Fail

by Rick Skwiot

  - 27 -

  Gabriel stood in the large, carpeted anteroom outside Cira’s office chatting with the mayor’s driver, Monroe. Small talk about mutual acquaintances on the job, who was retiring, who was moving up, who was slipping up. Soon they fell into silence. So much they could say about the city, the gangs, the kids on the street. But what was the point? It was a job like most jobs. People in other professions sorted through ideas, data, or fresh fruit, retaining the good, disposing of the bad. The criminal justice system, for which cops were the point men, did it with people.

  Soon the double doors to the mayor’s office opened and Cira stepped through with homeless shelter impresario the Reverend Norris Pritchard and two corporate execs, judging by their tailored suits and bright demeanor. After bidding them goodbye and exchanging words with his secretary seated in the expansive outer office, Cira led Monroe and Gabriel down the marble staircase, through the lobby, and outside to his Lincoln waiting on the east side of the building. Once inside the car Cira said to Monroe: “M.A.C.”

  The Missouri Athletic Club—membership by referral only—was located some eight blocks northeast, a ten-story, hundred-year-old building that overlooked Eads Bridge and the Mississippi River. Gabriel had never been referred. Just as well. The YMCA he could afford, not this, with its gourmet restaurants, luxury guest rooms, and squash courts. Its barroom had won a rare exemption from new anti-smoking laws. It was often where deals went down downtown—if one was in the position to deal. And today, for once, Gabriel felt he was.

  The locker-room attendant found shorts and a tee shirt that fit Gabriel. Shoes were a problem but he finally located some size twelves in the lost-and-found.

  Gabriel joined Cira on the indoor track that circled the gymnasium—deserted at three in the afternoon—jogging by his side.

  “You keep in good shape, buddy,” the mayor said.

  “If you like pears. Thirty pounds over my playing weight.”

  “Which was what—thirty years ago?”

  “I’ve been trying the low-carb diet.”

  “I’m just trying to keep things where they are: some weights, a little jogging…”

  “I hate jogging. Going up and down the court, fine. Not running around in circles.”

  “Sometimes it’s necessary to circle back, Gabriel, to cover your tracks.”

  Gabriel looked at Cira, but that was all the mayor had to say on the subject for now.

  Back at their lockers they wrapped towels around their waists and found an empty steam room. Cira pressed a button on the wall and steam began to billow from radiators. As he sat, Cira said, “Figured this was a good place for us to talk.”

  Gabriel grabbed his towel as if to discard it. “Want to do a cavity search?”

  Cira laughed. “Can’t be too careful. We need total confidentiality on this. Not even Donnewald needs to know.”

  “Know what?”

  He fixed Gabriel with a stare. “How we’re going to deal with Stone.”

  “I’m dealing with it.”

  “You’re dealing with it? What the hell’s going on? I thought you had him under control. What’s he talking about yesterday? He doesn’t have anything.”

  “Maybe he does.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gabriel sat. “I think he has backup files.”

  “You ‘think’?”

  The thick steam made Gabriel cough. “I’ve been playing ‘good cop.’ After he buried his wife, we had drinks and he spilled his guts. Claims he’s hidden copies somewhere.”

  “Get them, whatever it takes.”

  “Believe me, I’m trying. I’m just saying it may not be easy.”

  “Get them. Even though he got half the stuff illegally, he could cause problems. And we don’t need him stirring up shit about his wife’s connection to me and her suicide. I need this election. It’s closer than the wise guys think, and Holmes has something up his sleeve. My word from D.C. is that the president might come to do the ribbon cutting on Holmes’ halfway-house project—that is, stab me in the back for being on the wrong side in his primary run. Fucker. Bottom line, Carlo, if I don’t get this election then my Stadium Towne deal—which the city needs—is finished, along with everything else I’ve worked for.”

  “I hear you.”

  “If Holmes got his hands on this stuff … Shit,” Cira shook his head and looked away.

