Dope (16 page)

“If I could get a ride to Belmont,” he said over and over again, “I could turn this dollar into fifteen. I
know
I could.”

I heard a man sobbing from upstairs. The sound echoed down through the lobby. When I was trying to get the attention of the old man behind the counter another man walked in, a respectable-looking man in a black suit. The old man behind the counter sprang to life.

“Oh no, you son of a bitch,” he shouted. “I said you're never stepping foot in here again and I meant it.”

Without a word the respectable-looking man turned around and left. Then the clerk turned his attention to me.

I told him that I needed to see Harry and I needed to see him now. He shrugged. “I ain't leaving the desk. But you can ask one of the boys to get him for you.”

He looked out toward the lobby. The boys. I went up to one of them, a tall heavyset Negro around a hundred years old who looked like there still might be some life left in him. At least enough to go upstairs and get Harry.

“Hey, mister,” I said. “You know Skinny Harry? I'll give you a dollar if you go upstairs and get him for me.”

He looked at me. And kept looking. I reached into my purse and got a dollar out. “Look,” I said. “I really got a dollar. And it's all yours if you go and get my friend.”

He kept on looking. I gave him the bill. He took it. Then he smiled, and when he smiled he didn't look like an old Negro in dirty clothes wasting time in the lobby of the Prince George hotel. He looked like someone you'd like to have a cup of coffee with.

“All right,” he said. “I'll be back down with Harry before you can spit.”

I didn't spit, but Harry came down the stairs fast. I don't know what the old man had told him, but Harry looked happy, like maybe someone had come by with a puppy dog and a ten-dollar hooker for him. But when he saw me his face fell and he rolled his eyes.

“Oh Jesus Christ, Joe. Ain't I done enough for you already?”

I took his arm and led him out to the street before I said anything. The old men ignored us. Outside I turned to face him and he cringed, like he thought I might hit him.

“Yeah, you son of a bitch, you did plenty for me. You got me set up for murdering Jerry McFall.”

Harry's face twisted up and he looked at me. “But Jerry ain't dead, Joe. What the hell are you talking about?”

“He is now, you nitwit.”

I watched as Harry's face twisted up even more, and then slackened out to something like sadness. He started to speak a few times, but couldn't get a sentence out.

Finally he said, “I can't believe it. Jerry's been kilt.”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said, a little more softly. “Jerry's been killed. You didn't know anything about it?”

He shook his head, slowly. “I gotta sit down or something.”

He looked pale so we went back inside and sat on two armchairs, near the old men. I gave Harry a few minutes, and then I asked him if he knew anything else about the job Jerry had pulled off right before he died.

He ignored me. “Jesus,” he said. “Jerry's dead. I used to do stuff for him—you know, run errands and stuff—and he always took care of me. He always took care of me good. Now . . . don't know what I'm gonna do now.”

“You'll be okay,” I said.

“I can't work like I used to,” he said, shaking his head. “Remember the jobs we used to pull? Like in Buffalo? And then that other time, in Chinatown with Easy Mike?”

“Sure,” I said. “I remember.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I can't do that stuff no more. Not since the war. I fucked up my head.” He smacked himself lightly on his forehead with the heel of his hand. “That's why I run errands and stuff like that now. I fucked up my head.”

“You'll be okay,” I said again. “Jerry treated you pretty good, huh?”

Harry shook his head. “I don't know. Not really. We weren't really friends, like I made it out to be to you and everyone else. I just did things for him, that's all. Sometimes he would call me stupid and stuff like that. But he never stiffed me. Bring this package to this girl, I'll give you a dollar. He always gave me a dollar here, a quarter there. Now I don't know what I'm gonna do.”

“Listen, Harry,” I said. “I know you're shook up. But I want you to think for a minute. Really think. You're gonna help me find out who killed Jerry. Do you know where he got his dope from?”

