Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)(54)

Finally, Pickles. Pepper caught him picking his nose, under the harsh interrogation-room track lighting of the rec room. Hard to put faith in a man’s subtlety and discretion when he can’t pick his nose right. In retrospect maybe that’s why they called him Pickles.

“Remember me?” Pickles asked. His eyes watered.

Pepper said, yeah.

Quincy huffed in disgust. “Pickles. Pepper. Pope—what is this, some kind of fucked-up convention?”

Pope said, “Man, you don’t want to mess with this dude.”

“Bring some motherfucker in to rob my ass and tell me to calm down.”

Pepper exhaled loudly. “I’m here about Lucinda Cole. She was here two nights ago.”

“So what?” Quincy said. “She forgot her purse?”

Pepper scratched his jaw. His host got two free wisecracks in return for him not taking off his shoes, but the next one meant a pop in the mouth. “Tell me about it,” Pepper said.

He hadn’t seen the actress in two years, Quincy told him. “She tried to clean her ass up, and we’re always the first to get dropped. Until they get a hankering again.” He was a fan of her work, and of her as a person. She was always polite and comported herself well, “not like a lot of the heads who come through here.” The actress was lucky he was home when she called; he and Pickles were supposed to see that killer snake movie Sssssss at the Maharaja Theater on 145th, but the times in the newspaper were wrong “as motherfucking usual.”

Now assured that he was not being robbed, and merely had to violate customer privacy, Quincy adopted a relaxed tone. “She looked good, but she always does,” he said, crook to crook. “She never showed her habit, you know? Didn’t want any powder, just something to help her sleep. Complained the movie was running her ragged. People go on about how tired and run ragged they are, then ask for something to turn the volume down more.”

In response to Pepper’s question, he added that she left around midnight. “Hooked her up with some Valium. In and out, didn’t want to stay and chat.”

“Valium.”

“Practically raining Valium out there these days. Corporate pharmaceutical profit strategy is the same as ghetto strategy: Flood the streets, get them hooked.”

Quincy began to expound on how the Nazis basically invented the modern-day tranquilizer industry by forcing the drug company Roche to relocate their Jewish scientists to the United States, but Pepper raised his hand: Stop. He turned to Pickles. “What’s he leaving out?”

“That’s it,” Pickles said. He rubbed his sore foot in gentle circles. “You know, sometimes people want to get to their goodies lickety-split.”

“Too true,” Pope said, wistfully.

“Chink Montague looking for my ass, I’d be scarce, too.” Quincy laughed.

Pepper’s headache piped up: Still here. He told him to spill it.

“She was running out the door and I asked her if it was good to be home,” Quincy said. “She grew up around here, uptown. Said it was good to be back, except for all the familiar faces.”

“Like Chink?”

“I didn’t bring him up—she did.” He flopped his shoulders. “He used to go with her when she was starting out. Bought her clothes, helped her ‘get discovered.’ She said she was mostly laying low downtown, but that night she was shooting in some shoe store uptown, the phone rings and it’s him on the phone.”

Pepper pictured the movie setup at Carney’s place. Lola had taken over Marie’s office. “What’d he say?”

“I don’t know man, ask Columbo.” Pepper stiffened and Quincy eliminated the sarcasm from his tone. “Didn’t say. But she came here so he must have got her riled up.”

Pepper withdrew four steps. He checked on the defeated Pickles, whose slouch and pout signaled that he was unlikely to coldcock him on the way out.

Pope said, “We done?”

Pepper nodded.

“Mind if I stay and catch up with my man Quincy?”

Pepper gave him a look. “Macrobiotic.”

The comedian chuckled and rubbed his palms together. “It’s hard out here in the Big Apple—man needs every boost he can get.”

Pope had brought a violent man into the drug peddler’s house and made him rat out a customer, but from Quincy’s expression he bore no grudge. Another reason Pepper had never worked retail: It required a forgiving nature.

Pickles sat up. He said, “Hey, man.”

Pepper stopped in the doorway.

“Why didn’t you take off your damn shoes?”

“Hole,” he said. “In my sock.”





SIX


They were tearing up the street outside the Martinez Funeral Home again, exposing the layers beneath the black asphalt. The jackhammers did not stop, the racket went on for hours, and it was as if the noise from out of the hole was that of the machine of the city and you could now hear the true operation of the metropolis. The noisy industry of valves and pistons, the great gears grinding against each other, the clack and snap and bang. Maybe after midnight in the hours of crime and sleeplessness you may hear it, too, if you listen closely: a distant whir or rumble.

When he woke it was dark and quiet. After his visit to 107th Street, Pepper had returned to the McAlpin to check out Lucinda Cole’s room. It had been trashed; he wanted to see what he could find in the mess. The hotel hadn’t cleaned up—probably waiting on the insurance company. Get the film company to pay, then your insurance: double-dip. What Pepper saw was not the aftermath of a party, as described. A vase had detonated against the full-length mirror on the door, shattering them both. The floor lamp had been ripped from the wall and bent in half—the shaft was too thick to snap completely. This was rage.