He pressed his lips to hers briefly. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Dana watched him walk from the room, purposefulness in his stride. With any luck, the next time she saw him, he’d still be whole and safe and this whole business would be behind them. But she wasn’t holding her breath. The man out there had less to lose than he had before and he obviously had it in for Jonathan. How far would Moretti go to save himself and exact retribution? That’s the question that terrified her the most.
The meeting in Shea’s office was brief and to the point. “Where do we stand with this Moretti thing?” Shea asked. “Any proof, other than the word of an old rummy that he knew the priest?”
Jonathan said, “None. He didn’t consider Pee Wee’s conjecture proof. Did he show up this morning?”
“He came in after you left and disappeared.”
Probably long enough to find out that they were talking to Randall that morning. He had to figure they’d get something out of the old man one way or another. At the very least, he’d have to answer for not mentioning he knew Malone. At worst, he was the one responsible for Pierce’s death. For the fact that Moretti was still out operating without closer scrutiny, Jonathan blamed himself. If he’d told Shea about Pee Wee’s intimation that a cop was involved, they would have played it differently, made sure no one outside the operation knew what was going on. Actually, Jonathan had suggested that, but Shea had arranged things the way he wanted them anyway. Now, Moretti was on the loose God only knew where. Jonathan only hoped the folks at IAB had decided to follow him that day. Damn!
Martinez poked his head in the door. “The unit that went out to Moretti’s place says it looks like he cleared out.”
“Damnit to hell,” Shea said.
Jonathan ground his teeth together. If Moretti wanted to implicate himself as more than an innocent party in this he’d done a damn good job.
“We’ll take it from here, then, folks.” Jonathan’s gaze slid to the man who’d spoken, a man he recognized as being fairly high up in the rat squad food chain, but not the top. “If Moretti needs to be found, we’ll find him.”
If ? Jonathan wanted to say. It should be obvious to everyone in this room that Moretti had every intention of disappearing into the wind. But he held his tongue and bided his time. One thing he’d learned over the years was that if you didn’t ask permission to do something no one could refuse you. There might be hell to pay later, but more often than not it was worth it.
“If there’s anything we need from you, we’ll let you know,” the suit said, before walking from the room with an air of his own importance.
After he was gone, Shea turned to Martinez, who still stood in the doorway. “You and Jerry get busy working on those other names. For all we know Moretti isn’t in this alone. I’m sure the rest of you have something to do.”
Shea glanced directly at him when he said that. Sure, he had plenty to do, but it surprised him that Shea seemed to be giving him the okay to do it.
As they left the office, Mari whispered. “Am I mistaken, or did the boss just grow a set of balls in there?”
She didn’t need an answer to that, so he didn’t give her one. “Let’s get out of here.”
Dana had never been one to pace the floor much, but these last couple of weeks had changed that. She’d turned on the TV set, just to have some noise in the room that didn’t come from the boisterous couple copulating next door. Still she couldn’t seem to sit in one place for long without getting up and worrying the carpet. Thank God she’d had sense enough that morning to wear her sneakers instead of a pair of sandals. That way her feet were protected from whatever critters might be hiding in that rug.
A sudden knock on the door made her jump and her heartbeat triple. “Ms. Molloy. It’s Officer Cohen.”
“Y-yes,” she called back in as calm a voice as she could muster.
“Are you hungry? We’ve got some cheeseburgers.”
Something as mundane as putting some food in her stomach hadn’t occurred to her. She wondered where they’d magicked up this food from since she hadn’t heard the car either leave or come back. But she understood the necessity of keeping her belly full and her wits about her.
“Okay. Show me your badge at the peephole and your ID under the door.”
She thought she detected a note of humor in the officer’s voice as he said, “Just a moment, ma’am.”
She moved the chair out of the way so that she could look through the peephole. She decided there must be some defect in the glass, since she couldn’t make out any of the details on the badge Cohen showed her, but when he removed it, she saw the car out front clearly.
She looked downward to see if he’d slipped his identification under the door. As she watched, it slid under easily. There must have been a good inch and a half of space between the floor and the bottom of the door. She picked up the ID and scanned it. He’d been the one driving.
She opened the door and exchanged the ID for a white paper bag.
“How are you holding up?” Cohen asked.
“Pretty well, I guess.” She wasn’t about to confide in this man that she was half worried out of her mind, a tale he might feel compelled to carry back to Jonathan if asked.
“Don’t forget to lock up.”
“I won’t.”
He smiled encouragingly. “It won’t be long now.”
Another brave face, but no real news. If there were anything good to report, he was keeping it to himself. She shut the door, put the food on the bed then returned to lock up. Though the cheeseburger and fries smelled heavenly, she couldn’t bring herself to eat one bite.
Regardless of age, race or ethnicity, the most likely place for a man in trouble to take refuge was with his mama. Freddie Jackson had reminded Jonathan of that. But since Moretti’s mother had been dead for more than ten years, they tried his girlfriend’s apartment off Webster Avenue instead.
