Damaged Goods (11 page)

“I thought you had Jim doing homicides?”

“A uniform on the scene reported that one of the girls ain’t gonna make it.” McWhirter cleared his throat. “Look, Moodrow, I got a drive-by on Orchard Street and no suits to cover it, so if you’ll pardon me, I’ll write Tilley a note and have him call you when he gets in.”

Moodrow hung up, walked into the kitchen, took a beer out of the refrigerator, then trudged back to the phone. Two calls to go, two calls before he slept. He dialed Ginny Gadd’s office number, was amazed to hear her answer on the second ring.

“It’s Moodrow. I thought you’d be gone by now.”

“I sacked out for an hour; I feel fine. How’d it go with Buster Levy?”

“The prick kept me sitting in his living room for two hours, but he gave me what I wanted.”

“Why’d he do that, Moodrow?” Gadd jammed the phone between her right shoulder and her ear, fiddled with the paperwork on her desk. Having decided what she wanted from Stanley Moodrow, it was now a matter of convincing him that their interests were mutual. “Why’d he talk to you at all?”

“He did it because Carmine told him to.” Moodrow’s expression soured. He didn’t care to be cross-examined, but he didn’t see any way out of it, either. “And don’t ask me about Carmine. Believe me, Gadd, you don’t wanna know how I convinced Carmine.”

“All right, Moodrow,” Gadd said after a pause, “have it your way. Do I take it Jilly Sappone lifted some credit cards when he hit Levy’s business?”

“Yeah, four. I don’t know squat about computers. Is that a lot to check out?”

“What it is, Moodrow, under both New York State and federal law, is a felony. Four felonies, actually. One for each card.”

“You serious?” Moodrow held the phone away from his head, told himself not to lose his temper. If she was going to back out, she would have done it while he was in her office.

“Absolutely. You have to have a legitimate interest—or represent somebody with a legitimate interest—in the financial affairs of an individual before you’re legally entitled to credit-card transactions.” Gadd stopped, allowed herself a gleeful grin, the one her last boyfriend had termed goofy. She could feel Moodrow’s discomfort, feel it ooze through the phone she held to her ear. “On the other hand,” she finally continued, “you could pass the numbers on to the cops or the feds, let
them
get the records.”

“First of all, there are no
cops
to give it to.” Moodrow again reminded himself to hold his temper in check. “The assault on Ann Kalkadonis and the robbery at Buster Levy’s business were turned over to a single cop. His name is Jim Tilley. As for Carol Pierce and her boyfriend, there’s no real proof that Jilly Sappone was involved.”

“So Tilley’s working all by himself?”

“All by himself while clearing every other case on his desk. Jim’s a good friend of mine and he’ll get every scrap of information that comes my way. He’s also a good detective, but he can’t move fast enough to save the kid. As for the feds … well, I’d rather cut off my dick than go to the feds.”

“Nicely put.”

“Thank you, Gadd.” He hesitated briefly, decided to change the subject. “Lemme ask you this, did you have any luck with the list of names I gave you?”

“Out of the ten, I ran down four who live close enough. Two in Jersey, one in Connecticut, one on Long Island. Two of the others are in jail, two are dead, and two I couldn’t locate.”

“Good enough. Lemme get a pencil and a piece of paper.” He put down the phone, took a spiral notebook and a Bic out of his pocket, laid them on his desk, then watched the second hand circle his wall clock twice before retrieving the phone. “Okay, I’m ready. Fire away.”

The dinosaur being a lot sharper than she expected, it was Ginny Gadd’s turn to hesitate. If she gave him the information, he could simply walk away from her. On the other hand, if she had the credit-card numbers, their roles would reverse in a New York minute.

“What about the credit cards?”

Moodrow registered the sharpened tone. He allowed himself a smile before responding. “I can’t ask you to commit a crime. No matter what kind of risks I’m willing to take.”

“Look, Moodrow, it’s not like you could actually get caught. Or like anybody in law enforcement gives a damn. Didn’t you tell me you had experience in this business?” She ran on before he could respond. “There’s a lot of illegal information out there and it’s all for sale. The problems kick in when you try to use the information, but in this case the target isn’t likely to complain. After all, it’s not like we’re cops.”

