Lie Down with the Devil (30 page)

“Maybe he’s headed to Nausett,” I said. “Might be good to see where.”

Mooney’s lips tightened.

“Let’s just see where he goes,” I said. “We get an address on him, we can learn a lot more by the time we brace him. Want me to drive? You can pull into the—”

“No.”

“Sleepy?”

“No.”

I know now I was pushing it, pushing him, and I’m not sure why. Maybe I was trying to stick pins in the
balloon of my contentment. Maybe I was wary of being alone with Mooney at the Marshfield house.

I’ve had trouble with men. I’m independent and proud of it, maybe overly proud of it; I know that. Maybe I choose men I can’t stay with because I’m afraid that if I find one I love, one I want to make a life with, one my long-dead mother might approve of, I’ll flip, change, turn into the ghostly twin of my devoted, worried, beleaguered mom. Become part of something that might start with sharing, start as partnership, but end in tyranny, like my parents’ marriage did. Lose my independence. Lose myself. Live every day with grinding soul-wearing compromise.

Dr. Eisner would have had a field day.

The miles hissed by: place names on green signs, side roads, glistening lights. 195 to 25 to Route 6, but only as far as the second exit.

Mooney spoke for the first time in twenty-five minutes. “You think he made us?”

I shrugged, then realized he couldn’t see me. “No.”

“What’s down 130?”

“Mashpee, I think. Eventually.”

With the headlights off and few if any streetlamps to guide us, Moon slowed the Buick to stay on a road bordered by low flat countryside, shrubs and bogs. He sat bolt upright, head jutting forward, eyes searching beyond the windshield.

“Did he turn in?” he asked.

“Yeah, there on the right. It’s narrow.”

“Carlotta, I don’t like this.”

“Moon, hang a left. Turn around—”

There was suddenly plenty not to like. As we passed a crossroad, a car pulled out behind us, engine roaring, lights flaring. Skewed sideways, blocking the road in front, the Volvo. No choice but to hit the brakes. Hard.
Moon’s door fell open and the beam from a high-intensity flash blinded me. I fumbled for the door handle, remembered too late that the passenger door was stuck. A thud and Mooney grunted. His head fell forward, hit the steering wheel. The horn blared, then stopped as someone shoved Mooney back in the seat. I was still light-blind. I raised my hands to shield my eyes, and then hands closed around my wrists, yanking my arms.

Before the night went dark, I remember thinking I knew those voices, those familiar shadows.

Someone made a sound like a hurt animal. After a two-second lapse, I realized it was me and I was being hauled to my feet, frog-marched down a corridor and into a room with dim and spotty light. Around me, an elongated space echoed, filled with empty shelves and narrow iron cots. Round metal lighting fixtures dangled from high wooden rafters. What was this place? A hangar, a warehouse, a prison?

My inspection of the narrow chamber came to an abrupt halt, my eyes caught by the tableau at the far end. Mooney was tied to a chair by thick rope that looped around his chest and his legs. Eddie Nardo, small and precise, cashmere overcoat draped over his shoulders, was seated nearby in a folding chair. Nardo’s tie was patterned, red and gold. His fedora belonged in a black-and-white movie from the forties. Jonno San Giordino was more casually dressed. No tie on his open-collared shirt. Boots, not shoes. Sap in hand, he loomed over Mooney.

Blood welled and dribbled from Mooney’s nose. A dark stain crept down the left side of his neck.

The walls were painted a dull army green. My brain sputtered like a misfiring engine and emitted the words “Camp Edwards.” Hurricane Katrina victims had been
housed in temporary quarters at Camp Edwards, which, along with the Otis Air National Guard Base, made up the vast Massachusetts Military Reservation. The smell of sweat and cigarettes lingered. Barracks, I thought, iron cots for soldiers, a deserted barracks.

There are constant rumors that Otis will close. Maybe we were there, at Otis not Edwards, in some abandoned corner of the air base. I was missing a chunk of time. I remembered a seamless midnight car trunk, the deep panic of darkness.

Nardo, still seated, jerked his head in my direction. “Maybe you want to tell us why you’re so keen to talk to Haber? Your boyfriend doesn’t seem to enjoy conversation.”

The name Haber threw me, and then I thought
Kyle
, and it came flooding back. I moved my eyes left and right because it hurt less than moving my head. Kyle was nowhere to be seen. Unless he was behind me. Someone was back there, out of sight, gripping both my elbows hard and tight.

They used to test-fire ammunition on the military reservation. It was so remote, so isolated that no one complained about the noise.

