The Woman Who Knew Too Much

by Thomas Gifford

  It had gone way, way beyond the bad dream stage.

  He girded himself, got up, and went over to the corpse. How in the name of sweet Jesus was he going to explain this?

  Naturally the man’s billfold was in his hip pocket, which necessitated a prolonged bout with the dead weight in order to extract it and learn his unwanted guest’s identity.

  Vincenzo Giraldi. Of Queens.

  It meant nothing to him.

  He needed help. There was only one place to turn, like it or not.

  Well, he didn’t like it. He didn’t like the feeling of his brain unraveling. His nervous system was fraying. When he thought about things, his psyche began to hurt as much as his body. Impossible. Who was this guy? He frowned at Vincenzo Giraldi. Why wasn’t this idiot home asleep in his own bed? Why couldn’t anything—ever—be easy?

  He called Lefferts, who sounded sleepy. Cunningham had some trouble making himself understood. Finally the editor had grasped the essentials. “You sound funny, man,” Lefferts said. “Hey, you know, it’s the middle of the fuckin’ night—”

  “You’re right, I do sound funny. You’d never believe how funny I feel. You get the manuscript?”

  “Yeah, sure, fine, no prob—”

  “Well, everything’s going crazy. People are getting killed. Just sit on the damned thing and … well, if anything happens to me, go for it, publish the damned thing, call press conferences, call Walter Cronkite and the Times and whoever owns CBS this week.”

  “Boy, you really sound weird, Charlie. You on something or what?”

  “Listen to me, asshole, I’ve got a dead guy I don’t know from Adam sitting in my favorite chair, and he’s staring at me. I gotta get outa here. Tell Julie Christie my last thoughts were of her.”

  “Hey, you better get some sleep, man—”

  Charlie Cunningham hung up on him. He put on his raincoat and took an umbrella from the closet doorknob. He sighed and said good-bye to poor Vincenzo Giraldi, then limped into the street in search of a cab.

  The door to the Bassinetti house stood open, the rain blowing in across the entry hall carpet. Cunningham stopped at the last moment, his finger poised above the bell. Why was the door open? He closed his umbrella and pushed through into the hallway. He heard some music. He went quietly down the hall and stood in the doorway.

  She stood by the couch, watching him. She’d been crying, but had apparently stopped. She put her finger to her lips and motioned with her other hand to be quiet, beckoned him into the room. She handed him a heavy statuette of the Goddess Kwan-Yin, which usually decorated an end table. “Hit him,” she whispered, and nodded toward the deck. A man was kneeling beside a body. Hell, just another body. Her voice was insistent, almost hypnotic, commanding him. There was something smeared across the front of her nightgown, but all he could see were her large erect brown nipples poking through her wet nightgown. He had no idea what was going on, but nothing seemed to make any difference anymore. He felt her hand on his back pushing him across the room. The kneeling man hadn’t looked up. She kept pushing until he stood beside him.

  “Hit him!” she hissed.

  He lifted Kwan-Yin above his own head and brought it down as hard as he could in his weakened condition. Just before impact the man’s head turned a fraction of an inch and Cunningham saw that he wore an eye patch.

  There was a solid thud as the statuette whacked into the head. The man slumped forward and sprawled across the body of the evening’s second corpse.

  Cunningham sat down while she got him a brandy. It didn’t seem like a good time to tell her that he had a corpse of his own waiting at home. He socked back the brandy and she poured him another. She stood before him, hands on hips, waiting for him to shape up. She’d slipped into gray wool slacks, a silk blouse, and a heavy sweater that hung below her hips.

  “Who’s the dead man?” he asked, throat and belly on fire with the brandy. “Who’s the other guy, for that matter? Who killed Pepper?”

  “The dead man killed Pepper,” she said. Her eyes bored into him, as if she were looking for cracks in his nervous system.

  “And who killed him?”

  “I did.”

  “Jesus! Who did I hit?”

  “A man called Greco. He was here this afternoon with a Miss Blandings.” Her voice was festooned with sarcasm. “Ring a bell?”

