The Last Gig

by Norman Green

  “You are not authorized to make this call.” It was a prerecorded voice, but still it seemed to carry an undertone of disapproval. Alessandra shook her head. Maybe the guy don’t wanna talk to you, she thought. He cut the service off . . . It was the phone she’d retrieved from the empty lot next to her building on Pineapple Street in Brooklyn. She turned it off, laid it aside, fished through her camera bag for the phone she’d taken off Malik back in the warehouse. She looked through the phone’s directory, found what she was looking for, made the call.

  “Yeah.”

  “Yo, Jerry,” she said, when she heard the voice on the other end. “That ain’t no way to answer the phone. Yeah? Not, ‘hello,’ or ‘howyadoin,’ just ‘yeah’? People are gonna think you don’t give a fuck.”

  “Who is this?” His voice was affronted, angry.

  “You don’t know me? You gotta be kidding. I remember you, Jerry, you were one of the stiffs at Caughlan’s party the other night.”

  “Who the fuck is this? How did you get my cell number? I find out—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Jerry.” That worked, for a space of five seconds.

  “What?” He couldn’t believe she’d said it, she could hear it in his voice. “What did you say? You got any fucking idea who you’re talking to? Do you know what I can do to you, you fucking piece of shit? I am gonna—”

  “You ain’t gonna do shit, Tomasino. You had your chance the other night and you didn’t get it done, so why don’t you shut up and listen?”

  “All right.” She could almost see him fighting for control. “All right. You’re that fucking bitch that . . . I got you. You don’t know how sorry you’re gonna be, you are gonna beg, before—”

  “We got a problem, Jerry.”

  “The fuck are you talking about? You’re the one with the problem. You got off easy, when I get you this next time, I’m gonna—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She felt curiously calm. She had expected to have to fight not to lose her temper, but she was almost serene. Maybe it was because of what she had to tell Tomasino. “Listen, Jerry, you hear from the guys at your warehouse in Norwood?”

  He was silent, then, but she had his attention.

  “Oh. Maybe they didn’t call you. I figured, they work for you, they’ll call right away, but maybe they didn’t. Maybe they took off, left the mess for you to deal with. Can’t say I blame them. I was them, I might think about a nice long Mexican vacation.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Your warehouse in Norwood. Jersey. Norwood, New Jersey? I took it down a little while ago. Fucked up your shit, called the cops after, told them what you had in those plastic drums. I mean, even if the shit’s all over the floor now, it’s still technically in your possession. I got your attention yet?”

  He was silent for a moment, then, in a soft voice: “If what you say is true, there isn’t a place on this planet you can hide.”

  “Hide, my ass. Five fucking guys you hadda send for me? You shoulda sent six, Jerry. They the best you got? I got bigger balls than all of them put together.”

  His voice was almost a whisper. “You’re gonna be sorry you were ever born.”

  “I want the name of the man who sent you after me, Jerry. And I want the Englishman, and I want Ramon.”

  Tomasino lost it. “You want the Englishman? Well, you’re gonna get him, right up the fucking ass you’re gonna get him! You are gonna get—”

  “Limp-dick motherfucker.” That was the final straw. There was no going back now. Al spoke into the sudden silence. “I am not done with you, Tomasino. You hear me? I am just getting started.” She hung up the phone before he could reply.

  Twenty-one

  Sarah Waters had a big rear end.

  Alessandra hadn’t noticed it before, but the woman had been sitting down through most of their first meeting, back in Marty’s office on West Houston. Waters hurried across the emergency room and hugged Al. “Are you all right?” Al asked her.

  Sarah nodded. “They found him early this morning,” she said. “They said he died twice in the ambulance on the way here, but the EMTs were able to bring him back. They had to take out one of his kidneys, and he lost a lot of blood. They don’t know if he’s going to make it, and if he does, they don’t know if he’ll be the same. He might be paralyzed, or, or, you know, um, damaged. Upstairs.” She released her grip on Al, then took her by one hand and dragged her over to a pair of empty chairs on the far side of the room. “How did you know he was here?” she said. “I didn’t know who to call. I don’t know if Mr. Stiles has any family or anything.”

