But Lowenthal doubted it. He had been close to many rich and powerful men during his career but had never really known any of them well, for they were guarded people. Secrecy went with power and money—it was a thing he had learned early on. But he had to admit that DeLaroza was perhaps the most shielded of all. There was nothing but the skimpiest of dossiers on DeLaroza. No pictures, no stories. Lowenthal knew that he had come to America sixteen years before and had become a naturalized citizen four years ago. He had managed Hotchins’s campaign finances almost from the beginning and done it impeccably. There was little else available. His holdings and personal worth were unknown, his companies privately held. If this was to be an opportunity for anyone to get to know anyone, it was DeLaroza who would find out about Lowenthal and Lowenthal knew it.
Oh, well, he thought, what’s to know about me? He had no secrets at all.
“You’re taking quite a gamble,” he said as they approached the long, winding steps of the Ladder Street bazaar.
“I suppose so,” DeLaroza said.
“And if the public doesn’t bite?”
DeLaroza paused a moment, then said, “I never consider failure. There is a Chinese proverb—The fish that fears it will be eaten becomes dinner for the shark.”
Lowenthal smiled. “And you don’t fear the shark?”
DeLaroza looked at him and smiled faintly. “No,” he said, “I do not fear the shark.”
They turned into Ladder Street and started the long walk down to the main floor, DeLaroza stopping occasionally to chat with shopkeepers. Along the way, they passed two jugglers tossing fire sticks back and forth as though they were playing catch.
“What’s the story behind the dragon and the snake?” Lowenthal asked.
“Ah, my favorite legend, although I must say there are many Oriental myths which stir the imagination. The guides in the garden explain it quite poetically. My chef has prepared for us a potpourri of the menu, a preview of its delights. I will have one of the young ladies tell you the story while we eat.”
At the foot of Ladder Street, an elderly Caucasian gentleman with soft, gentle features and snow-white hair sat on a wall playing the violin. He nodded to DeLaroza as the two men passed him.
“That is Mr. Reynolds,” DeLaroza said. “He has journeyed all over China with a traveling band, played first chair in the Vienna Symphony, played ragtime music with the greats in New Orleans, and he once taught at the Boston Conservatory. I have known him for many, many years and I have no idea how old he is. He is not interested in age. For him, every day is a new experience. He is the leader of our Chinese band.”
“Where did you find him?”
“He found me,” DeLaroza said cryptically and ended that part of the conversation. “The restaurant is over there. On the other side of the pond. It is a replica of Tai Tak, the finest restaurant in all Hong Kong—at least my favorite. But first let me show you one more thing. I think this may excite your imagination more than all the rest of this.”
They walked up a curving pathway to the end, near the outside wall of the building. Lowenthal saw the looming figure before they reached it, seven feet tall, his eyes gleaming slits, his mustaches plunging down to his chest, his fingernails curved like talons.
“Meet Man Chu, the war lord,” DeLaroza said proudly. The giant turned its head and glared down at the two men. For an instant Lowenthal almost held out his hand to shake its menacing fist.
“It’s almost real,” Lowenthal breathed in wonderment.
“The definitive Arcurion,” DeLaroza said. “Nikos does not make toys or robots; he makes people and creatures. Sometimes I find myself talking to them as though they were alive.”
“What is this?” Lowenthal asked.
“The pièce de résistance. A thrill ride like no other in creation. This is where the park gets its name. Pachinko.”
The robot stood in front of a hollow stainless-steel ball large enough to seat two people. The door in the front of the ball opened toward the floor.
“Step inside,” DeLaroza said. Lowenthal got into the ball and settled into the soft leather seat. DeLaroza closed the door. The top half was open so that the rider had a clear view out of the round car.
“Now imagine Man Chu, here, firing this ball into that tunnel in front of you. You drop down a chute to the floor below, which is an enormous pinball field. Bumpers, lights, tunnels, mirrors. The car rolls freely on ball bearings, it never turns upside down and the speed is electronically controlled by an operator who sits in the middle of the pachinko board. Once it leaves the chute here, it is on its own. Only the speed is controlled, so it does not fly out of control. Otherwise it bounces from bumper to bumper up to thirty miles an hour at times before it drops through another chute and arrives on the first floor … where your attendant hands you your car keys.”
