Don Winslow - A Cool Breeze on the Underground

Good cops take possession of a space, and this one was a good cop. Most rent-a-cops shove their ID at you, but this guy didn’t bother. He sat down and invited Neal to do the same.

“My name is Hatcher,” he said. “I’m from Vine Street Station. Do you know where that is?”

Neal sat down on the edge of his bed. “No.”

“It’s across Man-In-The-Moon Passage. Do you know where that is?”

“I don’t know where anything is.”

Hatcher nodded. “It’s just outside the kitchen and the laundry. Do you know why I’m telling you this?”

Yeah, I do, Neal thought. You could tell me what you want to tell me straight out, but you’re establishing a pattern of question and answer. “Not really.”

“This hotel does not require a house detective, because I can be here on a moment’s notice. I am not the house detective. I am a London police inspector.”

“Would you like a drink? I have scotch, scotch and water, and scotch on the rocks.”

“Scotch, thank you.”

Neal poured three fingers into a glass and handed it to Hatcher. Then he sat down again on the bed and waited.

“The hotel staff cannot have helped but notice considerable traffic in and out of your room.”

“I’m looking for a girl.”

“Apparently.”

“A particular girl.”

“Rather particular indeed, Mr. Carey.”

Neal shrugged and tried to look stupid. It wasn’t tough. He hadn’t figured on a cop stepping into this.

“And you have yet to find her?” Hatcher asked.

“Not yet.”

Hatcher sipped at his drink. “But you intend to continue this search for… the Holy Grail.”

“Yup.”

Hatcher’s sad eyes grew a little sadder. Then he stared at the floor before staring back at Neal. It was an old cop move and it didn’t surprise Neal much. It did surprise him that it shook him up a little.

“Not in this hotel, lad.”

Neal stood up and freshened his own drink. He held the bottle up in an invitation that Hatcher accepted.

“Why not?” Neal asked.

“We don’t mind a little of the old in-and-out, man. But you have them trooping up here at a pace that would do credit to an Australian rabbit.”

Neal took a chance on getting his ribs bashed in. “So? It’s not illegal.”

“It’s unseemly.”

“So you don’t mind guests running whores up here, you just don’t want to get a reputation for it.”

Hatcher shook his head. “I don’t mind guests ‘running whores up here,’ I just want to receive a piece of it.”

Neal smiled.

“Understand, Mr. Carey,” Hatcher said. “This telephone business tends to cut the lads out-the bellboys, the concierge, the local constabulary who are coming up on retirement and who aren’t likely to get that promotion before the pension is set… The referral fees are missed.”

“What are you suggesting?”

Neal could see the cop was annoyed at having to spell it out.

“I am suggesting that you try to exercise a bit of control over your libido, and that when the need does arise, so to speak, you ring the bellboy.”

And if I was looking to get laid, Neal thought, I wouldn’t mind at all. But my only shot at Allie is over the phone. He stepped to the door and opened it. “Sorry.”

Hatcher ignored the door. “You don’t mind if I have a look-see?”

“It’s your town.”

“What brings you to London?” Hatcher asked from the bathroom.

“Business.”

“You have been busy.”

Neal knew what was coming.

“Oh dear,” Hatcher said.

And here it comes.

Hatcher came back from the bathroom holding a plastic film canister.

“It’s not mine,” Neal said.

Hatcher reached into his jacket and took out a set of handcuffs. “Nevertheless.”

Neal held his hands out in front of him to show his spirit of cooperation and said, “Why don’t I tell you what I’m really doing here?”

Hatcher was back in half an hour with the hotel’s telephone records.

“Your Mackensen lad made only three calls from the room.”

They checked the phone numbers against the classified sex ads. Number eleven matched. Neal reached for the phone.

“No longer in service, lad. I checked already.”

“But the next number should be the dealer’s.”

“True, but it isn’t much help. It’s a phone box in Leicester Square.”

They were there in ten minutes. Hatcher pointed to the phone box. It was unoccupied.

“Your dealer is a cute one,” he said. “The girls knew to reach him there. Maybe he keeps regular hours. Different phone booths at different times.

“You haven’t asked me for my advice, lad, but I’m giving it to you, nevertheless. Give it up. Go back to the States and tell your aunt and uncle to forget about their daughter. It’s a fine thing you’re trying to do, but… Even if you were to find her, you’re more likely to get a knife in your innards than get your cousin back. You’ve no business being on the Main Drag.”

“I have to try.” He gave it a nice touch of nobility.

“Suit yourself.”

“Thanks for your help.”

Hatcher smiled. “Forget about it. Literally.”

Neal straightened up the room. he picked up the magazines and newspapers and tossed them in the trash bin. He opened up a window to let the cigar stench out. He rinsed the glasses out in the bathroom sink and then fixed himself a fresh drink while he drew a bath.

It isn’t so bad, he thought as he lay in the hot water. He didn’t have an address but he did have this phone booth, or box, in the vernacular. And the location fits Mackensen’s story. And tomorrow I’ll check it out. And find the dealer. Who’ll lead me to Allie.

Right.

Except he wasn’t there. Like a road-show Shakespeare when Hamlet’s missed the bus, the dealer wasn’t onstage when the lights came up and the supporting cast was in place.

So Neal waited for him, which wouldn’t have been so bad except for the bloody heat. Neal had learned to say “the bloody heat,” because everybody around him was calling it that. In a country where air conditioning is considered decadent and they sell you an ice cube in your drink, temps in the nineties were a pain indeed.

Neal sweated through long afternoons in the square. He had picked a bench that gave him a nice view of the phone box and its surroundings. He also could check out most of the square’s pubs, movie houses, and eateries. Now a bench in a public park is a jealously guarded commodity, so Neal was careful not to monopolize his spot and draw unwanted attention from any of the long-timer winos, senile pigeon aficionados, or schizoid bums for whom the square and its benches were something called home. Public parks and gardens, built by proud city patrons and matrons as a pleasant gathering spot for the upper middle class, had long since become one of the few surviving habitats of society’s detritus, a crucial place to sit or lie down. So a regular in Leicester Square was more or less tolerated unless he caused trouble. Screaming above the city’s natural decibel level, pushing the panhandling act too hard with a tourist, dealing dope too visibly, or whipping out a weapon to lay claim to a spot on a bench were but a few of the offenses that might disturb the sensibilities of the local gendarmerie. The serene London bobbies, those fabled paragons of patience and civility, might drag a repeat offender into a convenient alley or doorway and stomp the bejesus out of him. The judicious application of nightstick to shin discouraged recidivism. The occasional hard case might require a more thorough going-over, and the rawest copper soon discovered that a trip to hospital could keep a nuisance off the beat for weeks at a time. Neal wasn’t surprised to discover that the London cops had their own version of New York’s Finest’s “Teacher, May I” technique, in which one officer raises the student’s arm high above his head, stretching out the thin sheaf of muscle that covers the rib cage. Then his partner administers the lesson in one of two modes: If he just wants to get his point across, he jams the butt end of his nightstick into the student’s ribs, inspiring an instant shortage of breath coupled with a few moments of searing, albeit temporary, pain. But if the teacher wants the pupil absent from class for a few days, he swings the nightstick like a Jimmy Connors forehand at Wimbledon, cracking the student’s ribs. Class dismissed.