A Dark and Broken Heart (21 page)

He grabbed the handrail and took another narrow corner of the well, and down he went—another flight, and yet another—and from the sound of her footsteps he believed he was gaining on her,
and it spurred him on. And then he could see her hand as she took another corner two flights below. Madigan sped up, barely kept his footing as he went down another three, five, nine steps. His heart was pounding. His breath came short and fast. He felt sick. He believed his heart would burst in his chest before he ever managed to catch her, and then he had his gun in his hand and he was shouting, “Goddammit! Stop running, for Christ’s sake! Stop running or I’m gonna fucking shoot you!”

It was another two flights before he caught her.

He was breathing heavily, almost unable to stand, and Isabella Arias was backed up into a corner of the well, her face varnished with sweat, her eyes wide, her mascara streaked across her upper cheeks, her hands clenched in tight fists. She looked like a cornered animal, ready to unsheathe claws and strike back any way she could before she died.

“Isabella Arias,” he gasped, and he held his gun in such a way as she could see it without aiming it at her directly. “You run again I’m gonna shoot you in the goddamned head, okay?”

She said nothing. She glared at him.

“You understand me?”

An almost imperceptible nod of the head.

“Okay, okay . . . so calm the hell down. I am not here to arrest you, all right? I am not here to take you in. I came here to see your daughter—” Madigan tugged the last two prints of Melissa out of his pocket. “See?” he said. “I am trying to find out who shot her, okay? This is what I am doing here. Nothing else. I need to talk to you. You can help me find out what happened.”

Isabella looked at him with disdain and contempt. “Screw you,” she hissed through her teeth.

“I know you lost your sister . . . and now this has happened . . .”

“You are police,” Isabella snapped. “You are police. You people don’t care what happens to us . . . You are just pigs . . .”

Madigan lowered the gun further. He was still breathing heavily, still feeling the tight fist of tension and nausea in his chest. He looked at the woman, and he saw fear and hatred and anger and pain and grief and a thousand other things.

And he felt it.

He felt it good.

He stepped back and closed his eyes for just a second, but that look in her eyes went right through him, and for a second he didn’t even know his own name . . . he just felt the piercing nature
of her stare, and he was no longer anonymous, no longer inconspicuous, no longer a ghost . . .

Madigan looked back at her and he could see himself. He could see what he had become, and it terrified him.

“I am here to help you,” he repeated, and the words came out slow and staggered.
I. Am. Here. To. Help. You
.

Isabella Arias sneered contemptuously. “People like you,” she said, “are only ever interested in helping themselves.”

Madigan could not reply.

“My sister is dead . . . murdered by that bastard. And now my daughter is shot and lying in a hospital, and there is nothing I can do to protect her . . . And you think I don’t know about the police . . . You think I don’t know he is paying you to always look the other way . . .”

“Who are you talking about? Who murdered your sister?”

Isabella Arias—fierce and scared, her eyes wide, her hands clenched in fists, her whole body shaking with rage and hate—just looked back at Madigan with utter contempt.

“Fuck. You,” she said, emphasizing each word so precisely. “You cannot help me. No one can help me. He will find me and he will kill me, and then he will kill my daughter . . . And there is nothing anyone can do to stop him . . .”

33
SECRET FIRES

I
t did not take a great deal of time, nor a great deal of work, for Walsh to find Bernie Tomczak. He was in a bar no more than three or four blocks west of the 167th, and when he saw Walsh come in the door his eyes went this way and that. Bernie could not have known that Walsh was looking for him, but Bernie knew cops.

“Jesus,” Walsh said when he sat down across from the man. “Who the hell did you have an argument with?”

Bernie said nothing. He shook his head.

“Hey, I have nothing on you,” Walsh reassured him. “I spoke to a couple of people who spoke to a couple more, and I was told I might find you here.” Walsh looked around the small, dimly lit watering hole. It was suitably
atmospheric
to obscure all manner of transactions, suitably crowded and noisy to minimize the chance of being overheard, but it was a dump. No question about it. Aside from nursing what appeared to be a fractured jaw, both eyes blackened, a map of tiny hemorrhages across the upper half of both cheeks, Bernie was also holding on to a glass of something or other.

