A Dark and Broken Heart (23 page)

“You know who shot my daughter?”

“I
think
I know,” Madigan repeated. “I’m not sure. But I am sure about whose house it is, and I just want you to tell me why your daughter was kidnapped and why she was being held there.”

“I can’t trust you,” Isabella said. “What makes you think I can trust you more than anyone else? . . . In fact, in my experience cops are the very last people you should trust—”

“You should trust me because I think we want the same thing,” Madigan said.

“And what would that be?”

“We want our lives back the way they were.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you want your daughter back, and you want to go on with your life without people looking for you. And I want to get back some things that I have lost.”

“Such as?”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you can go stay in a motel, and when you run out of money you can walk the streets and take your chances, or you can trust me enough to let me give you a room. For one night, two maybe—however long you want—and you tell me what you know and I will go and take care of all this bullshit.”

She paused, and once again she looked at him just as she had in the hospital stairwell. She looked
through
him. That was the way it felt.

“You’re serious,” she said.

“I am.”

“So who
are
you?”

Madigan smiled sardonically. “I was somebody, and then I was nobody, and now I’m trying to be somebody again.”

“Are you for real? Who talks like that? This isn’t a game, mister. These are real people, and my daughter is in a real hospital, and someone took my sister and they really cut her head off. You think you’re in a movie or something?”

“Sometimes, yes . . . Actually, yes, sometimes it does feel like a
movie.” He slowly shook his head. He looked down at his empty glass and wanted another drink so badly. Then he looked up at her and smiled. “But the movie’s gotta end sooner or later, right? People gotta go home. People have lives to get on with . . .” His voice trailed away. For the first time he wasn’t thinking about every word he was saying. He’d lied so much and to so many people, about so many things, and every word he uttered had to be weighed and considered just in case he said something that he really shouldn’t. What kind of a life was that?

“You’re some crazy son of a bitch,” she said, “and you want me to come stay in your house?”

“No, not really,” Madigan replied. “I don’t know what the hell I want most of the time, but I think you and I can help each other, and I think that if we do this together then maybe we have a chance. I think if you try and handle this alone then you’re going to wind up like your sister—”

“Enough!” Isabella snapped. “You have no business—”

“I do,” Madigan interjected. “I have a great deal of business talking about this. Your sister is dead and your daughter is shot, and I think I can help you get through the other side of this alive. You? Out there on your own? If this is who I think it is . . . If what I think is going on here
is
actually going on, then I’d give you a day, maybe two, and then I’ll be pulling bits of you out of Dumpsters all over the city.”

Isabella Arias just looked at Vincent Madigan and there was nothing she could say.

“Tell me who killed your sister,” Madigan said.

“I don’t know.”

“You know the people who came to your apartment, the people who took Melissa?”

“Their names? No, I don’t know their names.”

“But you know who they work for?”

No response, and that was response enough.

“Sandià, right?” Madigan asked. “Melissa was in his house, and if Melissa was taken by Sandià’s people, then Sandià must also have ordered your sister’s murder. Am I getting close here?”

Again, there was nothing in the woman’s expression to even suggest she was hearing Madigan.

“And if they wanted you as well, and you’re on the run, then they must have been holding on to Melissa as a hostage until you turned yourself in to them. Is that right?”

Silence. Her expression was implacable.

“And if they want you that badly . . . bad enough to kill Maribel, bad enough to kidnap your daughter, then you must know something that makes them awful scared . . .”

“Sandià,” Isabella said. “That’s what he calls himself. That’s what people call him. To me he will only ever be Barrantes . . . Dario Barrantes . . .”

Madigan’s reaction was immediate. He had not heard anyone speak that name for years.

Isabella nodded. “You know Barrantes, eh?”

“Yes,” Madigan replied. “I know Barrantes.”

“And you know why they call him Sandià, the Watermelon Man?”

“Yes, I do.”

“And you associate with him? You are one of his people?”

“No,” Madigan said. “I am not one of his people. But I am a cop in the Yard. Everything that happens here has something to do with Sandià, and so we cross paths.”

Isabella closed her eyes and leaned back.

