Speak of the Devil

by Richard Hawke

  “I need to see him, Betsy.”

  “Of course you do. Somebody always does. Wait here.”

  She disappeared down the hallway. I looked at a framed print of Grand Central Terminal on the wall, the print with the sunlight streaming through the cathedral windows as if heaven itself had just pulled up outside. A minute later, Tommy Carroll appeared at the end of the hallway. He was in silhouette and he filled the space. I heard his labored breathing before he spoke. “Come in, Fritz. I’m in my office.”

  The dark form turned and walked off. I followed. Betsy was standing at the open door to her husband’s home office as I emerged from the hallway. She gave me a plucky smile as I entered, then closed the door behind me.

  Tommy Carroll had loosened his tie and rolled his sleeves partway up his freckled arms. He was settling into a chair in front of a laptop computer. I noticed a short tumbler next to the laptop. Something brown, with a melted chip of ice. He hit some keys on the laptop, stared at the screen a few seconds, then pivoted the laptop in my direction. “You want to see what it’s come to?”

  I didn’t, really, but I knew I would. It was Philip Byron, of course. The picture was from the waist up. He was seated or standing in front of a red wall. His left eye was red and swollen, and he had what appeared to be several cuts above it and on his chin. He was holding up his left hand, which was covered with a gauze bandage. A trace of red had seeped through. His expression was somewhere between mortified and extremely grim. Or maybe despairing and angry. I didn’t really know the man. As Cox had said, the barrel of an Uzi rifle was planted against Byron’s temple. All that could be seen of the person holding the rifle was the arm. Outstretched to show as much of the rifle as possible, wearing what appeared to be a puffy black winter coat. Five million New Yorkers wear puffy black winter coats. Not that it mattered. We knew who the arm belonged to. Or, if not who owned the arm, then who had taken the picture. I knew the face. Even on the good brother, it was a disturbing face.

  “He wants ten million dollars or else he kills Byron. He also says he’ll kill more people. We’ve got twenty-four hours.” Carroll looked at his watch. “Just under. At five o’clock tomorrow, he tells us where he wants the money delivered.”

  “Five o’clock. That’s better than high noon.”

  “A punk like this likes to hide in the dark. He’ll want the money dropped somewhere at night.”

  “Is this going to happen?” I asked. “Is he going to get his ten million dollars?”

  Carroll hit a button on the keyboard and the image of Byron vanished. He hit another key and a new image came up. It was the face of Victor Ramos, with the addition of a thin mustache, above a slate board bearing a series of numbers and letters. But it wasn’t Victor Ramos. It was his twin brother. Angel Ramos’s mug shot.

  Carroll placed his finger on the screen just below Ramos’s chin. The liquid screen ballooned slightly.

  “He’s going to get his throat cut, that’s what,” Carroll said. “You or Cox, or me if I have to. We’re going to find him, and we’re going to take him out.”

  “We can’t do it that way, Tommy. You know that. If that’s your plan, I’m done here.”

  Carroll’s face grew crimson in a matter of seconds. “You’re not done until I say you’re done. Goddammit, Malone, I’ll take you out!” He punctuated this last sentiment by slamming his fist on the desk. The force made his tumbler fall to the carpet. He let it remain. Carroll’s shoulders and head were trembling as if he were caught up in his own private earthquake. Which, of course, he was.

  “Betsy told me,” I said.

  He glowered at me. “Told you what?”

  I said it again, slowly. “She told me.”

  This time he got it. We remained in silence a few seconds, then Carroll reached down and picked up the tumbler and set it back on the desk. He rubbed the spilled liquid into the carpet with his shoe. “She shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I squeezed it out of her,” I lied. “I had a hunch.”

  Carroll seemed to like that. “The great detective and his hunch.” He produced a bottle of Jameson’s from a desk drawer and poured a few fingerfuls into his tumbler. He barked out, “Lisbeth!” When the door behind me opened, he said, “Get me another glass, would you? Fritz here wants to drink to my health. What do you think about that, honey?”

  We said nothing while Betsy went off to fetch the glass. She came into the room and set it on Carroll’s desk. He tried to make eye contact with her, but she refused. She left without a word. I took a seat while Carroll poured out a shot.

