“Yeah,” she said. “He’s dead and gone. But hey, listen, kiddo. He was serious about bumping you off. I made sure of that. If it hadn’t been him, it would’ve been you.”
Joy set down the coffee cup with a hollow clunk. “Yes.”
“He chose to play this game. We just played it better than him, that’s all. You practiced the golden rule: do unto others before they get the chance to do unto you.”
This line, at least, did coax a smile from her client. Bonnie was satisfied with that.
“You got the phone on you?” she asked.
“The one you gave me? Yes.”
Joy dug in her pocket and handed over a TracFone that Bonnie had picked up at Rite Aid. Bonnie dumped it into her purse and gave Joy a new phone, same make and model, and equally cheap and disposable.
“This one’s activated, but it’s never been used. No call history. I’ll reach you on it in a couple days so we can work out a meet. You know, so you can pay me the rest of my fee. It’s thirty grand, remember.” Not long ago she had raised her going rate; everything cost more these days.
“Blood money,” Joy murmured.
Bonnie was getting a little pissed off. “Yeah, that’s right. Money that stopped him from shedding your blood. You knew this was how it would play out. I didn’t come to you, remember? You came to me.”
“Yes. I did.”
“And you did the right thing.” She lowered her voice. “You’re just freaking out a little. It’s natural. No biggie. But things will be fine. Just fine.”
She hoped this would prove true. She stood, shouldering her purse.
“Gotta get moving. There’s stuff I need to do. Plus there’s always a chance the cops have already noticed the unlocked door and found the body, in which case they might be on their way over. Needless to say, it wouldn’t be too good if they found me here.”
The tremor that passed through Joy Krauss was almost strong enough to qualify as a shudder. “No,” she whispered.
It wasn’t unusual for a client to go blood simple on her, but Gil Krauss’s widow seemed more poleaxed than most.
Bonnie took one last stab at reassurance. “All you need to do is hold it together for the next few hours, and it’ll be all over. Okay? Just a few hours.”
Joy didn’t answer. Her gaze was fixed on Bonnie’s jacket.
She looked down and saw a long smear of red on one nylon flap. It would be nice to think it was ketchup. It wasn’t.
She must have picked up some blood while rifling the body. Damn. She’d liked that jacket, too.
Bonnie didn’t say anything. Neither did Joy. Really, there was nothing to say.
She turned and left the kitchen. As she was opening the front door, Joy spoke up from where she sat.
“I don’t know how you can deal with it,” she said in a low, frightened tone. “With ... with death.”
Bonnie shrugged. “It’s a living.”
As an answer, it was utterly inadequate, but it was all she had.
4
The jacket went into another trash bin, this one hidden behind a Whole Foods store that was still under construction. Bonnie pushed it way down among the refuse. Maybe she could have cleaned the stain off, but she wasn’t taking any chances. The things they could do in forensic labs these days were pretty amazing—and downright scary if you had something to hide.
Back in the Jeep, she headed in the general direction of Brighton Cove, where she owned half of a little duplex on Windlass Court, a real fashionable address, right near the railroad tracks. But she didn’t stop there. She kept going.
In Algonquin, just south of Brighton Cove, she slotted the Jeep into a space behind a store that sold used timepieces, called Second Hand. Get it?
She walked a block and a half through a mist of rain to a brick apartment building, climbed the outside stairs, and rapped on the door of unit 2A.
After a half minute, the door opened on Patrol Officer Bradley Walsh of the Brighton Cove Police Department.
“Where’d you disappear to?” he asked. “I was hoping we could catch dinner.”
She went inside fast, because it wasn’t smart to loiter in his doorway.
“Got stuck on a job,” she said as the door closed behind her.
“Doing what?”
“Tailing a guy who may or may not be cheating on his wife.”
“Sounds like a fun night.”
“Oh, yeah. Snore.”
“Care to give names?”
“You know I never tail and tell.”