Madigan was aware of his own heartbeat. He was aware of his pulse. He was frightened, tense, agitated. He didn’t know this woman. He didn’t understand how these things had happened, but he believed he had been drawn irreversibly into some dense and complex web. Always on the outskirts, the edges, and now?

“Okay,” she said, interrupting his train of thought.

“Okay?”

“I will come with you,” she said. “That’s what you want, right?”

“Yes,” Madigan said, almost involuntarily. “That’s what I want.”

“So let’s go.”

“Why the sudden—”

“Why? Because you are right. I have enough money for a day, maybe two, and then I am dead anyway. If you work for Barrantes, then so be it. I am dead if I go with you, dead if I don’t. And if I don’t do something,
anything
, then he will kill Melissa . . .” She hesitated, breathed deeply, seemed to gather herself from the edge of another abyss of grief, and then she was sliding along the seat of the booth and gathering up her jacket.

Madigan rose to his feet. And now? That had been his earlier thought. Now what? Now there was no turning back. He had come this far, and—just as he had considered earlier—the only way off
the rollercoaster was to reach the end. You pay your money, you take your choice.

She walked to the door. He followed her as quickly as he could, pausing only to drop enough money on the bar to cover their check. She remembered where he had parked the car and she went on ahead. He caught up with her, grabbed her arm and slowed her down. She did not resist, did not protest. He released her and she walked beside him.

He drove slowly, five miles below the speed limit. They were at his house within ten minutes, and even as he drew to a stop against the curb he knew that something was wrong.

“Wait here,” he said, and he switched off the internal light before opening the driver’s side door. He had his gun in his hand, and he walked past three houses to the left of his own and cut through an alleyway into the rear of the block. He came up behind his own place, saw a silhouette against the rear door, and crouched down. The silhouette was still, and then it moved, and then the silhouette put a cigarette in its mouth and flicked a lighter.

Bernie Tomczak.

Madigan—wondering what the hell Bernie Tomczak was doing in his yard—came up out of nowhere and stuck his gun in the small of Bernie’s back.

“Jesus freakin’ Christ, Vincent!” Bernie exclaimed. The lit cigarette dropped from his lips and bounced in a shower of small sparks on the stoop.

“What are you doing here, Bernie? Come to stick me?”

“Jesus, no, Vincent. What the hell? Christ Almighty, you damn near gave me a freakin’ coronary.”

“Answer the question, Bernie . . . What are you doing here?”

“I came to speak to you. Someone came and visited me. A cop. He came and told me some shit, and I think you should know about it.”

“If you’re bullshitting me, Bernie . . . If this is some kind of—”

“Vincent, just shut the fuck up and listen to me, okay? I got something that’s gonna help you.”

Madigan frowned. He remembered the kicking he gave Bernie just two days earlier, the kicking that had left him looking like a car crash victim. And then he put two and two together.

“You want me to make your debt to Sandià disappear, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, Bernie, you better have something really valuable . . .”

“Vincent, just let me in the goddamned house already. What the hell, eh?”

“Okay, Bernie, but I got someone with me.”

“You on a hot date, Vincent?” Bernie smiled like a fool.

“No, I am not on a hot date, you asshole. I got a witness out in the car, and I need you to go easy, okay?”

“Whatever you say, Vincent. Whatever you say.”

“Jesus, I don’t know why the hell I have anything to do with you.”

Bernie raised his hand and gently tapped Madigan’s cheek. “Because you love me, Vincent, and you’d miss me if I was gone.”

Madigan took out his keys and opened the back door. “Get in there,” he said. “Make some coffee. I’m gonna go get the girl, and no bullshit, okay?”

Bernie Tomczak went on in the house and Madigan closed the door behind him.

Back around the front he told Isabella that there was someone else inside.

“Who?” she asked.

“His name is Bernie Tomczak. He’s an old friend. He’s okay.”

She seemed unperturbed by the fact. She got out of the car and followed Madigan.

It was then, as Isabella Arias and Bernie Tomczak came face-to-face, that Madigan saw something in Bernie’s expression. He did well to hide it, because Isabella seemed to see nothing, but Madigan caught it. A fleeting shift, like the shadow of a cloud across a field, and then it was gone.

