Funeral Hotdish (14 page)

“You boys just take it easy and let the law do its job. If you hear anything or know anything, you know my number. I don’t like drug dealers any more than you do, but I’ve got to have evidence. So take care and stay calm and let’s see what happens. Hell, maybe the kid is gone forever and your problems are over.”

Alice remembered him sauntering out of her bakery—pulling the door back and forth to make the bell sing its head off—and she felt the same contempt the men did. She didn’t turn around as she went back to the kitchen, so she wasn’t sure which one spewed out, “I haven’t been called a boy for fifty years.”

But she was sure this proof-versus-know argument held no more sway with these men than the first time they heard it a year ago, when they’d tried to prevent a tragedy like Amber’s death. These were men who watched enough cop shows on TV—there’s not a lot else to do on a cold North Dakota night—to know that good cops go out and GET the proof they need. They don’t sit on their fat asses and complain that it didn’t walk in the front door. Besides, these men had lots of personal experience in proof-versus-know—all were the law in their own homes and all had raised children. When they were convinced, that was proof enough. And as any child knows, the threshold for proof is far lower for fathers than it is for mothers.

But since Sheriff Potter’s awful visit, things were slowly working their way back to normal. Johnny had woken up—again. His broken leg was healing inside the thick cast that demanded he use crutches. His folks brought him home over the weekend and the word was he was going to be alright. Everyone was nervous to see him. What do you say to the boy? How do you treat him?

Alice hoped people would be kind—kinder than Johnny’s own father, from what she heard. Everyone knew the boy would be scarred—you don’t have a loss like this without consequences. Her own cousin, Mary, was proof. Years ago she was babysitting and the poor little girl fell out of her highchair and landed on her head. The girl was never right after that and Mary entered the nunnery to do penance for her mistake. Alice knew the religious life wouldn’t be where Johnny Roth found his solace, and she worried what was waiting on the other side of the road. More likely, he’d move away to avoid a whole town that knew what he’d done.

Johnny was one of the threads of today’s slow conversation. How was he? Was there any brain damage? Was he going back to school? How did he look? How did he sound? What would become of him? When was the cast coming off?

“I hear his classmates all went out to see him at home,” Bernard offered. “He’s not strong enough to get around yet.”

“They’re standing by him,” Ralph noted. “That’s good. The boy needs support.”

Another hand of Smear was dealt. All attention was on the trick-taking game as Earl’s team won the bid. The game was almost over when someone offered, “Yeah, the poor kid needs support. It’s a helluva thing to go through life with that hanging over your head.”

Two games later, Earl said, “I hear he said he’s going to kill Crabapple.” Alice stopped kneading her Dakota Maid dough and held her breath.

“Yeah, I heard that too,” Bernard chimed in, letting out a deep sigh like it had been weighing on his shoulders.

Alice stayed transfixed as the game finished and points were counted. It wasn’t until she heard the cards being shuffled that Ralph spoke the words that gave her chills.

“It wouldn’t be right for a guy to let that happen.”

The next “oh, no” moment came when Alice heard the bell and looked up to see LeRoy Roth walking through her front door. There was no one she hated more seeing in her bakery—or anywhere else, for that matter.

“LeRoy Roth is certifiably nuts,” she often declared, and there wasn’t a person in Northville that didn’t agree.

Johnny’s uncle was the only card-carrying member of the extreme right-wing group called the Posse Comitatus. They hated Jews, Blacks, Mexicans, gays, women’s libbers, and anyone associated with the government. They saw a communist under every tree and thought Hitler wasn’t that far off. LeRoy was always trying to recruit new members, but thankfully, hadn’t found any takers.

The man had quit paying taxes years ago, claiming the federal government was operating under the Communist Manifesto rather than the U.S. Constitution. That was the same reason he opted out of Social Security, informing Washington in a letter address to “The Synagogue of Satan.” He recognized only “township government,” which didn’t exist anywhere except in his head. Even free public schools were a communist plot, and he believed America got into World War II because the feds lied about Pearl Harbor. That thought alone was enough to turn off the men at the card table.

If there was one subject on which LeRoy Roth was absolutely obsessed, it was the fate of his idol and fellow North Dakota farmer, Gordon Kahl. Some call the 1983 tragedy “North Dakota’s most notorious crime,” and LeRoy never got over it. The way he told the story, Kahl and his family were ambushed by evil federal agents who got themselves killed—what they deserved for going after an honest patriot. The way the FBI told it, Kahl was an armed and dangerous fanatic who killed two federal marshals who were trying to arrest him for probation violations.

