Speak of the Devil

by Richard Hawke

  Tommy Carroll picked up a remote and switched on the television. A grim-faced blond woman with helplessly blue eyes was holding a microphone to her chin. Kelly Cole. Ubiquitous Kelly. Channel 4.

  “According to Mayor Leavitt, the gunman has been-”

  Carroll muted the sound. He frowned. “What were you and Greene talking about just now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He’s a wiseass. That question about McNally? A good cop is killed defending the people of this city, and this pipsqueak reporter thinks he can get smug on me.”

  “That’s his job,” I said.

  “To smear the New York City Police Department?”

  “Seems to me the cops over in the Ninety-fifth have been doing a fine job of that all on their own.”

  Carroll scowled. “I thought I told you to stay at the Three Roses until we were finished up here.”

  I pulled the twenty out of my pocket and placed it on the desk. “Sorry, Tommy. The place was making me feel like I needed to take a shower.”

  “We’ve got a real problem going on here, Fritz.”

  “As they say in the old country, ‘No shit, Sherlock.’ ”

  “The mayor and I are counting on you to cooperate.”

  “Cooperate with what?”

  Carroll unballed his hands and leaned back in the chair. He gazed out the window over his left shoulder. It occurred to me that those picnic tables near the subway entrance were probably a decent fit for the commissioner. He looked out the window a few seconds, then let out a gravelly sigh and turned back to me. “The shooter has been identified as Roberto Diaz. Born in Puerto Rico. American citizen. Lived in Brooklyn. Divorced. Last worked for a company called Delivery on Demand. It’s a messenger service.”

  “I see.”

  “He left a month ago. Quit.”

  “Okay.”

  Carroll leveled me with a look. “You didn’t shoot him.”

  “I didn’t what?”

  “You didn’t shoot him, Fritz. Just start getting that notion into your head. You’re not leaving this office until it’s there.”

  I leaned back in my chair. I noted again the commissioner’s labored breathing. Tommy Carroll had been a heavy smoker ever since I’d known him. He’d quit lately. I wondered if he’d quit too late. He dipped his large chin toward his chest, his eyes inviting me to speak.

  “I shot him, Tommy. I hit him in the right shoulder.”

  He was wagging his head even before I’d finished talking. “You didn’t shoot him, Fritz. Officer Leonard Cox shot him.”

  “Who is Officer Leonard Cox?”

  “He’s the cop who shot Roberto Diaz.”

  “Did he shoot him in the right shoulder?”

  Carroll nodded.

  “Did he shoot him out by the Bethesda Fountain?”

  Another nod.

  “While giving chase?”

  “Of course. What else?”

  “Well, I don’t know what else, Tommy. Since we’re obviously stringing fantasies together here, maybe this Officer Cox shot Diaz because Diaz was running around with a flowerpot on his head, and the new rule is no flowerpots on the head on national holidays. I don’t know. What the hell is this all about?”

  As Carroll was raising a hand in a gesture to quiet me down, the phone on his desk rang. He picked it up, still looking at me, and listened a few seconds. Then he said, “No. Not yet.” He listened a few more seconds, then grunted and hung up. “That was the mayor.”

  “I hope he’s not wearing a flowerpot on his head.”

  “You’re talking to him in five minutes.”

  “Okay, Tommy, can we get everything out on the table? Why was I taken away from the scene and shoved onto the floor of a police cruiser with a bag over my head? Why was I taken to the Municipal Building? Was Diaz run through the same routine? Where is he now? And last but not least, why am I supposed to start pretending that I didn’t shoot the guy in the shoulder, or anywhere else, for that matter? I’m seeing the mayor in five minutes? Fine. I’ll give you two of those minutes to tell me exactly what the hell’s going on, or I’m walking out of here.” I indicated the television, where Kelly Cole was still yammering into her microphone out in front of City Hall. “Forget Greene. Kelly and I are old pals. You can tell the mayor to tune in to the Channel Four News for all the latest.”

  Carroll looked as if he would be quite happy to see my head come off my neck and crash to the floor in pieces. He cleared the telephone to the edge of the desk with his arm, as if making room to lunge forward and grab me by the collar.

