Margo poked her head out from the kitchen. “Tonight? You’ve got to be kidding. What the hell is she doing running around on a Broadway stage tonight? Someone just took a shot at her in the Thanksgiving Day parade. Is she a nut?”
“That’s pretty close to how I put the question to the mayor,” I said. “And he was pretty much in agreement with me. But it’s what she wants to do.”
Margo groaned. “The show must go on?”
“Right. It’s some form of thespian testosterone. The mayor took a call from her while we were huddling in Tommy Carroll’s office. Not to disparage our good mayor, but from what I observed, he’s not the only one who wears the pants in that relationship. His plan was for all the theaters to go black tonight. Because of Thanksgiving, a lot of them had already decided not to do a show. But Rebecca Gilpin’s is one of the ones scheduled to run tonight, and apparently, the woman wants to make a statement by, yes, going on with the show.”
“What the hell is the statement?” Margo asked, bringing a large knife and a head of cabbage to me. “I’m an insensitive idiot? I have can-do spirit?”
“Can do what? Can do tap-dance across a crowded stage with a bunch of gay sailors? I’m with you. She should take the night off and think about all the people who weren’t as lucky today as she was.”
“From what you told me, it wasn’t luck, bubba. You saved her life.”
“I threw a bag of bagels at her.”
“You said she ducked. The bullet would have gone right into her head.”
“I still call that lucky. Anyway, the short version of all this is that Leavitt wants me to be her personal shadow.”
Margo took the knife from me and gave the cabbage a few whacks. “Like that.” She handed me back the knife. “But I don’t understand. The killer was killed.”
It was Philip Byron who had suggested that if I needed to explain to anyone why I was Rebecca Gilpin’s bodyguard, I should say there was some concern about copycatters. Nutcases who find inspiration in high-profile tragedies and try to get in on the action.
“I’m supposed to tell you that they’re afraid someone might try to do a copycat thing and take a shot at her,” I said.
“But that’s not it?”
“That’s not it.”
“This is the sworn-to-secrecy part?”
“It is.” I told her about the mayor’s having received a phone call after the parade massacre from the person who had been taunting him the past several weeks about an imminent public tragedy.
“You mean the guy who did this is still out there?”
“The guy who did it is dead. But the guy who was behind it is still very much with us. And he told Leavitt today that the nightmare has just begun. That’s a quote.”
“What the hell is this all about, Fritz?”
“I don’t know. Tommy Carroll said this was all being handled on a need-to-know basis and that I didn’t need to know.”
“And you agreed to that?”
“I didn’t agree to anything. Well, no. That’s not true. I agreed to keep my mouth shut about my shooting this Diaz character in the shoulder. For the time being, anyway.”
“Diaz. The dead Diaz.”
“That’s him.”
“Whom you shot in the shoulder.”
“Correct.”
“But whom we’re being told was killed by a policeman.”
“Correct again.”
“And he died of a shoulder wound.”
“He died of a bullet to the brain.”
“Which you didn’t inflict.”
“Which I didn’t inflict.”
“That was the policeman?”
“Officer Leonard Cox. Our hero du jour.”
“But that didn’t happen at the Bethesda Fountain, right? You said that after you clipped the guy’s wing, both of you were taken into custody.”
“And driven in circles with bags over our heads.”
“Jesus, Fritz. What was that about?”
“My opinion is that it was just a stalling tactic while Tommy Carroll and the mayor scrambled to come up with a plan.”
“That would account for the blindfold and the dipsy-doodle driving. But what about the bag?”
“You have to remember, they didn’t know who this other person was. The trigger-happy citizen who grabbed a cop’s gun and went running after the shooter.”
“You.”
“Me. They didn’t know who or what they had on their hands until they got me somewhere they could talk to me.”
“And what’s wrong with a station house?”
I shrugged. “Too many witnesses? That’s my guess. That’s why the bag in the first place. As best as I figure it, they wanted to make sure that if a photographer somehow happened to snap a picture of this trigger-happy person being led into the Municipal Building, it would be that much more difficult to identify him.”
