Sharky's Machine

  “You got any idea who?” Sharky asked.

  “Not the foggiest. But whoever it is, the way I see it, we let it start to come together, then we step in and maybe we can bust the whole lot.”

  “Who’s this Domino?” Sharky asked.

  “Another lady in the stable. All the while we figure it for a twosome, now all of a sudden up pops the devil and we got another one in the act.”

  “You think maybe she’s got a scam working too?” Sharky said.

  “Why not? It seems to be the season for it.”

  “Then let’s go after her too,” Sharky said. “Do we have a line on her.”

  “Yeah. Livingston and Papa dutched them the night they went out with the boys from Holland,” said Friscoe, “then followed Domino home.”

  “We should all live that good,” Livingston said. “A Caddy limo the size of a 747 picks them up. They hit Nikolai’s Roof for dinner, dancing afterward at Krazz. The bill for the four of them must have been five hundred bucks.”

  Sharky whistled. “Maybe we’re in the wrong business,” he said and grinned. “I wonder if she’d give me about ten dollars worth?”

  “Yeah,” Papa said, “for ten bucks she’ll goose ya.”

  “On your pay you can’t even afford to smell it,” said Friscoe.

  “Maybe she’ll take a dollar down and a dollar a week,” Sharky joked.

  “Look,” Friscoe said, “I agree we need to go after the Domino broad too. I already got the office from Alvers. After I played that performance between Tiffany and Freaky Freddie, he was ready to give me permission to bug her church pew.”

  Sharky’s mind was humming. He had survived on the street for eighteen months with instinct and little else. Now every nerve ending was telling him that this Domino would provide a key, although he was not sure why. Perhaps because it had taken almost four weeks for her name to pop up. It seemed to him she was being well shielded and there had to be a reason.

  “What we need,” he said half to himself, “is a first class wireman. Somebody who can do it right. The apartment. The phone. The whole shooting match.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s tough shit,” said Friscoe. “All we got is what’s down here in the dump. One lousy tape recorder and maybe a little help from the phone company to tap into her phone.”

  “I want the whole place,” Sharky said.

  “Good luck,” Livingston said.

  “I got just the guy for the job,” Sharky went on. “He’ll love it. It’ll be a challenge.”

  “Who is this genius?” Friscoe asked.

  “The Nosh,” Sharky said.

  “Who the fuck is The Nosh?”

  “Larry Abrams. He’s got everything we need. Voice-activated recorders. Mikes the size of your fingernail. FM preamps for the pickup. Let me tell you, The Nosh could plant a bug in a hummingbird’s ass.”

  “So where do we find this wonder boy?” Friscoe asked.

  “Right here in the House. He’s in OC.”

  Friscoe rolled his eyes. He shook his head. “Forget it,” he said forlornly, “Organized Crime is D’Agastino’s outfit. That cheap guinea wouldn’t loan us the dog shit on his shoes.”

  “The hell with D’Agastino,” Sharky said. “The Nosh and I go back long before either of us was on the force. I can sneak him out long enough to get it done.”

  Friscoe thought about it for a few moments, then shrugged. “Look, it’s your machine, see. We all figure, maybe you can bring something into it we can’t. We’ve all been … you just get jaded after a while. You wanna do some dog-robbing here in the House it’s okay with me. If the shit hits the fan, well … we’ll all duck.”

  Sharky was thinking about The Nosh. Little Larry, fiddling around in the workshop in his garage, inventing gadgets that only he would ever use. He chuckled thinking about it.

  “I tell you what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna be all over this Domino. Before we’re through we’ll know what she’s thinking. Because The Nosh and I, we’re going to put more wire in her place than an AT and T substation.”

  7

  Sharky guided the gray Dodge Charger down through a squalid warehouse district known as the Pits and parked in front of a bleak, washed-out two-story brick building. He switched off the engine.

  Livingston, sitting beside him in the front seat, slid down and lit a plastic-tipped cigar. “Welcome to Creepsville,” he growled.

