I jammed the gun into his back. “Don’t move!”
He froze. I grabbed his coat and pulled his head and body into view. He had a large bag of potato chips in one hand and a quart of gin in the other.
“Drop them,” I ordered.
The bottle and bag fell to the ground, the bottle exploding with a thick splat.
“Keep your hands up where I can see them.”
He slurred. “You better shoot me now if you’re going to kill me.”
I frisked him and found an automatic jammed into his waist. I removed it, stuffed it into my belt, and pushed him forward. “You can’t wait to die, I’m sure.”
A swirling gust of wind swept the street as we crossed the tiny front lawn, picking up strands of loose paper and tossing them over the fence of the house next door. Zooted into next week, Parkoff wobbled up to the front door, his legs seemingly going in a different direction than his body.
“I have to take my hands down to get my keys,” he said, his voice thick and almost unintelligible.
“Kick it. It’s open.”
He kicked the door and fell facedown inside. The door slashed open, banging hard against the wall, the sound vibrating around the howling wind. I stepped in and closed the door. Knowing the location of the light switch proved advantageous. I was able to flick the switch without taking my eyes off him. Perhaps expecting me to be lost in the dark he rolled over and tried to leg whip me. I hopped over his thrashing legs.
Grasping the hood of his down coat I dragged him to the middle of the room. He rolled onto his stomach and groaned.
It was cold in the house. I sat at the edge of the dusty sofa, my mind softening at the sight of Parkoff curled up on the floor. He sat up slowly and turned to face me. His face was white as a mime’s mask, his tiny eyes bulging wider than a frog’s. There was a tiny spawn of blood caked on the side of his head below a flesh wound. I suspected that was where Anais’s bullet had grazed him.
“Did you kill Ronan?” I said.
“Somebody else got to him first.”
“Who?”
“Whip me if I know or care. Politicians make all kinds of enemies.” He groaned again and smiled, his upper lip cocked sinisterly. “You could’ve prevented all of this. All I wanted was the money.”
“What you gonna get is a bullet.”
His expression didn’t change, but his eyes sunk deep into his skull. He blew his nose in his hands, then scrawled his scum-filled hands across the front of his jacket. “Your wife couldn’t kill me. And you can’t either.”
“You stink so much she probably thought you were already dead.”
“So pull the trigger if you’ve got the balls. Because if you don’t I’m going to kill you unless you give me the girl or my money.”
He saw the hesitation in my eyes and laughed, unbuttoning his coat as he struggled up off the ground. “Your wife’s got more balls than you.”
I stared at his leering face and realized I couldn’t pull the trigger.
“See you around.” He dropped his coat to the floor and turned to walk away.
“Stop.” I unhooked my phone to call Agent Kraw.
He stumbled a few more steps.
I got up and followed him, pressing the gun into his neck. “I said stop.”
With a quick shift of his head he ducked and spun, bulldozing into me. The blow sent me lurching backward. I stumbled, attempting to regain my balance. He was on me with the viciousness of a rabid dog, following up his shoulder tackle with a kick to my groin. The pain flew straight to my head setting off bells ringing in my ears and the gun slipped from my fingers as I slammed into the floor. He leapt on me, scooping up the gun, which had fallen near his foot. He put the gun to my head, his eyes wild, his shirt open, exposing a nest of tiny snakes.
“They say when you die you don’t feel a thing,” he sneered.
“Then enjoy your trip to hell.” The woman’s voice came from behind us.
Parkoff spun around. River shot him twice in the head.
I grabbed the gun from Parkoff’s hand as he fell to the floor. I rolled away from his twitching body and when River refocused on me my gun was already pointed at her heart.
“What’re you doing?” she said, still crouched.
“What’re you doing here?” My eardrums pulsed from the reverb of the big gun exploding.
She straightened up and brought her gun down. “I spoke to your father. He said you went hunting. Figured this was the game.”
