Damaged Goods (27 page)

“What you’re doing is perilously close to obstruction of justice.” Ewing, apparently having taken her at her word, was sitting back in his chair. His steepled fingers lay against the collar of his white-on-white shirt.

“Bullshit,” Gadd replied. Her voice, she noted, was satisfyingly flat. As intended. “One, since I haven’t been fired, Ann Kalkadonis is still my client. Two, I’m under no obligation to inform my client of my every move. Three, Ann Kalkadonis is very interested in how Jilly Sappone got out of prison. If you don’t believe me, ask her.”

It was Gadd’s turn to pause and Ewing’s to hold his peace. “All right,” Gadd said, acknowledging the move with a slight smile, “let’s make this short and sour. If you’re here to beg me, then beg me. If you’re here to threaten me, then threaten me. Take it to the bank, Ewing, I got a million things to do and I don’t have time for your fed bullshit.”

Ewing shrugged his shoulders, a gesture Gadd interpreted as, Well, I tried, didn’t I?

“You’re interfering with an ongoing federal investigation.” He raised a hand. “No, don’t stop me. If you don’t get out of the way, your investigator’s license will be suspended. If that’s not enough, if you continue to persist, your license will be revoked altogether.” He stood abruptly. “Look at yourself, my dear. You couldn’t make it as a cop. You couldn’t make it as a wife. What will you do if you can’t make it as a private investigator? There are things here you don’t understand.”

Gadd looked up at him, as she knew she was meant to do. “Well, you’re thorough, I’ll give you that, but the fact is that you and your bosses are responsible for letting Sappone out of jail.” She stood, took a step toward the agent. “What would you do if I told you I was recording this conversation? Would you attack me, maybe rip the wire from my prostrate body?”

“You’ve been reading too many bad novels.”

The words were defiant, but Ewing’s complexion, Gadd noted, now matched his shirt. There was anger there, too, of course, but his (and, by extension, the FBI’s) impotence jumped out at her.

She turned, crossed to the door, then spun around, her exit lines carefully prepared. “I’ve seen his prison records. Jilly Sappone’s. Makes for good reading, now that I know who got him out.”

Unfortunately, Ewing’s preparation included a parting shot of his own. “Wasn’t killing the child,” he called to her retreating back, “enough for you?”

T
HE PARADE BEGAN SHORTLY
after Stanley Moodrow came home to his Lower East Side apartment. Leonora Higgins arrived first, in the early afternoon, bearing a box of dark chocolate almond clusters from Le Chocolatier on Park Row. Moodrow, surprised, accepted the gift tentatively, then, suddenly ravenous, jammed one of the clusters into his mouth.

“You remember Johnny Katanos?” Leonora asked.

“I think I lost a few pounds,” Moodrow mumbled. “In the hospital.” He was growing stronger by the minute, could actually feel strength returning, the way a long drink of water relieved thirst after a serious workout.

“Katanos was a terrorist, right?” Betty asked. Having carefully orchestrated the afternoon’s program, she wasn’t about to let Moodrow’s appetite prevent his receiving the essential message.

“That’s right, one of the worst ever to hit this country.” Leonora reached forward. “Stanley, you think I could have one of those? Before they disappear into your bloodstream.”

She was wearing a dark brown dress, dark enough to complement the semisweet chocolate clusters, and a matching bolero jacket. Moodrow found the outfit a bit somber, despite the gold sunburst pinned to her breast; Leonora’s tastes usually ran to the warmest end of the scale. He wondered, briefly, if this was her sick-friend outfit, then shoved another piece of candy into his mouth.

“So what about him?” Betty asked. “About Johnny Katanos?”

“He’s been transferred to a mental hospital. A complete breakdown, apparently.”

“What does ‘complete breakdown’ mean? Does he hear voices?”

“It means, according to my father’s sister’s nephew, who works in the federal penal system, that Johnny Katanos covers himself, his cell, and any corrections officer who comes too close with his own feces.”

Moodrow, his mouth too full for actual speech, nodded indifferently. Once upon a time, he’d hunted Johnny Katanos with the blind determination of a starving wolverine, had put a gun to the man’s face with every intention of killing him. Leonora had prevented the murder with a bullet of her own.

“Seems like another century,” he finally said.

“It was six years ago,” Leonora countered. “And half the cops in New York City were looking for him. Not to mention the FBI.” She snatched another piece of chocolate, nibbled at the edges before continuing. “You took him down, Stanley. All I did was follow you.”

