Known to Evil (27 page)

"Of course. What do you need?"

I gave him some coordinates near Columbus Circle.

"Have your police search a dark-green Dodge that will be parked there in an hour. Tell them to arrest and hold the man they find for as long as they can."

He repeated the position and said it would be done.

I gave Diego a syringe loaded with a sedative.

"Only give him half," I said. "Considering all the blood he's lost, the whole thing might kill him."

AT 5:00 A. M. I was seeing Diego off on an airport bus shuttle across the street from Grand Central. We'd bandaged the assassin's wound and left him unconscious in the backseat of his Dodge, under the coarse burlap, on a side street in Midtown.

"How'd you know he'd talk?" I asked my comrade.

"He knew too much about killing. He knew where I would go if he didn't bend."

I shuddered, visibly. Diego stared at this with his innocent, ruthless gaze.

"You should have killed him," he said. "Alive, he will try to find you."

"Yeah," I said. "Maybe so. See you, my friend."

We clasped hands and Diego smiled, his broad face expressing friendship combined with something like pity.

I WAS FIFTEEN MINUTES early to Grimaldi's but Alphonse still beat me. It wasn't the first time that he reminded me of Twill . . . and Hush.

The suit he wore was Italian, in a price range that was akin to middle-class family vacations. It was dark, dark red, with a white shirt that hinted at a scarlet blush. His hands were manicured. The bluish silk tie he wore simulated snakeskin perfectly. His presence transformed the booth into a kind of portable papal chamber you might find in some corner in a vast room of the Vatican.

I suppressed the urge to make a sarcastic bow and moved in across from him.

We stared at each other for a few moments and I was reminded of Diego and Patrick. The feeling was unsettling.

I expected the Big Man to get right down to the matter at hand. That's how he had always conducted business before. But the last week had been full of revelations.

"I want to thank you for this, Leonid," he said. "I know I haven't given you much support."

Before I could respond, another voice said, "What can I get you, bud?"

It was a nut-brown white man dressed all in cook's white. He was small, wiry, and pretty much emotionless at his job.

"Black coffee, scrambled eggs, and ham," I said.

"Hash browns?"

"No thanks."

The cook/waiter turned away.

"Terry Lord is called 'the Impresario' in his field," Alphonse said. "He's a freelancer of the highest caliber, an entrepreneur who, how shall I say, leverages events."

"What kind of events?"

"Like you used to do," Alphonse said, "but on a much larger scale."

There was subtlety to Rinaldo's description. I was surprised that he remembered how my life had shifted from being a crook to trying to make amends in some way. My life seemed like such a small thing compared to the world in which he traveled. For my circumstances to fall under his purview seemed . . . improbable--like a mountain claiming to feel the passage of a caterpillar.

"So you think Lord might be, um, leveraging Tara?"

Rinaldo sucked in his lips and then tried to cover the faux pas with his left hand.

"I don't know," he said. "It makes sense that if he was going after me he might approach her. I suppose he could decide to kill her, but I can't think why. At any rate, it's nothing personal. He's working for someone else. I need to find out who that is."

"I take it that you can't do something so delicate through Strange or Latour," I speculated.

"No."

"What about Tara?"

"What about her?"

"What does she have to do with you?"

Alphonse Rinaldo winced, if only slightly. He shuddered and looked away. In those few gestures he conveyed to me that this subject, the central purpose of our business, was off limits.

"Then tell me what you know about Lord," I said.

"There was once a congressman," Rinaldo began, on confident footing.

"Here's yer eggs and ham," the nut-brown cook said. He set down the food and coffee and left.

"There was once a congressman . . ." I said, to restart the story.

". . . who was looking into the pricing practices of the oil companies. He was a brash midwesterner who didn't understand the protocols necessary in taking such an action. The process of bringing to light these practices . . . was protracted. Terry Lord was hired to follow it from inside a shadow.

