Crooked (4 page)

“If someone offered me a stolen painting, I’d report it directly to the police.” Beatrice stood behind and a little to the side, where he could only make her out in his peripheral vision. “Besides, my interest in Moolman isn’t exactly common knowledge. What makes you think they’d come to me?”

“It’s my business to know things like this, Ms. Belarus, and I have to assume anyone who took it would know how to unload it and to whom. So here’s my card.” She took it. He removed his glasses and they locked eyes.

“You sure you haven’t come across a Moolman today?” Nicholas let the question carry a lot of weight. She was a hardball character, and he wanted her to know he could play. Beatrice was pale as it was, but he thought she turned just a tad paler.

“Nobody calls me
Ms. Belarus,
Nicky. It’s BB.” She stepped around in front of him. “No Moolmans today.”

“People call me all sorts of things, but only one person calls me Nicky.” He started for the door. “Call me if one turns up. I’ll make it worth your while.”

Nicholas let himself out, and as soon as he hit the windblown sidewalk his cell phone started to vibrate. He found cell phones useful sometimes, but preferred the anonymity of pay phones. Everybody had caller ID, and even if you did block your number, the wrong people could tap into your signal and listen in. A pay phone number told the callee nothing, and if you used a different one each time, was tap-proof. Nicholas’s theory was that the less anybody knew about him or his whereabouts, the better. Very few people knew where he lived, and all his bills were sent to a post office box. He gave out his cell number sparingly.

“Nicholas, it’s me.”

Here we go,
Nicholas thought. It was the distinctive voice of his brother, Garth, and the tone was familiar. Nicholas always kidded him there were only two Garth tones of voice. One was that of the disapproving big brother. The other was that of a helpful neighbor who would come over to borrow the mower but end up drinking beer. Nicholas wished today’s tone were the latter.

“What gives?” Nicholas sighed.

“What gives is that I read in the paper that my brother was arrested for murder.”

“Yeah, well…” Nicholas rolled his eyes, drawing his coat about him to shut out the cold. “I’ve been on a killing spree.”

“You think this is some kind of joke?”

“Yes, it is a joke. The guy was dead when I got there, OK? What do you want from me, Garth? An apology?”

“No, Nicholas. I’m sorry.” There was a pause on the other end. “It’s just sort of a shock to read about your brother as a murder suspect in the paper. You could have called, you know.”

“Been busy.” Nicholas regretted giving Garth his cell number—this business of having family, of being big brothered, was cramping his style. “I’ve been working on extricating myself from the murder rap, and I’ve got a new project that’s hot. What could you have done, anyway? Not like you could have bailed me out.”

“Well…”

“Look, Garth, let’s be frank here. You and Angie have been in a bit of trouble yourselves now and again, am I right?”

“Well…”

“OK, then.” Nicholas took a deep breath and calmed. “You can’t afford lawyers for yourself, much less for me. What are you going to do, come down to One Centre with a stuffed squirrel?”

Nicholas had his odd line of work, and Garth had his: taxidermy dealer. He wasn’t a taxidermist, just a guy who rented it to the movies and TV and such. And, as it happened, Garth got into a jam once or twice when one of his stuffed animals turned out to be something someone was willing to kill for. That was how the brothers had gotten reacquainted a year ago. Before then, they hadn’t seen each other since their dad’s funeral.

“Please, Nicholas, don’t even joke about squirrels, not after what we went through.” Garth’s tone had softened toward that of the beer-swilling neighbor. “I guess the family curse for getting in trouble is alive and well. You should come over Sunday, have a beer, or a scotch…hold on…” There was a muffled sound on the other end.

“Are you OK, Nicholas?” It was Angie, Garth’s longtime significant other.

“Golly, Mother, I’m just super,” Nicholas chirped.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she scolded. “Shouldn’t we be concerned?”

“Except that girl I took to the T-dance, well, she’s pregnant, and we figure we’ll steal a car and go on a crime spree across the flat states…”

“You’re family, Nicholas. We’re your family. If you need anything, anything at all…”

Nicholas smiled. At least Angie wasn’t a complete ball breaker. No history between them. And there was something about the way she was completely unfazed by his bullshit, not to mention all her goofy expletives, that disarmed him.