  He never had the heart for anyone but himself, Al thought, then felt bad for it. “I think he’s got a sister someplace down south,” she said. “Marty called me last night, after he’d been shot. All he had time to tell me was where it happened, so I called the local cops. After that, I just kept checking with the hospitals.”

  “They were asking about you this morning,” Sarah told her, her voice low. “Earlier. I didn’t tell them anything.”

  Al nodded. Sarah Waters may have come from the other end of Brooklyn, but it seemed that certain principles held borough-wide. Don’t tell ’em shit. “Anyone told you what his chances are?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  Sarah shook her head. “He was out of the office all day yesterday. He called in at five and told me to go home, said he’d see me in the morning. Then this morning I got a call at home from the police, they said he’d been shot. Sometime last night. They said some woman called last night, reported hearing gunfire. I guess that was you. It musta been a quiet night otherwise, because four cruisers showed up, and that’s when they found him. They sent a car down to pick me up and bring me out here. I was starting to think I’d be stuck in Jersey forever.”

  “Marty didn’t tell you what he was working on?”

  “No. I mean, sometimes he did, he liked to tell stories. Half the time I didn’t believe him. But when he called yesterday, he sounded, I don’t know, far away, or tired or something. I don’t know what it was. I just thought, you know, it was a lousy connection or whatever.”

  A white guy in a brown suit stepped through a set of swinging doors at the rear of the waiting room. He saw Al sitting next to Sarah Waters, walked across the room, and stood in front of them. “Alessandra Martillo?” he said, but he stared at Sarah.

  “Yeah,” Al said. “I’m over here.”

  The guy glanced at Al, then looked back at Waters. “I thought we agreed you were going to come get me if she showed up.”

  “She just now walked in,” Sarah told him, smiling sweetly.

  The guy reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his police ID, and showed it to Al. “Miss Martillo,” he said. “Would you come with me, please?”

  “Al, honey?” It was Waters. “The phone is gonna be ringing off the hook. What do I tell the clients?”

  Al glanced at the policeman. “Tell them he’s out on a case. Tell them he’ll call back as soon as he can. I’ll be back.”

  It was pretty small, even for a suburban police station. It was a tiny redbrick building sitting back on a quiet, tree-lined street just off what passed for the main road in Old Tappan, New Jersey. It was a ten-minute drive from the hospital. They sat her at a table in the one-room basement, but it was clean, air-conditioned, and well-lit because it was the same room where they held their staff meetings. The two detectives who brought her there questioned her relentlessly, same questions over and over, one of them insinuating that she knew more about Marty’s business than she was willing to tell, and maybe more about his death, too. She didn’t let it bother her. She put all thoughts of time out of her mind. This will take as long as it takes, she told herself, and she answered their questions calmly, annoyed them with frequent inquiries after Marty Stiles’s health. There was a third cop, a black guy who sat silent in the background. Al thought something about him was familiar, but she couldn’t place him
.

  “So let’s go over this again,” the guy in the brown suit said. “Just for the record. How long have you worked for Martin Stiles?”

  How many times had they asked the same questions? She’d lost count. Answer them the same way, she thought. Use the same words. “Couple years.”

  “What is the nature of your duties for Mr. Stiles?”

  “Lots of typing. I take some pictures. I have dinner, sometimes, in a restaurant that belongs to one of his clients, and I report back.”

  “What about car repos?”

  “Oh, yeah. That, too. Sorry, I forgot that part.”

  “Weren’t you arrested just the other night? In Secaucus, am I right?”

  “I wasn’t arrested. I was questioned. There was an eyewitness to the fact that I was assaulted while in the lawful pursuit of my employer’s business.”

