A Dark and Broken Heart (22 page)

“Not for me,” he said, “for my brother. And it ain’t no big deal.”

“You brother?”

“Right, my brother, Peter. It was all a mistake. He was holding something for someone, just a .22. It was a popgun, a peashooter. No big deal. Anyway, he gets himself pinched, and I need it to go away. That .22 is in your evidence lockup, and if that was to vanish then there wouldn’t be no case.”

“You expect me to make evidence vanish,” Walsh said.

“You can do anything you want to, Detective. Or you can not. If you don’t, then you ain’t getting nothing from me. You know this shit. This shit goes down all the time. You can’t play ignorant with me. You either want this guy’s name or you don’t.”

Walsh was suddenly agitated. An edge of panic had entered into his emotions, but he was nevertheless still driven. It was as if Bernie Tomczak had drawn him into a web and there was no way out but to carry on through.

“And if I agreed,” Walsh said, “then what’s to say I wouldn’t just renege on the agreement? You tell me what you know, and then I don’t carry through on the deal. I just go on like I never even spoke to you. What’s to stop me doing that?”

“Nothing,” Bernie said matter-of-factly.

Walsh leaned back. “You’re gonna have to trust me?”

“I am. Just like you’re gonna have to trust me to give you the right information.”

“But I’m gonna follow up on whatever you tell me and if it turns out to be bogus then we don’t have a deal.”

“Right.”

“So we’re still back to you trusting me to hold up my end of the deal.”

“We are.”

Walsh looked down, noticed his hand was shaking.

“Looks like you need a little time to think this over,” Bernie said.

Walsh put his hand in his jacket pocket and then withdrew it. For a moment it looked like the back wall was ever so slowly sliding to the left.

“No,” he said. “You need to tell me what you know.”

“You’re sure, Detective?”

Walsh didn’t answer.

“You’re agreeing with me that if I tell you what I know, then you and I have a deal. I give you a name and my brother’s .22 goes walkabout never to be seen again . . . That’s the deal we’re agreeing right here and right now?”

“Yes,” Walsh replied, the word like a bullet from his lips.

“Then I’m gonna go find out what I need to find out,” Bernie said. “Give me your card.”

“You’re going to tell me now, right?”

Bernie shook his head. “No sirree, not now.”

“What the fu—” Walsh started to get up out of the chair.

“Sit down, Detective,” Bernie said. “We’re gonna do this, then we’re gonna do it my way. I go away, I check something out, I call you, you tell me that .22 has disappeared, and then you find out what you need to know.”

“This is bullshit,” Walsh said. “This is fucking bullshit. No fucking way. This is not what we agreed. You tell me what you know now, or the deal is off—”

Bernie reached for his glass and drained it. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “We have an agreement,” he said quietly. “And the agreement stands. I find out what you want to know, you take care of my problem.”

“Screw you,” Walsh said.

“Oh, I don’t think you got a choice Detective Walsh,” Bernie said, and from his jacket pocket he withdrew a phone. “This,” he said, “is one hell of a phone. It takes pictures, it keeps me reminded of my appointments—and I have
so
many important appointments. Know what I mean? And it also has a recorder on it.” He smiled. “The whole conversation, my friend, the whole fucking conversation, and that—whichever way you look at it—gives me a straight flush. You are on tape, my friend, agreeing to make that evidence disappear, and that—as we say in the trade—is a home run—”

Walsh lunged forward and tried to snatch the phone from Bernie’s hand. Bernie took two steps back, turned and started walking.

Walsh was up and past the table. He closed on Bernie rapidly, faster than Bernie expected, had Bernie by the arm, was wrenching him back.

And then he was aware of people moving, people who knew Bernie but did not know him, people who looked a great deal more threatening and dangerous than Bernie ever could.

“You need some help there, my friend?” someone said, and in their tone was such an undercurrent of aggression that Walsh just let go of Bernie’s arm and stood there.

