Damaged Goods (49 page)

“Okay, let’s stop it right here. These two vehicles, this red van and this blue van, held soldiers from the Carmine Stettecase crime family. This man—can we zoom in, Brian?—is Carmine Stettecase himself. He and his boys were there to steal the heroin, a fact unknown to the NYPD, the FBI, and the DEA, all of whom were represented on the scene, all of whom expected a common drug deal. Unfortunately for Mr. Stettecase, the gray van was heavily armored. The men you see falling in the street were hit by ricocheting rounds from their own weapons.”

As the video began to roll again, Moodrow started to rise, coming halfway out of the seat before settling back down. He shook his head, muttered, “What a mess, what a fucking mess.” A dozen men and women, city cops, poured from doorways up and down the street, responding automatically to the sound of gunfire while the leaderless feds (and their team of rooftop sharpshooters) held back. At the same time, the door to a brick warehouse in the middle of the block opened and On Luk’s remaining troops charged into the street, firing as they came. Stettecase’s soldiers (Carmine was dead by this time), seeing themselves surrounded, first tried to get to their vans. When that failed, they began to shoot at the cops who were already being fired on by On Luk’s men. Then somebody opened up from the roof and, within seconds, the scene descended into utter chaos. It stayed that way for several minutes, until the video camera took a direct hit and the screen went black.

“There are questions here.” Johnson’s face reappeared. He was hunched forward, leaning over his desk. “Questions that demand answers. Last night, the bodies of three men, FBI Special Agent in Charge Karl Holtzmann, United States Attorney Abner Kirkwood, and Special Agent Robert Ewing, were discovered near an isolated house in western New Jersey. Karl Holtzmann was supposed to command the federal team.” Johnson paused, took a deep breath, turned into a camera positioned to his left. “Yesterday afternoon, a fugitive named Gildo Sappone was captured by a private investigator in Manhattan. Sappone had known connections to the Stettecase crime family.” The camera moved in until Johnson’s head filled the screen. “Did Gildo Sappone, as rumors suggest, have something to do with the New Jersey killings? What effect did Karl Holtzmann’s absence have on the Bronx disaster, and who, if anybody, was in charge? Was the FBI protecting Gildo Sappone, the man who kidnapped, then murdered, Theresa Kalkadonis? After a brief commercial break, we’ll be joined in our studios by three experts. …”

Moodrow shut off the television. “Enough is enough,” he said. When neither Gadd nor Betty disagreed, he rose and carried the cutting board to a counter between the sink and the stove. “I think I’ve lost my appetite,” he announced.

“You’re not blaming yourself?” Betty turned on the light under a second skillet. “You’ve got a bad habit of doing that.” She dropped a chunk of butter into the pan, watched it begin to melt.

“No, no, it’s something else.” He began to chop at the onions and peppers on the cutting board, then stopped abruptly and looked over at Gadd. “You listen to that tape again?”

“Of course.” A quick grin opened Gadd’s face. Moodrow had expected her to do what he would have done under the same circumstances. In a way, it was the ultimate compliment, one she’d never gotten from any of her NYPD partners. Or from her husband. “And you’re right. Not only is there no mention of a rip-off, at one point somebody—I think it was Carmine, but I’m still not sure who’s who—says they’ve got all the money together.”

Moodrow went back to his chopping. “It
had
to say that,” he called over his shoulder. “Otherwise, the feds would’ve been prepared for what actually went down.” Finished, he laid the knife on the counter. Betty was stirring a bowl of scrambled eggs into the skillet and the hiss and crackle of the cool, yellow liquid hitting the hot pan held his attention for a moment. “So, who got the money?” he finally asked.

“Tommaso the Timid,” Gadd replied. “Who else?”

Josie Rizzo stood in front of her daughter’s bedroom closet, sliding hangers from left to right as she examined the wardrobe inside. Mary was sitting on the edge of the bed, her eyes glued to the television set, watching Carmine go down for the fourth time in the last twenty minutes. “Carmine’s dead,” she whispered.

“How many times you gonna say the same thing?” Josie had never been happier. She had to admit it, had to admit that, for as long as the spirit possessed her, she hadn’t been happy at all. “So, whatta you think?” Turning, she held a white, long-sleeved dress against her chest. “Is it the real me?” When Mary didn’t respond, Josie put the dress back in the closet. The basic decision she’d made—to never again wear a black dress—didn’t offer a clue to what she actually
should
wear.

