“We built this goddamn town, people like you and me, our families,” Danny Scrignoli said to McGuire. “The pasta-makers and the potato-eaters, the guineas and the shamrocks, right? Where’d this town be without us micks?”
They were in La Venezia on Salem Street, and the conversation from other tables in the crowded restaurant masked the traffic sounds of the elevated expressway a block away. The voices were loud and vibrant, charged with passion and life, a fusion of Italian, English and Portuguese.
“Not me,” McGuire said.
“What? Whattaya mean, not you?” Scrignoli lifted a glass of Chianti to his lips and held it there. “You’re Irish as hell, it’s all over you.”
“Worcester,” McGuire said. “I’m from Worcester.”
“Yeah?” Scrignoli took a long sip of wine. “I never knew that,” he said. “I thought all the time you were a Boston kid.”
McGuire had palmed his last pill and swallowed it dry, riding down from Revere Beach in Scrignoli’s car, Danny not noticing because he was babbling on about some woman he was chasing. “Little redhead, no boobs but a great ass.” The pill had begun its work. To McGuire’s surprise he discovered himself smiling, enjoying himself, glad to be where he was. He sipped the wine and savoured its astringency. “What’d you order for us?” he asked.
Scrignoli had taken charge from the moment they entered the restaurant, greeting the owner and patrons and waitresses with a broad smile and Italian phrases interrupted by quick embraces. “Leave it to me,” Scrignoli had said when the menus arrived, and McGuire had not even listened as Scrignoli ordered the meal in Italian to a woman who looked like an overweight Liza Minnelli, all eyes and lips and hips.
Now Scrignoli answered. “We got some arancini coming, that’s a baked rice ball stuffed with meat and cheese.” He kissed the tips of his fingers. “Orgasmic, McGuire. Fuckin’ orgasmic. Then I ordered baked cavatelli for me, that’s with ricotta, egg, mozzarella and Parmesan in a marinara sauce and you got some veal paragina coming ’cause I thought you’d want something like that, all that Anglo-Saxon stuff rattling around in your genes.”
McGuire said it sounded good and he drank more wine, wondering when the defenses of the Demerol would begin to crumble, how soon he would become headachy and nauseous again.
The arancini arrived with a salad and it was as good as Scrignoli promised. It had been years since McGuire had eaten at a North End restaurant, never with Danny Scrignoli.
“Did you hear, they make anybody yet on that case they were trying to hang you for, the one on Newbury Street, woman beat to death?” Scrignoli asked. He finished the remains of the arancini on his plate, pushing it onto a last scrap of Italian bread, raising it to his mouth and washing it down with more wine.
“Don’t know,” McGuire answered.
Scrignoli frowned. “Somebody said you were related to her.”
“Only by divorce.”
The other man laughed. “Christ, I went through mine two years ago.” He set the plate aside, turned the stem of the wineglass in circles, watching the patterns. “Miss the kids. That’s what I miss most of all. My kids.”
“It happens.”
“So this woman was, what? A sister-in-law?”
McGuire nodded. Heather is dead, he reminded himself. All those years I wished her to be and now she is. Somehow it wasn’t sufficient, satisfying.
Scrignoli turned away, looked at the floor for a minute, then back at McGuire. “Look, I gotta ask you something. The victim, her name was Heather Lorenzo, right? Lived over an art gallery on Newbury?”
McGuire nodded. “Antique store. She lived over an antique store.”
Scrignoli closed his eyes and nodded. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered.
The waitress arrived to remove the dishes and Scrignoli waited for her to leave before resting his forearms on the table and leaning forward, holding McGuire in his gaze. “I knew her,” he said softly. “I mean, I never met her but I knew about her.” His fist came down on the table, rattling the eating utensils. “Jee-sus, this could be a real screw-up. I gotta tell you about it.”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” McGuire said.
“You’re still a suspect, I hear. It’s gotta matter to you.”
McGuire shook his head.
“Anyway, it matters to me.”
McGuire was about to ask how when the waitress returned with the main course. “I’ll tell you about it later,” Scrignoli said, and began eating distractedly. McGuire wanted to tell Danny he didn’t give a damn, he was out of it, out of police work, out of anything that smacked of responsibility, including relationships, but he said nothing. When Scrignoli asked how his food was, McGuire told him it was damn good and Scrignoli nodded but didn’t appear pleased, just kept eating, mechanically, his mind in a distant place.