A unit in the area had been sent to watch the place until he and Mari got there. The two officers followed them inside as they went to an apartment on the third floor. They took up positions on the opposite sides of the door, weapons drawn, not taking any chances that Moretti might be inside and willing to fire on whoever was on the other side of the flimsy door.
Jonathan rapped on the door. “New York police detectives.” He waited a moment. No shotgun blasts or blasts of any kind followed. Instead, the door was opened partway by a pretty, petite black woman.
She gazed back at him. “Is Tommy with you?”
Both her softly spoken question and her appearance surprised him. He wouldn’t have though Moretti the type to venture over the color line, but stranger things had happened. What struck him most was the fear he saw in her eyes, not of him, but maybe of the situation. “He’s not here with you?”
She shook her head. “He left this morning.”
“Can we come in?”
She stepped back, opening the door wide enough for him to enter. The place was small. From the threshold he could see the living room and kitchen. No sign of Moretti. To the left was a hall that probably led to the bathroom and bedroom. “Do you mind if we look around?”
She gestured toward the back of the apartment. “Go ahead, but he’s not here.”
A quick sweep of the other rooms proved her right. “Do you know where he is?”
“He told me he was going to work.”
“But you didn’t believe him?”
She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “The last couple of weeks, he’s been here a lot, but he isn’t sleeping. He’s not eating. This morning he gave me this.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small key for a locker or safe deposit box. “I don’t know what it fits. He told me I’d know when I needed to.”
Jonathan took the key she extended toward him and put it in his pocket. How naïve could this woman be? She appeared to be in her early thirties, old enough to know that simply being Moretti’s brother cop didn’t mean he wished the m
an well. “Is there anything else you can tell us? Anywhere he might go?”
“Sometimes we’d go to the bar around the corner, but I doubt he’s there.” She paused, placing her hand on his sleeve. “I don’t know what he’s done, but I don’t want him hurt. Promise me you won’t hurt him.”
He scanned her face, this time finding both supplication and a kind of feminine determination he hadn’t expected. Something told him she knew exactly what kind of man she was involved with, and moreover exactly who he, Jonathan, was and how he fit into the scheme of things. If that were true, that made her shrewd, not gullible, as he was probably one of the few cops on the case who wouldn’t want Moretti taking the easy way out of this by either eating his gun or forcing some other cop to do it for him. If Moretti were guilty of more than concealing information, Jonathan wanted Moretti caught, tried, convicted and sentenced—somewhere the population would really object to having a cop in their midst.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Jonathan said. But really, the outcome of this was up to Moretti.
Thomas Moretti sat behind the steering wheel of his car parked in a cul de sac on a residential street on the edge of Brooklyn. The night was dark and moonless with the only illumination coming from the street lamps and the lingering lights in a few of the houses. It was over for him. He knew that. He’d known it before Amanda Pierce came sniffing around looking for answers that were better left uncovered. He’d known it was coming from the first day he took money to look the other way when he should have been doing his job. Other people might have the kind of luck that allowed them to get away with almost anything. He never had.
Once upon a time, he’d been a good cop, ambitious, proud to be on the force. Proud to have made something of himself in the wake of his youth and in Father Malone’s memory. He’d been partnered with a veteran cop who taught him everything about surviving on the streets—except what to do when your next partner puts a few hundred dollars in your hand and tells you it’s your cut to keep your mouth shut about the drug dealer he tricked you into helping him roust. He’d taken the money, which he kept for years in a tin can in his closet, but he’d immediately asked to be assigned another partner. It hadn’t occurred to him that a dirty cop was the worst type of enemy to have. His request coupled with a lack of explanation proved almost as damning as if he’d given one. He’d gotten his reassignment, but he’d also gained an enemy for life, an enemy that had nonetheless managed to ascend higher and faster in the police hierarchy. An enemy that made it plain that anything that he could do to thwart Moretti’s career would be done.
After a while, it had occurred to him to question what he was busting his hump for when he was getting himself nowhere, when one vindictive son-of-a-bitch took it as his personal mission to make him suffer. Then one day, he’d found himself rousting some scum—taking his money and drugs off him and offering his reluctant partner a share of the take. It had come full circle.
It was time to salvage what he could, not for himself, but for the others. They were brothers, the only kinship that had ever mattered to him. His mother had washed away her disappointment in a bottle of booze. She’d barely been coherent enough to notice when her truck driver husband bothered to come home—quarrelsome and eager to take out his anger at his lot in life on the nearest person handy, usually with his fists.
Thinking back on it, he couldn’t remember how the three of them had grown to be friends, except that like sought out like. None of them had a home life worth a damn. Each of them was searching, needy. He understood those kids who’d join a gang simply to have someone who offered the pretense of giving a damn about them. For a while they had been a gang, too, a gang of three, running the streets and taking what they wanted.
That was, until Father got hold of them. Something in the priest reached each of them, probably because he’d lived the life he wanted them to abandon. And for a while, each of them had—until they’d heard the rumors about Father Malone. How could a man who demanded that they walk the narrow and straight path be guilty himself of stealing from those who needed him? More than greed, they’d felt betrayal and a profound sense of disappointment in the one man they trusted.
