Jim Cogan - The Dirty City

“Sure is, Lt. Speaking of which, how is Mrs Wails these days?”

“Why, you son of a bitch-!”

“Easy, Lt, why don’t you go see the medic, get yourself checked over properly, eh? Let me sort this out.”

Had to hand it to good old Scotty, he had a way of dealing with Wails. It made me kind of glad that I wasn’t on the force anymore, I’d have shot that bastard long ago!

“You get him out of here, you got that, Sgt? You hearing me, Jerome, you go look elsewhere for your missing druggie, this place is off limits.”

Finally, and to my great relief, Lt Wails departed. Now I could go to work.

“Thanks, Scotty. So what’s the crack here?”

“Dope house bust.”

“You know about the heroin, right?”

“Ain’t found any yet, but that ain’t what we’re looking for, we’re here for marijuana.”

Strange as it seems, but at the time that was the line of thinking at the very top. Dope was deemed to be the biggest threat to our society, those darn communists were flooding the country with it to turn us into a nation of hopelessly stoned idiots, no doubt with the long term plan to invade and conquer us while we were all shitfaced. Meanwhile, the French Connection was in full swing and heroin was coming in right, left and centre and seemingly no-one gave a shit.

“The Mayor is up for re-election next spring, so he wants to be seen to be tough – he’s picking up the official line from Washington and looking to wipe out the scourge that is dope from our fair streets. So here we are.”

I could see Glenn wanted to wind up the friendly small talk.

“Anyway, Johnny, it’s been good to see you, but you heard the Lt.”

“Scotty, I need a favour.”

“The hell you do-.”

“That guy over there, the dealer, I need to speak to him.”

“You gotta’ be shittin’ me, Johnny?”

“C’mon, two minutes, that’s all I’m after.”

“But Wails-.”

“Screw Wails!”

“Easy for you to say, you don’t have to work with the asshole.”

“I’m going to give you something of use here, Scotty. Last night I was here. Different case – missing girl, Santa Justina PD failed to find her, Michelle Masters, you familiar with that one.”

“Sure, someone brought her into the hospital last night, was that you, Johnny?”

“Sure was, she was in a very bad way, massive heroin OD, but she just about made it. Whilst getting her out of there I spotted a kid passed out on the kitchen floor, turns out he is the son of some hotshot lawyer, who just happened to turn up at my office this morning hoping I could find him. That’s why I’m here, but it seems the kid ain’t here no more, and that guy you got cuffed up over there might be the only lead as to where he’s at now.”

“That’s your case, Johnny, not ours, I don’t see what-.”

“Look, no doubt there was a small bit of dope dealing going on in there, but that place was being geared up for heroin. Hopeless addicts, guaranteed repeat business, it’s a dependable and profitable racket at the moment.”

“But so far we’ve found next to nothing. A few reefer butts in an ashtray, a hung over dealer and three – well, actually two unconscious customers and one with a penchant for playing dead then punching police officers, but no sign of any dope or any heroin.”

“Those two unconscious customers – from here they look like they’re in a similar state to the girl I rescued last night. If I was a gambling man I’d say they’ve panicked when your boys started kicking in the door and swallowed their stash.”

In later years, when the true danger of heroin was realised and taken seriously, this kind of calamitous situation would become a thing of the past. But for now, I had to accept the cops naivety and give them a few pointers every now and again.

“Meaning, Scotty, that unless you react, fast, you could end up with two fatalities on your hands.”

“Oh shit!”

“And while you’re reacting, seeing as I gave you this little heads up, you’re not going to notice that I’m going to cross this here barrier and go and have a chat with our dealer friend over there, right?”

“Two minutes, Johnny, and you better be gone when Wails heads back this way.”

And with that, Glenn turned tail and ran to find a medic.

“Well, well, Newt, we do seem to meet in the most bizarre of circumstances, do we not?”

In the light of day Newt looked younger but at the same time somehow more haggard. I put it down to having his beauty sleep interrupted by a police raid. The cops had cuffed him behind his back and then unceremoniously dumped him down on the kerbside.

“I’ve not slept since we met last night, had to rush that girl over to the hospital, and then it’s just been one thing after another – but you, you look like crap, do you know that?”

He finally raised his head a little and squinted in my general direction.

“Hey. You. You’re that private dick who showed up last night.”

“Yep, now I’d love to waste time chatting but the clock is counting down. There was a guy, crashed out cold, in your kitchen last night.”

“Was there? Lots of people pass out in my kitchen, you can’t expect me to make a mental log of them all, can you?”

“This was the guy, I’m sure you’d remember him, he was probably a very good customer of yours, he may well have had turned up at yours with a significant amount of dough to spend?”

I held the photo out in front of him.

“You know what they say about a fool and their money, Mr – shit, what was the name again?”

“Jerome. And I don’t need riddles, Newt, I need to know where he went.”

Newt looked at the photo again, this time there was the light of recognition in his eyes.

“Oh, its Anton, Mr ‘My daddy is a hotshot lawyer.’ The poor little rich boy.”

“Great, so you know him, do you know where he might be staying?”

“Fucked if I know, Mr Jerome, my customers don’t usually tell and I’m not interested enough to ask. As long as they got the green I couldn’t give a rats ass if they live on Mars.”

My heart sank, time was almost up and it didn’t seem like Newt had the answers I wanted. But then he said something that re-ignited the trail.

“Anyway, Anton didn’t exactly leave my establishment by his own volition last night.”

“What do you mean?”

“About an hour after you took the girl, some guys turned up looking for Anton.”

“What kind of guys?”

“Mob guys. I thought they were delivering me more stash, but it turned out they were after him. As you saw, he wasn’t exactly in any position to resist.”

“And you have no idea where they took him, or why?”

“If I was you, I’d go find that little bitch whore you dragged out of here last night and ask her, she was real keen on Anton. She might know something.”

So Michelle Masters and Anton Jameson were close, perhaps even lovers. That made it all the more fortunate that I had saved her life last night because she was my main lead now.

“Hey, Mr Jerome. Did you tip off the cops about those chumps over there swallowing the heroin?”

“It was an educated guess. How much did they have?”

“Shit, enough to kill a God damn horse I reckon. They all panicked when the heat started kicking in the door, they just got rid of it the fastest way they could think of. But did you see Rudy, though?”

“Was he the big guy, what the hell had he taken?”

“Oh man, are you familiar with methamphetamine?”

“Speed? He ate a load of speed?”

“Man, that shit makes you so crazy.”

“Well that explains why it took so many cops to take him down. But what about you, Newt?” I studied him a bit closer, “you ate the dope, didn’t you?”