Damaged Goods

by Stephen Solomita

  Holtzmann, enraged by Moodrow’s cool attitude, crumpled the pages in his fist, then tossed them back into Moodrow’s cage. “I want you to listen to me for a minute.” He stepped up to the bars of the cell. “Your partner is still out there somewhere. If she does anything to interfere with this operation, the both of you will be placed under arrest. At present, you have not been charged with a crime and it’s my intention to release you when it’s safe to do so, but …” He sucked in a deep breath, drew himself up to his full height. “The charges,” he announced, “may well be kidnapping and extortion.”

  Moodrow stood up and took a step toward the agent. “Why don’t you dump the ‘good cop’ bullshit and tell me what the fuck you want?”

  “I want you to tell me where she is, Moodrow. This is not rocket science.” Holtzmann flicked a finger in the general direction of the crumpled pages on the floor of the cell. “Even for a lunatic.”

  To his credit, Moodrow never considered betraying his partner. This despite the fact that a clear vision of Jilly Sappone getting into that apartment, of what he’d do to Ginny Gadd and how long it would take him to do it, tore through his mind like acid through a paper towel. Instead, Moodrow’s left hand snaked between the bars to grab Karl Holtzmann’s face.

  “Karl, you ready for the real deal?” He bore down with all his strength. “Because the real deal goes like this: If anything happens to my partner as a result of your putting me in this cage, I’m gonna kill you with my bare hands. And I’m gonna be wearing my grandmother’s wedding dress when I do it.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  KARL HOLTZMANN, AS HE piloted a Bureau Ford along I-80 in central New Jersey some three hours later, continued to feel the imprint of Stanley Moodrow’s fingertips on both cheekbones. It was as if the ex-cop was still holding onto his face. As if he intended never to let go.

  Violated. That was the word that kept popping into the agent’s mind no matter how firmly he tried to keep it out. He didn’t like the word because he associated it with rape victims and rape victims were all women. Helpless women.

  “Are you listening to me, Karl?”

  Holtzmann studiously ignored the man who sat on the passenger side of the Ford’s bench seat. He wanted to deal with Moodrow, get the ex-cop out of the way, before he considered Abner Kirkwood’s insistence that they take Jilly Sappone into custody. Unfortunately, he couldn’t manufacture a realistic course of action that wasn’t dominated by negative consequences. And he couldn’t put Moodrow out of his mind, either.

  A part of him insisted that Moodrow be arrested and charged with obstruction of justice, that even if Moodrow managed to beat the charge, he’d be tied in knots for as long as it took, and out the money for a lawyer who knew the federal system. It would be revenge of a sort, and enough until (and unless) Carlo Sappone turned up. But Karl Holtzmann would need the cooperation of a US attorney to make it really painful and that, considering Abner Kirkwood’s current state of mind, seemed very unlikely.

  Another part of him, this one peeking in from time to time like a toddler from behind a piece of furniture, whispered, Catch him on the street and kick his fucking ass.

  Well, Karl Holtzmann wasn’t about to play macho man with an ex-cop who outweighed him by a hundred pounds and had the kind of grip generally associated with the Terminator.

  “Karl?”

  Holtzmann ran the fingertips of his right hand along the rim of the steering wheel. “Moodrow corroborates Jilly Sappone,” he whispered.

  “Say that again.”

  “Moodrow is being held without charge; Sappone is being held without charge. The facts of their incarceration lend credence to the rumor that Sappone was paroled at our request.” Holtzmann glanced at his companion. Kirkwood had his arms folded across his chest and his jaws were clamped together. “Sappone is certain to claim he was held against his will. How do we explain it?”

  “If we’re forced to, by a judge, we say Jilly Sappone offered to inform, that he voluntarily submitted to a debriefing and we persisted until we realized that he had nothing to offer.”

  Holtzmann managed a short, contemptuous laugh. The bureau had already inserted Sappone’s name into its list of the most-wanted criminals in America. Meanwhile, one of the bureau’s senior agents had taken Sappone into custody without either informing his superiors or filling out a single page of the required paperwork.

