on a piece of paper. Customer took the paper to Truong, who collected the cash and initialled his okay. Customer traded the paper for another paper. That was handled by the lads in the Datsun. The slip of paper they issued gave the customer an address where the coke could be picked up. The paper also indicated the amount of coke the customer was entitled to. Very cagey.

The tall guy, for example, the tall guy who ought to be undergoing major surgery about now. The number on his paper was five. Five grams of coke he paid six hundred and twenty-five dollars for. The mathematics worked; at Big Bam's current rate of one-twenty-five per gram, the six-twenty-five bought exactly five grams. And the other thing on the tall guy's piece of paper was the address where he was supposed to pick up the five grams, namely the small and ancient lady's house on Ulster.

The same address must have been on the paper that the guy in the Armani jacket bought from Big Bam's outfit. The number on his paper would have been different, the number of grams. Much higher. I saw him count out five grand to Truong. How'd that calculate? One hundred and twenty-five divided into five thousand—click, click—came to an even forty. Forty grams of eighty-per-cent-pure cocaine. All of it spilled on the sidewalk by me. No wonder the guy went a little crazed.

What about the old woman at the Ulster house? Did she know what she was distributing? Maybe not precisely, but she must have surmised it was something more precious and dangerous than herbal tea.

Clever. Better, it was diabolical. Big Bam probably had a network of little old ladies in houses all over the city dishing out thousands of grams of cocaine every week. Probably paid them a small fee, and the whole scheme kept Bam himself safely distanced from the illegal transactions.