A Dark and Broken Heart (17 page)

That would be the first port of call—to find out about the sister. When had she died, when and where had she been found, and who had found her? It may have been handled at the 167th, and if so it made his life a great deal easier. The last thing he needed was to officially involve another precinct in this mess.

He left the apartment, knocked on Elizabeth Young’s door.

“I’m done in there for now,” he said. “Before I go, I just want to clarify these dates. The sister was murdered on the twenty-sixth, right?”

“Well, I don’t know when she was murdered, but that was when they found her.”

“Okay, and then you saw Isabella and Melissa on the thirty-first, New Year’s Eve?”

“Yeah, New Year’s Eve.”

“And you hadn’t seen them at all between the twenty-sixth and the thirty-first?”

“No, not a sign of them. Like I said, I figured they’d gone away visiting family or something, the sister having died an’ all.”

“Okay,” Madigan said. “And between the time they arrived and when you knocked on the apartment door a couple of hours later you heard nothing suspicious?”

The woman smiled and shook her head. “My brother is deaf like a plank. He has the TV on so damned loud I have to go shut myself in the kitchen. World War Three could break out in the lobby and I wouldn’t hear a damned thing.” She hesitated, and then she frowned. “Why? You think something happened here? She gone and got herself killed as well?”

“I don’t know, Ms. Young. I really don’t know. I’m just trying to find her right now, that’s all.”

“Well, if you do find her tell her to get her ass back here pronto.
Another two weeks they’re gonna come empty the place out, paint it maybe, and then it’ll be someone else’s apartment.”

“If I see her, I’ll tell her. And is there anything else that you think might be useful for me to know . . . people who came over, recent visitors, anything out of the ordinary?”

“Not that I can think of,” she replied. “I’ve told you everything I know.”

“That’s really appreciated, Ms. Young.”

Madigan gave her his card, asked her to call him if there was any news of Isabella Arias or her daughter. He did not tell the woman that Melissa Arias was lying in a bed in Harlem Hospital. Such a piece of information would be everywhere in the building, everywhere in the neighborhood, before nightfall. And the last thing he needed was for word to get back to Sandià that he was looking into the murder of Maribel. He did not see how they could be anything but connected. The sister is murdered, the woman and her daughter disappear, and the daughter is found in Sandià’s house. Two plus two makes four.

He left the building, and as he walked back to his car he began to appreciate that whatever concern Sandià possessed about Melissa Arias, it was a great deal more important than three hundred grand and the death of his nephew.

Madigan was scared. There was another facet to everything now, another factor to take into consideration. Something was going on, and that something was important enough to have justified the killing of Maribel Arias and the kidnap of the child. Maybe Isabella was dead too. Maybe she’d been cut up and scattered around some other part of the city, and it was merely a matter of time before someone found her.

Madigan, however, did not think so. He believed that Isabella Arias was out there. Hiding, terrified, perhaps unaware of what had happened to her daughter. Above all else, she needed to be found, and found fast. Madigan needed to get to her before Sandià.

He started the engine and headed back to the 167th. There were case files on the sister’s murder that he needed to locate, and if those files were outside the Yard then he was screwed.

More than he already was? For sure, no question about it. If there was one thing he knew from hard-won experience, it was however deep the hole there was always a way to dig it deeper.

27
CLEOPATRA DREAMS ON

T
here is usually one way to get things right, but there are countless ways to get it wrong
.

Among the things you don’t want to get wrong are your family, your marriage, your kids, your career, your finances. All the important shit
.

The little things don’t matter. They get fixed or they fix themselves
.

With me, it’s always been the other way around, and in hindsight I have recognized the problem. I am short-sighted. I see today, tomorrow, maybe next week. Guys who get things right—the important things—look a little farther. They have five-year plans. I can’t comprehend five years. What does that even mean? Sometimes twenty-four hours is a struggle. A day. A single day. And I’m expected to be planning the next two thousand? Some kind of joke that is
.

