“Who's Megan?”
“Megan Cole. She's ... a special friend.”
A troubled pause. “From where? From New York?”
“No. She's more or less local.”
Dòyle softened. “I'm glad, Michael. I'm glad for you.”
Fallon wrote down the flight information. The lawyer wished him a nice weekend and broke the connection.
They have one extra cot, thought Michael. But better yet, maybe Megan will bring her boat over, tie up for the weekend in Edgartown. She's not crazy about crowds but she might. He'll ask her tonight when he sees her.
Doyle, alone in his office, glanced at the notepad where he had scribbled Megan Cole.
“Megan, huh?” A good Irish name. And tomorrow, Friday, is Michael's birthday. It's nice he has someone on his birthday. And it's good that she's not some old friend from New York who might tell other friends where Michael is living.
Still, thought Doyle, it wouldn't hurt to know a little more about her. He had to call Boston anyway, the young lawyer who had handled Michael's closing. He would ask him to see what he could find.
Doyle made that call, then worked through a small stack of message slips, returning those calls as well. He returned all but two.
The two calls he had not returned were from Avery Bellows in Washington. Both were marked urgent. On the second one, his secretary had drawn two lines under the word. This did not seem to suggest that Bellows knew he was bluffing.
“Shame on you, counselor,” Doyle muttered aloud. “Never let 'em see you sweat.”
He dropped the slips in his wastebasket.
He would return them, but later. Maureen, his secretary, is out to lunch now, he'll go when she gets back, and then he'll call Bellows on the Priva-Fone. It ought to be very interest. . .
Doyle froze.
He had sensed, rather than heard, a presence in his outer office. His first thought was that it was Moon. The ghost who walks. Dumb black bastard. But just in case, he quietly opened the drawer in which he kept his Smith & Wesson. He placed his right hand over it. With his left, he took the phone off its cradle and pretended to tap out a number. From outside, he heard a shuddering sigh. Wasn't Moon. Doyle raised the revolver and aimed it.
Bart Hobbs stepped into his line of sight. Doyle knew him from Jake's funeral and from Bronwyn's. But the Bart Hobbs of those two occasions had been well groomed, well dressed, and composed. This one looked like a drunk. And this time he had a gun in his hand.
Moon saw the commotion outside the diner.
A few blocks back, on Flatbush, he had driven past a fender bender. No police there yet but two women, screaming at each other, had attracted a crowd. One had her hair up in curlers. They must have been the drivers.
Now he saw what had kept the police. Three squad cars, lights flashing, were gathered outside the diner. One cop was taking statements from a man in an apron and from another who carried a briefcase. The two men were arguing about who saw what and who was right. There were newspapers all over the sidewalk and Moon thought he saw a single shoe.
Just a typical Brooklyn morning.
Doyle's office was only a few blocks down but Moon kept going. He'd called Johnny G. from a drugstore outside the cemetery. Johnny sounded real anxious to see him but he said don't come down to the docks. Meet him halfway, outside Blockbuster Video, the one just up Prospect from Villardi's Seafood Palace.
Johnny wouldn't say why on the phone. But whatever this was about, Moon realized, he didn't want his brother to hear it.
Aaronson was more confused than afraid. One moment he's trying to give directions to a cab driver who barely speaks English and the next he's punched in the kidneys from behind, or stabbed, or shot, it's hard to tell, and two men are throwing him into the cab.
They had him in the well of the backseat now. The two men had their feet on him while the cab driver drove. One of them kicked him in the head every time he tried to struggle or yell and then jabbed him in the neck with something sharp. But yelling didn't seem so urgent now.
He was starting to feel all warm and dreamy.
Could he be dreaming this?
There are times when he feels like he's not in a taxi at all. He has a funny taste in his mouth. Maybe he's just lying down.
What did he do with his other shoe? And where are his glasses?
If he doesn't have his glasses he must be lying down. He always takes his glasses off first but where did he put them?
He'll find them later, he decided. Right now he has to sleep.
Hobbs's gun was a tiny automatic, chromed, small caliber. He never raised it all the way. But he wouldn't put it down either.
“It wasn't me,” was all he said. He repeated it three times. He said it through a fog.
A part of Brendan Doyle was thinking, Just kill the son of a bitch.
He knew he couldn't ask for a cleaner shoot than this. The man walks into his office with a gun, pupils are dilated, he's incoherent, and best of all, he's holding this dumb-ass little thing that he must have lifted from his mother's purse. He's holding it at his hip, pointing more or less forward but angled downward. It's like they held guns in the early Cagney movies until some director explained about lining up the sights. If Hobbs pulls that trigger, he'll be lucky to hit the desk.
“Doyle?” Hobbs said it again. “It wasn't me.”
It wasn't you who what? Killed Jake, you fucking weeny? No shit. Doyle decided to risk lowering his revolver. He eased the hammer back down.
“You want some coffee?”
Hobbs blinked a few times. A flicker of relief. A hesitant nod.
