The Violet Hour (22 page)

Authors: Richard Montanari

BOOK: The Violet Hour

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What did he know? He knew this: People were being shot full of dope and having parts of their bodies removed. Parts they were still young enough to need. Things like lips, skin, eyes.

So far, Nicky thought, he had been lucky to get out of this with his life. Four other people hadn’t, and the guilt of not having brought this straight to the police was weighing on him. There was some crazy shit going on here; it had something to do with poetry and dope and dead people, and that was about all he needed to know to get the fuck out of the way. Who was he kidding? He would talk Erique Mars into a story on something else. Christmas in Collinwood. Christmas with the Cleveland Indians. Something that didn’t involve scalpels and heroin, if you don’t mind. If not, then he’d have to get a job.

Sorry, Grampa.

Gil’s visit had left him without any food, so over soup at Sol’s he decided to do the wise thing. The moment he got back to his apartment he would call Kral and give him everything he had.

‘Fuck you, asshole.’

The fist attached to that greeting seemed to hurtle out of the darkness that led to the basement, shrieking through space, growing in size and velocity, catching Nicky high on his left cheek, slamming him back into the door. Luckily, it was a glancing blow because the fist was enormous and wrapped in some sort of hard leather.

But still Nicky visited an entire galaxy of yellow and orange stars; his legs felt
al dente.

‘You think I’m fuckin’ stupid?’ the owner of the fist barked into his face as he pushed Nicky up the stairs. ‘Huh? You think you can play me night after fuckin’ night? I been lenient with you, asshole. Lee-nee-yent. Now I’m going to kick your fuckin’ ass.’

This time it was, of course, Frank Corso, but Nicky’s vision was so blurred at the moment that it could’ve been anyone. Anyone the size and shape of Pittsburgh.

With incredible ease, Frank shoved Nicky up the remaining six steps to his door.

They stood in Nicky’s cramped living room, five feet apart, and Nicky gave him all the money he had. Frank pulled his own huge roll of bills kept together in a rubber band, put it under his left armpit, and began to count Nicky’s money. He finished, looked Nicky in the eye. ‘It’s only three hundred.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Nicky said, his face throbbing, swelling. ‘That’s my payment.’

‘What did I tell you last week? I want the four large.’ He retrieved the roll from under his arm, unbanded it, added Nicky’s money. ‘Man, I thought you was hipper than that.’ He raised the gun – a .38 police special – and pointed it at Nicky. ‘Where’s the rest?’

‘What, are you
kidding
me?’

‘No,’ Frank said. ‘Drop down.’

Nicky pretended to be incredulous. ‘You were serious about that?’

‘Like ball cancer. Gimme my fuckin’ money.’

Nicky’s mind was reeling. He knew he had something like ten dollars available to him, and half of that was probably in dimes and quarters. He doubted if Frank Corso would take a check. It would only bounce and they’d have to do this all over again.

So Nicky, standing near the doorway to his bedroom, figured he had two options. One, to dive into his bedroom, slam the door, turn the key, and buy himself just enough time to jump out the window and fall thirty feet. Or try to bluff.

Okay, one option.

‘I gotta go to the ATM then. I can get maybe two thousand,’ Nicky said, hoping Frank Corso was too stupid to know that you can’t withdraw that much from an ATM machine.

Thankfully, he was.

‘Show me the card,’ Frank said, keeping the gun on him. ‘Slow.’

Nicky reached into his back pocket slowly, retrieved his wallet, keeping his eye on the barrel of the gun the whole time. Then, suddenly, a shadow appeared on the wall behind Frank, a steadily creeping shadow that grew in size for a moment, then narrowed into a human form.

And somehow, the Birdman was standing right behind Frank.

At first Nicky feared the worst. A flashback. Some kind of drug he had ingested once had just decided to kick in and he was hallucinating things. Cops showing up in the nick of time to save his life. Was this a dad thing? he wondered.

But the Birdman was real.

