Hip-Deep in Alligators, page 14
part #3 of Jimmy Flannery Series
"What comes next?" he says.
"I got to get the file on Aguilar opened up again. I got to tell the cops what I surmise. I got to get this Cheetch and this Little Foot off the streets."
"I could be indicted as an accessory," Delvin says.
I still don't turn around. I don't want to face what I know is coming next.
"I done a lot of favors, a lot of good things in the life, Jimmy."
"That goes without saying."
"A lifetime should count for something against one little slip of the foot."
The clock seems to get louder.
"I can't let them two go on doing what they're doing."
"I'm not suggesting you do that."
He's waiting for me to say it. I won't say it. It's got to come from him. He's got to name the favor and ask the favor.
"What I'm suggesting, if you could go for it, is we tell the cops how we figured out together this thing Cheetch and Little Foot was doing. We make it like we was in it to trap these bastards. What good would it do to have me go to trial, put me away? I'd never live to serve the time."
The clock gets louder and louder. "Favor for favor," he finally says.
I shake my head. "No, Mr. Delvin. You gave me my break a long time ago. I never had a chance to pay that back. I was always in your debt. Sometimes you held it over me. I won't tell the story like you just told it, but I won't say no when you tell it. That's what I'll do. That's how I'll pay you back. You won't owe me no favor. And I won't owe you no favor. We'll be even-Stephen next time we meet. Nobody owes nothing to nobody. That's what I'll do."
TWENTY-EIGHT
Now, I've got a very big problem. By keeping Delvin out of it, I got nothing very much to take to the cops except a very wild story. All Delvin's got to do, because he's got my promise, is not tell anybody anything. Just let it die.
I still don't know where Cheetch and Little Foot keeps the crocodilians or where Jaime Mineiros is, or even if he's alive. It could be he was in with Aguilar on the ill-fated skim. It could be he saw Aguilar murdered. It could be he's dead, too.
I won't be able to go to the cops until I find out where the reptiles and the cocaine lab is hid, unless they've already busted them up and abandoned them.
I've been snookered by the old war-horse. I'm beginning to wonder if Delvin's really even sick.
When I get home, Stanley is sitting on the stoop.
"Hey, Jimbly," he says. "You ain' startin' up with holy stuff again, is you?"
"What do you mean, Stanley?" I say.
"You ain' goin' to do like you done wid Mr. Bilina what lived downstairs an' died an' fell outta his coffin an' you made like he wuz a saint what grew wings an' few up to hebbin outta his gwave."
"Well, I don't have any plans like that, Stanley," I say.
"Some girl jus' went up to you fwat what had a thing on her head. She weren't no nun, but sure did act like one."
"Well, I don't know what that could be all about. Why don't I just go up and find out?"
"You do that, and keep me posted."
Upstairs in my flat, Mary is sitting at the kitchen table with this young woman dressed in a dark dress, cotton stockings, plain shoes, and a shawl covering her hair, though it's very warm even with the fan going.
They both look at me. I smile, not knowing what this is going to be all about.
"You don't remember me," the young woman says.
"Well, no, I don't. Should I?"
"Probably not. The person you saw earlier wasn't really me." She grabs my hand and starts to kiss it while she's going down on her knees.
"I wish you wouldn't do that."
"I will be grateful to you for the rest of my life for bringing the light of the Holy Ghost to me," she says while I'm dragging her back up on her feet.
"Would you sit down, Miss. . .?"
"Connie Landowski. You don't remember me? Why should you remember me? I was laying up there on the floor at Cheetch's, wearing a red wrapper what you could see through, and sucking on a free-base pipe." She blushes and turns her head away. "It makes me ashamed even to talk about it."
"Well, judging by your present appearance, I'd say you decided to change your life-style and got nothing to be ashamed about."
Connie looks at Mary and says, "Will you listen how he forgives me. But, then, what can you expect from an angel what carries the Holy Spirit around with him?"