“Angie, sugar, I’ve got a good lawyer, I’ve got a handle on this, and will get it all sorted out, so don’t worry.”

“You coming to dinner Sunday? You’ve missed the last three weeks.”

Nicholas sighed. He was of two minds about having a family. He’d spent almost two decades divorced from it. Out of touch. Angie had made a project out of bringing him into the fold. He liked her, mainly because she seemed to like him for some reason. But she was a tourist approaching his beach, his island.

“Look, babe, our family isn’t exactly the Waltons.”

Angie laughed. “I’ll bake an apple pie and put it on the windowsill if that’ll make Sunday dinner more appealing.”

“You win, as usual.” Nicholas sighed again. Angie had his number and knew how to make him feel just a little like a jerk. “Anything to get off the phone and get back to business. I’ve got a lot to do.”

“See you Sunday, then, at seven.” There was obvious satisfaction in her voice.

“OK, Mom. Hey, has Garth been giving any thought to that insurance appraiser work?”

“We’ll talk again Sunday,” she said guardedly. Nicholas was trying to do a good deed. But because of past frictions, Garth was leery of any venture coming from him. Before getting into insurance investigation Nicholas had been involved in his fair share of shady enterprises, including the one that had ruined their dad’s finances.

“Hey, I know he’s suspicious, but believe me, Angie, this is completely legitimate. I’m just trying to throw some work his way.” Anything to put Garth off the disapproving big brother act.

“OK, then, we’ll see you Sunday.” She obviously didn’t want to discuss it while Garth was standing there. “Good night, John Boy. And happy birthday.”

“Super.” Nicholas disconnected the call, trying to suppress a smile. Garth and Angie’s concern was alternately annoying and mildly amusing. Why? Maybe he had yet to realize he liked it.

C h a p t e r                           4

 
S
am and Joey Pazzo had been drillers for six years, starting the very day they collected their high school diplomas and joined their pop at Hoboken Drilling, Inc. They worked skid and flatbed rigs for soil sampling. The Pazzo brothers were scrappy, reckless workers, and they always drilled as a team.

Maimings are not particularly unusual for drillers. Either a truck outrigger chops off their toes, or a wrench slips from a brace and lops off a finger, or an overtaxed coupling shatters and pokes out an eye. The Pazzo brothers had suffered only the virtual loss of all fingernails, not from any accident, but from continuous manual labor without the protection of gloves. Bulbous yellow corns tipped their fingers like pads on the toes of a tree frog.

After a day’s drilling, they’d smoke a joint or two on the way back to their wives and their two-family house. Sam lived upstairs, Joey down. Their kitchen windows afforded a sweeping view of the Helix, the long spiral ramp into the entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel. After a light dinner of pasta, meat, and iced tea, they’d gather their body armor and sticks and head for the hockey rink. Their team was called “HoBroken.”

The outcome of a typical HoBroken game was never in doubt. Droplets of blood stood out brightly on the ice. Final score? The challenger, Metallica: five bloody noses, one chipped dental cap, one broken tooth, one overextended knee, an undetermined number of minor contusions, two black eyes, and one probable concussion. HoBroken: two bloody noses, one knocked-out tooth, an undetermined number of minor contusions, three black eyes, and two probable concussions.

Sam and Joey suffered all the black eyes and bloody noses for HoBroken.

“Ice tonight was fuckin’ awesome best!” Sam smacked his helmet into Joey’s as the team dragged themselves back down the corridor to the locker room.

“Yeah! Slam!” Joey enthused.

Their teammates were not so exuberant.

“Fuckin’ Sam! Why the fuck don’t you pass the puck!” a fellow HoBroken admonished, pointing his stick.

“’Cause you can’t shoot worth a fuck, that’s what.” Sam pointed back. “Fuck.”

“Fuck you, Sam,” another teammate accused, a bloody tooth in his hand. “You Pazzo brothers act like you’re the only ones on the ice. Joey shouldn’ta passed all the way out to center field. He did that to get the puck to you.”

“Fuck you,” Joey retorted, then flashed a smile at his older brother.

“Yeah, fuck you,” Sam agreed. “You guys wanna play ice or what? Out there, you gotta do what you gotta do to put the puck in the goal, end of story.”

“Fuck you, Sam,” several teammates muttered.

