Sharky's Machine

  “Could you gimme a guess why it happened?”

  “Papa, I never got closer than ten feet to the lady. Couple of months ago I came up a heavy winner in a poker game and Dantzler lost his ass. I took his marker for five bills. I offered to trade it out for a night with Domino and she nixed it, not him. Maybe, you know, she thumbed her nose at the wrong guy.”

  “You hear anything about Dantzler and Tiffany juicing some tourist recently?”

  Leo began to laugh. “Jesus, you sure want a lot for your nickel, don’t ya?”

  “Leo, how long we known each other?”

  “Too long.”

  “Did I ever stand short on you?”

  “No, I can’t say that.”

  “So when I tell you time is short, I mean time is short. We do my problem, then we do yours. Now tell me about this shakedown.”

  “A few weeks ago Dantzler shows up with a new Ferrari. And he buys up my marker and generally settles up around town. So I ask him, ‘What did you do, hit a bank or something?’ And what he says is this: ‘Tiffany and me found ourselves a turkey in a ten-gallon hat.’ So I says, ‘Was Domino in on it?’ And he says, ‘Don’t I wish! If I could get Domino in on it I could retire.’ The figure I heard was fifty g’s. The way he was throwin’ money around, I believe it.”

  “So Domino was not in on it.”

  “I don’t know how to say it, but she was a very classy lady. I don’t think she’d get her hands dirty in that kind of action.”

  “Shit, she’s … she was a hooker, Leo.”

  “You asked me, I’m tellin’ you. If I was making book on this question, I would give odds she didn’t know a thing about it, and if she did, she would have given Dantzler the long goodbye.”

  “Could she maybe have found out about it and given Dantzler some trouble?”

  “I see where you’re goin’ with this. Let me tell you, this Dantzler’s got balls the size of a blackhead. Phony paper, pyramids, pimping, that’s his style. He don’t have the guts to step on an ant—or ask anybody else to. Anyway, even if he had it in mind, you know, he would have known to run it past me and I would have kicked his ass all the way to Alabama for even thinking about it. No, you can scratch Dantzler. He might be able to tell you why he thinks it was done, but he didn’t have a thing to do with it. That’s my opinion.”

  “So I end up exactly nowhere.”

  “No, you end up with a travelin’ hit man on your hands. If you want to come down on Dantzler, it’s going to have to be for something else.”

  Papa nodded. “Okay. I want you to do this for me. I want you to listen around and if you hear anything, anything about this gambit, you give it to me. And if you hear anybody outside the Vice Squad askin’ questions about Domino or Dantzler or any of that crowd, you get on the horn to me.”

  “You want me to let you know if I get pneumonia from standing out here?”

  “You wanna run around half naked that’s your problem.”

  “Okay, but I got another problem.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I got married a couple of weeks ago. Maybe you heard.”

  “You got a problem all right but there ain’t anything I can do about it.”

  Leo laughed again. “It ain’t her, it’s her brother. He got dumped for running a red light and they turned up two lids of reefer in the car. It was strictly for personal use. The kid doesn’t push dope.”

  “Two ounces for personal use?”

  “So he smokes a lot, what do I know? He’s twenty. You know how it is when you’re twenty. You don’t do anything in moderation.”

  “You need to have a heart-to-heart with the kid.”

  “I already did. What it is, they hit him with felony possession.”

  “Anything over an ounce, the law says you’re pushing.”

  “Look, the kid’s okay. Anyway, I only been married a month, I’d like to give the old lady a little delayed wedding present, know what I mean?”

  “This the kid’s first time out?”

  “He got caught in a little bust here about a year ago. A bunch of kids were selling tax-free cigarettes they brought in from North Carolina. They must have cleared all of twenty bucks.”

  “Careless son of a bitch, isn’t he?”

  “He’s not real bright.”

  “Okay. I got a pal just off the Narcs. I’ll talk to him.”

  “Whatever you can do.”

  “I can maybe work it out for a suspended sentence. He’ll have to do about six months probation or so, cough up a couple of yards for the fine.”

