Damaged Goods (50 page)

“Al Roker said it was gonna be sunny and cooler.” Mary was back on the edge of the bed, staring at her mother. Trying to figure it out.

“Al Roker,” Josie sneered. “Like he was your boyfriend.”

“Please, mama, he’s black. And he’s fat.”

Josie turned to her daughter. “Looks okay, right?” The red dress, meant to fall to mid calf, was riding just above her knees.

“Mama, you didn’t even shave your legs. And you’re wearing black sneakers.”

“Nobody gonna mind.” She turned her back to her daughter. “Here, zip me up.”

Mary got the zipper midway between her mother’s shoulder blades before she surrendered to nature and went for another safety pin. “You’re too big around the chest.”

Josie didn’t respond. She was looking at her flattened breasts in the mirror. Amazed at how perfectly round they were, like a pair of large, shallow bowls.

“Why can’t I talk to you?” Mary said. She was standing behind her mother, pinning the zipper. “We have to talk.”

“Why?” Josie, as she slipped into the bolero jacket, was genuinely puzzled.

“We have to decide what we’re gonna do.” Mary sat down on the bed. “And what about Gildo? He’s in jail.”

“Gildo!” Josie sucked her upper lip into her mouth. Ann’s survival was the fly in the ointment, there was no getting away from it, but Carmine’s death more than made up for Gildo’s failure. There was no getting away from that, either. “Gildo gotta take care of himself.”

“He could get the death penalty. From the feds.”

“So whatta ya wanna do, break him out?” Josie walked across the room and yanked her black leather bag off a chair by the door. “Gildo’s a man,” she said, fully expecting her daughter to understand.

“Mama, when are you coming back?”

Josie stopped in the doorway, but didn’t turn around. She started to speak, then changed her mind, crossing the living room to the front door, fumbling with the locks for a minute before charging down the stairs. When she found the door to Carmine’s duplex on the ground floor open, she realized, for the first time, that Rose Stettecase was in mourning. Josie looked at the women gathered in the foyer, all of whom were staring back at her. She recognized several faces, the wives of Carmine’s
paisons,
and looked around for their husbands before recalling that their husbands were either dead or in custody. As were the husbands of
all
the women in the room.

Well, that was too bad. Josie had nothing against any of these women, not even Rose. If there’d been another way …

She turned away from them, opened the front door, and stepped onto the sidewalk. A light breeze curled against her legs, the sensation odd enough to make her look down for a moment. Then she straightened, pushing out her flattened breasts, lifting her chin into the air until she was looking at the world along the length of her nose.

Moodrow was actually grateful for the traffic on the Long Island Expressway. He was inching forward, almost literally, a mile or so from Woodhaven Boulevard, trying to force his emotions to follow the car’s example. Eventually he’d come down, find a low to match the high inspired by the events of the prior day, but for right now he was still flying. He felt powerful, confident, like he could do anything he wanted to do. Like he could snap his fingers and the wall of hot metal surrounding his Chevrolet would disappear.

Meanwhile, assuming Tommaso was actually sitting on Carmine’s buy money, there was every reason to believe he was armed. And if he’d stolen the money from Carmine, he was crazy as well. The problem, for Moodrow, was what
kind
of crazy.

“I got lucky out there.”

Moodrow glanced across the seat. Gadd was wearing Betty’s black leather coat. Its soft luster neatly matched the black eye shadow and dark lipstick on her face. “Say that again?”

“Yesterday, when Jilly showed up, I was out in the stairwell. You know, having a cigarette.” Laughing softly, she pulled out a half-empty pack of Newports. “Speaking of which, I appear to be a nicotine junkie. Again.” She cracked the window, let in a stream of warm air. “Suppose I was in that apartment,” she said, “instead of on the stairs. I would’ve heard Jilly coming, because I kept the chain on whenever I was inside, but I would’ve had to shoot
through
Leuten Kitt to get to Jilly. I don’t know if I could’ve done it.”

“What’s the difference? Whether you tell Sappone to shoot Kitt or threaten to shoot him yourself, it’s the same bluff.”

“The difference is that …” Gadd flicked her ash out the window, then looked over at Moodrow. “The difference is that I would’ve had to look into his eyes. Leuten’s, I mean. I would’ve had to look into his eyes while I threatened to kill him.”