  “You know, Abner, when an informant agrees to talk without a lawyer present, it’s customary to have him sign a release. In case the voluntary nature of that agreement is called into question at some later date. Nor did we generate any of the other paperwork relating to the detention of criminal informants. That was because we had no options. We couldn’t very well admit that we were protecting Jilly Sappone. To do so would be tantamount to admitting that we freed him in the first place. No, we used up our options—all of our options—when we agreed to Josefina Rizzo’s terms.”

  “I don’t care. I won’t step across that line, Karl. I won’t become the enemy.” Kirkwood unfolded his arms, looked at his clenched fists as if he’d never seen them before, finally dropped them onto his knees. “It’s murder, Karl. I must’ve been crazy to even think about it.”

  Karl Holtzmann nodded thoughtfully. Just before the start of his third tour in Vietnam, he’d been assigned to an Operation Phoenix interrogation team. For the next thirteen months, his whole life had been about murder.

  “It’s not murder. An execution is not a murder.” He savored the lie for a moment before continuing. “But that’s neither here nor there, because the thing of it, Abner, is that I’m going to kill Gildo Sappone within sixty seconds of our arrival. And if I sense, even for a minute, that you’ll betray me, I’m going to kill you, too.”

  As he slid the Ford onto the Route 517 exit ramp, Karl Holtzmann began to hum tunelessly. A genuine smile, the first in weeks, brightened his face. It was funny how it all came flooding back, the games they’d played with those tough little dinks, how tough those tough little dinks actually were. Even the spooks admired them.

  Holtzmann’s first two years in-country had prepared him for the work, had covered him with enough blood and fear to make that third year the best year of his life. And what he should have done, when he again found himself on American soil, was take the spooks’ best offer. He should have made himself a part of their meaningless battles in order to avail himself of their tactics. Instead, he’d gone to law school, joined the FBI, wrapped himself so deeply in the Constitution that it was now squeezing his life away like a python around the chest of a geriatric monkey.

  “Cat got your tongue, Abner?” He dug the knife in, gave it a twist. Wanting to gauge Kirkwood’s response, see if he was ready to accept reality the way the dinks accepted it when you offered to scoop out their eyeballs. When Kirkwood didn’t respond, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel impatiently. “In all the years, Abner, I’ve never taken a dime. There was opportunity, of course. Occasions when I knew I could fill my hands without running any risk of apprehension. But I refrained and now, as I approach retirement, I find that my wife and I will have to depend on my pension. I’m not complaining, really, because the plan is generous enough to see us through our declining years. As long as we have it.”

  “You’re doing this for your pension?”

  Kirkwood’s voice dripped contempt, and Holtzmann willed himself not to react.

  “And yours too, of course.”

  “Well, I can’t stop you. That’s obvious enough. I’m not armed.” Kirkwood looked down at his hands. Now that he knew it was going to happen, he felt much better. Like a child released from a promise.

  Holtzmann turned the Ford onto a two-lane blacktop road and headed north along the western edge of Allamuchy Mountain State Park. A dense mix of hardwoods and stringy red pine, relieved only by the occasional, isolated house, lined both sides of the road.

  “It was your idea, Abner,” Holtzmann finally said. “Do you remember that?”

 
“What?”

  “We were strolling through Washington Square Park and you were going on about Greek Revival houses. I was proud of you then, Abner, though I didn’t say so at the time.” Holtzmann took his pipe off the car seat and put it, unlit, into his mouth. “Perhaps I should have made my feelings plain, but I didn’t. I took you at your word.”

  Kirkwood popped his seat belt and let it slide over his chest as Holtzmann turned the Ford onto a hard-packed dirt road. Thirty feet ahead, a padlocked steel bar mounted on hinges set into concrete pillars blocked the way. Holtzmann brought the car to a stop and Kirkwood opened his door.

  “It’s murder, Karl. I didn’t see it at the time, but I do now.” He stepped out of the car and fished in his pocket for the key to the padlock. “And that’s the way a jury would see it, too.”

  He unlocked the bar, swung it to the side, waited until Holtzmann drove past. Then he pushed the bar into place and got back in the car to find Holtzmann with a large automatic, probably a .45, in his hand.

