Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (5 page)

“Not that married.”

“Just tell him I said . . . hello,” Jessica said.

“Just hello?”

“Yeah. For now. The last thing I need in my life right now is a man.”

“Probably the saddest words I’ve ever heard,” Angela said.

Jessica laughed. “You’re right. It does sound pretty pathetic.”

“Everything all set for tonight?”

“
Oh
yeah,” Jessica said.

“What’s her name?”

“You ready?”

“Hit me.”

“Sparkle Munoz.”

“Wow,” Angela said. “Sparkle?”

“Sparkle.”

“What do you know about her?”

“I saw a tape of her last fight,” Jessica said. “Powder puff.”

Jessica was one of a small but growing coterie of Philly female boxers. What began as a lark at Police Athletic League gyms, while Jessica tried to lose the weight she had gained during her pregnancy, had grown into a serious pursuit. With a record of 3–0, all three wins by knockout, Jessica was already starting to get some good press. The fact that she wore dusty rose satin trunks with the words
JESSIE BALLS
stitched across the waistband didn’t hurt her image, either.

“You’re gonna be there, right?” Jessica asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Thanks, cuz,” Jessica said, glancing at the clock. “Listen, I gotta run.”

“Me, too.”

“Got one more question for you, Angie.”

“Shoot.”

“Why did I become a cop again?”

“That’s easy,” Angela said. “To molest and swerve.”

“Eight o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Love you.”

“Love you back.”

Jessica hung up the phone, looked at Sophie. Sophie had decided it was a good idea to connect the dots on her polka-dot dress with an orange Magic Marker.

How the
hell
was she going to get through this day?

W
ITH SOPHIE CHANGED and deposited at Paula Farinacci’s—the godsend babysitter who lived three doors down, and one of Jessica’s best friends—Jessica walked back home, her maize-colored suit already starting to wrinkle. When she had been in Auto, she could opt for jeans and leather, T-shirts and sweatshirts, the occasional pantsuit. She liked the look of the Glock on the hip of her best faded Levi’s. All cops did, if they were being honest. But now she had to look a little more professional.

Lexington Park was a stable section of Northeast Philadelphia that bordered Pennypack Park. It was also home to a lot of law enforcement types, and for that reason, there were not a lot of burglaries in Lexington Park these days. Second-story men seemed to have a pathological aversion to hollow points and slavering rottweilers.

Welcome to Cop Land.

Enter at your own risk.

Before Jessica reached her driveway, she heard the metallic growl and knew it was Vincent. Three years in Auto gave her a highly attuned logic when it came to engines, so when Vincent’s throaty 1969 Shovelhead Harley rounded the corner and roared to a stop in the driveway, she knew her piston-sense was still fully functioning. Vincent also had an old Dodge van, but, like most bikers, the minute the thermometer topped forty degrees—and often before—he was on his Hog.

As a plainclothes narcotics detective, Vincent Balzano had an unfettered leeway when it came to his appearance. With his four-day beard, scuffed leather jacket, and Serengeti sunglasses, he looked a lot more like a perp than a cop. His dark brown hair was longer than she’d ever seen it. It was pulled back into a ponytail. The ever-present gold crucifix he wore on a gold chain around his neck winked in the morning sunlight.

Jessica was, and always had been, a sucker for the bad-boy, swarthy type.

She banished
that
thought and put on her game face.

“What do you want, Vincent?”

He took off his sunglasses and calmly asked: “What time did he leave?”

“I don’t have time for this shit.”

“It’s a simple question, Jessie.”

“It’s also none of your business.”

Jessica could see that this hurt but, at the moment, she didn’t care.

“You are my
wife,
” he began, as if giving her a primer on their life. “This is my house. My daughter
sleeps
here. It
is
my fucking business.”

Save me from the Italian-American male,
Jessica thought. Was there a more possessive creature in all of nature? Italian-American men made silverback gorillas look reasonable. Italian-American cops were even worse. Like herself, Vincent was born and bred on the streets of South Philly.

“Oh,
now
it’s your business? Was it your business when you were banging that
putana
? Huh? When you were banging that big-ass South Jersey frosted skank in my bed?”

Vincent rubbed his face. His eyes were red, his posture a little weary. It was clear he was coming off a long tour. Or maybe a long night doing something else. “How many times do I have to apologize, Jess?”

“A few million more, Vincent. Then we’ll be too friggin’ old to remember how you cheated on me.”

Every unit has its badge bunnies, cop groupies who saw a uniform or a badge and suddenly had the uncontrollable urge to flop onto their backs and spread their legs. Narcotics and Vice had the most, for all the obvious reasons. But Michelle Brown was no badge bunny. Michelle Brown was an affair. Michelle Brown had fucked her husband in
her house
.

“Jessie.”

“I need this shit today, right? I really need this.”

Vincent’s face softened, as if he’d just remembered what day this was. He opened his mouth to speak, but Jessica raised a hand, cutting him off.

“Don’t,” she said. “Not today.”

“When?”

The truth was, she didn’t know. Did she miss him? Desperately. Would she show it? Never in a million years.

“I don’t know.”

For all his faults—and they were legion—Vincent Balzano knew when to quit with his wife. “C’mon,” he said. “Let me give you a ride, at least.”

He knew she would refuse, opting out of the Phyllis Diller look a ride to the Roundhouse on a Harley would provide for her.

But he smiled that damn smile, the one that got her into bed in the first place, and she almost—almost—caved.

“I’ve got to go, Vincent,” she said.

She walked around the bike and continued on toward the garage. As tempted as she was to turn around, she resisted. He had cheated on her and now she was the one who felt like shit.