  “Oh, God

  “I have no idea what he came here for tonight, and I certainly didn’t have time to find out. But he had to be nosing around for the same reason they were here for this afternoon. Now listen to me, Charlie. We’ve got to stick to our plan … and we’ll have to get rid of this body. We must get it down to the car and dump it somewhere—”

  “What about Greco?”

  “I don’t know, I’m thinking. He doesn’t look awfully good at the moment. You probably fractured his skull. First, we get the other body out of the way—”

  “Christ, how can you be so calm?”

  “Because I’m a homicidal maniac, you fool. Now let’s get moving before Greco wakes up.”

  The corpse provided a considerable challenge. With his various injuries, Cunningham found himself unable to carry or drag him for any distance. There was no strength in his wrist. And the damned woman had looked at his ear bandage and refused to ask him what happened. Cold-blooded bitch …

  “This isn’t working,” she said. “You’re hopeless. We’ll have to drop him—”

  “What? Drop him where?”

  “Over the railing, of course. Quickest way.”

  Cunningham shuddered. He peered over the railing. Far below, the rain bounced and danced on the shiny bonnet of the Rolls.

  “Come on,” she said, “hurry up.” She was tugging at the corpse of Irwin Friborg. He reached down, got the dead weight under the arms, hoisted, then slid his grasp down to the hips and lifted. His ankle gave way under the weight, he slipped forward into one of the huge pots and lost control of the late Mr. Friborg, who plummeted over the railing. His arms flailed in the rain like a bottom-heavy bird trying to take flight. Then his descent was abruptly interrupted by the driver’s front fender of the Rolls. Friborg bounced sluggishly and landed on his back in a deep puddle, one arm outstretched. He looked like he was waving good-bye.

  Cunningham slowly followed her down the back stairway, trying to ignore her orders to hurry up. The rain was heavier, if anything, and he was getting soaked again.

  “My God, look, just look at that fender!”

  “I didn’t aim him,” he shouted back, still trotting carefully behind her.

  “If you had, you’d have missed!” She unlocked the trunk and ducked back out of the rain. “Come on, what are you waiting for? Get him into the trunk!”

  He pulled and tugged, and dripping with sweat as well as rain, finally lifted the legs up into the cavernous interior and slammed the lid. The traffic on the FDR was so loud it seemed to be running in one ear and out the other. He came back to her, leaned against the wall, out of breath.

  “What about Greco?” he asked.

  “Come back upstairs …”

  Gasping, he followed her. “What are we gonna do?”

  She stood in the kitchen, dabbing at her face with a fresh towel. “Kill him,” she said.

  “I won’t do it,” he said, shaking his head.

  “He knows about us. He knows everything—why do you think he came here? Now don’t argue with me, you’ll bloody well do as you’re told.”

  She went into the dining room, picked up the .45, held it out to him.

  He took it. He watched her go to the deck.

  “Oh, damn!” she said, stamping her foot.

  He went to the deck and looked down and sighed with relief.

  Greco was gone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  FOR A WHILE HE saw two of everything, which made it all a little dicey on the drive through the rain to the Village. Once he got to Fifth Avenue he was all right. It was just past three o’clock and there wasn’t any traf
fic. It was like having the city to himself, and he needed every damn inch of it.

  He parked in front of a fire hydrant and looked up at her windows. It hadn’t occurred to him to go anywhere else. Now that people were getting killed, it was a whole new ball game. First thing you did, you made sure your partner was all right. So, why did she have all the lights on in the middle of the night?

  He leaned on her buzzer. His legs weren’t too good yet, but that was to be expected. Just so he didn’t start throwing up. He buzzed again and left his finger on the button. He heard a window opening, and stepping back out into the rain, looked up.

  “It’s me,” he called. “Greco.” The sound of his voice felt like a wedge being driven into a frontal lobe. “Lemme in, Slats, I’m gonna keel over out here.”

  He heard her answering buzz, lunged unsteadily through the door.

  She found him sitting on the steps halfway to the second floor. “Are you all right? What are you doing?”

  She sounded okay. She was okay.

  “Praying. Waiting for a St. Bernard. I don’t know what I’m doing.” He stood up, grabbed the banister and pulled himself the rest of the way.