  From the outside the building looked deserted. Weeds pushed through cracks in the sidewalk, water stains streaked its sides, a sign, ravaged by time and weather and barely readable, announced: For sale or lease. B. Siegel and Sons. The building had no windows, although here and there along its grimy face large squares of new brick indicated where several had been sealed up. Midway in the building was its only opening, a scarred, grim, ugly door with a single window covered with steel mesh. It was electrically operated and everyone entered and left the building through this single forbidding portal.

  “Looks like something you’d see in Russia. The bad part of Russia,” Livingston said.

  The building housed the Organized Crime Division, known as the OC, which was run by a pompous, taciturn political opportunist, Captain D’Agastino. Inside, a maze of computers, readouts, photo lines, and electronic gadgetry connected the building, like a giant umbilicus, to the FBI.

  “D’Agastino runs this place like the fuckin’ CIA,” Livingston said. “He doesn’t do zilch for us out on the street, him and that bunch of elitist shits.”

  “Bunch of assholes, you ask me,” Papa volunteered from the back seat.

  They fell silent. Livingston stared up at the sky thick with black, swarming clouds and blew a smoke ring which wobbled through the air like a flat tire and fell apart against the windshield.

  “Gonna rain like a son of a bitch,” he said.

  More silence.

  Sharky stared straight ahead, toying aimlessly with the steering wheel.

  “Thing is,” Livingston said, “I don’t trust any of those turkeys in there.”

  Silence.

  “Do you trust any of them, Papa?” he asked.

  “Shit,” Papa said with disgust.

  Sharky picked lint from his suede pullover.

  Livingston finally looked over at him.

  “And this Abrams, he’s a buddy of yours, hunh?”

  Sharky nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Well, uh, how come you’re so thick with somebody in the goddamn OC?”

  There it was, the big question. Sharky had felt it coming. They were testing him. And why not? He was the new kid on the block and already he was captain of the ball club and bringing in his own pitcher.

  Livingston blew another imperfect smoke ring, watched it fall apart. “I heard that bastard D’Agastino won’t even consider you for the OC unless you’d turn in your own mother. You hear that, Papa?”

  “Anything you heard, I heard worse. I heard you gotta pass the bad breath test just to get in the door.”

  Sharky started to burn, but he held his temper in check.

  “What’ve you heard there, Sharky?” Livingston said.

  “Not much.”

  “Not much, hunh.” More silence. Finally: “Wanna tell us about this Abrams?”

  Sharky did not answer immediately. What could he tell them? That he and The Nosh, which is what he had called Abrams since they were kids, were born across the street from each other, grew up together, fought together, had even broken the law together? Should he tell them about Red Ingles or the night the transmission fell out? Shit. In high school Sharky and The Nosh had befriended a grizzled, solitary alcoholic named Red Ingles who lived up the street from them. Ingles had a singular talent; he souped up cars. Boy, did he soup up cars. Ingles souped up cars the way a piano tuner coaxed perfect pitch from the strings of an old baby grand. The chromium touch, Sharky called it. Ingles worked in his backyard, a backyard cluttered with battered old wrecks that looked as if they might fall apart if you slammed the door too hard.

&n
bsp; But under those tarnished, dented hoods, engines gleamed with stainless-steel carburetors, chromium headers, and glistening valve lifters. Ingles usually worked on two cars at a time, interchanging parts and tuning one against the other until the engines hummed in perfect harmony. Then he gave The Nosh and Sharky five dollars apiece and told them to “take those Jessies and blow them mills out good.” And he would settle back with his jar of still whiskey while they drove out to the river, poised fender to fender on hidden dirt roads, motors straining underfoot, and then took off, the engines whining and shivering in their mounts, speedometers inching up to 150 and 160 as they skimmed over the dirt, skittering at the very edge of disaster with that reckless and wonderful sense of indestructability reserved for the young.

  They never asked what Red did with the cars. They didn’t have to. At night they sneaked down to his place and lay under the shrubs, watching him negotiate with heavy-set men in galluses and sweaty felt hats, passing the fruit jar back and forth as they argued and cursed and ranted. Finally Red would smile and slam his hand down on the fender of the car in question and the good old boys would count out the price. In the morning the cars were gone. Sharky was certain that Red Ingles was the sole supplier of transportation for every moonshiner in North Georgia.

