“Who’s Larry Big…Big…what’d you say his name was?” Luca said. “And what the fuck is a maelstrom?”
“A whirlpool. Tell Bigelow this,” Bill said, “tell him Eddie has the goods and he’s going to the Daily News with it. It’s time to stop bluffing and talk money. Tell him that Bill thinks he can get out of this relatively cheap. Tell him that not only does he have to worry about the rigged bids, but he has to worry about you.”
“What do you mean, me?” Luca asked.
Jericho smiled and said, “You want us to believe that you intend for Bigelow to live so he could rat out your part of the scheme?”
Bill flipped open the lid of the top pizza box, handed a slice to Jericho, and took one for himself. He opened the door, stepped out of the car, and invited Luca to slide out.
“Your friend knows how to reach me,” Bill said. He looked Luca in the eye. The mob boss was slack-jawed.
“I expect a call no later than tonight or Eddie goes to the papers. Now go deliver your pies.” Bill tucked the pistol into his waistband and got in the front seat as the Expedition’s engine roared to life.
Bill rushed home, hoping for a call from Bigelow. As he went through the door, his foot kicked the piece of mail on the floor of the vestibule. There was no writing on the envelope, stiff from whatever was inside. He pulled out the flap and saw borders of the photographs. There were six of them.
The top one was a close-up of Louise’s face, grotesquely swollen and black and blue. He fell into a chair and looked at each of them, each more pitiful and shocking than the last. He felt flushed. Inside he was screaming but he couldn’t expel it. He wanted to run, to escape from the horror he again had caused.
He couldn’t take seeing her punished anymore. He was doing everything he could but was still not enough. He filled a brandy snifter and gulped half of it down, anything to get away from feeling cold isolation and impotence. He collapsed back into the chair. Only forgiveness could save him, but forgiveness from whom? His mind turned to Eddie. Eddie could bring forgiveness. By dying.
As he drank, the image of Eddie’s face magnified like a malicious Macy’s float, its tethers tied to Bill, following no matter where he ran. It looked down on him, its mocking laughter ominous. He closed his eyes tighter and blocked his ears with his hands. He gulped down the rest of the brandy and walked to a mirror and looked at himself. He began to sway. Maybe it was the booze, or maybe the weight of his walls pressing down, walls that he had created around himself, for himself. His .357 was still in his waistband. He reached behind and felt the gun. The feel of his hand around the grip felt good. It made his self-loathing empty like lava into a crucible of vengeance against Eddie Matthews. He put his hand on his chest and felt his heart pounding.
The ringing telephone was at first only a faint insinuation into a restless dream of walking with Dennis, but something was the matter with his kid brother. In the dream, Bill tugged at Dennis’s wet clothes and asked him to get the phone. Dennis looked at him, but said nothing. Suddenly they were in a rowboat together and the phone kept ringing. There was nothing untoward about a telephone in the boat; what mattered was that Dennis still wasn’t talking and still wouldn’t answer the phone as the ringing got louder and louder. Bill finally noticed that Dennis couldn’t answer the phone with such long fingernails painted blue with white glitter, and that he had to answer it himself.
Bill snapped awake to the phone’s insistent ringing. He lunged for the receiver but knocked it to the floor. He jerked it by its coiled cord, causing the plastic jack to break. He tried to insert the wire into its receptacle but the connection had been lost, or if the other party was still on the line, Bill was unable to hear them. It was two-twenty a.m.
He slumped back into the chair. His forehead pounded like a jackhammer. Was that Bigelow’s call? Maybe it was Luca. Maybe it was a wrong number. He turned off the lamp. The dark was forgiving of his wicked headache. Now what? No way could he contact Luca. If he went anywhere near Spaciad, they’d nail him to a chair. The best bet was to call Bigelow’s office early in the a.m., think up some emergency-sounding thing so they’d get a message to him. If it was Bigelow trying to reach him just now, he’d respond to the call. That was all Bill could do. For now. Thinking hurt too much.