“I’m going to ask you one more time and don’t lie to me. Did you try to kill Noah?”
“That wasn’t me.”
“Who was it?”
“Look, Blades, my head’s been fucked up for a long time; I’d be the first to admit that. Yeah, I got close to you because I wanted to find your father. But I’ve learned something from you. People can change what’s in their heart if they want to. You’ve been a friend to me. And I want to change what’s in my heart because I care about you. And I love Chez. I didn’t try to kill your friend and I have no intention of trying to kill your father. I stepped off that battleship when I saw how lost you looked after you got that call from Parkoff. I knew I’d have to kill you if I took out your father. I couldn’t imagine what that would do to Chez.”
“What about your brother?”
“You don’t have to worry about Smooth.”
THIRTY-NINE
w e lodged Parkoff’s gun into his hand and squeezed off two rounds into the wall. Then we called the police. The story we gave them was credible enough: I’d come to see Parkoff to ask him to stay away from my family. He pulled a gun and threatened to kill me. We struggled and I was fortunate that River arrived in time to save my life.
As we left the scene together, foaming wind fanned the oatmeal-thick fog which had settled over Brooklyn like a giant gleaming spaceship, whipping at Brooklyn’s dusty corners, threatening to uproot trees, sucking up every loose scrap of dirt and paper off the ground and turning them into tiny missiles.
“You okay?” River said to me, standing next to my car.
“As a horse.”
She smiled, her loosened dreadlocks swept by the wind. “You better clean that shit off before you go home.”
“Where’re you going?”
“Somewhere to get drunk.”
“That helps you forget?”
“Nothing helps you forget, you must know that. It just makes the time go by faster. Or at least it seems that way. Death is lamentable. Once you kill another person you’re wounded for life. But people like Parkoff are lesions, cancers. Sometimes you have to kill it to save a life.”
I saw the ache in her eyes before she walked away, struggling against the wind.
“Hey,” I called.
She paused, turning slowly.
“You better give the FBI their money back. Call their field office in Manhattan and ask for Agent Kraw. She might even give you a finder’s fee.”
Without a reply she turned and walked away. I lost her in the fog. A few minutes later I heard the heavy purr of the Bronco waking up. I was already in my car when she rolled by, steaming the vapor with powerful lamps.
I SAT IN the X5 for some time reliving the nightmare, trying to think of how I was going to bind Anais’s anger. The raw smell of death finally made it past the stubborn centurions guarding my senses.
My jacket had been scorched with blood and tissue from the close-range blast of River’s big FN 49; my eardrums still shivered. I took the jacket off and flung it across the passenger seat. Something spilled from the pocket onto the floor. I reached over and picked it up.
My mind was so far away from reality, for a moment I looked at it not recalling what it was and where I’d gotten it. It was a list of telephone numbers. Then I remembered meeting Kraw earlier. I perused the list making a mental note to call on J’Noel Bitelow later so we could go over the list.
My eyes caught a number that seemed vaguely familiar. I stared at it for a while thinking. I’d call
ed the number recently. But when?
Like a rod between the eyes it hit me. I took out my wallet hoping to find the piece of paper on which I’d copied the number Noah had given me. I still had it. I compared the two numbers. Perfect match. What were my eyes telling me?
I continued to stare at the number. The call was made on the same night and roughly half an hour after Ronan was gunned down. And then I noticed something else. The number appeared more than once. In fact there was a pattern of repeated calls late at night over a month. I checked the calling number. J’Noel’s home number. And then it occurred to me that, based on the frequency, these calls were probably not made by Malcolm Nails-Diggs but by J’Noel Bitelow herself. Besides, Malcolm was in no condition to call anyone the night Ronan was killed.
What could J’Noel and Dr. Palmer have in common to be calling each other so often? What strange bed had J’Noel and Dr. Chris Palmer made together? I now saw that J’Noel had been the link all along. She’d done a good job lying to me.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the headrest. I didn’t want to think about this shit anymore. The adrenaline burnout left me exhausted and my head felt too heavy to lift up off the headrest.