  “Leavitt knew about the shooting in advance.”

  The words came in loud and clear, but I had to run them through the filter several times just to be sure. “He knew Diaz was gong to shoot up the Thanksgiving parade?”

  “Not exactly. He didn’t know the specific details of what was going to happen. He didn’t know the where or the who or the when.”

  “But he knew?”

  “He’d been warned that something might happen.”

  “And he did nothing to stop it?”

  “You’re not listening. I just told you. He didn’t know what or where or when. Believe me, we were working on it. The parade was an obvious target. I tried to get him to cancel the damn thing, but in this town that’s like asking someone to cancel Christmas. Leavitt wasn’t about to do something like that. Especially now, with all this other crap coming down. People like a parade. It gets their mind off stuff. The whole point was not to go public.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Diaz contacted the mayor a couple of weeks ago. Of course he didn’t give us his name. It was a note. He made… let’s just say he made some demands. I can’t go into details.”

  “Can I assume they were unreasonable demands?”

  “Of course they were. You know how it is, we hear from nutcases all the time. It’s almost always them just blowing off steam. Nothing comes of it. This guy, who could say? He wasn’t specific about his threats. They never are. But we weren’t sitting on our thumbs. We were working to worm him out, but obviously he acted before we could get to him.”

  “What were the demands?”

  “I just told you, I can’t go into details.”

  “Is that what I should tell Kelly Cole?”

  “You’re not telling Cole anything. Maybe I haven’t impressed on you the seriousness of this whole thing. We have seven known dead out there, including one of our own. We’ve got more who are injured. Some of them pretty badly. So we might lose a few more.”

  “Half an hour ago you were calling these numbers lucky.”

  “Fuck half an hour ago. Now is now. There’s nothing lucky about any of this. It’s a nightmare. But it’s not half the nightmare it’s going to be if word gets out that the mayor was warned in advance. You know how it works. It doesn’t matter that no one knew where or when or any of the details at all. The only thing that matters is the mayor was told someone was ready to do some real fucking damage in this city, and that for all our efforts to stop the guy, the damage was done. We’re not putting that word out. Simple as that.”

  “So you’re manipulating the truth.”

  “Fuck the truth.”

  “Nice,” I said.

  “That’s how it is.”

  “So what about Rebecca Gilpin?”

  “What about her?”

  “The shooter aimed at her first. I was right there. The first bullet was a head shot on Mother Goose.”

  “What of it?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what of it’? Apparently the whole world knows that Leavitt is fluffing the pillows with this woman. Come on, Tommy. Diaz was trying to kill the mayor’s lady friend. Don’t tell me he wasn’t. He was making it personal.”

  Carroll grumbled, “I told him to pull her from the parade just in case. Easy enough to do. Put out the word that she’s got a twenty-four-hour flu. He presented it to her. Let me tell you something, Fritz, this is a woman who doesn’t listen.
If you’ve got two seconds, I can tell you how much patience I’ve got for celebrities.”

  “Okay, so why are you trying to twist the truth about who shot Diaz?”

  “Politics.”

  “Explain, please.”

  “You’re a citizen. We’re damn lucky you’re a licensed snoop, even though the gun you used wasn’t the one you’re licensed to shoot. But at least you’re not some trigger-happy Joe Everybody grabbing a gun and running around trying to be a hero. But even with you being a private dick, it’s not a good picture. Vigilante justice is something we can do without.”

  I understood. “But a cop chasing the perp, winging him in the shoulder and taking him into custody, that’s a good story. That’s clean. That’s ‘Hero Cop Saves City from More Hell.’ Am I reading the headlines correctly? A good apple? Is that what you’re angling for? A little positive news for once?”

  “It’s close.”

  “Close. What am I missing?”

  Before he could answer, the office door opened and in walked Martin Leavitt. Without a word, he strode to the television set, where he moved his hand over the controls like a wizard doing a little conjuring. He turned to the police commissioner. “Where’s the sound?”