“I think we’re good here, thanks,” Bernie said. He looked at Walsh. He smiled. When he spoke his voice was hushed but emphatic. “I have everything I need, Detective Walsh. You are in the deepest shit imaginable. You agreed to removing evidence. You made the trade-off. You said what you said. This winds up in the press, you are screwed. Only way out is to hold up your end of the deal. You make the .22 vanish, you get the name you want, you bust that case wide open, and you’re the hero. You let me down, my friend, and this is the end of your career. If you’re lucky, you can look forward to security duty at J.C. Penney.”

There was nothing Walsh could do. People were looking. People were waiting for him to back down, to let Bernie go whichever way he was going.

Bernie Tomczak took a step. Walsh didn’t move. Bernie took another, yet another, and then he had made it to the door. He glanced back. Walsh caught the fleeting sly smile on his face, and then he was gone.

Walsh stood there for a minute, and then he sat down heavily.

The sense of overwhelm he felt just sucked all the air right out of him. He could barely breathe, couldn’t think straight at all. He had no choice. He had to make the .22 disappear. Dead if he did, dead if he didn’t. Moran, Benedict . . . and now Bernie Tomczak? What the hell was he playing at? What kind of game did he think he was playing?

He could not believe the situation he had created for himself, could not believe the words that had come from his own lips.

34
SORROW KNOWS

S
he had finally looked at him in the stairwell, and there must have been something in his eyes that gave her sufficient pause, because she just said, “Get me out of here,” and Madigan did. She didn’t say a word as Madigan drove, and he drove her somewhere where no one connected to Sandià would know her. Madigan had asked her nothing—not where she’d been living, not where she got the nurses’ uniform, not who she thought had shot her daughter or killed her sister.

He asked her nothing.

Every once in a while he just said a few reassuring words.
It’s okay. I can help you. You can tell me what happened. Take your time. Take your time
.

Marion’s Continental at 354 Bowery was a place that easily forgot you after you’d left. It was a place with history, and Madigan had forgotten how many times he’d fallen drunk in the restroom and been carried out. The sink in there had been replaced four times, broken beneath the weight of couples screwing. Despite it being a haunt of celebrities and aesthetes, their no paparazzi policy kept away a great deal of people—the kind that wanted to see celebrities, the kind that wanted to be seen. Madigan found it sufficiently discreet and off the usual beaten tracks to suit his needs. It was a good place to remain anonymous. In all the years he had frequented Marion’s he had never seen another cop there, and that was reason enough to patronize the place.

It was here that he got Isabella Arias into the men’s restroom and helped her clean up her face, got her to straighten up the skirt and T-shirt that she’d been wearing beneath the nurses’ tunic. No one interrupted them for the few minutes it took, and Madigan was grateful for this. Once done, he sat with her at a corner table, watched her drink brandy, and waited and waited for her to wind
down and settle out. Her eyes were red-swollen. Looked like she’d cried for a week without a break.

At one point Madigan glanced at his watch. It was late, past eleven, and he had no idea how long they had been sitting there.

Eventually she spoke. “I am hungry,” she said. “Can we go somewhere to eat?”

“We can eat here,” he said.

“No,” she replied. “I do not want to stay here. I want to go somewhere else.”

Madigan didn’t resist. He helped her up, walked her out, opened the car door for her, and walked around to get in. He drove toward home, back to the Bronx, and he kept on driving until he found a regular haunt up on Grand past the park and the museum. He came around again and opened the door. She looked at him but said nothing. She was exhausted. He could see it in every step she took, every motion of her body. Tired and weak and scared and confused. He tried to imagine how he would feel if it had been Cassie there in the hospital, a bullet wound . . .

He tried to remember if the bullet had ever been recovered from the room where the girl had been found.

Had Crime Scene ever come back to him on that?

He should know that. He should know such a thing with certainty, and yet he could not remember.

He opened the restaurant door for her. The place was dark and empty. Here they would go unnoticed.

“Thank you,” she said, and she stepped ahead of him and walked to a booth in the far right-hand corner.

As Madigan passed the bar he caught the attention of waiter. “Menu?” he asked.

The waiter nodded, brought menus to where they were sitting and asked for drink orders.

“Just water,” Isabella said. “No more alcohol.”

“Jack Daniel’s,” Madigan said. “Double, straight.”

