A Witness Above (27 page)

A phone call told us Boog Morelli still lived in the same penthouse we remembered, at the top of a high-rise overlooking the Hudson and the Palisades. To many of his wealthy neighbors who didn't know he had done time up in Ossining, he was probably nothing more than a reclusive, odd-looking businessman who seemed in need of a great amount of protection and came and went at unusual hours. Thirteen years might have slowed the Boog down some, just as Hack Wilson had said. Then again, maybe not.

The grim-faced guard on duty in the lobby wore a kelly green uniform with matching hat, bright gold braid, and epaulet. He gave Jake and me hard eyes when I handed him my card and told him whom we had come to see. Morelli's man.

“Mr. M. doesn't normally accept visitors before two o'clock,” he said.

“He'll see us,” I said. “We're old pals.”

He studied my card and Jake's sheepskin as if they might yield additional information that would tell him what to do. Maybe he was thinking he would just have us stand there until two. I decided to wait him out.

At last he said: “Have a seat. I'll see what they say upstairs.”

We plunked down in a pair of black leather chairs facing a matching black sofa and looked at a marble-and-onyx sculpture on a chrome-and-glass table. Sort of an art deco thing, I guess, but the lack of color made it look depressing. The guard spoke with his hand cupped over the receiver to keep us from hearing. Must have been taught that in guard school. He even maintained his surveillance of Jake and me at the same time. Probably graduated near the top.

“Okay, fellas. Your lucky day. Mr. Morelli doesn't like it, but he says he'll see you.” He put down the phone and jerked his thumb toward the bank of elevators. Then he went back to the copy of the
Daily News
he must have been studying before we came in.

I looked at Jake and shrugged. We stepped to the elevators and the doors of one on the far end slid open. There was one man aboard who motioned for us to join him.

Cherry-paneled walls and railing with brass fittings. The man was tall, about six-foot-seven, but not too muscular. He had blond hair and wore a blue tracksuit. A deep scar ran across the base of his chin.

“You guys carrying?” he asked. “I'll have to search you anyway, but it might make things simpler.” Real polite.

Jake held his arms up and waited while he was patted down. I did the same. Neither of us had brought a handgun, but the stop on the way in from La Guardia had been at a self-storage facility where Jake had disappeared for a few minutes before returning to the rental car carrying an oversized, weathered briefcase. He passed the case to the man now.

The track star whistled when he snapped open the locks. “You guys planning to go to war?”

Inside, in their padded cut-outs, were two Ingram M-11 semiauto pistols and enough clips to do some real damage.

“If necessary,” Jake said.

The man laughed but he stopped when he saw the look in Toronto's eyes. We rode in silence the rest of the way to the top.

The doors whisked open again, this time on a dimly lit hall where a fat man about a foot shorter than our guide stood like a cigar store Indian. He too was dressed in a dark running suit, but I could see the bulge from his shoulder holster through the material.

“We had to wake him up,” the man said, expressionless. “Almost time anyway.”

The tall man led us, carrying the case, to the end of the corridor where a set of heavy double doors were locked with an electronic mechanism. He punched in a code, the handle clicked, and he stood to the side holding the door open. We stepped past him into the suite.

Not much light here either. Heavy drapes hung over the windows, blocking the brilliant sunshine but also spoiling the view. There were several pieces of Ethan Allen furniture and a lot of boxes piled neatly around the walls. Some large water bottles took up one corner and what looked like air tanks. Boog Morelli was nowhere to be seen.

But we could hear a deep, rattling cough coming from the far side of a hospital bed deployed in the middle of the living room. An Asian woman in a short skirt bent over the matress helping her patient drink from a paper cup with a straw. No one else was in the room.

“Mr. Morelli,” the tall man said. “Your two guests are here.”

“Ah, Christ.” The voice was a whispery reed. “Can't even let a man get his friggin’ rest. C'mon in. C'mon in.”

Boog Morelli used to arm wrestle some of his little misfits and hoods just for fun. In his prime, it was said, no one could beat him, and though the competition might have been somewhat suspect, I guess he had been pretty good. He was a bottom-heavy mass of fat and muscle and deep-set eyes that, along with a distinct curvature of his upper spine, made him resemble, for all the world, a scale model Tyrannosaurus Rex.

