hundred and fifty thousand. Cold cash, in your hand.”
“The IRS would love that.”
“If we were to pay a witness a contingency fee for his testimony, that would be a very serious crime, Mr. Caine. One single conviction for that sort of activity would topple even the most reputable company. A huge backlog of cases the company had won could be reopened. Nobody wants that kind of disaster, rest assured. Nobody.”
“Fuck!”
“What?”
“Mr.… Johnson,” I said, reading it off the business card he’d handed to me, “this is the first time in my whole life that I wish I had done the crime.”
He looked at me for a long minute. Looked hard. The gray got deeper. Darker.
“We’re not paying off on that jeweler’s policy. He’s got to sue us to get paid, and that case will still be open long after you walk out of here. On the back of the card I gave you is a number. Call it and you’ll reach me. Me, personally. Anytime, day or night.”
Then he got up and walked away.
So I was right—that guy was an insurance investigator, with plenty of clout behind him. I didn’t know if he had enough to pull tax records. On me, I’m talking about. But one thing I was sure of: “Robert Johnson” might not be his real name, but him being the kind of man to take a job all the way, that was real. I was glad it wasn’t me he wanted.
That jewelry-store owner, I wonder if he knew about the gray cloud yet. What I knew for sure was that he had nothing to trade. He wouldn’t have Solly’s name, much less me or Big Matt’s.
Solly was a master storyteller. Like that wild card, Jessop. I didn’t even know if there was any Albie who’d vouched for him. But when I thought about that gray man, I could see a lot more reasons why Solly would want to be sure of this Jessop guy. Even dead sure.
The best time to find what I wanted was mid-afternoon. The best place was outside Manhattan.
The club’s parking lot was nearly empty. Inside, a single dancer phoned it in on the pole. Half a dozen guys were watching, none of them sitting together. The whole joint was about as sexy as a morgue.
When the waitress came over, I told her what I wanted. She answered on autopilot: “Got anybody special in mind, big boy?”
“If I had my choice, it’d be you.”
“For real?”
“You’re the best-looking thing in this place, by far.”
“Once, maybe. But I’m not a dancer, not anymore. We’re not supposed to … Oh, fuck it. What can he do, fire me? But could you go another fifty, hon? If I don’t give the girl who’s up there now something, she’ll tell the boss.”
“A buck and a half?”
“I know,” she said, kind of sad. “For that kind of money, you could get—”
“A bargain,” I told her.
She leaned all over me, whispered, “You won’t be sorry, I swear.”
Then she told me to give her a few minutes, and how to find the room in the back.
They had a guy posted on the other side of the curtains—maybe to make the girls feel safer. Long hair, cowboy mustache, dungaree vest. I guess he was supposed to be some kind of biker. Looked like a guy who threw weights every day when he was Inside, then stopped the minute he got out. From the size of his gut, I figured he must have been out for years.
He eye-fucked me just to play the role, but his heart wasn’t in it—if he still had any left. I figured the girl had tipped him, too. Not to get me past Fatso, just so she could show off a little.
And she was right. I wasn’t sorry at all.
“So? You find everything you needed? At that loft, I’m talking about.”
“Yeah,” I told Solly. “Thanks. You had it set up real slick.”
He looked at me funny. Just for a second, but I caught it.
“You don’t mind Ken’s daughter getting a look at you, right? I mean, we went over this. You might need to stay here sometime. Who knows how things are gonna go?”
“Nobody,” I said. “Nobody knows.”
“You believe that?”
“Huh?”
“By me, ‘nobody,’ that’s people. Not …” He pointed at the ceiling.
“You mean, like God or something?”
“There’s no God ‘or something.’ Either there is or there isn’t. A God, I’m saying.”
“Okay.”
“You got one?”
“One what?”
He took a deep breath. Let it out slow. “All I’m asking, it’s a simple question, Sugar. I’m