Last Chance for Glory (16 page)

“You wanna know why I don’t drink, Kosinski?” Blake said, the question surprising him even as he asked it.

“Astonish me. Tell me you’re
not
an alcoholic.”

“First, the truth is that I do drink. In this business, there are times when you can’t refuse a social drink. But that’s where I let it go. One drink, held in my hand until the ice melts. Now, I used to drink pretty hard when I was in my early twenties. That went on for about five years. Most nights and every weekend I’d make the bar scene on the Upper West Side. I’d have a few drinks and look around for someone who deserved to get his ass kicked. If I couldn’t find a likely candidate, I’d keeping drinking until I didn’t care about the ‘deserved’ part. I was a shit-kicker and proud of it, Kosinski. Thought I was the baddest motherfucker in New York. Then one day I picked the wrong bar and got myself worked over with a matched set of Louisville Sluggers. Spent a week in Mt. Sinai considering my fate while the fractures healed to the point where I could walk on crutches. Thinking about what a jerk I was and that I couldn’t control what alcohol did to me. You following me here?”

“Sure.”

“So, the question, for me, was do you learn from your mistakes? Or do you go right back out there and maybe this time get killed? Guess which one I picked?”

“Well, it seems to me like you’re pretty belligerent even without the booze. You didn’t start usin’ dope, did ya?”

“Funny.”

“Look, Marty, I’m not saying you’re weak or stupid, but there’s a few things you should understand. Go back to what I said before. About giving the kid an alibi. About what happens if we
can’t
give the kid an alibi.”

“I’ve already thought about it.” Blake was steering the Taurus around a construction site on the Drive. Wishing he’d taken the Midtown Tunnel. He had to change lanes, but the yellow cab on his left was determined to keep him where he was. Blake watched the turbaned driver’s lips move, wondered if he was being called the son of a profligate donkey. Or if the Sikh language had words like cocksucker and shithead.

“And did you come to any conclusions?”

“No, I didn’t.” Blake slid in behind the cab, began to inch forward. “Beyond the obvious.”

“Which is what?”

“Which is that I’m being paid three hundred dollars a day plus expenses, some of which I mark up.” Blake grinned, then realized that Kosinski wasn’t going for it. Not this time. “If you can’t put Sowell somewhere else when the killing went down,” he said matter-of-factly, “then you have to find the actual killer.”

“And that doesn’t make you nervous? Being as the ‘actual killer’ was able to reach into the New York Police Department, the DA’s office, and maybe the New York Supreme Court and Legal Aid to put someone else in prison?”

“It would, if I thought it was gonna come down to that. But it’ll take a month before I get to the point where I have to admit that I can’t provide Sowell with an alibi. By that time, Steinberg’ll be ready to go into court with your testimony. He’ll also be sick of parting with two grand a week. Remember, he’s using his own money. No, Kosinski, I’m not worried about going up against the NYPD, because it’s never gonna happen.”

They drove the rest of the way in (from Marty Blake’s point of view, anyway) merciful silence. It was Friday night and there were people about, but this particular slice of Manhattan, sandwiched between the sex and violence of Times Square to the north and the illicit glitter of Greenwich Village to the south, lacked both the focus and the crowds associated with New York nightlife. Blake was making his way crosstown on Twenty-ninth Street, carefully skirting Penn Station and its piggyback neighbor, Madison Square Garden. Though he knew the Garden, home to the Rangers and the Knicks, was usually dark in the summertime, he wasn’t ready to chance a convention of Seventh Day Adventists or Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The drive took him past the stolid prosperity of Murray Hill’s carefully preserved brownstones, the newly renovated, low-rise office buildings clustered around Park Avenue South, the wholesale flower district, now shuttered, near Sixth Avenue, finally into a neighborhood of thoroughly neglected tenements.

The Chatham Hotel, a half block from the Hudson River, offered no surprises. A six-story, redbrick apartment building flanked by two identical six-story, redbrick buildings, it typified the decline of a once-proud neighborhood. Somewhere near the turn of the century, the landlord-owner had stood alongside his builder and surveyed the completed work with justifiable satisfaction. All three structures had elaborate cornices, complete with gargoyles at the corners. The lintels beneath the tall windows sported bunches of carved stone grapes and the broad stoops leading up to the front doors were protected by wrought-iron railings. It was good; it was solid; it would stand.

