The Long Good Boy (23 page)

We went inside, the air so cold it seemed white. Chi Chi wiggled her fingers, such a girlish gesture, as if we were saying good-bye after a movie or a trip to the malt shoppe. I nodded and watched her head down the row of carcasses and disappear.

About a third of the freezer hooks were in use. I'd seen a box of heavy rubber gloves last time I'd been through, and I headed there first, taking a pair and slipping them on. I could feel a thick layer of steel mesh between the layers of rubber, something to prevent the loss of a finger when cutting the meat. They were ridiculously too big, but I pulled them as tight as I could and started at one end of the first row, reaching inside, feeling around for anything that I could remove, going from carcass to carcass until I'd given each and every pig an internal exam. Nothing.

I checked out everything else I could see, a pair of boots left against the wall, the gizmo that you wrapped the high-pressure hose around. I reached behind the grinding machine, into the backs of the drawers on the huge cutting tables, everywhere. Nothing.

If the cops were here undercover because of drugs, the third big business of the area, where the hell were they? Was I merely too early?

If Vinnie was using the carcasses of the pigs to transport drugs, might not the drugs come with the morning deliveries? But from where? Were they being shipped to New York to be sold on the street from Iowa? Because, for God's sake, that was where these pigs had lived and died. And where were they headed? And when? If they came in in the morning, when did they go out again? And where did Vinnie stash them in between? That's when I remembered that key again, the one I'd seen in the middle desk drawer. But if the key opened to the door to the drug stash, why would it be kept where anyone could find and use it?

Fine, I could risk Chi Chi and frisk the pigs now. But if the stuff hadn't come in yet, there was no way I could get in here and do what I'd just done when everyone was working. Could Vinnie? If the meat was coming in and most of it getting processed, ground and sliced and chopped, the same day, then going out again, how could Vinnie know which carcasses to check before the butchers began to cut them up?

But drugs made sense when nothing else did. Drugs would bring the cops in, undercover. Drugs were rife in the neighborhood, and transporting them this way might just work. If they'd been so easy to find, wouldn't Mulrooney have cracked the case in a day or two? He'd been here for two months.

Of course. He knew about the drugs. He probably knew how they got here. What took time was plotting out the whole route, where they started out, when they got hidden in the meat, who removed them from the meat, and where they went when they left here. And why did it have to be Vinnie? It could have been any one of the other butchers, looking for a stamp, a mark on the pork, taking those to process first.

Could be, could be. Standing in the refrigerator, the compressor as loud as a subway pulling into the station, I realized I'd have to get into the files again. Somehow I'd see a pattern, figure out where the drugs were headed. And then the more difficult part—who was rerouting them once they arrived? I took another pass around the refrigerated room. Nothing.

The compressor shut off, and I heard Chi Chi.

“No, honey, I can find my own way out.”

And there she was, mad as a cat in the bathtub.

“Move it,” she said, pointing toward the door.

“What?”

She pushed the front door open, pulled Clint out of her jacket and set him down, pulled the door closed behind us. But she didn't explain. Because that's when we saw her lying in the courtyard, facedown, her legs splayed at an odd angle, blood seeping out near her face, the lucky boa splattered red, lying next to her now, her skin bleached pale by a sliver of a moon.

29

What Are You Talking About? I Asked Him

“We've got to get out of here.” I grabbed Chi Chi's arm and tried to pull her toward the street, but she might have been cemented in place. She never budged. My hand still partway around her biceps, I was reminded of what it was sometimes easy to forget. Chi Chi was a man.

“We can't just leave her here.” One hand covered her mouth, the other held the leash. Both dogs stayed put, heads up, tasting the air. Then Clint began to wail.

“That could be you lying there. Don't you get it?”

Chi Chi turned slowly away from Jasmine and toward me. I knew what was coming before she said it. But she never did. She just shook her head, slowly took the hand that had covered her raspberry-colored lips, and pointed at me.