Moodrow glanced at Betty, found her looking away, embarrassed. “I don’t recall issuing a denial,” he finally said. “But if you’re after a confession, you’ll have to beat it out of me.”

Leonora made her good-byes half an hour later. It was a working day and lunch was definitely over. Moodrow saw her to the door, accepted a gentle kiss on the cheek. A complex of emotions—anger, gratitude, amusement—coursed through him as he closed the door and turned back to find Betty seated at the kitchen table.

“I’m writing a shopping list, Stanley. I have to go back to Brooklyn tonight and I don’t want you making an ice-cream run to the bodega. If you’ve got any secret cravings, better get them out in the open.”

“Secret cravings?” Moodrow shook his head. “I don’t know whether to kiss you or spank you.”

Betty looked up, fluttered her eyelids. “Couldn’t we do both?”

Moodrow nodded thoughtfully. “I
am
feeling better,” he admitted. “Let’s try for tomorrow morning.”

Twenty minutes later, the second wave hit the beach. Two NYPD sergeants, Manny Pissaro and Paul Malone, both thirty-year men, knocked at Moodrow’s door. Cops bearing gifts, they waved a quart of Wild Turkey bourbon in his surprised face.

By the time they left, half the bottle and fifty rehashed cases later, Moodrow was too tired to do more than stagger into the bedroom and fall asleep. Betty found him, fully dressed, when she returned from her shopping. She looked at him for a moment, thinking that it didn’t seem fair. His face was up by the headboard, his short hair actually brushing the wood, while his feet stuck out several inches beyond the mattress. With his arms spread wide, his shoulders seemed to span the full width of the bed.

People that big, she decided, aren’t allowed to be vulnerable. They’re not supposed to make mistakes. If they do, if they fuck up royally, they’ve got to deny it, make excuses, point the finger elsewhere. Fallen heroes are a dime a dozen.

The most amazing part was that he’d actually found Sappone, that he’d done it in less than a week. How could a spur-of-the-moment decision negate the result of that carefully planned effort? Betty had been a trial lawyer for most of her adult life. She was perfectly willing to admit (to herself, naturally) that she’d blown it any number of times, put the wrong question to the wrong witness, gotten a reply that had buried her client. What you did was live with it, go to the next case, get on with the rest of your life.

But, then, she acknowledged, I wasn’t there. I didn’t run up to find the child’s body, didn’t wait, helpless, within feet of her smashed skull, for the cops and the ambulance to arrive.

The suits had grilled the both of them, Moodrow and Gadd, for nearly four hours, taking them over each detail, again and again and again.

As she started back into the kitchen, pausing to retrieve the full shopping cart, she suddenly realized that she’d never loved Stanley Moodrow more than she did at that moment.

When Jilly Sappone answered his cellular telephone, he wasn’t surprised to hear Aunt Josie’s voice. She was the only one who knew the number. But when he listened to her outline her plans for his immediate future, his jaw dropped open. It was ten o’clock in the morning and he’d just had his first snort of the day. That was part of the reason why he didn’t hang up, the other part being that he was afraid of his Aunt Josie, had been since the day she’d come to take him out of the hospital.

“You go in the witness program,” she explained. “You go tonight with the FBI. It’s no good on the street. You stay on the street, they’re gonna kill you.” For Aunt Josie, it was a very long speech.

“This a joke?” he asked. Meanwhile, he had no memory of her laughter, couldn’t remember her cracking a smile, not even when he was small enough to look up at her down-turned face.

“I got them by the balls,” she replied. “You gonna be all right.”

Jilly didn’t ask how, just as he’d never asked her what she’d done to get him out of the joint. That was because there was only one thing she
could
have done.

“I got things I gotta get finished,” Jilly muttered, knowing there was nothing he could say to change her mind, that she could give him up any time she wanted. Meanwhile, in her own way, she was gonna bury Carmine Stettecase.

What I oughta be doing, he told himself, is planning out the rest of my time on the street.

“You don’t go to a jail,” she declared. “They’re gonna take you somewhere private, a house.” When he didn’t reply, she went for the jugular. “Why you gotta play the fool, huh? Always the fool. You should’a buried that kid in the ground, not throw her out in the street. I told you to kill her right away, didn’t I? I said don’t carry extra weight, she’s gonna take you down. Meanwhile, you had’a throw it in your wife’s face, had’a be a big shot, make jokes with the cops.”

