The Last Dance (7 page)

“Who gave you that?”

“Harpo.”

“Harpo what?”

“Marx,” Danny said, and grinned like a barracuda.

“Let me get this straight.”

“Sure.”

“Poker game Saturday night …”

“Right. On Lewiston Avenue.”

“Guy who killed Andrew Hale comes into the game with five
grand, leaves it with twenty. Invites your friend Harpo up for a drink, some pot, a little sex, starts boasting about the hit, lays a strip of roach on him before they part company.”

“You've got it.”

“And you say the hitter's leaving town the day after tomorrow?”

“From what I understand.”

“This isn't any high-pressured bullshit, is it, Danny?”

“Me? High-pressured?”

“I mean, he really is going back to Houston this Wednesday?”

“Is what Harpo told me.”

“And he also told you the guy's name …”

“He did.”

“… and where he's staying.”

“That's right.”

“Out of the goodness of his heart.”

“He's a friend. Also, I'll probably pass a little something on to him if your lieutenant comes through.”

“I'll have to get back to you on this,” Carella said.

“Sure, take your time,” Danny said. “You got till Wednesday.”

“I'll let you know,” Carella said, and started to move out of the booth, suddenly remembering how cold it was outside on this eighth day of November. You got to be forty, and suddenly it was cold out there. He was sliding across the leatherette seat, swinging his legs out, starting to rise, Danny doing the same thing on the other side of the table, when the first shot pierced the din of the abnormally crowded room, silencing it in an instant. Even before the second shot sounded, people were diving under tables. It took a moment for Carella to spot the two gunmen advancing swiftly toward the booth, one black, one white, equal opportunity employment. It took another moment for him to realize Danny Gimp was their target.

His coat was already unbuttoned, he reached across his waist for a cross-body draw, the nine-millimeter Glock snapping out of its holster with a spring-assisted click. There were more shots. Someone
screamed. Danny was scrambling across the floor on his hands and knees, trailing blood. A man running for the entrance doors knocked over one of the serving counters, and pizza toppings spilled all over the floor, tomato sauce running into anchovies and mushrooms and grated cheese and slippery slices of pepperoni. Carella upended a table, and ducked behind it. There was more screaming, two more shots very close by, footsteps pounding. He raised his head in time to see the gunmen running toward the front of the place, leaped to his feet, began chasing after them. There was still too much background for him to risk firing. He followed them out into the street, thought he had a clear shot, but they turned the corner in that instant and were gone.

Shit, he thought.

The last two shots Carella heard had been fired at close range into Danny's head. The shot near his cheek was fired with the muzzle of the gun almost touching the skin; there was a cluster of soot on the flesh but hardly any gunpowder around the wound itself. The shot closer to Danny's chin was fired from a few inches away; gunpowder particles were diffused over a two-inch diameter and the wound was encircled by a small area of soot. Danny was already dead when Carella knelt beside him.

A patrolman pounded into the pizzeria with his gun drawn, scaring the patrons even further, yelling “Stand back, everybody keep back,” like an extra in an action-adventure movie. Tables and chairs had been overturned in the mad rush that virtually cleared the place of customers. But many of the patrons still lingered, either curious to see what a bleeding body looked like close up, or else hoping to wave to the television cameras if and when they got here. There was nothing jackasses liked better than to grin and wave at the camera while tragedy was unfolding in the foreground.

“I'm on the job,” Carella told the patrolman. “Get an ambulance here.”

A second patrolman entered the place now, his gun also drawn,
his eyes wide, his face pale. He had never seen a dead body before except for that time in a funeral home when his uncle Pete died of sclerosis of the liver. The first patrolman, similarly inexperienced, was already on his mobile phone, telling Sergeant Murchison at the Eight-Seven that there'd been a shoot-out in the pizzeria on Culver and Sixth, Guido's, the place was called. “There's one person down, better send a meat wagon,” he actually called it, causing Murchison to wince.

