The Last Dance (6 page)

There had been six other men in that poker game. Keating claimed that the game had started at eight o'clock and ended at around a quarter past midnight. The six other men confirmed that he had been there during the times he'd stated. His wife, as was to be expected, confirmed that he'd come home at around one
A.M.
, and had not left the apartment again that night.

It appeared to the detectives that their two prime suspects had airtight alibis and that whoever had dropped Rohypnol into Andrew Hale's drink and draped him over a closet hook was still out there boogying someplace.

At Hale's funeral on Sunday morning, they listened to a minister who had never met the man telling his sole remaining relatives what a fine and upstanding human being he'd been. Cynthia Keating and her husband Robert listened dry-eyed. It was still raining when the first shovelful of earth was dumped onto Hale's simple wooden casket.

It was as if he had never existed.

From home that Sunday night, Carella called Danny Gimp.

“Danny?” he said. “It's Steve.”

“Hey, Steve,” Danny said. “Whatta ya hear?”

This was a joke. Danny Gimp was an informer.
He
—and not
Carella—was the one who heard things and passed them on. For money. The men didn't exchange any niceties. Carella got right down to business.

“Old guy named Andrew Hale …”

“
How
old?” Danny asked.

“Sixty-eight.”

“Ancient,” Danny said.

“Got himself aced Thursday night.”

“Where?”

“Apartment off Currey Yard.”

“What time?”

“ME puts it around midnight. But you know how accurate PMI's are.”

“How'd he catch it?”

“Hanged. But first he was doped with a drug called Rohypnol. Ever hear of it?”

“Sure.”

“You have?”

“Sure,” Danny said.

“Anyway,” Carella said, “the only two people who had any reason to want him dead have alibis a mile long. We're wondering if maybe they knew somebody handy with a noose.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He's a lawyer …”

“The dead man?”

“No. One of the suspects.”

“A criminal lawyer?”

“No. But he
knows
criminal lawyers.”

“That doesn't mean he knows hit men.”

“It means there could've been access.”

“Okay.”

“Ask around, Danny. There's twenty-five grand in insurance money involved here.”

“That ain't a lot.”

“I know. But maybe it's enough.”

“Well, let me go on the earie, see what's what.”

“Get back to me, okay?”

“If I hear anything.”

“Even if you don't.”

“Okay,” Danny said, and hung up.

He did not get back to Carella until the following Sunday night, the seventh of November. By that time, the case was stone-cold dead.

Danny came limping into the place he himself had chosen for the meet, a pizzeria on Culver and Sixth. The collar of his threadbare coat was pulled high against the wind and the rain. A long, college-boy, striped muffler was wrapped around his neck, and he was wearing woolen gloves. He peered around the place as if he were a spy coming in with nuclear secrets. Carella signaled to him. A scowl crossed Danny's face.

“You shouldn't do that,” he said, sliding into the booth. “Bad enough I'm meeting you in a public place.”

Carella was willing to forgive Danny his occasional irritability. He had never forgotten that Danny had come to the hospital when he'd got shot for the first time in his professional life. It had not been an easy thing for Danny to do; police informers do not last long on the job once it is known they are police informers. Danny's eyes were darting all over the place now, checking the perimeter. He himself had chosen the venue, but he seemed disturbed by it now, perhaps because it was unexpectedly crowded at nine
A.M.
on a Monday morning. Who the hell expected people eating
pizza
for breakfast? But he couldn't go to the station house, and he didn't want Carella to come to his shitty little room over on the South Side because to tell the truth, it embarrassed him. Danny had known better times.

He was thinner than Carella had ever seen him, his eyes rheumy, his nose runny. He kept taking paper napkins from the holder on
the table, blowing his nose, crumpling the napkins and stuffing them into the pockets of his coat, which he had not yet removed. He did not look healthy. But more than that, he looked unkempt, odd for a man who'd always prided himself on what he considered sartorial elegance. Danny needed a shave. Soiled shirt cuffs showed at the edges of his ragged coat sleeves. His face was dotted with blackheads, his fingernails edged with grime. Sensing Carella's scrutiny, he said in seeming explanation, “The leg's been bothering me.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, it still bothers me. From when I got shot that time.”