  “Just doing your job.”

  “That’s right.”

  “The Secaucus PD didn’t quite see it that way.”

  “They weren’t there.”

  “So in the pursuit of your job, as you say, you do, at times, inflict bodily harm when you deem it necessary. Or when your employer, Mr. Stiles, deems it necessary.”

  “No. I defend myself when I am assaulted.”

  “Were you aware that your alleged assailant is considering a civil suit?”

  Oh, great, Al thought. Just what I need. “No.”

  “Did you know that Stiles was investigated by Internal Affairs no less than three times during his years on the force?”

  Apparently, they didn’t find shit . . . “No.”

  “And you never heard of a Mr. Gerald Baker, who was assaulted four months ago in Brooklyn?”

  Al repressed a smile. “No.”

  The cop sighed. “You have a very colorful past, Miss Martillo. You were—”

  “It’s been a good life,” she said, interrupting him.

  “—thrown out of the academy,” he continued, “for assaulting an instructor, a certain Mr. Baines, who was teaching hand-to-hand—”

  “Get off it,” Al said, allowing herself a small spark of anger. “You know as well as I do, Lou Baines is a douche bag who loves groping female cadets under the guise of ‘instruction.’ He deserved worse than he got from me. He grabbed a handful of your crotch and you didn’t do anything about it, I would wonder about you.”

  “Mr. Baines required extensive dental—”

  “Point taken.” The speaker was the other white cop, and he stepped forward, sat down across the white plastic table from Al. He looked at the first cop, who got up and walked out of the room. “Ms. Martillo,” he said. “I don’t disagree with you about Baines, for whatever it’s worth.”

  “Al.”

  He nodded. “Al. We’re not after you, here, I hope you understand that. Our problem is that Marty had some questionable associations while he was on the force, and we have some information that he continued those associations on a professional level since retiring.”

  “You think Marty worked for the mob?”

  “We think he had some questionable associations. Are you aware of the nature of Marty’s business? Or are you really telling us the truth? I’m sorry, Al, but you don’t impress me as the sort of girl who spends her days typing.”

  Al sighed. “He was teaching me,” she said. “You know what Marty’s business is. Wayward spouses, crooked bartenders, silent partners. You got some slime stuck to your shoe, Marty will scrape it off for you. He ain’t the only ex-cop in the trade, either. You might wind up working for him yourself, someday.”

  “And that’s your aspiration.”

  “I’m just trying to pay the rent.”

  “Do you know what Marty was doing on this side of the river last night?”

  “I don’t know what he was working on. You’re going to have to go back over his invoices and phone logs. Listen, if I knew who shot Marty, I would tell you right now, but I don’t. And what’s worse, I can’t think of anything we did recently that would provoke this kind of a response, unless it was an aggrieved husband or something.”

  “All right.” He leaned forward, put his forearms on the table. “You ever hear of a group called BandX?”

  Oh, shit . . . She tried not to look startled. “Yeah, I heard of ’em.”

  “You follow that sort of music?”

  “I heard of the band,” she said.

  “You ever hear the name Sean Caughlan, aka Willy Caughlan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How about his father? Daniel Caughlan, aka Mickey Caughlan?”

  “Heard of him, too.”

  “You have any knowledge of a B&E on a house in the Bronx that was occupied by members of BandX?”

  “No.”

  “So you wouldn’t know anything about a kit of burglar’s tools that was recovered near the scene? I’m told your fingerprints are all over them.”

  Do they have my prints, she wondered, or is he just fishing? She had been printed twice as a juvenile, but those records were sealed. Supposedly. “I was responsible for Mr. Stiles’s equipment. I packed tools for him all the time. What he did with them was not my affair.”

  The cop shook his head. “Hiding behind a dead man.”

  “Is he dead? Do you know that?”

  “We’re trying to give you an opportunity to cooperate with us, Ms. Martillo, but this is a onetime offer. If you walk out of here holding out on us, we will prosecute you for the burglary in the Bronx, and with your record, you could go away for some time. You could be looking at three to five . . .”

