LOSERS LIVE LONGER (Hard Case Crime Book 59) Read online

  I guess whenever you see an amateur doing something you do professionally, you feel a certain pique. I almost wanted to shout at him, “Stop looking directly at your subject, dummy!”

  His lips were tightly compressed and his eyes straining, white-rinded, glued on the Yaffa.

  I followed his gaze to the sidewalk tables. Which of the remaining patrons was his study? I knew who I’d be watching, the striking young woman with the Degas-bronze profile and long brown hair that fanned around her face whenever she leaned forward to sip cappuccino or look up and down the street. I could barely take my eyes off her myself.

  She was waiting for someone, checking the watch on her slender wrist inside the sleeve of an ochre yellow silk blouse.

  At another table, a gray-haired couple in matching checkered-flag outfits who’d been consulting a fold-out map refolded it, paid their bill, left. I turned to my squirrel, but their departure meant nothing to him.

  I went back to studying the lanky brunette, all the while keeping up my cell phone act, repeating my location, what time it was, what time it was going to be, my location, what time it was, etc. There was something irresistible about this woman, something that made you think of Pavlov and dogs and bells, or maybe moths and flames.

  Twenty minutes went by. People left, a few more arrived, but my squirrel still watched and waited, and the brunette remained alone. She’d been stood up. It was a crime.

  A nearby churchbell rang in the noon hour.

  The woman signaled the waiter to bring her check.

  My squirrel stopped his swaying and stood still and flexed his hands. Gentlemen, start your engines.

  The check came and she dug into a suede shoulder bag as she went inside to pay. She came out again, left her tip, and we were on our way.

  She looked west to First Avenue, waiting just that little bit longer before she started walking east in the direction of Avenue A. Long legs in black pants like sheer silk pajama bottoms.

  My squirrel started right off. He took the job of shadow literally, matching her step-for-step on the opposite side of the street. I sized him up, wondering what he was capable of. Hundred twenty pounds tops, but plenty of bunched-up nervous energy.

  I waited. Thirty feet. In my too-loud outside voice I said my location one last time, then goodbye, call you later, and pocketed my imaginary phone. Forty feet. I turned and looked in the shop window of the artist De La Vega’s store. Some wild stuff on display as well as handmade books of his artwork and collections of his writing. I’d have to come by again when he was open. Fifty feet. I started after them.

  At Avenue A, she stopped for the light to change, so I caught them up a little. He matched her on the opposite corner, but at least he didn’t stare right at her. She crossed the street and entered Tompkins Square Park. He followed at a slackened pace.

  She led us through the park, passed stone chess tables occupied by men playing cards, snaking by the sprawling green lawns where people lay bathing in the sun, many of them drably dressed street kids sleeping off the previous night’s debauch. We went by where the bandshell used to be before the 1998 riots and the destruction of the shantytown. Now there were jungle gyms. We threaded our way southeast along the narrow leafy paths, finally exiting at Avenue B and East Seventh Street.

  Our parade continued south along Avenue B, through an Alphabet City unrecognizable to anyone who hadn’t arrived in the last fifteen minutes. Most of the older businesses—dive bars and dodgy bodegas—had been consumed, replaced by upscale boutiques, curtained lounges, French crepe shoppes; new money remaking the neighborhood in its own image. There stood a hair & nail salon where once had slouched a beer-drenched saloon.

  But down these gentrified streets a man must go…

  Was a time, I wouldn’t’ve walked in this neighborhood except under extreme duress or a high cash retainer (often one and the same), but times had changed.

  Or so we’d been told. Statistically, crime was down to a record low in the city. But statistics only measure what they’re designed to: crimes reported and arrests made. When crime goes underground, out of sight, and the crooks become more sophisticated in avoiding detection, then the stats are useless to judge by and it’s time for a new means of measuring.

  The numbers people saw reported supported the hyped image of a new New York City, crime-free and user-friendly. “Come one, come all, you’ll be safe as houses. Bring the kids. This isn’t your grandpa’s NYC.” Only when they get here, they discover it’s a lot less like Sex and the City and a lot more like Law & Order.