  “Took it from our lab,” he announced, “a long time ago. The techs had it for a week. Couldn’t bring up a serial number. We’ll leave it with Jilly.” Smiling, he laid the gun on the seat between himself and Kirkwood. “In time, it’ll fade, Abner. Believe me, that’s the way it works. When Sappone’s body is found next to an untraceable murder weapon, the media will call it a mob hit, then forget about it. In time, your conscience will do the same.”

  The road wound for two hundred yards beneath interlaced branches of oak and maple. Dense brush lined the soft shoulders on either side. Holtzmann drove slowly, avoiding the occasional pothole and the deeper ruts. The setting was perfect, as isolated as a hermit’s cave. The house and clearing, when he finally emerged, seemed almost exotic, a gingerbread cottage in a fairy tale.

  Holtzmann pulled up behind Ewing’s car, a Ford nearly identical to the one he drove, and shut down the engine. He tapped the horn twice and waited for Ewing to step onto the porch, give them an all-clear. Despite his self-proclaimed bravado, he wanted to get it done as quickly as possible, which was why his attention was so focused on the little porch in front of the door that he failed to see Jilly Sappone until Jilly was fifteen feet away. Still, he might have had a chance. If he hadn’t shut off the ignition, he could have jammed his head against the post between the front and backseats, slammed the car into gear, hoped Sappone’s bullets found their way into Abner Kirkwood’s body. As it was, he reached for the .45 on the seat, tried to jack a round into the chamber, to turn and fire in the space of a heartbeat.

  Abner Kirkwood didn’t see Jilly’s approach at all. His attention was focused on his own fears, his own rising excitement. He was vaguely aware of the agent’s hand dropping to the seat, but the implications of the move didn’t register until after Jilly Sappone fired a round directly into Karl Holtzmann’s skull and the agent collapsed against him. Kirkwood’s first thought, in the last moment of his life, was that the odor filling the car was the odor of blood. Then he realized that his bladder had let go and that he was sitting in a puddle of his own urine and that was the way he was going to die.

  “Hi, sweetie.”

  Kirkwood managed to swivel his head a few inches. Sappone, automatic in hand, was leaning into the window, the grin on his face belying the hatred in his eyes.

  “I tried to save you,” Kirkwood whispered.

  Sappone’s eyebrows shot up, but the smile held firm. “Shit, man,” he said, “that was real white of you. Now here’s your fucking reward.”

  It was almost dark by the time Ginny Gadd admitted to herself that Stanley Moodrow had called it quits, that he’d meant what he said and he wasn’t coming back. She was sitting in the Kalkadonises’ apartment, in the living room, half watching a repeat Seinfeld episode. Wondering what she could do to fend off the inevitable. What she could do that she hadn’t already done.

  What you could do, she told herself, is pack your bag, catch a cab back to the office, get on with your life. You’re not obliged to be here on a fool’s errand. Nobody’s gonna care; nobody’s even gonna know.

  Instead of following her own advice, she went to her computer, already set up on the dining-room table, and dialed into the Slave School bulletin board. Sure enough, Tommaso had left a message announcing that his life had been reduced to a single ambition. He wanted to clean her bathroom with the silk lining of his best dinner jacket.

  Gadd scrolled through the message quickly. She could feel Moodrow’s derision as if he was in the room looking over her shoulder and this time she could muster no defense. Tommaso, best case, led to Carmine Stettecase, not Jilly Sappone, and Carmine was about to go down for the count, taking any connection between himself and Josie Rizzo to prison. Answering Tommaso was a clear waste of time.

  But wasting time was exactly what she’d been doing for the last six hours, what she wanted to keep on doing as long as possible. Tommaso’s message stared up at her, white letters on a luminous azure background. Maybe if she stared at it long enough Tommaso’s obsession would offer some clue to her own behavior.

  She got up, sat down, got up again. An approaching helicopter, so loud it might have been skimming the rooftops, droned closer, its throaty roar a seeming complement to the relentless Seinfeld laugh track. Gadd felt a sudden rising anger, an urge to snatch her computer off the table, to fling it through the open window as if its memory was her own. Her hands were on the keyboard, the small laptop several inches above the table, when she stopped herself. A cold shudder rolled up her spine and into her neck.

