Damaged Goods (8 page)

“Yeah. You a cop?” His face registered open disbelief, one blond eyebrow rising into the shadow of his cap.

“Retired. I’m lookin’ for a suit named Jim Tilley. You register him on the scene?”

The patrolman ran down the list of names on his sheet.

“Yeah, he came in thirty minutes ago.”

“You wouldn’t know where he is now?”

“He didn’t leave me his schedule but I hear they got a second stiff inside the complex. Found her dead when they went to notify this one’s next-of-kin. Maybe your man dropped in to have a look. The ME’s still up there.”

Five minutes later, Moodrow stepped out of an elevator at 1277 Avenue C, to confront still another patrolman. This one had dark red hair and a thin mustache but, to Moodrow, he looked exactly like his brother. He looked like a baby.

“I’m trying to locate Detective Jim Tilley. He inside?”

The cop glanced at his book. “Yeah, I’ll get him.” He leaned back through the open doorway, yelled, “Detective Tilley. You got a visitor.”

Jim Tilley appeared a moment later. He smiled apologetically as he explained why he couldn’t get his friend inside. “It’s not my squeal, Stanley. I’m a beggar here, myself.”

Moodrow nodded thoughtfully, just as if the smell of blood drifting through the open door wasn’t calling to him like the sirens called Ulysses. “I understand. What’s the connection with Sappone?”

“The victim inside is Carol Pierce. She was a witness in the case that put Sappone away.”

“No shit. And the one outside?”

“Her boyfriend. Guy named Patsy Gullo.”

“Gullo works for Carmine Stettecase.”

Tilley leaned back against the wall. He pulled a stick of chewing gum from his shirt pocket, took his time getting it into his mouth. “What can I say, Stanley? I’m impressed. Is there anybody you
don’t
know?”

Moodrow shrugged. “Look, Betty’s plane was delayed and I have to meet Leonora at the hospital in a half hour. Why don’t we get down to business. Do you have a witness who can make Sappone?”

“Are you kidding? We got a balding white male between twenty-five and forty-five years of age. Five-six to six feet tall. Hair gray or blonde or brown. Driving or being driven in a white, blue, or light green Toyota, Chevy, Nissan …”

“Okay, Jim. I heard enough. What about Carol Pierce? I can smell the blood from out here.”

Tilley looked serious for the first time. He spoke through pinched lips. “The prick took her apart with a can opener. He taped her mouth and hands, then dragged her into the bathroom. There was no sign of a struggle.”

“That’s not Jilly’s style.”

“Maybe not. Gullo was taken out with a single shot to the head. A pure mob hit.”

Moodrow touched the bandage on the back of his head. The wound was healing, the stitches pulling tight. “Sappone had a partner when he took Buster Levy. It’s gotta be someone he knew in the joint. Anybody working on that?”

“Yeah, me. I got a call in to the warden’s office in Attica. Prisoners don’t mingle with each other at Southport.” Tilley pushed himself away from the wall. “Look, I got no reason to hang around here. Give me a second to say good-bye and I’ll drive you over to the hospital.”

“I got a question,” Moodrow said, “that keeps coming back to me.” He was sitting next to Jim Tilley, staring down at a prison photo of Jilly Sappone. Taken five years ago, it revealed a cleanshaven, balding man with a sharp, bent nose and a thick, prominent chin. “How did Sappone get out of prison? Leonora told me the board turned him down, then reversed itself. How often does that happen?”

Tilley pulled the Dodge out in front of a taxi, endured the blaring response. “Don’t know, Stanley. I just get ’em
into
prison. Letting ’em out isn’t up to me.”

“Yeah, fine.” Moodrow continued to stare down at the photograph. He traced the lines on Sappone’s brow, from the edge of his forehead to the sharp delta between his eyes. “Look, I’ve got a bad feeling about the parole board.”

“You think somebody reached them?”

Moodrow shook his head. “The problem is I can’t see who or how. Carmine wouldn’t do it, even if he had the muscle. And if Jilly ratted to get himself an early parole, why hasn’t anyone been arrested? Where’s the Grand Jury investigation?” He paused for a moment, shook his head again. “I wanna play it safe. Don’t tell anybody at the house where Ann Kalkadonis is staying. The hospital or where she goes later. Nobody.”