He couldn’t speak for the others, but he’d gone to the church that night hoping to be proven wrong. But Father’s denials had only angered Mouse. The more he and Randy tried to calm him, the more upset he became. He’d struck Father Malone who had gone down, hitting his head on the edge of his desk. The candle burning, the symbol of Christ’s presence in mass and in the Father’s office, was dislodged from its holder and rolled across the floor to settle underneath the window. The sheer curtains went up in an instant. Like any frightened, stupid boys, they’d run.
But later that night, in the heat of the fire, they’d made their pact. For twenty-five years they’d kept it and their secret intact.
But he’d known. Someday, it would come back to them. He knew that Father wouldn’t approve of what he was about to do, even if he was sacrificing himself to save the others. But he was determined that it would die with him. It seemed fitting that he, the least of them should take the fall. There would be no more questions, no investigation, no doubt. One way or another he’d see to that.
He took his weapon out of its holster, whispered, “God forgive me,” aimed the gun and fired.
Nineteen
Jonathan pulled into the spot beside the unmarked car outside the motel and cut the engine. It was ten o’clock and he still had no idea where Moretti was or what he was up to. He only thanked God that he hadn’t come here, that Dana was alive and safe. Part of him couldn’t care less if they never found Moretti if it meant that would continue to be true.
He’d known almost from the beginning that he was falling for her. Why else would he have jeopardized his career and his investigation to keep her with him? Why else was it that concern for her safety fueled his determination to solve the case, much more than the vindication of the victim? Even Mari, who’d sworn after the last time she’d brought up the subject not to say anything else, noticed.
They’d stopped about an hour and a half ago to finally eat some dinner. They’d chosen to go to a restaurant rather than eat on the go as they often did, partly because they wanted to unwind and partly to go over all they hadn’t accomplished in a day.
Once the waitress brought their orders Jonathan relaxed against the leather cushion of their booth. He rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Weariness, both physical and emotional, pulled at him. But he sensed the opposite in Mari, an excited energy that the long day hadn’t managed to sap from her.
“By the way,” she said, “whatever happened with Nichols the porno king?”
In the wake of everything else, Jonathan had forgotten all about him. “Turns out his receptionist was only sixteen. He claims he didn’t know she was underage, but she was the only employee he was paying off the books.”
“So there would be no record he knew her age. Clever.”
“Not so much. When they came to arrest him on statutory rape charges they found the two of them in the act in his office. So much for trying to salvage himself by claiming he hadn’t touched her.”
Mari shook her head. “Never underestimate the stupidity of the male mind once a little booty is involved.” She sipped from the glass of wine she’d ordered.
So they were back to their personal battle of the sexes. “You women are no Einsteins when it comes to men either.”
She made a disgusted face. “Tell me about it. Could you believe Moretti’s squeeze? If I’d met her under other circumstances I would have sworn she was intelligent.”
Jonathan shrugged. There really was no accounting for taste, yet he wondered what Moretti could have done to inspire such loyalty in that woman. Maybe she was like a million other women blinded by love to everything except what she wanted to see. Or maybe there was more to Moretti than he, Jonathan, had ever gotten to see.
For a moment, he mulled that over in his mind
, but quickly his thoughts returned to the one person who had constantly been on his mind.
“Why don’t you go see her, Stone? We’ve done all we can right now. We’ve talked to everybody we could think of, been everywhere we could go.”
“Was I that obvious?”
“Only to people who have eyes. Even the guys from this morning were taking bets on whether you were sleeping with her or not. But hey, we’re cops. That’s what we do. You know that.”
“And you don’t approve?”
“I’m not your mother. I just don’t want you doing anything stupid. We already discussed how you men get.” She sipped from her glass. “She’s a nice lady, Jon. Sharp, compassionate. I doubt she takes any shit from you. I’m happy for you.”
“Thanks.”
She winked at him. “Tell me she’s got a brother or two hanging around.”
“Just one. He’s seventeen.”
“A little young for my taste, but let me know when he turns twenty-five.”
After they paid the bill, he dropped Mari off at her place, went to his and collected Dana’s things and started off for the motel.
Now, sitting in his car, he took the Polaroid of Amanda Pierce from his pocket and scanned the image of her broken face in the dim luminescence of the track lighting recessed in the building’s overhang.
Her murder had started it all, brought Dana into his life in a way that allowed him to know her as more than his sister’s friend. He had no idea what Dana’s feelings were or if a relationship between them was tenable once all this was over. But those few nights spent with her had given him hope that there was something in this world for him more than the grind of the job and the solitude of his apartment.
He tucked Pierce’s picture back in his pocket. It was time he gave her something back.
For the third time that day, Dana jumped hearing a knock at the door. The first time had been when they brought her lunch. The second time was when the shift changed and brought her dinner. What could they want to offer her now? A midnight snack?
Body Of Truth Page 24