Mary, interrupted by her mother in the act of dressing, had on a pair of beige panties and nothing else. She was looking down at her breasts, a bewildered expression clouding her face. “Tommy’s gone, too, mama.”

“Whatta you sayin’?” Josie, a sky blue suit draped over her right arm, stared at herself in the mirror on the closet door.

“Tommy’s gone, too,” Mary dutifully repeated.

Josie took a moment to process the information, trying to decide if it meant anything. “How you know he’s gone?”

“I watched him, mama. The night before last. I pretended I was asleep, but I saw him pack his things into a trunk. It was five o’clock in the morning.”

Suspicious, Josie crossed the room and looked into her son-in-law’s closet. “It’s fulla clothes,” she said, dismissing Tommaso from her thoughts.

“He only took a few things.”

Ignoring the statement, Josie went back to her daughter’s wardrobe, rummaging from outfit to outfit until she discovered a blazing red dress with a flaring skirt and a matching bolero jacket. Pressing it to her waist and the base of her throat, she again turned to her daughter.

“Whatta you think?”

The ensemble looked hideously youthful against Josie Rizzo’s sixty-year-old form, but Mary, if she noticed at all, didn’t bother to comment. “Mama,” she said, “you’re three inches taller than me. And fifteen pounds lighter. You can’t wear my clothes.”

“I gotta do what I gotta do. We’ll pin it.” Josie’s fingers played with the buttons at the top of her cotton nightgown. She wanted to try on the dress, but it’d been more than thirty years since she’d been naked in front of another human being and she hadn’t cared for it even then. “I’m gonna take the dress upstairs, try it on. You go find a safety pin.”

Mary watched her mother stride across the room and open the door. “Mama,” she called.

“Yeah?” Josie stood with her back to her daughter.

“You’re holding your head up.”

Josie snorted her contempt for the weak thing on the bed. “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,” she said.

“I don’t know what that means, mama. I just thought you might have a sore neck.”

“I think we need to talk about this tape.” Betty slid the edge of a metal spatula under the half-cooked eggs in the pan, dropped in the onions and peppers, flipped the omelet back on itself. “Specifically, about why, in light of the fact that its mere possession is a felony, the tape hasn’t been destroyed.”

“I’m saving it for
Hard Copy
,” Gadd replied. “Whatta you think, Betty, could I get enough for the tape to make it worth spending a couple of years in a federal prison?”

“Is that what you wanna do?” Moodrow set three mugs on the table, then went back for plates, silverware, and napkins.

“No,” Gadd replied evenly, “it’s not what I
want
to do. What I want to do is go on the classy shows,
Today, Oprah, Donahue,
but they don’t pay their guests. I think it has something to do with journalistic integrity.” She looked at Moodrow long enough to be sure he wasn’t going to offer any help, then went on with what she’d come to say. “I’m twenty-nine, divorced, and living behind an office located above a porn shop.” She stopped again, this time to let Betty shovel a third of the omelet and several slices of bacon onto her plate while Moodrow filled her mug. “Many thanks,” she said.

“You’re welcome.” Moodrow filled Betty’s mug, then turned to his own. “You were talking about pornography.”

Gadd flushed to her ears. “Look, Moodrow, it’s easy for a guy with a fat pension and money in the bank to play at being high and mighty. When you went into the job you were what? Twenty? Twenty-one?”

“Twenty,” Moodrow admitted.

“And you’ve had a steady paycheck all these years, right? Medical insurance, dental, disability …” She waited for his grudging nod before continuing. “Well, I’ve gotta put it together all by myself, and I can’t afford your ethical standards.” Drawing a deep breath, she forced herself to settle down. “Look, it’s real simple. Fate, for once, has taken a kindly turn and I’ve got a chance to get the sort of publicity that’ll put me in a real office. Not to mention a real apartment with a real kitchen. I didn’t ask for it, but now that the opportunity’s out there, I’d be a complete jerk if I didn’t take advantage.” She snatched a forkful of the omelet, held it up to her mouth. “After all, a girl’s gotta eat.”

Betty raised her coffee mug. “I’ll drink to that.”

Moodrow started to lift his mug, then set it down on the table. “I’m not gonna drink to an attack on the job. I can’t …”

“But that’s the beauty of it,” Gadd announced. Her eyes were wide open, showing white above and below the dark iris. “I’m gonna put all the blame on the feds, say the job got screwed, which, if you remember, it did. That’s gonna be one of my main themes.”

