Damaged Goods (12 page)

As fast as you can.

Patty-cake, patty-cake …”

Jilly groaned, his anguish spilling out despite all efforts to hold it in, then pulled to the curb. Pushing his cop fears firmly to the side, he fished a small glassine envelope out of his shirt pocket and sucked the contents up into his nostrils. His hands twisted the steering wheel, tried to rip it apart, while he waited for the heroin to take effect. As it did, as it slowly filtered down into his bloodstream, the pounding in his head withdrew, moving from his ears into the center of his skull where it panted like a sullen Doberman.

“Jackson-Davis?”

“Yeah, Jilly?”

“What’d I say about singin’?”

“We ain’t singin’, Jilly.”

“Then what were ya doin’?”

“We was playin’, Jilly. We was playin’ patty-cakes. You know, like when you pat your hands together?” He cocked his head and smiled. “See, your hands are the cakes. Paaaaty-
cake.
Theresa loves it.”

Jilly took a deep breath. He was in control, now, though he couldn’t be sure how long it would last. The main thing, a thought he clung to as his eyelids sagged, was that he was too stoned to drive.

“Jackson-Davis?”

“Yeah, Jilly?”

“I want you to come up front and drive.” He turned slowly, looked down at Theresa-Marie. She was already beginning to whimper. “I’ll sit in the back and try to read the map.”

Jackson-Davis tried to think of some way to refuse without refusing. That was because old Jilly didn’t like people saying no to him. Unfortunately, refusing without refusing was beyond his abilities.

“Jilly?”

“Yeah?”

“You ain’t gonna hurt Theresa, right? You ain’t gonna have one of your shitstorms if we get lost again?”

“Look at it this way, Jackson. If we stay here, the cops are gonna stop and ask what the fuck we’re doin’ pulled over to the curb in the rain. If that happens, I’ll have to blow the cop away; I won’t have no choice.” He waited for Jackson-Davis to nod agreement. “You know me, Jackson. Once I get started, I got a real hard time stoppin’ again.” Another nod. “So maybe you better get up in front. Right now.”

“Yeah, but Jilly?”

“What, Jackson?”

“You promised me you wouldn’t hurt Theresa no more.”

“I ain’t gonna hurt her, Jackson.” Jilly was still drifting down, still perfectly calm. He could stare at his partner’s eyes, dream of the day when he’d empty a clip into those eyes, when they’d disappear, along with the back of Jackson-Davis’s head. “But if ya worried about it, we could put her in the trunk.”

Now Theresa was really sobbing. Jackson-Davis pulled her close, glared at Jilly Sappone.

“C’mon, Jilly. You know how Theresa hates the trunk. You promised you wouldn’t put her in the trunk unless it was darn sure necessary.”

“What’s necessary, Jackson, is for you to get up here and drive the fuckin’ car. Before any of that other shit happens.”

Jilly dropped into the backseat like a sack of potatoes. He was vaguely aware of the car pulling away from the curb, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about its destination. The dope was cutting its own path through his mind.

“I should’na come up here,” he mumbled.

“You say somethin’?” Jackson-Davis was hoping Jilly had gone into one of his dope nods. Dope nods made Jilly real quiet-like, maybe so quiet that Jackson-Davis could flip down the vanity mirror behind the visor and take inventory.

“Things were too good.” Jilly’s voice, like his thoughts, seemed to come from a great distance. “Just about ready to go and I had to take a goddamned detour.”

“Go where, Jilly?”

“Away,” Jilly whispered. “Away from Carlo.”

“From
Cousin
Carlo? Fits and conniptions, Jilly, why’re we goin’ away from Cousin Carlo when he’s been treatin’ us real good-like?”

Jilly was in too deep to explain. (Not that he would have bothered even when he was straight. Explaining things to Jackson-Davis was a losing proposition, like teaching algebra to a hamster.) But the truth was that Carlo Sappone was a weak link in every sense of the word, a drug dealer who snorted, shot, and smoked his profits. If the cops put the heat on Carlo, he’d give Jilly up. It was that simple.

Coming out of prison after fourteen years with no money in his pocket, Jilly hadn’t had a lot of choices. It was Carlo Sappone or sleep on the streets. That had all changed when the package he’d retrieved from the puddle of blood surrounding Patsy Gullo’s body turned out to contain four ounces of reasonably pure heroin. Carlo’s small, dark eyes had flashed pure greed when Jilly broke the bags open; he’d been more than willing to part with every dime he admitted to having.