But the shrunken man in the bed didn't look much like the old Boog. He weighed maybe a hundred pounds at best, his arms as thin as broomsticks. His skin was pockmarked with blue and black nodules. He had long white hair and his cheekbones looked as if they were about to collapse.

“Old pals, my ass. Pavlicek and Toronto. How ya doin’, boys? Been a long time. C'mon in.”

We moved around to the front of the bed.

“Hello, Boog,” I said. “You don't look well.”

He coughed so hard his whole body convulsed, but it ended in a chuckle. “I don't look well. Jesus, you hear that, Marina? I don't look well.” He looked at the tall man.

The tall man said: “Mr. Morelli suffers from late-stage malignant melanoma.”

Jake was nodding.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “That doesn't sound good.”

“It ain't,” Morelli whispered. “I used to sit over at Jones Beach all day, all day long, you hear? Put baby oil on, that was all. Used to look like a lobster then turn brown as a nigger. Now these shots I'm takin’ don't work. I'm dead.”

No one said anything. As if to fill the silence the tall man added: “We've tried Interferon and now we're experimenting with a vaccine.”

“Are you an RN or something?” I asked.

“Oncologist, actually, among other things.”

“Only the best for old Boog, ain't that right, Pavlicek?” Morelli managed a weak smile. I hesitated to ask what “other things” meant.

“So what is this?” Morelli asked. “A Confederate invasion? First this bumfuck sheriff a couple days ago. Now you two.”

“Sheriff Cowan is dead,” I said. “Found him this morning with most of his face missing.”

“S'that right?” He stared blankly ahead, trying not to show any reaction, apparently, but one of his arms gave a visible shudder.

“You know who did it?”

“You think it was me.”

“We were thinking maybe you might have ordered it done.”

He coughed again, hard this time. The young woman rushed forward to put a cloth to his mouth. When she took it away there was a visible bit of blood. Morelli shook his head. “Not me, pal. Don't give a shit about no sheriff.” He coughed some more.

I waited until he finished. “What about Dewayne Turner?”

“What about him?”

“You care anything about him?”

He snickered, but then he smiled. “He was a good kid.”

“You know he's dead then too?”

He nodded. “Your sheriff fella there told me.”

“You know what happened to him?”

“If I did, the sons of bitches would be joinin’ him in a hurry.”

“What was your business with Turner?”

He adjusted his blanket and sheet for a few moments as if he hadn't heard me. “You know Dewayne, that kid comes up here about a month ago. Sits in the chair right over there and tries to tell me we all gotta die sometime.” He pointed, then wiped the corner of an eye with the back of his hand. “Like I fuckin’ don't know … We had the curtains open to watch the sunset and it was beautiful out over the water and the cliffs, you see what I mean?”

I nodded.

“I tried to tell him, there ain't gonna be much hope for an old thug like me, but he wouldn't listen.”

“He must have thought there was some.”

Boog Morelli stared at the heavy drapes and gave a raspy chuckle. “Maybe so. Maybe so.”

The tall man moved to the corner, picked up a clipboard, and began writing notes.

“You two want some breakfast?” Morelli asked. “I was just about to have some myself.”

“No thanks.”

“That's okay. It ain't exactly steak and eggs. …”

The Asian woman disappeared for the moment into the kitchen.

“Turner used to work for you?” I asked.

“Sure, sure. He was a good boy.”

“What about Smoke and the rest of his gang?”

Morelli shook his head. “Bunch of punks. None of them's got the brains.” Another coughing spasm shook him. “Listen, I ain't got no time to lie here answering no more questions. I suppose you two come about the money.”

I glanced at Jake. “Money?”

“Yeah. You bring me my money?”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Boog.”

He looked at Jake then back at me and saw that it was true. “Jeez Louise, you mean I gotta send somebody else special down there to collect?”

“Collect? Collect what?”

“The money that's owed me for the kilos, you dipstick, what do you think I'm talkin about?”

“Who owes you for the kilos?”

“Who owes me for the kilos?” He shook his head in wonder. “You guys fly all the way up here to talk to me and you don't know your buddy Cahill owes me fourteen grand?”