Moodrow eased the car onto the exit ramp and stepped on the accelerator. “Actually,” he declared, “if Jilly had found the chain on, he’d have smelled out the trap and killed Leuten in the hallway. So I guess you were lucky twice.” He stopped for the light at the end of the ramp. “Or twice as lucky.”

They rode for several miles in silence, heading south toward the airport and Tommaso’s motel, the First Flight, on Rockaway Boulevard. Moodrow, his mind back to the problem at hand, was trying to decide whether Gadd should talk her way inside, see if Tommaso was armed before they made their move. He didn’t like the idea of Gadd in the room by herself, even for a few seconds, but if they kicked in the door as soon as Tommaso cracked it open and he had a gun in his hand … The biggest problem was they had no right to be there. Tommaso, unlike Jilly Sappone, was just another citizen. How would they explain a public shoot-out? What, for instance, would they say if Tommaso
didn’t
have Carmine’s missing millions? If an innocent bystander took a round?

He was about to voice his misgivings, when Gadd said, “Do you think it’s done now? Is it over?”

“Ya know, Gadd, you’re being very inscrutable this morning. I don’t have any idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

“Yeah, you do.”

Moodrow shrugged. “Okay, so I do. What of it?” She was talking about Theresa Kalkadonis, the sum total of what they’d done for and to her.

“I was asking if we were through it. Now that Sappone’s facing the death sentence.”

“Look …” What Moodrow wanted to do, in the worst way, was change the subject, talk about Tommaso the Timid, decide on a basic strategy. And if Ginny Gadd hadn’t actually been there, if she hadn’t jumped out of the car, run up to the still form by the side of the road, changing the subject was exactly what he would have done. But the way he saw it now, she’d paid for
his
mistake; she was still paying. “If it was over,” he finally said, “you wouldn’t be talking about it.”

Gadd tossed her cigarette out the window. “You’ve got a point,” she admitted. “But it feels different now.” She looked up at Moodrow, the exotic makeup belying her sincerity. “I feel like I’m ready to live with it.”

“As if you had a choice.” Moodrow ran his fingers through his close-cropped hair. “As for me, it isn’t the first time I fucked up, just the first time I witnessed the consequences, so … Look, Gadd, the thing of it is that I don’t plan to jump off a bridge, and I’m not having nightmares, and I’m giving serious thought to your business proposition.”

Gadd smiled, touched Moodrow’s arm. “That’s good enough for me,” she said. “Now, about Tommaso, the first thing is no guns. If I think he’s armed, I’m gonna back away, let the cops handle it.”

Moodrow banged the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Jesus,” he said, “I wish you’d stop reading my mind.”

Fifteen minutes later, Gadd was knocking softly on the door of Unit 14 at the First Flight Motor Inn. There was no peephole, but she was certain she saw the drapes rustle a moment before the door swung back.

“If you dare to address me,” she said as she squared her shoulders and stepped into the room, “you’ll pay with your flesh.” Her eyes dropped to Tommaso’s hands, finding them empty, then jumped to his face, registering his bald head, receding chin, and happy smirk at a glance. “Moodrow,” she called over her shoulder, “c’mon in.”

Tommaso stopped grinning when Moodrow strode through the door, spun him around, and thoroughly frisked him. “Are you a cop?” he asked.

“Worse,” Moodrow replied evenly. He stood behind Tommaso, one hand on the man’s back, pinning him to the wall.

“Let’s see,” Gadd said, “what have we here?” She walked directly to the closet and dragged out a large trunk. “Christ, it’s not even locked.”

Moodrow looked over, saw the money and the revolver lying on top of it. He wondered, briefly, what he’d do if it wasn’t mob money and therefore a death sentence for anyone possessing it. “Son of a bitch,” he said, “you really went and did it.” He spun Tommaso around. “You have any idea how many people died because you stole that money?”

Tommaso replied by licking his lips. “Are you gonna give me the third degree?” he asked.

“What about the cops, the ones who died on that street? Do they matter? What about your father?” Moodrow, who’d been no more than curious when he’d begun the questions, felt a rush of anger so intense he literally trembled from head to toe.

“Don’t hurt him.”

Moodrow turned at the sound of Gadd’s voice. He looked at her as if she’d just stepped out of one of the cheap prints on the wall. “I’m not gonna hurt him,” he finally said. “No, I’ve got something better in mind. You like to play games?”