“Can I get you another one of those?” Walsh asked.

Bernie nodded. “Sure, why the hell not? JD straight, no rocks, no water . . . And make it a big one.”

Walsh got up and walked to the bar. He glanced back over his shoulder, and Bernie was already halfway to the door. Walsh took three or four strides and grabbed his arm.

“Bernie . . . seriously . . . I just need a word or two, that’s all. I buy you a drink, we sit down, share a few words, I go away. That’s it, no bullshit.”

Bernie seemed to hesitate then. He appeared to be considering the odds. Wrench himself free and run. Lull Walsh into a false sense of security, catch him off guard again, and then run. Or just let the guy ask the questions and then leave him to his drink.

Bernie nodded. He chose the latter. He just didn’t have the will or the strength to go haring down the street with a cop on his tail.

Bernie went back to the table, waited for Walsh to bring his glass of JD.

Bernie poured his drinks into one glass, leaned back and looked at Walsh.

“So who did the handiwork on your face?” Walsh asked.

“Is that what you came to ask me?”

“Nope.”

“Then ask me what you came to ask me and fuck off.”

Walsh nodded. “Larry Fulton,” he said.

“What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

“Now, there’s a surprise.”

“You knew?”

“I know a lot of things.”

“But you already knew that Larry Fulton was dead?” Walsh repeated.

“I knew Larry Fulton well enough to know that he was never going to be long for this world.”

“So his death doesn’t surprise you?”

Bernie smiled sardonically. “Nothing surprises me.”

“Did you know anything about the job he was doing?”

Bernie reached forward for his glass. He took a sip. He kept his eyes on Walsh but Walsh saw nothing, not even a flicker to suggest that he might possess any information that was relevant. That meant nothing. Bernie, according to his sheet, was a gambler, and gamblers practiced implacability.

“Bernie?”

Bernie put his glass back on the table. “What’s your name?”

“Walsh.”

“You a detective?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Which precinct?”

“167th.”

“Hey, that’s over here just a coupla blocks.”

“That’s right.”

“So how come we’ve never crossed paths?”

“Should we have?”

Bernie laughed. “Hell, man, if it has a uniform, or ever had a uniform, I have crossed paths with it.”

“Because I’m not in Vice or Robbery-Homicide,” Walsh said.

“So what the hell are you?”

“Internal Affairs.”

“No shit,” Bernie said, and not only was there surprise in his voice, there was also a sense of curiosity.

“No shit,” Walsh echoed.

“So what are you doing out here asking after me?”

“Working on a case.”

Bernie smiled sarcastically. “No shit.”

“So did you know anything about the job Larry Fulton was doing?”

Bernie sipped his drink again. “Do you know anything about me, Detective Walsh, Internal Affairs, 167th Precinct?”

“No, Bernie, I don’t.”

“Well, I’m gonna tell you something now, and this is for free. If I was the only person in the world who knew the answer to that question, and in telling you that answer we could bring peace to all nations, end all wars, solve world hunger, and bring about the second coming of Christ, I would put a pencil in each nostril and bang my head on this table before I uttered a single freaking word.”

“You feel quite strongly about it, then?”

“I do.”

“That’s a shame.”

“It is.”

“You know why that’s a shame, Bernie?”

“No, I don’t, Detective Walsh. And though I know you’re going to tell me, I feel a certain duty to inform you that I don’t give a rat’s ass why it’s a shame.”

“Just so we’re on the same page, right?”

“Sure, Detective . . . just so’s we’re on the same page.”

“Well, bear with me, Bernie, because this here is the deal. Larry Fulton is dead. So are two other characters, one by the name of Bobby Landry, another by the name of Chuck Williams. They got killed by a fourth man, and that man may or may not be a cop—”

Bernie’s eyes widened fractionally.

“I got your interest now?” Walsh asked.

“Go on,” Bernie said.

“Well, I was talking with a friend of mine called Richard Moran—”

Bernie laughed. “Shit, man, if you and Moran are buddies then I am the second coming of Jesus Christ.”

