Damaged Goods (26 page)

Josie was living in an Elizabeth Street tenement at the time, along with her infant daughter and her poor, wounded nephew, trying to get along on handouts and home relief checks. For a while, she wondered if Dominick Favara (or his shadow, Carmine Stettecase) had had a hand in the killings. The rumor on the streets of Little Italy was that Dominick’s path to success was paved with the bodies of his childhood chums. But there’d been no way to find out, to know for sure, and she’d finally come to realize that it didn’t matter. Dominick and Carmine had survived the great mob war that swept the country after WWII. They’d come up winners and that was enough.

Having, as she saw it, no choice in the matter, she’d cursed the both of them, only to discover that her dear, departed
nonna
had been wrong again. The spirit lived inside her, all right. She could feel it there, feel it feeding on her
own
spirit, but, unfortunately, it didn’t do a damn thing to her enemies.

“Well, Josie, what’s the good news? Jilly get run over by a bus?”

Josie Rizzo, her chin nearly on her chest, peered at Abner Kirkwood through bushy eyebrows. The man’s face had no character, no feature too big or too small, nothing bent or twisted. His soft, grainy skin was the color of almond paste.

“I come about Gildo.” She ignored his tone, knowing exactly what she had to do. “You take him in the program. Today.” She spit the words out as if warding off contamination.

Kirkwood glanced at Karl Holtzmann, exchanged a knowing look, a quick smile. “The program, Josie?”

“The protection program.” She pulled up a chair without being asked, dropped down into it as if she never intended to leave. “Gildo’s gotta get off the street. You put him in the witness program.”

“Tell me something, Josie.” Kirkwood pressed the tips of his steepled fingers against his chin. “Jilly murdering that child, does it bother you at all?”

“No. Does it bother
you
?” She wasn’t about to make excuses to a whore like Abner Kirkwood. It was too humiliating. No, what she had to do, if she wanted to save Gildo, was stay tough, let the pig think she was crazy.

Holtzmann jumped in before Kirkwood, his face now flushed with anger, could respond. “That’s not really the point now.” He looked from Josie to his boss. “What’s done being actually done.” He’d been playing the good cop right from the beginning.

“What’d you tell me?” Josie Rizzo answered her own question without pausing. “After I testify against Carmine, you’re gonna put me in the program, because if I stay on the streets I’m a dead woman. You didn’t say that?” She kept her eyes glued to the edge of Kirkwood’s desk, afraid that even a quick glance would reveal the truth. Josie Rizzo did not intend to run away, hide her head in shame. Afterward, once Carmine was arrested and knew he was going to die in prison, Josie imagined herself striding through the neighborhood, her chin high in the air, letting them all have a good look at what burned in Josie Rizzo’s heart. “Gildo, he comes with me. To a new life.”

Kirkwood started to speak, but Karl Holtzmann interrupted him again. “Are you telling us, Josie, that you’re in touch with your nephew and he’s willing to be taken into custody?”

Josie Rizzo tapped the toe of her black Reeboks on the carpet beneath her chair, taking her time, as if she hadn’t been expecting the question.

“Josie?” Kirkwood leaned forward. “Agent Holtzmann asked you something.”

“In the program,” she repeated. “No arrest, no jail. You take him to a safe place until Carmine is finished. Then me and Gildo, we go off together.” Pausing briefly, she allowed herself a thin smile. If the New York cops found Gildo before she got him out of that Upper West Side apartment, the game was over. Let the feds take him to one of their hotel rooms, maybe a house in New Jersey, keep him sheltered until the heat died down. By that time, maybe she’d know what to do. “I gotta stay in touch while you got him, call every day on the telephone.”

“Christ,” Kirkwood muttered, “she’s acting like it’s a done deal.”

Josie planted her legs, pressed thighs, knees, and calves firmly together. It was time to see if the pigs could stop feeding while they were still hungry. Kirkwood knew a lot about Carmine’s impending deal, knew the size of it, for instance, and the money involved, but he didn’t have the date or the place. That was because Carmine didn’t have the information, either, which was the way his Chinese connection wanted it. On Luk Sun, trade representative for the People’s Republic of China, fronted in the USA for several dozen factories on mainland China. The processed heroin might come from any of them, go to any port on the East Coast or the Gulf of Mexico. Carmine would distribute the product within a few days, had his customers already lined up, money in hand. If Kirkwood missed by even half a day it would all be for nothing.