They refused the dessert menu and ordered espresso instead. Scrignoli made small talk about police department personnel they both knew until two women entered the restaurant and stood waiting to be shown to their table. Scrignoli commented on their figures but without the zeal he might have shown an hour earlier, then paid the bill and led the way through the chilly night to his car, saying nothing, as though weighing what he might tell McGuire who didn’t care to listen anyway, who was wondering only where Django was and when he might see him next.
“You know I’m undercover, right?”
They were skirting Government Center in Scrignoli’s Buick, the buildings gray and empty. McGuire grunted.
“Have been for, what? Three, maybe four years now.” Scrignoli turned onto Tremont. “Probably not much longer, blown it too many times. Can’t work the streets anymore. So I’m doin’ white collar stuff.” He looked across at McGuire who caught his glance with eyebrows raised. “Oh yeah, I can spin that shit out when I have to. Did a bunch of Cambridge yo-yos dealing hot computer equipment out of a place down near Central Wharf last year, and a whole family running insurance scams out of a big office on Copley Square, stuff like that. This spring, somebody tipped us to a bunch of stockbrokers in town running a game. Not S.E.C. stuff, you know, churning accounts, privileged information, none of that, that’s out of our league. But little deals between them that’s got nothing to do with taxes or anything, borderline stuff but big money, some really big money. Tough case. Turn here?”
They were approaching the Flamingo, the streets dark and crusty. McGuire had told Scrignoli to drop him off at the club, not knowing if the other man knew where he lived, how he lived.
“So we got a guy on the fringe, a heavy hitter. Not involved in things, not a perp himself but he knew what was going on, made some money on deals, we coulda nailed him as an accessory if we wanted to push it. Piece a cake. Dead to rights, but maybe if we nailed him he’d just get a fine, couple a hundred grand’s all he’d pay.”
Scrignoli glided the Buick to a stop in front of the strip club. Two of the girls, Billie and Dakota, were standing in the doorway, flashing their thighs from under their robes, having a smoke. Billie bent from the waist to look through the car’s windshield. She saw McGuire, puckered her lips, raised a hand in greeting and touched one open palm with two fingers of the other hand.
“You know her?” Scrignoli grinned at McGuire.
McGuire nodded.
“What’s with the signal?” Scrignoli raised his hand and imitated the woman’s gesture. “The hell’s that mean?”
“Somebody’s using my room.” McGuire stared out his window to the other side of the street where a Korean woman was leading her two children quickly along the sidewalk, gripping their hands. “One of the girls, with a john.”
Scrignoli studied McGuire for a moment, his mouth open, surprise and amusement in his eyes. Then he looked away and shrugged. “So whattaya do? Wait ’til they’re finished?”
“It’s a living.”
Scrignoli laughed. “Jesus, I never thought . . .” He shook away the rest of the sentence and leaned forward, resting his arms on the steering wheel. “Anyway, about this guy. He’s a broker. Independent. I mean he’s more than a trader, this guy’s got a full operation, a whole floor of offices downtown, branch office in New York, another in Chicago. Maybe thirty-five, forty people working for him here. A house on the Cape, condo over on Marlborough and a hell of a big place out near Natick, private lake, horses, the whole bit. Married to this woman who’s related to the Cabots, kind of broad they made up the word ‘classy’ for.”
“So what’s the point?” There would be at least ten dollars waiting for McGuire in his room and maybe Django was inside the club, Django and his handfuls of tiny white relief. The agony was perched on McGuire’s doorstep, waiting to burst through his skull and pounce on his well-being.
“Two points.” Scrignoli twisted in the seat to face McGuire. “Two points I gotta make to you. First one. This guy, the broker, he turned for me. Took a hell of a lot of doing but I laid it out for him and his lawyer and his lawyer said, ‘Tell ’em,’ so he told us. It wasn’t the fine that scared him, hell, he spills a hundred grand a year through the cracks in the floor, wouldn’t bother him. But he’d lose his license, and that’d be a bitch. And if his wife figured out some other shit. . . . Well, he’d probably have to find honest work.”
Scrignoli shifted in his seat, instinct directing his eyes to scan the street as he talked, watching for the unexpected face, the threatening motion, the movement where movement shouldn’t be.
