Jenny gave me a steady look. She pulled the beers without so much as a glance at them. “How’s Margo these days, Fritz?”
“She’s good, Jenny.”
“We don’t see her much.”
“She’s a busy girl.”
“She still writing about famous people?”
“Among other things.”
“I guess she’s hit the big time. Must be fun work.”
“It’s a hustle. Margo works hard.”
“Plays hard, too, I’ll bet.” I didn’t answer. Jenny set the two beers on the counter. She was still giving me her steady gaze. “How about you, Fritz? Are you working hard?”
“Keeping out of trouble,” I said.
She set a glass on the bar and shot it full of seltzer. “Your work is trouble.” She picked up the glass. “Cheers.”
I drained an inch from my Harp, then set a twenty on the counter.
Jenny ignored the bill. “So, you two are good? You and Margo?”
I nodded. “We’re good.”
“Any news on the way?”
“News?”
“About the two of you?”
I shrugged. “No news.”
She allowed a thin eyebrow to rise. “So you’re not that kind of good.”
I took up the beers. “We’re good, Jenny.”
She scraped the twenty off the bar. “Tell her I said hi. Tell her I wish her continued good luck in the city. Tell her she should interview that Tom Cruise while he’s still cute.”
“I’ll tell her.” I took the beers back to the table. Charlie was watching me closely. “It’s nothing,” I said, setting the mugs down.
“I don’t trust that one farther than I can throw her.”
“I said it’s nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing before.”
“Before is before.”
“My girl is a hundred of that one. Listen, if I ever-”
I cut him off. “Charlie. Just drop it. Come on already.” I slid my mug over and tapped his. He hesitated, putting a long look on me, then he lifted his mug.
“May the cat catch its tail.”
THE NAME. ANGEL. GABRIELLA HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO PROVIDE A LAST name for me. Only the first. She had pronounced it An-hell, which was the kind of irony you could beat a person senseless with.
Angel was an acquaintance of Diaz’s. Gabriella hadn’t been certain when the two first hooked up. She told me she had a vague memory of Diaz mentioning someone named Angel early in their marriage, but the name didn’t really start cropping up on a regular basis until a couple of years later. Charlie picked up on this detail when I related it.
“Prison,” he said. “They appear, they disappear, they appear again. Prison.” I agreed; that’s what I had concluded.
Gabriella encountered this Angel character in the flesh on only two occasions. The last year of her marriage with Diaz, he was away from home half as often as he checked in. It was clear to Gabriella that her husband was involved with drugs, running with a bad crowd. More and more, she said, Diaz arrived home high on God knows what, laughing, sweating, speaking a mile a minute, trash-talking people Gabriella had never even met, trash-talking the police, the mayor, all white people, the Jews, the Arabs, the president. And there was always Angel. Angel this and Angel that. Me and Angel. You should have seen Angel. Finally, one night, Gabriella did see Angel. She was standing at a bus stop on her way to her office-cleaning job when a silver hatchback drove by across the street, vibrating the entire block with a thumpa-thumpa bass blast from a deck of inverted speakers filling the entire hatchback area. The tires squealed as the car ripped a half circle in the middle of the street, pulling to an abrupt stop in front of the bus stop. Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa. Diaz came out of the passenger side, and from the driver’s side came a tall mocha-skinned man in a muscle shirt, a silver bandanna and a pair of orange-tinted sunglasses. Gabriella described him as at least six feet and “with muscles he was proud of.” He had a pencil-thin mustache. Diaz had made an overt point of being what Gabriella called “all lovey-dovey, like he was showing off for his friend.” Diaz introduced Angel to Gabriella. She said that Angel had barely acknowledged her. She couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, and if he even spoke to her directly, it was in a voice pitched as low as the thumping coming from the back of the car. Gabriella commented twice to me about the man’s muscles. What she had said was, “There was no soul. Only a body.”
“Prison,” Charlie said again. “We lock them up, they pump it up. Nice damn system.”
The second time Gabriella encountered Angel, he was trying to rape her.
Gabriella had turned her head away from the picnic table where her daughter was playing with the flowers. She had kept her tiny convulsions under control even as the tears flooded her cheeks.
