Jeffery Deaver - Twisted - The Collected Stories of Jeffery Deaver

“You can’t have the whole thing. What you can have is four hours. Half tour. But no overtime. And you work with the detectives.” The sergeant looked into the young cop’s eyes. “You’re not going to work with the detectives, are you?”

“No.”

Weber debated. “Okay. But listen — for this to work, Vincenzo, we need the perp. Not just the damn violin.” He nodded toward the woman from the mayor’s office. “They need somebody to crucify.”

“Understood.”

“Get going. The clock’s running.”

Tony started east, toward the precinct house. But he stopped and returned to Pitkin and the mayor’s aide. He looked up at the musician. “Gotta question. You mentioned Paganini?”

A blink. “I did, yes. What about it?”

“Well, I got a Paganini story. See, one time his friends decided to rag him a little... And what they did was they wrote a piece of violin music that was so complicated it couldn’t be played. Like, human hands just wouldn’t work that way. They left it on a music stand and invited him over. Paganini walks into the room and glances at the music then goes into the corner and picks up this violin and tunes it. Then, get this, he looks at his friends and he smiles. And he plays the whole thing perfectly. From memory. Blew them away. Is that a great story, or what?”

Pitkin stared at Tony coldly for a moment. “You should’ve shot that man, Officer.” He turned away and climbed into his limousine. “The Sherry-Netherland,” he said. The door slammed shut.

Tony called Jean Marie from the precinct and told her not to wait up. He was on special assignment.

“It’s not dangerous, is it, honey?”

“Naw, they just want me to help out on a case with this music bigwig.”

“Really? That’s great.”

“Get some sleep. Love you.”

“Love you too, Tony.”

Then he changed into street clothes and drove uptown in his own car. The jeans and sneakers were only for comfort; there was no way he could work undercover where he was going — the Johnny B pool hall on 125th Street — since Tony’s was the only white face in the place. And nobody had cop written on him as clearly as Tony Vincenzo. But that didn’t matter. He wasn’t here to fool anybody. He’d worked the street long enough to know there was only one way to get information out of people who weren’t otherwise inclined to give it to you: buying and selling. Of course, he didn’t have any snitch money, being just a patrol officer, but he thought he had some negotiable tender to shop with.

“Hey, Sam,” he called, walking up to the bar.

“Yo, Tony. Whatchu doing here?” the white-haired old bartender asked in a raspy voice. “Looking for a game?”

“No, I’m looking for an asshole.”

“Heh. Got plenty of them round here.”

“Naw, my boy’s gone to ground. ’Jacked something tonight and got away from me.”

“Personal, huh?”

Tony didn’t answer. “So how’s your brother?”

“Billy? Whatta you think? How’d you like it you spent four years in a ten-by-ten cell and was looking at four more?”

“I wouldn’t like it one bit. But I also wouldn’t like being the teller he threatened to shoot.”

“Yeah, well. He didn’t shoot her, did he?”

“Tell me, how’d Billy boy like to be looking at maybe three to go ’stead of four?”

Sam poured a beer for Tony. He drank down half of it.

“I dunno,” Sam said. “Bet he’d like to be looking at one year ’stead of four.”

Tony thought for a minute. “How’s eighteen months sound?”

“You a beat cop. You can do that?”

Tony decided that he’d have the mayor’s support on this one. Cultural New York was at stake. “Yeah, I can do it.”

“But listen up. I ain’t getting my ass capped for snitching on bad boys.”

“I saw him in action. Don’t worry. No backup. No gang colors. He also picked on the wrong guy and’s going away for a long, long time. He’ll be old and gray ’fore he get out of Ossining.”

“Okay. You got a name?”

“No name.”

“What’s he look like?” Sam asked.

Tony asked, “I look like I can see through ski masks?”

“Oh.”

“He’s six-two, give or take. Heavy. Was wearing black sweats and black-and-red Nike Air pumps. Oh, and a fake Rolex.”

Because no crook was dumb enough to wear a three-thousand-dollar watch on a job — too easy to get messed up or lost.

“And he’s a pool player.”

“You know that?”

“I know that.”

Because whatever the detectives from downtown thought, Tony knew it’d been cue chalk dust that Pitkin had seen on his hands. No drug dealer or junkie’d be so careless with coke or smack that he’d get visible residue on his hands. And if he did, he’d lick them clean in a second. That’s why Tony was here — he knew the perp had to be a serious pool player if he’d got chalk on his hands before a job like this. And while there were a lot of pool parlors in New York City, there weren’t many that catered to serious players and there were fewer still that catered to serious black players.

But, after thinking for a long moment, the bartender shook his head, sad. “Man, I wish I could say I seen him. But you know Uptown Billiards?”

“On Lex?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “They had a tournament tonight. Five hunnerd bucks. Know a lotta players was there. Check it out. Talk to Izz. Little dude hangs in the back. Tell him you know me and it’s cool.”

“Okay, it pans out, I’ll talk to D of C. Get your brother knocked down.”

“Thanks, man. Hey, you want another beer?”

“You still got Smokey Robinson on the box?” He nodded to the jukebox.

Sam frowned indignantly. “Course I do.”

“Good. I’ll take a rain check.”

At Uptown Billiards Tony’s reception was a lot cooler but he found Izz, who was little and was in the back though not just hanging out; he was relieving a cocky young shark of a good wad of bills by sweeping the table at eight ball without even paying much attention. After he pocketed the money and watched the loser slink out of the parlor, Izz turned to Tony and lifted a plucked eyebrow.

Tony introduced himself and mentioned Sam’s name.

Izz looked at him like he was a bare wall. Tony continued. “I’m looking for somebody.” He described the perp.

Without a word Izz stepped away and made a phone call. Tony heard enough of the conversation to know he’d called Sam and verified the story.

He returned to the table and racked the balls.

“Yeah,” Izz said, “guy like that was in here earlier. I remember the Rolex. Took it off and left it on the bar when he played so I knowed it was fake. He was good but he washed out the second round. He was trying too hard, you know what I’m saying? You can’t never win, you play that way. Soon as you start trying, you already lost.”

“He hangs here?”

“Some. I’ve seen him around the ’hood. Mostly he keeps to himself.”

“What’s his name?” Tony said good-bye to five twenties.

Izz walked to the bar and flipped through a soggy, dog-eared stack of papers. Contestants in the tournament, Tony guessed. “Devon Williams. Yeah, gotta be him. I know everybody else in here.”

Another $100 changed hands. “Got his address?”

“Here you go.”

It was on 131st Street, just four blocks away.

“Thanks, man. Later.”

Izz didn’t answer. He sank two balls on the break, one striped, one solid. He walked around the table, muttering, “Decisions, fucking decisions.”

Outside, Tony stood on Lexington Avenue, debating. If he called for backup they’d know what was going down and the detectives would swoop in like hawks. They’d snatch the case away from him in a minute. Somebody else’d take the collar and his chance for the boost with his detective application would disappear.