  The truth is the city isn’t an animal you can domesticate. Those who imagine it is make the same mistake as people who try keeping grizzly bear cubs as pets: sooner or later, they get their faces clawed off.

  We passed by a grade school and the Sixth Street Community Garden. At East Fourth Street, the woman crossed the avenue and continued east, halfway down this darker, less-tenanted, tree-lined street, coming to a stop at a waist-high black wrought-iron gate in front of a trim three-story townhouse. This building hadn’t even existed the last time I’d been here. The stark newness was offset by its neighbor, a six-story pre-war brownstone, painted white, with the black trails of rusted porticos running down its facade like tear-streaked mascara.

  The young man was directly across the street as she went in.

  I tightened up on him, closing within twenty feet. Too close really, but I wasn’t sure what he was liable to do.

  The front gate swung shut behind her as she mounted the white cement steps to the door. She stirred the contents of her suede bag until she brought up keys, then opened the door and went in.

  He watched. I watched. We watched. After she’d gone, he crossed the street to the gate and looked up at the door. A brass plate was mounted to its right. I supposed he read it. Too far for me to make it out.

  The first floor windows had inside shutters of light-colored wood and they were closed. The second floor windows had dark, gypsy-shawl patterned curtains which were drawn shut.

  The top-floor windows had the same curtains. One of them twitched as my eyes rested upon it.

  My squirrel, “Jeff,” had his hand on the front gate, but he didn’t take it further. He turned left and walked away. I followed with my eyes, not losing sight of him as I crossed the street to the gate. I noted the address and the name engraved on the townhouse’s brass plate.

  Rauth Reality.

  I read it again. Rauth Realty.

  My squirrel was thirty feet away. Enough of a head start. I followed.

  He led me to the next corner where he turned right on Avenue C/Avenida Loisaida and headed south into the barrio. The cover of trees thinned out to stark empty sidewalks crumbling in spots. Fewer people around and more CLOSED signs on businesses yet to be revitalized. Fantasy-art murals on the side street brick walls.

  I kept him on a long leash, but the precaution was unnecessary: leading me down C, past East Second and a half-block further to a five-story apartment house, he never once looked behind him.

  I thought it funny, a guy follows someone but never looks behind himself to see if he’s being followed.

  Yeh, hilarious. Same was true of me.

  A familiar grinding sound turned my head, but I saw no one behind me. And then didn’t hear the sound again.

  The building was #27 Avenue C, a dilapidated tenement, one of the older buildings still remaining on the block, decades of touch-up paint, olive and gray, peeling from the bricks like scabby flesh.

  Its entrance was between a TV repair shop with a CLOSED sign in its dusty window and a scaffolded four-story building covered in wind-torn blue tarp. No construction workers on the scene. A project that had begun with great fervor but stalled in the economic slump. The wave of gentrification stuttering, falling behind.

  As my squirrel inserted his key in the street door, I broke into a jog, spanning the short distance between us. I was a few feet away when the door shut.

  It was a battered metal door cove
red with wild tagger scrawls, which looked like the miscellaneous symbols that appear above a cartoon character’s head when conked.

  The clouded view into the vestibule was a small square window of chicken wire-reinforced glass, grimy-yellow and etched by battery-acid graffitists.

  I strolled up and peered in, hoping just to catch a glimpse of him maybe going up the stairs. But when I looked, he was still in the entryway, removing a key from the door of one of the mailboxes, top row, third from the left. No mail though, his hands were empty.

  A car sped up the avenue, music on mondo, a thudding Latin beat and sugary rhythm that sustained in the air long after it passed, like the echo of a discharged cannon.

  I hung back from the door, casually studying my watch. 12:18. Inside, the squirrel opened a second door and entered the building’s hallway. He went toward the stairs but passed by them, on to a rear left ground-floor apartment. Bit of luck.