“He’s gettin’ ready to finger some buddies who’ve been filling their pockets with coin, big coin, for a long time,” he began again. “In return, he doesn’t testify, him and his company come out of this with roses in their teeth. We’re almost there, goddamn it. Almost there. Soon as we get the word in from the forensic accountants, that’s what they call themselves, bunch of pencil pushers tracing money transfers and stuff, we move. We get their evidence nailed down and I make this one, we call in the Bureau, hand over a bunch of interstate scores for ’em, and I’m up a couple of notches, maybe get my ass off the street ’cause I’m tired, Joe. I’m really getting tired, and I’m too well-known. Can’t work the Zone any more, not around here. And I’m losin’ it too, losin’ the edge.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a good source.” McGuire lowered his head, pinched the bridge of his nose.
“This guy’s a gold mine, Joe.” Scrignoli became animated, like a man describing an expensive new car or a voluptuous woman. “He’s a fuckin’ mother lode. This guy can blow the whole scam in this town to the moon, trust me on that.”
“So what’s the second point?”
Scrignoli exhaled slowly and struck the top of the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “We start digging into his records and there it is. He was banging her, the Lorenzo woman. The broad you used to be related to. He’d get it on with her, her place, business trip to Florida, it’s all there. Then she started blackmailing him and he paid her off but she came back for more. So that makes him a suspect. But he couldn’t’ve done it. No way could this guy have done it, Joe.”
“Why not?”
Scrignoli poked McGuire’s shoulder with a forefinger. “Because when Lorenzo got hers the other night, I was with the son of a bitch at his place on the Cape, working out his evidence. He never left my sight, Joe. All night long, except maybe to go have a whizz. Never left my sight.”
Dakota dropped her cigarette to the sidewalk, stubbed it out with her shoe and turned to enter the club with Billie, who headed for the john. Just inside the door two guys with long greasy hair and trucker’s caps asked her to table dance for them. She said, “Not now, maybe later.”
Dakota recognized the guy McGuire had been sitting with outside in the car, fingered him. Didn’t know his name, only that he was a cop. A while back, couple of years maybe, he’d busted her and some friends who were dealing a little snow, not a hell of a lot, just enough to keep them on top of things. They dropped the charges against her but she remembered the arrogant little Italian guy, undercover turd, would never forget him.
Jesus, was McGuire one of them too? All this time, McGuire mumbling and hanging around here, watching and listening, was the son of a bitch working undercover?
She’d better tell Dewey. And maybe Grizzly, and Django. Tell them what she saw, tell them maybe to take a hike from McGuire, hang him out to dry.
“You gonna tell me any more about your buddy, the broker?” McGuire was leaning forward, his elbows on the dashboard of Scrignoli’s car, his head in his hands. Wait, he told himself. Wait until Danny’s gone. Find Django, make the connection.
“What’s to tell?” Scrignoli shrugged. “He’s worth maybe fifty, sixty million. Keeps himself in shape, hell of a tennis player I hear. He’s got a workout room in his house with enough Nautilus machines to train an army regiment.”
“And you’re convinced he didn’t do it.”
“No fuckin’ way.” Scrignoli’s voice grew stronger. “Told you, I was with this guy the night she was put through the wringer. All night long. Out on the Cape, going through his books, taking statements, putting everything in place. We started at nine and worked through till three. Almost finished off a bottle of Remy Martin between us, but who needs to know that, right? We crashed about three-thirty and were up before seven, having breakfast at a Denny’s near Hyannis. Got back in town about ten and I was a mess the whole day but I had what I needed.”
Scrignoli slapped the steering wheel again. “See, here’s where I can get screwed. Somebody starts sniffing around, thinks my guy’s involved in a first-degree and spills it to his wife that he was having little romper room parties with your former sister-in-law over on Newbury, and there goes six months of work down the toilet. Along with my plan to spend a big chunk of my life in a hammock with unlimited beer and lots of broads close by. ’Cause there’s no way this guy’ll cooperate if his wife picks up on the Lorenzo bitch. No way. She’ll put him out of business if she goes for a divorce. She gets half the company, I can’t protect him any more from the P.A., he loses his license and he’ll tell me to take a hike. You see what I’m sayin’ here?”
“Just because your guy’s with you on the Cape doesn’t mean he didn’t have it done,” McGuire said. “Somebody else does it for him, he’s got an alibi with you.”