  Gabriel took in a deep breath. “And something else, Ange. When he was schnockered, Stone alluded to something really explosive. I tried to pump him on it but he clammed up tight. I don’t know what it is—photos, audio, documents. Could be anything. He’s one of those computer geeks.”

  “That son of a bitch. With all this computer stuff around these days who knows who’s got what anymore. Hard to do business. We got to stop him.”

  “Maybe some real-world education would do the trick.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  The steam’s hiss brought to mind the image of a serpent. Then the Garden of Eden. Forbidden fruit. Temptation. Knowledge.

  “If he learned his wife didn’t kill herself, it might give him pause, might make him step back, reconsider everything.”

  Cira studied him. He opened his mouth to speak, but Gabriel kept going.

  “Don’t bullshit me, Ange. If I’m going to do your dirty work, don’t be blowing smoke up my ass. If I can persuade him that you or yours pulled the trigger, I think I can get him to cough up the backup files. Just look at him. The guy’s a pussy. He’ll he shitting his pants.”

  Cira covered his face with his palms and sat frozen, elbows on his knees as the steam swirled around him. “That’s what you get when you fuck around with amateurs. His wife was the same. As soon as she learned what he’d been up to, she panicked. Worried about her schmuck husband’s whereabouts and welfare. Talking about going to the F.B.I. Dumb of her to tell me. Jesus H. Christ. Did she think I was going to let her go to the feds?

  Gabriel swallowed. “I need a scenario, something to make him a believer.”

  The steam sputtered to a halt. Gabriel waited. His heart raced, blood thrummed in his ears. At last Cira spoke without looking up.

  “Okay. Here’s a plausible one. That night I spoke at the Martin Luther King dinner at the Chase. Afterward I called her from a phone at the hotel and told her we had to talk. I walked across the street into Forest Park where she picked me up. Had her park where there’d be little traffic. I knew she carried the Seecamp in her purse since she always had to lock it away when we traveled. Afterward I walked home. It took less than fifteen minutes. Good enough?”

  “I can fill in the blanks.”

  “Tell him whatever works.” Cira looked up. “Shouldn’t be that hard. But once we’ve got the files, I don’t want him having a change of heart. He might have backup files. We can’t trust this guy. He thinks he’s too smart.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “He needs to vanish for good this time.”

  Though but a few feet distant, Cira appeared like an apparition through the steam.

  “I hear you but—”

  “I need you to come through for me, Carlo. Like you used to.”

  “There’s risk.”

  “You’re a smart cop. You know how to do things.”

  “Big risk deserves big reward.”

  “I said I’d take care of you.”

  “The price has just gone up.”

  Cira stared at him. After some seconds he said, “Name a figure.”

  “I was thinking seven figures.”

  “You’re fucking me.”

  “I gauge that’s just Ellen Cantrell’s share. If I pull this off, the best place for me is south of the border. Early retirement. I’ve come to hate the goddamn winters. Summers suck too.”

  “I should assign you to the Tourist Bureau. Look, Carlo, I can’t get that kind of cash together without leaving a trail a mile wide.”

  “I trust you for it, Ange. It doesn’t have to come upfront o
r in a lump. I plan to have a long retirement. Just dribble it to me.”

  “All right. We’ll figure something.”

  “And one other thing. We’re partners again. We do it together. I don’t want my ass hanging out to dry. No middlemen. Hand-in-hand so we have the omertà in full operation.”

  “You’ve already thought this through, haven’t you?”

  “I figured it was coming. You’d already said as much, so yeah, I’m looking out for me, Ange. But I’m looking out for you, too. I’m not going to let this little weasel take either one of us down. Besides, I’ll be up to my neck in it myself.”

  Cira leaned across and put his hand on Gabriel’s bare knee. “But it has to happen now, Carlo. Can’t give Stone any time to figure out how to fuck us. We need to move fast. And it has to be clean. This all needs to be washed away quickly. Got it?”

  Suddenly the steam kicked back on.

  “Got it.”

  “Good. Set something up for tomorrow.”

  “Not much time.”

  “You know some places. This guy has to go back in the river.”

