True Confessions (23 page)

“If you want to put a dirty name to it,” Brenda said. The cat was licking her hand. “It’s worth a fortune. They can’t complain, the wetbacks, they don’t get their money, because they’re illegals, most of them.”

“And if they do bitch . . .”

“They can always get hit by another car.” Brenda concentrated on the cat. It was almost as if she were speaking to it and not to Tom Spellacy. “When’s the last time Robbery-Homicide broke its hump for a dead Mex?”

Tom Spellacy ignored the question. “I wonder who dreamed this one up?”

“I bet you could guess.”

Of course I can, he thought. Jack Amsterdam. Every time I turn around, there’s Jack. Lois Fazenda does a good deed and it’s one of Jack’s rackets. That goddamn maze.

“So he knew her.”

“He was fucking her.”

“He cut her?”

“He’s clean.”

“So what’s his worry?”

Brenda looked at him, a hard smile on her face. “He thinks you’re crazy. He’s old, Jack, he’s going to die. He likes to think he was born at sixty, building cathedrals. And there’s this nut cop reminding people when he was a pimp and stuffing people into laundry dryers. He wishes he never heard of you.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

“He thinks you’re going to pull him in.”

Tom Spellacy suddenly remembered the warning from Marge Madragon. It was all beginning to come clear. He could imagine the raised eyebrows in the department if he pulled in Jack. That would get a few laughs. He tried not to think of Jack’s lawyer telling a judge what old pals they were, Tom and Jack.

“He thinks you’re going to drop this girl on him,” Brenda said. “And embarrass him. He’s had a private audience with the Pope. How many pimps can say that?”

Tom Spellacy wondered if Des had arranged the private audience. “He won’t like it, you telling me this.”

“Fuck him,” Brenda said. “I took the fall for you, Tom. But he’s the one made me do it.” She picked cat hairs from her dress. “This is my going-away present.”

“I don’t know if I can do anything with it.”

“That’s up to you.” Brenda held the cat and emptied the rest of the bread bag onto the ground. “Anyway I wanted to say good-bye.”

“Why?”

“It’s nice to have somebody to say good-bye to, is all. Who do I have? The lieutenant governor? You think I can call him up and say remember me, we used to fuck?”

Tom Spellacy did not say anything. All around the bench, birds and ducks were gobbling up the last of the bread.

“All I’ve got are old whores and people I bought,” Brenda said.

Tom Spellacy stood up. No one paid any attention to them. We’re just another middle-aged couple, he thought.

“So long, Brenda.”

Sonny McDonough marked his putt and surveyed the green
. “You’re away, Des.”

“You make that one, Des, they’ll give you a gold putter in heaven,” Dan T. Campion said.

“That’s grand, Dan,” Sonny McDonough said. “A gold putter in heaven. Frank Leary would give up being pastor at Saint Jude’s, he had one of them.”

“He went over the top, I hear, Frank,” Dan T. Campion said.

“Most successful fund raiser in the archdiocese,” Sonny McDonough said. “It’s made of money, Saint Jude’s.”

“There’s not a better pastor than Frank,” Dan T. Campion said. “And a nicer man.”

“And a worse golfer,” Sonny McDonough said.

“Is that a fact?” Dan T. Campion said.

“I was playing with him the other day,” Sonny McDonough said. “And he misses a tap-in. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ he says. And I says, Taking the Lord’s name in vain, Monsignor. You’re going to have to confess that.’ And you know what he says?”

“No,” Dan T. Campion said.

“He says, ‘Damn right,’ “ Sonny McDonough said. “Isn’t that grand?”

“A grand story,” Dan T. Campion said.

“You got to tell it to His Eminence, Des,” Sonny McDonough said.

Who’ll think I’ve taken leave of my senses, Desmond Spellacy thought. He contemplated his putt. A twelve-footer with a slight break to the right. This was one he wanted to sink. Just to show his killer instinct. The killer instinct was something Sonny Mc-Donough would respect. If Sonny’s going to be a successful chairman of the Building Fund, he’d better learn right now he’s not going to gull me with stories about Frank Leary’s golf game.

