He drove back to St. James Place, left the Eldorado where he’d found it, key in the ignition-no hard feelings. His Datsun was in a lot up the same street. But first, back to the Satellite Cafe. The waitress behind the counter recognized him.
“How’s your boss?”
“He’s at the hospital.”
Vincent handed her the wad of bills, made her take it as she hesitated. She said, “Don’t tell me anything, okay? I don’t want to know.”
He used the pay phone to call Northfield and said to Dixie, “Ricky didn’t do it.”
“You sure?”
“Ninety-nine percent.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me,” Vincent said. “But it’s okay. You’re gonna get a chance to bring him up on attempted murder. I hope attempted. Day after tomorrow it looks like he’s gonna take a crack at me.”
Vincent walked back to the corner, tired, till he got to the stairway, started down to St. James Place and stopped halfway, wide awake, remembering the Eldorado as he had seen it a little more than an hour ago, the same high-angle view from the stairs, Ricky standing there getting his keys out…
But to open the trunk, not the door!
Because today was collection day, right, according to Dixie Davies, and Ricky the bagman was making pickups from the horse books, the card-game and numbers guys, from whoever owed them a cut or a shylock payment. Vincent popped the trunk lid and there it was, the bag, a blue canvas carry-on with straps and buckles and handy pockets… and wads and wads of currency in the main compartment, rolled up in red rubber bands.
The bartender at the Holmhurst said, “Well, how we doing? We still a winner?”
Vincent was holding a double scotch to take upstairs with him. He lifted the blue canvas bag from the barstool.
“You wouldn’t believe how much I got in here.”
“I probably wouldn’t,” the bartender said.
TEDDY’S MOM SAID TO BUDDY, cocking her head the same way Buddy had his green-and-orange parrot head cocked, “He don’t remember all I’ve done for him. What I went through at the hospital when he was born and I almost died of a hemorrhage, the blood gushing out a me like it would never stop.”
Teddy said, “Aw, Mom, Jesus.”
“He don’t remember the times I was up the night with him when he was sick.” Now she was talking to the bird in a pouty little Shirley Temple voice. “No, or he don’t remember all the meals I cooked for him.”
“I remember how Dad use to go out in the garage where he hid his bottles and drink,” Teddy said. “I remember him leaving and never coming back. ‘Ey, let’s me and you stroll down mem’ry lane and see what else we can remember of our happy home.”
“You love to hurt me,” his mom said. “Don’t you?”
All he wanted was to borrow the car. He’d already heard what it was like in Camden, New Jersey, during the Depression when his mom ate ketchup sandwiches and fried mush. She still couldn’t cook for shit. Put a pork roast in the oven and every twenty minutes throw a glass of water on it. He had better chow at Raiford. When it was something he didn’t like Monroe Ritchie would get him candy bars. For his sweetie’s sweet tooth, Monroe’d say. It was funny, he sort of missed Monroe. He worked up his nerve and asked him one time, “Monroe? Are you a homasexyul?” And Monroe wrinkled his eyebrows and said, “Nooo, man, you pussy. I touch you with my wan’ you all of a sodden a magic pussy.” Really? Oh well.
What Teddy did finally, he put on his Van Halen tape with the volume turned up and David Lee Roth set him free. He had George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” ready to go when his mom said, “Go on, take the car. I can’t listen to that no more.”
She wouldn’t give him any money though. He had about ten bucks left… Hey, and a twenty stuck down in his camera case! He’d forgot about it. His mom said, “Oh, you going out to take pictures in the rain?”
Teddy said, “It’s stopped, Mom. It’s gonna be a beautiful evening.” He believed it, just remembering he had that twenty-dollar bill. It meant he could get back to trailing the cop and not have to bother some old lady.
It was close to eight o’clock when the cop came out of the Holmhurst.
Teddy had gone in, taken a chance, and asked the desk clerk if Mr. Mora was in his room. The clerk checked a file and said to dial three-ten on the house phone over there. Teddy dialed it, heard the cop’s voice and hung up, got out of there, sat in his mom’s big yellow turd to wait. It really surprised him when the cop got in the tan Datsun in front that he’d admired and wished was his. He believed it was a sign. He liked the idea of signs and omens: they showed you were on the right track.
He followed the Datsun’s taillights into the poor section and look, another sign: the Datsun pulling up at the house on Caspian where Iris had stayed, the cop going inside.
He had followed Iris here…
He had followed Iris all over the place. He had tried to talk to her in the lounge, in her cute little cocktail waitress outfit and tried to get her to go out with him and even offered money he didn’t have. Had twice seen her come out of the hotel with three guys, one of them a big jig, and another woman and get in the limo he followed to the condo in Ventnor. Three A.M. he walked all around the building, looking up at the windows from the other side of the street and saw where lights were on: hardly any except for half the top floor on the Atlantic Avenue side. Half past four they came out and the limo took them home. The next night she went up again, Teddy learning surveillance work was a pain in the ass. Fun in San Juan but not here. Never be a private eye. But the next morning Iris didn’t come out with the three guys and the woman and Teddy perked up, wondered if this was his chance. He sat there all day. No Iris. All day thinking.
Half past eleven that evening he went in with the cheese steak subs from the White House, ran a game on the security guy telling him he’d lost the slip with the name on it, but the apartment number was eighteen-something. The security guy looked at his clipboard list with one hand on the phone. Let’s see, it wouldn’t be 1802, nobody was there and 1803 was out for the evening; 1804, also 1805, they went to bed early, never ordered carry-outs; he said it must be the Shipmans in 1806, he’d ring. Teddy said that was it, Shipman. The security guy still wanted to ring them. Teddy said, ‘ey, how’d you like a sub? Happen to have an extra one. Mmmm, smell those onions… That was how he got upstairs to knock on the door to 1802.
Then he had to run a game on Iris when she opened the door, not looking very happy. He told her somebody from the hotel had sent the food over. She nodded, closed the door, didn’t even offer him a tip. He ran down the stairs and opened the delivery door in back. Ran up the stairs, thought he was going to have a heart attack, caught his breath. Then rode the elevator down, stepped off in the lobby and said nighty-night to the old guy eating his cheese steak sub.
Now he entered from the rear, walked up the stairs this time and when Iris opened the door gave her a smile and a wink and said, “Miss me?”
It amazed him they would hire a girl with so little personality. Especially a PR.
“Don’t you know how to smile?”
“I’m tired of smiling.”
See? She was a grouch. She didn’t seem afraid of him or even care he was here. It was something else bothering her, or her life in general that made her crabby. Sitting there pissed off in her black bra and panties.
“You staying here now?”
“If I feel like it.”
He looked around the apartment. There was all kinds of booze in one of the kitchen cupboards, the cheese steak sub sitting on the counter. Teddy realized he was hungry and ate it. Even cold it was good. He fixed two rum-and-Cokes then, emptying a street-lude cap into Iris’s-eighty milligrams of Valium to take off her edge-and brought their drinks out to the living room.