  “I hope you like it neat,” he said, sliding the glass across the desk.

  I picked it up and tapped it against his. “To your health.” I thought of Charlie Burke’s toasts. He’d have been unimpressed.

  Carroll growled, “Just don’t tell me you’re sorry. I don’t want to hear that from anybody. I’ve got no damn room for pity. I hate pity.”

  We threw back our drinks like a couple of cowboys. Carroll refilled his, then aimed for my glass. I waved him off. “I’m good.”

  “Unless you want to be trapped with a drunken, pissed-off old man, you’d better leave.”

  “You should take the trip to Tortola, Tommy. Get away with Betsy and sit on your can for a few days. If not for you, for her.”

  He set down his tumbler, running his thumb back and forth along the rim before looking up at me. “I’ve already got the Post calling for my head. Now we’ve got a psycho out there ready to blow the deputy mayor’s brains out. And I’m supposed to go off and play in the sand?”

  “So far you’ve done a pretty good job of keeping the city from even knowing there’s a psycho out there. We know who he is now. We’ll get him. If we do it right, we’ll even get Byron out alive. Then you and the mayor can work up some sort of cutesy story about his fingers. A buzz-saw accident while he was out in the heartland helping his old pa bring in wood for the winter, whatever you want. It’ll all be over soon. Then take the damn vacation. It’s not going to kill you.”

  The words were out of my mouth before I could call them back. Carroll acknowledged them with a bemused look as he took another sip. “You see? If I tell people what’s happening to me, it’s going to be just like that. Everybody tripping over their tongues.”

  “As if that’s ever bothered you.”

  “No, you’re right. I got thicker skin than that.” He picked up a framed photograph from his desk. I couldn’t see what it was. His voice lowered. “They’ll railroad me right out of there, Fritz. You know they will. They’ll smell the blood. Leavitt, the papers, all of them. It’ll be ‘Thanks for the psycho, thanks for the Bad Apples, you really screwed up royal, here’s your gold watch, now get the hell out of here and go die somewhere else.’ ”

  “That’s pity,” I said.

  “That’s fact! Fucking Leavitt. He’s the one that really burns me. Candy-assed little playboy. That prick should have stayed in Brooklyn busting criminals. But he’s too big for that. He’s got to be goddamn mayor. Screwing his celebrity girlfriends and whatever the hell else he can get his hands on. Do you think Leavitt’s big goal was just to be mayor of New York City? No chance. This is a guy who doesn’t know when to stop. He’s that kind of politician. As far as Marty Leavitt’s concerned, he’s just stopping off here to piss on a few fire hydrants on his way up. The man has plans. Do you think he’s about to let this Bad Apple thing take him down? Not if he can pin the damn thing on me and give me the boot. And if word got out that I’m being eaten alive, it’d just give him one more way to hold me up as damaged goods.” He glanced at the photograph again, then set it back down. “I’m staying put. And we’re getting Angel Ramos. That’s all there is to it. If this Nightmare business explodes now, it could bring me and Leavitt down. What I’m telling you is that I’m not going down. Or when I do, it’s on my own terms. I’ve busted my ass all my life to get where I got. I don’t go out a loser. It’s just not going to happen.”

  He snatched u
p his drink. For just an instant, he looked like the healthiest man on earth.

  BEFORE I LEFT, I HAD CARROLL PRINT ME OUT A COPY OF ANGEL Ramos’s mug shot. Betsy Carroll showed me to the door.

  “You’re not much for keeping secrets, are you?” she said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Secrets can eat away at people, too. It would do him good to talk about it with someone.”

  “He didn’t want to talk about it, Betsy. He just wanted to yell.”

  She pulled open the door. “You’ve got to start somewhere.”

  I hadn’t been to my office since Wednesday, so I walked the eleven blocks up and over to Forty-first Street. I stopped off at a cash machine on the way and withdrew a thousand dollars. As I passed the library, I saw that the lions out front were each wearing an enormous Christmas wreath.

