Damaged Goods (45 page)

“Don’t go down there, Betty,” Leonora had patiently advised when Betty called her back. “You’ll never get past the lobby. Remember, Stanley hasn’t been charged. That means nobody
you
can reach will even know he’s there. Tomorrow morning I’ll try to call Holtzmann. If he won’t speak to me, I’ll go to the US attorney. If that doesn’t work, I know a deputy attorney general in DC. …”

“Leonora?” Betty had interrupted, her imagination already running away with itself. “What if they take him over to the MCC?”

“That’s a definite possibility—I won’t deny it—but what I think is there’s more chance of his being charged and transferred if you try to call their bluff.”

Leonora’s “trapped rat” scenario had been enough to keep Betty in Moodrow’s apartment until Leonora’s third call, but it hadn’t gotten her a night’s sleep. By the time the phone rang, a little after nine o’clock in the morning, she was on her fourth cup of coffee.

“I found somebody you can talk to,” Leonora had announced. “An agent named Marsha Millstein in the Division of Public Relations.”

Betty had failed to keep the disappointment out of her voice. “Leonora, that’s like talking to a very polite statue. Stonewalling is what they do. Hell, it’s
all
they do.”

“I won’t argue the point, but it’s a place to start. Right now, I can’t reach Holtzmann or anyone close to him.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper. “Look, there’s something big happening over there and I can’t get a handle on it.”

“Bigger than arresting Carmine Stettecase with a couple hundred kilos of heroin?”

“Maybe that’s it, but I keep sensing fear, not anticipation. Like something’s gone wrong and they don’t know how to fix it. Anyway, I called the MCC from my office a few minutes ago and Stanley’s not there.”

“Or so they claim.”

Leonora had paused briefly, looking for a polite way to frame the essential message. When she couldn’t find one, she opted for frank and to the point. “Don’t go in there with an attitude. Be Stanley’s attorney, not his lover. Remember, they’ve been holding him for less than forty-eight hours. It might be irregular, but it’s not a technical violation of his rights, not in the federal system. Try to make Agent Millstein understand that releasing Stanley is in the Bureau’s best interest.”

“In the Bureau’s best interest,” Betty repeated as she locked the door and made her way down to the street. She said it again as she walked into the Metropolitan Correctional Center and presented her credentials.

“Pardon me?” The corrections officer seated behind the low counter, a middle-aged white man with a sagging gut and deep blue-gray pouches beneath a pair of tiny ice blue eyes, seemed utterly bored. “Were you talkin’ to me?”

“I’m here to see my client, Stanley Moodrow.” Betty laid her identification on the counter, watched him pick it up, examine it like an entomologist trying to identify an unfamiliar insect, then pass it back. “You wanna spell out that name?”

“The first or the last?”

“The last.” His expression didn’t change, didn’t even flicker.

“M-O-O-D-R-O-W” Betty glanced at the man’s nameplate. “Officer McTaggert.”

“No such.”

It was Betty’s turn to say, “Pardon me?”

“No such.” McTaggert swiveled the monitor 180 degrees. “Look for yourself. He ain’t here.”

“I spoke to him last night.” Betty wondered, briefly, if lying fit the general heading of “in the Bureau’s best interest.”

“Maybe he got bailed out. You want me to check?”

“I want you to be sure he’s not here right now.”

“I’m already sure.”

“In that case, so am I. And thank you for your cheerful assistance.”

It took Betty less than ten minutes to walk the few blocks to FBI headquarters in the Federal Building on Worth Street. Inside, she received a visitor’s badge marked with her name and her ultimate destination, the FBI’s Public Relations Division on the thirty-fourth floor. The lobby was crowded with men and women heading off to dozens of federal bureaucracies, some as workers and some as supplicants. Betty, as she waited for an elevator, made a conscious effort to see herself as the latter. And not as an avenging angel.

In the Bureau’s best interest, she said to herself. The Constitution will just have to fend for itself.

Moodrow was still eating his breakfast (cold cereal, cold juice, cold coffee) when two beefy corrections officers approached his cell, ordered him out, then walked him down the hall to a tiny interview room. Without explanation, they put him inside, leaving him to sit in a chair bolted to the green tile floor while they stood guard outside. Moodrow noted the mustard yellow walls, the metal table, the dirty white ceiling, and nodded to himself. While the room didn’t have the cachet of the Canary Cage in the old Seventh Precinct, it did reek of squirming, sweating mutts and the sharply focused men who pursued them. Apparently, interrogation was a facet of law enforcement the feds hadn’t managed to sanitize.