Naturally she couldn’t tell him what she’d really been up to. He was a small-town cop whose most dangerous assignment on any given day was herding a flock of jaywalking geese across the street. How would he react if he knew that less than two hours ago she’d been rifling a dead man’s pockets? She didn’t have to ask the question. She knew.
He lived in a two-room apartment that was much tidier than the slovenly shit hole she called home. The living room was decked out in fake ferns, art prints from Kmart, and two goldfish in a bowl, whose names were Turner and Hooch. Scattered wireless speakers played low music throughout the premises—a Pandora radio channel, easy listening stuff. Elevator music. Bonnie hated it but hadn’t said so, mainly because she hadn’t been asked.
“You’re soaked,” he observed. “Still parking a mile away?”
“It’s more like a quarter mile. What can I say? I’m the cautious type.”
Though there was little chance the Algonquin cops would pay attention to her Jeep, she didn’t want an alert patrol unit making a connection between her and a member of the Brighton Cove PD. It would do Brad no good at all if anyone figured out he was dating her.
They’d been seeing each other for six months, but almost never in public. On the rare occasions when they did go out, it was always to some distant spot like Atlantic Highlands, where there was little chance of being recognized. They never went shopping together or went to the movies or got a cone at the local ice cream parlor, or did any of the things normal couples did. That was okay. It was Bonnie’s first clandestine relationship, and sneaking around made it even hotter.
Brad was a good guy, too. Totally straightforward, not a user, not a manipulator, like a certain former boyfriend she could name. No, she’d finally hooked up with somebody who would be completely straight with her about everything. This time the deceit was all on her side.
“You shouldn’t be going around without a coat in this weather,” Brad said reproachfully.
She’d had a jacket until she’d left it in a dump bin. “Aw, you know me—I got ice water in my veins. Don’t even feel the cold.”
“Let’s warm you up anyway.”
He drew her close and gave her a long kiss. When he pulled away, he was frowning. “You taste like french fries.”
“Mickey D’s.”
“That stuff will kill you.”
“It’ll have to get in line. Behind your boss, at least.”
“Dan doesn’t want to kill you.”
“Nah, he just wants me in a six-by-nine cell for life.”
“You know, I sometimes get the impression you don’t like the chief.”
“What’s to like? The guy’s got all the charm of a urinal cake.”
“You’re a girl. What do you know about urinal cakes?”
She shrugged. “I hear things.”
He followed her into the bedroom. She kicked off her shoes and unzipped her jeans. They had been together long enough that undressing in front of him was no longer an act of seduction.
“Dan’s just doing his job, as he sees it,” Brad said, lingering by the bedroom door.
“If his job as being an asshole, mission accomplished.”
“That’s not really fair to him.”
“How fair would he be to you if he found out me and you’ve been shacking up?”
“With you, he’s got a blind spot. I admit that. Nobody’s perfect.”
Bonnie chuckled. “Officer Walsh, your loyalty to
your superior is admirable.”
She wriggled out of her shirt, the one that basically proclaimed she was a bitch. She liked it because, you know, truth in advertising.
In her bra and panties, she sneaked a glance at herself in the mirror over his bureau. Lately she had been making more of an effort to stay in shape. She’d never been a big one for hitting the gym, but dating a younger guy with washboard abs had a way of changing her perspective on the virtues of working out. She thought she looked pretty damn good for a woman of thirty. Brad was fitter than she was, which kinda bugged her. Still, she hadn’t heard any complaints.
She couldn’t say exactly what had changed her mind about Brad. For a long time she’d put up an impenetrable wall of resistance to his advances. She hadn’t wanted to risk getting him in trouble with his boss, and more than that, she just couldn’t see herself hooking up with a guy she thought of as still a kid, and a Boy Scout at that. In her more cynical moods she’d thought it would be like dating Opie.
But maybe Opie was what she needed. Who could say? What did women want, anyway? She sure as hell didn’t know.