"Her name was Alana Ash, and she was everything a happily married man could want in a prostitute. The arrangement went on for eleven months. Just before the congressman was to bring the case of the oil companies to his fellows, Alana moved to Virginia, not far from downtown D.C. One day the congressman sent his car for her. The FBI had him in custody for interstate sex trafficking before the sweat had dried."

It was a simple scenario, one that I might have arranged myself, on a slightly smaller scale.

"So he's got a lot of clout, huh?" I said.

"He could crush you without a second thought, Leonid."

A smile I could not suppress slid across my mouth and I said, "No one is safe from anyone else in this world."

"Is there anything else you need from me?" he asked.

"What do you know about an ADA named Broderick Tinely?"

"I know the name. Why?"

"He's pressing the investigation of Soa's murder, going above and beyond."

"I'll look into it."

"There's a guy named Grant. He was looking into Angie's whereabouts when Wanda Soa was murdered."

"Forget him. He was working for me through Sam Strange."

"What about Lamont Jennings? He represented Soa at one time."

"Same thing. Anything else?"

"No, not that I can think of."

"Will you continue the investigation?" Rinaldo asked.

"Right after I eat these eggs."

48

T
he Big Man paid the bill in cash, then left me to my protein and caffeine.

My phone made the sound of mission bells. It was Aura calling me. I feared that if I spoke with her I might be thrown off my game again and trampled by one of the many enemies I was accruing.

I decided to let her leave a message.

The eggs were crumbly and the tough ham was shot through with the harsh taste of preservatives. The coffee was strong enough, but the hour was too early.

After scarfing down this breakfast, I took a cab to Wilma Spyres's apartment building.

SHE ANSWERED THE DOOR quickly, didn't even ask who it was. Her tattered robe was partly open. Upon seeing me she closed the fabric gap and produced a perfect sneer with her small mouth.

"What do you want?" she asked

"What all men want," I said.

This statement sparked interest in the former beauty's muddled eyes. Then a wave of suspicion washed away the momentary vulnerability.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Truth."

"I don't have time for this," she said.

"Unless you want to be doing time you better find a few minutes for me."

"Fuck you."

She stepped back and moved to close the door.

"You shut me out and I go right to Joe Fleming," I said.

That stayed her slam hand.

"What are you talking about?"

"Let me in or I go to Joe."

"Ron's not here," she said. I didn't know what she meant by it. Maybe it was a stab at old-fashioned respectability--you couldn't enter a man's domicile with his woman if he was not present.

"I know that."

"Come on, then," she said, turning her back, leaving me to close the door behind us.

Wilma sat on the dark-blue sofa and I returned to the relative safety of the folding chair.

"What?" she asked. Even the potential for beauty disappeared behind her wall of anger, this buttressed by a lifetime of fear.

"I have a very simple job, Ms. Spyres," I said. "I have to keep Ron out of trouble. I don't care about you, your habits, or your friends. Tomorrow they could crown you queen of England or lay you in your grave--it's all the same to me."

These words sobered her rampant emotions a bit.

"What do you want?"

"The truth."

"What truth?"

"Tell me something," I said. "If I were to have put a sealed envelope with Ron's name on it under your door instead of knocking, would you just put it down there next to that bong and wait for him to come home?"

I took no pleasure in seeing the fear that flooded the junkie's girlfriend's eyes.

"It was Joe Fleming," she said, stammering over every other word.

"No."

"It was Joe set Ronnie up," she pleaded.

"No."

Wilma jumped to her feet.

"Sit down," I said, with no particular emphasis to my voice.

She obeyed and muttered something that I didn't understand.

"What?"

She looked away, biting back the tears.

"What did you say?" I asked.

"He made me do it," she said loudly and clearly, her tone somehow underscoring the cliched phrase.

"Who?"

"He . . ." she stopped after the syllable and took a breath. "He told me that we could, could get together. All I had to do was make the deal with Ron. Once the car was picked up, me and him would go away to Atlantic City to this time-share he got down there. It used to belong to his auntie, but she died and left it to him."

"His name."