Scrignoli looked out his window, staring absently down the alley leading to the back of the Flamingo. “Can’t see it, Joe. First, the broad’s only touching him for ten grand. That’s pocket change to him. He’d paid her some already, then she came looking for ten grand more, said she’d wait a month, she wasn’t greedy, just wanted to know it was coming. He’d a paid it, trust me. Second, I had a noose on his nuts when it came to money. Poor bugger couldn’t buy a book of matches without me knowing about it. That’s how I found out about her in the first place. So how’s he gonna lay off whatever it takes to pay some street hood to do her without leaving a trail?”
McGuire shrugged. “Wasn’t professional either,” he said. “Whoever did her took his time, beating her up like that. Not like a professional hit. Somebody enjoyed doing Heather.”
“Got a point there,” Scrignoli said. “You got a point. So whattaya think I should do?”
McGuire had had enough. Whoever was in his room should be finished by now. “Don’t know why you’re asking me.” He wrenched the door open.
Scrignoli seemed surprised by McGuire’s sudden departure. “Just wanted your advice, Joe. That’s all. What, I should go to Fat Eddie on this, ask him to be cool?”
McGuire stepped from the car. “Tim Fox,” he said. He felt a steel rod where his neck used to be, a white-hot steel rod extending out of his skull. “Tell Timmy, he’s handling the case. Timmy’ll know what to do. Thanks for dinner.”
He turned, stumbled once before pushing open the door of the club, and entered the darkness and the noise, not even glancing at the naked woman writhing in the glare of the lights.
His mother named him Byron because a lover had once given her a poem written by somebody with that name, a lord or count or something, and because the gift of the poem was the lone romantic memory in her life, she had preserved it, or tried to, in the name of her only child.
But a boy growing up in South Boston soon learns Byron is not a name to command respect on the street. By the time Byron was fifteen years of age he stood almost six feet tall and boasted a record of two convictions for theft and one for assault. He also carried a new name, Dewey. You don’t fuck with a Dewey, especially Dewey Robinson who contradicted normal physiological development by, at age thirty-five, managing to accumulate equal quantities of fat and muscle on his six foot three inch body, ballooning out to more than three hundred pounds.
Dewey loved his job, managing the floor at the Flamingo. He loved the girls, especially those who were good to him in the back room, the ones who would perform any little act he wanted if he sweet-talked them and laid a little coke on them. He loved intimidating customers, assholes who couldn’t keep their hands off the girls like they were supposed to until Dewey showed up, casting a shadow over them with his presence before leaning down to whisper in their ear, “How’d you like your nuts shoved up your nose, cowboy?” Which tended to slow them down a little, decide that copping a feel probably wasn’t worth being taken outside and dropped like a sack of potatoes on a fire hydrant. Dewey had done that to a couple of them. When word got around, people knew he meant business, and it added to the whole intimidating package. Like shaving his head did, and wearing sleeveless vests so he could flash the tattoos on his biceps.
Dewey especially liked grabbing the microphone and announcing the girls’ names over the P.A. system as they climbed the stairs to the stage, imitating those big-time radio jocks who screamed about drag races in between beer commercials and Rolling Stones records. Some day Dewey’d go to one of those radio stations, get a job as a nighttime DJ. Make some of that big bread, get his picture in those ads on billboards and on the side of the MBTA buses, maybe with a hip line like, “Dewey Does It For You Every Night,” something like that. Christ, he’d have women crawling all over him, begging him for it.
Sienna was starting her third tune, down to nothing but skin now, rolling on her red velvet blanket, Risa waiting to go on, then Billie, then Dakota, then MaryLou when she got back. Risa was new, nice build, lots of thick dark hair . . .
“Dewey?”
He turned to see Dakota standing there, biting her bottom lip. What, she needs something to snort in the back, Dewey thought. It’ll cost her. “What’s up?” he asked.
“I gotta talk to you.”
“So talk.”
Dakota looked around. Snakes, the bartender, was pulling a couple of drafts and laughing with two bikers. The music was rolling behind Sienna and every guy in the place, maybe a couple dozen of them, was watching her. Some had their mouths open and a couple were nodding, liking what they saw. “You know McGuire?” Dakota asked.
“Haven’t seen him.”
“Yeah, well, I just did. Out front. Sittin’ in a car with a cop, guy who does undercover work.”
Dewey’s head didn’t move but his eyes swung over to look at Dakota, something happening to them when he did that, and Dakota’s hands started playing with themselves, fingers soothing fingers.
“You sure?”
Dakota nodded. “Guy busted me and some friends a while back.” She shrugged. “They didn’t nail me for nothin’, you know? The two guys, they got three to five, I didn’t have to testify or anything.”