Moodrow scratched his head, smiled ruefully. “No, it’s not like that,” he said. “Not like we were cops.”

“So, you wanna give me the card numbers?”

“If I do that, I’ll have nothing. No names, no addresses.” He stood up and started to walk away. When the phone dropped to the floor, he stopped short. “Shit, you still there? I knocked the phone off the desk.”

“I’m still here.” She kept her tone sharp, but felt no insult whatever. “Why don’t we stop playing games? I was a cop long enough to know the rule: nothing for nothing. Give me the card numbers and tomorrow I’ll tell you if they were used. Favor for favor. Just like the good old days.”

Moodrow took a moment to think it over. He could always take the names Ann Kalkadonis had given him and hire another computer expert to run down the addresses. But that didn’t help him with the credit-card numbers.

“You wouldn’t consider billing me at the regular rate? Maybe if I paid cash?”

“Sorry, pal, your money’s no good here.”

Moodrow read off the card numbers, made an appointment for the following morning at nine, then hung up. He was pretty certain she was going to ask to go along with him, to become a partner. What else did he have to offer? And the truth was that he could use her, as long as she was willing to commit a few more felonies along the way.

He got up, crossed to the window at the far side of the room, and started out. The gloom failed to hide the expected flash of a propane lighter on the rooftop across the street, though it successfully hid the faces of the huddled crack junkies who gathered there nightly. Not that they cared one way or the other about anonymity. The entire building, though officially unoccupied and actually owned by the city, was given over to the sale of one drug or another. The cops, at the behest of the Fourth Street Block Association, had been through a dozen times, making nearly a hundred arrests, but the trade continued, the sellers and buyers seemingly as uniform and interchangeable as lightbulbs.

All right, enough with the local color, Moodrow told himself. Do what you have to do.

The words failed to move him, though fatigue continued to wash through his body. The call he had to make, the last detail of a day filled with details, was to Betty in California. In the course of their conversation, she was going to ask him how the investigation was progressing and he was going to lie and he didn’t want to lie. No, what he wanted, at that moment, was to have her close to him, to take her in his arms and into his bed, to wake up in the morning and listen to the soft hiss of her breath against the pillow.

The ringing phone jerked him away from his small fantasy. The mountain, he thought, coming to Muhammad. He picked up the receiver on the second ring, muttered, “Hello.”

“Stanley, I thought you were going to call me.”

“I just got in.” The first lie of the evening. “How’s Marilyn doing?”

He listened to the sharply indrawn breath, knew she was holding back tears. “Marilyn’s broken, Stanley. Her body is gone, smashed. The doctor tried to prepare me, but it didn’t help. I wanted to run out of the room, out of the hospital. I can’t believe she’s still alive.” Another quick breath. “We’re just waiting, now. Waiting and hoping.”

Hoping Marilyn would die. Moodrow heard the words without Betty saying them.

“Is she conscious?”

“Her eyes were open; I think she was there, but she can’t talk. Not with the tubes. And she can’t move, either. Not enough to let me know for sure.”

Bad things happen to good people. The cliché popped into his mind, though he managed to keep himself from actually saying it. “What about Artie?” Artie was Marilyn’s husband.

“Artie’s out of it.” Her voice was edged with anger. “He spent his whole life making money. Everything else was up to Marilyn. Now he acts like an infant who needs his diaper changed. I didn’t come out here to take care of him, Stanley, but that’s apparently what he expects.”

“It sounds like he’s lost.” Moodrow tried to imagine life without Betty, how he’d feel if she was suddenly gone.
Lost
didn’t begin to describe it. “They’ve been together a long time.”

“Does that mean I should make his bed for him?”

“Not unless you slept in it.”

A momentary silence followed by a deep chuckle. “Only you, Stanley.” She sighed, then rushed on. “It’s much worse than Artie led me to believe. I thought I was coming to help Marilyn, but it’s actually a death watch. The doctor told me her liver’s barely functioning. They’re not sure about her brain, how badly damaged it is.”

“Look, I’ll fly out there if you need me.” The second lie. Moodrow couldn’t have been pulled off the case with a crowbar and he knew it.

“Did you find the girl?” Betty’s surprise at the offer was evident, exactly as Moodrow had expected.

“No, but there’s a lot of other people looking.”