‘Don’t fucking move,’ Kral said coolly, putting the barrel of his nine-millimeter pistol to the back of Frank Corso’s head. He cocked his weapon and continued: ‘Now, I’m assuming you got through the third grade, but I’ll go slow anyway, just in case. We’re gonna count to three now. Okay?’

Nobody said a word. Nicky stole a glance at Frank Corso’s face. His eyes were darting from side to side, a rivulet of sweat was working its way down his forehead, over the bridge of his nose. But still he kept his revolver pointed at Nicky.

‘Nicky, you count with me, okay? I’m going to shoot him in the head on three.’

‘What?’

‘One . . .’

‘Un,’ Nicky said, coming in halfway through the word. The gun in Corso’s hand began to shake.

‘Two . . .’ Kral and Nicky said in perfect unison, drawing a breath afterward. On that upbeat of air, Nicky knew he was going to live through this. He saw the break in Frank Corso’s resolve. He also saw Frank mouth the words
you are fucking dead, asshole
as he slowly lowered the gun to his side and let it drop to the floor.

Nicky figured that Kral would now reach behind his back, grab a pair of cuffs, and slip them on Corso. What Nicky didn’t expect was what actually happened. The moment that Frank Corso’s gun hit the carpet, Kral leaned to his left, putting all of his weight on his left foot, spun in place, and slammed his right foot into Frank Corso’s liver.
Hard
. Frank Corso folded to the floor like an accordion pleat.

The banded roll of bills, which Corso still had in his left hand when the impact occurred, went flying across the room and rolled under the couch. Incredibly, Kral didn’t see it, and Frank Corso was far too busy puking to care. Nicky backed to the couch slowly, sat down, not having to feign relief at all. Kral spoke into his two-way radio, and within a few minutes two uniformed officers came up the stairs and took the folded-up version of Frank Corso into custody. While everyone’s back was turned, Nicky reached under the couch, grabbed the roll, and shoved it into his pocket.

He sat there, his pulse racing, waiting, the roll of bills against his leg like a big green erection.

Five minutes later, he got the shock of his life.

‘You’ve got two choices, Nicky,’ Kral said. ‘Downtown or here. But I will tell you that we have a policy at the Homicide Unit. Your first trip is always an overnighter.’

‘You gonna tell me what this is all about first?’ he asked, although he knew his bargaining power was nil.

‘Yeah, I’ll tell you,’ Kral said, as he put the handcuffs on Nicky. ‘Ronnie Choi is dead.’

Nicky, of course, told them everything. Rolled like a fat guy down Granger Road hill. This had gotten so out of control, so fast, that it had begun to teach him one of those indelible lessons that you carry with you the rest of your life. Never lie to a cop. Stay away from the crazy shit. He explained about Frank Corso and the loan, but not about the roll. It appeared that Kral believed him, and that there was nothing prosecutable about Nicky’s end of the matter. So Kral moved on.

‘The girl at the drug house identified you, Nicky. We showed her your picture and she tossed.’

Nicky recalled the pretty young hostess at Elegant Linda’s. The one with the small butterfly tattoo by her right eye. ‘Okay . . .’

‘Said you came in with a tranny. A hooker.’

‘She’s not a hooker.’

‘And you asked for Ronnie Choi.’

Nicky figured he’d save the argument regarding Beverly Ahn’s virtue for another time. ‘That’s right.’

‘And you just saw Ronnie Choi that one time. At the drug house.’

‘Yes.’

‘With this Beverly Ahn.’

‘Yes. But there’s no way she’s involved in any of this,’ Nicky said. ‘I mean . . . there’s just no way.’

‘You made her involved, Nicky. You dropped her right in the middle of it, didn’t you?’

‘She’s a transvestite. A show girl. The only things she’s interested in are makeup, magazines, and finding big shoes. She’s not a killer.’

‘She a user?’

Nicky knew he would have to lie again to stop this particular line of questioning. ‘Well, you know what kind of lifestyle she leads. I’m sure she smokes. Little toot now and then. But I’m sure she doesn’t—’

‘What exactly did she want to talk to Ronnie Choi about that day?’ Kral asked.