  There was a pile of mail under the slot, and the door plowed it as I pushed it open. It’s a small reception area, four chairs, a low black table covered with outdated magazines, one of those Don Quixote prints by Picasso. I pulled a man’s daughter from the paws of a serial rapist a number of years ago and he thanked me with a midtown office. Nothing fancy, but a convenient place to put my feet up and to meet with clients. There’s a receptionist’s desk but no receptionist. At least not on a regular basis. I hire one now and then for a day’s work when I’m feeling charitable. New York City’s temporary help comes in all sorts of varieties, and I consider it cheap entertainment. The rest of the time, when the desk is empty, I tell the waiting clients that my receptionist had to run out for an emergency. Margo and I took in a James Bond movie a few years back, and while Bond was playing cutesy with Miss Moneypenny for the jillionth time, Margo whispered in my ear, “If you had a Moneypenny, I’d kill you.” Before the night was out, we’d somehow transformed the name “Moneypenny” to “Dashpebble” and christened my nonexistent receptionist.

  The mail was mostly junk. Some of it was semi-junk, and I tossed those pieces onto Miss Dashpebble’s desk. The rest I dumped in the trash can next to the desk. I hadn’t emptied the trash can for a while. Maybe it was about time to get one of those entertaining temps in.

  I went into my office, which overlooks Bryant Park, behind the library. When the weather’s warm, the place is swarming with people. Junior executives from all over midtown come to the park at lunchtime and loosen their ties or pull their skirts up to the danger zone and soak in the rays. Not for nothing do I keep my binoculars handy.

  But a cold November Monday nearing seven o’clock? At a glance, I counted fourteen hardy souls bundled like Cossacks.

  The red light on my phone was blinking, so I checked my messages. One was from my mother in California. She can never remember my cell number. She sounded garrulous and a little angry. Pretty typical. She said she was going to hold the phone out so that I could hear “the mighty Pacific.” This was followed by ten seconds of silence. She came back on and said she was having a wonderful time, that she loved me and I should stay out of trouble. She gave a cackling laugh and hung up.

  There were a few calls about cases that I’d stuck on the back burner, then a familiar voice calling me “Fritzy boy.” It was Jigs. I put the message on speakerphone and dropped into my chair.

  “Most boring day of my life, I think. You should pay me double. I shadowed that half a brother of yours, like you asked. He was very polite on the subway in the morning. Gave up his seat to a one-armed lady. A real gentleman. But I don’t think he was sleeping with her. Too old, too fat, too black. Didn’t seem like Paulie’s type. I think I snooped out what you need, though. A woman he works with. They took lunch together at a Mexican place near their office. I’ve got it written down what they ate. He paid. No hand-holding, no footsies, but they seemed to have a lot to talk about. Then, around three-thirty, a coffee break in City Hall Park. This time she was crying. Paulie was patting her on the back like he was trying to burp a pet pooch. And for the hat trick, drinks after work. That’s where I am now. The Raccoon Lodge on Warren. They’re in a booth. I’m looking at the tops of their cheating heads as we speak. She’s got a name, too. It’s Annette Hartman. Redhead. Not bad. I wouldn’t kick her off the Ferris wheel. Husband’s name is Robert, but you play your cards right, I bet he’ll let you call him Bob. They live at eight seventeen West End Avenue, and I’ve got to say, Fritz, it shocks me that people actually pay you to find out this kind of thing. This is too easy. I don’t know why you’re not a millionaire by now. So look, if these lovebirds decide to go somewhere and flap their wings in private, I’m off the clock. I’ve got a call in to the homely and fair Allison from the Cloisters. Say a prayer for your favorite altar boy, Mac.”

  I’d scribbled down the information as Jigs was giving it to me. Next to “Annette Hartman,” I wrote, “crying.” Before I handed the name over to Phyllis, I’d want to check on it. Chasing after spouses has always felt to me like bottom-feeding. Charlie Burke calls it “bottom-line feeding.” It was a good thing Phyllis wasn’t asking for photographs. That kind of work depresses me.

  I pushed my chair back and put my feet up on the windowsill. Rodin got it wrong when he chiseled The Thinker. His guy looks like he might have been mulling over a tough chess move, but for real honest-to-goodness thinking, you’ve got to bring your feet up level with your head. So long as you don’t fall asleep, the cranium will start clicking.

  Click.

  I had to find Angel Ramos.

  Click.

