Damaged Goods (35 page)

“
Thrust
themselves? Gimme a fucking break.”

Moodrow, who’d been watching for tails, was almost certain that he hadn’t been followed. He wasn’t sure about Ginny Gadd, though. Despite her reassurances earlier in the afternoon, it was quite possible, given her lack of experience, that her theft of the tape had been observed. It would depend on how many agents were available to Holtzmann.

“This warning is your ‘break,’ Moodrow. The next step is obstruction of justice.”

“For doing exactly what?”

“For exactly obstructing justice.” Holtzmann’s tight, prim mouth drew up at the corners. “We’re going to prosecute. Remember, you’re nothing more than a private citizen. You no longer carry a badge. If you get in our way, you’ll be crushed, like any other civilian.”

The two men stood silently for a moment, until Moodrow decided it was time to go upstairs, lie down, catch a quick nap before Betty came over.

“Ya know something, Karl? It seems to me like it’s you feds obstructing justice. I mean considering that half the goddamned NYPD’s looking for Jilly Sappone and you’re protecting him.” Moodrow noted Holtzmann’s left eye jerk slightly. The man tried to cover it by looking over his shoulder, but it was much too late. “Letting him out of prison,” he continued, “now that was a judgment call. Sure, the prison shrinks said jilly was crazy and violent, but that didn’t mean he was gonna go out and kill a child. Not for sure. But now that the child is
actually
dead,
actually
buried, the excuses won’t wash. Not with the media. Not with, say, Mike Wallace on
60 Minutes.
” Moodrow slapped his forehead. “Jesus, they’ll be like sharks at a feeding frenzy. Especially if your bosses in Washington don’t know what you’re doing.”

Holtzmann, instead of showing fear, drew up his shoulders and bunched his fists. He was accustomed to command, simply couldn’t play the role of the beggar even though it was obviously required. Still, he wasn’t so angry that he seriously considered an attack on the giant in front of him.

“You can’t go to the media,” he sputtered, the words ringing hollow even in his own ears.

“What are you gonna do, kill me?” Moodrow stepped back onto his stoop, waited for a response. “Tell ya what, Holtzmann with two
n
s,” he finally said, “why don’t you go back to your keepers, try to come up with a strategy in line with our relative positions. I might be willing to bend a little here. For, say, a real wet blow job.”

W
HEN MOODROW AWAKENED, HE
was literally without breath. His chest and lungs refused to expand, refused to follow the demands of his panicky brain. He sat straight up, his torso jerking to attention like a spring-loaded knife blade. The 3
AM
darkness confused him, left him suspended, without time or place. He heard Betty, saw her kneeling in front of him, but neither recognized her nor understood the words she shouted in his face. Finally, in desperation, he sipped at the air through pursed lips, continuing doggedly until his chest finally opened and he began to gasp like a half-drowned swimmer dragged up through a ragged surf.

“Stanley, wake up. Wake up.”

Betty was punching him in the chest. Her face was contorted, her mouth forming a nearly perfect circle around her small even teeth. Moodrow stared at her for a moment, then pulled her into his arms.

“Jesus,” he hissed. “I couldn’t breathe.”

“You scared the crap out of me.”

Moodrow continued to gulp air, as if afraid that any pause in the rhythm would return him to paralysis.

“I was dreaming,” he announced, “about … that night. Sort of.”

Betty sat back on her heels, pushed an unruly lock of hair out of her eyes. “You want to tell me about it?” She watched him get up and walk to the window. He was wearing his usual sleeping outfit, a pair of boxer shorts and a T-shirt. The T-shirt, soaked with sweat, was pasted to the broad muscles of his back.

“It’s already vague.” He turned to face her. “Jilly Sappone was there, standing up high, like on the edge of a roof or a mountain, holding that white blanket with … with something inside it. He was staring at me, laughing, and I didn’t know what to do. I tried to plead with him, but it only made him angry. He said, ‘You stupid son of a bitch, it’s just a fucking
package.
’ ”

“It’ll fade, Stanley.” She felt the cliché even as she mouthed it. Nevertheless, she repeated herself. “Given time, it’ll fade.”

“Yeah, that’s the worst of it. Time will heal the wound. Heal it by reducing Theresa Kalkadonis to an official FBI statistic. By dropping me, Ann Kalkadonis, Ginny Gadd, and Jilly Sappone into our graves. It’s already turned the trick for Jackson-Davis Wescott.”

