The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [65]
Haggens smiled, this time more genuinely. “Well, you’re sure a surprise, Doc.” He was the second person from the docks to tell me that. “Turk said you was a chump.”
Although the sentiment hardly came as a revelation, it stung all the same. “But Turk is dead and I am here.”
“True enough,” Haggens admitted. He pulled out one of the drawers of the desk and reached inside. For an instant of panic, I feared he would withdraw a weapon, but his hand emerged instead with a bottle of whiskey. “Drink?” he asked.
“No, thank you,” I replied. “The last time I drank here, I was much the worse for it.”
Haggens laughed. “Oh, yeah. You had the ‘champagne.’ This is the real stuff, though.”
“Thank you, no.”
Haggens shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, pouring one for himself. “Have a seat, then.” He gestured toward a wooden chair against the wall. “Okay. What do you want to know?”
“First of all,” I said, “do you have any idea who killed Turk or why?”
“Not a clue. Going to have to do better than that, Doc.”
“Who was the man last Thursday night that Turk argued with, then? What was the argument about?”
Haggens rubbed his hand across his chin. Apparently, agreeing to speak with me about illicit activities was not the same as actually doing so. “All right,” he said finally, more to himself than me. “Don’t know the gent’s name. Been in here once or twice before. Always for Turk. Must have money though … good clothes … expensive. What they was fighting about? Well, Turk was no stranger to artificial stimulation, if you know what I mean.”
“You mean the man came here to ask Turk for drugs. What kind of drugs?”
“People down here don’t mix in each other’s business, Doc. Not good for the health. Turk was supposed to have something new … special. It ain’t from here. Comes in by boat, I think.” Haggens eyed me. “Understand, this is just guesswork. I don’t know none of this personally.”
“Of course,” I replied.
Haggens regarded me skeptically, then went on. “Anyways, this gent come in last Thursday all in a lather. Said I was to get Turk right away or there’d be bedlam. So I went and got him away from you and the ladies. As soon as Turk got there, this fella starts screaming at him, wanting to know what was the big idea about something or another.”
“The man wanted drugs?”
“Not sure. Looked more to me like a deal gone bad.” Haggens downed his whiskey and poured himself another. “I seen a lotta fellas in need, so to speak, but this gent didn’t have the right attitude for that. Talked more like an equal than a customer.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“Nothing all that clear. The gent told Turk that he’d better do right by him. Turk warned the gent to watch who he talked nasty to, especially down here, ’cause folks end up dead on the docks all the time. That seemed to take the old boy’s steam out.”
“There was someone else, wasn’t there? Someone who came for the other man.”
“Yeah. Popped in just for a minute. Stayed by the front door. Never saw him before or since. Little fella with a big mustache in a bowler.”
Since Haggens had proved so amenable to imparting information, I resolved to get all I could. “Turk had other businesses going, didn’t he? Something more in the ‘getting rid of description?”
Haggens eyed me. “You sure know a lot about a lot. He helped women who got themselves in trouble.”
“Helped?”
“Best help there is, Doc. Can make quite a bit of cash that way. Maybe you want to consider taking up where he left off?”
So it was true. Turk, you evil man, preying upon desperate women in crisis and amassing five thousand dollars doing it. You deserved to die. I felt for a moment that I would vomit. But I had learned enough of Haggens to maintain a composed demeanor at all cost.
“No, thank you,” I replied, as casually as I could. “Where did he do all of this? Not here?”
“Here?” Haggens looked genuinely aghast. “You looked like a pretty smart fella until that, Doc. Here?”
“Where, then? He must have had some base of operations