The detective asked Bill’s version of the story. He interjected little as Bill described the event disjointedly, with long sighs between sentences.
“Is there some way we can postpone this for a day or two,” Bill said. “I’ll be glad to come down to the station.”
“Sorry,” Lanza said. His eyes seemed to scope Bill’s body language while his tone was sympathetic. “But fresh is important, and yeah, you’ll still have to come down to the station.”
Bill told a straightforward story. Peter Jambalaya’s friends witnessed everything.
“Does anybody know who these guys were?” Lanza asked.
“Not that I know of,” Bill said.
After he interviewed Bill, Lanza called Jericho over and took more notes. When he finally put his notebook into a breast pocket, he called Bill back to sit alongside Jericho.
“Did you guys read about the woman in a costume they fished out of the river? She was wearing a Wonder Woman outfit. Apparently she called herself Thunder Woman.”
“Thunder Woman? She used to come in here,” Bill said.
“I’m beginning to think you guys are the Typhoid Mary of Philadelphia homicides, you don’t catch the disease but give it to everyone else. Henrietta Jackson? Thunder Woman, who frequented this very same bar, and now this dead kid?”
That Jericho should get slack by virtue of being law enforcement and their long-ago relationship seemed as remote to Lanza as a dog riding a unicycle. Jericho had told Bill the story that when they were uniformed beat partners, Sam subtly resented him as the fair-haired boy, while Sam chased down thugs, skulked roach and rat-infested alleys trying to catch bad guys, and went first to the doors of dangerous domestic squabbles.
“Sure, I got some forbearance because I was in law school,” Jericho had related. “But all the guys going to school got extra leash. In law school I learned that justice is a process, but Sam saw it as a result. It’s true, he did do a lot of the dirty work while I did the paperwork, but it was to sell our busts to the higher-ups, while Sam broke the rules to keep law and order in this fucking city. Especially order. In other words, I cleaned up Sam’s messes.”
Jericho gave the detective an incredulous look. “C’mon Sam, we knew nothing about that girl. What’re you trying to say?”
“Maybe.” Lanza turned to Bill. He wasn’t letting up. “And some kid in Graterford gets it, and the story is that you and him knew each other in the joint, isn’t that right Conlon?”
Looking back at Jericho, he went on, “Then you find yourself on the ass-end of administrative sanctions about rotten food at the prison. What are you guys, the Daltons?”
“None of that is our doing, Sam, you know that,” Jericho said, his palms upturned.
Lanza didn’t respond. He looked into Bill’s eyes, then Jericho’s, and paused as if chewing on Jericho’s disclaimer.
Finally, he said, “We’ll see.” He got up and went to a table where Peter sat weeping as his friends tried to comfort him.
As Lanza questioned Peter, he kept his eye on Bill and Jericho, who had wandered over to the bar. Jericho murmured to Bill that when Sam suspected something, he’d keep digging until he found out it was true.
The two men sat at the bar where Louise served up doubles. They knocked them back, then another round. When Lanza was done interviewing the witnesses, he walked up to the bar.
“Can I pour you one, Detective?” Louise said. “They probably got you out of bed for this one.”
“Didn’t think you’d ever ask,” Sam said. “Gimme a pair of Canadian Clubs in a water glass.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
After dropping off Jericho, Bill and Louise went home and straight to bed. Adrenaline-fueled thoughts raced through Bill’s head. They still had not dissipated though the sun was already up. Louise rolled onto her side and put her hand on Bill’s chest. Bill took her hand in his.
“I should have told you about Thunder Woman. The police came to the bar,” she said.
“It’s okay. How did she die?”
“They didn’t say.”
“It’s okay.”
“You know Bill, that detective had a point.”
He looked at her.
“I’m having a hard time with trust,” she went on. “I don’t know, but trouble seems to follow you around. I want to believe you have nothing to do with it, yet I wonder if that doesn’t matter. Murder, investigations, God knows what else, then you ask me to get close to Eddie…”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m trying to say what I said.” She rolled over again, her back to him.