“Why would they need to hide the person’s identity?”
“You’re not going to like my answer.”
“Try me.”
“It’s just supposition.”
“Supposition me.”
“In case the guy who walked into the Municipal Building under police custody never walked back out.”
“Explain.”
“Until they had a chance to talk to this live wire who’s running around shooting off policemen’s guns, they didn’t know for certain that he wasn’t part of the whole parade-massacre plot. Maybe he’s not Mr. Brave Citizen after all. What do they know?”
“So?”
“So, Tommy Carroll made it pretty clear to me that the mayor’s number one priority is to keep a lid on this whole thing. If word gets out that Leavitt had even an inkling about this in advance, and didn’t do everything in his power to stop it…”
I paused. Margo finished the thought. “He’s screwed.”
“Big-time screwed. Forget Bad Apple. This would bounce him right out of there.”
“So if you’d been a part of the conspiracy, you’re saying you think they would have killed you?”
“It’s only speculation,” I said.
“Pretty wild speculation. I know you’ve run into some unsavory cops now and then, but this sounds more than a little far-fetched.”
I said nothing. I just continued chopping. I could tell the moment it hit her. Her jaw dropped slightly and disbelief flooded her eyes.
“So… wait. Is that what happened to what’s-his-name? Diaz? Oh my God. You said he wasn’t killed out by the fountain. Where was he killed?”
“If you listen to the TV, he was killed out by the fountain. Resisting arrest. One shot to the shoulder, one shot to the skull.”
“By the police.”
“Officer Leonard Cox.”
“So is that really who shot him in the head? In the Municipal Building?”
I plunged the knife into the remainder of the cabbage. “According to Tommy Carroll, that’s one of those need-to-know things that I don’t need to know.”
Margo eyed me. “Fine. But are you going to settle for that?”
“What’s your guess?”
She stepped over to me, took the cutting board from my lap and put herself there. She looked deeply into my eyes.
“No fucking way.”
She took the words right out of my mouth.
6
WE TOOK THE 7 TRAIN OUT TO LONG ISLAND CITY. MARGO’S PARENTS lived on Starr Avenue, near the Silvercup Studios. The subway was relatively empty. It was difficult to tell whether the blank expressions on the few riders’ faces were your standard-issue blank expressions or if the parade massacre was a contributing factor.
The fatality count had bumped up to nine, which seemed to be where it was going to level off. This was a scale-down from ten, when it was determined after speaking with witnesses that one of the apparent victims had actually suffered a fatal heart attack just minutes before the bullets had started flying.
The oldest victim was a fifty-three-year-old math teacher from R
umson, New Jersey. The youngest was fourteen, the girl with the alto sax. Ezra Fisher’s mother had fallen somewhere in the middle. Twenty-seven. From Fort Lee, just over the George Washington Bridge. Single. No other children besides Ezra. When I heard this, the first thing that came to mind was the boy’s white balloon floating off by itself, higher and higher over the ruined parade.
We like to push bruises. I don’t know why that is.
There were several eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen a second gunman. A man running along Central Park West with a gun. The police vigorously denied these reports.
MARGO’S FATHER WAS SITTING OUT FRONT WHEN WE ARRIVED. THE house where Margo grew up was built in the mid-fifties. It is a compact little place with a cement porch overlooking a small front yard that has flat rocks where you’d expect grass. The grass is out back, where there’s also a picnic table, a birdbath and, in season, a modest vegetable garden. The house is two stories high, with an attic and a basement. It looks pretty much like all the others on the block except for its one novel feature, a long narrow ramp that runs at a shallow angle from the cement porch out over the flat rocks, ending right at the sidewalk. The ramp is wood-very solid-with two-inch-high strips running across it every two feet, sort of like the rungs of a ladder. The ramp allows Margo’s father to wheel his chair from the porch to the sidewalk. The strips help him keep the trip from getting out of hand.