Above the entrance tunnel was a large replica of the pachinko board itself, an electronic grid on which a blip followed the course of the ball, lighting up the bumpers and registering the score on a digital counter.
DeLaroza helped Lowenthal from the ball. “Now come along,” he said.
He led the way from the entrance to the ride, along a narrow alley and through a fire door. A flight of steps led down to a second door, which opened onto the field itself. Its walls were mirrored. Strobe lights flashed intermittently and the bumpers gleamed gaudily. It was the bumpers that intrigued Lowenthal, for they were like a vast field of strange statues, each in the shape of a Chinese deity.
DeLaroza strode out on the board, and was immediately dwarfed by the jazzy hardware of the giant pinball machine. He pointed first to this bumper, then that, talking continually.
“This is Shou-Lsing, the god of long life. I call him the laughing god. That one, the serene one, is Lu-Hsing, the god of salaries. Over there, that fat one? Who else but the god of wealth, Ts’ai-Shen? And this lady here, this is Kuan-Yin, goddess of mercy and compassion. Forty-two bumpers in all, enough to satisfy even the most masochistic thrill-seeker. The ball makes one complete revolution of the board here at thirty miles an hour before it rolls through that chute up there. The box in the center is the control-board. One man can control three balls. On opening night, of course, we will shoot them through one at a time.”
He turned and looked at Lowenthal. It was indeed a fitting climax for Pachinko!
“Well,” DeLaroza said grandly, “now what do you think?”
Lowenthal held his hands out at his sides, palms up. “What can I say? It is the definitive fantasy. Congratulations.”
Obviously pleased, DeLaroza led him back to the main floor of the park.
“And now,” he said, “we shall enjoy the crème de la crème. Wan Shu is waiting. Now that we have excited your emotions, we shall do the same for your palate.”
13
Barney Friscoe stormed through the lobby of the Lancaster Towers West with Papa trotting at his side. The security guard watched them enter and came out of his office with his eyebrows arched into question marks.
Papa managed a lame smile. “Superintendent,” he said, pointing to Friscoe, whose face looked like a volcano about to erupt.
“Everything hunky-dory up there?” the guard said, with a touch of panic in his voice.
“Fine, fine,” Papa said, “nothin’ to worry about. Routine.” They got into the elevator. The guard watched the door shut and finally shrugged and returned to his television set.
“What’s this ‘superintendent’ shit?” Friscoe snapped.
“A cover. He thinks we’re workin’ on the elevators,” Papa said.
“The elevators? Jesus H. Christ, Papa, this better be important, that’s all I got to say, pullin’ me outa the symphony, right in the middle of Prokofiev. And Lieutenant Kije at that! My oldest kid made third chair tonight, you understand that? It’s important.”
Papa said nothing.
“A fantastic program, we got Brahms, we got Schubert, and we got Prokofiev! And there I am, third row center.” Frisc
oe, who was wearing a tuxedo, pulled his velvet tie loose and opened the top button of his shirt as the elevator stopped.
“To the right, first door on the right,” Papa said.
Friscoe stomped down the hall, muttering to himself. “This better be good. This better be fingerfuckinlickin’ good.”
Friscoe hammered on the door to 10-A.
“Who is it?” Livingston asked from inside.
“It’s Little Red Riding Hood, for Chrissakes, who do you think it is? Open the goddamn door.”
The chain rattled and Livingston swung the door partially open. Friscoe charged through it without looking to the right or left. He came face to face with Sharky and The Nosh. Friscoe stood in front of them, his hands on his hips and his tie dangling like black crepe paper from his open collar.
“Awright,” Friscoe bawled, “what the fuck’s so urgent you jokers get me outa the symphony right on the dime, when in ten more minutes I could’ve sneaked out between numbers and nobody woulda been the wiser? I had to crawl over half of Atlanta society to—”
Livingston was tapping him on the shoulder and at the same moment Sharky pointed back toward the door. Friscoe spun around.