“You’re blocking my view, Sonny. Your shadow’s on the cup.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Des,” Sonny McDonough said. He scurried out of range.

“Now it’s your dime, Sonny,” Desmond Spellacy said. “Where you marked your ball. The sun’s glinting off it.”

“I’ll put a penny down, Des.”

Desmond Spellacy bent over and addressed his ball. “You know Cornelia Cronin, don’t you, Sonny? Corky, they call her.”

Desmond Spellacy straightened up. The color had drained from Sonny McDonough’s face. Dan T. Campion glanced back and forth between the two men. He’s heard about Sonny and Corky, too, Desmond Spellacy thought. Although he wasn’t surprised. There wasn’t much about deviant behavior that Dan Campion didn’t know.

“I do indeed, Monsignor,” Sonny McDonough said. So it’s “Monsignor” now, Desmond Spellacy thought. “Why do you ask?”

“She ran the Altar Society when I was at Saint Basil’s. She used to work for you.”

“As a bookkeeper, Monsignor.”

“Then she had an accident.”

“She broke her back, didn’t she, Sonny?” Dan T. Campion said.

He’d kill Dan right now if he could get away with it, Desmond Spellacy thought.

“Something like that,” Sonny McDonough said.

“You pensioned her off nicely, I hear,” Desmond Spellacy said. “Five hundred dollars a month, I’m told.”

“For life, Des,” Dan T. Campion said.

“You better putt, Monsignor,” Sonny McDonough said.

Desmond Spellacy stroked the ball evenly. It broke to the right a yard from the hole and dipped into the cup. He gave his putter to his caddy and turned his back on Dan Campion and Sonny McDonough. He could hear Dan chortle and knew that Sonny had missed his putt. He turned around just as Sonny putted a second time. The ball rimmed the cup and rolled to a stop a yard away.

“We’ll give you that one, Sonny, won’t we, Dan?”

“It’s you that’s giving it to him, Des, not me,” Dan T. Campion said. Giving Sonny the business is what he means, Desmond Spellacy thought. First the stick, now the carrot. He put his arm around Sonny McDonough as they walked to the next tee.

“That was a Christian thing you did for Corky, the pension,” Desmond Spellacy said. “There’s not many employers would do that.”

“Thank you, Monsignor.”

“It’s one of the reasons I told the Cardinal you should be chairman.”

“You told His Eminence about—”

“I told His Eminence you were one in a million.”

“What a grand thing for you to tell His Eminence, Des,” Sonny McDonough said. He seemed ready to collapse with relief. The killer instinct, Desmond Spellacy thought. He patted Sonny on the arm and walked to the next tee. A par-five, 565-yard hole. Desmond Spellacy put his ball on the tee and whacked it down the fairway. His lie was a good forty yards past Sonny and Dan. Plenty of time to be alone. Away from the chatter of the other two. They’d have a lot to talk about. Both wondering how he knew about Corky Cronin. That was one he owed Tommy. For a moment he thought about the girl in the confessional, then put her out of his mind. There were more immediate things to worry about. He knew Sonny was no longer a problem. No fast ones there. Sonny would do as he was told. There would not be much static from Sonny about getting rid of Jack Amsterdam.