  Carroll picked up the remote and pushed the mute button. Kelly Cole’s voice was twice as loud as any of us were prepared for.

  “… this horrifically tragic day. A spokesman for St. Luke’s confirmed just a few minutes ago that the still-unidentified gunman died of wounds inflicted during the shootout with police that had resulted in the gunman’s being taken into custody. Apparently, the suspect was struck-”

  I was out of my chair. “Died? I shot him in the fucking shoulder!”

  “You didn’t shoot him,” Tommy Carroll said flatly. “We just went over that.”

  Mayor Leavitt slammed his hand against the television’s power button. The screen went blank. His face was pale as chalk. “We’ve got a problem.”

  Carroll rose from his chair. “No, we don’t. We’re fine. Fritz here is on board. We’ve just got to talk it all out a little more.”

  Leavitt turned to his police commissioner, looking at him as if the man had just grown avocados out of his ears.

  “No.” He pointed at the blank television. “Not that. I just got a call. From him.”

  “From who?”

  “Him. The goddamn nightmare. Who do you think?”

  Carroll looked confused. “The nightmare just died at St. Luke’s Hospital, Martin. You heard the girl. Settle down. It’s over.”

  “No. You’re not listening. I just got a call. From him. There’s no question about it. It was him.” Leavitt was working to keep the waver out of his voice. He was only somewhat successful.

  Tommy Carroll came out from behind his desk. He stepped to within five inches of the mayor. A huff and a puff and the mayor would’ve gone down. Carroll’s voice came out with an eerie softness. “The shooter wasn’t our guy?”

  Leavitt was shaking his head. “He must have been put up to it by our guy. A triggerman. A partner. Something like that. I don’t know. The point is, our guy is still out there. He’s not dead.”

  Carroll repeated dully, “He’s not dead?”

  “And he’s not finished. Do you want to know what he said?” The mayor ran a hand through his hair. He took a few seconds to compose himself. God help me, for a moment I thought the man was going to cry. “He asked me if now I believed him. He said the nightmare has just begun. That’s a quote. The nightmare. So you know this is the guy, Tommy. And by God, you can be sure this time I do believe him. I sure as fuck believe him. The bastard.”

  I watched as the police commissioner’s face went from putty to crimson. I briefly thought he might put a fist right through the handsome mayor’s face. Then he spun in the direction of the television. The towering police commissioner was a hell of a lot quicker than I would have expected. Squeezing a growl through his clenched teeth, he swung his arm backward, clamped hold of the television and shoved it right off the metal stand. It crashed to the floor. The tube exploded with a loud pop. An instant later, the office door flew open and Carroll’s assistant ran in. The commissioner took one heavy dinosaur step in her direction.

  “Get the fuck out of here!”

  Stacy fled. I went over to the door. The young woman was running down the hallway as if fleeing a fire. I closed the door. Carroll’s cheeks were puffing with rage. Leavitt raised his hands as if appealing to a crowd for calm. Which, in a sense, he was.

  “Okay. Hold on. Just stop. Slow down.” He took a beat. “We’ve got a problem. We need to solve it.”

  The steadiness had returned to his voice. He stepped around Tommy Carroll and over to the desk, where he picked up the phone and hit a few buttons. “Philip. We’re in Tommy’s office. Get in here.” He disconnected the line. Looking up at me, he shook the phone receiver in my direction.

  “I’m not offering you a choice, Mr. Malone. Simple as this. You are cooperating.”

  5

  MARGO SPARED ME THE TRUDGE UP FOUR FLIGHTS. SHE MET ME AT LA Fortuna, right down the street from her apartment. It’s a dark cozy place with old opera LPs and framed photos of opera singers all over its brick walls. Margo once ran into Pavarotti here. He was sitting alone in the garden out back with a cappuccino and a basket of biscotti, reading a paperback copy of Lonesome Dove. She managed to join him, using her own enthusiasm for the book as a wedge, and by the final biscotti, Pavarotti had agreed to let her interview him for part of a fluff piece she was putting together for New York magazine. The tenor wrote her a three-page appreciation letter after the piece appeared.