  - 28 -

  After retrieving his car at City Hall, Gabriel picked up Stone at his condo on the east side of the park. Stone said he needed some fresh air so Gabriel drove to Art Hill and parked on its western ridge. Together they walked to the crest, toward the statue of St. Louis who sat his steed with sword drawn, arm held high as if blessing the city spread out before him. Rising temperatures and bright sunshine had shorn the slope of usable snow for sledders. A burnt-wood aroma from the cold bonfires hung in the air.

  Gabriel stood back while Stone went to the low wall there and gazed out over the Grand Basin toward the apartment buildings that lined the park’s northern edge, rose-colored at sunset.

  “It really hit me today,” Stone said. “Yesterday, when we went to my place to get my suit for the funeral, I was still numb. But this morning, I woke to her aroma in the sheets. The things she loved—art and cooking and, I don’t know, simple things we’d shared over the years—were all around me and I just can’t grasp that she found this world so lacking that she’d want to leave it forever.”

  Gabriel drew in a breath. “She didn’t kill herself, Jonathan. Cira did.”

  Stone turned, studied Gabriel’s face.

  “You know for sure?”

  Gabriel brought his gloved hands together. “Your disappearance likely triggered some anxiety and insecurity on her part. Then, after I revealed to her what you had unearthed, she apparently did some soul searching and acknowledged her duplicity and her responsibility for what she had done to you and to your marriage. She made up her mind to come clean and go to the feds with it, but made the mistake of telling Cira. He dissuaded her in the only way he could.”

  Stone ran his hand over his face then lifted his chin toward the Art Museum behind Gabriel. “I need to sit down.”

  They found a leather-covered bench in a gallery in the east wing.

  “Degas,” said Stone.

  “Where?”

  Stone indicated a painting to his left. “‘Ballet Dancers in the Wings.’”

  “Yeah, nice.”

  Stone took a breath and blew it out slowly. “I’m not going to start beating myself up again, but this news makes me feel even more guilty and stupid and selfish.”

  “I suspect it would. But it wasn’t you who let yourself be corrupted and it wasn’t you who pulled the trigger.”

  “So uncharacteristic, what I did to precipitate this.”

  “But it had the desired effect—to make her come to her senses and do the right thing.”

  Stone turned to Gabriel. “We need to do what she wanted to do, go to the F.B.I.”

  Gabriel pursed his lips. “I suppose we should. But with them things take time. Cira wants something to happen fast.”

  “Wants what to happen?”

  “For you to vanish.”

  “I guess that doesn’t mean another bus trip.”

  “No, it doesn’t. A blow to the head and a dip in the river, so if they ever found you it’d look like suicide. I’ve agreed to arrange it, but with the caveat that Cira has to be in on it so he can’t hold it over me.”

  Stone studied the Degas. “Admittedly I’m an amateur in these things, but given that my life’s on the line I think I have the right to an opinion. We need to go to the feds.”

  Gabriel followed Stone’s gaze to the painting. The ballerinas, exhausted, seemingly awaited their cue, looking like puppets whose strings have been slacked.

  “Okay, okay. You’re right. But I need to go to them with something other than just suppositions and a hard-on. A lot for them to swallow: the mayor a murderer, the police chief covering it up, multimillion-dollar kickbacks, corruption up and down the riverfront. A tall tale worthy of your Mark Twain.”

  “Without the humorous bits.”

  “Yeah. But it still may be a tough sell. Best to go in with a plan so they don’t have to do much thinking, just provide tech support and backup.”

  “You have any ideas?”

  “Let me think on it. Cira knows all the angles. He was a tough cop and a seasoned prosecutor, so he’s seen it all. He’d smell anything fishy a mile off. We’ve got the cover for a plausible suicide, distraught young widower who has lost everything. The fact that you disappeared previously shows a precarious mental state and makes it even more convincing. But the setup can’t have any strings showing.

  “And I have to be careful for the double cross—though I think it unlikely. He trusts me and figures I’m a safe bet. Particularly as I’ll be in Mexico with the million I get for killing you and sweeping all this under the rug.”