  “That’s okay. Maybe a little probation’ll straighten him out. I can handle the fine.”

  “Okay, Leo, we got a deal. Just keep in touch. Keep your ear close to the ground for the next forty-eight hours or so.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “And forget you heard anything about Domino from me or anybody else.”

  Leo’s eyebrows rose. “Who’s Domino?”

  _____________________

  A harsh chilling wind had replaced the rain, turning dirt in the gutters into dervishes as Livingston cruised down the dark streets. Beside him, Sharky stared silently through the windshield, his mind assaulted by nightmare demons—the what ifs and maybes, all the ways he might have prevented Domino’s death. In the brief time he had seen her, talked to her, listened to her make love to another man, in those few hours she had touched a place deep inside him nobody had ever touched before. He knew it was crazy. But it was a reality he could not escape and the reality tortured him.

  “Okay,” Livingston said after several minutes of silence, “what the hell’s eatin’ you?”

  The question shook Sharky back to the present.

  “All of it,” he said. “The whole thing.”

  “Got to kick that monkey, m’friend.”

  “Yeah.”

  They drove another block without words.

  “I got this, this, uh, lump in my gut, like a bad meal layin’ down there,” Sharky said. “Like maybe I’m missing something.”

  “Hunch, hunh?”

  “Maybe. Yeah, could be that.”

  “Really got to you, didn’t she?” Livingston said. “Got to thinkin’ about it, right? Wonderin’ what a five-hundred-dollar piece was like.”

  Sharky felt himself bristling. It wasn’t like that, he felt like saying, but then he began thinking about it, remembering how he had felt, listening to her making love the night before. He felt cold and he huddled deeper into his suede pullover.

  “Yeah,” he said finally, “she really got to me.”

  “I been in Vice a long time, Shark. Too long. Seen lots of fancy tricksters come and go. I done my share of wondering, too. All of us have. I mean, if you didn’t think about it, it wouldn’t be natural.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  “What? You talkin’ about duty, that kinda shit? Listen here, you’re a cop, you ain’t God. You make mistakes just like everybody else. Only trouble is, in our business a man can take an extra cup of coffee, fall asleep at the wrong moment, make a bad guess, it ends up disaster for somebody. You learn to live with it or get out. You’re gonna make a fuckin’ mistake now and then, you can’t afford to, but you’re gonna make ’em anyway. Couple of years ago a friend of mine named Tibbets lost a material witness. They had this cat under protective custody in a house off Highland Avenue and it all started comin’ down on this guy, y’know, he got the shivers. So one night he goes to the can and hangs himself in the shower. Tibbets is twenty feet away watchin’ a ball game. He never got over it, started in drinkin’, two months later he blew his brains out. So what did that prove? We had already lost a witness. The court case went down the toilet. Then we lost a good cop and for what? We all human, baby. You start thinkin’ otherwise, you’re in deep trouble.”

  “Keep reminding me of that, will you?”

  “Okay. For now just put it aside. She’s dead, man. That boat’s sailed. What we need to be doin’ right now is figur
e out where we goin’, not where we been. Now would you like to hear a thought?”

  “Anything at all.”

  “These Mafiosi are usually big gamblers. It goes with the territory, y’know. Comes to me that maybe this shooter’s found himself some local action. There ain’t that many bookies around and if he’s a heavy player, maybe we can get a line on him.”

  “Terrific. Only trouble is, I wouldn’t know where to place a fifty-cent bet on anything right now.”

  “Well, I know a few bookmakers. What I’m gonna do, I’m gonna quietly check with Whit Ramsey on the Gaming Squad, see if any new bookies are operatin’. Maybe we can shake somethin’ outa their pockets.”

  “Let’s get it on then,” Sharky said. “Pull over to that phone booth. You can touch base with Whit, I’ll call Barret and see if he’s turned up anything at the lab.”

  “That’s cool.”

  _____________________

  It took Sharky a minute or two to get the night operator and another minute to get George Barret on the phone.

