car. Brilliant. It must take you an hour and a half to watch
“Fuck you,” said Richie. “Get me my lawyer.”
“And my lawyer too!” said the black prisoner, whom P.F. recognized as Stevie Ray Banks.
P.F. put his hands in his pockets and started to walk away again. “I’m sure they’ll give you a call as soon as they get done with all the paperwork.”
Stevie Ray took out his penis again.
“Love to Ted,” P.F. said.
“Come on, come on!” said Richie, jiggling slightly. “Help me out here.”
“‘Help me out, help me out.’ That’s the problem with our culture now. We live in a society of victims. Everyone feels aggrieved. ‘Help me out, help me out.’ Unbelievable. Likethey expect something for nothing. My day, you had to work for a living.”
“You gotta get me out of here.”
His pathetic tone interested P.F., and he took a couple of steps back toward the cell. “Well, now, let’s go back to the old merit system. What do you have that’s worth bartering for? You didn’t happen to be around the Boardwalk the other night, did you?”
“I never go to the Boardwalk. That’s just for tourists.”
“Ah well, that’s too bad, isn’t it. The way I figure it, you’ll do a nickel and a dime at least in prison for what they found in the back of your car.”
“No way, no day.” Richie shook his head.
“Sentencing guidelines, Richie. They’re a bitch. They’re talking about bringing back the death penalty in some of these cases too. Seems a shame to waste your youth.” His eyes flicked down to Richie’s neck. “What happened? You cut yourself shaving?”
Richie nervously fingered the scabs and gouge marks on his throat. “I don’t know anything about any Boardwalk.”
“Oh, then you can’t tell this friend of mine what happened to Nicky D.”
Richie looked down at his damp boots and wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know any Nicky.”
“Then that’s the biggest shame of them all,” said P.F. “I know a guy over at the F.B.I. that might have been able to help you out. But since you don’t know anything, there’s no point. Right?”
Richie stiffened. “I’d have to talk to my lawyer first.”
“Absolutely not,” P.F. said. “We either talk about cooperating now or forget the whole thing. You call your lawyer and take your chances with Teddy back out on the street. And I bet he’d have some kind of wild hair up his ass with you getting locked up the way you did.”
He felt good saying it. This was how it was before. When he was actually doing police work, instead of just coasting on bad memories. Call ’im a Pigfucker and wait for him to deny it.
“I’m not scared,” claimed Richie.
“A fine thing too. A man can do a lot without fear in his life.”
The other two prisoners eyed Richie hungrily, like cavemen watching a water buffalo. He rubbed his wrist where the handcuff had been digging into it.
“I wouldn’t talk about everything, you know,” he murmured to P.F. “And I want them to drop all these fuckin’ charges with the car. I don’t want anybody to know I been arrested again.”
“That is none of my affair,” said P.F. “I’m merely passing the message.”
A half hour later P.F. was down the hall, calling Sadowsky’s beeper number. The witness might or might not cooperate, he said when he got the callback. It was too early to tell. But he hoped Sadowsky would keep his word about talking him up to the casino people.
“You got it, old buddy,” said the agent.
P.F. knew he was lying. But there was something exhilarating about getting involved again. He had to fight the urge to go tearing down the hall, bellowing about his prowess as a detective. The guards on duty would think he was some old fool. But there was no denying it. He was making a comeback. Porcine coitus was about to take place.
“Anything else I can do for you in the meantime, old buddy?” asked Sadowsky, sounding pleasingly anxious.
“Just lay off my job at the casino,” said P.F., trying to tamp down his enthusiasm. “I want at least one thing I’m sure of.”
27
I BROUGHT CARLA and the kids home that night, but I was so nervous that every time the phone rang, I thought the police were going to come through the line, and arrest me in my kitchen for killing Nicky. So I had my heart in my hand when I picked up the receiver the next morning.
It turned out to be Elijah Barton’s brother John B.
“I was talkin’ to the man,” he said, in the usual half-swallowed voice he used when the subject wasn’t his brother the champion.
“Who?”
With John, “the man” could have meant Jesus Christ or the head of the World Boxing Federation.
“Mr. Suarez,” he explained. “He say we better come up with that money soon or somebody else gonna have the chance to fight for the title.”
I remembered the leathery skin and the paisley ascot. Suarez was the guy we’d met at the Doubloon conference a month back. The one who’d asked for the “contribution” in exchange for getting Elijah ranked in the top ten. Scumbag. Without that ranking, we had no shot at talking to Sam Wolkowitz the corporate guy and making our deal to fight on television. I saw my brave new world of spacious boardrooms and designer suits washing away with the nine o’clock tide.
“Tell that greaseball to go fuck himself.” I picked up a bread knife from the kitchen counter.
For a second, I was taken aback. It was Vin’s voice coming out of my mouth. I wondered if I’d become more like him by virtue of killing somebody. But I told myself it was just the pressure. I put down the bread knife and tried to sound more reasonable. “Exactly who does Mr. Suarez think is going to fight their guy, if not Elijah?”
“They been talkin’ about Meldrick Norman,” John B. mumbled. “He’s ranked number four among the light heavyweights.”
“But he’s a nobody! He’s a tomato can! He doesn’t have a fifth the name recognition that Elijah has. How could they give him the shot instead of us?”
“It’s that kind of business.” John B.’s voice cracked mournfully on the line. “You got to give in order to get.”
I hung up on him and started pacing around. My whole world was falling in on me. My marriage was dead. I had a murder on my conscience. And my one chance to pull out of the tailspin and finally pay off that fat bastard Teddy was fading like the fog off the ocean. My mouth was dry. I opened the refrigerator to get something to drink, but all the orange juice was gone. I’d heard Carla go out the door a half hour before, saying she was going shopping. But I needed something now. There was a can of Budweiser on the door, though. Sensuous water beads slid down its side just like they do on a beer commercial.
Without even thinking, I opened it and took a swig. The clock above the sink said it was about nine-thirty in the morning. I’d never had a drink this early in the day before. Drinking when the sun was up was for cretins like Joey Snails, I thought. But the beer felt good going down my throat and cooling my belly. By the time I’d finished it, a kind of peace had settled over me for the first time since I’d killed Nicky. I wondered if this was why people became alcoholics. I closed my eyes and relaxed awhile, listening to the hum of the air conditioner in the living room. A 5400 BTU Carrier my father took off the back of a truck in Mays Landing. Maybe one day I’d be able to buy the family a new one with my own money.
I started to hear a high-pitched squeal. Sort of a piercing sound that went right through your eardrum and into your teeth. At first I thought it was the air conditioner. But then I realized the sound was coming from the back