She had just returned from work, she told me. It was five in the morning. Rosa was still with her grandmother. The apartment was empty. No Roberto. No surprise. Gabriella had showered, put on her nightgown and then gotten into bed, first pulling down the shades against the rising sun. She had drifted swiftly to sleep. The next thing she remembered, the sheets had been pulled back and a man was on top of her. She remembered a vanilla scent and a strong pair of hands forcing her legs apart, a low mumbling voice intoning, “Don’t fight, don’t fight, don’t fight.” She opened her mouth to scream, and one of the hands flashed up from under her nightgown and clamped over her mouth. Gabriella was staring wide-eyed into a pair of pale green eyes, open to no more than a slit. “They looked like the eyes of a goat.” She recognized the pencil-thin mustache. Angel was just entering her when her husband appeared in the doorway and started shouting. Angel attempted to continue, but Diaz threw himself onto the bed and the two men tumbled to the floor. Screaming, Gabriella had hurried off the other side of the bed and run into the bathroom, locking herself in, where she listened to the sounds of the fight. Eventually, the sounds stopped and she heard the front door slam. She waited an extra fifteen minutes, crying and shaking uncontrollably. When she finally emerged from the bathroom, Diaz was passed out on the bed, the pillow under his head draining blood from a small cut on his cheek. She told me that she had wanted to turn her husband’s head into the pillow and suffocate him.
Charlie had barely touched his beer. He picked up his mug and looked at me.
“I know,” I said. “I know.”
I TOLD CHARLIE THE REST OF GABRIELLA’S STORY AS I ACCOMPANIED him back to his house. Charlie didn’t like being pushed; he motored his chair on his own. The temperature had dropped considerably and the air smelled like snow. Charlie was underdressed in a sweatshirt and a thin windbreaker. He generated some heat, though, muscling the wheels of his chair. The orange glow at the tip of his cigar led the way.
I told him about Diaz showing up at Gabriella’s workplace accompanied by the woman with the rose tattoo on her arm, and the lawyer coming in to take Gabriella under his wing. Gabriella said she had insisted on using her husband’s infidelity-not Diaz’s violence-as the stated reason for the divorce. Apparently, the woman with the tattoo was more than just a one-night stand; Diaz had taken up with her. Charlie gave me a suggestion on how I might want to follow up on that information. At the house, he let me wheel him up the long ramp.
“You seeing my girl tonight?” he asked, sorting through his keys to find the one to the front door.
“I don’t think so.”
He looked up at me. “You wouldn’t be going back to the bar?”
“Of course not. I’m beat. I’m going home.”
“Just checking.”
I drove back to the city over the Queensboro Bridge. The way there are so many lights on in Manhattan’s buildings all through the night, it looks like you’re driving into a cluster of stars.
I gave Jigs Dugan a call when I got to my place. I told him I could use his services if he could use a little cash. Light lifting, I said. Easy money. He was okay with that, so I gave him the details.
An hour afte
r lights-out, I still wasn’t asleep. I got up and put a little milk and bourbon together and got back into bed. The face of An-hell floated near my ceiling. Slitted eyes, pencil-thin mustache, silver bandanna on his head. I summoned an image of the old man. My father. Get this punk out of here. I need some shut-eye.
I finally slept. I looked for Margo in my dreams. I had to skirt around that goddamn Jenny Gray and her pearl-white neckline, but at last I found Margo. Laugh me to sleep, sweetie. I’ll owe you. I’ll gladly owe you.
22
TOMMY CARROLL’S ASSISTANT HANDED ME MY FIRST CUP OF COFFEE of the day. She was dressed in a powder-blue suit and looked as stern as an unsexed schoolmarm.
“You don’t take sugar.” It was a statement, not a question, and it happened to be correct. I looked to see if I could find a hair out of place on her head. Not one. I considered asking if she had a boyfriend. I was thinking Jigs, just to muss her hair up a little.
“Commissioner Carroll will be right with you.”
“Thank you, Stacy.”
The door closed behind her. Thirty seconds later, it opened again. I stopped blowing on my coffee and greeted Tommy Carroll. “Morning, Commish.”