God, I’m sick of Jack, Desmond Spellacy said to himself as he approached his ball. You can’t look around without seeing him getting his hands dirty. He almost wished now that he had not asked Phil Leahy and Devlin Perkins to check up on the Protectors of the Poor. There was only one thing you could say for Jack: his brain was always working. It was not everyone who would know that Monsignor Aguilar was money in the bank. Ruben Aguilar, the pastor at San Conrado’s. Jack’s parish. Seventy-nine years old and an IQ to match. He wondered when it had occurred to Jack just how dumb Ruben Aguilar really was. Probably listening to him preach every Sunday. Imagine getting a priest to front for you. He wondered how Jack first put the bug in Ruben Aguilar’s ear. A charity. A charity for the Mexicans at County General. Candy and rosary beads and someone to talk to them in Spanish. The Anglos won’t do it. The Anglos don’t care about Mexicans. If there was one way to get Ruben Aguilar’s attention, that was it. Anglos not caring about Mexicans. A tax-exempt charity. Just the thing. You head the charity, Monsignor, I’ll get the tax exemption. That was the way Jack operated. The Protectors of the Poor. It would take Ruben Aguilar to come up with a name like that. Or Monsignor Amigo, as the newspapers called him. What a shill. All the volunteers were Jack’s people. And the towing companies and ambulance services and body shops and auto-wrecking yards that supplied the Protectors with the names of Mexican accident victims were all paid off by Jack for just that information. In the spirit of Christian charity. And brotherhood.

Desmond Spellacy cursed himself. I should have known. That’s what rankles. Every time I saw Ruben Aguilar’s picture in the paper shaking hands with the Mexican consul. Monsignor Amigo. I should have known that moron was being had.

Desmond Spellacy was on the green in three.

“It’s a terrible thing,” Sonny McDonough said as he and Dan T. Campion came onto the green.

“Giving them names like that to sell their newspapers,” Dan T. Campion said.

“The Virgin Tramp,” Sonny McDonough said. He seemed to have recovered from the Corky Cronin conversation. “If you’ll excuse the expression, Des.”

“It’s the Virgin Mary they should be reading about, not the Virgin Tramp,” Dan T. Campion said. “You never get a chance to read your newspaper these days, you spend so much time hiding it from the little ones.”

“She worked for the Protectors,” Sonny McDonough said. “You knew that, didn’t you, Des?”

Desmond Spellacy nodded.

“The one grand thing the poor girl did was help the poor Mexicans,” Sonny McDonough said. “Giving them jumping beans, which is what they like.”

“Why don’t you pipe down and let me putt,” Dan T. Campion said. His face was flushed with irritation. “She would’ve made Mary Magdalene blush with shame, that one.”

Dan T. Campion hunched over his putt and holed out.

“You’ve got to look for the beauty in everyone is what I always say,” Sonny McDonough said.

Annoyance still mottled Dan T. Campion’s face. “You never planted anyone wasn’t a grand girl, Sonny.”

“You sound like a coon, saying planted,” Sonny McDonough said. He would never stand for any aspersions cast on his profession. “I put the poor child in her final resting place is what I did.”

“If you planted killer Stalin, you’d make him sound like one of them elves which kissed the Blarney Stone,” Dan T. Campion said. “Because his loved ones had the foresight to pick McDonough & McCarthy, the General Motors of the planting industry.”

Desmond Spellacy let the conversation wash over him. It was always this way with Dan and Sonny. First one, then the other pressing the advantage. There was no need to bring up Jack until an opening was presented. He sank his putt, then watched Sonny three-putt for a bogie six. A bad two holes for Sonny.

Dan T. Campion was still chattering. There was something on Dan Campion’s mind, Desmond Spellacy was sure of that. When Dan Campion babbled, there was something he did not want anyone to know. That was one thing Desmond Spellacy had picked up in the years he and Dan had worked together. And Dan was babbling like a brook lately. Especially about Tommy. And what a fine detective he was. Such a grand Catholic. A credit to the force. A credit to the Church. A credit to Ireland. When the fact was, Dan T. Campion could not stand Tommy and Tommy returned the compliment.

Desmond Spellacy wondered what was on Dan’s mind. As long as it doesn’t concern me, he thought, I don’t really care.

