VC03 - Mortal Grace (64 page)

Eff’s cab executed a dizzy weave around ambulances and moving vans and pimpmobiles. Ellie frowned. “Where the hell is he going?”

At Fifth Avenue and Madison Square Park, Cardozo had no idea. When the cab careered across Second Avenue he was beginning to form a notion, and when it pulled to a shuddering stop at the north edge of Peter Cooper Village, he was sickeningly sure.

Ellie scanned the neat redbrick apartment buildings rising catty-cornered to the street. “Isn’t that where your sister lives?”

“No way I’m going to let this happen.” Cardozo snapped his seat belt off and was out of the car in one movement. He cut across the lawn toward Jill’s building. He was halfway to the door when he heard a voice call: “Eff! Over here!”

He whirled and saw Nell Dunbar, waiting on the other side of Twenty-third Street, waving.

It was too late to stop her, too late even to shout. The cab nose-dived into a U-turn and came to a screeching two-second halt. A door slammed, and when the cab shot west, the freckle-faced girl in jeans and straw hat was gone.

He ran back to the car and slammed into gear.

The cab, almost a full block ahead now, turned north on Third Avenue.

“How did Eff know where she was staying?” Ellie said.

Cardozo swung north. “Nell must have contacted him to get drugs.”

“What’s wrong with the girl? Her boyfriend went with Eff on one of these jobs and that was the last anyone saw of him. Can’t she put two and two together?”

“Maybe not. Where Nell’s been living, boyfriends disappear every week.”

Storm clouds were gathering and day had shrunk to a band of embers over the New Jersey skyline when Eff’s cab crossed the Willis Avenue Bridge into the Bronx.

“I never met a teenager yet,” Greg said, “who didn’t think they were immortal.”

Cardozo followed the cab onto Willis Avenue. Rain exploded.

Ellie shook her head. “Funny he’s not going on the Bruckner.”

The cab swung right onto 132nd Street into an area of mostly burned-out buildings.

At Brown Place a fire truck cut in front of Cardozo. He slammed on the brakes. “Screw!”

It was thirty seconds before the fire truck cleared the street, and by then the cab had vanished.

The rain was falling steadily now, like thin sheets of crinkled plastic wrap.

“The church has got to be near here,” Cardozo said. “They wouldn’t have gotten off the avenue if they weren’t close.”

Ellie peered out the windshield. “I don’t see a steeple.”

“Better ask at that bodega,” Greg said.

Cardozo eased to the curb and waited while Ellie went into the shop. She came back with three cups of Italian ice.

“Straight ahead two blocks, take a left, go four blocks to the busted traffic light and never mind the police barrier. One block further and you can’t miss it.” She handed Cardozo and Greg a cup each. “Hope you guys like lime.”

A streetlight caught a rising smiling sun painted on the door of a dark blue Toyota van. The van had parked in front of a small church with boarded-up windows. The street dead-ended in a field of rubble.

Greg squinted to read the lettering.
“God loves you
—
so do I.”

“That’s our man.” As Cardozo slowed the car, the church door opened. He braked gently to a stop a half block away.

On the church steps, three figures stood silhouetted against a dull red glow. A heavy mist was falling through the air, but Cardozo recognized Eff and the girl. The tall man with them wore a priest’s cassock. His hand rested on Nell’s shoulder.

She looked confused and uneasy. She was wearing a raincoat now and she moved with a kind of leggy lack of control that was practically stumbling.

“They gave her something,” Cardozo said.

Ellie nodded. “She’s stoned.”

Crossing the pavement, Nell almost fell. Eff helped her up. She was shaking her head violently. The priest opened the van door and Eff was trying to push her inside.

As Cardozo pressed the accelerator, the motor went dead. “Damn. Ellie, take the wheel. Block the street and don’t let them get by.” He hit the pavement at a sprint.

There was a slam and a backfire. Stripping gears shrieked. The van lurched toward the dead end. Behind him, Cardozo heard the Honda kick into a high, spinning whine.

The van began a turn, but instead of completing the U, it veered behind the church. Cardozo shot forward.

Ellie brought up the headlights and they caught Eff standing alone on the sidewalk. He froze. He glanced right and left, evaluating the best route of escape. He took a half second to decide and that was a half second too long.