Not that he was going to admit it, but maybe he
had
been stupid, maybe he
should
have taken her advice. Only he’d never, not for a single moment, expected anyone to find him. Meanwhile, this old fart of an ex-cop had run him down like a stray dog after a warehouse rat.

“Aunt Josie, did you tell the feds where I’m stayin’?”

She snorted her contempt, blew it out through her nose like a racehorse after a hard workout. “Tonight, ten o’clock, when it’s quiet. Broadway and Ninety-one. Stay inside till then, stay quiet. Remember who you are.”

Who he was, he knew, in her mind at least, was the last male Sappone. Never mind cousin Carlo and a half dozen other male Sappones scattered throughout the metropolitan area. Meanwhile, she’d hung up and the only real question was how he was going to amuse himself for the next twelve hours.

Carmine was out of the question, of course. Aunt Josie wanted Carmine to herself. Annunziata? Now, that was a real possibility. Get up on a roof, pump fifty rounds through one of the windows, hope for the best. Unfortunately, the FBI was guarding his little honey bunch, at least according to the jerk on the six-o’clock news. They’d most likely catch a serious attitude if he blew a couple of their agents into the next universe. Make it kind of hard to surrender.

Jilly chuckled at his own joke, then tore open a bag of dope and snorted it up. He was going to have to pack the dope into a few small balloons and swallow them before he surrendered. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to spend more than a few hours in the company of the pigs without losing control.

He was going to have to do something about the car, too, the one he’d rented. Maybe put it in a garage, pay a month in advance. Odds were, he’d need the car again before he was through, the car and the weapons in its trunk.

His thoughts drifted back to the ex-cop who’d tracked him down. Now there was a man he’d like to get his hands on, take three or four hours to kill. Meanwhile, he had no idea where Stanley Moodrow lived and no time to find out.

There was still Carlo, of course. Carlo had ratted him to the ex-cop, no doubt about it. But Carlo lived a long way from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And Carlo couldn’t do any more damage.

“Nnnnnnnnnnn-twenty.”

The shout tore through Jilly’s high, jerked him upright in his seat. He turned toward Jackson-Davis Wescott, found him sitting at the kitchen table playing slow-motion bingo with himself.

“Hey fuckface,” he snarled, then pulled up short. Talk about your basic weak link. Aunt Josie hadn’t said anything about Jackson-Davis and he’d been too stunned by her message to ask.

“Beeeeeeeeee-six.”

“Ya hear me talkin’ to ya?”

Jackson-Davis stared down at his game card, concentrating. The tip of his tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth and his eyes were opened so wide it looked like he’d just been punched in the stomach.

“I ain’t talkin’ to you,” he finally said. “No sirreee. After what you done, I ain’t never talkin’ to you again.”

“So, why don’t ya just take off, Jackson? Bein’ as your feet ain’t nailed to the floor.” He paused, then smirked. “I dare ya.”

Jackson-Davis looked at the door for a moment, then turned back to his partner. “Darers go first,” he muttered.

“Ya tellin’ me that I should leave?” Jilly’s smile dropped away. “Look here, Jackson,” he explained for the twentieth time, “the pigs were comin’ right up my ass. If I didn’t do somethin’ to slow ’em down, we’d be sittin’ in a cell right this minute.”

“You didn’t love her,” Jackson countered. “You was just
usin’
little Theresa.”

Jilly got up and walked across the room. He pulled up a chair, sat down, draped his arm across Wescott’s shoulders. “Maybe you’re right, Jackson. Maybe I should’a thought more about how much she meant to ya, but I didn’t and that’s all she wrote.” He paused, squeezed his partner’s shoulder. “Unless maybe we go out and find you another little playmate.”

T
HE OUTSIDE TEMPERATURE WAS
hovering just below eighty-five degrees when Jilly Sappone led his partner out of their West Ninetieth Street apartment building. Both men, as they stepped onto the sidewalk, hesitated momentarily, pulling the bills of their caps down to ward off a glaring sun. Six weeks down the line, when the brutal New York summer transformed the concrete and asphalt of Manhattan into a gigantic pizza oven, a similar day would seem downright balmy, a break in the prevailing misery. But in mid-May, when spring flowers still blossomed in Central Park, the heat was intrusive, seeming, after the long winter and brief spring, like a broken promise.