  I had to find him before the next sundown.

  Click.

  The demand for ten million dollars told me one thing: Ramos was losing his cool. It was an irrational sum of money. Call it a hunch, but to me there seemed a desperate smell in it. Whatever had been the purpose of all the pussyfooting around with the “nun” giving us the finger at Gristedes, the original drop at the Cloisters, the million dollars being designated for the Convent of the Holy Order of the Sisters of Good Shepherd and all the rest if it, things had now gotten more blunt. We had two severed fingers in a box, and we had an Uzi jammed into the side of Philip Byron’s head. These recent events squared more clearly with the Angel Ramos I’d been getting to know, the punk who’d steal money from the collection plate and recruit his ten-year-old nephew to run drugs. Call it another hunch, but I didn’t get the feeling Angel Ramos was intending to pass along his latest ransom demand to nuns or monks or anybody else. This was a grab. This was it. This was the enchilada.

  My ploy with the Amigo Willy cards had gone bust. I’d figured a few crank calls, at least. I tried Donna Bia’s number again, still not sure what I’d say to her if she answered. She didn’t. I hung up without leaving a message. I looked at my watch. I glanced out the window. Finally, I looked at my feet. “You boys ready?”

  They offered no resistance. I picked up the phone and called the rental place I use, up on Fifty-second.

  “Saddle up my pony,” I said to the person on the other end. He wasn’t with the program, so I had to translate. I hung up and fetched my blackjack from my desk drawer. A gift from the old man. When he was a beat cop, he’d lifted it from a man who had been number two to take over one of the big Italian crime families. The mobster told him he called it Betty. Betty had cracked some pretty notorious skulls in her day. I lightly slapped the blackjack a few times against my palm. Even with taps, you can feel the bones beginning to worry.

  I went into the closet and pulled out my scratched-up bomber jacket and checked through the pockets to be sure I had my black watch cap. All set.

  On my way out the door, I told Miss Dashpebble to hold my calls.

  26

  SISTER MARY RYAN WAS SURPRISED TO SEE ME. SHE WAS IN HER STREET clothes again, and I wondered if she ever donned the penguin suit.

  She cracked, “I don’t suppose you’re here to give us our million dollars back.”

  “I would if I could, but I can’t.”

  I had been told by the nun who answered the door to wait in the front hallway. Sister Mary showed me
into the Great Room. I sat in the chair where Gary Harvey had sat while we were grilling him. From across the room, Jesus looked down at me wearily.

  The sister offered me tea and I accepted. By a seemingly invisible signal, the young nun appeared, and Sister Mary put in the order for a pot of tea. I gave the nun a simple smile and she blushed.

  “Natividad cannot stop talking about what took place here the other night,” Sister Mary said after the nun had left the room. “With every telling, the details get more and more exciting. The guns get bigger and bigger. She is especially glowing about your Irish friend.”

  “Jigs. Yes. Women do glow.”

  Sister Mary made a delicate tent of her fingers. “Sister Anne and I have been talking. We would like to contact Mr. Harvey. In the confusion of the other evening, we feel we didn’t tend terribly well to him. I believe very strongly in fate, Mr. Malone. I feel that fate led Mr. Harvey to Good Shepherd.”

  “A cold-blooded killer is what led Mr. Harvey to Good Shepherd.”

  “The Lord utilizes His agents.”

  “No offense, Sister, but the Lord has lost control of that particular agent.”

  Sister Natividad floated into the room with a tray and all the tea goodies. She set the tray down on the table in front of Sister Mary. She said, “You must let it sleep.”

  “Steep, Natividad.”

  The nun’s blush was even richer than the last. She stole a glance at me as she left the room.

  “How old is she?” I asked.

  “Natividad is twenty.”

  “That seems young.”

  “It is.” She smiled. “The older we get, the younger it becomes.”

  “I mean to be a nun. I guess I don’t really know at what age a person can become a nun.”

  “Technically speaking, there are no restrictions. Of course, with a person who is not yet a legal adult, there has to be complete agreement from the parents or from the legal guardian. In Natividad’s case, she became a nun in the Philippines when she was seventeen. Earlier this year, her family moved to America, and she wanted to remain near them.”