That pride was long gone, as long gone as the middle-class tenants who’d once lived here. The buildings on either side of the Chatham were abandoned, their windows closed-off with sheet metal, their doorways now solid walls of cinder block. The Chatham, itself, showed every indication of following its neighbors on the downward spiral from respectable housing to rubble-strewn lot. The mortar between the rows of brick had retreated so far, that it seemed, in the dim light of the single working street lamp, as if the bricks were actually floating. Broken windows, missing lintels, knots of ragged men sharing pints of Thunderbird, whores in day-glo spandex, drug dealers and their suburban customers—Blake felt slightly disoriented, as if he was again approaching the walls of the Columbia Correctional Facility. Meanwhile, Kosinski, already out of the car, was sucking in the night breeze like it was blowing across a field of tulips. Instead of the Hudson River.

“‘It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day in the neighborhood,’” he sang happily.

Blake, as he stepped out of the Taurus, watched the night birds drift away. They were fairly circumspect about it, floating down the block like styrofoam cups in a drainage ditch.

“Respect for the badge,” Kosinski announced. “There’s nothing like it. The darlin’ mutts and the darlin’ mopes all know we’re not coming for
them.
Yet they slink into the night like assassins making their getaway. Admitting that it’s our turf, in the end. Not theirs. Are we ready, Detective Blake?”

The lobby of the Chatham was predictably threadbare. Though, in Blake’s eyes, reasonably clean, it smelled of booze, piss, and puke, as if the stench of despair was an unavoidable element in the atmosphere its inhabitants breathed. There was no desk, of course, no bellboys ready to help with the luggage—just two uniformed security guards seated behind a table set in the middle of the floor.

“Gentlemen,” Kosinski walked over to the security guards, leaned on the table, let his jacket fall open in case they’d missed the hint.

“What you want?”

The guard who spoke was middle-aged, gray-haired, balding. His nameplate read “Jackson.” The second guard, much younger, didn’t bother to look up from the newspaper. His nameplate read, “Peterson.”

“Well the first thing I want is to know if either of you boys are on parole?”

Blake saw the two heads snap to attention, felt a half-smile crawl over his face, knew that if he had to do this himself, he’d be entirely lost.

“Why you wanna mess with us, officer?” Jackson muttered. “Bein’ as we ain’t done nothin’ to you.”

“The nature of the beast,” Kosinski returned. “It doesn’t like to be disrespected.”

“Well, that’s interesting.” Peterson folded his newspaper carefully, laid it in his lap. “Because I’m not on parole. Nor have I disrespected you in any way.”

“Now, you jus’ shut that college-boy mouth, Emil,” Jackson said quickly. “I can handle this shit without no help. Y’unnerstand what ah’m sayin’?” He waited until Peterson went back to his newspaper, then folded his hands. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”

“We’re looking for a man named Kamal Collars, Mister Jackson,” Blake said. “We understand that he has a room here.”

“No, sir,” Jackson shook his head. “Ain’t no Kamal Collars livin’ at the Chatham.”

“Look, we know he was visited here by a social worker less than a month ago. I can understand why you’d want to protect him, but he’s not wanted for any crime. We …”

“Don’t matter why you want the boy. He don’t live here.”

“This Collars’ mail drop?” Kosinski asked matter-of-factly.

“What you say?”

Kosinski reached across the table, snatched the newspaper out of Peterson’s hands, tossed it on the floor. Peterson looked at the paper, then started to rise. Blake, noting the smirk on Kosinski’s face, took a step forward.

“We’re not gonna have any trouble here,” Kosinski said. “Because all we want is your cooperation. As good Americans, you owe us that much. Am I right, or wrong?”

Jackson put a restraining hand on his partner’s arm. “Look, officer, I can’t make the man be where he ain’t. You could trus’ me on this. If I had him in the closet, ah’d take him out and give him to you.”

“That’s too bad, Jackson, because what I’m gonna have to do is knock on every door in this fuckin’ dive. I’m gonna have to roust the whores doin’ business here, interrupt the dope deals, report whatever I see to the welfare people. By the time I get done, this hotel’s gonna look like the buildings next door.”

“Damn, officer. Ain’t no need to do that. Mister Boazman, the manager, he’s comin’ in tomorra mornin’, tell you anythin’ you need to know.”

“Glad to hear that, Jackson, but tomorrow’s tomorrow and this is tonight and you’re lyin’ in my face.”