Once they got down to it, the production didn’t take all that long to stage. They worked in silence, nodding to each other from time to time, until Moodrow finally picked up the phone.

“That’s an awful lot of money.” Gadd gestured toward the bed.

“True.” Moodrow paused to admire their handiwork. Tommaso’s hands and feet were cuffed to the head and footboards. He was naked except for a white bath towel that’d been drawn through his legs and pinned like a diaper. The money, all of it, was spread over his body like a blanket. “You wanna take it? Maybe retire to the Caribbean, see how fast you can spend the loot?”

“Uh-uh. For the reason we talked about on the way over here.” Gadd worked her tongue over her teeth. “Plus, it’s blood money. There’s blood all over it.”

Moodrow grunted assent as he punched the number of the central desk at One Police Plaza into the phone, then worked himself from switchboard to switchboard until he got Inspector Cohen on the line.

“Yeah, Inspector, I’m fine. How ’bout yourself?” He paused to listen for a moment, then nodded. “And Ginny Gadd’s fine, too. In fact, she’s right here next to me and she wants to speak to you. If you’ve got the time.” Moodrow passed the phone to his partner, said, “Break a leg.”

“Inspector, how are you?” Gadd looked over at Tommaso. He was staring back at her, his look sorrowful and joyous at the same time, an expression she’d never seen before and which she would have thought impossible a moment before. “Look, I’ve got a present for you, a three-million-dollar present to be exact.” She stopped abruptly. “That’s right, Inspector. The money is—I mean,
was
—Carmine Stettecase’s. And now it’s gonna be yours. Yours and the job’s, of course.” Gadd, smiling softly, again paused to listen. “Actually,” she finally said, “there’s nothing we really want. Right
now.
As for the future … well, I guess we’re just gonna have to rely on your personal integrity. That’s why I’m calling you, instead of a sleazebag reporter.”

Josie Rizzo plowed through lower Manhattan like a supercharged reaper through a field of corn. Once she got started, she found she couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow down long enough to enjoy the dumbfounded expressions until all her customary stops were made. She hit Patti Barbano’s Mulberry Street
salumeria
first, striding up to the counter, spinning on her left heel, marching back out the door without saying a word. Then Ira’s dairy on Houston Street, Tony’s
pasticceria
on LaGuardia Place, working west, then north, then east again, demanding they view her in all her glory.

It didn’t matter if they thought her mad, if they failed to catch so much as a glimmer of what she felt. Life, for them, was measured out in loaves of bread, pounds of fish; their opinions meant nothing. No, what was important was that they see and remember. Josie Rizzo was nothing, a mere woman, matriarch by default of a family on the decline, but she’d brought down Carmine Stettecase and all his soldiers. She’d destroyed a kingdom.

By the time she came out of Chu Wen’s Chinese laundry on Tenth and University some two hours later, Josie was fully satisfied, yet disappointed at the same time. The thought of returning to her shabby apartment in Carmine’s brownstone was yanking her chin down into her chest, turning her nose to the sidewalk. Still, there was nowhere else to go. And maybe that was where she belonged, anyway, in that house with all the widows. Maybe this brief moment was all she was entitled to.

“Mama?”

Josie, shocked, stared up through her eyelashes at her daughter, Mary. “Whatta you doin’ outside? You don’t go outside.”

“I’m on my way to see Gildo,” Mary explained. “Somebody has to get him a lawyer, see if he’s okay.”

“Maybe that husband you got …”

“Tommaso’s gone. I already told you that.”

Sensing a trace of pity in Mary’s voice, Josie peered up through her lashes, saw the same trace in her daughter’s eyes and wondered at Mary’s ignorance. For a moment, she was convinced that none of them, not one of the widows, really understood, but then she saw the two men walking toward her from Fifth Avenue and she knew that wasn’t true. They were big men, wearing identical blue jogging outfits, and they were staring straight at her as they came. Not with the amazement of strolling pedestrians, but with the dead, unblinking focus of true predators.

“
I
did it,” she shouted at her daughter. “Everything. Gildo worked for
me.
”

“Gildo needs help, mama.” Mary’s tone was soothing, but insistent. “We need money to hire a lawyer.” She groaned. “And I don’t even know where Tommaso kept the checkbook.”

The two men were being paced by a long black sedan. Josie noted the Jersey plates and slowly lifted her head. “Save yourself,” she said to Mary. “Forget about Gildo.”