Josie Rizzo, after any edge available, had reviewed every tape, holding onto them until she was alone with her little Walkman in her fifth-floor apartment. She knew their contents as well as either of the two men. “You don’t take Gildo in the program, no more tapes. I’m takin’ a big chance, here, but I’m doin’ it for Gildo. If he’s gone …” She paused to let the essential message penetrate, then continued, her eyes now locked on her folded hands. “If Gildo’s gone, then it’s fuck you to the feds.”

G
INNY GADD, AS SHE
pushed Stanley Moodrow’s battered Chevrolet over the rolling mountains of northwestern New Jersey, tried to keep her thoughts firmly rooted in the present. It was May 10
^th
, still early spring at this altitude, and the forest of birch and maple surrounding I-80 was fledged with tiny, translucent leaves. A bright sun, soon to be directly overhead, poured through the ineffective canopy, speckling the forest floor with delicate gray shadows. Just below the peaks, the highway had been cut through solid rock, as if the builders, having finally grown impatient, had decided to eliminate the red tape.

Gadd was on her way to visit Arnold Dumont at the local office of the New York State Division of Parole in the city of Binghamton. The fastest route (or so the AAA customer-service center had claimed) was west, through New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the city of Scranton, then north into New York again. Gadd considered herself a city girl, Central Park being as close as she wanted to get to the great outdoors. The spring light, the sun-washed rock, the carpet of buttery yellow dandelions at the highway’s margins would have been little more than distractions under the best of conditions. Now, haunted by images that jumped into her mind without warning, she might as well have been driving through the Holland Tunnel.

The mile markers on the side of the road tracked her progress, diminishing, one by one, as she approached the Pennsylvania border. She’d been on the road for more than an hour, had nearly three hours to go. The drive, the time alone with her own thoughts, hadn’t entered into her calculations when she’d bullied Arnold Dumont into making the appointment by declaring herself the personal representative of the victim’s mother. No, as she’d waited for the receptionist to put her through, the idea of justice had coursed through her body, as real, as physical, as the blood pumped from her heart. And not the kind of simple justice that ended with Jilly Sappone dead or in custody.

The simple fact was that Jilly Sappone hadn’t just appeared on the outside of the Southport Correctional Facility like he’d walked through the walls. Parole had been denied, then granted; the individuals who made the decisions had to be held responsible, even if responsibility came to no more than pulling up the bureaucratic rock under which they hid.

Of course, she hadn’t told that to Mr. Dumont, hadn’t given him a hint of her personal rage. That would come later, when they were face-to-face and she could look into his eyes. Instead, she’d made her case in the name of the Kalkadonis family. That was a stretch, of course, because Ann Kalkadonis was still too distraught to frame any goal beyond keeping her remaining daughter alive.

“Mrs. Kalkadonis has been through a terrible tragedy.” Gadd had begun the conversation by stating the obvious. “She needs to start the healing process.” Another incontrovertible truth, followed quickly by the kicker. “Surely, you can spare fifteen minutes to help her understand what happened to her daughter.”

Later, she’d casually mentioned the media swarm outside Ann’s apartment house, the calls from
Hard Copy
and
Inside Edition,
using the veiled threat as a clincher. Dumont would almost certainly try to stonewall her as he’d stonewalled the press, but he didn’t have the balls to refuse to see her. A refusal would probably make the local news on all three major networks.

As she crossed the Delaware River and slid up to the tollbooths on the far side, Gadd’s thoughts turned to Stanley Moodrow He’d be home by now, in his Lower East Side apartment. Betty would be fending off the reporters, trying to resist the urge to rip the phone out of the wall. Journalists were like cops. They never gave up.

The clerk at the booth took her dollar, smiled, said, “Thank you.” In New York, they charged three dollars each way and the clerk begrudged you change for a twenty, looked actually put upon, as if dealing with human beings wasn’t part of his job description.

The question, she asked herself as she accelerated away from the toll plaza, is why, aside from borrowing his car on occasion, I give a damn about Stanley Moodrow. If he wants to wallow in guilt, hold himself responsible, why should it matter to me?