“What the hell do you—” he said, and stopped in mid-sentence.
He saw the bloody pattern near the ceiling, the splash of blood on the wall where the force of the shot had thrown her, the streaks down to the crumpled body below.
A gaunt spider of a man was leaning over her, examining the body.
“Terrible for the blood pressure, Barney, blowing up like that,” the gaunt man said quietly.
“Holy shit!” Friscoe said, half under his breath. He took a few steps toward the corpse and stopped. His face contorted. He swallowed hard, shuddered, looked at Livingston, back at Sharky, and then at the corpse again.
“What the fuck … who is it? What happened here?”
Sharky started to speak but his voice cracked and he stopped to clear his throat. Livingston finally spoke up. “It’s the Domino woman,” he said. The words cut deep into Sharky’s gut when he heard them said aloud.
“Domino!” Friscoe said.
“Yeah.”
Friscoe’s eyes widened. “So what happened?”
The gaunt man, his hands encased in blood-covered plastic surgeon’s gloves, looked up at him. “Somebody aced the lady,” he said in a voice that sounded tired.
“I ain’t blind,” Friscoe bellowed. “What I wanna know is, what happened?”
“What happened, Sharky’s on the roof monitoring the bugs,” Livingston said. “She got away from us this morning and was out most of the day. About seven forty there was a call from somebody named Pete saying he would be late and would call back. She came in at seven forty-four. Two minutes later another call. Whoever it was hung up. At seven fifty-eight the doorbell rang, she opened the door and”—he nodded toward the corpse. “Couple more things. She was packing her suitcase when she got hit. It’s in there on the bed. Then about fifteen minutes after … it happened … there was another call. We let the machine answer it. It was this Pete again. I picked it up, but he hung up as soon as he heard my voice.”
The gaunt man stripped off his gloves, put a hand on his knee, and stood up. And up. And up. He was a shade over six-foot-six, thin as a stalk of wheat, his clothes hanging from bony shoulders like rags on a scarecrow. His complexion was the color of oatmeal, his hair—what there was of it—the color of sugared cinnamon. The bones in his long, angular face strained against wafer-thin skin. His long needle fingers seemed as brittle as the limbs of a dead bush. Art Harris, one of the city’s better reporters, had once profiled him thus: “Max Grimm, the Fulton County coroner, is a cadaverous stalk of twigs who looks worse than many of his subjects …” The description provided Grimm with his nickname, Twigs. At sixty-seven he had been coroner for forty-one years and had managed to stave off compulsory retirement at sixty-five with the excuse that he was suffering some vague terminal disorder and wanted to work as long as possible at the job he had held for almost two-thirds of his life. Nobody believed him, but that was immaterial. He was too good to retire anyway.
His partner in crime was George Barret, head of the forensics lab. Together, they were the Mutt and Jeff of Pathology, the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of crime lab and morgue. Barret stood barely five-five, outweighed Grimm by at least twenty pounds, wore rimless bifocals, and parted his strawberry-colored hair down the middle like a turn-of-the-century snake-oil peddler. He was an arch-Baptist who neither smoked, swore, nor drank and was constantly offended by Grimm’s penchant for Napoleon brandy, which the coroner nipped constantly from a Maalox bottle. Barret entered the scene from one of the bedrooms carrying an ancient black snap-satchel which his late father, a country doctor, had willed him. Inside were crammed all the mysterious vials, chemicals, and tools of the forensic trade.
In his soft Southern voice he said, in a single sentence virtually uninhibited by punctuation: “Nothing here, I got all the pictures and measurements I need, oh, hi, Barney, I think we can assume from the tape and what we can—or more correctly, what we can’t—find that the killer never ventured beyond the door there.”
Friscoe was a man fighting frustration, pearls of sweat twinkling on his forehead. “Well, where’s everybody else?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Livingston replied.
“I mean where the hell is everybody else? Where’s Homicide? I see the ME there. I see Forensics. Where is everybody else? Here it is an hour and five minutes since it happened and there ain’t a Homicide in sight yet.”
“Nobody called Homicide,” Livingston said.