With Jasmine in a cat suit very much like mine and the boa I'd been wearing all week, her hair in ringlets, in this location, dark as a pimp's asshole and twice as foul, someone could have thought they were killing me, the interloper, the snoop, not realizing until after the fact, one quick slash to the neck, expertly delivered from behind, that the dead woman had rough, dark skin, that she was in fact not a woman at all.

I looked around, as if at any moment someone might pop out from behind Vinnie's car and rectify their mistake. But there was no one there. I don't know why I did it when I should have gotten out of there as fast as possible, but I bent down and picked up the boa. Then, yanking on Chi Chi's arm, I made for the street.

“I want you to go home,” I told her. “Now. Do you have a cell phone today?”

She nodded, turning back to look at the courtyard as I pulled her toward Washington Street, hoping the meat market would be coming to life soon, that there'd be trucks moving, deliveries arriving, butchers in their white coats and hard hats standing on the sidewalk, watching as sides of beef, hooks with thirty chickens hanging from them, trembling as if they were still alive, moved into the processing plants.

“Good. Then call LaDonna. She have her phone, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Call her. Meet her over on Hudson Street, and both of you go home. And I don't want either of you back here tomorrow night, okay? Take the night off.” I reached into my pocket for the money I'd collected earlier in the night, remembering I'd already given it all to LaDonna. “Don't come back here without calling me first,” I told her. “I must be getting close if someone's coming after me.”

“But Jasmine—”

“Nothing we can do for her now.”

“You're sure?”

“I'm sure.” I put my arms around her and hugged her against me. She bent and picked up Clint. That's when I saw that she was crying. “Go home. Get LaDonna and just go home.”

I watched as she tip-tapped across the street, rushing toward the curb when a huge truck came barreling down the street. It stopped without pulling over, blocking my view of Chi Chi. The driver honked. I could see the back of his head as he called out to Chi Chi, but she apparently never answered him, never stopped running.

That's when he turned to me.

“How much?” he asked. No beating around the bush in this neck of the woods.

“Fifty,” I told him, way too high for this time in the morning. I was hoping he'd go away and leave me alone.

That's when I realized what I'd done. I'd sent Chi Chi home. I looked left, down the canyon of the dark streets where the hookers worked. There was no one in sight. But Jasmine had just been killed. We'd been inside Keller's for only twenty minutes, maybe less. So whoever had done that, whoever had tried to kill me, could still be around.

I walked closer to the truck. “Good-looking guy like you,” I said, offering him the Kaminsky family grin, all teeth and charm, “how would twenty be?”

He frowned.

“Ten? Ten okay?”

This time he grinned and nodded, but when he leaned over to open the door—a real gentleman, just when you think there's not one left anywhere—he seemed to notice Dashiell for the first time.

“He curls up on the floor. Unless he snores, you'll never know he's there.”

He thought about it, then pushed the door open.

I tied the boa around my waist, sent Dashiell ahead of me, and climbed in after him. He put the truck into gear, but instead of driving over to Horatio Street, he pulled over to the curb on the next block and, leaving the engine on, parked, his hands coming off the wheel and going right to his lap.

“Whoa,” I said. “No small talk?”

“You gotta be kidding. I been on the road eighteen hours. This delivery is due in ten, fifteen minutes. You want I should spend that time talking?”

“Actually, I do,” I told him. I pulled out the camera.

“What the hell?”

“Sorry, fellow, you're busted.”

“What are you—”

“Police. Giuliani is cracking down on prostitution, haven't you heard? Since you're obviously such a decent person,” I said as his hands slipped back onto the wheel, “I'm going to do you a big favor. I'm going to make this a warning.” I snapped a picture. “Turn forward,” I told him. But he didn't. He glared at me, but I saw him take in Dashiell, too. Whatever he might have been thinking, Dashiell inspired him to think again.

“This is for the Busted Johns website,” I told him. “Have you seen it?”

“This is entrapment. For ten bucks, hey, no guy's going to say no.”

I shrugged. “Way it goes.”

“No way, sister. This'll never hold up in court. Besides, you said this would be a warning.”

“Right. I'll just hang on to this, in case I see you here again.”