No, I have been short-sighted. I have listened to the epithets and clichés. People who aim for nothing are sure to hit it. Some people dream of success while others get up and work hard at it. To hell with that. You need a hit. Just one good hit, and it’s all done and dusted. Sandià’s money was going to dig me out of a hole. Hell, the guy can afford it. He makes that much money between every heartbeat. But me? No, not me. I get it organized, I get it straight, I get it all figured out—all the details. But I miss the important shit. I miss the vitally important life-or-death significant keystone that holds the whole thing together. You don’t ever crap in your own backyard. I should’ve known that. What was I thinking? Chewing pills like M&M’s, drinking a fifth before dinner, another fifth before bed. Jesus, could I have been dumber? Sure I could. Have been dumber than that before. Dumb enough to get involved with Sandià. Kind of bullshit stupid thing was that? Well, it wasn’t at the time. Smartest thing I could’ve done. That’s what I thought. I can play both sides. I can make a little here, a little there, keep the PD happy, make some busts, all the while the left hand is right behind me taking a fat bonus from Sandià for keeping the noise down around his place
.

And now? Now I have only one advantage. It’s simple really, too simple to ignore. Sandià trusts me. Why else would he ask me to take care of this thing? He needs the girl alive; he needs to know who took his money and killed his nephew. So who does he call? He calls Vincent. Good old Vincent. Vincent will take care of it. Vincent can play both sides. Vincent can see around corners. This is what Vincent does. This is Vincent’s specialty
.

And it all comes down to the money. Only thing you need to get anyplace at all
.

Am I dreaming?

Is this all a figment of my imagination?

Have I just taken too many pills and emptied too many bottles to even remember where reality and imagination divide?

Jesus, what the hell have I done here?

What the hell am I doing now?

And if I get this wrong? If I screw this up? Hell, I don’t even want to think about it
.

I think a thought, and it’s a strange thought, an uncharacteristic thought—at least for me. For a second—just a second—I wonder what it will do to the children. Cassie, Adam, Lucy, and Tom. What would it do to them if they found out the truth about their father?

Angela, Ivonne, Catherine . . . what they think doesn’t matter now. They’re all grown up. They can handle it. They knew what they were taking on, and if they didn’t when they started they sure as hell did by the time they were finished
.

It was a game. That was all. Just a game
.

And then it became something else. What, I don’t know, but it became something else. It got serious. It started to mean something
.

I have to get back to how I was. I have to be the old Vincent Madigan, the one who didn’t give a damn for anything but today, right now, the next five minutes
.

Right now anything else would be suicide. It’s all right to give a damn, but you have to give a damn about the right things. That money has to wind up somewhere, and that will be the clincher. Someone has to take the fall for this and then it will all settle down. I got to think fast, think both ways at the same time, and then we’ll get through and out the other side
.

Things always look better looking backward. Slow down, take a sidestep and you’ll never get there. Hindsight may well be the cruelest
and most astute adviser, but until something is past there ain’t no such thing
.

This is not going to be the end for me. This is not the thing I will be remembered for
.

This is not going to be the thing that kills me
.

28
GOOD TIMES

F
inding Moran was the easy part. Everything else was a different story. Moran was heavy-set, taller than Walsh, and when he opened the door to the walk-up he looked down at Walsh with an expression of certainty. Walsh was a cop. There was no doubt in Moran’s mind.

“Richard Moran?” Walsh asked.

“Who’s asking?”

Walsh had his ID out. “Detective Walsh, 167th Precinct.”

“And if I am?”

Walsh took a step back. He didn’t want to appear too aggressive. “A friend of yours was killed and I wanted to see if you could help me—”

“And why would I want to do that?”

Walsh hesitated. He looked back and to the left, across the hallway toward a woman coming out of her apartment with a squalling baby. “No reason,” he said, turning back to Moran. “Except maybe self-preservation.”

“How so?”

“What goes around comes around,” Walsh said. “He was into a thing, the thing went bad, and anyone who was connected might run into some difficulty.”

“Who’s to say I even know what you’re talking about? Who’s to say I was connected?”