I swallowed the sharp taste of vomit. “He doesn’t know.”

“Outside.”

A breath, then I realized Jonno was speaking to the unseen man behind me. I tried to will my legs to move, but before I could gather myself, the instant the unseen man let go, Jonno lunged, grabbing my hair at the nape. He yanked it, forcing me to my knees.

My hands wouldn’t move. Jonno’s knee was sharp against my back. Between his fingers and thumb, a silver cigarette lighter. His fingers moved. The flame hissed as he dragged me across the floor, half-shoving
me with that knee in my back, moving me closer to Mooney.

“Hey, cop,” Jonno said. “You like to watch women burn?”

Mooney said, “Kyle’s just the courier.”

“Moon—,” I said.

“Shut up,” Mooney said.

“Go on. Courier between who?” Jonno’s voice was less important than the snick of the lighter, the disappearance of the flame. I tried to gather saliva in my mouth, enough to swallow.

“The tribe’s lawyer,” Moon said. “He’s playing both sides, taking the Nausett’s money, funneling it to the opposition. Taking money from other tribes, too, so the Nausett are paying their lawyer to work against them.”

“Sweet deal, some lawyers have,” Nardo said.

My hands were loose; it wasn’t my wrists that were tied. It was higher up. I wasn’t bound with rope or wire, but I couldn’t move.

“Tell me more, cop,” Jonno said.

“That’s all I—”

The lighter flared again. I felt the flame hit my right ear, the hiss combining with a sharp intake of breath. I clamped my lips, my jaw, and then Mooney was talking, words pouring out, and the flame went away. The searing torment stopped. Sweat beaded my forehead. I tried to slow my breathing, figure out what pinned my useless arms behind me.

“Wilder finds out what’s going on,” Mooney said. “She arranges a little blackmail on her own, small stuff, but then she starts sleeping with Gianelli— match made in heaven—and one night she tells him her little story. He puts the real heat on Hastings: Give the mob a piece of the tribe or else. I don’t know,
maybe the Boston mob is putting up the money for the land deal?”

“Don’t stop now. You’re hot.”

“Wilder doesn’t like Gianelli horning in. Maybe she got moral, decided to be a friend of the tribe.”

Jonno snorted. “That bitch? Hell, no, she wanted to make a splash, get her fucking name in lights. Thought she’d be the star of Washington, wouldn’t have to go to law school, work her tail off. She’d go straight to fame-and-fortune-tabloid-heaven, the fucking bitch.”

Mooney raised his head, met my eyes for the first time. “Gianelli killed her.”

I was wearing a black tank, a transparent black overblouse. The blouse, still buttoned, had been yanked down past my shoulders. It bit into my arms at the elbow.

“No cigar for you, cop,” Nardo said. “Not Gianelli. Not this time.”

Jonno said, “Would you believe the old goat, Hastings? You wouldn’t think he had it in him, would you, but the bitch pushed the old goat too far. Goes to show you. He throttles her right there in the office, and then he calls us, his brand-new partners, to ask for help. Just like now, when Haber calls us to say you guys are looking for him in the fucking casino. Smart play.”

“The lawyer called
me
, kid, not
us.
Not you.” Nardo’s eyes sought mine. As though he were talking not to Jonno, but to me.

“Yeah,” Jonno agreed, sounding puzzled.

“When Hastings called the first time, I made a mistake. Jonno, you know you talk too much? See, I asked Jonno to handle it and then we had this big fucking mess.”

I couldn’t turn my head to see whether Kyle was in
the room. I didn’t know if there were other men. I couldn’t see the far wall of the shadowy space. Nardo had to be carrying. He always did. Jonno probably had a piece. Somebody had Mooney’s Glock. Three guns in the room. At least.

Nardo kept talking, his voice even and low. “See, Jonno’s got this problem. Jonno’s got a hair up his ass about Sam. Has had, ever since the old man bought his mother, cash on the barrelhead.”

“Don’t mention my mother. Don’t say her fucking name.”

“I’ll think about it. In the meantime, why don’t you let go of Sam’s woman, Jonno?”

“Why don’t you try and make me?”

“I’m an old-fashioned guy. I don’t like this bullshit, bringing in women, kids.”

“Old-fashioned, Nardo. Yeah, that’s what you are.” Jonno’s grip on my hair tightened.

The fabric of the blouse was strong, cheap stuff, but the buttons were weak, tiny fake mother-of-pearl things. They would break under pressure. I was sure they would break.