  “Sharky, I haven’t got much, but I just thought you’d like to know you were right about that little red pill. It’s a red devil all right. Seventy percent speed, thirty percent nitroglycerine.”

  Sharky whistled through his teeth. “Jesus, that’s pure dynamite!”

  “I’d certainly agree with you. Blow a normal man straight through the roof. Whoever’s using these is flirting with a coronary.”

  “Anything else, George?”

  “Well, they’d be highly addictive, if that helps. I’d say two or three a day at least.”

  “Just a shit kicker, right? No medicinal value?”

  “I miss the point.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be the kind of thing maybe he’d have a prescription for?”

  “Not unless the doctor that prescribed them is a homicidal maniac. No, this is not the kind of thing you would find on the medicine shelf. It’s narcotics, period.”

  “George, you’re a winner. Got anything else?”

  “Really, sir. I’ve just gotten started.”

  “Talk to you later.”

  He got back in the car. A moment later Livingston joined him.

  “Got anything?” Livingston asked.

  “Yeah. You ever heard of red devils?”

  “Some kind of upper, right?”

  “Upper is right. You could launch a rocket with one of them. Our shooter was probably using. And if he was, Barret says he’s more than likely addicted.”

  “You’re gonna have a hell of a time trackin’ down every pusher in town that might be peddlin’ this shit, ain’t you?”

  “Maybe not. I haven’t seen any red devils on the street in a year or two. Too expensive. They go down for about five bucks a pop.”

  “Jesus, you can do smack for that kind of money.”

  “Different kind of high. Point is, maybe they were specially ordered. That would narrow the field a bit. How about you?”

  “I got three names. M’man Ramsey says if these three juicers ain’t bookin’ him and he’s a big player, then he’s using a phone contact somewhere else. And I know one of these guys. We grew up together. I can always finger him, so I figure we try to run down the other two first, save old Zipper until last.”

  “Zipper?”

  “Got a scar down his back at least a foot long. I grew up in a rough neighborhood.”

  “Okay, but first let me try one more call.”

  _____________________

  Ben Colter had worked his way through Georgia State University playing “Melancholy Baby,” “One for the Road,” and other such classics for raucous salesmen and aging divorcees in a red-and-black vinyl lounge called Mona’s Piano Bar. It was a job he had learned to hate passionately while staring out across the elongated piano six nights a week at faces he later said had only two expressions, drunk and desperate. The day he received his diploma he swore he would never again play the piano, not even in the solitude of his own home. The world had heard his last rendition of “My Way.”

  Retirement from the keyboard, however, was not in the cards for Ben. After serving six months as a rookie on the APD and two years and three months as a patrolman, Colter was promoted to third grade detective and assigned to Captain Vernon Oglesby in Narcotics. Oglesby was a competent officer, but he had a flaw. He was intrigued by intrigue. Because he loved the drama of subterfuge, Oglesby had more men on the street undercover than he had on straight duty. Any excuse at all and Oglesby would put another man out with phony I.D.’s and some new and flamboyant cover.

  Colter was made to order for Oglesby. His presence on the Narcs summoned forth one of the captain’s most outrageous ideas. Colter’s past had caught up with him. He would form a trio and the Captain would arrange for the group to play at the Arboretum, one of the city’s more popular uptown bars, there to get the inside on the dope traffic among the better-heeled swinging singles.

  Within four weeks, an appalled Colter found himself the leader of the Red Colter Trio, the other two members being a hastily drafted teenage drummer who thought he was Buddy Rich and a guitar player who, as one of the patrons once observed, probably could make better music picking cotton than guitar.

  Nevertheless the trio was modestly successful and Ben Colter, to his joy, discovered a marvelous fringe benefit: flesh. The ladies were young, liberated, and among the best looking in town. Hardly a night passed that the latent groupie instincts of some female patron were not vested in Colter’s corner. They always had a little Colombian weed and occasionally a snort of coke to share. Ben properly excused his transgressions as part of the job and one night he had experienced his first amyl nitrite popper, later likening the resulting orgasm to a combination of the Mount Vesuvius eruption and the San Francisco earthquake.