HIGH WINDS scattered rain down the mountainside. I was drenched, yet my throat was parched and I felt as if I’d been running all day and night. There were voices above me, loud singing in a language I could not understand. And there was a strange sound like the wings of large birds beating the air. I looked up but whatever it was that hung above me was made invisible by the thick rain clouds. I kept running up the mountainside until I reached a clearing at the top. The singing had stopped. And the beating sound had disappeared. There standing under the wide wings of a massive oak, his eyes whiter than daybreak, was Billy Franklin, an unarmed drug dealer I’d shot to death when I was a cop.
I WAS JERKED out of the dream by bells ringing. The faint light of dawn had slipped past me leaving a soft glow. I blinked several times before I realized my phone was ringing. When I answered it was Anais crying.
“Where’re you, Blades? Come home.”
“He’s dead, Anais.”
“I don’t care. Come home.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
But she’d already hung up.
SLY DAWN toting a slate gray sky shadowed the low-slung buildings to the east. A pickup truck, its engine sputtering like a mad cow, wheezed toward me. I started the SUV and drove off feeling a welt thickening in my throat that ordinarily might signal the beginning of a cold. But I knew what had brought on this feeling.
I had just participated in the death of another human being. This was my mind telling my body that all was not well with my conscience, that I could not easily absolve myself of guilt though I knew Parkoff was an evil man.
I had crossed the Gowanus Bridge and was about to weave my way into the burgeoning traffic on the Prospect Parkway when I remembered the telephone list. There was one thing left for me to do before I went home to Anais.
I ARRIVED AT J’Noel’s apartment building around 6:25, as Brooklyn stuttered from sleep. Nearby, Flatbush Avenue clamored with buses rumbling over rutted roads, setting the morning humming. I knew I smelled like shit. Looking like shit was no big deal, but I hated to smell bad. Right now it couldn’t be helped.
I had to buzz the door downstairs several times before anyone answered. The intercom squawked and a woman’s voice still trapped in sleep spat irritation.
“Police,” I barked. “Open up.”
“What you want?”
“Just open the door, lady.”
The intercom went dead.
Bzzzzz went the door.
I pushed and entered, releasing the heavy metal door to bang shut behind me.
The elevator was waiting. I rode up alone, wondering what it took for these two women from such different backgrounds to form their murderous tryst. How much money did it take to secure J’Noel’s streetwise expertise?
Parkoff didn’t kill Ronan, for I believed him to be the kind of killer who proudly claimed his scalps. I was convinced that the telephone calls between J’Noel and Ronan’s ex-wife were for one purpose, and if what I suspected was true then J’Noel Bitelow would be long gone.
Standing in front of apartment 9E I banged firmly on the door.
A woman’s raspy voice. “Who there?”
“Open the door. Police matter.”
“What wrong?” she spat back.
“Ma’am, you don’t want us to break down your door, do you?”
She must’ve been standing behind the door because it cracked open seconds later.
A plump face, swamped in confusion, sleep-red eyes fixed in a startled stare, peeked out at me. “You the police?”
“Are you J’Noel’s mom?”
“She ain’t here.”
“Where’s she?”
“Is this about that crazy man she was seeing?”
“Can I come in?”
“She ain’t here, I tell yuh.”
“I still need to come in.” I said.
She opened the door wide enough for me to slip into the passageway. It smelled of puke.
“Look, I telling you the truth. J’Noel not here. She pack she suitcase and take off yesterday morning. If you want to search the house you could search it but you ain’t go find she in here.”
The woman’s morning alcohol-laced breath fanned out above my nose.
I stepped to the side. “Where did she go?”
She stepped back. Probably got a whiff of my funk. “Trinidad. She and Malcolm gone to stay with my mother.”
“Is that where she was born?”
“She come here when she was three. Ain’t never been back since.”