The television cameras arrived some five minutes before either the ambulance or a second car from adjoining Charlie Sector angled into the curb. A woman wearing a fake fur that
looked
fake told the roving reporter that all at once these two big guys came in and started shooting at the man lying on the floor over there, at which point the camera operator panned over to where Danny was lying in an ocean of slippery pizza toppings, blood and tomato sauce mingling to create an op-art camera op. The second patrolman told everybody to keep back; he was wondering if he should put up some of those yellow
CRIME SCENE
tapes he had in the trunk of the patrol car. Two teenagers wearing woolen watch caps, ski parkas, and baggy pants tried to position themselves behind the victim so they could grin and wave at the camera, but they were too late. The camera operator had already turned to the entrance door, where a pair of detectives from the Eight-Seven were walking in looking very official and busy, shields pinned to their overcoats, faces raw from the biting cold outside. Behind them, an ambulance was pulling in, which made for another good shot, the detectives with long strides and flapping overcoats, the flashing red lights on the ambulance, this was the camera operator's lucky day.

Arthur Brown, one of the responding detectives, would later tell everyone in the squadroom that even before Carella informed him, he knew the guy laying on the floor there was dead. The detective with Brown was Bert Kling. The minute he spotted Carella, he went over to him and asked, “What happened?”

“Two hitters nailed Danny Gimp,” Carella said, and got to his
feet, his coat sleeve stained with blood from Danny's wounds, the knees of his trousers soiled from all the pizza shit on the floor.

They all stood around while the stretchers came in.

The paramedics realized at once that there wasn't any urgency about getting Danny aboard.

SINCE THERE
were two homicides on the table this Tuesday morning—an unusual circumstance, even for the Eight-Seven—Lieutenant Byrnes told the detectives assembled in his office that he'd be skipping over all the usual shit and getting directly to the murders, if nobody had any objections. Andy Parker didn't think the murder of a two-bit stool pigeon should take priority over a drug bust he'd been trying to set up for the past two weeks, but he knew better than to challenge the lieutenant when he was wearing what Parker referred to privately as his “Irish Look.”

Hal Willis wasn't too tickled to be passed over, either. He'd caught a burglary yesterday where the perp had left chocolate-covered donuts on his victim's pillow. This looked a lot like what the Cookie Boy used to do, but he'd jumped bail in August and was now only God knew where. So this guy was obviously a copycat, which similarity might have made for a little early morning amusement if the lieutenant hadn't pulled the chain. Like teenagers invited to a party and then requested not to dance, please, the two detectives slouched sourly against the wall, arms folded across
their chests in unmistakable body language. They didn't even sniff at the bagels and coffee on the lieutenant's desk, a treat—or more accurately a bribe to encourage punctuality—paid for by the squadroom slush fund every Tuesday.

This was eight o'clock in the morning. A harsh, bright sunlight streamed through Byrnes's corner windows. All told, and including the lieutenant, there were eight detectives in the office. Artie Brown and Bert Kling had responded to the pizzeria shoot-out and were looking for anything they could get on the two shooters. Carella and Meyer wanted to explore the Hale case. The two detectives sulking against the wall didn't care to offer their thoughts on anything. They'd been shut out, and they were miffed, although Byrnes seemed blithely unaware of their annoyance. Cotton Hawes was neutral. His plate was clean at the moment. In fact, he'd been in court testifying all last week. Sitting in a leather easy chair opposite the lieutenant's desk, feeling curiously uninvolved, like a cop visiting from another city, he listened as the lieutenant summarized the two homicide cases, and then asked, “You think they're linked?”

“Maybe,” Carella said.

“Meyer?” Byrnes asked.

“Only if they were trying to shut Danny up.”

“You sure they weren't after Steve?”

“No, it was Danny,” Kling said.

“Neither of them even fired a shot at me.”

“Ten, twelve people saw them go straight for Danny,” Brown said.

“They'd seen a lot of movies.”

“Kept describing it as a gangland execution.”

“In broad daylight?” Hawes asked, and shook his head skeptically. He was sitting in sunlight. It caught his red hair, setting it on fire. The single white streak over his left temple looked like a patch of melting snow.

