The Moonlight (43 page)

From his study of the man’s criminal career, Spolino did not have the impression that Charlie Brush was stupid—psychotic yes, but not stupid. 
Tommy the baker’s boy, watch your ass.

He was sending him another message.  Charlie Brush wanted him to know.

“Did you get a good look at the guy?”

“Enough to know I’m glad he’s not my boyfriend.”

C. Herner, patrolwoman in the Traffic Division, allowed herself something like a smile.  There was no mirth in it, simply an acknowledgement of the truth of your surmise that she probably didn’t have a boyfriend.

“There aren’t any streetlights there, but I have my vehicle on high beam, so I saw enough.  Whatever that guy’s got, I hope I never catch it.  He looked three quarters of the way to dead.”

Spolino took a photograph out of his desk drawer and showed it to her.

“This him?”

She looked, frowned again, and nodded.

“That’s him, Lieutenant—in better days.”

“You mean he looked old?”

“Not old.  Not any older than in that picture.”  She tapped the photograph by way of emphasis.  “Just. . .  What can I say?  He looked like a corpse was all.”

“Thanks, Catherine.  You can get back to your beat now.”

Long after Patrolwoman Herner had passed out through the day room’s double doors, Spolino continued to study Charlie Brush’s mug shots.  They now had a positive i.d. from someone who was not in a state of shock from watching Sal Grazzi get blown apart.  Leo Galatina had named his killer—he hadn’t been hallucinating.  Charlie Brush was up and walking around and using Philip Owings’ 1988 wine-red Lincoln Town Car.

This time Spolino knew he had enough.  It was time to go back to the Captain and get a warrant.

. . . . .

Ed Monser was not on duty, so Spolino phoned him at home and was told to come over.  It was the first time he had ever received such an invitation.  He had to look up the address in the office directory.

It turned out to be in a fashionable apartment building across from the old North Street Church on Putnam Avenue.  There was a security gate and even a doorman.  The lobby practically glittered.  It was the sort of building that attracted corporation lawyers and executive vice presidents.

Monser had been divorced when he came to Greenley, and nobody knew anything about his wife.  Maybe she had been rich and had bought him off with a big settlement, because otherwise it was difficult to understand how a police captain could afford to live in such splendor.

Spolino got into the elevator and pushed the button for the fifth floor.  When the doors opened, he looked down the hall and saw Ed Monser standing across his threshold, framed by a rectangle of yellow light.

“You want a drink, Tom?”

“No thanks.”  Spolino shook his head.  “I’d probably collapse.  It’s been a long day.”

He looked around the living room, which had an expensive-looking deep green carpet and was filled with modern furniture of the leather and chrome persuasion.  There were paintings on the walls—real paintings, not lithos or the stuff you bought at J.C. Penny’s—and where you might have expected a fireplace there was a massive stereo system.

Monser was wearing a soft jacket of black silk with shiny black lapels.  No kidding.  He smiled a little nervously, as if afraid of having betrayed some secret.

“One of our traffic ladies ticketed Owings’ car a block from the nursing home where Vito Carboni was whacked,” Spolino told him, holding Monser with his eyes the way he did a suspect while he laid out the evidence in the charge statement.  “9:03 p.m.—that’s just about on the button.  She even had a run-in with the driver.  It was Charlie Brush.”

“So?”  Captain Monser, in a gesture one might have expected from Cary Grant, shrugged beneath his jacket.  “What does that prove, except that Charlie Brush or his twin brother is making the rounds of the nursing homes?  From what I gather, he belongs in one.”

He smiled again, apparently very pleased with his little joke.

“Ed, the man identified by Leo Galatina as his murderer has been tagged at the scene of another homicide.”

“Fine—I don’t think we’ll have to worry about probable cause.  Pick him up and bring him in for questioning.”