“Over there.” Doyle gestured toward the machine on his credenza. “You want a drink instead, the liquor's in the cabinet underneath.”
Hobbs went for the booze. It took him a while and it was all in slow motion but he found a fifth of Popov back behind a bottle of Jameson's. He poured the vodka into a coffee mug, spilling almost an equal amount. Doyle was glad he bought cheap vodka.
“Me too,” said Doyle. “The Jameson's.”
Drinking with him seemed a good idea. But it flustered Hobbs because it reminded him that he had forgotten his manners. He muttered an apology as he groped for the Irish whiskey. Then he muttered other things as he poured.
From what Doyle could make out of it, Moon was back in town. But so was Michael. Hobbs had seen them both yesterday. Over in Manhattan on the street near his building. And they came back this morning. They brought him a bat and some lilies.
It wasn't Michael. Doyle knew for a fact that Michael had never left the island. Moon, maybe, but then who was he with? A bat, maybe, but lilies? There's no way ill hell that Moon would send lilies and therefore it couldn't have been Moon either.
Why ruin a good thing, however.
“Sit down, Mr. Hobbs. Tell me all about it.”
He could see that Hobbs was right on the edge. Hobbs patted his pocket, reached in for what looked like a bunch of snapshots. Of what, Doyle couldn't see. Now he's trying to figure out how to pick up two mugs while holding both the snapshots and his mother's pea-shooter.
“Mr. Hobbs . . . you don't need the gun. Come sit.”
Hobbs actually giggled. Half-giggle, half-sob.
“What you came here for is help. Sit. Let's see if we can help each other.”
Doyle set his Smith & Wesson down but he kept his hand near it. With his left hand he made a calming gesture toward Hobbs and then, slowly, he reached to open the middle drawer of his desk. From it, he took out the plastic bag that contained the items from Jake's pockets, including the copy of the annual report. Hobbs recognized it. He sagged even more.
Doyle slid it from the bag and opened it to the inside front cover. That page contained a photograph that was typical of all such publications—a bunch of suits sitting around a conference table. He knew that to ask was not terribly smart because if he was wrong that would weaken his hand. But he didn't think he was wrong.
“This one.” He touched his
finger to the tall, thin man in the middle, the one with the scar. “Jake recognized this one.”
He saw the truth in Bart Hobbs's eyes. He also saw hatred and fear.
”I didn't ... I didn't know him back then.”
Hobbs was talking, Doyle realized, about what happened twenty-five years ago.
“That's good,” Doyle lied. “Because then is all I care about.”
“I'm not to blame, you know. I'm as much a victim as—”
“Sit down, Mr. Hobbs. Let's talk about how to fix it.”
It was not that Moon mistrusted Johnny G.
But he knew that you could fill a graveyard with all the men who were found dead in their cars after a real good friend called and said let's meet at such and such a place.
He did two fly-bys of the Blockbuster Video store, one with the traffic, one going slow. A more thorough look would be on foot but he was reasonably satisfied that the place Johnny named had not been staked out. Too many people around. There was a bus stop right across the street, saloons on each corner, a busy Exxon station on one side and an A&P supermarket on the other. It was not a good place for a hit.
Still, he waited until Johnny G. drove up, by himself, and stepped out of his car to look around for him. Moon caught his attention. That he came without bodyguards might still mean only that he wants to look harmless. He signaled Johnny G. to move his car into that gas station and park it. Johnny understood. That done, Moon waved him over, all the time watching the street. Johnny G. gave him a dirty look.
“You satisfied?” he asked as he climbed into the passenger side. ”I mean, shouldn't I get out again so you can pat me down?”
But his feelings weren't hurt that badly. He would have done the same thing. Moon pulled out and made his first right turn onto a residential street. He watched his mirror. No one followed. Johnny G. could not resist a little sulking.
“Moon . . . how long have you known me?”
Since his first communion, was the answer. But this was now. Those people Michael worked for want him dead and they're all very rich. If he knows Julie, Julie's been scheming up ways to get some of their money. Anyone can get tempted. Maybe not Johnny so much. But anyone, Johnny included, can be used.
“Screw it,” said the younger man. “Stop and let me out.”
A sigh. “You want I'm sorry? I'm sorry.”
“It's not even that. Let me out, Moon. This is a bad idea.”
Moon slowed but he kept the car moving. ”I visited with your father,” he said. “I went to see Jake but I stopped off to see your father before I left.”
Johnny G. was silent for a long moment.
“Hang a right,” he said abruptly. “Let's both of us go see him.”
Ten minutes into listening to Hobbs, and pouring him another shot of Popov, Doyle agreed to call Moon and Michael off. He said he would need to get on his Priva-Fone. He would get the word out to all his people that we're declaring a one-day truce.
“Never mind all what people,” he told the increasingly slopped Bart Hobbs. “We have a network. You'd be surprised how many want a piece of those bastards.”