"But the cops busted Ron and now it's all shit. You know, if I could just get away from the losers around here for just a mont' I know I could get straight." With one hand Wilma scratched her face and with the other she pulled at her hair. "I was gonna leave Ron with this place. He could'a stayed here until the rent ran out. I didn't mean for him to go to jail. Now what am I gonna do?"

"His name," I said.

"What am I gonna do?" she asked again.

"Who gave you the money?"

"Cary Bottoms. They call him 'Scary' a lot, but he can be real sweet."

"What does this, uh, Cary do?"

Wilma looked at me, bringing her hands away from her face.

"He's killed people before," she said. "But that's just because he doesn't know how to get away from here, either. If we, if we could'a got that money from them guns we could'a moved out to Atlantic City."

"Have you seen Bottoms since Ron was arrested?"

She shook her head, looking away again.

"Do you know how to get in touch with him?"

"Maybe. I got a number but he told me never, never to call it."

Again I was reminded of the innocence of most career criminals.

"I want you to listen to me, Wilma. Ron is in jail and I have to tell him what you did."

"Why?"

"Because I'm working for his lawyer. But that doesn't matter. You want to get away and make a life for yourself, right?"

She nodded, trying her damnedest to understand.

"I know a man named Plumb. He works for the government, and he needs a big case to get from where he is to where he wants to be--just like you. I believe that he'd be willing to make a deal with you."

"Money?" she said.

I nodded. "All we have to do is get you in touch with Ron's lawyer for him to make the deal. And you don't have to worry about Scary. He's not a big enough fish. Plumb will want the people he's buying from and selling to. Maybe in the end you'll both get to go to Atlantic City."

Wilma smiled at that scenario. I felt like a real dog. But this was the best of all possible worlds.

"There's one thing, though, Wilma."

"What?"

"Scary's a killer and he knows that you can send him to jail."

"He would never hurt me."

I didn't even have to speak, just to look in her face was enough to crush her adolescent hope for love from the misunderstood gun dealer.

"Oh no," she said.

She stood up and glanced around the room, determining with alacrity what she should and should not take with her.

"I can go with you in a taxi to Ron's lawyer's office," I said. "He has a room where you can wait until he's made the deal with Plumb."

"How much?" Wilma asked.

"A few thousand," I said. "Maybe a little more."

She nodded and action took the place of words, deceptions, and self-deception.

While Wilma put her important belongings into a brown paper bag I called Breland's cell phone. He was already on his way to work. We made a plan that we hoped would produce a small fee and immunity for Wilma, and immediate release for Ron.

I rode with her in the cab and together we walked into Breland's seventh-floor office on Madison, just below Forty-second. After the two shook hands we sat at the round teakwood table in a room off from the reception area of Breland's office.

Shirley, his female jack-of-all-trades, was not in yet and so we had the place to ourselves for a while.

"So," Breland said after an hour of serious interrogation, "are you willing to identify Mr. Bottoms as the source of the money, car, and weapons?"

"Yes," Wilma whispered.

"You'll have to speak up, Ms. Spyres."

"Yes."

"And are you willing to name the people you suspect that he's doing business with?" Breland asked, sounding more like a hard-nosed prosecutor than a defense attorney.

"Lazar," she said. "His name is Richard Lazar. Cary's been movin' guns for him for years."

"COME AGAIN?" JAKE PLUMB said to me over one of Breland's eight lines.

It was only eight-thirty, but he was at work and I was in a hurry to get to my next disaster.

"I can give you the name of the guy who owned the car and the guns," I said, "testimony that my client didn't have knowledge of the contents of the trunk, and the name of the man that the weapons were being moved for."

"How the hell did you get all that?"

"I need ten thousand and immunity for the information my client can provide," was my reply, "and you drop all charges against Sharkey. Also, I want you to get one of your Rolodex judges to enroll him in a three-month detox program, courtesy of the Fed."

"Why not just wait until he's begging for the H?" I could imagine Plumb's evil smile.