  The owner of the cafe beamed like a brand new mother as I stood at the pie counter trying to decide.

  I put my finger on the glass. “The blueberry looks like the one today.”

  She pulled out the pie and slid a large slice onto a plate, using her knife to scrape some of the extra goop. She indicated Margo. “And what will it be for the princess?”

  Margo answered, “I’m not really hungry, Mrs. Valella. I’ll just steal a few bites from the big guy.”

  “You want the cappuccino?”

  “Two,” I said. “The big guy doesn’t share everything.”

  Margo and I retreated to one of the small tables next to the wall. Enrico Caruso looked over my shoulder as I took my first bite of pie. His mouth was wide open, as if he expected me to funnel a forkful his way. Margo looked like rain on a sunny day.

  “You could have been killed.”

  I nodded. “ ‘Could have’ is the road to unnecessary suffering. I wasn’t.”

  “But you could’ve been.”

  “That’s true for everyone,” I said. “You never know when the bus is going to flatten you. It’s why you want to seize the moment.” I tapped my fork against my plate. “How about a piece of pie?”

  She ignored me. “At the exact moment you were running around getting shot at less than a block away, I was probably sitting in bed painting my stupid toenails.”

  “It would have been stranger had it been the other way around.”

  “Oh, shut up. Think about the families, Fritz. Think about all the funerals they’re going to be having over the next couple of days. And there I was painting my toenails. I feel horrible.”

  “Are we juxtaposing the tragic with the trivial?”

  “I guess we are.”

  “And are we getting anything out of it? I mean besides anguish?” She screwed her mouth up into a pucker. With Margo, this is usually the equivalent of a pitcher going into his windup. I waited, but she simply remained that way, her eyes narrowing to slits. Finally, I asked, “Do you have something to say?”

  She unpuckered. “Forget it.”

  “Look, the whole city is shaken up,” I said. “Unfortunately, that’s the point of these kinds of things.”

  “The point. I like that.”

  “See? You’re edgy.”

  “How about we don’t talk about it?”

/>   “Okay.” I picked up the fork and shoveled the piece of pie into my mouth. “They sure do good pie here, eh?”

  She was crying. And I was an idiot. It was quiet crying. A pair of tears ran down her cheeks, followed by another pair. I felt something on my leg. It was the toe of Margo’s shoe. She was locating my shin, and when she found it, she gave it a not insubstantial kick.

  “I hate you,” she said in a barely audible voice. She reached a hand across the table and I took it. Mrs. Valella arrived with our cappuccinos. She gave Margo the sort of sympathetic look only an Italian mother can give.

  “He will keep you safe and warm, princess,” she said to Margo, setting down the cappuccinos. She shot me a withering look.

  Right?

  WHEN WE GOT BACK TO MARGO’S, I EXPLAINED THE SITUATION TO HER as best I could. Before leaving City Hall, I had been sworn to secrecy, and had I thought that telling Margo might in any way put her in danger, I’d have remained mum. And she would have understood. But I needed to talk it out-so much of it made no sense to me-and next to her father, Margo is the best sounding board I know.

  I swore her to secrecy. She crossed her fingers and said, “Sure.” The tears were gone.

  “I have a job,” I told her by way of getting into it. We were in Margo’s living room. One entire wall of the room was taken up with books. Floor-to-ceiling. A former boyfriend of Margo’s built the shelves for her. He even installed one of those moving ladders that glides along a horizontal pole for reaching the high shelves. Good craftsman, but in the end, a lousy boyfriend. I was seated in a wicker chair across from the wall of books. Margo was in no one place for longer than twenty seconds. We were due at her parents’ for Thanksgiving dinner, and she had promised her purple cabbage casserole. She flew in from the kitchen and landed a cutting board in my lap.

  “Job is good,” she said. “We like job.” She ducked back into the kitchen.

  “We’ll see if job is good,” I called in to her. “The mayor wants me to look after his girlfriend.”

  “Really? That’s the job? So you get to meet Rebecca Gilpin.”

  “So do you. We’ve got comps to go see her in her big Broadway show tonight. That is, if you want to go.”