“Might be too late for that.” Tilley passed on the details of Sappone’s phone call to the two agents, Ewing and Holtzmann. He made no attempt to convey the quality of the experience, mentioning Sappone’s Jekyll-and-Hyde mood swing in the same matter-of-fact tone he used to state the man’s final demand. “The fibbies decided they had to tell her. They want to cover their asses, let the victim make the final decision.” He glanced at his watch. It was nearly two o’clock. “They’ve most likely been and gone by now.”

M
OODROW STOOD IN THE
entranceway of St. Vincent’s Hospital’s cafeteria and watched the four women seated around Styrofoam coffee containers at a far table. Leonora Higgins was there, of course, as sharp as ever in a no-nonsense charcoal business suit. He didn’t recognize any of the others, but he knew they were from the Haven Foundation, a committee met to evaluate his personal worth. It wasn’t the first time he’d been through the process. Having done just enough corporate work to be familiar with the politics of selection, he fully understood that his task was to reduce their choices to Stanley Moodrow or Stanley Moodrow.

Time for the show, he said to himself as he crossed the cafeteria floor. Time for the game face.

“Stanley.” Leonora stood up. She extended her hand, but refused to meet his eyes. “There are some people here you need to know. Margaret Cohen, Patricia Burke, and Toni Alicea. They’re from the Haven Foundation.”

Moodrow nodded to each in turn, wished, not for the first time, that he knew his client’s room number. He snatched a chair from a nearby table and sat down.

“Did you see Jim Tilley?” Leonora continued.

“I just left him.” He glanced at the women, saw no question marks on their faces, and assumed they’d been well briefed.

“What’s your take on the police effort?” Leonora was playing to his strengths. The way any good prosecutor would display a friendly witness.

“Except for Ann’s personal protection, they dropped the whole thing in Jim’s lap. No help and he’s expected to continue working his caseload while he looks for Jilly. Jim’ll put the word out to the patrol cops in the Seven, supply them with mug shots and a history, tell ’em to be on the lookout. Given the crime rate on the Lower East Side, that’s the best he can do.”

“That’s it?” Toni Alicea’s dark eyes flashed an obvious anger, just as Moodrow had hoped. She, like the other women, appeared to be in her mid-thirties. And, like the others, she was dressed for business.

“What could I say? The cops are running it as two assaults and a robbery. They’re leaving the kidnapping to the FBI, which is par for the course.” He didn’t mention Carol Pierce, figuring to pick his spots, leave it for later.

Alicea glanced at the other women before turning back to Moodrow. “That’s just not good enough,” she said.

“Look, Ms. Alicea.” He leaned toward her. “Theresa Kalkadonis has a better chance if the cops stay out of it. You have to understand something here. Jilly Sappone is a dead man and he knows it.” Moodrow went on to describe the Stuyvesant Town crime scenes, including the relationship between Carmine Stettecase, the two victims, and Jilly Sappone. “Carmine’s going to kill Jilly,” he concluded. “If he doesn’t catch Jilly on the outside, he’ll have him hit in prison. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Then why did Sappone do it? Is he suicidal? Is he crazy?”

Moodrow took a moment to consider the question. As far as he was concerned, Jilly Sappone had ceased to be human; something or someone had reduced him to the status of a natural disaster. In fact, Sappone reminded Moodrow of a crack-crazed psychotic named Levander Greenwood who’d once terrorized the Lower East Side. At the time, Moodrow recalled, he and Jim Tilley had thought of Greenwood as a force of nature. To be dealt with, but not hated.

“That’s the wrong question,” he finally announced. “Jilly Sappone’s gonna keep on killing. Like I just explained, the man has no reason to stop, no way out.” He leaned back, swept the table with his eyes. “The question you need to ask is this: What would Jilly Sappone do to Theresa Kalkadonis if, for instance, Jilly woke up from his afternoon nap to find ten or twenty well-armed cops massed outside his door?” He laid his palms on the table, paused for a moment. “I’m not trying to be dramatic here. Do what any cop would do. Run through the possibilities.”

“Excuse me.”

Moodrow turned to meet Patricia Burke’s sharp green eyes. He noted the clenched jaw, the slight underbite, the flaming cheeks. She was pissed, too, and that was just fine with him. That was why the bait had been cast in the first place.

“You seem to be telling us to give up.”

“Not at all.”

“No? Didn’t you just infer that Jilly Sappone will …” She hesitated for a moment, took a deep breath. “You said that he’ll kill Theresa before he’ll surrender.”