As if he had lost interest, Spolino let his gaze turn away as he began looking around the room.  The curtains on the front windows, which looked across to the North Street Church, were yellow silk and looked new.  There was a little bar cart against one wall, and on the bottom shelf was an unopened bottle of Chivas Regal.  He wondered what Monser was paying out to live like this and where he got the money.

“If I thought I could do that, I wouldn’t be here,” he said at last, still studying the bottle of Chivas Regal.  “I need a search warrant on Philip Owings.  He’s the only lead we have to Brush.”

“But your witness saw Brush, not Owings.”

“Ed, he was using Owings’ car during the commission of a felony.”

“Wait a minute, Tom—it doesn’t work that way.”  Monser sat down on his brown glove-leather sofa, letting his hands fall loose between his knees.  He motioned for Spolino to take the chair opposite, but Spolino ignored the invitation.  “Did your witness actually see him get into the car?”

Spolino shook his head.  Quite frankly, it hadn’t occurred to him to ask.  Even now it seemed irrelevant.

“He was implying control of the vehicle when he accosted our meter maid,” he said, a little appalled by the jargon.

“Or maybe he was trying to incriminate Owings.”  Monser smiled, as if he had made another joke.  “Or maybe he just wanted to be seen and remembered by a competent witness.  This guy Brush sounds weird enough for that.  Owings is entitled to park his car anywhere he wants, and you still have nothing to tie him in with any of these murders.  What am I supposed to do, Tom, get you a warrant for every car that was parked in the area?”

“No, just Owings’.”

“I can’t do it, Tom.  His lawyer would be all over us.”

Spolino appeared to be considering the matter, but really there was nothing to consider—he knew he was being flim-flammed.  Instead, he gave his attention to Monser’s yellow silk drapes.  Alice would probably have parted with a couple of fingers from either hand for a set of drapes like that.

“Who are you trying to protect, Ed?”

He turned around and gave his captain the benefit of the coldest stare he had in him, because he had figured out about the drapes and the Chivas Regal and the six-figure apartment.  He only knew one person with pockets deep enough for that.

But if he felt the accusation, Monser didn’t show it.

“I thought it was you, Tom.”

. . . . .

Hal Kirby was going to be awfully disappointed.

That, honestly, was his first thought, as Spolino got into the elevator and watched the doors close on him.  He felt sorry for the guy, because now he wasn’t going to get a nice commendation and another notch up on his steady climb to lieutenant.

Still, Kirby wouldn’t want to come along now.  Careers don’t get made by what was going to happen next.

Because it never even crossed Spolino’s mind not to go right on out to the Moonlight and make his bust.  This was all just too close to home to worry about legal niceties—particularly not the kind Ed Monser was cooking up.  Tomorrow morning, if they wanted it, they could have his badge, but tonight he was going out there and pull in Charlie Brush by the heels.

And if he got away with this one—and maybe even if he didn’t—he thought he might just find out what Monser was doing to get on the Family’s Christmas list.  He might even bring the son-of-a-bitch down for it.

Spolino didn’t go back to the station.  There was nothing he needed at the station and he didn’t want to answer any awkward questions or recruit any volunteers.  He had good people working under him, and it was better they didn’t get involved.  If this went bad, he wanted it to be his alone.

After all, it was his responsibility—at least, it felt like his responsibility.  Maybe it wasn’t, but, still, it had been his grandfather who had screwed that ice pick into Charlie Brush’s ear.

It was close to midnight when he reached the Moonlight, and there were no lights on.  That might mean that Philip Owings’ was already tucked up in bed, or it might mean that Charlie Brush had taken the Lincoln out for a joyride.  Or it might mean he should just watch his step.

He parked in front of the garage and, after a moment’s thought, opened the glove compartment of his car and took out his service revolver, which was strapped into a stiff leather holster that clipped onto his belt.