Cardozo hit him with a body-block and the impact spun him around. Greg was there and ready when Eff crashed into him. His right fist caught the boy full in the face. Eff tried to cry out, but Greg followed with the left and slammed another punch. And another. Eff crashed down into the street and came to a sitting-down stop with his mouth open, like a clown.

Cardozo grabbed him from behind, a full nelson hold under the shoulders and around the neck. He lifted the kicking body and dragged it to the Honda and pitched it into the backseat.

Eff was panting like a winded dog.

Cardozo slid in next to him. “Where’s that van going?”

Eff gave him a defiant glare. “I want my lawyer.”

“Greg—help me.”

Greg grabbed Eff’s legs and Cardozo frisked him. From the left trouser pocket he pulled a wallet stuffed with charge cards. From the right pocket, a plastic bag of pills and rolled joints. From the left sock, a razor. He tossed them all into the front seat.

“Talk to me, Eff. Tell me where your friends are going.” Cardozo drew his service revolver out of the holster.

“I don’t know!” Eff screamed. “I don’t know where they’re going!”

Cardozo spun the chamber of the revolver. It made a clicking sound like a rhythm instrument in a rumba band.

“They’re going south!” Eff screamed. “Manhattan!”

Ellie slipped the motor into forward. “Which bridge?”

“Eff, which bridge?”

“Triborough!”

“We’ll head them off,” Ellie said.

“Hey, Eff, let’s talk about the rectory,” Cardozo said. “The first time. Why did you break in?”

“Who says I broke in anywhere?”

“The first time, Eff. Why did you go in that very first time?”

Streetlights flashed by, striping Eff’s face.

“Was it to put those photos in Father Joe’s file?” Cardozo gave the gun barrel another twirl.

“Okay, okay. It was to leave the photos.”

“Who told you to do it?”

“Nobody.”

“Come on, Eff. You just decided to give Father Joe a present? Don’t give me shit, Eff.” Cardozo cocked the .38. “Was it your friend Damien?”

Eff considered for a moment. “I don’t remember.”

“Come on, Eff.”

“I don’t remember his name.”

Cardozo nuzzled the barrel of the gun into Eff’s ear. “Who was it?”

“Okay, it was Damien.”

“Who’s Damien? What’s his real name?”

“All I know is, he calls himself Damien.”

Cardozo slammed the gun into the seat beside Eff’s head. “Tell me the name, punk.”

“Cole. His name is Damien Cole.”

Ellie steered the Honda over a head-banging bump in the road, then swerved onto an entrance ramp to the Triborough Bridge.

“How’d you get into the rectory?”

“The window upstairs.”

“You numbered the photos. Why?”

“Damien wants people from
OutMag.
So I said this is the number one guy, this is the number two guy.”

“Why did you bring Pablo?”

Eff didn’t answer. Bridge lights whipped past the window.

“You’d better tell me why, Eff.”

Eff tried to smile. “Too much good stuff for one person to carry.”

Cardozo moved the barrel of the gun up to Eff’s temple. “Why did you go back and leave Pablo’s photo in the desk?”

A fine line of sweat broke out on Eff’s cheekbones.

“Pablo wasn’t one of your kiddie hookers.” Cardozo stroked the gun along Eff’s hairline. “Why’d you go back and leave his photo?”

Eff’s mouth opened and for one panicky instant nothing came out but the labored sound of lungs pulling in gulps of air.

“Why, Eff?”

“Because…” Eff’s voice dropped. “Because he was dead.”

Approaching the line of tollbooths, Ellie slowed and steered toward an exact-change lane. “Vince,” she said. “Over there.”

Two lanes over, the blue Toyota van waited in line. Burps of smoke curled from its exhaust.

“How did Pablo die?” Cardozo said.

“He walked into a booby trap and it killed him.” Eff flinched from the next anticipated blow. “Man, I couldn’t let it lead back to me. I’m on probation. They were going to suspect that faggot priest anyway. Let them suspect him for one more.”

The van passed through the tollgate. Shadows of three passengers slipped across the side window.

“Then you knew those other kids were dead.”

“Hell, no!” Eff yanked away. “I don’t know anything about that!”

But Cardozo could see the answer ugly on his face. “The evidence says you killed Pablo.”

“No way! Fuck you!”

Ellie allowed the van a ten-car lead, then began following.

“The evidence shows the booby trap only wounded him.” Cardozo took hold of the ponytail and pulled with a steady pressure. “A witness heard Pablo screaming. You were afraid the neighbors would call the cops. So you killed him.”