“Look.” Moodrow tightened his voice down, forcing Patricia Burke to lean into him in order to hear. “The odds are stacked against Theresa Kalkadonis. That’s the truth of it. But poor odds are no reason to give up. You have to accept your hand and find the best way to play the cards. One or two people have a better chance of surprising Jilly Sappone and his partner, of taking them down before they can hurt the child, than an army of by-the-book cops or FBI agents. Cops and FBI agents have to give suspects a chance to surrender.” He waited until Patricia Burke’s eyes told him she’d digested the information, then continued. “Besides,” he said, “I have an ace in the hole. I went to grammar school with Carmine Stettecase. I know he’s a man who can be persuaded to act in his own self-interest.”

Moodrow hesitated outside the door to Room 436. He knew what he was going to find inside, had stood at the hospital bedsides of hundreds of beating victims in the course of his career. Ann Kalkadonis’s face would be so badly swollen as to actually appear featureless, a dimpled balloon stretched to the point of bursting. By turns, the color of her skin would range from purple to red to green to a faded, sickly yellow. As if her face had been tie-dyed by Jilly Sappone’s fists.

“Stanley?”

Leonora Higgins was standing beside him. He’d wanted to interview Ann Kalkadonis by himself, but wasn’t surprised when the entire committee had insisted on coming along. Leonora had been the compromise.

“Gimme a second to get ready,” he said. The trick was not to let ordinary human pity stop you from asking the questions that had to be asked. Maybe all you wanted to do was mumble your condolences and get the fuck out, but the man paid you to be a detective and you couldn’t detect without information, therefore …

“All right,” he said, “let’s go.”

He nodded to the bored cop sitting beside the door, stepped inside, found no surprises. Ann Kalkadonis was awake, though probably drugged. Her face, as she slowly turned toward him, was every bit as grotesque as he’d expected. At least, the parts that weren’t bandaged.

“You got older,” she mumbled.

“Say that again?” He crossed the room, sat on the plastic chair beside her bed.

“You got older,” she repeated.

“I guess that means you remember me.” Moodrow crossed his legs, settled back in the chair. “Tell ya the truth, Mrs. Kalkadonis, I’m flattered.”

“I remember you from the fight.”

“That was a long time ago.” He looked up at Leonora and motioned for her to take the other chair, before explaining. “Once upon a time, Jilly and I had what cops like to call an altercation. It happened in a bar on Houston Street. Jilly was loud, as usual, sounding off about all cops being scumbag thieves. Me, I was off duty and too close to drunk to walk out. You could say I won the fight, being as how I was standing up when it ended. But the truth is that nobody wins a fight like that. I hurt for a week.”

Leonora nodded thoughtfully. She’d been setting up Moodrow’s punch lines for two days because she really believed that he was Theresa’s best chance. That didn’t mean she enjoyed being used. “Did he come after you? Later on?”

Moodrow shook his head. “Back then, you didn’t kill a cop.” He turned to Ann Kalkadonis. “I know you’re hurting, Ann, so I’ll try to keep it brief. After I finish, we’ll talk about what we’re gonna do.”

Slowly, with many pauses, they established a list of Jilly Sappone’s friends and relatives. The list, of course, was fifteen years old, the last time Ann Kalkadonis had had any contact with the family, but it was a place to begin. When they were finished, Moodrow leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs.

“Have the feds told you about Jilly’s call?” He waited for a nod, then continued. “Jilly wants you in the apartment. He wants you to answer the telephone next time he calls. I need to know if you’re gonna go, if you’re gonna give Jilly a target?” The questions were purely rhetorical, Ann Kalkadonis having no choice in the matter. Moodrow received a nod, then continued. “If your other daughter, Patricia, is still in Boston, bring her back. There’s at least a chance that Jilly could find her. Just like he found Carol Pierce. Just like he found
you.
”

Leonora started to say something, but Moodrow motioned her into silence. “From what I hear, Ann, you want me to be your bodyguard. We both know that won’t work. I have to locate Jilly and I have to do it fast. The FBI has your apartment wired. They’ll stay with you twenty-four hours a day. The same goes for the New York cops.”

Ann Kalkadonis mumbled something that Moodrow didn’t catch. He leaned closer, asked her to repeat herself, then came up laughing.

“What did she say?” Leonora asked.

“She said, “I’m Sicilian. I don’t trust cops.’ ” He turned back to his client. “In this case, you’ve got the cops and the FBI agents to watch each other. Just make sure Patricia doesn’t decide to stroll through the neighborhood. If we’re careful, Sappone will never know she came back.”