He grunted and moved directly to his desk. “Where are we? What’ve you got?”
I told him, “Angel something-or-other. An associate of Roberto Diaz’s. Likely ex-con. Diaz looked up to him. Extremely violent. The guy tried to rape Diaz’s wife several years ago with Diaz in the next room. Don’t ask me why, but I’m getting a ‘fearless’ vibe.”
“How’d you get the name?”
“Diaz’s ex-wife. She told me she’d spoken with the police. How come you didn’t get the name?”
“The officers who questioned Mrs. Montero weren’t looking for an accomplice.”
“Right. Of course. That’s still our little secret.”
Carroll gave me a hard look. “I don’t need your wisecracking. Not today. We’ve got a deputy mayor out there, either dead already or getting whittled down as we speak. And this asshole could pounce again any minute. The mayor wants this over.”
“Then maybe the mayor should unleash the full power of the best police force in the world,” I said. “How about we look for a soft-spoken six-foot Hispanic ex-con named Angel Something? Pale green eyes. Possible pencil-thin mustache. Drug chewer. Violent. Maybe drives a silver hatchback with music booming out of the rear. Muscles on muscles. Ice-cold blood. Aviator sunglasses. Jesus Christ, Tommy, I’m painting you a picture.”
“We’ll look for him,” Carroll said brusquely. “Meantime, you keep looking. Get a last name.”
I asked, “No more word on Byron?”
Carroll muttered, “Fucking Byron.” He shook his head. “No. Nothing. Two fingers tied up like a crucifix. Real cute.”
“I’m sure Byron didn’t think so. What’s the word you’re putting out? There’s been nothing on the news.”
“Illness in the family. Out in the heartland somewhere, a thousand miles from here. It’ll buy us some time.”
“It wasn’t Wisconsin, was it?”
Carroll ignored the crack. “The mayor wants this guy.”
“I heard that.”
“I’m going to give you Cox,” Carroll said.
I was about to take a sip of my coffee, but I stopped. “What do you mean, ‘give’ me?”
“To help find this Angel character. I’ve had Cox put on special duty.”
“I don’t want him,” I said. “Why don’t you give your hero cop a trip to Disney World? A cop who doesn’t pat down a violent suspect, then ends up shooting him in the face in cold blood? I’ll pass.”
“It wasn’t cold blood.”
“Whatever. I wasn’t there.”
“You need help on this.”
I took the sip. “Give me Noon.”
“Noon? What do you mean, noon?”
“Patrick Noon. The guy who stuck me in a bag for you. If you want to loosen up a cop for me, give me Patrick Noon. Or is he still tied up guarding Rebecca Gilpin’s hospital room? Is that how our tax dollars are spent?”
“We’re trying to keep this thing contained.”
“Meaning what? Cox knows too much and Patrick Noon doesn’t?”
Carroll worked a knuckle until it cracked. “Let me talk to Remy Sanchez.”
“Sanchez would love it if you’d talk to him. He’s not happy about being kept in the dark. You’re containing this thing right up the rear, Tommy. How about the mayor just comes clean and explains to the city that we’ve got a problem and we’re working on it? It’s amazing how the truth can simplify matters. He should be unbottling this thing.”
“We’re getting fingers in a fucking box,” Carroll said. “Marty Leavitt doesn’t think that’s going to make him look real good right now.”
“Well, Mr. Marty has to start backing away from the political mirror.”
“This isn’t going to make anyone look good,” Carroll said. “It’s getting out of hand. I want it shut down now.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but Carroll’s intercom buzzed. The commissioner practically destroyed the machine crashing his hand down on it. “What!”
It was Stacy. “Mayor Leavitt’s on line one, sir.”
Go figure.
Carroll snarled into the intercom, “Tell him to sit on it for a minute. I’ll be with him.”
“Sir?”
“Tell him to hold on.”
The intercom clicked off. Carroll looked across the desk at me. “It’s Monday. Byron got grabbed on Saturday. It’s not going to surprise me if we hear from Nightmare again today, one way or another. Go find him. You’re a pain in the ass, but you’re a good bloodhound. Just go find this Angel character. Sniff him out and give him to me. And forget the Patrick Noon business. You might be Harlan’s kid, but you don’t run my police force. I’m putting Cox on this. He’s a good cop. Plus he’s motivated.”
