Canary (33 page)

Marty barely has time to comprehend what he’s reading before his dad yells, annoyed, telling him he’s going to be late for school.

It’s scary, the way Honors Girl lays it all out for him.

She has a manila folder full of newspaper clips, handwritten notes (in her impeccably neat script). It’s even highlighted. It takes a while for him to process it all, and after he catches on Wildey starts firing questions at her, trying to poke holes in her logic. She answers his questions using clips or notes, and when she doesn’t have a clip or a note, she cites a “source close to the organization.”

“You’re gonna have to tell me more about this source,” Wildey says. “That’s a big piece of this.”

“No,” she says. “You protect your sources, I protect mine.”

“I can’t go to my Loot with a big fat ol’ ‘trust me.’”

“See, that’s exactly my point.”

Only when she walks him through it again does Wildey understand the full implications of what she’s saying. It’s pretty much the unthinkable. The ultimate betrayal.

“Either you sold out your own informants …”

Wildey gives her a stern look. “You know that’s about the fuckin’ last thing I would do …”

“… or she did.”

She,
meaning Lieutenant Katrina Mahoney. The head of the NFU-CS. The unofficial drug czarina of Philadelphia.

“No. That can’t be.”

“I hope not. But there’s a way you can find out.”

Honors Girl tells Wildey the way. It’s big, it’s bold, it’s potentially crazy. But even Wildey has to agree it’s the only move.

The waitress comes back to see if they still don’t want coffee. Neither of them says anything; they’re too lost in thought. The waitress gives up, shuffles away.

“You don’t have to do this,” Wildey says after a long while.

“Yes I do,” she says. “You know I do.”

Yeah, he knows she does, too.

Today is supposed to be a rare day off for his Loot, but Wildey calls her cell; she answers after the first ring. He suggests meeting at that Grey Lodge place, but Kaz tells him she can’t leave home.

“Well, I can’t do this on the phone.”

Kaz sighs. “Fine, come to my fucking house, then.”

The lieutenant is making cabbage and egg
pirozhki
when Wildey arrives. The front hall reeks of sulfur and boiled sweat, which her neighbors must love. Kaz lives in one of those huge brownstone mansions that have been carved up into apartments; hers is on the first floor, rear. Wildey knocks on the door. He hears the Loot yell, “Come on in,” and he opens the door and makes his way down a long, skinny hall to the galley kitchen. Weird layout, but that’s what you get when you carve up a mansion into ten apartments.

Also weird to see Kaz standing in front of her countertop wearing jeans, a long-sleeved V-neck T-shirt, barefoot, arms all speckled with white flour.

“Smells good,” Wildey says.

“It’s pirozhki,” she says. She pronounces it
peeroshkee.
“For a family dinner this weekend.”

“Ah. You going to see your family?”

“A couple of cousins are coming here, that’s all.”

“Just a couple?”

Kaz looks at him as if she’s considering sharing something, then turns her attention back to kneading a mass of dough that looks too large for her hands to contain.

“My maiden name’s Fieuchevsky,” she says, as if that explains it all.

And then a moment later, Wildey recognizes the name. Russian gang family, had a huge war with the Italian mob about ten years ago. Wildey was still at the academy during the worst of it. Also made sense that Kaz would keep her ex-husband’s name. Mahoney’s a fine cop name. Fieuchevsky, not so much.

Kaz glances over and sees that Wildey gets it. “So yeah, some of my family is otherwise engaged this holiday season. Let me just wash this flour off my hands and we can talk. Want a beer, something?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Go ahead into the living room.”

Which was a big box. Big windows, protected with steel bars, looking out onto a small porch and concrete patio. A staircase leading down to the basement, which must be the bedroom. There is no railing around the stairs—just a rectangle cut into the floor, with wooden steps leading down. More creative space-making, he supposed. Nice and everything, and the neighborhood is pretty great, but Wildey wouldn’t trade his busted-ass row house for this place, no way.

“This is coming from one thirty-seven,” Wildey says.

“What, did she ask for another extension?”

“You’re not going to like this.”

“I don’t like anything these days.”

Wildey spells it out for her. Indeed, Honors Girl has found something insane. “I think she’s onto our leak. A friend of hers has been dating Little Pete D’Argenio, and Little Pete’s been bragging about taking over the city’s drug scene.”

“Goombahs like to brag,” Kaz says.

“Well, this one’s bragging about having police protection. Like he’s untouchable. And then he goes on about how he’s even snitch-proof. That if anyone dares snitch on him, they’re basically walking around with an expiration date on their foreheads.”

