The Whites: A Novel by Richard Price

says there’s a smell from 5D? I don’t want to find you, see some three-legged alligator tortured you for your ATM code, left you with a screwdriver in your ear.”
    “Yeah, well.” Appleyard’s duffel slipped from his grip, the perfume and cognac bottles clinking on the smooth stone floor. “I can’t see that.”
    The African tenant finally took off, crossing the lobby on her way to the front door, Pavlicek not even raising his eyes to her as she glided past the couch, her voluminous housecoat brushing his knees.
    “And stop handing that shit out or you won’t even make it to two days. What’s wrong with you?”
    “How much you want for the cabin and the car,” Appleyard asked, peeking into the duffel for spillage. “Because I know you want something.”
    “For a week?” Whelan said, squinting at the ceiling. “Fifteen hundred.”
    “And I’m supposed to worry about everybody else takin’ me off, huh?”
    “Make it two thousand and I’ll come with you.”
    “Charge me for you to come to your own house? You got a TV up there?”
    “Of course.”
    “They sell groceries up there?”
    “No, everyone crawls around eating grass.”
    “Bars?”
    “You stay out of bars.”
    “Naw, I’m gonna stay right here,” handing Whelan back his keys. “This is my block.”
    “I tell you what,” Whelan said. “I’ll sell you the car for twelve grand.”
    “I don’t think so.” Appleyard laughed, then hauled the duffel back up on his shoulder and took off down the hall to knock on doors.
    As they finally headed out to the street, Pavlicek falling in with them silently, Billy’s cell rang, Stacey Taylor again, Billy killing this call from her too.
    Collin’s Steak house was situated in the financial district on a small cobblestoned lane lined with landmark nineteenth-century merchants’ homes and low shebeens named after Irish poets, the whole plunked down like an antique snow globe dwarfed and surrounded by a futuristic ring of office towers. They were the first to arrive, and the publican Stephan Cunliffe, a Belfast transplant who by blood mandate loved cops and writers, brought over a tray of Midleton shots before they had even taken their seats.
    “Sláinte,” Cunliffe said, hoisting his own.
    Although Irish himself, Billy could live the rest of his life without hearing that particular toast again.
    “Is Mr. Brown coming?”
    “Redman’s got a funeral service uptown,” Billy said.
    “And the lovely Ms. Assaf-Doyle?”
    “As per usual, she’ll be coming when she comes.”
    Which was twenty minutes later, swooping to the table like a rush breath, her enormous dark eyes beneath blue-black hair, wet and combed straight back as if she had just come from a workout, and wearing, as always, her trademark hippie coat, calfskin shearling trimmed with vaguely Tibetan embroidery and frogged buttons.
    “Where’s mine?” Yasmeen said, looking at the empty glasses.
    Cunliffe snapped his fingers, and a fresh round appeared as if the waiter had it behind his back all along.
    “My job this week?” Shrugging off her coat. “I had a girl in the dorms from India, lost her virginity to some douchebag in the Village, the guy made a tape and now he’s threatening to send it to her parents if she stops putting out, so I had to go up to his skank-ass crib and scare the piss out of him, like, call out the dogs of war, right? Oh, and today? They had me investigating a missing sweater, anyways, besahah’, ” draining her shot. Then: “So, Billy, you caught the Bannion job?”
    “Four in the morning.”
    “Penn Station, a real clusterfuck, right? Any leads?”
    “At this point, ask Midtown South. I’m just the night porter.”
    “You ever see that movie? I almost asked for my money back.”
    “What movie,” Whelan said.
    “Anyways, here’s to Bannion,” hoisting her second glass. “When bad things happen to bad people.”
    “Hear, hear.”
    “First Tomassi, then Bannion,” she said. “It’s like