Fatigue descended on him like a heavy fog. There was a time when he would lie awake and try to pray his way into acceptance of God’s will, but instead of healing balm, all he felt was vengeance and acid. He didn’t press her, but he knew it was time to leave.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Eddie racked his brain to think of a way to appease Luca, who was a more immediate threat than the cops, but setting traps to kill Jericho wasn’t Eddie’s strong suit. Traps always fucked him up one way or another. “I ain’t no chess player,” was his conclusion. But he was a fierce opportunist and would find a way to get Luca off his back and make money while he was at it. After all, he got this far, didn’t he? He appreciated the leverage of the ServMark docs, and speaking of leverage, what about Louise? She was leverage too. Soon enough, the question became how to get her, use her as a bargaining chip to get the priest to double-cross his pal Jericho. She was a helluva lot easier to snatch than that fucking galoot, Jericho.
It could work, but Luca needed to make it easy for the priest to buy into the trade. Make it sound like Luca had a deal for Jericho, then murder the shit out of him. If Luca put some kind of phony deal on the table, Jericho would waltz to Spaciad on his own.
Louise for Jericho. A second demand would be for the priest to connect Eddie with the highest bidder for the ServMark docs stolen from the widow Osborne. Snatching Louise could make it all happen.
But who knew about that fucking Luca? All Luca knew was violence, unlike Eddie who was blessed with powers of persuasiveness, like he used on Mikey and Thunder Woman. Jericho’s girlfriend had been different. She was an unfortunate victim of circumstances and Eddie’s decisiveness. Another useful talent; though in her case, not such a hot outcome. But if she hadn’t been brushing her hair in the Expedition she’d still be alive.
And there might be fringe benefits to the kidnap scheme. Eddie would bet that Louise had a thing for him. Sure, she gave him mixed signals trying to resist his magnetism, but she was another one with hot pants for bad boys. When lying next to the priest, it was reasonable for Eddie to believe she thought of him. So he’d snatch her and tie her up, and because she’d be helpless, it would give her permission to let herself go and fuck Eddie’s brains out. But forget it if she wanted a piece of the action. No way would that happen. The scheme became clean and simple: grab the girl, make some calls.
He went to Home Depot for cork paneling, foam wedges and particleboard to soundproof the closet in his room, then scouted Dirty Frank’s to see which days she showed up without the priest. The diethyl ether was easy; his Kensington network of meth lab chemists had bottles to spare. Tuesday nights fit the bill. During the work week, Pine Street was as dark and quiet as an Appalachian hollow. He reserved a van from Enterprise.
On the following Tuesday, at 2:30 a.m., he double-parked a Nissan Vanette next to Dirty Frank’s. He got out and popped the hood. Returning behind the wheel, he tuned in to Overnight Metal on the radio, set the handkerchief and bottle of ether next to him, and watched the door to the bar. At 2:45 it opened and Louise came out. She slammed the door shut, locked it, tossed the keys into her shoulder bag and looked to be digging for car keys. She didn’t seem to notice the Nissan with its hood up, double-parked in front of the place.
“Louisey!” Eddie called out. “Oh my God am I glad to see you. Didn’t you hear me knock?”
“Eddie!
Jesus, you scared me! No, I didn’t hear any knock. I locked up at 2:00. What’s the trouble, you broke down?”
“Yeah. Look, would you do something for me while I try to start it? Would you look at the engine and see if the carburetor lever is stuck?”
“Sure. Tell me what to look for.” She walked into the street and poked her nose under the raised hood.
Eddie saturated the kerchief with ether and got out. As she peered into the dark morass of wires and greasy engine components, he grabbed her from behind and held the kerchief to her face until she went limp.
He looked around again and put her into the van. He gagged her, bound her with duct tape and handcuffed her to a support handle. He lowered the hood and drove off. As he turned onto Broad from Lombard, he heard gurgling and choking. He pulled over for a look. When he pulled the gag out of her mouth she puked a stream of yellow vomit all over the front of him.
“Jesus, Louise, what the fuck is it?” he said, wiping vomit from his eyes.