Frisco’s eyes went blank. “Nobody called Homicide?”
“Nobody called Homicide.”
“Well, uh, is there a reason nobody called Homicide? I mean have all communications between this here apartment house and the main station busted down or what?”
Sharky was staring at the floor. He had said nothing since Friscoe arrived. He was still having trouble putting together an intelligible sentence. The one thing Friscoe would not understand, would not accept, was Sharky’s personal feeling and Sharky knew it would be difficult, if not impossible, to put his personal anger aside. He had to be cautious and it was that necessity that kept him from saying anything. Friscoe finally turned to Livingston. “Arch?”
“Sure,” Livingston said and then suddenly words seemed to die in his mouth, too. It was Papa who finally broke the awkward, stammering cadence of the conversation. “We wanna do it,” he said simply.
“We wanna do what?” Friscoe said.
“We wanna handle this one.”
“What are you talkin’ about?”
“He means we want to run with it, Barney,” Livingston said. “We know more about—”
“Wait a minute! Wait a fuckin’ minute,” Friscoe said, and his voice wavered. He held up a finger. “You all understand, right, that the golden rule, I mean rule number one of the holy scriptures according to The Bat, is that in the event of any sudden or unexplainable or suspicious death, any death of that nature, Homicide gets notified first. Before anybody even goes to the fuckin’ bathroom, the Homicides are brought in. That’s gospel, boys.”
“Listen a minute,” Livingston implored.
“No! I don’t believe my ears. Maybe the robust second chorus of Lieutenant Kije has temporarily damaged the old ears here, because if what I’m hearing is what I think I’m hearing, you’re all off the wall. You’re all dangerous if that’s what’s comin’ off here. You’re as dangerous as a goddamn cross-eyed barber if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking.” Friscoe’s face had turned red with anger.
“Look, don’t take it personal, for Chrissakes,” Livingston said.
“Well I am takin’ it personal. How about that? I’m takin’ all this bullshit personal. And that’s what it is—bullshit.”
“Look,” Livingston said, “we’re all a little, uh, freaked right now.”
“Oh, I can tell
that, yessiree. You’re all around the bend, if you ask me. You—you’re Abrams, that right?”
The Nosh nodded.
“And you go along with this?”
The Nosh nodded again.
“Shit, you’re all nuttier than a team of one-legged tap dancers, you wanna know what I think. That’s if anybody’s interested in what I think.”
The Nosh smiled.
“It ain’t funny there, Abrams,” Friscoe roared. “You got yourself one hell of a pile of trouble. What you think’s gonna happen when D’Agastino hears about this? You think I’m going up? Hah! D’Agastino’s gonna break eardrums in Afghanistan. That fuckin’ wop can outscream Billy Graham.”
“Will you just listen for a min—” Livingston started to say.
Friscoe cut him off. “Crazy,” the lieutenant said, “craz-eeee.” He put his hands over his ears.
Livingston looked at Sharky and shrugged. “What’d I tell you?” he said.
“What’d I tell who?” Friscoe said, still holding his hands over his ears.
“I told him you’d think we were nuts.”
“You are nuts. Absogoddamnlutely nuts. The lot of you. N-u-t-s.”
“I thought at least you’d …” Livingston started, and then let the sentence dangle.
“Thought what? Thought what?” Friscoe said, his voice beginning to rise again.
“I thought you’d hear us out.”
“What is this here you’re layin’ off on me, Arch? What’s with this heartbreak hotel shit? Jesus, right now, this here very minute you are all up to your ass in alligators. And for Christ’s sake, so am I. I ain’t even involved in this and I’m in trouble. The Bat’s gonna have ass, man. Ten fat cheeks nailed to his fuckin’ wall. And you, too, Twigs. You and George there. You know the procedure.”
“I work for the county,” Twigs said quietly. “Captain Jaspers can go suck a duck egg.”
“That’s real cute,” Friscoe said. “How about you, George?”
“He owes me,” Livingston said. “I just called in my green stamps.”
“Jaspers won’t bother me,” Barret said. “I can remember when he was pounding a beat. He had difficulty tying his shoes in those days.”