Free American Gangster by Max Allan Collins Page A

gathered his things, then on the way out offered one last piece of advice: “Store it in a cool, dark place, Frank.”
    â€œSounds like you’re talking about Harlem,” he said, with another brief smile, and let the kid out.
    Then Frank drew all the blinds and set himself down in his Eames chair, put his feet up and did his mulling, meditative thing. He needed a whole new way of doing things and probably a whole new crew and he had to think it through. . . .

8. OD
    At the morgue, an assistant medical examiner pulled open a cadaver drawer for Richie Roberts to confirm an ID. The detective who’d called him down was an old friend of both Richie and his ex-partner Javy, who was the corpse in question.
    Even knowing Javy had been using didn’t prepare Richie for the wealth of scabs and tracks on not just his arms but the stomach, legs and toes of the longtime addict his ex-partner had become.
    The detective, Jacobs, asked, “You know his girlfriend, Rich? Good-looker. Started out as one of his informants, and then he moved in with her.”
    Richie said, “Beth. Her name was Beth. Don’t remember her last name.”
    The heavy-set figure in white that was the assistant medical examiner slid open another cadaver drawer, as matter of fact as an office worker at a file cabinet.
    â€œThat’s her,” Richie said, staring down at the skinny, once-attractive body with its own array of needle marks.
    â€œShould’ve seen their pad,” Detective Jacobs said. “Like a buncha animals lived there.”
    â€œI’ve seen it,” Richie said. “Wasn’t so bad, once.”
    â€œWell, trust me, you don’t wanna drop by now.” Then the detective said to the assistant ME, “Picked a good night for it, huh? Grand Central in here.”
    â€œIt’s been like this every night, lately,” the ME said with a fatalistic shrug. “I’m lucky if I get home before midnight. Lot of careless people in the world.”
    â€œLess now,” Jacobs pointed out.
    Richie took a look at the small pile of personal effects on the chest of his ex-partner’s cold corpse: a few crumpled dollars, car keys and a half-empty package of what appeared to be heroin in blue cellophane.
    â€œThis needs to go into evidence,” Richie said, and took the bag.
    The assistant ME filed Javy away, and on his way out with the detective, Richie held up the bag and asked, “This tell you anything? Blue cellophane?”
    â€œThat’s the junkie’s current brand of choice, my friend—Blue Magic. Stronger stuff than usual. May be why we’re having such a carnival of ODs, lately.”
    Richie offered the bag to the detective. “You should take this. It’s your evidence.”
    â€œEvidence of what? Javy Rivera being a first-class idiot?”
    â€œHe was a good cop, once upon a time.”
    The detective grunted. “That fairy tale is over.”

    In the lounge of the small police gym where Richie liked to work out, a television was going, though nobody was watching it right now. He found himself trying to listen, as he lifted weights in sweats and tennies, though the report wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know.
    â€œ
Since 1965,
” a typically authoritative baritone intoned, “
law enforcement has watched the steady increase of heroin addiction, no longer exclusive to big city neighborhoods, and along with it a rise in violent crime. Now unaccountably, it has exploded, reaching into cities as a whole—our suburbs and towns—our schools.”
    Only a few other cops were working out, many of them overweight types who’d been sent here “or else,” but whether fit or fat, the cops had one thing in common: none of them wanted a damn thing to do with Richie. Sometimes they’d even walk in, see him and walk out.
    â€œ
Someone is finally saying enough is enough,
” the narrator