And then there was Ruby Ridge in 1992 and Waco in 1993, and LeRoy kept stepping deeper and deeper into the fanatical world of the ultra right-wing—so much that his brother, Paul, hardly talked to him anymore. These days, the communist conspiracy took backstage to the “Zionist conspiracy,” and just mention a homosexual and LeRoy might shoot on sight.

So Alice Peters wasn’t the only one who got nervous whenever he crossed the threshold.

LeRoy Roth burst into the bakery. “The Bastard’s Back,” he announced, like it was the title of a play.

Chapter Thirteen

Thursday, December 16, 1999—Wednesday, January 5, 2000

As Christmas approached, the wiretaps secretly invading Sammy Gravano’s life counted in the thousands.

Joya was ashamed that she didn’t worry about how many of these were illegal, how many calls had nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with the daily life of a family. She knew the cops weren’t supposed to listen to everyday conversations, but you never knew when one thing began and the other stopped. It made her uncomfortable that she was so ready to give the cops a pass on what was legal and what wasn’t.

It was a long-established problem of the press that reporters assigned to cover the “cop shop” got too cozy with the police they were supposed to be watch-dogging. They ended up seeing the cops’ side of things, even when the cops were wrong. Joya now realized how easy that was. But she’d made a deal with the devil, so she stuffed away her qualms.

She couldn’t ignore the problems at home that easily.

Joya hated it when the cracks started showing up. Not the creases—his inability to put down the toilet seat or throw away his own beer cans—but the cracks that let in light.

The first crack was predictable. Joya had dated enough divorced men to know that the ex never liked the new girlfriend—“Get your fat ass out of my husband’s apartment!” or “Help yourself to my leftovers, honey, but he’ll never stay with you over me!” But those calls and ex problems usually rose at the start of the relationship, so she got agitated when the call came to her house six months after he’d moved in.

“Is Rob there?” The female voice on the other end sounded official and impatient.

“Who may I say is calling?”

“It’s Rose. I need him.” There was such entitlement in the voice that Joya felt like yelling, “Fucking Heavenly Queen, Mother of Your Children is calling.” But she didn’t. Maybe one of the kids was hurt. She announced the call and even Rob looked a little startled that she was calling
here.

He rushed to the phone and listened a minute. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

On his way to the bathroom, he told Joya, “Her sinks are all plugged up. I need to go help her.”

“She couldn’t call a plumber?”

“Our house is old and the pipes are touchy and I’ve fixed them a dozen times.”

“And a plumber couldn’t?”

He gave her a dirty look and jumped into clothes to rush out the door.

She watched the back of the door for a minute, mulling over his exit. To Rob, it was still “our house.” He jumped when she called. What could possibly go wrong here?

The second crack was a surprise. She came home one Friday afternoon to find a woman with legs up to here and tits hanging out of her velvet shirt walking through her living room.

“Hi, Joya,” the fancy lady said over her shoulder as she walked into the kitchen.

Joya wouldn’t have been more surprised if she’d encountered a giraffe in her home. She followed the woman—there was a hint of recognition—but before she could ask the obvious question, the woman started laughing.

“Don’t recognize me, do you?”

The voice gave her away. “Mary Kay? Is that you, Mary Kay? Holy shit, what have you done to yourself?”

The last time Joya saw Detective Mary Kay Grimes, she was sitting at her desk on the fifth floor, discussing the value of the wiretaps with Joya. Mary Kay was a passably-pretty woman and a little skinny. But here she was, dolled up like a hooker, standing in Joya’s kitchen.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re going undercover tonight to the clubs in Scottsdale. Detective Cope needs us. He’s been buying Ex for months—nothing big, twenty-five, fifty pills at a time—but tonight he’s going to try and make a big buy and hope that smokes out Mike Papa and the Gravano kid.”

“Wow. That’s big. They hang out at these clubs?”

“Oh, sure. You should see Papa—he’s the king of the hill. Silk shirt open. Gold necklaces around his hairy neck. He looks ridiculous, but he thinks he’s cool. He’s a real bad-ass. Comes out of the East Valley. He headed some racist gangs out there—the Devil Dogs, White Power. He’s a mess. Sammy’s kid follows him around like a puppy dog. We hope they got the word a big buyer’s in town and they show up. But you never know about undercover work.”