“That’s a bit of a leap.”

“There’s more, and I can walk you through that later. But I came out here because time is tight. One thirty-seven got herself invited to a party that Little Pete is throwing later tonight. When he drinks, he brags. She wants to wear a wire, get some of that bragging on tape.”

“Why’s she doing this?”

“She wants out. She won’t give up her boyfriend, so instead she’s finding me someone else.”

“You ready to give up on Chuckie Morphine?”

“No. Not by a long shot. But if one thirty-seven serves up a mobster who’s about to start a drug empire who also has pull inside the department, you know, I’ll consider us even.”

“Christ on a bike,” Kaz says, sighing. “I thought we were done with this shit. It’s gotta be one of the other NFUs. I mean, right? Here’s what you do. You get her to get him talking about the cop who’s protecting him. I almost don’t care about Little Fucking Pete. But I want to know who’s so eager to sell us out. And swear to God, if it’s someone in our unit, I’m going to take a cheese grater to his balls and post it on YouTube.”

Man, Wildey thinks. You are a Fieuchevsky after all.

“So I have your okay?”

“Yes. But don’t tell a soul. This stays with you and me.”

“Understood.”

“You okay running her by yourself?”

“It’s just a party. I think she’ll be okay.”

Rembrandt “Rem” Mahoney fucking hates
pirozhki.
That’s one of the things he doesn’t miss. (There are plenty of others.) He can practically smell that awful cabbage and egg bullshit all the way out here in the Northeast. Just listening to her speak of it resurrects the awful odor in his nasal cavity. But Rem listens just the same.

And he can’t stop listening.

He tells himself it started because he worried about her. Honest. And, okay, he missed her. She was an insufferable commie psycho most days. But when she eased up—most often thanks to a shot or five of that Ukrainian firewater—there was nobody else like her. No drug, no high, no beating, no vice, even came close. Ten years later he could conjure the taste of her mouth, tinged with vodka.

Rem started the whole surveillance thing small. Keeping tabs, really, to make sure she didn’t end up in any kind of trouble. She was keeping his last name, so it was his duty to make sure she didn’t drag it into the mud. She moved into that place on Green Street, chose an apartment in the back, so drive-bys wouldn’t work. One night, after getting soused at a small sports bar on the corner of Twentieth and Green, Rem did something stupid yet life-changing. He hopped a six-foot wooden fence, stumbled into a cramped alley, then crept into her backward patio. Lights in the apartment were on. Wow. She was home. That was the night Rem became … well, okay, he’ll admit it … kind of a pervert. But only for his ex! No civilians.

At first it was just peeping through her windows, trying to listen to her conversations, that sort of thing. Slowly it escalated. Before he could talk himself out of it, he was breaking into the basement—the property owner had carved out a corner of the basement to serve as the one bedroom for the apartment above, Katrina’s apartment. The construction guys hadn’t done the best job in the world; the drywall was on the thin side. The rest of the basement was dusty storage that smelled like raw mushrooms. But Rem could easily slip inside and lean up against the flimsy drywall and listen to her breathe. Or talk on the phone—always curt, clipped conversations. Rem dreaded/hoped for the night Katrina would bring home a lover. Had to happen, sooner or later. The ex was a hellspawn, but she was still hot.

Rem couldn’t spend all of his time in his ex-wife’s basement. His clothes were starting to smell funny. So he went to the police supply shop and got himself a basic surveillance setup. Drilled a tiny hole in the cheap drywall when he knew she was on duty. The rest was easy, and tumbled along. Bugging the basement soon turned into bugging the living room, and then the bathroom (yeah, Rem already admitted he was a perv, big deal, let’s move on), and then her car. Then … and okay, yes, Rem Mahoney crossed a line here … her office. Then he ran a tap on her cell. Not through the PD, of course, but a fed he knew. Rem kind of hinted that his ex might have been a bit more cozy with the rest of her family in the Russian mob than she let on.

End result, oddly enough, is that Rem feels like he knew his ex better now than he did when they were married.

Including pretty much all of the identities of her two hundred snitches. He had to hand it to her, the strategy was clever. And it was so like Katrina to respond to a citywide snitch crisis by, guess what, yeah, signing up even more snitches. Snitches to sniff out major cases, snitches to make sure her team was on the up-and-up. Airtight.

So was this CI #137? Rem was sure he could break into her place later tonight when she was taking her evening shower and dig up the name himself, but time is of the essence here. Besides, he’s willing to bet there’s someone who’ll know the snitch’s name straightaway.