“Stay where you are, Stanley.” She sounded weary now, weary and resigned. “Stay where you are and do what you have to do.”

I
T WAS BAD, ALL
right, as bad as it got for old Jilly Sappone. Even Jackson-Davis could see
that.
And for once it really wasn’t Jilly’s fault. No, the way it was, dark as a bandit with the rain pouring down so you couldn’t see the street names, even old Reverend Luke would’ve lost his temper. Hell, they must’ve gone over this one bridge six times. Back and forth across some kinda river Jackson couldn’t see, until finally Jilly made him get out to ask somebody where they were.

“That’s Harvard.”

The tall, bearded man pointed to these old buildings, then hurried on through the downpour. That seemed kind of strange because the man had on a slicker
and
an umbrella, while Jackson-Davis was standing out there in a little-bitty jacket with the cold rain pounding his hair into his skull.

“That’s Hazzard,” he told Jilly Sappone once he was back inside the car.

“Hazzard?”

“Yeah, like in the
Dukes
and … and stuff.” He’d started to say
shit,
but caught himself in time. Little Theresa was sitting next to him in the back and it didn’t seem right-like to curse around Little Theresa. Not no more it didn’t.

“What the fuck does that mean? ‘Like in the
Dukes
’?”

Jackson-Davis Wescott’s mouth curled into a tiny circle. He’d complained to old Jilly about cursing in front of Theresa. (“Little pitchers have big ears, Jilly. Can’t say you never heard
that
one.”) But Jilly had just laughed at him.

“The Dukes of Hazzard,
Jilly. The TV show?” He wrinkled his nose, not once, but twice. That was by way of explaining to Jilly how he felt about the cursing. Course, it was too dark for old Jilly to actually
see
his nose, but it made Jackson-Davis feel much better.

“I thought I told you to find out where we are.” Jilly pulled away from the curb. His head was pounding and the oncoming headlights carried a familiar halo. He wanted to tell Jackson-Davis to drive, but with a shit-storm on the immediate horizon, he didn’t trust himself near the kid.

“I did find out, Jilly. Them buildings back there? Them’s
Hazzard.
” He hesitated momentarily as an idea began to form. “Say, what if it’s the
real
Hazzard?”

Jilly didn’t bother to respond. He was having a hard enough time driving the car. The lights pierced his eyes like knives, even though he’d already flipped up the rearview mirror, even though he tried to keep his eyes glued to the side of the road. The lights and the pounding (which didn’t really hurt, more like somebody put his heart where his brain should be) were always the first sign that he was about to lose it altogether. Unless he did something real quick, the buzzing would sound, the lightning flash, the world narrow down to a thin, angry slit.

“Fiiiiive bottles of beer on the wall.

Fiiiiive bottles of beeeeeeeer.

If one of those bottles should happen to fall,

Fooooour bottles of beer on the wall.

Fooooour bottles of beer on the wall.

Fooooour bottle of beeeeeeeer.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Jilly spat the words through clenched teeth.

“But, Jilly, you told me to make sure little Theresa didn’t do no whinin’.”

“I didn’t tell you to fuckin’
sing.
”

“You didn’t tell me nothin’ about
no
singin’.” Jackson-Davis folded his arms across his chest. He knew he had a good point, a
damn
good point.

“I’m tellin ya now.”

“Why are you whisperin’, Jilly? You sick or somethin’?”

“I’m fine.” But he wasn’t fine; he was lost. And somehow the little streets all seemed to come back on each other so no matter what direction he took, he ended up back at Hazzard. Instead of on the bridge he shouldn’t have crossed in the first place.

He turned onto a wide street, saw a sign and an arrow: DOWNTOWN BOSTON. Great, maybe the nightmare would finally come to an end. The way he saw it, he had two major problems and both of them were cops. With no paper for the car, no registration, and no license, he couldn’t very well stop and ask a cop for directions. And he couldn’t pull over at every corner to check the names of the streets, either, because a cop on patrol might decide to help out. Jilly had already made up his mind: He was going to kill any cop who approached, kill him quick,
before
he got suspicious.

“Patty-cake, patty-cake,

Baker’s man.

Bake me a cake

As fast as you can.

Patty-cake, patty-cake,

Baker’s man.

Bake me a cake