  Almost as a side benefit of the job Colter became an expert on the latest hip talk, the ultimate styles, the fashionable drugs—pot, Quaaludes, coke, poppers—anything that stimulated bedtime organs, heightening the allure and dulling the uneasiness of the one-night stand. He also was compiling an impressive list of the uptown pushers, those who made their contacts at the crowded Arboretum Bar and delivered their dream cigarettes and nose candy in the seats of the Mercedes, Corvettes, and baby Cadillacs that nightly filled the parking lot.

  On this particular Friday night Colter was feeling very lucky indeed. A young woman in a black skintight jumpsuit zipped down the front almost to her navel and bulging with incredible natural endowments was sitting just below the bandstand where for an hour or so she had been staring at Colter without even blinking her eyes.

  Colter was stirred. He was also encouraged by her escort, a thirtyish loudmouth who obviously thought he was still in a fraternity. His size indicated that he had probably played either guard or tackle, although what had once been muscle had long since congealed into blubber. For an hour he had been extolling the virtues of the Auburn University War Eagles while quaffing down one bottle of Bud after another, swallowing the contents in a single long, horrifying gulp until eventually the beer took its toll. The War Eagle rose, his face the color of a bishop’s vestments, and headed unsteadily toward the men’s room.

  Now is the time to strike, thought Colter, and abruptly ended his version of “Take the A Train” while his two partners floundered hopelessly in mid-chord. As Colter hit the floor a waiter handed him a note.

  “Guy says it’s urgent,” the waiter said.

  The note said: “Sharky. P-929-1423.”

  The P was a simple code for phonebooth. The call was indeed urgent.

  Colter smiled at the jumpsuit zipper and winked, then hurried across the room to the public phones.

  Sharky answered on the first ring.

  “Sharky?” Ben said.

  “Yeah. That you, Ben?”

  “Yeah, man. How ya doin’?”

  “I’ve had better days.”

  “I heard what The Bat did to you for icing High Ball Mary. That dumb shit. For what it’s worth, Shark
, I think we lost the best street man we had.”

  “Thanks, Ben. How’s it with you?”

  Ben wasn’t listening. The girl in the jumpsuit was leaning over, saying something to one of the other girls at the table.

  She’s comin’ over here, thought Colter. I know she’s comin’ over here. I gotta get off the phone.

  “Uh, what did ya say, buddy? It’s loud as hell in this place.”

  “I said, how ya doin?”

  “Oh, yeah, man. It’s a drag, y’know, a real drag.”

  She was getting up, looking his way. A bead of sweat popped out between Colter’s eyes.

  “Ben, I need some help.”

  “Okay, name it.”

  Here she comes.

  “When’s the last time you saw any red devils on the street?”

  “Red devils,” Colter repeated and then looked frantically around for fear someone had heard him. “Red devils,” he said, lowering his voice. “Shit, nobody buys red devils anymore. Who’s gonna lay out five bucks a pop, when you can get good uppers for two bits?”

  She had caught the wind and was in full sail, coming straight at him, her course irreversible. He had to get off the phone. The sweat was now dribbling down the side of his nose.

  “What I need, Ben, is a line on a pusher, somebody out in your territory who maybe scored very big in red devils in the last two, three weeks.”

  “Two or three weeks,” Colter repeated, watching the jumpsuit slink closer.

  A customer reached out and took her by the arm. But she looked down, said something terminal, and he dropped his hand.

  “Red devils, hunh?” Ben said. “Lemme see, that could be, you know, three or four shovers I know of. Gimme an hour, I’ll see if I can pin it down without blowing my cover.”

  “Thanks. Should I call you?”

  “Use the squad room drop. Give ’em a number at … eleven o’clock. I’ll call in and get it.”

  “That’s cool, Ben. And thanks.”

  “Any time, buddy. Later.”

  He hung up. She was three feet away, staring up at him with eyes that looked like they had dust in them.

  “Lining up your dance card for the rest of the night?” she said. The voice was perfect.