Charlie Burke waved his cigar at us from the porch. “Happy Hanukkah, you two lovebirds.”
“Shalom to you, too, Charlie,” I said as I stepped onto the porch. I carried a shopping bag with Margo’s cabbage casserole.
Charlie stuck the cigar between his teeth and gave me his hard grip. “You’re as ugly as ever,” he said.
“You, too.”
Margo landed her hands gently on her father’s shoulders and went in for a soft kiss on his rough cheek. “Happy Thanksgiving, Daddy.”
“Well, we’ve had better ones, haven’t we?”
Margo straightened and her father studied her face. “That whole mess was close to your apartment, honey.”
“I phoned Mom.”
“I know you did. You’re a good girl.” He looked up at me. “They say the guy worked for a messenger service.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“That’s sort of like working for the post office. What kind of nut does something like that?”
“The worst kind,” I said.
“But they got him. Only good news of the day.”
Margo took the shopping bag from me. “I’m going inside.” She looked from her father to me and back to her father. “Save the world, men.”
She disappeared into the house. I could hear the high falsetto of her mother’s lavish greetings. I lowered myself lightly on the wrought-iron railing. Charlie was working up a blue haze with his cigar.
“It’s not over, Charlie,” I said.
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Oh?”
“The guy they took down. Diaz. He was a stooge. Or a partner. Something. Whatever he was, he wasn’t the person behind the shooting. He was behind the gun. But he was following orders.”
“Keep going.”
“Diaz was executed. At least that’s how it’s smelling to me. The police had him in custody with a shoulder wound. Nothing life-threatening.”
“The TV says he took one to the head. DOA at St. Luke’s.”
“Maybe so. But he wasn’t shot until after he was in custody. The police cruiser that took him to St. Luke’s took a detour first, to the Municipal Building.”
Charlie had a beanbag ashtray in his lap. He tapped the end of his cigar into it, snuffing it out. “You get a better news station than I do, Fritz. I missed all that.”
“The version you got goes down easier.”
Charlie frowned. “What’s this about? Where’d you get all this?”
I gave him the story. He listened without interrupting. When I was finished, he stared down at his dead cigar.
“That need-to-know crap is crap,” he said. “You just tell those bastards you need to know and that’s that.”
“I know it’s crap, Charlie. But you’ve got to imagine the vibe at City Hall. It was so thick in there you couldn’t cut it with a knife. Everybody was keeping their cards very close. Nobody was about to tell me any more than they figured they had to.”
“Yeah, but you’ve got leverage. You’ve got a story they don’t want you telling.”
“I know that. And that’s my key back in the door once things have cooled off a little. They leaned on me and I let them. For now.”
Charlie was looking past me out toward the street. He used to do this back when we shared an office. As he put it, he did his best thinking out the window. I remained perched on the railing and waited. With little effort, I could transform the spiky gray-haired fellow in the wheelchair into the less grizzled version-the guy who used to be mistaken sometimes for Gene Hackman-leaning back in his worn red leather desk chair, looking out the window for invisible pieces of puzzles to fall magically together.
He snapped from his reverie. “A cop was killed out at the parade.”
I nodded.
“Cops don’t like cop killers.”
I nodded again.
“So they took this Diaz character out. Pure and simple. No trial. This was the police commissioner putting the gag on you.”
“Him and the mayor.”
Charlie scoffed. “Screw the mayor. I don’t give a damn about him. He’s just a pretty face. It was Carroll, wasn’t it? Let me guess. He pulled your father on you, didn’t he? Of course he did. Commissioner Scott, blah blah blah. Loyalty to the old man’s memory. He told you to be a team player, right? They’re like a goddamn little mafia over there. You know how I feel about Thomas Carroll.”
“I’ve gotten your drift over the years.”
“So I’m right, aren’t I? He put his big arm around you and walked you over to the thin blue line.”
“I think you’re taking it a little far, Charlie. But okay. I didn’t go running out the door into the arms of the first reporter I saw. That’s not my style, in any case. Especially when I don’t have enough of the story myself. If you taught me anything, it was not to go off half-cocked.”