“McNally?”
“Exactly.”
“That kind of motivation isn’t always so good,” I said. “I mean it, Tommy. Don’t saddle me with a man I don’t trust. I’m not working with Cox. I’ll go kick down some doors and let you know what I find behind them. What you do with it is your business. Consider this a gift from me to the city I love. But I can take the gift back anytime and go home. It wouldn’t be the first time I walked away from a client.”
“Your old man was a fucking mule, too.”
I stood up. “Now, Tommy, don’t start with the compliments.”
23
I SLIPPED INTO THE COURTROOM AND TOOK A SEAT IN THE REAR PEW. There were twenty long pews in all, room for at least a hundred onlookers. Besides me, three people were present.
A woman had misstepped coming out the door of a sporting-goods store, where she had just purchased enough gear to tackle Everest on her own. Juggling all the bags had allegedly contributed to the misstep. She hadn’t seen the yellow tape on the edge of the step, nor the sign that read, BEWARE OF STEP, and she’d twisted her ankle. From what I could piece together, she felt she should have been given a verbal warning by the shopclerk or been encouraged to take the bags outside in two trips. Or maybe chaperoned out of the damn store in a miniature hot-air balloon. The ankle had somehow led to a neck brace (Exhibit A) as well as severe interference with the woman’s livelihood, which had something to do with the music-video industry. She was sitting at the plaintiff’s table, legs crossed, wagging a foot incessantly. The foot was adorned with no less than a four-inch heel.
The lawyer arguing the case for the sporting-goods store was named Lance Jennings. He had promised me on the phone that we could talk at ten-thirty. I was giving him until eleven. The judge called a break at ten-fifty-two. I introduced myself to Jennings.
“She’s wearing stiletto heels,” I said.
“Oh, I know. The champagne’s already cold on this one. I’m going to ask the judge to have her go up into the witness stand in those beautiful stupid shoes, then step back down. In front of the jury. I just k
now she’s going to wobble.”
We went to a coffee shop. “I don’t drink coffee anymore,” Jennings said, shooing my money away. “Acid reflux.” He asked for a cup of hot water and produced his own tea bag from a small container in his briefcase. “Green tea. I’m becoming a damn Chinaman.” I ordered a cup of the acid reflux.
I had told Jennings on the phone that I wanted some information about the Roberto and Gabriella Diaz divorce. After dunking his tea bag in his cup, the lawyer produced a blue manila folder from his briefcase.
“Sweet women marry assholes. Don’t ask me why. This Diaz was a real hard-on. Paranoid, a classic. Thought everyone was out to persecute him and rip him off. First thing out of his mouth in court was that his wife and I were ganging up on him and we were out to get him. I think he eventually included the judge in the conspiracy. Or maybe it was his own lawyer, I can’t remember. He would just go off. A real trigger temper.”
“I understand you were able to get a restraining order on him.”
The lawyer poked at his tea bag with a spoon. “Piece of cake. History of violence, no inkling of remorse. Plus, I was the prime witness to the beating he gave his wife.”
“With the vacuum-cleaner hose?”
“These were no love taps. It was hard plastic. The prick was really whipping her with it.”
“He supposedly also beat Gabriella with an iron.”
“She told me. This is a man who cannot be trusted with domestic appliances. When I intervened, he turned on me. I still have a buzzing in my ear from it. I’ll take it to my grave. The bastard.”
“So what did you think when you heard it was Diaz who shot up the parade the other day?”
Jennings answered immediately. “I felt good that I helped separate him from his wife and daughter. I felt maybe I saved their lives.”
“So then it didn’t surprise you?”
“The shooting? I was horrified, of course, like everyone else. But when I heard it was Diaz? That’s what you’re asking? What can I tell you, it made sense to me. This guy had rage, Mr. Malone. Serious rage. I feel horrible for the people he shot. I guess you can’t put out a restraining order to keep someone away from everyone else in the world. I guess that’s called prison.”
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