She recalled sitting in that intersection, waiting for the light to change, Moodrow slamming the gas pedal to the floor, fishtailing into the turn. Her first reaction, grabbing the dashboard and the seat to stop herself from sliding into the door, had occupied all her attention. By the time she put it together, realized that Sappone had to be in the car ahead of them, Moodrow was slamming on the brakes and …

You promised not to think about the rest of it, she reminded herself. You decided to keep your mind on the job until it was over.

What she wanted from Moodrow, she finally decided, was his confidence. She wanted the Stanley Moodrow who first walked into her office, knowing exactly what
he
wanted. Her decision to punish the bad guys, that was all well and good, but Moodrow was the one who actually found Sappone. There was no doubt about who’d been using whom. Without him, she’d still be in her office, bullshitting the Foundation.

Here’s what’s really happening, she told herself. Right now the reporters have a better chance of getting to the truth than I do. They could use the Freedom of Information Act, demand the parole board records, write their stories a year or two down the line when the information comes through. Meanwhile, I’m gonna waste the next ten hours trying to get the truth from a bureaucrat. Like running the Iditarod Sled Race with a team of South Bronx cockroaches.

Two hours later, Ginny Gadd knew exactly how Jilly Sappone got out of jail. After introducing herself to Arnold Dumont’s secretary and a very short wait (short enough to make her actually suspicious) she was shown into a large office. She noted the beige carpeting, the sturdy wooden desk in the center of the room, the two upholstered chairs in front of the desk, and decided that Dumont’s assistant commissioners probably made do with tiled floors and metal furniture. That’s if they had offices at all, if they weren’t part-timers.

Then a door at the back of the office swung open and FBI Agent Bob Ewing stepped inside. He flashed her a welcoming smile, a grin, really, so filled with self-love as to be actually repulsive.

“Ms. Gadd.” He extended a hand, crossed the room swiftly. “We meet again.”

Gadd, a grin of her own spreading across her face, took his hand. She started to speak, then changed her mind, deciding to listen for a change, hear what the man had to say.

Ewing motioned her to sit, then plopped down into Arnold Dumont’s leather chair. “We need to talk,” he announced.

“About?” Gadd held herself still, like a child awaiting an unpleasant surprise.

Ewing’s smile vanished. “About your pretending to represent Ann Kalkadonis.” He laid his fingertips on the table, leaned slightly forward. “As you know, we’re still protecting the Kalkadonis family, still have a presence inside their apartment. I spoke to Ann Kalkadonis this morning and she has no idea what you’re doing.” He tapped a forefinger against his chin, shook his head. “You know something, Gadd, I don’t have any idea what you’re doing, either. Maybe you can explain it to me.”

Gadd ran her fingers through her hair, glanced around the room. She was still on her feet. “You recording this conversation, Agent Ewing?”

Ewing didn’t turn a hair. “Why do you want to know?”

“I was hoping you’d give me a copy of the tape.” Gadd recalled an incident from her years on patrol. A kid, maybe ten or eleven, had come running up to the cruiser she shared with her partner. He’d begun to babble about a mugging, the words running together like city traffic through a long tunnel. Suddenly, she’d realized that everything he said—his name, his age, where he lived, the crime—was a lie. Sure enough, the minute her partner asked for ID, the kid pivoted, tossed them a finger, sprinted off down the street.

“Clever.” Ewing tossed her a grudging nod. “But somehow I don’t find this situation all that funny, Ms. Gadd. Especially when I consider the net effect of your meddling to date.” He paused, obviously expecting her to continue. When she didn’t, when she maintained her slightly quizzical, slightly bemused expression, he shifted uneasily in his chair. “I didn’t want to make this unpleasant,” he finally muttered. “I wanted us to come to an understanding.”

“Why don’t we cut to the threats, Agent Ewing. Save some time.” The smile dropped away, replaced by an inner rage that came upon her so swiftly she felt it as pure heat before she became aware of its emotional content. Her jaw tightened down as if clamped and she felt herself actually rise up as her buttocks and thighs contracted. Her hands, when she looked down at them, were balled into white-knuckled fists.

“Are you all right?”

Gadd forced herself to take a breath, say, “Perfectly.” A moment later, she felt the anger drop away, like a criminal through the trapdoor of a gallows. As her chest relaxed and her breathing returned to normal, she wondered when it would return. Would she welcome her anger, nourish it? It had comforted her, in a way, had relieved her of other burdens.