Moodrow finally raised his mug. “Sounds like you got it covered,” he said before drinking. “In fact, it seems like you had it covered before you got here.” Pausing, he allowed himself the ghost of a smile. “Unless you expect me to go on
Oprah,
back you up.”

Gadd shook her head. “No, the impossible is not on my agenda.” She cut through a slice of bacon with the edge of her fork, put it in her mouth, chewed thoughtfully. “I need money,” she said after swallowing. “Before I go public. I need a real office, with furniture and filing cabinets and a phone system that’ll accept more than one call at a time.” Stopping abruptly, she leaned over the table and jabbed her fork in Moodrow’s direction. “Face it, Moodrow, sooner or later, Leuten Kitt is gonna talk to the media. He’s gonna tell ’em what happened in that apartment. Then, whether I like it or not, they’re gonna come to me for the story.”

“Okay.” Moodrow waved her to a halt. “I understand what you wanna do and I’m not putting you down for it. So why don’t we get to the bottom line? What’s all this have to do with me?”

“What makes you think it has anything to do with you?” Gadd endured Moodrow’s tombstone expression for a few seconds before laughing out loud. “All right, so you got me pinned. But my motives are not as ulterior as you think.”

“Well, just how ulterior
are
they?”

Gadd toyed with the food on her plate, stirring it for a moment with the edge of the fork. She was looking for a way to put the essential message that wouldn’t have her blushing. Finally, she decided to just get it out there and live with the red ears. “I want us to become partners.” Gadd felt the heat rise from her throat to her scalp, tried not to imagine what she must look like to Moodrow. “The idea is for you to put up ten thousand dollars, five thousand of which is a loan to me and which I eventually pay back. Eventually.” She raised her head, looked him in the eye. “The money isn’t the only thing, Moodrow. I lack street experience and I know it. I also know that I can’t afford to fuck up while I’m learning. Do I have to point out the obvious?”

Moodrow shook his head. “No, you’re right, but the thing of it is …”

“Just let me finish, okay. I can go out there and get money from one of the tabloids.
The Star, The Enquirer, Hard Copy …
somebody’s gonna be willing to come up with ten grand, maybe a lot more if I can get them bidding against each other. I don’t want that. It’s demeaning.” She gave Betty an imploring look. “Do you understand what I’m saying here, Betty?”

“Yeah, I do.” Betty’s smile was so warm it threatened to curdle the half-and-half.

“How about you, Moodrow?” Gadd turned to face him. “Do you understand?”

“Yeah, but I’ll have to think about it.” Without warning, he burst into a giggle. “I’ve been a cheap motherfucker for so long,” he admitted, “I don’t know if I could hold my hand steady long enough to write the check.” He laid his fork on his plate, pushed the plate toward the center of the table. “There’s a third way, of course. But I don’t know if you wanna hear about it.”

“Does that mean I don’t
have
to?”

Moodrow grinned. “You could always find Tommaso. He’s got three million that doesn’t belong to him.”

“I don’t have to find him, Moodrow.” Gadd shoved her chair back and crossed her legs. “Because I already know where he is.” She glanced at her watch. “We’ve got an appointment in exactly one hour and fifty-five minutes.”

“You’re telling me he hasn’t left town?”

“Uh-uh. Yesterday, maybe an hour before Jilly made his appearance, I picked up a message from Tommaso. He wrote that he was booked on a midnight flight to South America and he wanted me to come out to his motel and humiliate him before he left.” She held up a finger, cocked her head to one side. “I didn’t call him, didn’t think he had anything to do with Jilly or Carmine. The only reason I sent him E-mail was because I was bored. But, last night, after I saw the video, I got him on the phone and talked him into changing his reservations.”

Moodrow rapped a knuckle on the tabletop. “Gadd, you tell me what you told Tommaso, word for word, and I’ll sign the check right now.”

“Not a prayer.” Gadd’s solemn head shake was softened considerably by the lopsided grin on her face. “We’re talking privileged information here.
Client
confidentiality. So to speak.”

“What’s it like out, huh?” Josie gathered the sides of the dress and pinched them in tight. “You always watchin’ the television. Is it gonna rain?” Releasing the material with her right hand, she took a safety pin out of her mouth and pinned up the left side of the garment.