She ordered chicken-fried steak, a bowl of fries, a salad. Madigan had the same because he couldn’t be bothered to read the menu. The food came. It was acceptable. She cleaned the plate and Madigan ate more than he wanted, but he felt he needed it. He could not recall the last time he’d eaten a meal of real substance.

She wanted coffee. The waiter brought it. Madigan ordered another double, and she raised an eyebrow.

“I am bulletproof,” he said.

“You are driving,” she replied.

“I am, yes, but I am a cop, and if I get stopped they won’t bust me.”

She shook her head disparagingly.

There was silence for a moment, and Madigan broke it with, “Your sister is dead.”

Isabella looked at him. Had she not cried for a week, she perhaps would have cried some more.

“And your daughter is in the hospital. She’s going to be okay, you know?”

Isabella said nothing. Her expression didn’t change. Madigan believed she would look like this for a long time to come, as if a twelve-wheel hauler had driven through her life and left nothing but wreckage.

“They told you this?” Madigan asked.

“No,” she replied. “I have been there three times. I went back yesterday and she was gone. I didn’t know where they had taken her. I was panicking. Then I asked someone and they told me she had gone to the Rehab Ward. Apparently if you go to Rehab you’re unlikely to die.” She spoke matter-of-factly. She was holding everything inside as best she could. She was trying to convince herself that she could cope with this, that she was strong enough to deal with everything that was happening to her, with what had happened to her daughter, her sister.

Madigan watched Isabella’s hands. Her fingers fought with one another, her fists clenching, unclenching, her knuckles white with the tension of what she was feeling.

“Where have you been since your sister was killed?”

She shook her head.

“It’s okay. You don’t need to tell me,” Madigan said. “I went to your apartment. I spoke to the super. He said you had been there to collect a few things.”

Again there was not a word.

“I am not the person who is investigating your sister’s death,” Madigan went on. “I am investigating the robbery of a house where your daughter was staying—”

Isabella looked up suddenly. Her eyes flashed angrily. “She wasn’t
staying
anywhere!”

“She was being held there, right?” Madigan asked.

No response.

“Someone kidnapped her . . . Someone came to your apartment
and they took her, right? You or she tried to hide in the bathroom. You had your foot against the bottom of the door, but you couldn’t stop what was happening, and they took her. Is that what happened?”

“They took her,” Isabella said. “They took us both. We escaped in the street, but they came after us and they caught her . . .”

She bowed her head. Her hands went to her face. Her whole body rose and fell sharply as she stifled her sobbing.

“They caught her and took her to this house?” Madigan asked, and then he reached forward and touched her arm.

She moved her arm suddenly, rejecting his effort to console her, his attempt at reassurance. And she leaned back against the wall of the booth and simply glared at him.

“Who the fuck are you?” she said. “What do you want from me?”

“I want to help you find out what happened to your sister, and I want to see you get your daughter back.”

“Why? What does it matter to you? You’re a cop. You people are just as corrupt as . . .”

She didn’t finish the sentence.

“As corrupt as who?” Madigan prompted. “As corrupt as the people who took your daughter?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Madigan didn’t press the issue. She would talk in her own time, or perhaps she would not.

“Do you have somewhere to stay?” he asked.

“I have an apartment I cannot go to. I have people looking for me . . .”

“You can’t go on staying where you’ve been staying already?”

“I have been in a motel. I have very little money. I can stay somewhere one more night, maybe two if it’s cheap—”

“I have a place,” Madigan said.

She smiled sarcastically. “That’s nice for you.”

“I have a room you could use.”

She looked at him. Her expression was suspicious, untrusting, even vindictive. To her, Madigan merely symbolized much of what was wrong with the world.

Madigan raised his hands.
Look
, he was saying.
No tricks
.

“What?”

“A room. I have a house. I live alone. You can stay there for a
while. It isn’t great. In fact, it’s really crappy. But no one will look for you there and you will be safe.”

“No way . . . What the hell are you—”

“It’s real simple, Miss Arias. I know who robbed the house where your daughter was. I think I know who shot her. I certainly know who owns the place . . .”