“G’wan, Sonny,” Dan T. Campion said. He was sitting in the shadow of a shade tree, fanning his face with a white straw hat. “ ‘I planted Carole Lombard,’ is probably what you told them. Listing your credits, that’s your best sales pitch. Isn’t that right, Des? Fatty Arbuckle. Rin Tin Tin of the canine family. All the stars of the animal kingdom. Black Beauty. My Friend Flicka. Nanook of the North.”

“That’s an eskimo, you dumbbell,” Sonny McDonough said. He was washing the dirt from his golf balls, not looking at Dan Campion.

“Buy by the acre, sell by the foot,” Dan T. Campion said. “I know the rules of your business.”

“The only rule of my business is I’d like to put you in the ground right now,” Sonny McDonough said. He turned to Desmond Spellacy and with an elaborate pretense of ignoring Dan Campion, said, “I keep reading about your brother the policeman.”

“And doing a grand job he is,” Dan T. Campion said. He rose from the bench and took a club from his bag. “The backbone of the city, our policemen. You’d have to agree to that, Sonny. You, too, Des. If we didn’t have any policemen, we’d have a lot more crime than we have now. And that’s a well-known fact.”

“There’s always the types likes to run them down,” Sonny McDonough said.

“The Mexicans, usually, and the colored,” Dan T. Campion said.

“I seen him fight once, your brother,” Sonny McDonough said. “Over to the Legion Stadium in El Monte there. Eight-round semifinal. He was fighting a colored boy.”

“He won, did he?” Dan T. Campion said.

“Lost,” Sonny McDonough said. “Split decision. A dirty fight it was, too. Lots of rabbit punches.”

“They’re good at the rabbit punches, the colored,” Dan T. Campion said.

“Tommy Jefferson,” Desmond Spellacy said. “That was the name of the boy that beat him.”

It was the only time he had ever seen Tommy fight.

“A terrible thing the way they take the names of our presidents,” Dan T. Campion said. “Eye-talian names, they should take, the colored. Or Polish.” He turned to Desmond Spellacy. “That fellow Jefferson ever sticks up a bank, he won’t try the rabbit punches on your brother if he’s there.”

“What’d he be doing there in the first place?” Sonny McDonough said. “He’s not a bank guard.”

“Using his noggin is what he’d be doing there,” Dan T. Campion said. “It’s why he’s such a grand detective, the way he uses his bean. There’d be no bank stickups from this Jefferson with Tom Spellacy on the job.”

“You make him sound like Sherlock Holmes,” Desmond Spellacy said.

“Oh, that’s grand, Des, grand,” Dan T. Campion said. “A grand policeman, Sherlock Holmes, and that’s a well-known fact.”

Desmond Spellacy parred the ninth and tenth holes, double-bogied the eleventh and birdied the twelfth. On the thirteenth tee, he was a hole up on Sonny McDonough and even with Dan Campion. Over the previous four holes, the two men seemed to have reached an accord about the mortuary business.

“I did her for free, you know,” Sonny McDonough said. “One of your beautiful thirty-footers.”

“How did you get that one past Shake Hands?” Dan T. Campion said. “A tight man with a dollar, Shake Hands McCarthy.”

“The argument we had,” Sonny McDonough said. “ ‘You give away a thirty-footer here and a thirty-footer there,’ Shake Hands said, ‘pretty soon you got an acre full of nothing but deadbeats.’ ‘Just one plot,’ I says. ‘A twenty-seven footer,’ he says.”

“That’s what he’ll be remembered for, Shake Hands, the twenty-seven footers,” Dan T. Campion said.

“Them three square feet give you twenty more plots to the acre,” Sonny McDonough said.

“A revolutionary idea,” Dan T. Campion said.

“A great man, Shake Hands,” Sonny McDonough said. “For a bookkeeper. It’s the long-range planning he has trouble with. ‘Think of the publicity,’ I says to him. ‘Twenty thousand new people moving here every month. This is where they’re going to stay until they pass away. What a way to introduce them to McDonough & McCarthy, giving this poor girl a free send-off.’ “