  He stopped with the key in his hand and knocked on the door twice. He said something, then opened the door himself and went in.

  The squirrel was in his nest.

  I turned my gaze back to the mailboxes. A name on the one he’d opened. I tried to read it, shifting my head around, standing on my toes, looking for a less clouded section of glass. First initial: L. Last name: A-N-D—was that an R?

  “What you want?”

  He was a thick-featured Latin about 60 years old, dressed in pine-green overalls and a pine-green visored cap, carrying a bucket full of black water and a mop the color of storm clouds. He had a keyring crammed with about 30 assorted keys clipped to his belt. The building’s super. From the corner of his mouth hung a small smoldering cigar like a soggy stuffed grapeleaf.

  I smiled. “Afternoon. Was looking to see if a friend of mine still lives here.”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  I took a chance on the name.

  “Andrews.”

  His face softened, his mug looked like a flabby kneecap. He had bushy gray eyebrows below which his black eyes were bright but deep-set like two coins out of reach under a grate.

  He asked cautiously, “You a friend of Mr. Andrew?”

  “Yes. Is he still living here?”

  He shook his head sadly. “Mr. Andrew went away. The people who stay in his place are no good. Very bad.”

  A vapor of alcohol traveled on his words.

  “Really? Well, that’s not right.”

  “But I don’t know how to call Mr. Andrew,” he insisted, grieved nearly to tears. “I would tell him of how bad these people are.”

  “Well, maybe I could get a message to him for you.”

  “You call Mr. Andrew?” His dark eyes sparkled. “Yes? You talk to him, you tell him to call me, Luis, right away. He has my number, but I give to you.”

  From his back pocket, he pulled a stubby pencil and a brown paper bag with a pint bottle still in it. He wrote something on a corner and tore it off and handed it to me.

  “You tell him about this man and this woman? Specially the woman. She’s…” He searched for the word in English, but couldn’t find it and shrugged ashamedly.

  “Bad?” I offered.

  “Loco,” he said, and he said it darkly. “When I tell them not to leave garbage always in the hall outside their door, she punch a hole in the wall by my head. I call police, when they come she tell them I was drunk. She lies and says I punch the wall. They almost arrest me. I call the police and almost they arrest me. Ha! But other building people come out, come down to the sidewalk, and tell police who I am. Good building people, nothing like them.” He spat on the sidewalk.

  I thought of the woman at the hotel who’d bashed me over the head. I asked him, “Red hair? Rojo? This woman?”

  He shook his head. “No, blonde. Like an angel.” His lips contorted with the irony and made a wet-fart noise. “But she’s a diabla. You know? If devil were a woman. You know?”

  I described Jeff to him and he nodded his head. “Yes, him. I see him at the garage, the one on Tenth, across from near the pool. He’s not so bad, but she is…she is…”

  “Bad?” I tried again.

  He nodded. “Bad. You tell Mr. Andrew, he come back, see what these people do. I know Mr. Andrew, he will not like what they do. But I don’t know how to call. You call?”

  I nodded my head, assured him I’d make the call.

  He smiled broadly. Several bottom front teeth were missing, the rest slanted into a craggy yellow W.

  He landed a meaty, callused hand on my shoulder.

  “You tell?” he asked again, now with a smile.

  “I will.”

  He gripped my shoulder and squeezed hard in appreciation. Don’t think it could’ve hurt more if he’d meant it to.

  He pulled out the paper bag from his back pocket again, but not to jot down a number this time. He unscrewed the cap and offered the open bottle to me.

  I asked what it was. He told me, but it didn’t sound like anything I’d ever heard of, maybe he said it in his native tongue.

  What the hell, I thought, it had to be nine a.m. someplace. I took the bottle and had a gulp from it.

  His grin broadened and that should’ve warned me, but on I glug-glugged and swallowed.

  Heavy duty tequila. Tears streamed from my eyes. I whooped and cast out a demon. The warmth in my chest was active and alive, but at least not rebellious.