  “And I think you could be blowing smoke out of your asshole. You want to know who shot Marty Stiles? Stop wasting your time on me. Go get his invoices, go get his phone records. Go do the work.”

  The cop turned red, started to speak, but he was interrupted by the black guy, who had been sitting silent in the corner the whole time. “All right,” the guy said. “All right. I’ve had enough. I’m going to take Miss Martillo back to the hospital.”

  “Look,” the white cop said, suddenly angry. “If she and Stiles have been interfering with an ongoing investigation . . .”

  “The only things you guys ‘investigate’ out here are drunk drivers and kids smoking dope in the woods. Stick to what you’re good at.” He stood up. “Miss Martillo? This way out.”

  He showed her to his car, held the passenger-side door open for her. He got in behind the wheel, paused, held his hand out to her. “Miss Martillo,” he said. “I’m Sal Edwards. I apologize for my associates, back inside. They’re just trying to do their jobs.”

  She shook his hand. “Sal,” she said. “Funny name for a brother. Short for Salvatore?”

  He shook his head. “Salathiel,” he said.

  “Salathiel,” she said. “I like it. Are you with the Jersey cops?”

  Sal shook his head. “NYPD,” he said, and he started his car and pulled out of the lot. “I worked with your father, once.”

  Alessandra wondered if that was good or bad. “Is that right?”

  “Yeah. Years ago, in the service. He was kind to me. Taught me a lot of things they don’t show you in school.” He glanced over at her. “Anyway. My partner and I have been working on a case for a couple months. It started with Willy Caughlan’s death. We know Marty Stiles worked for Willy’s father on a number of occasions. The two of them, as a matter of fact, go back to Marty’s days on the Job.” He looked at Alessandra again. “You know Daniel Caughlan. We’ve got pictures of you at a party he threw last weekend.”

  She nodded. “I know him.”

  He turned his attention back to the road. “Daniel Caughlan is one of those guys whose luck always seems to run a little better than ours. We’re pretty sure he’s dirty, but we’ve never been able to nail him for anything.”

  “You ever consider,” Al asked him, “that maybe he’s just running a trucking company? Maybe all you’ve got on him is your own prejudice. He looks like a bad guy, so you assume he’s bad. You think that’s possi
ble?”

  The cop shrugged. “It happens. But here’s my point: this case has taken us in some directions we hadn’t expected, but we haven’t forgotten about Willy. Now, I’m guessing that Caughlan asked his old buddy Marty Stiles to look into his son’s death, and maybe, just maybe, Stiles got into trouble when he started turning over rocks. And it seems a reasonable proposition that Stiles would use your help. Let me guess: he had you checking out BandX. Tell me, Al. Am I off base here?”

  “Not entirely.” Funny, she thought, I was the one who was curious about Willy, Stiles and Caughlan wanted me to leave it alone.

  “All right, fair enough. Next question: that was you, up at that house BandX rented up in the Bronx. Yes?”

  “No comment.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes. I could make a case against any one of those dope fiends. They each had plenty of opportunity to murder Willy, and probably motive, too, if you dig a little bit. But how do you pick one of them over another?”

  “Be nice if you got the right guy. You guys get anything from the crime scene?”

  Sal affected an excited, high-pitched voice. “‘Officer, there’s a hair stuck to the bathroom mirror! It must have the perp’s DNA!’ You know something? You got to live on what you get from the crime-scene guys, you’ll starve to death.”

  “Had to be somebody Willy knew,” Al said.

  Edwards nodded. “If it was anything other than a simple overdose,” he said, “if someone did kill him, Willy opened the door and let them in. That leaves us pretty much back where we started. Except for one thing: Marty Stiles was looking into this, and now he’s lying on an operating table. He might make it and he might not. The way I see it, that leaves you out on a ledge.”