Dewey’s eyes swung back to the stage. He didn’t speak, he just breathed in deeply, a long intake of air that made his chest expand like a balloon and made the lines of his neck stand out like rope.
“Everybody knows McGuire used to be a cop, long time ago,” Dakota said. “He never tried to hide it, never talked about it or nothing. Maybe this guy’s just an old buddy givin’ him a ride. Hell, no way he’d meet an undercover right out front, out in the open like that, right? I mean, Billie says there’s no way, she was with me, she says McGuire’s not like that.”
“Billie’s got the hots for him, she’d say anything.” Dewey was frowning at his thumbnail.
“She knows him better’n me, that’s all I’m sayin’.”
“Yeah.” Dewey was watching Sienna again. “That’s right.”
Dakota stood there for maybe another minute, wondering if she had done the right thing and then she said the hell with it, picked up a stool and walked back to the two grease balls with the 49ers caps, ready to show it all, do it all, five bucks for five minutes.
It happens, it happens, it happens, MaryLou kept telling herself over and over, silently, behind the tape that covered her mouth. It happened before, twice before, and she lived, she survived it, she could survive this, and when she did Dewey or somebody would hunt this fucker down and oh God!
She had never seen the guy before, didn’t even notice him sitting in the far corner until she had finished table dancing for a couple of college kids and was heading back to the bar and he waved her over. Harmless looking but they all are at first. Glasses, short haircut, skinny guy wearing a heavy tweed jacket over a Hawaiian shirt.
“You wanna go out?” he asked her.
“Cost you a hundred,” she said.
“Got it.”
“Ten more for the room.”
“Got it.”
“I have to be back here on time, half an hour, that’s it.”
The guy nodded.
“Meet me out back, bottom of the fire escape,” she said.
She’d told Billie and one of the other girls, let ’em know she had a john, then left by the rear door where the john was standing in the shadows and led him up the outside stairs to McGuire’s room, knowing McGuire was never there between six and midnight, that was the deal. The john with the glasses and the nerdy haircut was behind her, she could hear him breathing hard.
She pushed open the door and there was the cot and the small light at the back, and as she reached behind her to shrug out of her robe the john pushed her face down on the cot, and she felt a knife against her neck and the son of a bitch was breathing in her ear telling her he’d cut her right there and now, Now!, if she made a noise, made a move, did anything except what he told her to do, and she thought, “Oh, Jesus, not again!”
He must have done it before because he had the tape already cut to size and across her mouth and more tape around her wrists, her hands behind her back. Then he rolled her over and sliced through her robe and bra and G-string with the knife blade, watching them fall from her body with no expression, not even pleasure, not drooling, not laughing, none of that stuff, and his silence was more frightening to her than laughter or lust.
When she was naked he studied her body like a gardener surveying a plot of land, spade in his hand. But instead of a spade, he reached inside the waistband of his trousers to withdraw a length of garden hose, maybe two feet long. An inch or two of butcher’s string formed a loop at one end and she realized he had concealed it within his trousers, hanging it inside so you never saw it, and in spite of herself, her fear, her panic, she thought, “Are you glad to see me or is that just a garden hose in your pants?” and then he brought the hose down hard on her stomach and she began the long vomit of silent screams.
Django was sitting in the far corner of the Flamingo, his teeth gleaming in a wide smile, his small head moving to the music, watching the stage where Risa was prancing and showing it off, playing to the audience.
McGuire ignored the woman on the stage and walked toward the small black man, steadying himself against tables as he moved. There would be money upstairs, enough for some pills to ease the pain, enough to play a few notes of Django’s tune.
When Django saw McGuire approaching, the smile vanished and he turned back to Risa and her lovely long legs.
“I need some candy,” McGuire said, sitting heavily on the chair next to Django. “There’s some money waiting . . .”
“Candy?” Django’s smile returned but his eyes remained on the stage. “Rot your teeth, Jolt. Do like your mama tell you, eat up those veggies. Get your greens, all them vitamins.”
“You know what I mean,” McGuire growled. “Gimme a couple now and when . . .”
Django’s head shook from side to side. “Out,” he said. He brought his thumbnail to his teeth and began probing the crevices.
“Hey, I’ve got it,” McGuire said. His voice was hoarse and his hands began to quiver from the pain. “Codeine, whatever you’ve got, just roll me a couple for now.”