“Uh-huh.”

Actually, Danny had never been shot in his life. He limped because he'd had polio as a child. But pretending he'd been wounded in a big gang shoot-out gave him a certain street cred he considered essential to the gathering of incidental information. Carella was willing to forgive him the lie.

“You want some pizza?” he asked.

“Coffee might be better,” Danny said, and started to rise.

“Sit,” Carella said, “I'll get it. You want anything with it?”

“The pastry looks good,” Danny said. “Bring me one of them chocolate things, okay?”

Carella went up to the counter and came back some five minutes later with two chocolate eclairs and two cups of coffee. Danny was blowing on his hands, trying to warm them. A constant flow of traffic through the entrance doors and past the counter kept bringing in the cold from outside. He picked up his coffee cup, warmed his hands on that for a while. Carella bit into his chocolate eclair. Danny bit into his. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, “that is delicious,” and took another bite. “Oh, Jesus,” he said again.

“So what've you got?” Carella asked.

$25,000 was a big-enough prize in a city where you could buy anyone's dead ass for a subway token. If Robert Keating and his
wife Cynthia had been otherwise engaged while her father was being hoisted and hanged, the possibility existed that they'd hired someone to do the job for them. In this city, you could get anything done to anybody for a price. You want somebody's eyeglasses smashed? You want his fingernails pulled out? His legs broken? You want him more seriously injured? You want him hurt so he's an invalid the rest of his life? You want him skinned, you want him burned, you want him—don't even mention it in a whisper—
killed?
It can be done. Let me talk to someone. It can be done.

“I've got quite a lot, actually,” Danny said, seemingly more involved in his eclair than in doing business.

“Oh really?” Carella said.

On the phone last night, Danny had said only that he'd come up with something interesting. This morning, it seemed to be more than that. But perhaps this was just the prelude to negotiation.

Actually, Danny knew that what he had was very good stuff. So good, in fact, that it might be worth more money than Carella was used to paying. He hated negotiating with someone he considered an old friend, though he was never quite sure Carella shared the sentiment. At the same time, he didn't want to pass on information that could conceivably lead to a bust in a murder case, and then have Carella toss fifty bucks or so across the table. This was too good for that kind of chump change.

“I know who did it,” he said, flat out.

Carella looked surprised.

“Yeah, I got lucky,” Danny said, and grinned. His teeth looked bad, too. He was clearly not taking good care of himself.

“So let me hear it,” Carella said.

“I think this is worth at least what the killer got,” Danny said, lowering his voice.

“And how much is that?”

“Five grand,” Danny said.

“You're joking, right?”

“You think so?” Danny said.

Carella did not think so.

“I'd have to clear that kind of money with the lieutenant,” he said.

“Sure, clear it. But I don't think this guy's gonna hang around very long.”

“What can I tell him?”

“Who?”

“My lieutenant.”

Five thousand was a lot of money to hand over to an informer. The squadroom slush fund sometimes rose higher than that, depending on what contributions went into it in any given month. Nobody asked questions about a few bucks that disappeared during drug busts hither and yon, provided the money went into what was euphemistically called “the War Chest.” But a big drug intercept on the docks downtown had slowed traffic in the precinct these past two months, and Carella wondered now if there was that much contingency cash lying around. He further wondered if the lieutenant would turn over that kind of money to a stoolie. Danny's information would have to be pure gold to justify such an outlay.

“Tell him I know who did it and I know where he is,” he said. “If that ain't worth five grand, I'm in the wrong business.”

“How'd you get this?” Carella asked.

“Fellow I know.”

“How'd
he
get it?”

“Straight from the horse's mouth.”

“Give me something I can run with.”

“Sure,” Danny said. “Your man was in a poker game.”

“You talking about Robert Keating?” Carella said, surprised.

“No. Who's Robert Keating?”

“Then who do you mean?”