She was in no shape to answer as he tried to brush off little pieces of undigested food and putrid stench. Leaving her dangling from the support handle, he closed the windows, put on the air, and turned the radio full volume in case she came to and screamed, though judging from the looks of her, it appeared unlikely.
He pulled up to the front of his building and parked. He administered another dose of ether. Its odor helped mask the stink of vomit. When her head lolled back, he undid her bindings and pulled her from the vehicle. Supporting her dead weight, he half dragged her up the stoop and two flights of stairs, the whole time singing Everybody Wants to Rule the World in fake, drunken fashion. When he got her into the apartment, he gagged her again and handcuffed her to a hook inside the soundproofed closet. He got out of his clothes, put them in a plastic bag, and showered.
He applied talcum powder and deodorant, then walked naked to the closet and opened the door. Louise was moaning and gagging. Again he removed the gag. Again she vomited all over him. “What the fuck!”
Calm down, he thought. Something is making her sick. Maybe she doesn’t like being sedated or tied up. Maybe he needs to get her out of her clothes. Maybe she’ll feel better, be ready for him. He took off her clothes and cleaned her up. But she wasn’t ready for him. She wasn’t ready for anything—not Eddie lying nude on top of her humping away, not ready to feel anything at all, not even ready to open her eyes. It wasn’t what Eddie expected.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Bill awoke to an empty bed. “Lou?” he called out. Silence. He looked in the bathroom. He looked downstairs. No sign. Had she come home? He looked throughout the house and went outside to see if her car was parked on the street. The bar wouldn’t be open yet, so he couldn’t call there. A sickening feeling overcame him. He had felt her coldness the other night. Had she spent the night with someone else?
He dressed, sat in a chair and read from his missal. Its words registered on his mind but meaning wouldn’t stick. He closed it and decided to take a long walk. Perhaps the air and effort would clear his head.
Between her comments about trust a few nights ago and not coming home last night, well, maybe she was interested in someone else but didn’t know how to say it—said it the only way she knew. He couldn’t hate her, no matter what. Besides, he didn’t have the energy to fight, not her, not himself.
By the time he reached the bar he saw her car parked nearby. Wherever she spent the night, she went directly to the bar rather than home. She probably rode in the other guy’s car and cleaned up at his place. Maybe she kept clothes there.
He tried the door. Locked. He knocked on the door, then the window. No answer. He looked in her car. Nothing unusual.
It was 11:30. She should have been there to open by now. Something wasn’t right. He didn’t know what to do. No choice but wait. Sooner or later the owner would find out the place wasn’t opening on time and somebody, hopefully Louise, would show up. Bill wanted to shake his head and waken himself, but this was no dream. He pulled out his missal, leaned against a mailbox and tried to read, but couldn’t. Maybe he should call Jericho. That was no good either. What took more energy, talking about it or pushing it away? Even that decision was too much. As soon as the bar opened he’d take the middle ground and get drunk.
It was 12:30 when a bartender who Bill didn’t recognize unlocked the door. He tried to follow her in, but she held him at bay saying she had preparations to make before opening the door. “Where’s Louise?” he asked.
“She must be sick or something. She didn’t call in. We’re still checking.”
After the doors opened, a few lunchtime customers ordered beers when the bartender, her name was O’Mara, told them the kitchen was closed. When Bill pressed her about Louise she was tight-lipped, which fueled Bill’s suspicions that people were covering for her. Girlfriends did that.
“Look, O’Mara, Louise and I are close, real close. I’m worried. She’s disappeared. It’s not like her not to tell me her schedule.”
O’Mara looked skeptical. Maybe she wasn’t that close with Louise. For all she knew, Bill was some stalker. “Couldn’t tell you, sir. All I know is I got a call from Frank to come and open, that someone didn’t show.”
“Can I talk to him? What’s his number?”
“Can’t give it to you. Give me your number and I’ll see he gets a message.”
“When?” he asked. But he could tell his impatience put O’Mara off, probably fueled her suspicions that he wasn’t legit.