Harry shook his head. “I'm thinking, Joe, I really am. But he never told me nothing like that. I'd deliver it to the girls for him, sometimes. But I never went with him to get it. I don't know anything about that.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. How about the job he pulled, the one that made him go hide out in Sunset Park. Do you know anything about that, anything at all?”

Harry thought for a long time. “He never told me stuff like that. The only reason I knew about that at all was because he called me up and asked me to come out to Sunset Park to bring him some things from his apartment. He called me at the Red Rooster—there's no phone here.”

“What did he say when he called?” I asked.

Harry thought some more. “‘I was taking some dope off someone's hands and it didn't turn out like I planned,'” he finally said, in a good imitation of Jerry's oily voice. “Of course I knew what that meant. I'm not stupid. He'd torn someone off, and he'd been busted. Then I asked if he was okay, everything like that. He said ‘Sure, I'm okay. I'll tell you, Harry, it was all worth it just to stick it to that son of a bitch. You know the type, thinks they're better than everyone else.'”

“Then what happened?”

“Then he asked me to get some stuff from his apartment—just a couple of suits, some underwear, things like that—and bring them out to him in Brooklyn. Which I did.”

I showed him the photo of Jerry and Nadine. By now it was getting soft and crumpled around the edges. “How about Nadine? Did you ever meet her?”

Harry looked at the picture and smiled. “Oh,
that
girl. Yeah, she was hanging out with Jerry a lot for a while there. Real nice. Real sweet girl. But when I went out to Sunset Park he was with that other girl. I asked where Nadine was and he said she was more trouble than she was worth, now. That's exactly what he said. ‘That girl's more trouble than she's worth, now.'”

That was all Harry knew. I was getting ready to leave when I thought of something. I asked Harry if he still had the key to Jerry's apartment.

“Sure,” he said, “right here.” He reached into his pocket and took it out. I asked if I could have it.

“I don't know,” he said, slowly. “Would this really make us square? I mean once and for all?”

“Harry,” I said, “we're really square.”

I gave him ten dollars and told him to look out for himself. He gave me the key.

 

 

Driving north on the Bowery I saw a black Chevy behind me. I was at a red light and I saw it just a few cars behind me, waiting for the light to change. He was back. I thought about what to do. Did I want to lose him, or did I want to draw him out, find out who it was? If I wanted to confront him, I could just not start driving again when the light changed. At the very least he'd have to go around me, and maybe I could get a look at his face that way. . . .

And then I saw something else. A few cars behind that was another black Chevy. I looked around. There was another, parked around the corner on Fourth Street. I looked up. Across the street, on top of the gate of a parking lot on Bowery and Fourth, was a billboard. There was a drawing of a black Chevy with a family of four inside. A dog was hanging his head out the window. They looked like they were on their way to a picnic.

Chevrolet,
it said underneath the picture.
America's most POPULAR car!

J
erry lived in a brownstone turned over to apartments on West Twenty-seventh Street. The lock on the front door was busted and inside the building smelled like boiled chickens. Jerry's place was on the fourth floor in the rear. I looked around to make sure no one was watching and then I let myself in. It was a stupid thing to do and I knew it. The cops were still investigating and they could be around any minute. But if I was quick I should be okay.

His apartment looked like a hurricane had been through it. Either the cops had already been through it or his killer had been looking for the dope, or probably both. The closets and the dressers and the cabinets were emptied onto the floor. The furniture had been turned upside down and sliced up. There was a bedroom and it was the same in there—everything destroyed. I walked around, trying not to disturb anything too much. Being in a dead man's apartment spooked me.

You'd think you'd be able to tell a lot about a person from his apartment, but nothing stood out. The mirror didn't scream “Jerry McFall's mirror!” It was just a plain mirror hung on the back of the bedroom door. The sofa didn't look like something you'd see and say, “Now that's a sofa a pimp would buy.” It was just plain furniture. I don't know what I had been hoping to find there. Maybe a big sign with “SO-AND-SO KILLED ME” hung up on the refrigerator.