“No …”

“Try to look at it from my point of view. See, I know that you know who Kamal Collars is. I know you know how to find him if his caseworker should happen to show up unannounced. I know that you know that Kamal Collars has to have an address in order to be eligible for welfare. I know that you know that he hands a piece of his check over to your boss in return for the privilege of listing this sleazy fucking dive as his official residence. Now, truth be told, Jackson, I don’t get a thrill out of harassing ex-cons tryin’ to go straight. No sir, and if Mister Boazman was around, I wouldn’t be botherin’ you at all; I’d just go harass
him,
if you take my meaning. But Boazman ain’t here and I can’t wait for tomorrow morning, so if you don’t give me the straight shit on Kamal Collars, I’m gonna tear the hotel apart lookin’ for him.”

Jackson met Kosinski’s eyes for the first time. There was smoke in that meeting; Blake could smell it in Kosinski’s thin-lipped grin, in the cop-hate radiating from Jackson’s expressionless face. These were men who knew each other, who bargained on their own terms.

“Look, Mr. Jackson,” Blake said, “like I told you before, Kamal Collars isn’t wanted for anything. He didn’t commit any crime that we know about. Help us locate him, and we’ll be on our way. It’s that simple.”

Jackson glanced at his partner. “Get in the wind, college boy. I gotta talk private.”

“S
EE, GENTLEMEN,” JACKSON SAID,
once his partner was out the door, “what I got here is a problem. I ain’t sayin’ as I don’t wanna help y’all out, but I do got a problem.”

Blake sighed, shook his head, repeated himself. “We’re not here to arrest Kamal Collars. Trust us on this. Collars’ll be
grateful.”

“Ain’t about Kamal.” He pronounced it Ka-
mal.
“Old Kamal’s just about through. Street done ate him up. Gettin’ ready to shit him out, too. Kamal got the TB. Y’unnerstand what ah’m sayin’ here? He got the kind they can’t fix.”

Kosinski circled the table, sat in Peterson’s chair. He fished the Smirnoff out of his pocket, took a long drink, then passed it over to the security guard.

“Thank you, sir.” Jackson matched Kosinski, sighed contentedly, returned the bottle after carefully wiping the rim on his sleeve. “See, the problem is that me and my partner—and I ain’t talkin’ ’bout ol’ college boy—got a little thing goin’ that ain’t ezakly on the up and up. What we doin’ ain’ no crime or nothin’, but if my boss find out about it, we gon’ be shovelin’ some serious shit.”

“You takin’ money from the whores, Jackson?”

“The tricks sometime give us a tip to look out for they backs, but that ain’t what ah’m gettin’ to.”

Blake, standing off to one side, knew that he was out of it. That’s
if
he was ever in it to begin with. The hate had disappeared from Jackson’s eyes, the impatience from Kosinski’s voice and posture. Somehow, he’d missed the transition, and he felt slightly disoriented, as if he’d skipped a chapter in a spy novel.

“Well, it
is
gettin’ kinda late, Jackson. And my partner needs his beauty rest.”

“Okay, Im’a get to the point. Me and my man got forty cots set up in the basement. Charge two bucks a night to let folks sleep down there. What we givin’ ’em is security, if you take my meanin’. Don’t let in no crackheads, no knuckleheads. Don’t allow no fightin’, no stealin’, no fuckin’. Mens and womens can sleep in peace ’cause they steady knowin’ they gonna wake up with they goods where they left ’em. Plus, in the winter they could stay warm.”

“Sounds like an okay deal. Is Kamal down there?”

“Yeah, he with us mos’ every night.”

“And you’re afraid the manager—what’s his name? Boazman, right? You’re afraid Boazman’ll find out and close you down.”

“Nossir. Ah’m worried Boazman gonna find out and axe me for a piece. He ain’t the owner, y’unnerstand what ah’m sayin? The owner don’t come near the hotel; fraid he gonna get hisself busted for all the violations ain’t been fixed. That’s why he leave the managin’ to Boazman. Now, I ain’t greedy. Share and share alike, that’s my thing. But Boazman, he already collectin’ from the whores, and he ain’t sharin’ his shit. So, why I gotta take care of him?”

“No reason I can see,” Kosinski said. “And no reason why me and my partner should ever speak to Mister Boazman. Being as he doesn’t know anything about the work we’re doing. You wanna take us down, now?”

“Yeah.” Jackson stood up, stretched, snatched his flashlight off the table. “Y’all watch yo step.”

They made their way, Blake trailing, across the lobby and down a narrow, winding stairway. Two low-wattage light bulbs screwed into ceiling fixtures provided some illumination, but not enough for Blake to actually see where he was placing his feet.