  “You look awful—”

  “You’re a vision. I gotta sit down. Keep that goddamn bird away from me.”

  “Come in,” she said. She’d never been so glad to see anyone in her life. She took his arm and felt him lean on her. “What happened to you?”

  He laughed, winced, and collapsed on the sofa.

  “What is that?” he said, pointing, squinting.

  “Oh, well, that’s a piece of ear—”

  “Of what?”

  “Just an earlobe. I thought I ought to keep it as evidence—”

  “Works for me.” He looked up at her. His vision was blurring again. “You’re strangely beautiful. Both of you.”

  “Are you drunk? You don’t smell drunk—”

  “Tell me, whose ear is that?”

  “It’s a long story. Oh, God, you’ve got blood all over your neck. What happened?” She knelt on the couch beside him and peered at his head. “You’ve been sapped!”

  “Please don’t make me laugh.”

  She touched the matted hair and he jerked away, flinching. She stood up and cinched and knotted the belt of her robe. “I’m going to clean your head, you just stay put.”

  “Who used to be connected to this ear, Slats?”

  “Charlie Cunningham.” She headed off to the bathroom.

  Greco closed his eyes. Somehow that only made things worse.

  He sat quietly while she washed the wound with warm water. She brought him a glass of water and two Advil. He gulped them down and leaned back on the couch, smiling up at her.

  “That’s good work, Slats. I feel a hundred percent better.” He took her hand and squeezed it, held on for an extra moment. “Thanks,” he said. “Now sit down. It makes my head hurt to look up.”

  She sat down at the other end of the couch. She couldn’t stop smiling. “I’m so glad you’re here, Peter, really I am. I’ve been calling you and calling you. Are you all right now?”

  “I’m fine. Now tell me about this ear—”

  “In a minute. What happened to your head?”

  He told her. Then she told him. It was four o’clock.

  “I don’t get it,” she said, mystified by the pattern that had to be there but remained resolutely hidden.

  “It’s a mosaic,” he said. He shrugged. “I just keep trying to see the picture but it won’t come clear. Thing that worries me now is time. And old Charlie doesn’t sound like he’s in very good shape. Mentally or physically. I mean this is one desperate guy … that’s the kind of guy really scares me—”

  “So that little buck and wing you were doing when you went off to shoot pool was just an act! I don’t need protecting from the harsh realities, Peter—”

  “I guess not.” He tried not to look at the earlobe, which was wrapped in a baggie. “I promise not to protect you anymore, okay?” He smiled crookedly, his lip curling up, joining a thin scar below the black patch.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m a full partner in this, the senior partner, in fact. Now, about Charlie Cunningham—he really seemed sort of crazy, like he wasn’t thinking straight at all.”

  “What bothers me is there’s too many shooters in this game, you need a scorecard. We got a dead man Mrs. Bassinetti says she killed—who was he? He breaks in, shoots her dog, but what did he want from her? Does it have anything to do with Cunningham?”

  “It must.”

  He nodded slowly. “Sure. But what? It’s a violence matrix, but what does it mean? Then someone sneaks up behind me and knocks me for a loop, but it wasn’t Mrs. B. She had to know who it was, she was standing right there … but who was it? Cunningham was ready for a hospital when he left here, by the sound of it … so who and what else is she involved with? Then I wake up and the body’s gone, Mrs. B is gone, the guy who hits me is gone, I’m all alone with a dead dog. I get up seeing at least two of everything and walk out the front door and drive away. Getting back to you, Cunningham says he saw two guys get out of a car and follow you to Bradley’s. Who would be following you? Who could have a reason? Cunningham knows you’ve stumbled into the murder thing, let’s say he did tell Mrs. Bassinetti—but when he came out of the Strand he made two calls. Who did he call besides Mrs. B? Did that call produce two guys tailing you? Was it Z? And these two guys are still out there. If they were watching you a few hours ago, they’re watching now. Which means they now know I’m in this too. Yet they haven’t made a move. They’re just watching … but why? What do they want? What do they know about you that makes them watch?”