Abner Kirkwood and Karl Holtzmann stood nearly hip to hip beneath an oversize umbrella. They were in Battery Park, peering out through a steady downpour at the Staten Island Ferry. Silently, as if by agreement, they watched the ship retreat into the gray, slanting rain, Kirkwood thinking it was a perfect movie image, the two of them in their Burberry trench coats discussing the crime of murder.

It was a simple crime, he decided. A single act, done and over with; not like drug dealing with its network of smugglers and middlemen, or the elaborate scams of corporate sharks.

Finally, he said, “The ex-cop was completely defiant?” One more nail in Jilly Sappone’s coffin as far as Abner Kirkwood was concerned.

“Accused me … No, he accused
us,
Abner. Accused us of protecting Sappone. Threatened to go to the media.”

“Well, he’s right, Karl. We
are
protecting Jilly Sappone.” Kirkwood took the agent’s arm, pulled him in a little closer. “But we had a couple of breaks last night. Things may not be as bad as they look. At least the heat’s off.”

The last remark needed no explanation. In the early morning hours, somebody had firebombed a low-end nursing home in the Castle Hill section of the Bronx. Eleven different camera crews, including CNN’s, had gotten the whole thing, moaning survivors hustled into blocky EMS ambulances, body bags taking a more leisurely voyage into the back of a morgue wagon. The death count, at eight o’clock in the morning, stood at ten and was expected to rise, nine of the victims being Puerto Rican or black. Best of all, the arsonist was still at large and there were serious questions about the nursing home itself. The sprinklers, it seemed, despite a recent Fire Department inspection, had failed to work.

“I spoke to the Suffolk County District Attorney last night,” Kirkwood went on. “Man named Robert Cortese.”

Holtzmann snorted, rolled his eyes. “Not another one.”

“Another what?”

“Another guinea is what. When you’re up to your ass in alligators, you don’t call in a crocodile.”

Kirkwood thought of his childhood buddies. Without exception, they’d been Italian, Jewish, or Irish. “I’m gonna let that one go, Karl, because it’s irrelevant here. The call was pro forma.” He watched the rain splash onto the dull gray surface of the Hudson River, wished he was somewhere else, maybe a mile north in that ugly frame house New Yorkers called City Hall. Having breakfast with old Rudy. “Anyway, Cortese told me some very interesting things. First, they finally traced the house Jilly was living in to Carlo Sappone. We already knew that, of course, and Carlo has no connection to the Agency, so it’s not a problem for us.”

“Always expected them to find Carlo in there somewhere,” Holtzmann said. “Had to happen.”

“Cortese told me a very interesting story. On the morning after the incident, Carlo Sappone was found in a Catholic shrine called Our Lady of Long Island. He was chained to a tree, Karl.” Kirkwood raised his hand. “Don’t interrupt. We’ve been asking ourselves how Gadd and Moodrow found Jilly Sappone’s house and now we know. Unfortunately, by the time the Suffolk cops put it together, Carlo had moved out of his own home. They’re looking for him, naturally, but I doubt that he’ll testify against Moodrow, who must have been the muscle, even if they find him. Stanley Moodrow and Guinevere Gadd don’t know that, of course, and I want you to use it against them. Tell them you know where Carlo’s holed up, that you might be willing to protect Carlo if he testifies.”

Holtzmann waited until he was sure his boss was finished. “Got the picture,” he finally said.

“Good. Now tell me about Ewing.”

“He’s coming along, Abner. Hates Jilly Sappone.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“Not yet. Not until we’re sure. Ewing has his suspicions, naturally. One man to guard a dangerous prisoner.” Holtzmann shook his head. “Definite procedural violation.”

In the silence that followed the agent’s last remark, the wind picked up, first driving the rain beneath Kirkwood’s umbrella, then flipping the umbrella inside out. Kirkwood, instantly soaked, turned back toward the Bureau car parked fifty yards away, but Holtzmann grabbed his arm, spinning him around.

“Don’t tell him anything, Abner.”

“Pardon?” Kirkwood’s drenched suit had cost nearly a thousand dollars and he was having a hard time driving that particular fact out of his mind.

“Don’t speak to Bob Ewing,” Holtzmann said patiently. A steady stream of water ran along his nose and down over the corners of his mouth. “When the time comes, one or both of us will drive out there and handle Mister Sappone. Let Agent Bob deal with it after the fact.”