“I expect to talk to him later,” she said. “What are you having again?”
Bill began drinking and drank until the room began to revolve. He paid the tab, walked out to Louise’s car and put a note on her windshield: “Call me, please. I still love you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Sam Lanza tuned out the din of chatter and ringing telephones that inundated the squad room as he deployed the most effective tool of police detection, his long experience. His best thinking posture was to tap a pencil on the arm of his chair, and feet with crossed ankles propped on his desk. He wished that homicide investigation was like TV, or Sherlock Holmes, with brilliant deductions that led to ineluctable solutions. Instead, it was a slog through a swamp of useless information from the barely literate who were suspicious of cops, or had something to hide, or a hard-on against a neighbor or business competitor. Yet the work suited Sam, a man of average intelligence but the dogged persistence of an obsessive suitor and instincts of a sewer rat.
His old buddy Jericho Lewis and Jericho’s strange pal Bill Conlon were at the nexus of four dead bodies. Yet, he knew Jericho to be a good soul whose track record and values could out-Republican Dwight Eisenhower, even though Sam did all the real cop work back when they were in the streets together. Conlon, on the other hand, seemed too slick in the way he feigned forthrightness about his rape history, and Sam wondered if he was a sort of Svengali to Jericho.
To Lanza, given to stacking inference upon inference for the sake of getting results, it computed. While in prison, Conlon probably found Jericho’s confidence down over a wife running off with another guy, and under the guise of helping, sucked him into some shady shit. Maybe drugs, or some prison racket that got out of hand and metastasized outside the walls. That was probably why Conlon didn’t want to answer Sam’s questions about Graterford.
Maybe the whole stink over the prison food thing had something to do with something. Jericho’s DOC personnel file gave it as the reason he was suspended pending completion of the investigation. Or maybe it was something else. The IG and Sate Police investigation files would help but Sam couldn’t get access.
And then there was Eddie Matthews. Years ago, Sam had done a tour at the Twenty-fourth, and Eddie’s reputation as a punk inflated to celebrity-bad guy after he murdered his father for slapping his mother around. That Eddie did time along with Conlon and may have known Thunder Woman and was present when the twink got shot was too precious to ignore.
The address suppli
ed by Eddie’s parole officer had proven defunct. Clearly Eddie had left in a hurry. But they’d catch him sooner or later. Losers like Eddie Matthews were, above all else, stupid, and part of what made them stupid was they thought they were cunning like Al Capone or somebody. As Sam saw things, even Al Capone wasn’t Al Capone, instead was a syphilis-ridden loser who peaked at thirty-three and died at forty-nine after his brain turned to oil from the disease.
The so-called priest wasn’t a priest, either. Not even an ex-priest, but that’s what they called him at Graterford. Now he was different, and Sam Lanza would bet his pet snake, Maybeline the Mamba, that the priest was somehow in the middle of all the scandal and mayhem.
Sam would start his next round of inquiry with Jericho’s almost-ex, Crystal Lewis, who lived in Cherry Hill. She worked as an accountant in the Catering Division of ServMark Hospitality, a huge international conglomerate headquartered in Philadelphia. Its playboy president, Gary Bigelow, routinely hobnobbed with the glitterati. He and Princess Grace had served on boards together, most notably Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He gave such a moving eulogy at her funeral that aides had to rush to Nancy Reagan with extra tissues. The implication in the DOC file was that Jericho supposedly had some profiteering relationship with ServMark, but Sam didn’t believe it for one minute. Yet, it had to be checked out along with the murder of Jericho’s girlfriend.
Crystal answered her door still dressed in her work clothes, an Evan-Picone suit of black jacket with red piping and a knee-length black skirt along with red block-heel pumps. Lanza assessed her as having a middle-management staff job of some kind. They reminisced about old times and exchanged instant catch-ups.
“Can I get you a cup of coffee? How about a beer?” Crystal said.
“No thanks,” Sam said. “But hey, tell me about your new guy.”
“Fernando? He’s working late shift. You know how that is.”
I Detest All My Sins Page 10