  “It’s got to be the murder plan,” she said. She was too tired to connect any of the dots. “My brain is tired,” she said in a Gumby voice.

  “We need some sleep. I’m trying to think about tomorrow but I’m drawing a blank. Let me crash on this couch, Slats. I don’t really want to drag the wreckage home—”

  “You’re supposed to stay here.”

  She went to the bedroom and brought back a blanket and a pillow. She was fussing over him when he put his hand on her arm. “Go get some sleep. I’m just fine.”

  “Look, it’s been a weird night. I got pretty scared and … well … could I sleep out here with you? Boy, I feel like a wimp—I just don’t want to be alone. Can I?”

  He grinned and made a space for her.

  She tucked her robe tight and lay down beside him. “Am I an idiot? Am I crowding you?”

  “Relax. You’re not an idiot, you’re not crowding me.”

  She burrowed down against him, her back to him. She felt his arm resting across her. “Sometimes I snore.”

  “I can outsnore you any night.” He sighed deeply.

  The rain kept drumming on the deck.

  “You know, Peter, you really do jump in with both feet, don’t you? I mean, you didn’t have to go to Bassinetti’s tonight, you went on your own. You could have gotten yourself killed—”

  “Don’t romanticize me, Slats. I didn’t know anything was going to happen … it was just something to do—”

  “Sure, sure, something to do.” She lay quietly for a moment, listening to the rain, watching it streak the windows. Ed shifted on his perch. Cunningham’s ear had apparently satisfied his killer instinct for the night. “You still awake?”

  “Yeah, My head aches. I’m tender. Be very gentle with me, okay?”

  “Who are you really? And what happened to your eye? Do you mind my asking?”

  “Nope.”

  “You don’t seem like a cop, you don’t strike me as much of an organization man.”

  “Ah, now you begin to see the essential Greco,” he said. She felt his breath whispering at her hair. “I’m not much of an organization man, I’m a troublemaker, they’ve been telling me that all my life. I guess that’s why I’ve got only one eye. It all comes down to ego. I’ve had plenty of time to think about it the last few
years. Thing is, I’ve got way too much ego for my own good. See, I spent most of my career undercover, I wasn’t just your everyday cop. Undercover,” he mused, “it’s a strange, kinda unreal life, right on the edge of something bad happening all the time. You can understand better than most people, maybe—it’s a little like being an actor. You pretend to be someone you’re not, but the play is always changing without warning, everybody’s always improvising … sometimes the line begins to blur, you start becoming the person you’re pretending to be. Anyway, you gotta have a real king-sized ego problem to go undercover. You gotta believe you can handle anything, no matter what goes down—you’re most alive when it’s most dangerous, because nothing’s too tough, nothing’s too dangerous, not for you, ’cause you’re the best there is—and that’s all ego, pure ego, whatever you think you’re proving.

  “But that wasn’t enough for this guy—oh, no, not for Greco. I found out I was in the middle of a big narcotics scam going on within the department, cops stealing confiscated drugs and dealing them, sometimes back to the Mafia and sometimes through their own connections. Get it? Real sleazy.

  “Now you gotta understand, I was a good cop, I was liked, y’know. I did a damn good job. I was a cop’s cop, one of the boys. So I saw this real bad thing going down—not the penny ante stuff every cop was in on back then—this was major and I went along with it, a major drug ring—cops wasting guys with big shipments, Colombians, Mafia, anybody, and selling their goods. I even made some money and got myself a broker down on Wall Street. But then a coupla kids got hit by a coupla cops I knew, guys I drank beer with and went to the ball games with, but they blew these two kids away like it was another day at the office. And my ego got into the game, see?

  “I coulda just looked the other way, figured what the hell? But I couldn’t. I had to do something, push myself into the foreground. It takes a huge ego to betray your fellow officers, the guys who were your best friends, your family. That’s what these guys were, these cops—they were my family, I loved these guys. But I went to a couple reporters I knew and got the story to them—once they knew the names and dates and places, I had my insurance, so I wasn’t scared to go to Internal Affairs, and I gave them all the same stuff. They didn’t have any choice, they had to do something.