"I don't know that he's an angel," Mary says.
"Well, a messenger from God. At least a messenger. Oh, you should have been there. There he was surrounded by evil men," Connie says, turning those shining eyes on me again, "and when they laid hands on him to do him harm, the Lord sent the Holy Spirit in the form of two white doves. I knew it was a sign."
"A sign?" I say.
"For me. I've been reborn. . ."
"I'm glad for you."
". . .and I give up all my wicked ways right on the spot."
"How did Cheetch take that?"
"He don't know. I told him I had to use the toilet, and then I slipped out the door, went to the YWCA, and traded that whore's gown with a gym teacher for what you see me wearing now."
"You look nice."
She puts her hands on her cheeks and peers at me like she's looking out of a nun's wimple.
"So, what can I do for you?" I say.
"No, no. It's what I can do for you and, by doing for you, doing for myself."
"How's that?"
"I can show you where they keep them beasts."
TWENTY-NINE
I decide the best time to go down in the sewers is after midnight.
Mary and Mike don't want me to do it, now that they know what it's all about, but I tell them that I know the tunnels better than the criminals know the tunnels—which of course isn't true in this particular case, but which they never think to dispute. Besides, they both know by now that if I decide to do something, I'll do it and that's that.
I still got Joe Pakula's pistol.
Connie Landowski and me drive up in my Chevy almost to the Contagious Disease Hospital, which is just before you get to the House of Correction. There's a concrete maintenance hut just the other side of the Sanitary Canal. I got a master key that I carry on my key ring all the time so it's no trouble for me to open the green door and let us in.
I wait while Connie gets into Mary's galoshes. We both got a flashlight.
Mostly we make our way along the ledge. In some places we got to get down into the water, but it's only about ankle-high, this being a storm drain, not a sewer. The only thing we got to worry about is a sudden summer storm. Get caught in the underground storm drains at a time like that, you could drown just like people drown in flash floods out in the desert. We come to a vaulted niche in the brick wall and Connie gets down on her knees.
"This is the part I really hated when Cheetch brought me down here. But we're almost there."
"Shussh," I say.
We stand there like statues with our ears hanging out.
"I thought I heard something," I say a little sheepishly. "There's always something moving down here, and sounds travel miles through these tunnels. But we might as well keep it down anyway now that we're getting close." I get down and touch Connie on the ankle. "You're showing me something I never knew about."
This passage was supposed to be a blind tunnel where workmen could sit down for a minute and rest.
"Does it go straight?" She nods.
"Okay, then, let me go first."
I start crawling through with Connie behind me.
What somebody found out by reading the old maps, or knew because he was that familiar, was that there was a wall only one-brick thick between this tunnel and whatever was on the other side, and somebody had busted through. I crawl over the rubble. About twenty yards more and I stick my head out into what's not another abandoned sewer line or storm drain, but a big catch basin constructed out of brick. I'll bet it was built a hundred years ago or even more.
I hear a booming noise and for a minute I think it's pressure being pushed along by a rush of water. Then I see this big crocodilian coming at me. He's hauled himself out of the shallow water and is out to defend his territory.
Then everything seems to happen at once.
Connie lets out one hell of a scream that goes racketing around the catch basin. Cheetch and Little Foot come scrambling out of a pile of nets and other gear. This skinny Latino I figure is Jaime Mineiros comes running toward us with his arms outstretched, shouting in Spanish some thing about saints, miracles, and saviors.
Connie says real loud, "Who the hell are you shoving?"
I turn around to see Captain Beeston crawling into the cave. I turn back to see the reptile with his mouth wide open about to grab my head. I stick the pistol out straight in front of me and fire off all six shots. The animal lets out a roar what could scare ten years off your life, and goes thrashing back into the water. It struggles for a minute and then just floats belly-up in black water stained with red.
