Glitz

She said, “Oh, you. You think you’re so smart.”

The old lady had flipped, her mind out to lunch, till it came to money. Get on money she’d recite interest rates on T-bills, CDs and cash management accounts like a bank teller. “What’re you go

She’d say, “Never mind.”

The hell kind of an answer was that? “Never mind.” Then she’d be off again, worrying about a colored guy coming in and kidnapping her parrot, Buddy.

He said, “ ‘Ey, mom, the jigs’re making a fortune working the men’s rooms at the casinos. They turn the water on for the sucker going to the toilet, hand him a paper towel with a big nigger grin and the sucker gives him a buck for taking a leak.”

His mom gave him a dirty look and said, “Where on earth do you hear language like that?”

Now the cop was coming out of the hotel. He still had the beard from San Juan, but wasn’t using the cane anymore and didn’t seem to limp. He got back in the taxi and they drove off.

Teddy followed them down Pacific Avenue again. This time they turned off to pull up in front of Spade’s Boardwalk Casino Hotel and the girl, Linda, the friend of Iris’s on the plane, got out and went inside.

Iris was right the time she said this place was bigger than Spade’s down in San Juan. Man, that seemed like a long time ago. This place had the green neon spades decorating the front, but that’s all it was, a front, a snazzy new hotel lobby and casino of glass and chrome, green awnings, built onto an old hotel that had been here fifty years. Look up, there was the old hotel, like a different building. There were other places just like it, wearing shiny false fronts. Put up a glittery shell over an old Howard Johnson and call it Caesar’s Boardwalk Regency.

The taxi U-turned, went back to Pacific Avenue and headed south with just the cop now. Where was he going? Teddy followed. They drove along through early evening traffic to where Pacific petered out and Atlantic Avenue curved down to become the main thoroughfare, and kept going, Atlantic City to Ventnor, out of one and into the other without even knowing it, unless you were a native. Teddy was getting a feeling now that told him where the cop was going. Yeah, Surrey Place. The taxi turned off, came to a stop in front of the condo on the corner, where Iris had taken her swan dive. Teddy pulled to the curb on Atlantic Avenue. He couldn’t help looking up at that top floor, way, way up there, then watched through traffic going by as the cop got out of the taxi and went in the building.

Wasn’t that like a cop? Didn’t trust the local fuzz, had to come here and see for himself. “Well,” Teddy said out loud, “good luck.”

At first Vincent believed the building security guard was at least seventy. Jimmy Du

They sat in black leather director’s chairs Norma had bought him, drinking coffee out of thick pottery mugs, each with a big J baked into the glazed surface.

“Captain Davies was wondering,” Vincent said, “if any of the tenants are Puerto Rican.”

Jimmy Du

“You gave the captain a list of visitors.”

“Yes sir, they have to sign in right here or they don’t go upstairs.”

“How about deliveries?”

“We gave ’em a list. Florist, dry cleaners, ones the day man saw. On nights you don’t have many deliveries aside from maybe a restaurant, you know, like an order from the White House Sub Shop. There was a delivery from there. Fella had an extra cheese steak sub he gave me. Nice fella.”

“Did you know him?”

“Yeah, he looked familiar. But you get a turnover, those restaurant delivery boys, they don’t make a lot of money. You see ’em a couple weeks, they’re gone.”

“How about the night before?”

“The night before…” Jimmy Du

“The night of the day before. You give the captain a list of visitors?”

“Well, we musta talked about it.”

“You’re not sure if you did?”

“I guess I did, you know, if he asked.”

“Were you on the night before?”

“Well, I’m always around here, you know, since I live up in two-oh-nine. That’s why the tenants’ association, they know they can count on me.”

“Who was on the night before?”

Jimmy Du

“Just two of you work it?”

Jimmy Du

“Maybe that night before, somebody else was working.”

“Gee, I don’t know…”

“Could you look it up? It was only a few days ago.”

“Well, we don’t punch in or anything… you know.”

“Jimmy, this is pretty serious. Girl was killed…”

“Listen, I know it is. This town, it can happen. I love this town but… well, you got an influence here now you didn’t have in the old days, it’s different. The old days this’s where you brought your son to get his first piece a ass. You know, so there was plenty of action. But you had everything. You had your classy places, lot a big money had homes here. You had your shoobies, people’d bring their lunch in a shoebox, eat on the Boardwalk or out on the beach, never spend a dime. You had, I mentioned Victor Herbert, you had Sousa, ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,’ you had all kinds a entertainment. Horse that dove off the pier… Then people stop coming, I don’t know why. They’re watching color TV or something. Stores’re going out a business, hotels closing. So they bring in casino gambling to pick up the economy… Boy, people like to gamble, don’t they? Twenty-four hours a day, some of ’em.”

“I thought the casinos closed-what, four in the morning?”

“Four A.M. weekdays, six A.M. Saturday and Sunday, open again at ten. But this’s a twenty-four-hour town. You want something, say you want a game, no matter what time a day it is. You know what I mean? You can’t find it, you can arrange it.”

“Yeah?… I bet you’ve got some stories.”

“Make your hair stand up. Like I ‘magine you could tell a few yourself.”

Vincent paused. “Jimmy, I’m not with the police.”

“You’re not?” Wide-eyed. “But you said-”

“What I mentioned was, I talked to Captain Davies and he told me what they had. No, I’m not with Atlantic County.”

“You’re not?”

“I’m a good friend of the girl that was killed. No, I came up from Puerto Rico to make the funeral arrangements.”