The bottom line was that one night, lonely and bored, she’d shown up at Brad’s door. And yeah, she’d already known where he lived. So the idea of paying him a visit must have been crouching at the back of her mind, at least.
Lonely and bored. But to be really honest about it, the operative word was bored. She could handle loneliness. She’d been immersed in it for most of her life, and it felt natural to her, the way the goldfish bowl must feel natural to Turner and Hooch. Boredom, however, was a different matter. To escape boredom, she was willing to take reckless and stupid chances, like moonlighting as an assassin or dating a cop who would feel duty-bound to put her ass in prison if he ever found out.
“Dan was talking about you just today,” Brad said, breaking the silence.
“Yeah? What’d I do this time? Poison a puppy? Push an old lady down the stairs?”
“You cut off a kid’s balls.”
She turned to look him in the face. “Say what?”
“Some kid. Gangbanger up in Newark. He was pulling a B ’n E, got chewed up by a K-9 when he tried to book. They took him to the ER for repairs, and that’s when they found out his dick had lost its two best friends.”
She was having trouble following the story, maybe because of all the acronyms. “The dog did that?”
“No, it happened a while ago. A month or so. The wound was almost healed.”
“You’re saying he was ... neutered?”
“Fixed. Spayed. Not professionally, either. This was amateur work.”
“So who did it?”
“He wouldn’t say. Which is weird. Why the heck would he protect a person who did that to him?”
“Because the person in question could do a lot worse.”
Brad seemed dubious. “I guess.”
“If this went down in Newark, how does Dan even know about it? It’s not exactly his jurisdiction.”
“One of the guys in Homicide and Major Crimes is a friend of his. He knew Dan would be interested.”
“Why? He in the market for the same kind of surgery?”
“He’s put out the word that he wants to be kept up to date on the Long Fong Boyz. Remember them?”
She flashed on a memory: a machine gun stuttering, bodies dropping, screams. “Um, yeah, think I do. What’ve they got to do with some nutless wonder in Newark?”
“He had a tat identifying him as one of the gang. Chinese dragon. It’s their symbol.”
“Okay.” She sat down on the bed, folding her legs under her. “And just for shits ’n’ giggles, how does Danny think this relates to me?”
“He knows the Boyz were gunning for you a couple of years ago. And that ever since, they’ve been turning up dead.”
“The mob’s doing that. Because the LFB offed that Mafia guy, Frank Lazzaro.”
“Yeah, that’s what the newspapers say. But Dan’s pal in Newark thinks some of the hits aren’t mob related. He thinks there’s another player involved.”
“Another player? Who?”
“Dan thinks it’s you.”
“You gotta be shitting me.”
“Look, it’s not totally crazy.”
She tilted her head. “It’s not?”
Brad crossed the room and sat beside her, but she noticed he stared straight ahead, not meeting her gaze. “You could have a motive. That’s all.”
“Terrific. So Dan thinks I’m going around whacking gangbangers in my spare time.”
He shrugged. “It’s a theory.”
“And this theory includes me turning the latest victim into a soprano?”
“It doesn’t work like that. If you lose your testicles after puberty, you still have a normal speaking voice. I saw it on the Discovery Channel.”
“Good to know. Can we stay on point?”
“Yeah, Dan thinks you could’ve mutilated this kid. His exact words were: I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Huh. How about you, buckaroo?”
“How about me what?”
“Would you put it past me?”
“Oh, hell, Bonnie.” She knew he was flustered, because for him this was a strong oath. “I know you could never do anything like that. It’s Dan’s idea, not mine.” But he still wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“You said it wasn’t totally crazy.” She couldn’t let go of those words.
“If you look at it the way he does ... Like I said, he’s got a blind spot about you. But I know he’s wrong. And not just about any specific case. He’s wrong about the kind of person you are.”
“What kind is that?”
“You’re one of the good guys, Bonnie. Even if you don’t want to be.”
She heard the compliment—and the caveat. “Why wouldn’t I want to be?”