Nardo said, “I tell him, take care of Wilder’s body, a task a moron could do blindfolded, so what does he do? Does he haul it out, dump it in the ocean? Does he bury it where the sun won’t shine? Does he do any kind of reasonable job hiding a corpse nobody’s even gonna ask about? I mean a girl like that disappears, who gives a shit? The cops don’t even make a report. And Hastings would have told them, yeah, she took a vacation to one of those islands where girls disappear and nobody ever finds them. Or maybe Mexico. Who fucking cares?”

Hastings killed Wilder.

Jonno framed Sam.

The lighter flared near my eyes and I thought:
If my hair catches fire, if my hair catches fire …

I didn’t see Nardo’s gun until it was in his hand, as smooth a piece of sleight-of-hand as any magician. I thought it was over.

He was pointing the barrel high. He was aiming at Jonno. “Drop the lighter.”

When it hit the ground, it barely made a sound.

“You got us in a whole fucking mess, Jonno.”

“Which is gonna work out fine for you. What the fuck are you—?”

“Shut up,” Nardo said.

“You’ve been holding back money on Sam, cooking the books, cheating him—”

“Shut up! Cop, listen to me. I want to deal. I’ll give you Jonno, understand? You can have him for Danielle Wilder. Sam’s out of trouble. He comes back and we go on the way we were.”

“Hastings,” I said.

“The lawyer’s too valuable. He’s untouchable, okay? Listen, just think about it like it’s the government. You can’t touch the big guys, you know? So the little ones take the fall. Jonno’s a small fish. You get him for the girl, one for one.”

I said, “What about the other girl? Julie Farmer?”

“See? Her, Jonno did kill. To keep her from going to the cops, and to put you in the frame with that key. That one’s a slam-dunk. You know how dumb he is? I’ll tell you. He gets boxes to pack your stuff from Sam’s place; where does he get them from? I tried to take them back. Each and every one, on the bottom, it’s got a logo: CGCG. You ever unpack them, fold ’em up to toss away, and bingo. He’s an out-of-control dumb-as-shit punk and you, cop, can take him off the street,
do us all a fucking favor. Do you go for it? I can kill one of you or two or all three. Doesn’t matter to me.”

It must have mattered to Jonno.

He shoved me to the floor, but I was diving already. It took him too long to snatch the gun from his coat pocket. He never even got to fire it. Nardo took him in the throat with a bullet and Jonno sat down hard before the next one hit him under his left eye.

I strained against the fabric of the shirt, stretching, reaching, stretching.

“It was him or you, huh, cop?” Nardo’s voice stayed relaxed and conversational. “Guess you had to shoot the bastard. But, oops, the both of you musta fired at the same time. It’ll play. You know it will.”

Mooney didn’t speak.

Nardo raised the gun barrel, moved it to the right. I tensed every muscle in my chest and arms, felt black despair descend like a curtain. I knew I couldn’t stop the bullet.

The sound was deafening, like a cannon. Nardo’s gun arm exploded and he screamed, a high-pitched sound like a child in pain. Nardo’s jacket blossomed blood. The red-faced federal agent moved in from the left, shooting round after round, emptying the clip like on a firing range, and I watched Nardo’s flesh jerk with the shots. I don’t remember moving, but I was next to Mooney, bending over him, fumbling at the thick ropes. The knots resisted.

It seemed like I heard the agent’s voice from far away, from underwater.

“Move aside,” he said.

“What?”

“Jesus, you make trouble. Move it! Sam told me you wouldn’t let it go. Step aside, so I can gun the cop
and then we’ll fix it up as best we can. We don’t got a lot of time here.”

My left hand froze on the rope. “You work for Sam.”

“Well, hello, sunshine,” Dailey said. “Dawn breaks over Marblehead. Yeah, I fucking work for Gianelli. Years I’ve been working for Gianelli, and he says you should fucking listen for once in your life, do what he says, and get out of the fucking way.”

I lowered my eyes to meet Mooney’s. They were as dark as stagnant water. Empty.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“She’s a cupcake, huh?” Dailey said. “A real sweet one.”

It was the last thing he said. His eyes widened when I shot him with Nardo’s Beretta. He went down fast. I didn’t need the whole clip.

They buried Big Tony Gianelli when the soil under the first layer of mush was still hard with late frost. Some said Katharine’s abrupt departure killed him; some said he never noticed she was gone. I didn’t make the funeral. I’d had enough of death. I didn’t need to hear the old words intoned over the inert body of the old crook.