“You were his friend?”

Moran shrugged his shoulders. “I got a lot of friends.”

“Sure you have, but I don’t think Fulton did.”

Moran frowned. “Larry Fulton?”

“Yeah, Larry Fulton.”

“Shee-it.”

“You didn’t know he was dead?”

“Nope, didn’t know a thing.”

“Well, he is,” Walsh said. He took another step backward.
“Someone shot him in the stomach with a .44. There ain’t a great deal of his cheery smile left.”

Moran looked genuinely concerned for a moment, and then he seemed to realize that giving anything away was a mistake. His expression was deadpan once again.

“But, hell, you know how it is,” Walsh said. “Shit like this happens every which way each and every day. If you didn’t know he was dead, and you don’t know anything about what he was working on, then I’ll leave you to your business.” Walsh turned, his hands in his pockets, and took a step down to the sidewalk.

“Hey, wait up,” Moran said.

Walsh turned.

Moran came out of the doorway. He had on a sleeveless T-shirt, jailhouse tats scattered up and down his arms, around his shoulders, the base of his neck. His jeans were scuzzy, his boots worn-out, the laces hanging loose. He looked three days short of dereliction, and yet there was something about the way he was dressed that seemed contrived. Maybe he looked this way because he was supposed to look this way, to fit in, to belong.

“When’d he get it?”

“Yesterday.”

“He alone?”

“Can’t say.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

Walsh didn’t reply.

“Hey, man, it’s a give-and-take scenario here.” Moran smiled, held out his hands in a conciliatory fashion.

“He was not alone,” Walsh said. He didn’t move, still standing there in the hallway, hands in his pockets, everything about his body language saying he was really not that interested, that he really had other more important places to be.

“And what would you say if I said that he told me he was doing a thing?”

Walsh nodded slowly. “I’d say that I was interested in what he might have said to you.”

Moran held Walsh’s gaze. Everything that was going on behind his eyes was right there, as clear as day.

“Whatever it is, I can help you,” Walsh said.

“You don’t know what it is,” Moran replied.

“Do I want to know?”

“That depends on whether you want to know anything else.”

“And this is a conversation you want to have in the hallway?”

“You ain’t gonna wanna sit in my kitchen, man. I don’t have no old lady cleanin’ up after me.”

“You think I give a crap about your housework?”

Moran smiled. “Well, maybe I’m not so concerned about the dirty dishes as something else.”

“Then I’ll just see the dirty dishes, my friend, and I won’t see the something else.”

“You don’t have no warrant; you don’t have no probable cause. I’m inviting you in here and that’s all.”

“That’s all, Richard.”

Moran laughed. “Hell, man, no one calls me Richard.”

“What do they call you?”

“They call me Cutter.”

“Is that what you do?”

“I do a lot of things, man, but we ain’t talkin’ about me today. We’re talkin’ ’bout Larry Fulton and what he might have told me.”

“So lead the way,” Walsh said, and when Moran turned and went back in the apartment Walsh followed him.

Moran had been right. The place was a sty. The kitchen sink was stacked high with dishes, the smell of rotting food from the trash can almost overpowering, but it was the presence of mason jars, coffee filters, surgical tubing, and bottles of hydrogen peroxide that gave up the show. Moran was cooking tina—smalltime sure, but big-time had to start somewhere.

“A sideline,” Moran explained, aware of the fact that here was traction on him if Walsh needed to press him for information.

“I don’t see anything,” Walsh replied.

“We all got selective blindness when we need to, right?”

“Right.” Walsh took a seat at the table. He didn’t look at the upended coffee cup, mold growing on the spill of liquid that must have gone unattended for weeks. He didn’t concern himself what whatever filth he might find on his jacket and pants when he left. He just sat there and waited for Moran to talk.

Moran was silent for some time. He lit a cigarette and smoked most of it before he spoke. He surveyed his stained fingers, the backs of his hands, even the sole of one sneaker, and then he shook his head slowly and said, “We had some good times.”