‘I told you. Beverly was trying to get an interview with him. Talk him into it for me. I figured if he was selling the killer smack, I would ask him how he felt about it. But I wouldn’t have even known about him if it wasn’t for you guys. Ask Willie T. He’s the one who told me where Rat Boy was going to be that morning. Talk to him.’

‘I have,’ Kral said.

‘And what did he say?’ Nicky asked.

‘He said what you said.’

‘Well, there you go. As to all this other shit, I had no idea. The doctor in Erie, this Coldicott guy.’

The cuffs were off, but they were sitting on Nicky’s coffee table. Alongside Nicky’s collection of memory sticks. For some reason, the stick with the poem and the e-mail was nowhere in sight.

It looked as if he might not be making that trip downtown after all, but the Birdman’s face, now that Nicky had gotten to look at it sans disguise for much longer than he liked, was nothing if not inscrutable. It still could go either way. But still Nicky pushed. ‘And let me ask you something now,’ he said.

‘What is it?’

‘Do I have a shot at an exclusive here? I mean, there are three murders here that seem to be related, right? Four, with the girl. I’ve got the rest of the names. What do you say?’

‘We had most of this, Nicky.’

Nicky was stunned for a moment. ‘What?’

‘The FBI is already looking into the connection between the Crane murder in Erie and the death of John Angelino. The jaguar and marmoset stamps – that is a marmoset, by the way, not a monkey – are being run through VICAP now. What we didn’t have was the poem and the list. And for that the people of the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania are grateful to you.’

‘It’s a marmoset?’

‘Yes.’

‘Got any idea what it means?’ Nicky asked.

‘Not yet,’ Kral said, rising to his feet. ‘But the bad news for us is that the feds are here already and they’re going to take this away from us. Needless to say, we want this asshole bad.’

‘Then let me help,’ Nicky said, remembering his father’s great disdain for the attitude of the FBI agents he had worked with. He reached over to the end table and opened a drawer. He pulled out the half of the hundred-dollar bill, held it up. ‘Let me have the story, Detective Kral. Look at my face. I’ve earned it.’

Kral studied him. He didn’t take the half C note. ‘We’ll see.’

Yes
, Nicky thought. He put the bill in his pocket.

‘Now,’ Kral continued, ‘do you have that memory stick with the names here?’

‘Yeah. It must be in my car, though.’ Before he stood up, he looked to Kral for permission. Some things just rub off when you’re a policeman’s kid. Kral nodded and Nicky walked into his bedroom, retrieved his keys, ran down the steps and out the back door. As he was going through the papers on the passenger seat he noticed that Frank Corso’s Firebird was still parked out front. Then he remembered the roll. He took it out of his pocket and gave it a quick count.

It looked like fifteen hundred dollars!

Hang on, Grampa. We’re going to Atlantic City.

He put it in an empty McDonald’s bag, crumpled it, stuffed it under the seat. Except for the swelling on the left side of his face, and the fact that he had just narrowly avoided being booked for first-degree murder, it was turning out to be a fairly decent day.

But the memory stick was nowhere to be found.

He generally kept his memory sticks in a box in the glove compartment when he did any mobile computing, but the only things in there now were a dozen or so foil packets of ketchup and a hairbrush with a masking-taped handle.

Kral wrote down the name and address of a place called the Caprice Lounge.

‘You meet me here in an hour, Nicky. Bring the memory stick.’

‘No problem,’ Nicky answered, hoping he could put his hands on it. Where the hell had it gotten to? ‘I’ll be there.’

Kral held his gaze for a few moments before speaking. ‘Don’t fuck with me, Nicky. I’m giving you a pass here. I’m trusting you. You hear me?’

‘I hear you,’ Nicky said.

Kral gave Nicky a few more volts of attitude, then headed for the steps.

Twenty minutes later, when Gil returned to Nicky’s apartment, the two men tore the place apart. The memory stick was gone.