Richard Hawke - Speak of the Devil

He snatched up his drink. For just an instant, he looked like the healthiest man on earth.

BEFORE I LEFT, I HAD CARROLL PRINT ME OUT A COPY OF ANGEL Ramos’s mug shot. Betsy Carroll showed me to the door.

“You’re not much for keeping secrets, are you?” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Secrets can eat away at people, too. It would do him good to talk about it with someone.”

“He didn’t want to talk about it, Betsy. He just wanted to yell.”

She pulled open the door. “You’ve got to start somewhere.”

I hadn’t been to my office since Wednesday, so I walked the eleven blocks up and over to Forty-first Street. I stopped off at a cash machine on the way and withdrew a thousand dollars. As I passed the library, I saw that the lions out front were each wearing an enormous Christmas wreath.

There was a pile of mail under the slot, and the door plowed it as I pushed it open. It’s a small reception area, four chairs, a low black table covered with outdated magazines, one of those Don Quixote prints by Picasso. I pulled a man’s daughter from the paws of a serial rapist a number of years ago and he thanked me with a midtown office. Nothing fancy, but a convenient place to put my feet up and to meet with clients. There’s a receptionist’s desk but no receptionist. At least not on a regular basis. I hire one now and then for a day’s work when I’m feeling charitable. New York City’s temporary help comes in all sorts of varieties, and I consider it cheap entertainment. The rest of the time, when the desk is empty, I tell the waiting clients that my receptionist had to run out for an emergency. Margo and I took in a James Bond movie a few years back, and while Bond was playing cutesy with Miss Moneypenny for the jillionth time, Margo whispered in my ear, “If you had a Moneypenny, I’d kill you.” Before the night was out, we’d somehow transformed the name “Moneypenny” to “Dashpebble” and christened my nonexistent receptionist.

The mail was mostly junk. Some of it was semi-junk, and I tossed those pieces onto Miss Dashpebble’s desk. The rest I dumped in the trash can next to the desk. I hadn’t emptied the trash can for a while. Maybe it was about time to get one of those entertaining temps in.

I went into my office, which overlooks Bryant Park, behind the library. When the weather’s warm, the place is swarming with people. Junior executives from all over midtown come to the park at lunchtime and loosen their ties or pull their skirts up to the danger zone and soak in the rays. Not for nothing do I keep my binoculars handy.

But a cold November Monday nearing seven o’clock? At a glance, I counted fourteen hardy souls bundled like Cossacks.

The red light on my phone was blinking, so I checked my messages. One was from my mother in California. She can never remember my cell number. She sounded garrulous and a little angry. Pretty typical. She said she was going to hold the phone out so that I could hear “the mighty Pacific.” This was followed by ten seconds of silence. She came back on and said she was having a wonderful time, that she loved me and I should stay out of trouble. She gave a cackling laugh and hung up.

There were a few calls about cases that I’d stuck on the back burner, then a familiar voice calling me “Fritzy boy.” It was Jigs. I put the message on speakerphone and dropped into my chair.

“Most boring day of my life, I think. You should pay me double. I shadowed that half a brother of yours, like you asked. He was very polite on the subway in the morning. Gave up his seat to a one-armed lady. A real gentleman. But I don’t think he was sleeping with her. Too old, too fat, too black. Didn’t seem like Paulie’s type. I think I snooped out what you need, though. A woman he works with. They took lunch together at a Mexican place near their office. I’ve got it written down what they ate. He paid. No hand-holding, no footsies, but they seemed to have a lot to talk about. Then, around three-thirty, a coffee break in City Hall Park. This time she was crying. Paulie was patting her on the back like he was trying to burp a pet pooch. And for the hat trick, drinks after work. That’s where I am now. The Raccoon Lodge on Warren. They’re in a booth. I’m looking at the tops of their cheating heads as we speak. She’s got a name, too. It’s Annette Hartman. Redhead. Not bad. I wouldn’t kick her off the Ferris wheel. Husband’s name is Robert, but you play your cards right, I bet he’ll let you call him Bob. They live at eight seventeen West End Avenue, and I’ve got to say, Fritz, it shocks me that people actually pay you to find out this kind of thing. This is too easy. I don’t know why you’re not a millionaire by now. So look, if these lovebirds decide to go somewhere and flap their wings in private, I’m off the clock. I’ve got a call in to the homely and fair Allison from the Cloisters. Say a prayer for your favorite altar boy, Mac.”

I’d scribbled down the information as Jigs was giving it to me. Next to “Annette Hartman,” I wrote, “crying.” Before I handed the name over to Phyllis, I’d want to check on it. Chasing after spouses has always felt to me like bottom-feeding. Charlie Burke calls it “bottom-line feeding.” It was a good thing Phyllis wasn’t asking for photographs. That kind of work depresses me.

I pushed my chair back and put my feet up on the windowsill. Rodin got it wrong when he chiseled The Thinker . His guy looks like he might have been mulling over a tough chess move, but for real honest-to-goodness thinking, you’ve got to bring your feet up level with your head. So long as you don’t fall asleep, the cranium will start clicking.

Click.

I had to find Angel Ramos.

Click.

I had to find him before the next sundown.

Click.

The demand for ten million dollars told me one thing: Ramos was losing his cool. It was an irrational sum of money. Call it a hunch, but to me there seemed a desperate smell in it. Whatever had been the purpose of all the pussyfooting around with the “nun” giving us the finger at Gristedes, the original drop at the Cloisters, the million dollars being designated for the Convent of the Holy Order of the Sisters of Good Shepherd and all the rest if it, things had now gotten more blunt. We had two severed fingers in a box, and we had an Uzi jammed into the side of Philip Byron’s head. These recent events squared more clearly with the Angel Ramos I’d been getting to know, the punk who’d steal money from the collection plate and recruit his ten-year-old nephew to run drugs. Call it another hunch, but I didn’t get the feeling Angel Ramos was intending to pass along his latest ransom demand to nuns or monks or anybody else. This was a grab. This was it. This was the enchilada.

My ploy with the Amigo Willy cards had gone bust. I’d figured a few crank calls, at least. I tried Donna Bia’s number again, still not sure what I’d say to her if she answered. She didn’t. I hung up without leaving a message. I looked at my watch. I glanced out the window. Finally, I looked at my feet. “You boys ready?”

They offered no resistance. I picked up the phone and called the rental place I use, up on Fifty-second.

“Saddle up my pony,” I said to the person on the other end. He wasn’t with the program, so I had to translate. I hung up and fetched my blackjack from my desk drawer. A gift from the old man. When he was a beat cop, he’d lifted it from a man who had been number two to take over one of the big Italian crime families. The mobster told him he called it Betty. Betty had cracked some pretty notorious skulls in her day. I lightly slapped the blackjack a few times against my palm. Even with taps, you can feel the bones beginning to worry.