What Joya knew about undercover work was that you needed to be young, with a smokin’ body. It wasn’t work for her.

“Well, you look…”

“If you think I look hot, wait till you see Sandy.”

“Sandy’s going too? Where is she?”

“She’s in the bedroom getting ready.”

“Where’s Rob?”

“He’s back there, too, getting into his get-up.”

Joya blanched. Sandy wasn’t passable, but a flat-out fox. Even in the police uniform of polyester pants with shirt tucked in, she looked hot. And she was back in the bedroom with Rob? Joya could imagine how she’d gussy up, but when Sandy walked into the kitchen, she realized her imagination was lazy.

Sandy’s black satin pants were so tight, she couldn’t be wearing underwear. Even a thong would have shown. Her boobs were up high and perked, and she had a red flower in her blonde hair. There was enough makeup on her face to open a counter at Macy’s.

“Holy shit.”

“She says that a lot,” Mary Kay laughed. Sandy laughed back, already showing the confidence of a woman who can look like that.

And then Rob appeared—or someone who resembled the man who lived here, in a creepy way. He looked a decade younger than his thirty-nine years in his weight-lifting body and black leather jacket and silver chain around his neck. His pants were the kind of tight meant to show off his package, and even though Joya knew that part of his anatomy quite well, she was still impressed at how absolutely well it showed itself. His hair was slicked back. His hands held a wad of hundred-dollar bills that could have paid cash for a house.

“Did you see the 600 SL convertible outside?” He was trying to ignore how she kept muttering “Holy shit.” Sure, she’d seen the snazzy car, but had guessed someone was visiting a neighbor. “That’s our ride tonight.” Rob was eager to get behind the wheel.

The three of them started a checklist of names and info they’d pass out tonight as they posed as a high-rolling party from Paradise Valley. Mary Kay would be known as Katie. Sandy would be known as Susy. Neither needed a last name. Rob would be Deacon, but they argued over what his last name should be.

“How about Goldwater?” Sandy suggested, and the other two said that was too familiar a name in these parts to be safe. “How about Goldberg?”

“Too Jewish.”

“How about Martinez?”

“Do I look Mexican?”

“How about Sinclair, like the old oil company?”

“Perfect.”

Deacon Sinclair didn’t even give his girlfriend a kiss as the three waltzed out the door for a night of drinking and snorting—sometimes undercover required it—and dirty dancing.

Joya stared at the back of the door. She felt incredibly plain and undesirable. She stuffed it down with a bowl of ice cream.

She tried waiting up for Rob, but by one a.m. she was snoozing on the couch and by four a.m. she was in deep REM sleep. He woke her up with a sexy, heavy kiss. He wrapped her in his arms and cooed at her. His arms were too rough and his kiss tasted too much like scotch and weed.

Rob led her to bed and almost tore her dressing gown off her. They had furious, almost violent sex. At first, Joya tried to match his passion before sensing it didn’t make any difference. He didn’t need a partner, he just needed a warm body. She laid under him and wondered which one of his undercover hotties he was balling in his fantasy.

By the time Rob woke up Saturday morning, Joya was on her regular walk. She marched down the historic streets of Phoenix, talking herself out of her anger and angst. Did he use her last night or was it her insecurity? Should she be worried or was her imagination working overtime? Sure, things were tough right now. This case was wearing them both out. Just fatigue, she argued to herself. Don’t jump to conclusions. Yet she couldn’t escape the fact that with every step, she felt blinded by the sunlight pouring through this crack in their relationship.

Rob was nursing a cup of coffee when she came in. He wasn’t going to see his kids until later in the afternoon, and she agreed that had been a smart move. She pretended everything was okay.

“So tell me what it’s like,” she asked in her best reporter’s voice.

“I think we made contact. At least, we let them know we were in the market. We asked for five hundred pills, and nobody would hand them over. But everyone kept warning us that if we went that big, the ‘New York guys’ would think we were dealing and then they’d want a ‘tax’ on every pill. We told them, no way. We just liked to party. Tell the New York guys that.”

“That’s good, right?”

“That’s fuckin’ good.”

They didn’t talk about last night and never would. Rob left soon with an excuse he had errands to run and Joya was frankly happy to see him go. She curled up on the couch and ordered a science fiction movie on pay-per-view.

***

On Monday, Joya stopped by Mary Kay’s desk to get her impressions of the night of sin.