“The guy you're looking for,” Danny said. “He was in a poker game this past Saturday night.”

“Okay.”

“Who's Robert Keating?” Danny asked again.

“Nobody,” Carella said. “What about this game?”

“Your man was betting big.”

“How big?”

“Thousand-dollar pots. Came in with a five-grand stake, worked it up to twenty before the night was through. Big winner.”

“Is he a gambler?”

“No, he's a hit man who just
likes
to gamble.”

“He from this city?”

“Houston, Texas. And heading back there.”

“When?”

“Sometime this Wednesday. You want him, you better move fast. Funny about Houston, ain't it?”

Carella did not think there was anything funny about Houston.

“It must drive foreigners crazy,” Danny said. “The way words are spelled the same, but pronounced different. In English, I mean.”

“How does this
guy
spell his name?” Carella asked, fishing.

“Ho ho,” Danny said. “There's a street in New York, you know, it's spelled exactly the same as the city in Texas, but it's pronounced
House
-ton Street. Instead, we say
Youse
-ton, Texas, after
Sam
Youse-ton, is the way he pronounced his name. Which is peculiar, don't you think?”

“How does this hit man pronounce his name?”

“Ho, ho,
ho,”
Danny said, and shook his finger.

“Who hired him?” Carella said. “Can you tell me that?”

“I don't know who hired him.”

“Why was the old man killed?”

“Somebody wanted what he had and he wouldn't turn it over. So they took him out of the picture.”

“They?”

“Whoever.”

“More than one person?”

“I don't know that for sure.”

“You said ‘they.'”

“Just an expression. All I know is the only way to get what they wanted was to have him dusted.”

“The old man didn't have a pot to piss in, Danny.”

“I'm telling you what I heard.”

“From who?”

“My friend. Who got it straight from the hitter.”

“He told your friend he
killed
somebody?”

“Of course not.”

“I didn't think so.”

“But he told him enough.”

“Like what?”

“Drunk talk. Suppose this, suppose that.”

“Suppose
what
, Danny?”

“Okay,
suppose
there's this old fart got something somebody else wants real bad and he won't part with it? And
suppose
this something is worth a lotta money? And
suppose
…”

“This is our man talking?”

“This is him.
Suppose
somebody's willing to pay a person five large to get rid of the old man and make it look like an accident? And
suppose
…”

“Did he use that word? Accident?”

“Yeah.”

“And the price was five grand?”

“The same five he brought into the poker game.”

“When did he tell your friend all this?”

“Saturday night. After the game. They went back to his hotel room, had a few drinks, smoked a few joints.”

“Who supplied them?”

“The drinks?”

“The drinks, the pot.”

“The hitter. It was his party. I gotta tell you something, Steve. When a guy makes a big score, and then he quadruples it in a card
game, he wants to
talk
about it, you dig? He's
proud
of it. That's the way these guys' minds work. They want to tell you how great they are. My friend lost his shirt in that game Saturday night. Well, winners like to shit all over losers. So your hitter took pity on my friend, asked him to share a bottle and a couple of joints with him so he could tell him how fuckin terrific he is, gettin five grand to dust an old fart.”

“But he didn't tell him that.”

“The five grand, yes. The actual dusting, no.”

“Then you've got nothing to sell.”

“Oh, I've got plenty to sell. Remember what you told me on the phone? You asked did I hear anything on this old man got doped with R2 before somebody hung him in the closet. That ain't the kind of detail a person forgets, Steve. Well, before my friend left the hotel room—I think they had sex, by the way. My friend and the hitter. He's gay, my friend. Anyway, the hitter handed him a little present. A gift for the loser, you know? A consolation prize. Said it'd help his sex life. Grinning, right? It'll help your sex life, Harpo, give it a try. That's my friend's name, Harpo. So Harpo figured the guy was laying a Viagra cap on him. But instead, it was this.” Danny reached into his coat pocket. He opened his hand. A blister-pack strip of white tablets was on the palm, the word
Roche
echoing over and over again across its face. “Roach,” Danny said. “Same as your hangman used.”