“We’re friends now, Bernie. Get me? Not yesterday, not this morning, but
now
.”

Bernie squinted at Walsh, his eyes like a lizard. “What’d he get from you?”

Walsh waved the question aside. “I am interested in anything Larry might have said, Bernie . . .
anything
that Larry might have said that could help me. You understand what I’m saying?”

Bernie didn’t move for a moment, and then he nodded slowly.

Walsh felt the air grow light and cool in his chest. This thing was moving even faster than he’d anticipated. Two guys from Fulton’s file, and both of them had songs to sing.

“So you have a think for a moment, Bernie,” Walsh said. “You have a think for a moment and see whether or not there’s anything you might know about this fourth man. His name, perhaps, might be a good place to start . . .”

“And if I do?”

“Well, if you do, then maybe we could see whether there’s some kind of arrangement we could come to.”

“Like maybe the kind of arrangement you made with Moran?”

Walsh said nothing. His heart was going at some rate. He was listening to himself, and he could barely believe what he was hearing. He had walked himself into a conversation that would give him the identity of the fourth man.

“Then, Detective Walsh, I believe there might be a strong possibility of a mutually beneficial arrangement . . .” Bernie left the statement hanging in the air between them.

Walsh—once again—said nothing. He didn’t know what else needed saying. All of a sudden he was in the perfect bargaining position.

“So we each have something to work with here,” Bernie Tomczak said.

“Seems we do, Bernie. So start talking.”

Bernie shook his head. “Not the way it works, my friend,” he said. He winced for a second, held the flat of his hand gingerly to the right side of his jaw, and then he seemed to relax. “You tell me what you want to know. I see whether I know it, or if I can find out for you, and then I tell you what I want in exchange.”

“You already know what I want, Bernie. I want to know who Larry was working with.”

“Whether it was a cop, and if it was a cop then what is his name, right?”

“Right.”

Bernie took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Well, I’m gonna give you something for nothing, Detective Walsh. I can tell you right now that there wasn’t no cop involved in whatever Larry was into. Larry Fulton working with a cop? Not a prayer, my friend, not a freakin’ prayer. If you think Larry did business with a cop, then you didn’t know Larry.”

Walsh felt his heart miss a beat. He couldn’t understand what he was hearing. Fulton was
not
involved with a cop? If that was the case then what the hell was Moran talking about? And what had he himself now reported to Bryant?

Walsh shook his head. “Hey, wait a minute. Moran said—”

“Moran is a liar,” Bernie interjected, and then he smiled. “Okay, so I’m a liar too, but Moran is a worse liar.”

“Why should I—”

“Believe me before him? I’ll tell you why. Because I’m not trying to make a deal with you, see? Whatever the hell Moran asked for, well, you shouldn’t give it to him because he sold you a truckful of bullshit man, a truckful of bullshit. Larry Fulton would no more work with a cop than I would.”

Walsh leaned back. He didn’t know who to believe, and he didn’t know what to think.

“However,” Bernie added, “if the thing we were talking about earlier is still a goer, then maybe I can give you something that will point you in the right direction.”

“A name?”

“That’s right, Detective, a name.”

“Whose name?”

“The name of the man who put that job together.”

“The dealer’s house robbery—”

Bernie shrugged. “I don’t know where they robbed, or whose house it was, but I know it was the job Larry was doing.”

“How do you know it was the same one?”

“Because he told me where the money was coming from, and he told me who had it.”

Walsh raised his eyebrows.

Bernie smiled. “Let’s just say that by the time Larry Fulton and his crew got to that money, all the hard work had already been done. Make sense?”

It did. It made perfect sense. The hard work was the original bank robbery. “Yes,” Walsh said, certain that he and Bernie Tomczak were now talking about the same job.

“So I give you the name of the man you should talk to—and whether he was the one who whacked Larry and the others is another thing entirely—but I give you the name of the man who put that shit together then you and I got a deal, right?”

Walsh hesitated. “What do you want?”

“I want you to make something disappear for me.”

Walsh closed his eyes. He inhaled, exhaled slowly. They all wanted something to go away.

“What did you do?” Walsh asked. “What happened?”