  Then Ingles had made them an offer. He needed transmissions, tough transmissions. He would pay them seventy dollars for every working Corvette transmission they delivered to him. The Nosh was delighted. “I can drop a Vette transmission in fifteen minutes flat,” he confided to Sharky and they went into business. They put roller skate wheels on a piece of plywood and once a week they borrowed the rumpled pickup Sharky’s old man used at the hardware store and they cruised the dark streets, looking for prospects. When they found one, The Nosh rolled up under the car and dropped the transmission while Sharky sat behind the wheel of the pickup, ready to sound the horn in case of trouble. They were the toast of Grady High. The Nosh, barely five feet tall, became a ladies’ man while Sharky, already a cocksman of some renown, became the Beau Brummel of Ponce de Leon Avenue. Then one night the owner of a brand new Stingray appeared suddenly and unexpectedly while The Nosh was toiling under his car. It was too late to blow the horn. The owner flicked a speck of dust off the trunk, kicked a tire, climbed in, revved up, and took off with his tires chewing up the pavment.

  But no Nosh. He was caught under the Vette, his jacket hung up on the transmission, and he went right with the car, rocketing along on his plywood platform. When he finally tore himself loose, the platform flew out from under the Vette, sparks showering from the tortured roller skate wheels. It screamed down the street, hit a curb, and splintered, the wheels soaring off into the night while The Nosh was launched end over end into a fishpond.

  Sharky ran to his side. A dazed, soggy Nosh staggered from the pool. And at that moment, with an anguished clatter, the transmission fell out of the Corvette. They ran to the pickup and took off down the street while the teary-eyed Corvette owner ran after them, hands waving wildly overhead.

  “I don’t ever want to take a ride like that again,” The Nosh said.

  “Right,” said Sharky.

  “Besides, I feel sorry for that guy.”

  “Me too.”

  “There’s got to be an easier way to make a buck.”

  “Yeah.”

  And they quit.

  So how come I’m so thick with The Nosh? Sharky thought. It was basic. They had grown up together, exchanged bloody noses and embarrassed apologies, got laid together, and had joined the cops together. Their roots went deeper than blood or family.

  “I’ll tell you,” Sharky said, “we been asshole buddies almost since the day we were born. And I don’t give a damn if he’s in the OC, the PDQ, or the screw-you, it’s okay with me.”

  Livingston puffed on his cigar. Papa cleared his throat but said nothing. Finally Livingston nodded. “Well, it ain’t much detail, but it’s sure clear as hell.”

  After a moment, Papa said, “Where did he get that crazy monicker?”

  “It’s Yiddish. Means to nibble, eat between meals. The Nosh is one hell of a nibbler. He can also fix plumbing, do carpentry, fix radios, cameras. Shit, he can do just about anything. And he just might be the best wireman that ever came down the pike.”

  Between puffs Livingston said, “Does he walk on water?”

  Sharky laughed. “Probably. One of his ancestors did.”

  “Well, I just got to wonder, okay? I got to wonder how in hell he ever got tied in with that mother-humping piece of camelshit, D’Agastino.”

  “Like I said, he’s the best wireman in the country. Maybe D’Agastino needed him.”

  “I don’t care if he can bug running water. If he ain’t white, Christian, six-feet tall, and don’t wear pin-stripe suits and look like a goddamn stockbroker, he’s in the wrong outfit.”

  Sharky pointed toward the door of the OC. “Does that look like a six-foot stockbroker to you?” he asked.

  Larry Abrams, The Nosh, came out of the building, a short, boxy little man, a hair over five feet tall and almost as wide, wearing faded jeans, a blue work shirt, a suede jacket, and carrying a black tool box almost as big as he was. His thick black hair was longer than regulations permitted; he was wearing glasses a quarter-inch thick and his crepe-soled hiking boots were as muddy as they were ugly. The Nosh was grinning; he usually was.

  Livingston looked shocked. “He’s in the OC!”