Seven grand wasn’t half what the dope was worth, but it was enough to buy some independence. His Aunt Josie, now that he had the money to pay for it, had found him an apartment in Manhattan. All he had to do was pack up his few belongings and move in. But then he’d gotten this great idea: drive up to Boston, snatch his daughter, Patricia, then come back to New York and throw it in his wife’s face.

It hadn’t seemed like any big deal at the time. Josie had gotten the address from a letter Patricia had written to her mother, had taken it right out of the mailbox as one piece of the revenge she and Jilly were determined to take. If it was going to happen sooner or later, why not sooner? Four hours of driving, a quick grab (or a quick kill, depending on whether Patricia decided to resist), then four hours back. No muss, no fuss.

That was almost nine hours ago. Nine hours of heavy rain, of one construction project after another. A bad accident had forced him off the interstate and onto the mean streets of Hartford, Connecticut, at five o’clock in the afternoon. Another accident on the Massachusetts Turnpike had pushed four lanes of traffic onto the shoulder. Finally, there was Boston itself, a nightmare of dark and narrow streets that curled back on themselves like snakes swallowing their own tails.

“Jilly, you awake?” Jackson-Davis slid the mirror down, stole a quick look at his reflection. “Huh, Jilly?”

No answer, not even a glance. Jilly Sappone was in a place beyond thought.

“How ’bout you, Theresa? You with old Jackson-Davis?”

“Yes.”

Jackson-Davis took another look in the mirror. His “damn near to an albino” hair was plastered so tight against his head he seemed almost as bald as his old daddy. He ran his fingers over his skull, tried to fluff his hair up.

“You wanna get a burger or somethin’?” he asked.

“I wanna go home to my mother.”

“Don’t say that.” Jackson-Davis glanced at Jilly Sappone. “If old Jilly hears you say that he’ll get himself into a terrible snit. We don’t want that, do we?”

Theresa didn’t answer. She sat back with her head against the door in an attitude of utter resignation. Events, beginning with the sudden death of her father, had swallowed her whole.

“I tell you what, Theresa.” Jackson-Davis stole another glance in the mirror, this time at his narrow mouth. He liked to watch his lips move when he talked. “Let’s go find that place old Jilly’s lookin’ for. That’ll put him in a good mood when he wakes up.”

Jackson’s problem was that he couldn’t remember the name of the street, only that it was on some kind of a hill.

“I bet,” he said to his reflection, “if I find that hill, the name’ll just come right back to me.”

For once, Jackson-Davis Wescott was right. He found a steep hill after twenty minutes of random driving, paused at the bottom, and remembered the name of the street.

“Myrtle. Ain’t that right, Theresa?”

Theresa didn’t answer, the word having absolutely no meaning to her, but Jackson-Davis, preoccupied with another problem, didn’t seem to mind.

“Dang and darn,” he said after a moment’s reflection. “Guess the joke’s on me. I couldn’t read them old signs even if I could see ’em, which I cain’t.”

He drove up and around the hill for the next twenty minutes, trying to think of a solution to his problem, even though he knew he wasn’t good at solutions. In the meantime, Jilly began to awaken. Thoughts came first, thoughts devoid of any emotional content, then awareness slowly crept through his thoroughly stoned brain. He noted Theresa cringing against the door, the back of his partner’s head, the rain still falling, the windshield wipers slapping back and forth. A few minutes more and he began to place the various images in a particular time and place, remembering that he was in the city of Boston, looking for his only child.

“Jackson-Davis?”

“I done found that old hill, Jilly.” Jackson-Davis turned and grinned at his partner. “But I ain’t found the street on account of I cain’t read the signs.”

Jilly, after a serious effort, managed to raise his slumped body to a sitting position and look out the window. What he saw brought him fully awake. Knots of druggies, dealers and buyers, milled about on all four corners of the intersection, while prostitutes, barely dressed despite the cold rain, strolled beneath wide umbrellas on the avenues. The whores beckoned to the passing car and the two white men inside, one girl even lifting the edge of her mini to give them a good look at the available merchandise.

“Holy fucking shit,” Jilly moaned. “Where have you got us to?”