“Because you want to see yourself as an outlaw and a rebel. But deep down you believe in the same rules as everybody else. You just do your best to hide it.”
“Maybe I’m hiding more than you think,” she said a little recklessly.
“From other people, maybe. I know you for who you are.” He smiled. “But don’t worry. I love you anyway.”
It was the first time she’d heard those words from him. She was caught off guard, not sure what to say, so she did the first thing she could think of. She moved her hand to her bra strap and undid the hook.
“Don’t kid yourself, Walsh. I’m a bad, bad girl.” The bra fell away, and her lips brushed his ear. “Bad to the bone ...”
5
Bonnie’s cell phone rang at eight in the morning, waking her with a tinny rendition of “A Hard Day’s Night.” She glanced at the other side of the bed to see if Brad had heard it too, but there was no Brad. It was Saturday, and he’d left already. Lately, on the weekends, he’d been working the day shift, which began at seven.
She plucked the phone out of her handbag. It was a Samsung Galaxy, and it was named Sammy, which was short for Sammy II: Son of Sammy. Sammy II, like his predecessor, wore a shocking pink plastic case that did nothing to diminish his rugged masculinity.
She glanced at the screen. Caller ID didn’t recognize the number, but she did. It was the throwaway phone she’d given to Joy Krauss.
Suddenly she had a feeling in her gut that, if translated into speech, would have been: Uh-oh.
“Bonnie? Bonnie?”
“It’s me, Joy. I’m here. What is it? What happened?”
A beat of silence. “I screwed up.”
Definitely not what she wanted to hear a client say. “Okay, Joy, take it slow.”
“It happened the way you said. The police came by at eleven thirty last night and told me about Gil. I didn’t overreact. I played it cool, like you told me to.”
“Good, good.” She’d never particularly cared for the expression “waiting for the other shoe to drop,” but she got it now.
“But I made a mistake. When they told me Gil was dead, I said his shop had been robbed bef
ore. But that was before they’d told me any details. It was even before they said he had been murdered.”
Bonnie shut her eyes.
“So they got suspicious, I guess. I didn’t realize at first. I mean, they were so nice to me.”
I’ll bet, Bonnie thought.
“I said there’d been robberies before, so I just assumed. But I don’t think they bought it.”
Bonnie was sure they hadn’t bought it. There were too many other ways to die. Even in a redlined district like Maritime, death by gunshot was a rare occurrence.
“And they kept me talking a long time.”
Without a lawyer ...
“They kept coming back to the robbery thing. That’s when I knew I’d messed up. I shouldn’t have said anything about that.”
“It’s not too bad, Joy. It’s manageable.” Gently, gently. “Why didn’t you call me sooner?”
“They were with me all night. I got home at six. And then—then I was scared maybe they could listen in on the call.”
“You’re using the burner I gave you, so how could they listen in?”
“I don’t know,” she snapped, her voice worn ragged. “Maybe they could intercept the signal if I made the call from the townhouse. Maybe they have listening devices outside, like in the movies. So I went to the beach. That’s where I am now. South Beach, where the snack shack used to be.”
The shack was a casualty of Hurricane Sandy. It had been replaced, in season, by a food truck. Bonnie wondered why her mind was running to irrelevancies until she realized she just didn’t want to deal with this. She forced herself to focus.
“Okay. How’d the cops leave things?”
“They want to talk to me some more.”
“You got a lawyer?”
“Gil had one, for business.”
“Get one of your own. A criminal defense lawyer. Chase Benedict’s got a good rep, and he lives in Maritime. Call him.”
“Won’t it look suspicious if I, you know, lawyer up?”
“It doesn’t matter how it looks. What matters is that you don’t say anything else they could use against you.”
“I’m scared, Bonnie. I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“Just keep it together. They’re wondering how you knew it was a robbery before they told you anything. It could have been a heart attack, car accident, whatever. They’re curious, that’s all. They’re not itching to arrest you. They just have questions.”
Bad to the Bone (Bonnie Parker, PI Book 3) Page 3