Over the years he had gotten out of the habit of carrying a gun, and that was the way he preferred it.  That was why he had quit the N.Y.D.P. and had come back to Greenley, because he had gotten tired of its weight on his hip, of the necessity of constant readiness to use it.  A gun makes you feel big and powerful and full of authority until you’ve used it to kill a man.  Then you just feel ashamed.  Spolino had killed twice.  Both times he had come out of the Lethal Force hearings without a word against him—neither man had really given him the slightest choice—but a month after the second one he had handed in his badge and come home.

Greenley wasn’t New York, he thought.  A cop could go to retirement in Greenley without ever firing a round.  And so it had been for fifteen years.

But Charlie Brush wasn’t some stockbroker’s kid who had to be warned to turn down the amplifier on his electric guitar.  Charlie Brush was a different matter.

Spolino took the gun out of its holster and slipped it into his coat pocket.

What he would have liked to do was have a look around and then crash the joint—that was what he would have done if Monser had let him have a warrant.  But without a warrant he was naked.  He had to go right up to the front door and ring the bell.  If somebody answered, fine.  If not, it was anybody’s game.  He rang the doorbell and nobody answered.  He tried again and waited.  Silence.  The windows stayed black.  Officially, nobody was home.

Maybe, maybe not.

What the hell.  Warrant or no warrant, Spolino decided to was going inside for a look.

The front door was locked, and so was the door to the kitchen.  He went around to the back and, as he passed one of the side windows, he thought maybe out of the corner of his eye he saw a faint smear of light.  If it was ever there it disappeared at once.  It could have been the moon reflected off the glass.  It could have been his nerves playing tricks on him.

The door off the patio was standing slightly ajar, almost like an invitation.  Spolino pushed it open and, as he stepped inside and reached for the light switch, he felt something hard touch the back of his ear.

“Right there ’ll be fine,” someone said.  Spolino didn’t recognize the voice.  He didn’t say anything and he didn’t move.

For a moment they just stood there in the darkness.  It was obvious that the something hard was the muzzle of a gun.  It was still pressing against his earlobe, and he had the distinct impression that the hand which held it was trembling slightly.  Well, that was a relief—he couldn’t imagine Charlie Brush’s hand trembling.  Whoever this one was, he didn’t seem quite sure what to do next.

“I got him, Mr. DeLucia,” the man shouted, his gun bumping painfully against the back of Spolino’s head.  “I got him.”

A second later the light went on.  The underboss of the Galatina Family was standing by an interior doorway, a small automatic in his right hand and his left around the wrist of a young woman in dirty gray trousers.  It was a second or two before Spolino recognized her.  Then he turned his attention to the underboss and grinned.

“Well—Jimmy DeLucia.  As I live and breathe.”

DeLucia shot him an annoyed glance, implying that both of these might be merely temporary conditions, but his real anger seemed to be reserved for the man who was holding Spolino at gunpoint.

“This isn’t him, Joey,” he said, his voice like the dripping of ice water.  “You might have waited a minute or two.”

The gun muzzle eased away from Spolino’s head, and he turned to have a peek at “Joey”.  Joey looked ready to hand the gun over and apologize.

“You better pat him down,” DeLucia said, as if reminding a child to put on his coat before going outside to play.  But the message was really for Spolino—we’re playing for keeps, it said.

“Maybe you better give your boss a call,” Spolino murmured, favoring DeLucia with a nod to indicate he understood which game they were playing now.

“Maybe I better.”

After dinner, as soon as the servants were out of the house, Sonny went upstairs to his bedroom and changed into the charcoal gray suit he had worn to Sal Grazzi’s funeral.  After all, his revenge on Sal’s murderer was an event of some importance, and he wanted it to achieve the proper note of solemn dignity.

When he came back down to the living room, his wife, who was curled up on one end of the sofa, glanced in his direction, her eyes widening just enough to note the fact that he had done something unusual, and then, when he didn’t offer to explain, allowed her attention to return to her manicure.  For several minutes the only sound was the muffled rasp on the emory board against Traci’s fingernails.