Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy

MALLOY DON'T SING

The variables vary too much and the constants aren't as constant as they seem.

–finagle's fifth fundamental finding

"The fuck," Malloy said. "Where you get an idea like that? I don't sing, I never sing. Who's been handing you that shit?"

It was a small furnished room on Taylor Street in the San Francisco tenderloin. A sign outside the window advertised an establishment on the ground floor,

Les Nuits de Paris Massage.

Starhawk said, "Marty, I know three guys up in Folsom because of you. They're not sure. Each one of them, he says it might of been you, it might of been two other guys. I'm sure. I make it a point of honor to be sure about things like that. You pick up $20 here from Mendoza, $15 there from Murphy, and you tell them what you think they want to hear, mostly crap. To keep them interested, you give them a live one now and then, somebody you don't like. You and twenty other guys in this town. Don't crap me, Marty. I'm here to make money for you, not to give you a hard time about it."

Malloy said, "You're crazy. You should go see a psychiatrist. You must of been back on the reservation eating peyote again. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

"Okay," Starhawk said. "You're smart, Marty. You're so damned smart you don't admit anything, even when the other guy knows more about it than you do. My ass. You're so damned smart you're stupid, is what you are."

Malloy started to get up.

"Sit down," Starhawk said. "I keep telling you, I'm not here to give you a hard time. Listen to me, Marty, just a minute. I've got a century that's not doing anything, and it's yours." He opened his wallet and laid a $100 bill on the table. "Now, do we talk about its four brothers, and what you do to get them, or do you go on shitting me until I go out the door and find another guy that talks to cops?"

The massage sign below the window flickered on-off, on-off.

"Suppose I do it," Malloy said. "I mean, I'm not admitting anything, but suppose just this once I go talk to The Murph. What I got to know is, whose ass is in the sling, who goes up? You understand, I don't want somebody comes looking for me from the Syndicate."

"Nobody goes up, that's the beauty of it," Starhawk said. "You're just going to tell Murph about a guy got in today from L.A. He's here to do a job for Maldonado, see, and he got drunk and started shooting off his mouth about how funny it was, the guy he came to do the job on is a cop."

"Jesus," Malloy said. The massage sign flickered off and on again. "Don't tell me, let me guess. Starhawk, the man of bronze, two balls of cast iron and no more brains than a hamster. You got it in your head it's cop-hunting season and you're going to shoot one of them. And they trust good old Marty Malloy so much they'll spend all their time looking for an imaginary hit man from L.A., just because good old Marty tells them so. I take it all back. You don't need a psychiatrist, you need a new brain."

"Don't get your bowels in an uproar," Starhawk said. "It's not that kind of job. It's just a heist."

"What's this cop got, somebody comes all the way from L.A. to heist it? The crown jewels?"

Starhawk raised his fingers to his nose and made a sniffing motion.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Malloy said. "This cop, what he's got is a bag of snow, so he won't be talking to anybody else in the department when it turns up missing. I got to hand it to you, kid. Nobody could have set this up for you but another cop. The fuck, it would have to be his partner. Who's pissed because he didn't get his half, right?"

"Don't think about that, you might get so excited you'll talk about it in your sleep. The thing is, you just got to tell Murph about this Syndicate gun from L.A. and how funny he thinks it is, that this crooked cop is trying to sell some hot snow to Maldonado's boys and they just went and brought up this gorilla to take it from him, no down payment, no monthly installments, for free."

Malloy was grinning broadly. "Murph'll shit," he said. "He'll absolutely shit a brick."

"Yeah," Starhawk said. "I kind of think he will. You like it?"

"Kiddo," Malloy said, "if I wasn't so broke this week, I'd do it free. Just to watch him trying not to look like the cop I'm telling him about. The fat prick."

"I sort of figured you'd like it," Starhawk said. "Me, the only thing I regret is I can't be there to see his face myself."

"Yeah," Malloy said. "The fat prick."