  Turning on her heel, she walked into the tiny kitchen, opened the refrigerator, drank directly from a quart of orange juice. Then she went back to the computer and informed Tommaso Stettecase that his presumption could not go unpunished, that he was not worthy of her toilet bowl, that he had blown his one and only chance. Then, without resolving the obvious contradiction, she signed off, unplugged the modem, plugged Ann’s phone back into the wall, dialed her mother’s number.

  After the usual perfunctory How are you, Louise Gadd launched into a precise recitation of her best friend’s latest failures. Hazel Benton had met a new man, had thrown herself at him, was being treated badly, did not have the strength of character to toss him out on his butt.

  “Purcell’s five years younger and good-looking. What would he want with an old prune like Hazel?” Louise Gadd’s voice dropped a full octave. “Last week she paid his telephone bill. Does that give you a hint? The other day he calls up at five o’clock in the morning, blind drunk, wants to know if he can drop by. So what does Hazel do? She takes a shower. In case he should want sex, which he doesn’t. No, Purcell wants breakfast and coffee before he goes to work. And she cooks it for him. Bacon and eggs, hash browns, toast, the works. I’m telling you, Guinevere, the woman has no self-respect. She’s pathetic, a loser, a …”

  The harangue went on and on. New charges were added to the old, then the old recited anew. Gadd took it as long as she could, before interrupting. She saw the sharp acid tone, as well as the actual words, as pure therapy. Louise Gadd was everything Guinevere Gadd didn’t want to be, a negative role model that could be consulted for the price of a phone call.

  “Mom, I just phoned to see how you were.”

  “We haven’t even talked about me yet. So how could you know?”

  “Well I can see you haven’t lost your fighting spirit and that’s what I’m gonna have to settle for. I’m in the middle of a job.”

  “You call what you do a job?”

  “Bye, ma.”

  Gadd hung up and smiled. She was ready now, ready for what she had to do if she was going to stay in Ann Kalkadonis’s apartment. Without hesitating, she strode across the living room and into the hallway leading to the bedrooms. The first door she opened led to the master bedroom, the second revealed walls covered with a mix of rock and movie posters, the third opened into the room of a very young child. Gadd was prepared for the stuffed animal, a lumpy, tired cat with a missing ear. The bri
ght covers of a half dozen children’s books lying on top of the small pink dresser caused her no surprise, nor did the wallpaper with its dancing Disney characters or the Little Mermaid poster hanging by the window. She was prepared for all of that, but not for the neat white blanket covering the bed. Her eyes jammed shut and her head jerked back as if avoiding a punch.

  Look, she commanded herself. For once in your life, open your chickenshit eyes and see what you have to see.

  Despite the chickenshit, Gadd didn’t comply until a small white coffin flickered on the backs of her closed eyelids. The image jerked her to full, wide-eyed attention. Then she stood there, one hand resting lightly on the door, and let the full force of Theresa’s short life rush into her heart.

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE LAST THING A near-exhausted Carmine Stettecase expected to find as he entered his darkened study at a quarter to five on the morning of his personal liberation was his nerdy son, Tommaso, pursuing a little liberation of his own. Yet there he was, a shadow within a shadow, strapping Carmine’s three-million-dollar trunk onto a chrome luggage carrier.

  “Tommaso?”

  “Don’t move, Pop.”

  Carmine squinted, tried to peer through the darkness. He couldn’t really see the gun in Tommaso’s raised hand, but he decided to stop anyway. Carmine, having spent a good deal of his life on the right side of a weapon, had a great respect for firearms.

  “Can I turn on the light, Tommy? So’s we could talk about what you’re doin’ here?”

  “Okay, Pop. Just shut the door.”

  At first, Carmine could do no more than blink, then his eyes adjusted to the light and he saw that Tommaso did indeed have a gun clutched in his bony hand, a big, fat revolver, probably a .44. Worse yet, Tommaso’s bony hand was shaking uncontrollably and the hammer was cocked.

  “C’mon, Tommy, take it easy. You could see I’m not strapped.” Carmine’s gray silk pajamas encased his body like a sausage skin because of all the pre-deal eating. They were definitely tight enough to eliminate the possibility of any concealed weapon larger than a hat pin.