“Nobody says your goons are brain surgeons.”

“Black and white, huh?”

“And red all over.”

“Could've been an old beef,” Hawes suggested. “Finally caught up with him.”

“Be a coincidence, the day he's meeting with Steve. But I buy coincidence,” Byrnes said. “I've been a cop long enough.”

“Coulda been they wanted him before he told Steve whatever it was he had to tell him,” Brown said. He was straddling a wooden chair near the bookcases, a huge man with skin the color of a giant grizzly's coat. His shirt collar was open, and he was wearing over it a green sweater. His arms were resting on the chair's top rail.

“
Did
he tell you anything?” Kling asked. “Before they got him?”

“Not really. He wanted to get paid first.”

“Gee, there's a surprise.”

“How much was he looking for?” Hawes asked.

“Five grand.”

Hawes whistled.

“What'd he promise?” Willis asked, giving in at last to his curiosity. He was the shortest man on the squad, wiry and intense, dark eyes reflecting the day's cold light. Parker turned to him with a sharp look, as if his best friend in the entire world had suddenly moved to Anniston, Alabama, to wallow in pig shit.

“He said he knew the name and address of the guy who did Hale,” Carella said.

“Where'd he get
that?”
Willis asked, totally involved now. Parker stepped a little bit away from him.

“Pal of his was in a poker game with the hitter.”

“Let me get this straight,” Hawes said. “Danny was in a poker game with the hitter?”

“No, no,” Meyer said. “A
friend
of Danny's was in the game.”

“With the guy who hung Hale from the bathroom door?”

“Hanged him, yeah.”

“Yeah, him?”

“The very.”

“What is this, a movie?” Willis asked.

“I wish,” Carella said.

“I'da paid him on the spot,” Parker said suddenly, and then realized with a start that he'd broken his own sullen silence. Everyone turned to him, surprised by the vehemence in his voice, surprised, too, that he'd bothered to shave this morning. “That kind of information,” he said, plunging ahead, “I'da asked him to wait while I went to rob a bank.”

“I should've,” Carella said.

“Who's this pal of his?” Kling asked. He was wearing this morning a brown leather jacket that looked like it had come from Oklahoma or Wyoming, but which he'd bought off a pushcart at a street fair this summer. Blond and hazel-eyed, with a complexion and lashes most women would kill for, he projected a country bumpkin air that worked well in Good Cop/Bad Cop scenarios. He was particularly well-paired with Brown, whose perpetual scowl could sometimes be intimidating. “Did Danny give you a clue?”

“Somebody named Harpo.”

“It is a movie,” Willis said.

“Harpo what?”

“Didn't say.”

“He's gay,” Meyer offered.

“White, black?”

“Didn't say.”

“Where'd the card game take place?”

“Lewiston Av.”

“The Eight-Eight.”

“Yeah.”

“Probably black,” Parker said. “The Eight-Eight.”

Brown looked at him.

“What?” Parker said. “Did I say something bothered you?”

“I don't know
what
you said.”

“I said a card game in the Eight-Eight, you automatically figure black players,” Parker said, and shrugged. “Anyway, fuck you, you're so sensitive.”

“What'd I do,
look
at you?” Brown asked.

“You looked at me cockeyed.”

“Break it up, okay?” Byrnes said.

“Just don't be so fuckin sensitive,” Parker said. “Everybody in the world ain't out to shoot you a hundred and twelve times.”

“Hey!” Byrnes said. “Did you hear me, or what?”

“I heard you. He's too fuckin sensitive.”

“One more time, Andy,” Brown said.

“Hey!”
Byrnes shouted.

“All I'm sayin,” Parker said, “is if this was a black card game, then Danny's friend Harpo,
and
the guy who hanged Hale, could
both
be black, is all I'm sayin.”

“Point taken,” Brown said.

“Boy,” Parker said, and rolled his eyes.

“We finished here?” Byrnes asked.

“If we're finished,” Parker said, “I'd like to talk about settin up a bust on a …”