Already I'm feeling bad I did what I did, wishing I didn't have to kill the creature, which only went after me because it was scared. Federal types, you can tell from their wing-tipped shoes and gray pin-striped suits, are waving guns around and asking where the dope is. Beeston is pointing a couple of his men, wearing flak jackets and baseball caps, to go here and there.
"I thought you was Homicide," I say.
"That's how much you know," Beeston says.
THIRTY
So, it was pretty much like I figure. Beeston's getting nowhere trying to find out where Cheetch and Little Foot is keeping the crocs and the cocaine lab. They have a nose for cops and feds like the nose a hound dog has for rabbit.
He figures they might not have a nose for lamb, though, so he winds me up, knowing warning me off is the best way to keep me doing whatever I shouldn't be doing, and lets me go. Then, all he's got to do, is keep an eye on me and maybe this talent I got for getting into things but coming out all right, does his job for him.
It's just like I figured it, after I find out about the secondary effluent flush. Jaime Mineiros is taking care of the crocs and caimans and alligators which are trucked in with the pasta in rubber bags in their bellies. The stuff is refined and shipped out to other places the same way. Sugar gets greedy and tries to skim a little extra. Cheetch and Little Foot won't have nobody doing like that to them, so they kill him, not knowing Mineiros is down there bringing this croc some live birds, until they spot him. They done it with a knife, Mineiros says, and he figures they're going to do the same to him.
He turns around to get the hell out of there, when this water comes down like a flash flood, pushing over the pen he's built to keep the reptiles confined and sending Sugar Aguilar right into this croc's mouth.
By the time they chase the beast downstream, after almost getting drowned themselves, the croc has almost sawed Sugar in half and Aguilar is on his way down to the harbor outlet where I find him.
Cheetch and Little Foot need Mineiros to get the croc tied up and to build up the fence again. They keep him down in the sewer, telling him if he don't stay there his wife and him won't get to see Dulcinia grow up to be a woman because she'll be dead.
That's why, when he sees Connie, me, and the cops bust in the way we did, he starts giving thanks to every saint he ever heard about and calls me his savior.
While he's telling me all this, I get a thought what gives me a chill. After Cheetch and Little Foot kill Mineiros, they would have probably done the same to Delvin. No matter how stupid he was getting hooked up with them people, my old Chinaman don't deserve that.
THIRTY-ONE
The small wedding Mary wanted started out just that way.
Just her mother and Aunt Sada and my old man.
But then, of course, we had to invite Joe and Pearl Pakula, Stanley Recore and his folks, and all the people what lived in our building. Also the neighbors up and down Polk Street and across the street. Also the nurses, orderlies, and some of the doctors from Passavant. Also Dr. Chapman and his wife, Gloria, who work down in the abortion clinic where Mary still pulls volunteer shifts, but not as many as she used to.
There was the Party workers in the Twenty seventh and, since I sometimes stray out of my ward and meet people in other wards, political types from the Tenth, First, Fifth, Twenty-fifth. . .Well, you know, like that.
Professor Luger and some other people from the zoo.
My fellow workers from the Sewer Department. Others from Streets and Sanitation, Parks and Recreation, City Hall, and the police. Also a good portion of the firemen in Chicago.
Well, to tell the truth, we have the wedding in City Hall, after all. Not in the Marriage Bureau, but in the grand rotunda.
At the reception there's almost two thousand guests, which would have me going to the loan sharks to pay the rent for the next fifty years except the people from the precinct, the ward, City Hall, and the Democratic Party pay for the decorations, the food, and the drinks, close off one block of Polk Street by our flat, and throw me the biggest party the neighborhood has ever seen.
My old man is there wearing a tuxedo, looking, he says, like the toastmaster at a dinner for the Knights of Hibernia. Aunt Sada, in powder-blue chiffon, is on one of his arms and Charlotte, in rose chiffon, on the other.
Janet Canarias is there breaking hearts and doing a little campaigning for the future, it doesn't hurt.
Mabel Halstead, though, is probably the best looking woman at the party.
Connie Landowski comes up to me and Mary, looking very pretty in a flowered dress and high heels.