When they entered the locker room, next to the Pazzo brothers’ lockers stood someone they didn’t expect to see: a boyish-looking guy with graying temples, a brown leather flight jacket, a Greek fisherman’s cap, and a cup of coffee. He was lanky, and he leaned against the lockers with the waggish ease of a hick-town gas-pump jockey, hands thrust into his front pants pockets. But there was a sparkle in his blue eyes that belied this pump jockey was a man with a plan.

“Whoa!” Sam exclaimed, arms spread in confusion.

“Fuck!” Joey remarked. “It’s Barney.”

“Fellahs.” Barney saluted by bowing his head.

“Joey, remember that tunnel fuckin’ job out on 41st Street? Fuckin’ almost froze my hands off that day looking for that vault. Bent a rod that day, and the truck broke down. Barney, that was you who was the inspector that day, am I right?” Sam tossed his helmet on the concrete floor.

Barney nodded.

“You was the one at Third Avenue, looking for some old elevated train foundations.” Joey pointed at Barney with his gloves before throwing them onto the growing pile of sweaty armor.

Barney nodded.

“And that other time, we were pumpin’ away, Barney warned us we’re drilling into an electric conduit, we didn’t believe it. ’Member?” Sam shed his pads onto the heap.

“Yeah, well…” Barney crossed his legs, dug his hands deeper into his pockets. “That’d been a DC power line and you’d be Pop-Tarts, for sure.”

Sam pulled his jersey up over his head. “What’re you doin’ here?” he asked, voice muffled.

“Well…” Barney pulled a hand out of his pocket and rubbed his jaw in thought. “I figured that the Pazzo brothers play hockey, and, well, they live in Hoboken. Hell, I just worked it out.”

“What’d you come out here for? You coulda called the company.” Joey looked confused, his muscular body swaddled only in a yellowed jockstrap. “I don’t get it.”

“Fuck, you didn’t come all the way to Jersey just to see us play ice.” Sam snorted, wiping some blood from his upper lip.

“Yeah,” Joey agreed.

The Pazzo brothers exchanged confused shrugs and wandered off to the showers. When they came back, most of their teammates had left, but Barney was still there, admiring the splintered end of Sam’s hockey stick.

“That’s the third stick this season,” Sam boasted.

“Uh huh.” Barney nodded to himself, pursing his lips, eyes turning toward the ceiling tiles as though he were enjoying a sunset sky. “Say, fellahs. Might you be interested in, say, a little night drilling? Work on the side. Though to think of it, you guys look a little beat up, a little tired.” Barney gently set the stick against the wall and shrugged. “Maybe you’re not up to it.”

“Night drilling?” Sam’s frog fingers fastened the buttons on his shirt with remarkable agility. “Where?”

“Just a big open space.” Barney dug his hand back in his pocket, squinting at the floor. “No utilities, really, so nothing volatile in the way.”

“Sounds cool,” Joey said to Sam. “Too cool.”

“You got to figure we’d be drilling into about twenty feet of construction fill. Concrete, shingles, bricks, wood, some chain-link maybe, like that.” Barney’s blue eyes looked up from the floor. “Think you could handle that?”

“Fuck. Probably have to go with a double casing to get through it.” Sam donned a down vest. Joey was lacing his Timberlands. “Wash out the borehole with mud. There water nearby to help wash?”

Barney’s eyes returned to the floor. “Harlem River is less than a hundred feet away. Some fire hose would come in handy.”

“How many holes, how deep?” Joey asked.

“Thirty feet or so. Don’t know exactly how many holes, but I figure it’s a week’s work.”

“Samples? Cores?” Sam hacked at his sloppy black curls with a comb.

Barney shook his head slowly, still staring at his feet. “No cores, samples on demand. No blow counts, so you can drive the casings any way you want. But you fellahs would need to drill four-inch-wide holes. Each hole gets sleeved with PVC pipe.”

“That’s cool.” Joey took the comb from his brother and hacked at his loose yellow locks. “Cash?”

Barney looked them both in the eye and pointed a finger at them, like his hand was a gun. “Cash.”

“Very cool. What’s it we’re looking for, then?” Sam shrugged, fixing a Salem in his lips.

Barney took a deep breath.

“A boat.”