He resisted the temptation to pour another drink. He put his hand to his chest and could feel his heart thumping again. His gaze wandered over to the end table where lay the two blue plastic objects, translucent and sprinkled with glitter, the ones he found in Eddie’s apartment and had haunted him for weeks. He held them up to the light and suddenly remembered his dream of only minutes before, of being in the boat with Dennis and Dennis couldn’t answer the phone because of…of…that was it! They were press-on fingernails! They were Thunder Woman’s. Evidence that she had been in Eddie’s apartment after last seen leaving Dirty Frank’s.
But what to do about it? The police might think Bill had them because he killed Thunder Woman. He set them on the table and studied them. Don’t give them to the cops yet. They might be useful as leverage against Eddie.
His head still hurt. He was nodding off again when a loud knock on the door startled him into shooting bolt upright. He went to the window and looked out. When he saw Bigelow’s stretch limo parked in front he said under his breath, “Game on.”
He opened the door to Willie’s persistent knocking. “Mr. B wants to see you in the car,” he said.
“Tell him no deal. Tell him to come inside, alone.”
Willie went back to the car. He opened a passenger door and stuck his head inside. A moment later a tuxedo-clad leg stepped onto the pavement. Bigelow walked to the row house and into its modest first floor living room. Willie didn’t get back in the limo, but stood leaning against it with his arms crossed and facing the house as Bill let Bigelow in.
Bigelow sat on the edge of the sofa and said, “Here’s my problem. My problem is that if I pay money I want to be sure I get custody of everything this Eddie character has. What assurances can you give me? How do I know he won’t copy those materials and keep coming at me?”
“That is a problem, isn’t it?” Bill said. “We need to find out where he keeps it.”
Bigelow leaned back, crossed one leg over the other, and steepled his fingers. Bill’s problem of persuading him to play ball inflated to bringing him into the game and making him a teammate. Bill also leaned back in his chair. He and Bigelow were now co-conspirators.
“I’m pouring myself a drink, would you like one?” Bill said, getting up.
“Maybe I should,” Bigelow said, “I’ve never done this before.” The admission of vulnerability was surprising. The head of a multi-national corporation like Bigelow might be attuned to arms-length, white-collar crime, but not extortion by a street punk like Eddie Matthews, carried out through a de-frocked, rapist Jesuit brother like Bill. Bill poured his own brandy in the only snifter in the house, and Bigelow’s in a tumbler, a nice metaphor: remind Bigelow that he was no longer in Harvard MBA and Yale Law-land.
Bigelow took a sip of the brandy and said matter-of-factly, “Maybe I’ll just have him killed.”
Oh, right, Bill thought, I forgot about Luca Cunnio. Maybe this guy isn’t such a virgin after all. “How would you do that?”
“Mine is a world-class enterprise. I can arrange most anything I want.”
“But we don’t know what measures he’s taken to prevent that.”
“Like some kind of poison pill?” Bigelow asked.
“Sure. He probably has dozens of buddies in the joint who would be willing to carry the torch.”
“What exact role are you playing in this?” Bigelow said.
Bill wondered if he should he tell him the truth. His mind churned. What was the downside? How could Bigelow use it? Might it help? Finally, he said, “He’s blackmailing me too.”
“Over what?”
“Something personal, but it’s no less important to me than your situation is to you.”
Big
elow’s eyes stayed riveted on Bill’s.
“Let’s put the evidence on the shelf for a minute. What kind of money is your principal looking for?”
Bad sign. Rather than a teammate, Bigelow suddenly sounded like the opposition in a union negotiation.
“Five million,” Bill said. He pulled the number out of the air.
“Out of the question. Tell your man that even if he spills his guts, I can have lawyers and a battery of PR people grind the story into the next century. He’s got to understand that.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“More like fifty thousand at the most.”
“And you think paying lawyers and PR people into the next century won’t cost five million?”
“Maybe, but considering what’s at stake…”
“Stake. You mean like you going up the river? Losing the DOC account? Other fall-out?”