“You’re not going to believe this.” She leaned in. “I was dancing with this yo-yo who kept trying to kiss my tits and this kid is gyrating like he’s a spaz. It’s really hot in those clubs and this music was really making us move and this kid pulls up his shirt to cool off and guess what—he had a baby bull tattooed on his stomach!”

“You’re kidding. Was it Gerard Gravano?”

“Sammy’s son in the flesh! Sandy danced with him once.”

“Was Mike Papa there?”

“No, he didn’t show, but I bet he got our message.”

“You guys going out again?”

“Oh, yeah, get used to it. We’ve got to keep showing up until Papa comes to us. But I don’t think it will take long. That Gravano kid was already trying to seduce Sandy, bragging he could get her all the drugs she wanted. But that kid’s too dumb—he may be a little ‘slow’—to be the brains of this. He’s doing somebody else’s bidding.”

Joya took notes. This would be a great tidbit in her piece.

The wiretap chatter kept up, nothing big enough to send someone to jail, but big enough to add later, after the “big score.” Joya found it amusing that police looked on arresting Sammy with the same words Sammy’s people looked on a big drug deal. A Big Score.

***

Christmas became the third crack. The one that broke everything in two.

Her hometown was hurting because of this horrible drug problem, and Cousin Alice kept her informed on how unsettled the town had become. Joya’s original plan was to go to Northville for Christmas and check it out for herself. Maybe visit that stupid sheriff and demand an update, throw her investigative reporter weight around a little. But as the brick wall of Sammy’s story kept stacking up, she knew she couldn’t leave. It shocked her that Rob couldn’t see that.

“I really think you should go home for Christmas and see your folks,” he offered one night over dinner. “I think they need you. I think you need to see for yourself.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Rob, there’s no way I can go home now. What if the Sammy story broke and I’m halfway across the country? You think I’d jeopardize all this work to go home for Christmas? Don’t be an idiot. I’d never forgive myself if I was that unprofessional. I’d never let that kind of sentimentality get in the way of this story. And my editor would kill me. Would
you
take off now to visit your folks? Of course not. And if you think for one second I don’t take my job as seriously as you take yours, well, you’re wrong, buddy. Rob, this might be the biggest story of my life. Reporters don’t get inside police investigations every day, you know. With a famous Mafia snitch. With a huge drug ring. Jesus, this is a reporter’s dream come true and I’m on top of it. No, I can’t go home. I wouldn’t dream of going home. My feet are nailed to the floor here. Now, if you guys do your job and nab him before Christmas, that would be a different story. But I sure don’t see that happening.”

Rob got up from the table and put his plate in the sink. “I was just trying to be helpful,” he said over his shoulder, as he grabbed his jacket. “And if you think we’re lollygagging around to make your life miserable…” He slammed the door behind him.

She stewed all night. First she blamed him for a ridiculous suggestion. “So, he thinks my job isn’t that important? That I’m not as dedicated to this as he is? Fuck him.” Then she blamed herself. “Did you hear the hurt in his voice? Jesus, we can’t even talk to each other anymore. Joya, you are such a bitch.”

Rob didn’t come home that night. The next day at police headquarters, she grabbed his sleeve to pull him aside.

“I’m sorry, Rob. I had no right to snap at you like that. You were trying to help. I’m so on edge, you know? And I’d love to go home, but I just can’t risk it. And I didn’t mean that shit about you guys—I know you’re working your tails off.”

“I know,” he said. He gave her hand a half-hearted squeeze. “We’re all on edge. This case is driving us nuts. We thought we’d have him by now. Don’t worry about it.”

“I won’t worry if you don’t worry. We’re okay, right?”

“Sure. We’re fine.”

“I know, let’s go out tonight and not say one word about this case.”

“Sure. Maybe. Let’s see how the day goes.” He winked as he walked away.

Joya could recognize whistling in the wind when she heard it. They were both whistling their hearts out.

It was all downhill after that.

Rob traded off with the single detectives so he could spend Christmas with his kids. But Joya never expected him to move home with Rose and spend
all
the time with his family. He promised he was staying in the guest room and the kids were so little they
needed
him in the house over Christmas.

Wait for New Year’s Eve. That will be
our
night.

But New Year’s Eve was a bust, too. The one big “date night” of the year—and this one the turn of the century!—found her dateless. Rose called with an “emergency” and Rob went running. Joya went to dinner with friends, but was home so early, she saw the ball drop in New York, two hours ahead of Arizona.