Twisted

I got a Paganini story. See, one time his friends decided to rag him a little. . . . And what they did was they wrote a piece of violin music that was so complicated it couldn’t be played. Like, human hands just wouldn’t work that way. They left it on a music stand and invited him over. Paganini walks into the room and glances at the music then goes into the corner and picks up this violin and tunes it. Then, get this, he looks at his friends and he smiles. And he plays the whole thing perfectly. From memory. Blew them away. Is that a great story, or what?”
    Pitkin stared at Tony coldly for a moment. “You should’ve shot that man, Officer.” He turned away and climbed into his limousine. “The Sherry-Netherland,” he said. The door slammed shut.

    Tony called Jean Marie from the precinct and told her not to wait up. He was on special assignment.
    “It’s not dangerous, is it, honey?”
    “Naw, they just want me to help out on a case with this music bigwig.”
    “Really? That’s great.”
    “Get some sleep. Love you.”
    “Love you too, Tony.”
    Then he changed into street clothes and drove uptown in his own car. The jeans and sneakers were only for comfort; there was no way he could work undercover where he was going—the Johnny B pool hall on 125th Street—since Tony’s was the only white face in the place. And nobody had cop written on him as clearly as Tony Vincenzo. But that didn’t matter. He wasn’t here to fool anybody. He’d worked the street long enough to know there was only one way to get information out of people who weren’t otherwise inclined to give it to you: buying and selling. Of course, he didn’t have any snitch money, being just a patrol officer, but he thought he had some negotiable tender to shop with.
    “Hey, Sam,” he called, walking up to the bar.
    “Yo, Tony. Whatchu doing here?” the white-haired old bartender asked in a raspy voice. “Looking for a game?”
    “No, I’m looking for an asshole.”
    “Heh. Got plenty of them round here.”
    “Naw, my boy’s gone to ground. ’Jacked something tonight and got away from me.”
    “Personal, huh?”
    Tony didn’t answer. “So how’s your brother?”
    “Billy? Whatta you think? How’d you like it you spent four years in a ten-by-ten cell and was looking at four more?”
    “I wouldn’t like it one bit. But I also wouldn’t like being the teller he threatened to shoot.”
    “Yeah, well. He didn’t shoot her, did he?”
    “Tell me, how’d Billy boy like to be looking at maybe three to go ’stead of four?”
    Sam poured a beer for Tony. He drank down half of it.
    “I dunno,” Sam said. “Bet he’d like to be looking at one year ’stead of four.”
    Tony thought for a minute. “How’s eighteen months sound?”
    “You a beat cop. You can do that?”
    Tony decided that he’d have the mayor’s support on this one. Cultural New York was at stake. “Yeah, I can do it.”
    “But listen up. I ain’t getting my ass capped for snitching on bad boys.”
    “I saw him in action. Don’t worry. No backup. No gang colors. He also picked on the wrong guy and’s going away for a long, long time. He’ll be old and gray ’fore he get out of Ossining.”
    “Okay. You got a name?”
    “No name.”
    “What’s he look like?” Sam asked.
    Tony asked, “I look like I can see through ski masks?”
    “Oh.”
    “He’s six-two, give or take. Heavy. Was wearing black sweats and black-and-red Nike Air pumps. Oh, and a fake Rolex.”
    Because no crook was dumb enough to wear a three-thousand-dollar watch on a job—too easy to get messed up or lost.
    “And he’s a pool player.”
    “You know that?”
    “I know that.”
    Because whatever the detectives from downtown thought, Tony knew it’d been cue chalk dust that Pitkin had seen on his hands. No drug dealer or junkie’d be so careless with coke or smack that he’d get visible residue on his hands. And if he did, he’d lick them clean in a second. That’s why Tony was here—he knew the perp had to be a serious pool player if he’d got chalk on his hands before a job like this. And while there were a lot of pool parlors in New York City, there weren’t many that catered to serious players and there were fewer still that catered to serious black players.
    But, after thinking for a long moment, the bartender shook his head, sad. “Man, I wish I could say I seen him. But you know Uptown Billiards?”
    “On Lex?”
    “Yeah,” Sam said.