Madigan told Isabella to take a seat in the front. He went out back to the kitchen after Bernie.

“What?” Madigan asked him.

Bernie frowned.

“I said no bullshit, Bernie. What the hell is it with the girl?”

Bernie shook his head. His face dropped. “She’s the dead girl’s sister, right? The one Sandià’s looking for?”

“How the hell do you know about that?” Madigan asked.

“Oh man, you have no idea how much I know about . . . no freakin’ idea at all.”

35
ANGER BLUES

“I
don’t know why,” Walsh said. “I don’t know what the hell happened . . .”

“Oh come on, Duncan, you expect me to believe that? You, of all people? Mister Organized, Mister Predictable, Mister Routine . . . Are you even listening to yourself?”

“Carole, I am tired. I am really fucking tired, okay? I can’t use this right now—”

“Well, use it, Duncan, damn well use it. Because what you’ve just told me . . .” Carole Douglas threw her hands up in dismay. “Christ, I can’t even get my head around this.” She got up from the edge of the bed and walked to the door. She started to open it, and then she turned back. “No,” she said emphatically. “We talk about this, and we talk about it now.”

“Carole—”

“You are Internal Affairs, Duncan. You are
Internal
Affairs. You are supposed to be the cleanest of the clean. You are supposed to be beyond reproach. You are supposed to be setting the example that everyone else follows but you make a deal with some guy to get a possession bust lifted. And then you make a deal with the arresting officer to get a review postponed. And then you make another deal with some lowlife scumbag to make some evidence disappear, and he records it on his cellphone! Jesus Christ Al-fucking-mighty, Duncan, what the hell were you thinking?”

Walsh got up. “Enough!” he yelled. “Enough already, Carole! I told you because I need to work it out. I told you because I trust you. I told you because after six years together I figured you’d be understanding enough of this situation to maybe just listen to what I have to tell you and then try and help me figure something out with being a judgmental bitch—”

“Screw you, Duncan!”

“And screw you too, Carole!”

They stood there then, seemingly for an hour, a day, one on each side of the bed just glaring at each other.

Walsh was the first to look away, but it was merely to move from the edge of the mattress and walk around to the other side.

“I am sorry—” he started.

Carole stood there for a moment, and then she shook her head. “Jesus, Duncan, what the hell are we going to do?”

He shook his head.

“I mean, who is this guy? The one with the cellphone?”

“His name is Bernie Tomczak. He’s a crook, a lowlife, a gambler . . . Whatever, it doesn’t matter.”

“And what did you say exactly?”

“I told him I needed some information . . . important information regarding the possibility that a cop might have been involved in a robbery and a multiple homicide, and he said he had a name for me, and then he asked me to get a weapon out of evidence and get rid of it. Some bust his brother was up for, and if the weapon disappears then there’s no case.”

“And you agreed to this?”

Walsh nodded. “Yes, I agreed.”

“And he has you recorded on his phone.”

“Yes.”

Carole closed her eyes and shook her head.

Walsh heard her exhale resignedly.

“So you didn’t even get the information you wanted?”

“No,” Walsh replied.

“How the hell—”

“You weren’t there, Carole. You weren’t part of the conversation. If you’d been there—”

“Duncan, if I’d been there you wouldn’t have even been in a conversation with this guy. Jesus, what in Christ’s name was going through your mind?”

“The purpose, that’s what. The reason I do this. The reason I went to IA. It’s the job I do, Carole. That’s why I was there.”

“But speaking to some scumbag in a bar someplace . . . How the hell is that IA business?”

“It’s a long story.”

Carole sat down on the edge of the bed. She grabbed her purse, took out her cigarettes and lit one. “Well, I’ve got time, Duncan. I’ve got time, and I think you better tell me what the hell is happening here.”

Walsh sat down. He’d not smoked for two years, three perhaps, but he took one of her cigarettes and lit it. His hands were shaking. He felt a cold sheen of sweat across the entirety of his body. He’d not felt this way since his second month in Homicide when an OIS review had gone bad for him. For a while he was up for an accidental shooting of a civilian, but then Ballistics came back and it was not his gun. That had been the roughest three days of his life. Until now.