As the first of Risa’s three songs ended, she removed her halter top with a flourish, revealing heavy breasts, their skin the colour of buttermilk, and the men began applauding vigorously and a few appreciative whistles cut the smoky air.
Django clapped too, bringing his hands together in a slow rhythmic pattern, until McGuire leaned across the small table and seized the black man’s arm, yanking him close. “Come on, damn it,” McGuire spat in Django’s ear. “Give me a break here, just a couple until I get the money from the room.”
“Can’t, Jolt.” Django pulled away and smoothed the leather sleeve of his coat. “Couldn’t sell my mama a aspirin, way things are. Nothin’ personal, understand. You a good customer, good guy, but . . .” Django glanced behind McGuire and sat back in his chair again, his arms folded across his chest. He returned his eyes to the stage where Risa’s second tune had begun, whump-whump-whump, the tall black-haired woman striding back and forth across the stage, her hands supporting her breasts, thrusting the nipples forward so they bloomed like young roses.
McGuire reached for Django’s arm again. “What do you mean, the way things are?” he said, and a large hand settled heavily on McGuire’s back. He turned his head, winced at the stab of pain that raced across the base of his skull and locked eyes with Dewey.
“Don’t want no problem here,” Dewey said calmly. He kept his hand on McGuire’s back but he was looking across the room at Risa. “Just want everybody to have a good time, sit down, enjoy a drink, look at the pretty women, okay?”
“Aw, Jesus, Dewey,” McGuire said, then Dewey added, “’S’all we wanta happen here, so whyn’t you go outside, tell your buddies from Berkeley Street for me, okay?”
Django’s eyes grew wide and his head swivelled back and forth, from McGuire, to Dewey, to the front door where Grizzly and the Gypsy would be walking through any minute and finally down at the floor as though there might be a message for him there, telling him the Gypsy’d been right, he should never trust a cop, even an ex-cop.
“Berkeley?” McGuire said. “What’s with Berkeley Street?” but Dewey just stood there watching Risa on the stage and Django slid off his chair, looking to put room between himself and McGuire, who sat for a while with his head in his hands before rising and walking out the front door, wondering what the hell he was going to do now.
He rolled her on her stomach. His jacket was off, she didn’t know when he removed it, didn’t even know how long she had been there, but she remembered coming out of a faint maybe. Like she was somebody watching it all in a movie, she saw that his jacket was off and his ugly red Hawaiian shirt was stained under the arms from the effort of raising the rubber hose and bringing it down again and again across her body while she writhed to escape the blows.
Now her face was buried in the folds of the cot and when he began working on the backs of her thighs she knew she would either throw up or pass out or maybe both and if she did she would choke to death on her own vomit. My God, how long had it been going on? How much more could she stand?
Another blow from the hose on her thighs and then another, and she knew, she knew he wouldn’t stop until he killed her and the knowledge settled like a force within her. There had been times when she was coming down from a drug high and she owned and controlled nothing but her body, whatever she could do with it, those were times when MaryLou wished she were dead. She had said it aloud when she felt too much pain and too much sadness, when she had taken too much shit from her boyfriend or her father, and now she told herself that her wish was coming true, this is what happens when you get your wish.
The blows ceased and she heard only the man’s heavy, laboured breathing. MaryLou imagined him reaching for a knife and she repeated do it quick do it quick do it quick in her mind, her eyes squeezed shut.
But she heard only his breathing and then not even that when he held his breath, and she realized he was listening to something.
She heard it too. First a step on the landing beyond the door, and now the sound of the door opening.
McGuire stood absorbing the sight of MaryLou bound and gagged face down on his cot, and the man in the sweat-soaked red Hawaiian shirt with one arm raised and his eyes on McGuire’s. They were frozen for a moment, each stunned by the other’s presence, until the john dropped the hose and whirled around in search of the tweed jacket he had tossed over McGuire’s small table.
McGuire remained in the doorway, his thoughts moving slowly toward action, like someone swimming through syrup, and here was the john charging for the door now, holding his glasses against his face with one hand, the other gripping his jacket, aiming his body for the opening between McGuire and the door frame.
The scene was filtered through the pain and the residual effects of the Demerol but they failed to dull McGuire’s instincts entirely. He reacted without thinking, extending his arm out to clutch the man even while his eyes remained fixed on the sight of MaryLou bound and naked on his bed, her body crisscrossed with cranberry-coloured stripes.