“You said a hill, Jilly.” This wasn’t going the way Jackson-Davis had expected. “I remember you sayin’ about Patricia livin’ on a hill.”

“Are you kidding me? This is fucking niggertown. Would my daughter live in fucking niggertown?”

Jackson-Davis swallowed. “Guess not, Jilly.”

“Make a left turn, get down the goddamned hill and find a main street.”

“But, Jilly …”

“One more word, Jackson, and I’m gonna kill ya.”

Jackson-Davis made the turn, remembering that sometimes when Jilly Sappone talked real soft it was worse than when he shouted. He glanced into the mirror, watched his partner unfold a map, then turn on the overhead light.

“Real good, Jilly. Real …”

“I told you to shut the fuck up.” Jilly studied the map carefully, thinking that, in some ways, this was the best part of being high on dope. Though he was mightily pissed off, he was in complete control. Or, at least, he
felt
like he was in complete control, which was all he could hope for in life.

They found Columbus Avenue at the bottom of the hill. According to Jilly’s map, Columbus led directly into central Boston and Beacon Hill, which was where Patricia lived. All he had to do was make a left on Charles Street, a right on Revere, and another right on Myrtle, three simple turns and the deal was done.

They found the turn on Charles Street easily enough, the road was large and well marked, but then, without any warning, Charles turned one-way against them, forcing Jackson-Davis into a left on Beacon which led away from …

“Make the first right,” Jilly commanded. He didn’t know the name of the street, didn’t care. With the river on one side and a steep hill on the other, he figured they’d
eventually
stumble across Myrtle Street. As long as they didn’t cross that fucking river again.

Eventually turned out to be thirty minutes of pure torture during which he passed Revere three times without being able to turn into it, until he finally happened upon Myrtle from Anderson Street.

“Which way, Jilly?”

“No way, just park the goddamned car by that hydrant. I’ll walk from here.” He took inventory while Jackson-Davis maneuvered the car into the only open space on the block. The neighborhood was much fancier than he’d expected, but that might actually work in his favor. Between his neatly trimmed gray hair and beard, his black, London Fog trench coat, and the private security badge pinned to a billfold in his pocket, he’d most likely be able to pass himself off as a cop. As long as nobody got close enough to see the fire in his eyes.

“You sure you don’t want me to come along?”

Jilly yanked Theresa down on the seat, covered her with a blanket, ignored her sobbing. “The bitch is still gonna be under this blanket when I come back, right?”

“Yeah, Jilly. The blanket’ll make her nice and comfy-like.”

“And you’re gonna keep her quiet, right?”

“Not a peep.”

Jilly opened the door, stepped onto the sidewalk, listened to the muted buzzing in his ears. Shitstorm on the horizon? His brain had begun to pulse softly again, the streetlights to flare ominously. He told himself to hold on, to get it done, that he’d have plenty of time to relax, then walked off in search of his daughter.

He found her building on the next block, a four-story town house with a shielded lock on the front entrance. Patricia’s apartment was on the top floor, but Jilly rang Apartment 1A, announced, “Police,” into the intercom, then waited patiently while an old man shuffled down the hallway to check him out.

“Police,” he repeated, holding up the phony badge.

The man peered at the badge for a moment, then up at Jilly, then back at the badge. Finally, he stepped back to let Jilly into the hallway. “What’s this about?”

“I’m looking for a young woman named Patricia Sappone, a college student.”

“There’s a couple of girls up on the fourth floor. Four B, I think, but I don’t know their names.” He squinted up at Jilly through watery eyes. “What’d they do, Officer?”

Jilly threw the old man a reassuring smile. “Sorry to disappoint you, sir, but they didn’t
do
anything. Patricia Sappone witnessed an assault a few months ago and I need to go over her testimony.” He leaned forward. “Just between you and me, the cops who interviewed her the first time around screwed it up real bad. Took her address, but didn’t get her apartment or her phone number. It’s the new
element
on the force. The affirmative-action bullshit crew. That’s what I like to call ’em.”

He winked, turned his back, started up the stairs. Thinking that maybe the old man would call the real cops, but he’d be out before they responded. One way or the other.

As he climbed the winding staircase, he switched the nine millimeter from his belt to his coat pocket. There was always the chance that Patricia, though she hadn’t seen him in fourteen years, would recognize him through the peephole. In that case he fully intended to forgo the pleasure of her company, to empty a clip through the door.