Twenty minutes later, he stood and walked over to a small mirror set into the door, stared at his reflection, wondered if his guards were just outside looking back at him. When the COs ordered him out of the cell, Moodrow had anticipated only two possibilities: Holtzmann was either going to charge him or let him go. After all, what question could Holtzmann ask in an interview room that couldn’t be asked in Moodrow’s cell? And why, it being a few hours before the big bust, would Holtzmann be thinking about Stanley Moodrow at all?

Neither question was answered by the sudden appearance of a very tall, very elegant young man. At least as tall as Moodrow and rail thin, his black, summer-weight suit draped his bony frame perfectly, dropping in an unbroken line from his shoulders to the tops of his polished wingtips. Moodrow stared at the suit for a moment, relishing his own resentment, then raised his eyes to look into the man’s face. The man’s features were uniformly strong, the bones of his face prominent. He returned Moodrow’s contemptuous gaze frankly, but without apparent aggression.

“Cooper,” the man said. “Justice Department.” His voice carried vague traces of a southern drawl.

Moodrow thought about it for a moment, then said, “Justice Department, huh? That’s an unusual last name, but I guess it’s not impossible. I once knew a guy named Bureau. He spelled it with two
ns.

Cooper’s expression didn’t change. “Why don’t we sit down?” he said after a long pause.

“Why don’t you …” Moodrow bit off the rest of the message. Something was very wrong and he wasn’t going to find out what it was by playing the tough guy. “Why don’t we run through that one more time,” he said as he dropped into the chair. “Your full name and full title.”

“My name is Cooper. Buford Cooper. From the state of Mississippi.”

He smiled for the first time, a quick, broad flash of gleaming white teeth. Moodrow read the grin as supremely confident, the grin of a doctor treating a disease from which he, himself, was immune.

“And the title?”

“I’m what they call a Special Counsel.” He crossed his legs and took out a pack of Viceroys. “You smoke?” When Moodrow shook his head, he added, “Mind if I do?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Cooper shook out a smoke and lit it with a slender gold lighter. The lighter, Moodrow noted before it disappeared into Cooper’s trouser pocket, was neither flashy nor cheap.

“I’m Special Counsel to the Attorney General of the United States of America.” He blew out a stream of smoke. “Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“A wonderful ring,” Moodrow agreed. “Now why don’t you tell me what you want.”

Cooper stared at Moodrow for a moment, then took a deep breath and smiled again. “I want to know why you’re here,” he said. “No matter how stupid that sounds.”

A vague uneasiness flitted through Moodrow’s consciousness like a bat through an underground cave. “You saying you haven’t asked the man who brought me?”

“And who might that be?”

Moodrow shook his head slowly. “Don’t try to play the interrogator,” he said evenly. “You don’t have the experience to bring it off.” That brought a flush to Cooper’s tanned cheeks. “If you’re gonna answer every question by asking another one, I want my lawyer.”

“That would be Ms. Haluka. She’s in the building even as we speak. Inflicting psychological damage on a PR person.”

Moodrow giggled his appreciation. “One for you,” he admitted.

“One for me, yes.” Cooper put the cigarette into his mouth, let it rest on his lips for a moment before inhaling. “Let me put it simply,” he said. “I was in Manhattan on Justice Department business when I got a call from DC asking me to check on the status of an ex-cop being detained without charge by the FBI. Just to check, mind you, not to actually do anything about it. Now I can’t find a single agent who admits to knowing anything about Stanley Moodrow beyond the bare fact that he’s actually here.”

Moodrow leaned forward, placed his palms flat on the table. “And Karl Holtzmann?” He closed his eyes in anticipation of the blow sure to follow. “What does Karl Holtzmann say?”

“Karl Holtzmann is missing. Along with US Attorney Abner Kirkwood and Agent Bob Ewing.” Cooper tapped his ash onto the floor. “Would you know anything about that?”

It was the worst possible scenario. Ginny Gadd alone in that apartment; Stanley Moodrow in a cell, unable to even warn her; Jilly Sappone on the loose. Repressing a groan, Moodrow stared at his clenched fists. “You have to let me the fuck out of here.” He raised his head, glared at Buford Cooper as if contemplating an all-out attack.