This last had the hoped-for effect. It told Hobbs that he'd done the right thing and that he'd done it just in time. Doyle, of course, could only pretend to make the call because Moon might be anywhere and the closest thing he had to a network was Aaronson who didn't want to talk to him and the Giordanos who weren't so crazy about him either.
But he had to step into the outer office and make a show of playing with his phone. A temptation came over him. He tapped out the number of his broker. What he was going to do now is what he pays Aaronson for but Aaronson would give him an argument.
“What I want you to do,” he told Vincent Keating, his Merrill-Lynch broker, “is sell all my Upjohn and Pfizer and go short on AdChem.”
Keating asked him why he was whispering. Doyle said he had a cold. Keating asked him how short. Doyle picked a number. Keating said this is stupid because if Doyle had heard certain rumors about AdChem they've been around a long time and the market has already shrugged them off. Doyle said do it anyway.
Keating said that with the time difference the German exchange won't open for another twelve hours and Doyle has that long to come to his senses before he loses his ass. Doyle said put the order in now. Also sell the Coca-Cola, the GM, and the Microsoft. Put it all on AdChem to fold.
He'd make seven hundred thousand minimum.
What the hell, he thought. He hit the memory code for Villardi's Seafood Palace. A voice answered, he asked for Julie Giordano, Giordano came on.
“You wanted to make money on this? Here's what you do.”
Giordano said, “Hold it. Let me go to the office.”
Doyle said, ”I don't have all day. What you do, you take every dime you don't have on the street and you put it on AdChem to go down.”
“Brendan ... in my office.”
“Here's the price you want.” Doyle told him. He started to explain what going short meant but Julie yelled something about the bar and abruptly hung up on him.
Oh, yeah. Shit. The kid with the wire.
But since when was a stock tip an indictable offense? Insider trading? Hey, this is the German exchange. If that kid is smart, he'll put down a few bucks himself.
If Johnny's impulse to visit old Rocco sounded strange to Moon, he didn't feel that he was one to talk. His hunch was that if Johnny felt the need to be with family, then family is what this is about.
“Julie been busy?” he asked.
No answer. Johnny changed the subject.
“You worked for my father once. Is that true?”
Moon nodded. “Some. For a while.”
“Collecting?”
“Some.”
“Would he have dealt pills? I'm talking medicine now.”
“No.”
He went quiet again.
But that answered one question, thought Moon. Julie wants to deal pills and Johnny doesn't. The cemetery gate was just ahead.
The Giordano family plot was smaller than Vatican Square but only because the popes had a little more money.
Cemeteries, Moon had noticed, are laid out a lot like cities. First there's the tenements. Thousands of them, all with just one little stone marker and where caskets get piled one on top of the other because that's the cheapest way to die. Next there's the row house section where the monuments are bigger but they butt right up against one another. And then a high-rise section where the caskets and urns are cemented into walls, some of which have terraces so you have a place to put flowers.
After that, there's the suburbs. Those graves, like where Jake was buried, have a little more grass around them and a nicer view. Finally there's the country estates like Rocco Giordano had. They have columns, marble benches, and statues of angels and saints. Rocco's had a life-sized Saint Anthony with a little stone bird lighting on his hand. From the look of it, it gave a lot of real life birds the same idea.
Rocco himself would not have spent the money. It was Julie who did. Rocco lived his whole married life in the same frame house on Newkirk Avenue with a yard just big enough to grow zucchini and plum tomatoes. Here he could have grown wheat except that the ground had to be kept clear for when his wife and sons would need their plots. Moon could never understand buying graves in advance. He'd feel funny looking at ground that he's going to be under.
Moon had time to reflect on all this because there wasn't much conversation from Johnny. Johnny, at the moment, was kneeling on a marble prie-dieu saying a prayer to Saint Anthony. He seemed about through. That was good because Moon could use a little updating.
“Moon . . .” Johnny G. blessed himself as he rose. He paused to brush soot from his knees. ”I might have to go against my brother.””
Moon nodded. He waited.
“The pill thing. You know he wants a piece, right?”
”I figured.”
“Will you fight him?”
“Depends.”
“On whether he goes in?”
“Depends on with who.”
“On whether he goes in with the people who killed Jake?”
Moon could hear Jake calling from three rows back. Saying, “Moon ... never threaten. Never warn.'' But a warning to a friend is part of being friends.
“First way, I'll talk to him,” he told Johnny G. “Second way I'll stop him.”
“This is my brother, Moon.”
”I know.”
“This is hard for me.”
”I know that too.”
“If I'm going to go against family, I need to know I'm right.”
“Johnny . . . what is it you want?”
”I need to know why Jake died. I need to know all of it.”
Chapter 31
Parker was furious.
The good news of the day was that Julie Giordano was extremely interested in talking a deal. The meet is set for noon tomorrow. The bad news is that Doyle's bird dog, Aaronson, was barely conscious because he'd been pumped full of Nembutal. At the rate he was breathing, they'd be lucky to get three words out of him.
The Shadow Box Page 25