“Point taken.” He stood as if to leave. “Tell your man my offer. Tell him I am not without armament of my own. Get back to me through Willie.”
He pulled out a leather-bound notepad and scratched something onto it. “Here’s the number to the car.”
“Yes,” Bill said, “but we need to move fast.”
“Tell him what I told you,” Bigelow said. He let himself out the door and as the limousine pulled away, Willie and Bill exchanged waves.
Fifty thousand. Was it the result of Luca’s discussion with Bigelow? Bill had hoped for more. It was a start, but Eddie might be insulted and take it out on Louise. Bill would tell Eddie it was only a ploy and that he’d get the offer up. But the only way was if Luca squeezed Bigelow.
Bill’s hole seemed to get deeper. Now a mobster Benicio del Toro look-alike was in control of Louise’s life.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Lanza reluctantly agreed to meet with Jericho at Dirty Frank’s. Jericho might have something for him. It was the venue that Lanza wasn’t crazy about.
Jericho was chatting with Peter Jambalaya when Lanza came in. Peter immediately asked Lanza in his annoying voice about progress in the investigation of the death of his friend Phillip. It had been months since his killing.
“I can’t talk about things under investigation,” Lanza said.
Peter frowned. Lanza half expected a snide, or at least impatient, remark from the outspoken bartender. Though to the media and city at large the incident melded into the flow of more recent urban nightmares, the gay community still had not let up its drumbeat of criticism over PPD’s lack of progress over the death of one of its own. Especially given all that was known about the incident.
Police brass was unable to assuage the community’s outrage, which was getting shriller by the week. They were already picketing the Roundhouse and threatened to shut down rush hour traffic, maybe the bridges to Jersey, and fuck up all of Center City if the police department didn’t dedicate more resources to the investigation. Lanza felt plenty of heat to get something done, especially an arrest. Against the chance that Jericho and his buddy had loosened more cockroaches from under the town’s patina of orderliness, Lanza saw his job as Mr. Terminix, even if it meant hanging out at Dirty Frank’s. Besides, criminals frequently returned to the scene of the crime.
“Let’s take a table over in the corner,” he said to Jericho. When they sat he asked, “Hear anything I can use?”
“Off the record?” Jericho asked.
Sam bobbed yes.
“Luca Cunnio and the guy who heads ServMark, Gary Bigelow, are somehow in cahoots.”
“How do you know? Luca wouldn’t tell me shit.”
“Bill saw Luca coming out of ServMark’s HQ, then chatting with Bigelow’s limo driver.”
“Well, that’s a piece. A tiny piece, but a piece,” Lanza said.
“Then, we cornered Luca to get a message to Bigelow. We think he’ll do it.”
“What message?”
“Can’t tell you that part, Sam. It could jeopardize my friend Bill.”
“I appreciate what you’ve given me. But I don’t like that you cover for him.”
Jericho ignored it. They chatted a while longer. Sam then used the occasion to canvas the patrons about the night Phillip was killed, and whether they knew anything about Thunder Woman. No takers, but at least he created the image of concern.
“I have to roll,” he said to Jericho. “Remember to keep me posted. My neck is stretched out and all I see is a guillotine.”
“Yeah, I went through the same thing over the Mikey Osborne kid at the prison.”
Sam flicked a quick salute and walked into the daylight. Jericho was a good man, and Sam’s remark was calculated to induce him to work in his behalf rather than the priest’s. Jericho and the priest knew something, something important, and weren’t talking. Maybe it was time to bring the priest in. Squeeze the shit out of him. But for what? The priest had gone to Eddie Matthews’ apartment after Sam’s men had already been there. Why? To hide evidence? Bingo.
Bill didn’t want to miss Eddie’s call. Leaving the house was out of the question. At least he could report serious negotiations had finally begun. He wondered if he should tell Eddie about Bigelow’s actual number of fifty grand or report a lower number and make it look like Bill was working to get the CEO’s offer up. With every word said or not said to Eddie, Louise’s neck was at risk.