What’s wrong with this picture?

While she deliberately fumbled with the keys, drawing it out, she eventually heard the bike start, back up, roar defiantly, and disappear up the street.

When she started the Cherokee, she punched 1060 on the dial. KYW told her that I-95 was jammed. She glanced at the clock. She had time. She’d take Frankford Avenue into town.

As she pulled out of the drive, she saw an EMS van in front of the Arrabiata house across the street. Again. She made eye contact with Lily Arrabiata, and Lily waved. It seemed Carmine Arrabiata was having his weekly false-alarm heart attack, a regular event for as far back as Jessica could remember. It had gotten to the point that the city would no longer send an EMS rescue. The Arrabiatas had to call private ambulances. Lily’s wave was twofold. One, to say good morning. The other to tell Jessica that Carmine was fine. At least for the next week or so.

Heading toward Cottman Avenue, Jessica thought about the stupid fight she had just had with Vincent, and how a simple answer to his initial question would’ve ended the discussion immediately. The night before she had attended a Catholic Food Drive organizational meeting with an old friend of the family, little Davey Pizzino, all five foot one of him. It was a yearly occasion Jessica had attended since she was a teenager, and the farthest thing imaginable from a date, but Vincent didn’t need to know that. Davey Pizzino blushed at Summer’s Eve commercials. Davey Pizzino, at thirty-eight, was the oldest living virgin east of the Alleghenies. Davey Pizzino left at nine thirty.

But the fact that Vincent had probably spied on her pissed her off to no end.

Let him think what he wanted.

O
N THE WAY INTO CENTER CITY, Jessica watched the neighborhoods change. No other city she could think of had a personality so split between blight and splendor. No other city clung to the past with more pride, nor demanded the future with more fervor.

She saw a pair of brave joggers working their way up Frankford, and the floodgates opened wide. A torrent of memories and emotions washed over her.

She had begun running with her brother when he was seventeen; she, just a gangly thirteen, loosely constructed of pointy elbows, sharp shoulder blades, and bony kneecaps. For the first year or so she hadn’t a prayer of matching either his pace or his stride. Michael Giovanni stood just under six feet and weighed a trim and muscular 180.

In the summer heat, the spring rain, the winter snow they would jog through the streets of South Philly; Michael, always a few steps ahead; Jessica, always struggling to keep up, always in silent awe of his grace. She had beaten him to the steps of St. Paul’s once, on her fourteenth birthday, a contest to which Michael had never wavered in his claim of defeat. She knew he had let her win.

Jessica and Michael had lost their mother to breast cancer when Jessica was only five, and from that day forward Michael had been there for every scraped knee, every young girl’s heartbreak, every time she had been victimized by some neighborhood bully.

She had been fifteen when Michael had joined the Marine Corps, following in their father’s footsteps. She recalled how proud they had all been when he came home in his dress uniform for the first time. Every one of Jessica’s girlfriends had been desperately in love with Michael Giovanni, his caramel eyes and easy smile, the confident way he could put old people and children at ease. Everyone knew he would join the police force after his tour of duty, also following in their father’s footsteps.

She had been fifteen when Michael, serving in the First Battalion, Eleventh Marines, was killed in Kuwait.

Her father, a thrice-decorated veteran of the police force, a man who still carried his late wife’s internment card in his breast pocket, had closed his heart completely that day, a terrain he now tread only in the company of his granddaughter. Although small of stature, Peter Giovanni had stood ten feet tall in the company of his son.

Jessica had been headed to prelaw, then law school, but on the night they received word of Michael’s death she knew that she would join the police force.

And now, as she began what was essentially an entirely new career in one of the most respected homicide units of any police department in the country, it looked like law school was a dream relegated to the realm of fantasy.

Maybe one day.

Maybe.

B
Y THE TIME JESSICA PULLED INTO THE PARKING LOT at the Roundhouse, she realized that she didn’t recall any of it. Not a single thing. All the cramming in procedure, evidence, the years on the street, everything evacuated her brain.

Did the building get bigger?
she wondered.

At the door she caught her reflection in the glass. She was wearing a fairly expensive skirt suit, her best sensible girl-cop shoes. A big difference from the torn jeans and sweatshirts she had favored as an undergrad at Temple, in those giddy years before Vincent, before Sophie, before the academy, before all . . . 
this
. Not a care in the world, she thought. Now her world was built on worry, framed with concern, with a leaky roof shingled with trepidation.

Although she had entered this building many times, and although she could probably find her way to the bank of elevators blindfolded, it all seemed foreign to her, as if she were seeing it for the first time. The sights, the sounds, the smells all blended into the demented carnival that was this small corner of the Philadelphia justice system.

It was her brother Michael’s beautiful face that Jessica saw as she grabbed the handle on the door, an image that would come back to her many times over the next few weeks as the things upon which she had based her whole life became redefined as madness.

Jessica opened the door, stepped inside, thinking:

Watch my back, big brother.

Watch my back.

5

MONDAY, 7:55 AM

T
HE HOMICIDE UNIT of the Philadelphia Police Department was located on the first floor of the Roundhouse, the police administration building—or PAB, as it was often called—at Eighth and Race Streets, nicknamed for the round shape of its three-story structure. Even the elevators were round. Criminals were fond of pointing out that, from the air, the building looked like a pair of handcuffs. When a suspicious death occurred anywhere in Philadelphia County, the call came here.

Of the sixty-five detectives in the unit, only a handful were women, a stat the brass were desperate to change.

Everyone knew that, these days, in a department as politically sensitive as the PPD, it wasn’t necessarily a person who was promoted, but quite often a statistic, a delegate of some demographic that made the cut.