Jake's eyes grew wide and mine must have too. “What's Cahill got to do with kilos?” I was suddenly afraid I was already beginning to guess some of the answers.

He laughed. “What are you guys, some kind of joke? I don't hear nothin’ from the lot of ya for years and then out of the blue Cahill calls me up all hot under the collar about some fuckin’ old weapon. Says one of my boys was supposed to get rid of the thing. Like I'm supposed to fuckin’ remember.”

“When was all this?”

“I don't know.” His whisper sounded tired now. “Maybe a month ago. I don't remember exactly.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Hey, what can I say? People screw up. It was still lyin’ around.”

“Did Cat say what he was going to do about it?”

“No. But I had an idea. That was right after the boy you was talkin’ about came to see me. So I started thinking maybe, hey, since the kid ain't doin’ business for me no more and I got all these people waitin’ down that way, maybe Cat would be looking to supplement the cop pension again. You know, kind of make it up to him for the screwup with the gun.”

“Cat used to do business with you?”

“You people must have stepped off another planet. I thought you two was buddies with the guy. Sure we did business. He and—what was his name?—his old partner before he got wasted by those punk kids over in New Rochelle. You guys were there, weren't ya? Wasn't that what got ya kicked off the force?”

“This is really important, Boog. What did you tell Cat about doing business again?”

The girl had returned and Morelli signaled for her to give him another sip from the straw. We waited while he drank.

“Like I told ya, the kid was just here. So I got ahold of him and had him take the message to Cahill. Told him to tell Cat I could make up for the gun crap with some real business, set him up again and everything.”

“Then?”

“Then nothin’. I don't hear nothin’ until a week ago and Cahill calls me and says he wants two kilos fast. I figure, okay, he thought about it and he's taking me up on my offer. So I send down the stuff, but he stiffs my guy who, by the way, ain't ever gonna work for me again, and sends a message he won't have the cash for a few days.

“So what do I do? I call up one of my legal whores and have him gift wrap the piece for the NYPD. Why not? What's it to me? Next thing I know this bumfuck sheriff comes by asking questions. And now you two idiots show up, so I figure you must be bringing me the dough.”

Jake was biting a fingernail, listening intently.

“We haven't got the money, Boog. And I'm afraid I have bad news for you—the cops have your coke,” I said. “I don't think Cat was ever planning to sell it.”

“He wasn't? When I'm tryin’ to do the guy a favor. What's goin’ on?” There was a seed of dark anger in his eyes, but it seemed incapable now of blooming.

He looked at Jake who looked at me and said: “The gun thing.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“The gun thing?” Morelli said. He started to cough again. Weak and confused.

It was all coming together now.

“Sorry, Boog. Cahill's stolen the money from you, and if I'm right, he murdered Dewayne Turner and Sheriff Cowan. Not to mention his partner, Singer … We've got to go.”

“Cahill killed Turner?”

“Yeah. Part of covering up his past. I think Cat must have gotten into some kind of dispute with Singer who was his partner all those years ago. Who knows? Maybe Singer got cold feet.

“Those kids didn't shoot Cat's partner. Cat did. We must have stumbled in right after it happened, but we never made the connection. Cat must have somehow switched barrels on the docks—he had one and the kids had them too. Maybe he had planned something like that all along. It makes sense. He didn't realize two NYPD detectives were so close, and was going to pin it on one of the kids until we showed up. But he managed to shift the focus to us and cover everything all up. Except that now he knows that the missing weapon can prove he did it.”

“Christ,” Morelli said, trying to piece it all to together. “So when I sent the Turner kid with the message to give him. … he what … he offed the kid because he might know about the gun then too?”

I nodded. A large bit of whatever life remained in Boog Morelli seemed to drain from him then. No doubt he had ordered killings and beatings of various kinds himself, done his share and more of heinous crime. But this was something else.

“And I was the only other one who could make the connection. The bastard figured I was already good as dead. …”

“You never knew the truth about what happened in New Rochelle?”

His face was a blank. “Maybe I had an inkling. But that was a long time ago. I never figured your buddy Cahill for somethin’ like this.”

His lower lip began to tremble.