He chuckled. “If I taught you anything.”
“Carroll’s ass is in a sling over this Bad Apple affair. He didn’t come right out and say it, but it’s no secret. Call me a sentimental old fool, but I cut him some slack.”
“I’ll just call you a fool.”
“They’re all ready with a copycat story if something else happens soon,” I said. “Except we both know that will crumble pretty quickly. Leavitt’s all freaked out that his girlfriend might be a target again. That’s why Carroll sold my services to the mayor. You should have heard him, Charlie. I got a real silver-plated recommendation.”
“I hope you’re charging your premium rate.”
“That’s something else you taught me. Sliding scale.”
“You slid this one up, I hope.”
“I’ll be able to cover the rent.”
Charlie took hold of the wheels of his chair and gently rocked himself forward and backward. Aside from staring out the window, Charlie also used to be a pacer. You could make out the shiny trail he’d left on the wood floor of the office. Now he was reduced to this tiny ticktocking of his wheelchair. The movement was slight, but the coiled energy in his arms was heartbreaking to see. The man wanted out of that chair.
“They’re wasting their nickel sticking you as a bodyguard,” he said. “They should be cutting you loose to go find the son of a bitch who’s behind all this.”
The memory of a white balloon bumped gently against my cheek.
“I plan to keep my eyes open,” I said.
“And your back covered?”
“And my head down.”
Charlie laughed. “By God, I guess I did teach you a few things.”
“Meanwhile, I’ve got to hook a line onto the may
or’s celebrity girlfriend tonight. She’s insisting on strutting around onstage, and Martin Leavitt doesn’t seem to have the balls to shut the theater down.”
“I heard him on television just before you got here,” Charlie said. “That’s his message to the city. ‘The danger’s over. Go about your business. Enjoy your turkey.’ ”
“Well, if someone really is still gunning for her, I guess I’ll get to see it all over again.”
Charlie looked out at the street. After a moment he said, “You might want to pick up another bag of bagels, Fritz. Worked pretty good the first time.”
7
TIMES SQUARE NEVER TAKES A NIGHT OFF. THE ELECTRONIC BILLBOARDS and the zippers and the commercials being projected onto the sides of the glass buildings were all flashing and moving and blinking at their usual epileptic-seizure-inducing speed. The funnel where Broadway and Seventh Avenue merge was clogged with yellow taxis trying to get downtown, any random thirty of which were unleashing their horns for no apparent reason. I spotted one double-decker tourist bus. There was a lone inhabitant on the exposed upper level, wrapped in an Eskimo-like parka, twisting this way and that, a camcorder pressed to his face. As I crossed Broadway, the steam pouring forth from the Cup O’ Noodles billboard looked particularly inviting.
For all the dazzle and noise, the sidewalks were noticeably less packed than usual. A clown sat on the large sidewalk space in front of the Viacom Building, smoking a cigarette. His unicycle lay on the pavement next to him. His bucket was empty.
At the last minute Margo had opted out of joining me. The look of relief on her mother’s face when Margo announced she’d be staying over with them for the night told me that it was the right decision.
“Now I can go spring that Swedish honey I’ve had stashed away,” I’d told Margo. “Show her a swell time on the old town at last.”
A look of alarm had leaped to Margo’s mother’s face. “He’s kidding, isn’t he?”
“He’s kidding or he’s dead,” Margo answered. “The choice is completely his.”
THE THEATER WAS NOT FILLED TO CAPACITY. THE SEAT TO MY RIGHT, the one that would have been Margo’s, remained unoccupied. To my left was a geriatric couple who looked to have been lifted intact from another era and deposited into G-12 and G-13. He was a frail man in a three-piece brown wool suit and red bow tie, with a fine shiny cane. She was in something vaguely deco and pale. Her hair was like blue spun sugar. They leaned shoulder to shoulder to read the program together.
Speak of the Devil Page 5