Ed Mcbain - Money, Money, Money

“… treats me like a fuckin courier, don’t get me started. I used to make more money driving the truck. I used to drive a tow truck for this auto body shop on Mason.”

“What’s this guy’s name?” Carella said.

“First tell me how much the commissioner’s gonna okay on this,” Tigo said.

“Well, we haven’t talked to him yet,” Ollie said affably. “We have togo to him with something, you see. We tell him there’s this guymaybehas information, he’ll say go take a walk, fellas.”

“Can you at least tell us when this buy went down?” Carella asked.

“Sure,” Tigo said. “Four, five days ago.”

“When exactly?”

“What’s today?”

“The twenty-eighth.”

“So it must’ve been … let me see.” He began counting back on his fingers. “Last Saturday night? When was that? Christmas Eve?”

“No, the twenty-third,” Ollie said.

“So that’s when it was. Like I said. Four, five days ago.”

“Where?” Carella asked.

“I told you, this crib on Decatur. It’s these three apartments, this person we’re talking about knocked out the …”

“What’s the address?”

“1280 Decatur.”

“Were you there when the buy went down?”

“Yeah. This dude was waitin in the front room while we tested the shit. He was supposed to get a mill-nine for the hundred keys.”

“What was his name?”

“Frank Holt. But his picture in the paper said he was Jerry Hoskins. The same guy, right?”

“The same guy,” Carella said. “Tell us what happened.”

“This is where the bus stops,” Tigo said. “Go talk to the commissioner.”

“Suppose we go to 1280 Decatur instead, talk to whoever’s got the second floor there, tell him his trusted employee just ratted him out?” Carella said.

“Now, now, Steve,” Ollie said affably. “The man hasn’t ratted out anyone yet, have you, Tigo?”

“Not till I see the green.”

“You just told us you participated in a drug deal, do you realize that?” Carella said. He was thinking this was an odd reversal of roles, him playing Bad Cop to Ollie’s Good.

“Gee, did I?” Tigo said. “Are you wired, Detective? If not, who’s your witness? Another cop? A bullshit bust, and you know it.”

“I can tell you right now, nobody’s giving you fifty thousand dollars so we can nail a two-bit drug dealer in Diamondback.”

“Even if it’s murder?”

“Even if he raped the Mayor’s mother.”

“How muchare you prepared to give me?”

Sounding like a fucking lawyer all at once.

“You tell us you witnessed a murder, you give us all the details, you agree to testify at trial, we can maybe scrape up two or three …”

“Goodbye, gentlemen,” Tigo said, and got off the bench.

“Sit down, punk,” Ollie said.

Tigo looked surprised.

“Isaidsit the fuckdown.”

Tigo sat.

“Let me tell you what you’re gonna do for us,” Ollie said.

“OKAY, I got a better idea,” Wiggy was telling the two Mexicans. “We go in heavy, all three of us. Semi-automatics under our overcoats. We hold the mother-fuckers hostage.”

Villada looked at Ortiz.

“We go in early tomorrow morning. They got the whole fourth floor, ain’t nobody but us gonna know we’re in there holdin guns on them. We stay there till they come up with the cash.”

“The banks will be closed till Tuesday,” Ortiz said.

“It’s the long weekend,” Villada said, nodding agreement.

“Man, they stole a mill-nine from me, you think they put that in abank?These people are thieves, man. They got that moneystashed someplace, is what. All we got to do is ask that white-haired fuck to take us to wherever it is.”

“What aboutour money?” Ortiz asked.

“We’ll get that, too, don’t worry,” Wiggy said. “One thing I know for sure, you stick a piece in some dude’s face, he’s gonna give you every fuckin nickel he has.”

Actually, Wiggy didn’t give a rat’s ass about their money. Far as he was concerned, they could eat tacos and beans the rest of they fuckin lives. All he needed them for was the extra muscle they brought to the gig. He was already figuring they would be the ones who stayed behind to watch the others while him and Halloway went to retrieve the money that was rightfully his.

Ortiz was ahead of him.

“Who goes for the money?” he asked.

“Halloway. Their boss.”

“Who goeswith him?”

“Any one of us,” Wiggy said.

“I think it should be either me or Cesar,” Ortiz said.

“Sure, whoever,” Wiggy said, and grinned.

TIGO SAID NO, he would not go in with no wire on him.

Ollie said either he wore the wire or they would bust his ass for the Fire Lane Scam.

“What the fuck is the Fire Lane Scam?” Tigo asked.

“You drove the tow truck, remember?” Ollie said affably. In fact, he was actually smiling.

“What’s the Fire Lane Scam?” Carella asked.

“What I done when Tigo called me,” Ollie said, “was see what we had on him in the files. Aside from a bullshit marijuana violation two years ago …”

“I was acquitted.”

“I told you. Bullshit. In fact, I was just about to tell Detective Carella here that there didn’t seem to be anything else on you. So I figured you were clean.”

“I am.”

“Except for participating in a drug deal last Saturday night,” Carella said.

“You got only my word for that,” Tigo said, making a joke. In fact, he grinned at them as if expecting them to laugh.

Ollie didn’t laugh, but he grinned back.

“Your record said you were employed by King Auto Body when you were busted for the weed,” Ollie said. “So I cross-checked and found out why that name sounded familiar. I found a big, big arrest six months ago, Tigo. The Fire Lane Scam. For which Joey King—no relation to Larry—is doing a five-and-dime at Castleview. You know what I’m talking about now, Tigo?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You were driving a tow truck for him, right?”

“That’s right. I went out on calls for dead batteries, flat tires, lockouts, like that.”

“You also went out on calls for Berry Appliances, who were in on the scam with Joey.”

“I never heard of anything called Berry Appliances.”

“George and Michael Berry,” Ollie said. “They used to sell washing machines, refrigerators, stoves, all that shit. A shop on Twelfth and Moore, you remember it?”

“No.”

“Had a little alley running alongside the shop, remember the alley?”

“No.”

“What it was,” Ollie explained to Carella, “George Berry went to the Fire Department and greased a few palms—they all went down together, by the way. Joey King, George and his brother, and the two Fire Department assholes who signed papers declaring the alley a so-called fire lane. They’re all exercising in the yard upstate.”

“Ho-hum,” Tigo said.

“Yeah, ho-hum,” Ollie said, and turned back to Carella again.

“What it was, George and his brother posted these signs on the walls of the alley saying it was a fire lane, and you couldn’t park there, or your car would be towed if you did. Guy comes back, finds his car towed, he reads the small print on the bottom of the sign, it tells him he can recover the car at King’s Auto Body Shop on Mason Avenue. What Tigo here did was make a sweep of the alley every few hours, tow any car parked there. There were always five, six cars in the alley, nobody paid any attention to the signs. Tigo picked up the cars, towed them over to King’s. When the owner came to collect his car, Joey told him it would cost a hundred bucks to release it. You towed maybe twenty cars a night, didn’t you, Tigo? People in this city have no fuckin respect for the law. ‘No Parking’ signs all over the alley, ‘Fire Lane,’ they just ignored them. A hundred bucks a car, that’s two thousand bucks these guys were splitting every night of the week. That’s like fourteen grand a week, how much do we make, Steve?”