  Stone scratched his beard. “I think you made a mistake.”

  “What—I asked for too much money?”

  “I believe you meant to use the conditional mood, ‘I’d be in Mexico with the million I would get for killing you,’ a hypothetical state of affairs; not the future tense, ‘I’ll be in Mexico with the million I will get,’ which marks events expected to happen.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Right. My error.”

  - 29 -

  Late next afternoon when Gabriel returned to his apartment, where he had Stone sequestered all day, the professor appeared drawn and shaky.

  “You see the F.B.I.?” Stone asked.

  Gabriel discarded his overcoat, went to the liquor cabinet in the kitchen, and poured himself some bourbon. Gabriel held up the bottle. “You?”

  Stone shook his head.

  Gabriel led him to the living room carrying the bottle and lowered himself onto the sofa. “Yeah, I saw the feds.”

  Stone stood over him. “What’d they say?”

  “Said it’s going to be tricky.”

  “How so?”

  Gabriel felt himself anger and took some whiskey as suppressant. He had enough weighing on his mind without a bunch of questions from an English professor. But he needed him compliant, not skeptical.

  “We have a meeting set for tonight.”

  “With the F.B.I.?”

  “With Cira.”

  “What for?”

  “This is the show. It goes down tonight.”

  Stone blanched. “Already? Where?”

  “Won’t know till I hear from the mayor himself. Why don’t you sit down?”

  Stone turned away and stared out at the dusky park, where the shadow of Gabriel’s building lay across the snow as the sun set behind it. “I didn’t realize they were that quick. They got you wired and everything?”

  Gabriel took another drink. “Everything’s taken care of. All you have to do is follow the script.”

  Stone turned back. “What script?”

  “One the F.B.I. devised. We’ll go over it a couple times before we leave. It’ll be easy, even for a crappy actor like you. Now no more questions.”

  “Excuse me for being curious, but you’ve asked me to trust you with my life, and this sounds dangerous.”

  “Piece of cake. J
ust do what I tell you. Cira will be carrying, so you can’t fuck up.”

  Stone swallowed. Gabriel poured himself another, hoping that he, Carlo Gabriel, was a good enough actor so Stone would not sense he was being deceived.

  “You seem distracted, Carlo.”

  Gabriel again lifted his drink. “I’m thinking. Thinking how this will hasten my retirement so I can put all this shit behind me.”

  Stone stood looking at him wide-eyed, as if scared half to death. Just as well.

  They went over the script a couple times, simple as it was. Stone had been right. He was no actor. But he didn’t have to act much. His role called for him to play a terrified English professor.

  It was almost seven o’clock when Cira called. “You know that second place you talked about? See you there in a half hour. Let’s make it quick. I’ve got an eight o’clock town hall on the North Side.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  Gabriel put the cell phone in his pocket and turned to Stone.

  “We’re on. Get your car keys. You’re driving.” Gabriel clipped his off-duty pistol, the Smith & Wesson seven-shot, to his belt and pulled on a shoulder holster containing his service pistol, a 92 D Beretta 9 millimeter semiautomatic. He slid the weapon from its holster and checked to make sure he had all fifteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. When he turned, Stone was standing stock-still, staring at him.

  Once outside and in Stone’s Chevy, Gabriel directed him downtown on the interstate, then north on Broadway. Then, within minutes, onto Ferry Street toward the river and the massive, two-story high, concrete floodwall that lined it and protected the city when the Mississippi swelled. They moved through open metal gates.

  “Left.”

  “That’s the bike trail.”

  “Not tonight.”

  Trees cordoned the river, which flowed black but for slabs of gray ice dotting its surface. After a few hundred yards Gabriel spied a break in the tree line.

  “Turn here.”

  Stone moved the old Chevy into a frozen-mud clearing where sat a late-model SUV that had been stripped of its wheels and doors. Beer cans, plastic buckets, and other trash littered the plot. Dead ahead just yards away the dark river churned.