The more Jilly Sappone evaluated his prison, the more convinced he became that it was never designed to be a prison. First thing, it had real furniture, not slabs of iron or steel bolted into a concrete floor, and an air conditioner set into the wall. Furniture could be broken up, the pieces shaped into weapons, which was why Agent Ewing stayed on his side of the bars. Second thing, the windows had some kind of bullet-proof plastic instead of glass, but the plastic was set into ordinary wood frames and not into the walls. It was designed for protection, not confinement. Give him five minutes alone and he’d be out in the shrubbery. Third, and best, there were no walls around the walls. Once you got out of that little apartment, you were gone.

There was still the steel door, of course, the door between his cell and the rest of the house. Jilly figured the door most likely made Agent Ewing feel safe, that’s what it was there for. Meanwhile, the door was gonna be Agent Ewing’s immediate cause of death.

The phone rang just as he was about to get off his stoned-lazy ass and go to work. Jilly stepped over to the door and watched Agent Ewing emerge from the kitchen, pick up the receiver, say, “Hello.”

“That for me?” Jilly called. “Is that my loved one?”

Ewing responded by carrying the telephone across the room. He dropped it on the shelf, then turned away.

“You don’t gotta hurry, Agent Ewing,” Jilly called merrily. “I’ll wait until you get the earphones on.” He watched Ewing until the kitchen door closed behind the agent, then picked up the receiver.

“Yeah.”

“Jilly, how you doin’?”

“Great, Aunt Josie. Considering they got me back in prison.”

“No complaints. You don’t know what it’s like to suffer.”

Jilly groaned. If he didn’t shut her up, she’d run through every goddamned thing Carmine ever did to her, finish with her fucking
jetatura.

“I’m not complaining,” he said quickly. “Agent Ewing takes good care of me. Every night, after I shut the lights off, he tucks me into bed. Sometimes, Aunt Josie, sometimes he stays under the covers for a long, long time.”

Josie grunted. “Hey,
strunza,
stop with the games,” she ordered. “You gonna stay four more days. Then we go in the program. I’m gonna make ’em send us to Hawaii.”

She hung up before Jilly could say good-bye. A minute later, Ewing crossed the room.

“Hey, look, Agent Ewing, I was only kiddin’ around,” Jilly said. He was still holding the telephone. “I mean about you tuckin’ me in at night. You’re much too chickenshit to open that door.”

“Put the telephone down.” Ewing’s jaw was clenched. His lips barely moved.

Jilly dropped the phone, raised a hand to his mouth. “Jesus Christ, he
is
tough.”

As Ewing picked up the phone with his right hand, he touched the tight network of steel bars with his left. The gesture was habitual, the agent doing it each time he approached the door. Jilly, though he noted the touch with great satisfaction, kept his eyes focused on Ewing’s. When the time came, he was going to rely on that hand.

Meanwhile, he had work to do. Not much work, but work nonetheless. He strode into his bathroom, squeezed a dab of toothpaste onto his finger, stepped onto the rim of the toilet, covered the lens of the pinhole camera behind the wall. Then, ignoring Agent Ewing’s shout, he walked into the larger room and did the same thing to a second camera, this one concealed in a clock.

“What do you think you’re doing? What, you goddamned son of a bitch?”

“Sticks and stones, Agent Ewing.” Jilly stepped up to the barred door.

“I want you to clean those cameras.”

“Why? So you can see me naked? Hey, Agent Ewing, you wanna see me naked, you don’t have to peep through a camera. Come inside with me.” Sappone licked his lips, blew Ewing a kiss. “I wanna make you my sweet honey, Agent Ewing. I wanna run my fingers through that crew cut, lick the sweat off the back of your neck, push your head down where it belongs.”

Without warning, Jilly slammed the heel of his hand into the bars on the door. The sudden movement, the sharp crack as the door rattled on its hinges, sent Agent Ewing stumbling backward. He stared at Jilly Sappone as if seeing him for the first time.

“My sweet honey,” Sappone screamed. He wrapped his fingers around the bars, yanked at them until the veins in his throat stood out like swollen blue worms. All the while screaming, “My sweet honey. My sweet, sweet, sweet fucking honey.”

“I don’t want to do a goddamned thing,” Moodrow told Betty over breakfast. “Even if I could think of
what
to do, I wouldn’t wanna do it. And I can’t think of anything, Betty.” He shook his head decisively, as if determined to convince himself. “Personally capturing Jilly Sappone, even if I could bring it off, would be nothing more than an ego trip. You could believe me when I say I’m not exaggerating here.”