Her voice was passionate and sincere. I concluded she was telling the truth.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“I know why she run back. She afraid of his family. They threaten her. He deserved it, that fella. He was always beating her. I woulda done the same thing if it was me.”
I turned away, walking toward the elevator. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her daughter was a murderer.
TEN MINUTES LATER I saw Dr. Palmer come out of her house as I pulled the truck curbside. I got out and silently approached as she was locking her front door. She was dressed smartly in a tan pants suit; a light-brown raincoat flopped in the crook of her left arm, a brown leather briefcase slung over her right shoulder. When she turned around I was there, two feet away on the porch.
“Good morning, Chris.”
Startled, she stiffened like a soldier at inspection, her keys clanging to the floor. “My God! You gave me such a fright.”
I bent down to pick up her keys. “Sorry. I have to talk to you.”
She stepped back, eyeing me with a lean of her head. “I’m late for the clinic. It’ll have to wait.”
“I’m afraid not.” I handed her the keys.
She took the keys and began to walk past.
I latched on to her wrist, stopping her dead.
“Are you out of your mind? Release me.”
But I didn’t. “I just spoke to J’Noel.”
My lie hinged on the hope that J’Noel hadn’t given her a heads-up about her plan to skip.
Her face tightened. “I said release me.”
“Let’s go inside, Chris. You can hear what J’Noel told me alone, or you can hear it in handcuffs from the police.”
Her left eye twitched, her eyes turned frosty, as she tried to hold my gaze in a show of defiance. Her body trembled vigorously.
I took the keys from her hand and she made no attempt to resist me.
I released her to unlock the door. She stood quietly behind me until I was done. I pushed the door open and waited for her to enter. I followed her inside.
She shed her briefcase and coat on the sofa and walked into a room off to our right which might’ve been used as a study. Heavy wine-colored drapes hung from the wide windows. A folded treadmill brac
ed a far wall. There was a laptop computer on an L-shaped desk and folders stuffed with papers piled on the floor. She turned to face me, leaning on the edge of the desk.
“Why did you kill him?” I said, not giving her a chance to speak.
Her chest rose high as she breathed deeply. Holding her breath like an underwater diver, her eyes welled with frustration and anger. Then she exhaled, but said nothing.
“J’Noel confessed everything,” I lied. “She told me how you paid her to hire somebody to kill your ex-husband and his girlfriend.”
“If you don’t get out of my house this minute I will forget that you are a friend of Noah’s and call the police.”
I took the phone list from my pocket. “You spoke to J’Noel twelve times last month. Twice the day before Ronan was gunned down. And then half an hour after he was killed. I would bet the record of withdrawals from your bank account would back up J’Noel’s story about the sum you paid her.”
There was a knot of defiance in her laughter. “If you know so much, why didn’t you bring the police?”
“They’re on their way. So’s Noah. You should be glad I got here before Noah did. Based on the conversation I had with him, I would be more afraid of him than the police, if I were you. He’s not coming to give you a medal. He’s drunk and he’s armed. I’m here because I don’t want to see him get in trouble. Donna has already suffered enough.”
She walked to the window and drew the drapes back, looked out.
A whimpering sound as if she was crying. She turned around, her eyes as harsh as ever, her voice unyielding. “How well did you know Ronan?”
“Can’t say I knew him that well. I gather he was a clever businessman. And a good politician.”
“The things that made him a good politician made him a terrible husband. He wasn’t trustworthy. He was manipulative. He trusted no one. He said he didn’t want children. That’s what broke us apart. Claimed he wouldn’t be a good father. I begged for a child. He said he’d rather divorce. And we did. Yet, I still loved him. Do you understand how painful that is? I loved him so much I was willing to confuse our friendship by continuing to sleep with him. Even after we divorced. Then he tells me his girlfriend is pregnant. I couldn’t live with it. Just couldn’t live with it.”
Love and Death in Brooklyn Page 28