“That’s not an answer to my question.”

Moodrow slammed his fist into the table. “Give me one good reason why I should bail you out? You arrested me without probable cause, detained me without charge, denied me the right to make a phone call or consult an attorney …”

“I didn’t do any of that.” Cooper, who hadn’t flinched in the face of Moodrow’s tirade, dropped his cigarette on the floor and slowly ground it out with the heel of his shoe. “Until a couple of hours ago, I didn’t even know you existed.”

“What’re you lookin’ for, Cooper, tea and sympathy?”

“I’m looking for a little help.”

“You still haven’t given me a reason why I should give a shit about you.” He leaned back, took a deep breath, readied himself for the actual bargaining. “Or the Justice Department or the Federal Bureau of Incompetence.”

“Perhaps,” Cooper smiled again, “because giving a shit might go a long way toward getting you out of here.” He took a white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket and gently wiped his mouth. “Within, say, the next few hours.”

Jilly Sappone squatted, then sat on the gritty, tarred rooftop. Frowning, he leaned against the narrow ledge, took a sandwich bag from the pocket of Agent Bob’s forest green windbreaker, and stared at the small pile of dope at the bottom. For some reason, ever since his good-bye phone call to Aunt Josie, he couldn’t do anything without thinking it was the last time he was gonna do it. The last shower, the last shave, the last piss, the last bacon, eggs, toast, coffee. It was stupid, really, because he didn’t have to die. Captured, yeah; he was definitely gonna be captured. Even if he somehow got into that apartment, did the deed, got away, Jilly Sappone had nowhere to hide. But that didn’t mean he’d be killed, not unless he decided to put a round in his own head, let a big piece of lead chase the small one already down there, and he hadn’t made that decision. Not yet.

Nevertheless, as he dug his pinky into the heroin, scooped out a little heap, pushed it up into his nose, he heard himself say,
the last snort.
As clearly as if he’d spoken out loud.

The day was warm and the sun, directly overhead, poured down on the rooftop. Jilly could feel hot tar beneath his buttocks, knew he’d carry some of it with him when he finally got his act in gear. He didn’t mind, didn’t think Ann would mind, either. This being the last time and all.

He tilted his head back, closed his eyes, let the sun heat his face while the heroin worked its way through his body. Twenty minutes later, when he began to pull himself together, he was still sitting against the wall, though his chin had dropped down to his chest and he was snoring softly.

“The last nod,” Jilly said without opening his eyes. Laughter bubbled over his tongue and lips, seemed to dribble out of his mouth, the sound wet and ugly even to himself. Christ, he thought, I
gotta
get moving.

But he didn’t move, not until he heard the door to the roof squeal on its hinges. Then, as if someone had thrown a switch, his eyes were open, the automatic in his hand, his brain on full alert.

“Don’ shoo me, bro. Don’ shoo me.”

Jilly stared at the man in the doorway for a moment before dismissing him as a junkie looking for a place to fix or something to rip off. No surprise in a building like this. “You got business with me?” he asked.

“No way.” The man took a step forward, his eyes riveted to the barrel of the gun. “I don’t even know nobody’s up here.” He opened his clenched fist to reveal several bags of dope. “I gotta get off, bro. I’m sick.”

Jilly flicked the automatic in the general direction of Second Avenue, said, “Take it somewhere else,” watched the junkie half trot across the rooftops. When the man was several roofs away, Jilly dragged himself to his knees and turned around to peer over the low concrete parapet at a twenty-story apartment building across the street. The building, of white brick and studded with balconies, was solidly middle class and fronted Third Avenue at the corner of Twenty-seventh Street. Another, almost identical structure, faced it from the west side of the avenue. From each of these buildings, a string of five-story brick tenements radiated east and west along Twenty-seventh Street like the tendrils of a spreading cancer.

There was dope in virtually every building, even in those where the landlord bothered to repair the broken locks and mailboxes. Some, like the one Jilly had used to get to the roof, were almost entirely given over to the trade. At least half the twenty apartments, though unrented, served as shooting galleries, crack dens, or both. Four or five others were occupied by prostitutes who worked the lower end of Lexington Avenue a block to the west. The remainder housed working families whose economic survival depended on low rent.