“Let go! Ow! You got it wrong!”

“And then you broke a windowpane to make it look like he broke in.”

“Fuck no, you got it all wrong.”

Cardozo gave the ponytail a jerk like a toilet chain.

“Come on, man,” Eff howled. “That’s my hair!”

“Tell me the truth.”

“That booby trap fucked his skull, man. He was begging me to put him out of his misery—it was a mercy killing.”

“Mercy killing?” Cardozo tsk-tsked. “My, my. You are one kindhearted guy, Eff.”

Ahead, on a midtown Manhattan street, the van slowed to the curb.

“Pull over here,” Cardozo told Ellie.

EIGHTY-FOUR

A
TALL MAN STEPPED
out of the van, followed by a girl. They both wore raincoats.

Ellie and Cardozo got out of the Honda.

Fifty feet away, the man and the girl were heading down the sidewalk with swift buoyant strides, raincoats bouncing. They turned a corner.

Cardozo and Ellie broke into a run. They reached the corner just as a door halfway down the block closed behind two raincoats.

They sprinted.

When they reached the building, the man was just locking the mailbox and the girl was holding the inner door. As the man passed beneath an overhead light, Cardozo recognized Bonnie’s friend Colin Draper. Colin and the girl went into the last apartment on the right.

Ellie pushed buzzers for apartments on the higher floors.

A voice came over the intercom. “Who is it?”

“Pizza,” Cardozo called.

A buzz let them into the building. They moved quickly to the door at the end of the corridor.

Footsteps approached on the other side—soft muffled treads on carpet; a hard, rushed pattering on tile. Metal clicked as a lock bolt snapped into place. The steps went away, their hard-soft pattern reversed.

A man’s voice spoke. Cardozo could not make out the words, but there was a shouted resonance to them. A woman’s voice yelled something.

Ellie glanced at him, eyes wary.

He put his eye to the peephole. The wood was dark and shiny with old coats of varnish. The tiny curved lens gave him a tunnel view into nothingness.

The voices kept going. Two people could have been carrying on a conversation from opposite ends of the apartment; or they could have been arguing, building up to an explosion.

There was a blast of raucous music with a hypermanic TV sales pitch babbling over it. Footsteps clacked and the sound was quickly lowered.

The man shouted again. The woman shouted back. It was different this time. Cardozo could feel something happening.

Some kind of heavy object made a deep thud on the other side of the door, more vibration than sound. There was a split second of stillness. And then the woman let out a scream like a car alarm.

Cardozo yanked his revolver from its holster, took aim, fired two rounds. The lock jumped out of the door. He threw his full weight against the wood. It slammed inward.

Ellie advanced, gun raised and steady in both hands. “Police!”

A smoking wok trailed a comet spill of chopped vegetables across the kitchen floor of a gentrified railroad flat. A woman had taken crouching cover behind the refrigerator. In the room just beyond, Colin Draper was hunkered down behind an old wing chair.

Cardozo held up his shield. “Who screamed?”

“I did.” The woman’s eyes were fearful beneath pale brown curls.

“Why?”

“Is it against the law to scream?” She stood. She was wearing a man’s T-shirt with a Yale Divinity School seal and both arms ripped off. “I burned myself with the wok.”

Cardozo had seen the face before, in a photo on Bonnie Ruskay’s desk. “You’re Ben Ruskay’s fiancée.”
With ten years tacked on
, his mind added.

“If that’s a crime,” she said, “I’m innocent.”

“Anne and Ben were never engaged. Ben just liked to say they were.” Colin Draper came forward with his hands raised. “What’s this about? Are we under arrest for something? Because we have a right to know what you think we’ve done.”

“I pray to God you haven’t had time to do anything yet,” Cardozo said.

Ellie came back from the other rooms. Her eyes told Cardozo that something was wrong.

“Did you find Nell back there?”

Ellie shook her head. “There’s no one else here.”

Cardozo’s heart gave a jump. “I saw you get out of the van with Nell. You brought her in here. What the hell have you done with her?”

“I got out of the van with Anne,” Colin Draper said. “Nell stayed in the van and went with Ben.”

“Ben Ruskay was in the van too?”

“Of course.”

“What’s he doing with Nell?”

“Ben’s reaching out to runaways.” The woman’s voice was impatient now.