  He took the bottle and had a small dainty sip before replacing its cap. He shook his head, chuckling.

  He reached for the jumble of keys on his belt and deftly selected the one he wanted, opened the building’s street door. He propped it open with his bucket.

  “You call, you tell Mr. Andrew,” he said and turned his back on me, getting back to his work.

  He sank his mop into the bucket’s murky black water and swirled it around.

  I walked away, essentially off to do the same myself.

  Chapter Six: THE RIGHT CLIENT

  I walked, steady enough, retracing the route back to the townhouse the woman had entered. I stopped, again steady enough, but no mistake, I was feeling fine. That good was tequila was good, that tequila was.

  I opened the gate and mounted the steps lightly, Vesuvius milk swishing and swaying behind my belt and spreading all through me a warm, cascading buzz. I pressed the bruise on my temple and it hardly hurt.

  On impulse, I pushed the single intercom button, no idea what I was going to say when someone answered. I guess, if not for the shot of tequila, I might’ve handled it differently. First gone back to my office and thought about it, maybe done something else.

  But I can’t entirely fault the liquor. She shared in the blame. And was the more intoxicating from the very first sip.

  It’s not that I believed in love at first sight, just that as I saw her for the first time up close, I believed in nothing else.

  She came outside to see me rather than speak over the intercom. Hot, smooth, and languid as honeyed liquid, she slipped out and closed the door behind her. Softly, she leaned her back against it.

  “Yes? Can I help you?”

  Her frank eyes were almond-shaped and black as a bird’s. Eurasian? A dark complexion, deeper than tan. Maybe the gypsy curtains were more than mere decoration. A small flattish nose over thin lips, the ends of which curled into an arousing smirk. A wicked, impish chin and a slender downy neck with deer-taut tendons and a lively, animated throat.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes yes yes.”

  Some wise old freak once said, you can have anything you want in the world, all you’ve got to do is want it so badly it means more than anything else. Lot of people you talk to have no idea what that means. If you’ve never been hungry ever in life and you want a sandwich, you don’t really want that sandwich. But when you’ve been hungry for weeks, starving, no relief in sight—and you come across a sandwich, a stacked, lightly toasted club sandwich, so fresh there’s beads of dew on the pert overhang of lettuce? You want that sandwich.

  That kind of want. B
ut fuck the sandwich. I wanted her.

  On top of the way she looked, I sensed something I never could resist. She was and/or was in trouble. And I could see from the look on her face she was trying to figure out just what I was. Would I be her knight in shining armor or another dragon?

  A low sound in her throat, not a laugh, more like a confused cough. I couldn’t stop staring at her and she wouldn’t break eye contact with me. Like when someone’s got a grip on a high-voltage wire and can’t release it, and the people around watching him, his brains frying, sparks shooting out his ears, are all thinking to themselves, Why doesn’t he just let go?

  She blinked and broke the spell, or at least suspended it.

  “Who are you looking for?”

  “You. Well, not exactly.”

  What had I been thinking? She wasn’t all that pretty. Her features heavy, her nose a lump. Really kind of ugly, or else that was all just from the ponderous frown she leveled at me.

  “Not exactly,” she repeated. She had some trace of accent I couldn’t place, but not American, more guttural, her words spoken under her breath. “Could you be exact?”

  “Possibly. Given time.”

  “I do not have time, I’m about to go out.”

  “But you just got back in.”

  She cocked her eyebrow, but ignored the deliberate provocation. “And now I go back out again.” She pushed the intercom button and, when she heard a crackle from the speaker, said, “The door.” The latch clacked and she pushed the door open behind her and took a backward step.

  “That’s in,” I said, feeling playful.

  “What?”

  “You’re going in. You said you were going back out again, but that’s in you’re going. I learned all about it. From this guy, Grover. Shaggy blue hair, red nose, thin dangly arms? No? He also taught me about near and far. If you like I could teach you sometime.”

  “Yes. Let us begin with far.” She started to swing the door closed.