I looked through the piles of stuff. There were some household items, things you'd find in anyone's apartment—coffee cups, ashtrays, a corkscrew, a can opener. Magazines. Dime novels. Clothes. A cigarette case. Matchbooks. Records. A pillow from the bed that ended up in the living room. In the bedroom, lying on top of the sliced-up mattress, was a little ceramic deer. There were no signs, no clues, no secret messages.

In a pile of junk in the corner of the living room I found his phone book. It was one of those automatic types, where you slide the lever to the letter you want. I slid it to “A,” opened it, and broke the lever off so I could flip through. Most of the names meant nothing to me. I could call every one and ask if they knew who killed him. That probably wouldn't go over too well. But I knew some people in there. Harry, after which he wrote
Red Rooster.
Jim was in there. I wasn't surprised. He said he knew him. I looked through the book some more. Lots of girls' names: Hazel, Clara, Nadine.

And Shelley.

I left everything as I found it and went back downstairs.

On the street in front of the building was a police car, with Springer at the wheel. Parked a few cars down from him was a black Chevy.

“Don't even think about running, Joe,” Springer said. “You're coming with me.”

 

 

 

“I got a call from one of the neighbors that someone was in McFall's place,” Springer said in the car. “It's funny, because I was going to come and find you today, anyway. So you saved me a lot of trouble. I got a lot more people who say you were looking for McFall, people who say you've known the man for years. I think it's time we had a talk.”

So I went to the station with him to talk. We talked for about ten hours. It was a funny kind of talking, because no matter what I said, he didn't believe me. Instead Springer kept slapping the table with a big phone book and threatening to do the same to me if I didn't come clean. I told him I was coming clean.

“Listen, Joe,” he said. “The mayor's getting pretty pissed off about all the dope on the streets, and we're not taking any shit from the junkies and the dealers anymore. The whole thing's gone too far. Why, you're bothering good people, regular people. Folks can't even walk around Times Square without getting sick just looking at you, bags of bones begging for change and looking for drunks to roll and tourists to rob.”

I told him I wasn't using anymore. He called me a liar. I rolled up my sleeves to show him the scars on my arms, as healed up as they'd ever be. I asked for a female officer to give me a strip search. Springer said there were no female officers in his district, and he'd damn well search me himself, but it wouldn't mean anything, because us goddamn junkies were always finding new places to shoot up. He was right about that.

“I'm better off without Jerry McFall,” he said, “and I goddamn well know it. But I've got to get this mess cleaned up before it escalates. I don't want a war breaking out on the streets.”

I hadn't slept in about twenty hours. I dozed off a few times and Springer woke me up by smacking the back of my head. But not with the phone book.

Then he tried a friendlier approach. “Aside from the dame,” he said, “and of course you, Joe, the last person to see McFall alive was old man Harmon. They were seen together at the Happy Hour the evening before Jerry went into hiding in Brooklyn—the night of the eleventh. So what's the angle, Joe? If you're working for Harmon, all you have to do is tell me, and we'll cut a deal.”

I knew old man Harmon. Of course, Springer was wrong—he wasn't anywhere near the last. There was me, like he had mentioned, there was Harry, who'd brought him his clothes, the killer, and probably more. But back to Harmon. If he knew anything about McFall, I could count on him to be square with me.

“Come on, Joe,” he said, still trying to be friendly. “If Jim got you mixed up in this, all you have to do is tell me. Why take the fall for him?”

I told him I wasn't taking the fall for anyone.

Finally Springer got a phone call that a businessman from Cleveland had been shot over in Pennsylvania Station and they cut me loose. Everyone cares a lot more about a dead businessman from Cleveland than they do about a dead dope pusher from New York.

It was dawn by the time they let me out. I took a taxi back up to Twenty-seventh Street to get Jim's car and then drove home. I smelled like a police station. When I got to my room I washed up and lay down on the bed, just for a minute, before I got dressed.