  “Jesus,” Papa said, “there ain’t much to him is there?”

  Livingston watched the little man approach the car. “Amazing,” he said, “everything in the world that fuckin’ D’Agastino hates. He’s Jewish, he’s too short, his hair’s too long, he’s overweight, his shoes are dirty, he’s smiling, he’s dressed like a janitor, and he looks human.”

  The Nosh leaned against the door of the car. “Hey, Shark, what’s up?”

  “Any problems with D’Agastino?”

  “Nah. I told him I had to go over and do a trick for the FBIs. That’s the magic word in the fortress there. You say FBI, everybody wets their pants.”

  “Hop in.”

  The Nosh crawled into the back seat and Sharky introduced him around.

  “Where we headed?” The Nosh asked.

  “Moneyville. Lancaster Towers,” Sharky said.

  The Nosh whistled through his teeth. “Who we after?”

  “A very pretty lady,” Livingston said.

  “Aww,” The Nosh said, “I hate to pick on pretty ladies.”

  Livingston turned sideways in his seat so he could look at Abrams as he talked. “Me too, but this lady happens to be a very high class hooker whose pimp just shook fifty g’s out of a Texas oilman. We think she may be involved in a new scam and this time the stakes may be even higher. What we’d like is to wire up her place like a Christmas package and see what we can turn up.”

  “What kind of set-up?”

  “Nobody’s been inside yet. You know the Lancaster Towers?” said Livingston.

  “I’ve driven by it, never been inside.”

  “Okay, what we got is twin towers, twelve stories each, an east tower and a west tower. They’re connected at the third floor by a terrace that runs between them. Swimming pool, bar, that sort of thing. The parking garage is below ground-level, three stories, with a gate that’s activated by one of those plastic coded cards. Visitor parking on ground level. Both buildings have security guards. She’s in 10-A, facing the east wing. We been checking her number for the past hour or so and her machine answers.”

  The Nosh nodded. “She could be up there doing a number.”

  “We considered the possibility,” Sharky said.

  The Nosh said, “We can give the door a rattle. If she answers, we tell her we’re checking the TV cable, something like that.”

  “Sounds good,” Livingston said. “We also have the security guards. I’d like to keep this in the family, but I don’t see any way to get past them without showing our hand.”

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nbsp; The Nosh smiled and opened his tool chest. It was meticulously arranged. Wire, diodes, phonejacks, screws, nuts and bolts of all sizes, miniature amplifiers, microphones, and tape recorders, all were neatly fitted into the case. A tray on top contained tools of all kinds and, arranged neatly in one corner, two Baby Ruth bars, a box of Good n’ Plenty and a coconut Twinkie. The Nosh opened a drawer and took out a bundle of business cards. Leafing through them, he stopped and smiled. “Here we go,” he said. “We’re from the elevator inspection department. That’s city. Suppose we, uh, suppose we’re doing a stress check on the elevators. We’ll be in and out for the next couple days.”

  “What’s a stress check?” Papa asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know,” The Nosh said, “but it sounds good.”

  They all laughed.

  Papa stared at the candy bars. “I got a weight problem,” he said. “You got a weight problem?”

  “I can put on a couple pounds driving past a deli,” The Nosh said.

  “I gain weight readin’ recipes,” Papa said.

  “Wanna split a Baby Ruth?”

  “Love it.”

  He cut one of the candy bars in two and gave Papa the larger half. Livingston turned back to Sharky. “It’s love at first sight,” he said. “They’ll be engaged before the weekend’s over.”

  “Here it comes,” Sharky said as raindrops began pummeling the windshield.

  “You mind I ask you a personal question?” Livingston said to The Nosh.

  “Shoot.”

  “How the hell you ever get in the fuckin’ OC?”

  The Nosh giggled. “It was because of the Feds,” he said. “I was workin’ radio maintenance down in Central and one day this FBI named Weir shows up and he’s lookin’ for somebody can really do a number on an automobile, so they loaned me to him. What it was—you remember that Mafia guy, Degallante, retired down here about a year ago?”

  “Sure,” Livingston said, “he got deported.”