I tell her how nice she looks.
"For a minute there I was ready to join the convent," she says. "Then I get to thinking of how them doves came to be flying around my head when I was so high on crack. I don't think God goes around taking the time to save fallen sparrows by sending a messenger with an Irish kisser and red hair. I think it was a miracle, all right, an everyday sort of miracle. Whatever you want to call it, I'm off the stuff and I got a job over to the dress shop, which is not that great, but which is better than what it was and will get better."
A while later, Jaime and Consuelo Mineiros and Dulcinia arrive. He is looking very neat in a black suit and a white shirt without a tie. Consuelo's wearing a skirt with a hundred colors in it. And Dulcinia's looking wisely at me like she does.
They thank me for finding Jaime and I say they got nothing to thank me for.
"Are you all right?" I say. "Are you having any trouble with the authorities?"
"Captain Beeston comes to see us," Consuelo says. "He tells us not to worry. He believes Jaime had no knowledge of what this Cheetch and this Little Shoe were doing. He says not to worry about Immigration. It's not his department and"—she frowns a little—"as far as he's concerned we give our testimony and then we fall through the cracks. Is that all right, to fall through the cracks?" she says.
"In this case, it's all right. Go have some food and wine. Enjoy yourselves."
"This is a day for celebration," Jaime Mineiros says.
Dulcinia reaches up and gives me a kiss on the cheek.
Mike comes over and asks Mary to dance.
Aunt Sada is somewhere else, charming a dozen men and boys.
"Dance with me?" Charlotte says.
"I was just about to ask."
She is very light in my arms. As I'm swirling her around, she's smiling and looking like a girl.
"You're a very good man, Jim," she says.
"You say that like you're worried. I'll take the best care of Mary I know how."
"Oh, I know that."
"It's what I do for a living? I know it might not seem like—"
"It's honest work. Who can ask for more than that? I've said it before, and I mean it."
"What, then?"
She leans back against my arm and looks into my face like she's studying my fate.
"You take too many chances, Jim. Too many chances."
"I know I do. It might not look like it, but I really don't take foolish chances."
"Maybe, so far. But will you back off someday when you know the chance is a foolish chance but your pride's at stake?"
"Somebody said something about life being what happens while you're waiting for life to happen. We'll just have to live and find out, won't we?"
She sighs and lets me hold her a little closer. "Oh, Mary, what a lucky girl," she says, and makes me feel like a million.
I don't know if I was ready to have Delvin appear at the party or not. A message and a gift arrived at the flat sometime before, and the word was he was still in bed.
But I suppose I wasn't very surprised when his old black Packard pulls up. Dunleavy and Delvin get out of the back. Ray Carrigan, the Party leader, gets out of the front and Delvin's driver goes off to find a place to park.
Dunleavy and Carrigan give me and Mary the usual hugs and handshakes, then they step aside and wander off. Mary gives my hand a squeeze and does the same. I'm alone with Delvin.
The old man shuffles forward, half a smile on his face.
"I didn't know was I welcome, Jimmy."
"Everybody's welcome to Jim and Mary Flannery's wedding."
"I know how hard it is for you to believe me when I say I knew and didn't know. If somebody said such a thing to me, I would say he was nothing but crazy. But let me put it a different way. I would have come to my senses. Sooner rather than later. I would have taken the scheme apart. Aguilar's death just sent me into confusion. I saw it in your eyes when you knew the truth. It broke my heart to see I'd broke your heart."
"I knew you was tricky and sly and cute, but I trusted you never to cut certain things too fine."
"There's no way I can take it back. What we got to do is see if there's some place to start again."
He's pulling out all the stops on the organ, shoving an onion up my nose, tap-dancing on my heart, and depending on my good nature. He's an actor who'd give Spencer Tracy and Paul Muni a run for their money. I know what he's doing and he knows I know and I know he knows I know. Like that. But underneath the performance and the con is the truth of his feelings.
