in here for working that same kind of racket on the street.
I’d X’ed out my old apartment the minute they’d clamped the cuffs on. I wouldn’t ask anyone to go back there for me; anything of mine was long gone by now. The super wouldn’t know nothing. The landlord was some company name. And the cops weren’t running a storage facility.
I didn’t have much in there, anyway.
They’d vouchered what I had on me when I was picked up. Only the three grand and change got turned into six C-notes.
I wondered what they’d done with the pistol, but I wasn’t worried about trace evidence on any of my clothes. After the job, we’d all gone back to this place Solly had rented. Left every stitch of clothes in these plastic bags he’d left behind. Took a good, long hot shower. Rubbed ourselves down with alcohol. Nails, hair, everything.
Then we each put on the stuff we’d been wearing when we first met up there.
“A good thief takes money, not chances,” Solly said. He was always saying it.
He believed it, too. Solly never went along on any job he put together.
I had a phone number for him. I knew it was just a pay phone, someplace in Manhattan. Indoors, so nobody could try and set up shop with it.
But first I had things to do.
I had almost seven hundred left over—what I had on the books and my gate money. Not enough. I wasn’t going anywhere near my share until I was carrying more than high hopes.
The money was enough for a prepaid cell and a night at this hotel every loser in the city knows about. One step above a flophouse, and they still charge over a hundred a night. Taxes, you know.
I didn’t even bother to undress. The room made my cell look ritzy. The lock wouldn’t stop a drunk who forgot his room number, never mind a guy who knew where to kick. No phone.
I could smell the disinfectant they probably hosed down the dump with every day. Didn’t see any roaches, but I wasn’t going to take a chance on bedbugs—or worse—in that foul-looking pad they called a mattress.
After I fixed the place so I’d get some warning if anyone tried to visit me, I rolled up my jacket on the floor and closed my eyes.
The next morning, I found a pay phone.
“What?” is all the guy at the other end said.
“I’m an old pal of Solly’s,” I said. “Haven’t seen him for quite a while. About five years.”
“Ain’t no Solly here, friend.”
“Let me leave you my number, just in case he walks by.”
When he didn’t hang up, I knew I was connected.
I went back to that fleabag. They kick you out at eleven-thirty in the morning, pounding on the doors like they had search warrants. When I hadn’t heard anything by noon, I checked in for another night, just to be off the street.
The same desk clerk took my money. If he remembered me from the night before, you couldn’t tell. I signed the register with a different name. He didn’t look at it, just gave me the key and the usual speech about how I’d be held responsible if … It was a long list; I walked off while he was still talking.
My new cell rang a little after dark. I pushed the button, heard: “Don’t say my name.” Solly’s voice.
“Okay.”
“Say something that’ll show me you’re who I think you are. Nothing stupid, understand?”
I knew then that Solly had already recognized my voice from the “Okay.” Solly liked me. He knew I was certified stand-up. Hell, he knew I’d just finished proving it all over again. But he never had too high an opinion of my IQ.
“Thanks for the warning,” I said.
I could hear him chuckling before he said, “You got a place?”
“No.”
“Good. Why don’t you drop by? We’ll talk over old times.”
“When?”
“I’ll keep a light on for you.”
The light was at the back of an old apartment building, hanging over the stone steps down to the basement. It sat inside a little cage of wire mesh. You couldn’t break the light by accident, and if you tried to poke something through the wire, a pair of giant navigation lights like they use on fishing boats would blast off right in your eyes.
There was a camera mounted behind the door. The lens was like the peephole for an apartment door, and the camera’s motor drive would start firing as soon as the lights went on. A cable