Ed Mcbain - Money, Money, Money

“You still there?” Ralston asked.

“Still here.”

“No record on a Randolph Biggs, B-I-G-G-S. But if this is the same dude, he turned up dead in Piedras Rosas two days ago. Found him floating in a tub of water with a plugged-in cattle prod. Death by electrocution. Apparent suicide.”

“That makes two,” Carella said.

“Pardon?”

“One of his colleagues was murdered up here on Christmas Eve.”

“Looks like you got your hands full,” Ralston said.

“Looks that way,” Carella said.

THE PHONE ON Ollie Weeks’s desk rang some five minutes later.

“Weeks,” he said.

“You handlin that murder happened last week?” a man’s voice asked.

“Which murder would that be?” Ollie asked.

Up here in the Eight-Eight, there were 10,247 murders every day of the year.

“The newspaper said he was Jerry Hoskins,” the man said. “To me, he was Frank Holt.”

“Who’s this?” Ollie asked at once.

“Nev’ mine who’s this,” the man said. “I know who killed him.”

Ollie pulled a pad into place.

“Tell me your name,” he said.

“Is they a reward?”

“Maybe. I can’t deal with you unless you tell me your name.”

“Tito Gomez,” the man said.

“Can you come up here in half an hour?”

“I rather meet you someplace else.”

“Sure. Where?”

“The Eight’ Street footpath into Grover. Fourth bench in.”

Ollie looked up at the wall clock.

“Make it a quarter to six,” he said.

“See you,” Tito said, and hung up.

Ollie hit the files.

IT DID NOT TAKE Wiggy and the two Mexicans long to discover that what they had in common was a hundred keys of cocaine. It also appeared they had each been stiffed by a company that purported to publish books, but which instead seemed to be involved in the transport and sale of controlled substances. They did not yet know they were fucking with something much bigger here. For the time being their shared grievances were enough to provide motivation for what they planned to do sometime tomorrow.

They were discussing all this over beers in a bar on Grover Avenue, not too distant from Grover Park, where Ollie and Gomez would be meeting twenty minutes from now. In many ways, the big bad city was just a small town.

“I can’t get over these people payin you queer money for your goods,” Wiggy was saying. “Which by the way was very high quality shit, I have to tell you.”

“Gracias, señor,”Ortiz said, pride of product glowing in his eyes.

“Which is a shame,” Wiggy said, “them stiffing you that way. But I have to tell you the moneyI paidthemwas hundred-percent genuine American currency, and I want it back cause they sent two blondes to take it away from me.”

This was not entirely true. Wiggy had never paid a single penny to Hoskins or Holt or whoever he was. He had shot him in the head instead.

“They stoleyour money, too?” Ortiz asked incredulously.

“For damn sure.”

Neither was this entirely true. They had, in fact, taken the money from his safe, but this was not stealing from him. This was collecting money rightfully owed them for the hundred keys of cocaine they’d delivered as promised.

“So they are stealing fromall of us,” Villada said.

“Basic thieves is what they are,” Wiggy said.

“Like us,” Ortiz said, and all three men burst out laughing.

“So what we’re gonna do tomorrow …” Wiggy said.

AT FIRST, it looked as if there was nothing on him but a marijuana violation two years ago. But at the time of the bust, Tito Gomez—whose street name was Tigo—had worked for a place named King Auto Body, and this rang a bell with Ollie. So he cross-checked the files and lo and behold, there it was. A massive conspiracy arrest some six months back. Ollie went to his desk and phoned Carella.

“Steve,” he said, “I got a call from somebody says he knows who killed Hoskins. I’m meeting him in Grover Park ten minutes from now. You want to join us?”

“Where in Grover?” Carella asked.

“WE GO UP THERE TOGETHER,” Wiggy said. “We tell them give us the fuckin money you owe us or you all dead men. Your million-seven. My million-nine.”

Nobody owed Wiggy anything. But he already believed himself the true owner of the million-nine the blondes had taken in rightful payment for the drugs he’d purchased.

“Fockin crooks,” Villada said, shaking his head.

Ortiz was shaking his head, too. But only because he didn’t like the plan. His reasoning was simple. Threats and warnings were one thing. Reality was another. In his broken English, he explained that between yesterday and today, nobody up at Wadsworth and Dodds could have gathered together the million-seven his partner had demanded, much less the million-nine their new associate was seeking. That came to a total of three-million-six …

“Which ees a ho lot of money,” Ortiz explained.

Wiggy was thinking there was once a time in his life when two dollars for a water pistol seemed like a whole lot of money.

TITO GOMEZ was sitting on the fourth bench into the park when Carella got there at ten minutes to six that Thursday night. The two seemed to be hitting it off extremely well. Gomez was smoking a cigarette and listening to Ollie intently as he concluded what was apparently a joke because Gomez burst out laughing just as Carella approached.

“Hey, Steve!” Ollie called. “You know the one about the guy who puts a condom on his piano?”

“Yes,” Carella said.

He sat on the bench beside Gomez, the two detectives flanking him like mismatched bookends. “This the man you were telling me about?” he asked Ollie.

“This is him,” Ollie said. “Tito Gomez. Otherwise known as Tigo. Meet Detective Carella, Tigo.”

Tigo nodded.

“So I understand you want to talk to us about something,” Carella said.

“Yeah, but I ain’t got all day here. You got any more detectives you need to call?” he asked Ollie.

“No, this is all of us,” Ollie said affably. “He says he knows who killed Jerry Hoskins, ain’t that interesting? He wants to know if there’s a reward.”

“We can maybe come up with a little something,” Carella said.

“What do you meanmaybe?”

“We can talk to the commissioner, see what this case means to him.”

He was thinking with counterfeit super-bills somehow involved, the commissioner might be able to come up with a little something.

“What I have in mind is fifty thousand dollars,” Tigo said.

“That’s a lot of money, Tigo.”

“But that’s what makes the world go round, no?” Tigo said, and grinned. “Money, money, money.”

“Well, that all depends on the value of the information you have for us, eh,amigo?” Ollie said, still affably.

Tigo didn’t like to be called“amigo.” His father was from Puerto Rico, true enough, but his mother was black, and he was proud of his heritage on her side of the family. As pleasantly as he could—these were, after all, cops he was dealing with—he said, “I don’t speak Spanish,amigo,” which was a lie, but which seemed to make his point.

“Oh, sorry,” Ollie said, “I didn’t realize. So tell us why you wanted to see us.”

“There was this buy on Decatur Av?” Tigo said, making it sound like a question. “Guy runs a posse from a crib on the whole second floor there, knocked out the walls of three apartments? He brings up dope from Mexico, Colombia, Peru, sells it in ten-kilo lots for forty, fifty a pop, whatever the traffic will bear. I’ve been workin for him almost two years now, you’d think he’d start talkin bout makin me a partner, but no. He’s still got me on salary …”

So that’s why he’s ratting him out, Carella thought.