“FiFi. Everybody calls me that.” He hooked two thumbs to indicate himself. “Fidel Figueroa. FiFi.”
Rook said, “Wouldn’t that be Fih Fih?” The silent reproach of the entire room fell on him and he held up a surrendering palm. “But who am I to edit another man’s gangsta handle?”
FiFi kept to his talking point. “So, no money?”
Back when she was a uniform, Heat had arrested scores of guys like Figueroa, usually working street corners on Eighth Avenue off Times Square. If it wasn’t selling counterfeit sunglasses and handbags, it was running short cons like Find the Pea to fleece unwitting Nebraskans in a rigged game. They came in all sizes, shapes, ages, genders, and colors, but all shared the dodgy moves, quick eyes, and body ticks of the career hustler. And they were always seeking the elusive one-up. Even in a police department interrogation room. “Let’s call it banking one for good citizenship,” she said.
The guest brushed his knuckles across the graying line of his chin strap beard then said, “Hey, worth a shot, huh?”
“Why don’t you just tell her what you know about Fabian Beauvais?” said Feller, pushing himself off the wall and looming over the grifter. Heat got a strong manifestation of Randall’s history as a street detective, knowing how to take physical intimidation right up to the line—and effectively.
Fidel scooted his chair an inch away and cowered. “Sure thing, the Haitian. Smart dude, that guy. Rough life, but had the touch, you know?”
“I don’t know,” came back Feller. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Nikki hoped the hustler wasn’t playing them because this was her first real opportunity to get a sense of her victim’s activities. Maybe FiFi would also give her some red meat, too. What that constituted, she would only know through careful listening. This bullshit artist gave her a lot to wade through.
“He had astucia. Cleverness. Some guys grow up getting shit on, and all they get is mean.” He brought his forefinger just close enough to his thumb to make a crack to peek through. “These many, just this much, get clever instead. Fabby was new—maybe off the boat just a coupla months after the big quake. That’s when he joined our, um, enterprise.”
“Picking through trash?” said Feller with a sniff. He took a seat on Figueroa’s side of the table and rested a boot on the man’s chair. This time FiFi didn’t shrink. On the contrary, he gave him a derisive side-glance.
“You don’t know, man, you have no clue. You think we were like these hoboes or some shit? Fuck that, man. We were pickers. But not for cans and bottles.”
This felt like it was heading somewhere. Nikki took the contradictory route, seeing now how conflict opened him up. “Well, what else do you call it, climbing into trash bins? I sure as hell wouldn’t call it an enterprise.”
Rook fell in step. “No shit. An enterprise? That’s usually a business undertaking that calls for slightly more resourcefulness than fishing for empties to recycle.”
“What about scoring hundreds of thousands? Millions. Would you call that an enterprise?”
“I would,” said Heat. There were numerous ways to get a witness to talk. Intimidating, cajoling, inducing, begging. She read FiFi as a man who needed to boast. So she fed the hungry egotist. “And you personally know of such a thing?”
“Know it? Hell, I worked it.” He checked himself in the observation mirror and said, “This may get me busted, but what I’ve seen? Whoo. Mind-boggling.”
“I can be boggled,” said Rook. He asked the others, “Anybody else?”
“I worked on a team for an organization that sent hundreds of us out in the field, day and night, to harvest the good stuff out of the trash.”