The man twisted out of his grip, stumbled backwards past McGuire and out the door, then bounced off the railing and turned to flee down the stairs. Now everything was clear to McGuire, who turned and hurled himself against the man’s back, throwing him onto his face and McGuire, gripping the other man’s shoulders, rode him down the stairs like a boy on a sled. At the landing they settled in a heap and McGuire, still laying atop him like a lover, seized a handful of hair and hammered the man’s head against the metal grates again and again until his face was layered with blood and bird droppings. Then he rose to his feet, lifted the man by the back of his shirt collar and walked slowly down the rest of the stairs to the ground pulling the bloodied mess behind him, the man’s feet striking each step of the fire escape, thunk, thunk, thunk.
McGuire rolled the man on his back, then limped back down the alley to the front door of the club where Sienna was standing with her robe partially open. “Tell Dewey there’s a piece of shit waiting for him out by the fire escape,” McGuire said when he caught his breath. “And have him call an ambulance. For MaryLou.”
Then he sat down right where he was on the sidewalk, his back against the crumbling brick wall, waiting for everything to unravel as he always knew it would some day.
“What’d you do to him?”
One of the cops handed McGuire a black coffee in a plastic cup and McGuire nodded his thanks. The others stood a few feet distant, chewing gum, making notes.
“Stopped him from killing the girl,” McGuire said. He was in the same spot in which he had collapsed fifteen minutes ago, his back against the wall of the club. Small knots of people grouped themselves across the street, staring down the alley now crowded with police cars and two ambulances.
Billie, her robe peeking out from beneath the hem of a cheap fur coat, knelt beside McGuire and used a damp cloth to dab at a cut over his eyebrow.
“Sure as hell did that,” the cop with the notebook said. “Berkeley Street lit up like a Christmas tree when we sent the guy’s description and M.O. in. Guy did two girls in Cambridge last month and one down in Quincy, all of ’em hookers. Same routine. Beats ’em with a hose and when he gets tired or bored, I guess, slips a knife between the ribs.”
“You see his face?” another cop asked McGuire.
“Too dark.” McGuire took another sip of coffee. Billie’s hands were soft and soothing on the back of his neck and for a moment, a brief passing moment that frightened McGuire, he felt his eyes begin to sting with tears.
“I mean just now, when they wheeled him into the ambulance?”
McGuire shook his head.
“Son of a bitch was at McDonald’s, they’d put his face on a grill, fry it up into a Big Mac.”
“Good.” Billie’s voice was full of venom. “Joe shoulda killed him’s what he shoulda done.”
“You wanna tell us how they got into your room, the two of ’em?” the cop with the notebook asked.
“Door’s always unlocked,” McGuire said. “Anybody can come and go as they please.” He drained the coffee, handed the cup to Billie. “How’s MaryLou?”
“Probably be back in there showing her ass to the world, couple a weeks,” the other cop said. “You don’t mind coming in, signing a statement when it’s typed up?”
“Sure.” McGuire struggled to his feet, steadying himself against Billie who rose with him. “Let me know when.”
“Where do we reach you? Be a bunch of ID people in your room for a while.”
“At my place,” Billie said before McGuire could respond. “He’ll be staying with me for a couple a days over on Chandler Street.” She recited an address and a telephone number while McGuire watched her, a small smile on his face.
The cops told everybody to break it up, damn it, the show was over. Standing in the doorway, Dewey announced the Flamingo was closed for the night and everybody should do what the police officers—dragging every syllable out with contempt—do what the pol-ice off-i-cers said to do.
Billie edged past Dewey to run inside for her purse and call a cab. The cop who had brought the coffee moved sideways toward McGuire. Keeping his eyes on the crowd as it parted to make way for the ambulance, he said, “You gave that pervert one hell of a ride.” Instinctively he patted McGuire on the back and strolled down the alley toward the back of the club.
Across the street on the fringe of the crowd, Grizzly watched the gesture impassively, the tip of a freshly lit Camel glowing precariously close to his wild untrimmed mustache. Standing next to him, the Gypsy’s face mirrored hate as her eyes flew back and forth between the police officers. “Cops are shit,” she muttered. “All of ’em, can’t trust a one of ’em.”
But a few feet away Django stood smiling among the grim faces of the onlookers, happy for McGuire and his new hero status, repeating over and over, “Yes yes yes yes Jolt, you the one, you the man!”