Just thinking about her jarred every depressing regret, self-doubt, and unworthy feeling possible to conjure. Once more, for a moment, Bill tried to access whatever faith might be left to ask for forgiveness and strength and courage, but the cudgel of despair kept pounding away. Faith, he knew, at least intellectually, was a shelter, every post and beam strengthened through the sacraments and sustained through charity to others—not fucking a vulnerable minor while high on smack in some seedy motel. He knew this, but didn’t feel it.
He sat in a chair and ran his hands through his thinning hair. More than anything at that moment he wished he had some dope, even a small fix would deliver him from the mess he put Louise in. Part of him knew anguish would still be there after he came out the other side of it, but falling backwards into a bed of feathers would still be respite. And who knows, maybe there would be no other side, maybe he’d be dead. He was even out of liquor. A liquor store was only two blocks away, but he didn’t want to chance missing Eddie’s call.
The loud knock at the door jostled him from his labyrinth of bleakness and back into the small house on Day Street. He looked through the small pane on the door. It was Detective Lanza and someone else. He let them in.
“This is Detective Billings. We want you to come with us to the station.”
“What’s up?” Bill asked.
“Put on your shoes,” Lanza said, “you’re coming with us.”
Bill sat in the back of the car. “Would you mind telling me what this is about? Am I under arrest for something?”
“We want to ask you some questions.”
Bill remained quiet in the elevator on the way to fourth floor Homicide. He was escorted into the same room where he was interrogated the last time. He sat. Detective Billings didn’t join them. Undoubtedly, he was watching through the two-way glass. Lanza took off his jacket and put it on the back of his chair. “I want to talk to you about Thunder Woman,” he said.
He began an hours-long interrogation of Bill’s history—of his home life, the seminary, his time in prison, comings and goings since leaving, who he knew from the seminary, from Graterford, Radiant Hope, Temple, Dirty Frank’s and anywhere else. Then he homed in on Bill’s visit to Eddie’s old apartment. Bill silently struggled whether to tell him about the press-on fingernails, but decided against it. Lanza put a piece of paper in front of him. “Write down all the names you just told me about and where you knew them from.”
Bill was hard pressed to remember all the names, kept having to backtrack to recall them. Lanza would go on tangents. He repeated questions about innocuous matters, implying significance, and caught Bill when the second or third version didn’t
match the first.
Bill looked at his watch.
“You in a hurry?” Lanza prodded.
“I was hoping to get a call. I guess it’ll wait.”
Finally, Lanza said, “What about that polygraph we talked about a while back?”
“If I do it, can we be done?”
“Sure.”
They walked down the hall to the polygraph room which reeked from the stench of sweat and cigarette smoke. The polygrapher asked some preliminary questions, then zeroed in on Bill’s relationship with Thunder Woman and after that, his visit to Eddie’s apartment.
“Did you go there to find evidence?” the operator asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you find any?”
“No.” The arm jumped. The operator continued in his low monotone. Neither he nor Lanza said anything after it was all through.
“Can I go now?” Bill said.
“Sure, Conlon, that was the deal.”
Lanza got what he wanted. Conlon’s balls were in a vise. It only needed one or two more turns.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Bill stopped at the liquor store on the way home. He didn’t want to spend one more night with himself. He was lucky the cops didn’t show up with a search warrant. There were weapons in the house. It could have caught him five more years in the pen.
He turned on the light in the vestibule and saw the envelope, the same kind that had contained the pictures of the battered Louise. He hesitated, then picked it up. Nothing was inside but scrawled on the back was a note: I’ll be at the Spigety Warhous til 10.
Okay then! Eddie lusted after the money enough to back off his deadlines. Bill sensed negotiations flexibility.
He jumped into the Mustang and headed up Spring Garden to the Spaghetti Warehouse. The huge family restaurant had been converted from a long-abandoned textile factory that closed in the fifties after thirty women died in a fire. He parked right at the historical marker and hoped the spirit of the martyred garment workers were watching over Louise. That women had it tough crossed his mind, some because of him also crossed his mind.
I Detest All My Sins Page 16