“Of course you'll see me here again. It's my job to be here. And you got a lot of guts, little lady, I'll tell you that, working these streets at this hour of the night after one of your own just got it.” He tilted his head in the direction I'd recently come from, toward the spot where Jasmine lay dead in the courtyard, waiting for the first of the butchers to show up and find her there.

My heart was suddenly racing. Dashiell leaned tighter against my legs, keeping his eyes on the trucker. How would he know Mulrooney was a cop? “What are you talking about?” I asked him, hoping I hadn't totally lost my cool, thinking I must have.

“Don't play dumb with me, little girl. I wasn't born yesterday.” Then he began to laugh. “You don't know, do you? Too bad the department didn't fill you in. Maybe you ought to read the papers more carefully.” And then he laughed again. “What's this, your first day on the job, sister? Is that how you got this plum assignment?”

I opened the camera and pulled out the roll of film, pulling it open, then dropping it on the floor.

“Speak,” I told him.

“What do you think, I'm your dog? Gotta make my delivery. You're the cop. Surely you can find out for yourself. Just check the computers or whatever it is you people do.” He sighed and leaned his head back, tired from his long drive. I opened the door and got out first, calling Dashiell to jump down after me, the empty camera still in my hand. Then I stood there watching as the truck backed up, the warning sound almost deafening at this close range. As he backed around the corner, toward Keller's, I headed home, picturing him still laughing about what had happened, until he stepped out of the cab and saw Jasmine lying dead at his feet and the whole world pitched sideways, suddenly and without warning, the way it did when you weren't paying attention, and sometimes, even when you were.

30

I Felt Small and Cold and Stupid

I needed activity to help me deal with what had happened less than an hour earlier, the murder of someone dressed like me and heading for where I had gone snooping. I put up the kettle and began to chop raw food for Dashiell. How did anyone know I'd be going to Keller's tonight? Who was running off at the mouth this time? And Jasmine, had she been coming to warn me? Is that why she'd been there?

I stopped chopping, turned off the stove, and sat down hard on the couch, the door open, Dashiell outside. Alone in the living room, only the kitchen light on, I felt small and cold and stupid. How could I have let this happen?

The change of carting company followed by the death of the undercover cop on the job could have been a coincidence. Replacing the usual provisions with genetically altered meat, something some people thought meant the end of the world as we knew it, that could have been a coincidence, too. But Jasmine's death? No way was that unconnected to what I was doing. Why hadn't I seen it coming?

I walked back to the kitchen, pushed aside the stack of unopened mail I'd been dropping on the counter for days, and finished making Dash's dinner. Or given the time of day, was it breakfast? His world was upside down, too.

I went upstairs, checked my messages, and lay down on my bed. But all I could think of was Jasmine in the lucky boa, Jasmine with her long hair curled, like mine, apparently thinking I knew something she didn't. And the trucker, knowing Mulrooney was a cop. My mind jumped from one thing to another.

I had to get to the library and check old newspapers for an article on a drug bust in the Bronx, something Mulrooney was involved in before he came to the Gansevoort Market. There had to be something there, something the trucker saw and I missed. I closed my eyes again, thinking I'd sleep a little first. The library wouldn't be open for hours. Instead I began to think about Rosalinda, that if she was killed because she was there when Mulrooney bought it, that means that Vinnie was there, too. And the only way Vinnie could still be alive is if he had something to do with the shooter. If drugs were moving in and out of Keller's and Vinnie was in on that, had Mulrooney confronted him? Was Vinnie onto Mulrooney in some other way? And did he set Mulrooney up?

I still had the boa tied around my waist, Rosalinda's lucky boa. Some joke. Now all I could think of was saving it, getting the blood out, making it look like new. I got up and took it into the bathroom, filling the sink with cold water, adding Woolite and stirring the water with one hand. Then I dropped in the boa, watched a part of it sink, pushing the rest of it under the water to soak. I dropped the rest of what I was wearing onto the floor, got into the shower, and stood under the water as hot as I could stand it for what seemed like a very long time.