Richard Hawke - Speak of the Devil

I paid for my beer and went over to the curtain. The two guys playing pool watched me with interest but didn’t interfere as I pulled back the curtain and started up the narrow stairs behind it. The thump-thump-thump grew louder.

The upstairs was packed. I’d say a hundred people were crammed into a room designed for half that number. The floor was elbow-to-elbow, with people either dancing or giving it their best shot. An obnoxious lighting system bathed the crowd in a rotation of colors, red then green then blue, followed by a ten-second white-light strobe, then back to the colors.

I checked my watch. Ten-thirty.

I thought of the image on Tommy Carroll’s computer screen. Philip Byron with his bloody bandaged hand, the Uzi pressed against his head. There’s a point in certain investigations-not all, but some of them-when you’re struck with the notion that you’ve gotten everything wrong. Investigating is a guessing game, after all, a matter of how much you trust a particular assumption and then the one that leads from that and the one after that and so on. You follow a path, but you need to remain mindful that it’s a path you helped create. Charlie used to warn me in the early days about what he called the intoxication factor: You can get yourself drunk on a single idea. You can go blind. That’s not good. A better idea might come lumbering along, as big as an elephant, and you won’t even see it. You’ve got to stay focused, but you’ve got to stay flexible .

My problem was time. This wasn’t an investigation of leisure, where I could put my feet up in my office and gaze down at the human ants in Bryant Park and systematically gather together in my mind the various threads or puzzle pieces or whatever you want to call them and see how things were looking. These kinds of investigations are a luxury. The information percolates, and all the useless bits eventually burn off until you’re left with exactly and only what you need. But this was the other kind of investigation. I had a mutilated man with an Uzi to his head and the Jeopardy ! theme song plinking away in the background. The thought that came to me as I stood at the entrance to the dance floor was that maybe I had allowed myself to become intoxicated with the unquestioned notion that Angel Ramos was the man of the hour and that maybe I was now standing gumshoed at the most ridiculous of all places, chasing after a nasty, degenerate, pale-eyed wild goose while time was tick-tick-tick ing away. The thought was a hammer blow to the gut. Philip Byron couldn’t afford for me to be wrong.

Then I spotted Donna Bia. She was dancing near the DJ’s station, twenty feet from where I was standing. Lance Jennings had painted a surprisingly accurate portrait with just a few words. Hellcat. Hot tamale. Also, I spotted the tattoo of a rose on the woman’s upper right arm.

If I were to say that Donna Bia was wearing a little yellow number, I’d be underreporting. Miss Bia had hips like a Vespa motor scooter, high round breasts that were jostling each other for attention, and taut, dark woo-woo legs, all packed into a breathtakingly tight and skimpy taxi-yellow dress. The hem of the thing ran so high the woman could not have sat down without causing a minor riot. Her cell phone was clipped to her dress, next to her right breast, and she was dancing with her eyes closed and a self-satisfied sex smile on her face. Her clenched fists pumped the air in time with the music as her ample hips gave just the barest hint of swing to the otherwise grandiose pelvic thrusts. Imaginary sex at its best. As I watched the hot tamale sizzling out there on the floor, I knew this much: Her mother would not be proud.

Margo drags me out onto the dance floor now and then, and my general act is to shuffle in place while Margo runs vivacious rings around me, sort of like I’m a maypole. Something told me that where Miss Bia was concerned, I should keep my dance moves under wraps. It was clear that I couldn’t attempt to speak with her here and expect anything other than a game of What? What ? I considered stepping forward and just muttering “Police,” flashing my PI license in the strobe lights and dragging her off the dance floor and out of the club under the guise of an arrest. But the backfire potential was too high. Besides, Lady Bia might simply slap her trap shut and demand to see a lawyer.

So I played dirty. Or rather, dirtier. Hell, it had worked so far. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone, along with a fistful of twenties. I hit the redial button and put the phone to my ear. A few seconds later, the woman in the yellow afterthought plucked her phone from her elastic hem. I saw her mouth move and heard the words shouted in my ear: “Is Donna!”

“I’m over here!” I shouted back. “I’m waving my arm!”

I waved my arm. Donna continued dancing-or at any rate, her hips kept stirring the air-and she looked around until she spotted me. She frowned and yelled into the phone, “Who’re you? What do you want?”

I held up the fistful of twenties. “I want to give you a lot of money!” I shouted into the phone. “All this! It’s for you!”

I didn’t wait for her response. I turned my back on her, pocketing the cash and the phone, and retreated down the stairs, through the curtain and back outside to the street. The shops across from the club were all shuttered. One of them-a Laundromat-had a blue plastic pony out front, the kind you feed a quarter to give a kid a ride. I crossed the street and waited next to the pony, arms crossed, leaning against the Laundromat’s metal gate. When Donna emerged from the club half a minute later, pulling a flimsy sweater around her shoulders, I gave a sharp whistle. “Over here!”

As she stepped across the street, slipping the strap of a pillbox purse over her shoulder, I pulled the watch cap off my head. The perfect gentleman. She came up onto the curb and I inclined my head to the right. “You want to ride the pony?”

She gave me the look I deserved. “What do you want? Where’d you get my number?”

“I thought maybe we could talk.”

“Talk fast, mister. It’s fucking cold out here.”

“We could go someplace warm.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What’s this about? You trying to fuck with me? I got a boyfriend’ll slice your eyes out, you try to fuck with me.”

“What I’m trying to do is give you some money in exchange for a little of your time.”

“I could slap you, talking to me that way,” she said. She took a beat. “How much money you talking?”

“Five hundred dollars.”

“Shit. What you think you’re going to get for that money? I told you, I got a boyfriend.”

I gave her a long, deliberate up-and-down. “Look, I can give my money to someone else. You’re a piece of work, but you’re not the last woman on the planet. If you want to sneeze at five hundred bucks, that’s up to you.”

Something passed over the woman; I could see it in the relaxing of her facial muscles. She moved a step closer, fingering the collar of her sweater. Her nails were hooked like talons. “You like how I dance? That it? I dance good, don’t I?”

“Yes. You dance good.”

“Uh-huh.” She stepped closer. “You want to give a girl some money to watch her dance? A little private dancing? How’s that sound?”

“Sounds good.”

“I know someplace warm.”

“I’ve got a car. It’s just down on the next block.”

She lowered her voice. “You go in front of me. You get in, and you get comfortable. And you get the five hundred ready. I’ll be right behind you.”

She had me pegged for a sucker. I could see it in her expression. She tried flashing her eyes to give out the pretense that she was suddenly all excited about what was to come, but it didn’t really work. I headed for the car, and she followed about twenty steps back. I caught some looks from the people outside the Flea Club, but no one said anything. I reached the car and got in and leaned over to open the passenger door. Donna got in. I thought her dress was going to snap in two. She set her tiny purse on her lap. The contrived smile on her face froze, then vanished altogether. I was holding my.38 loosely in my hand, aimed roughly at her waist.