Loud Pipes Save Lives

by Jennifer Giacalone

  He searched her face, but she said nothing.

  “I understand that,” he went on. “I feel that too, or I did before things fell apart. They have a way of doing that, don’t they?” He took something out of his breast pocket and dropped it on the side table next to the bed. It flipped open: an old badge. “That was mine, my old one, from the early eighties.”

  “Why do you still carry it?” she asked.

  “Because it’s easy to forget who you are.” He looked at her wounded shoulder. “Detective, I have done a lot of things in the line of duty that I regret. I let myself drift into the grey because my family was in a desperate situation. I tried to set rules and limits so that I would never find myself in a position of having to do something unambiguously wrong. Hell, I even felt all right about some of the things I took payoffs to do: closing down most of the cathouses in the precinct? I may have been leaving the mob ones alone, and eliminating their competition, but I was still fighting the good fight, wasn’t I?” He shook his head. “It’s so easy to slip down the wrong path and not realize that you’ve done it until you’ve gone too far.”

  “So what do you want from me?”

  “I want to undo it, if I can. And to do that, I need to talk to Sparr.”

  She looked at him: half-collapsed in the chair, hat in his lap, his thinning blond hair and sunken eyes the marks of a man who had lived a long time and built up a lot more regrets than he would have liked.

  “Self-imposed exile is a bitch,” she remarked, her voice hoarse.

  “You can say that again.”

  She struggled to believe that he wanted redemption.

  “Just help me reach her,” he pleaded. “You don’t have to tell me where she is.”

  “I already told Chernov, I don’t know where she is.”

  “I know. And that’s fine. Just help me get in touch with her. Let me talk to her. I want to contain this shit-show before it gets any worse.”

  She thought of Lily, driving away with the unconscious would-be killer in the back seat. Lil, are you sure you’re okay with this option? This seems a little ‘grey area’ for your liking.

  Frustrated, exhausted, and not at all sure she was making the right decision, she heaved a sigh. “In my jacket pocket. Get me my phone.”

  31

  Foreign Expressions

  Caroline’s head throbbed between her hands. This wasn’t a good night for anyone to be asking anything of her. She’d even sent her boy, William, to stay with his uncle Norris for the evening because she knew she wasn’t in a good place to deal with a nineteen-year-old with Asperger’s.

  Tonight was a night where she would spend so much of it scrambling against the darkness. She knew herself well enough to know when she was about to have a night like that. Tonight would have been a good night to take the bike out, she thought. The sensory thing of it was sometimes helpful. It could put her right when other more standard methods did not.

  She’d gotten her bike not long after Graham and Eleanor had gotten theirs, and she’d loved it, even though it didn’t make her any cooler. Graham had stenciled “My Queen” on the side of Eleanor’s and it was all Caroline could do not to vomit.

  She kind of felt like vomiting now, as she sat alone, in the dark, tapping away on her laptop, clicking around, looking for something to anchor herself. She shouldn’t be sitting here. She should be out on the bike. She shouldn’t be dealing with anyone else’s problems but her own. She heard them bumping around out in the other room. She knew she was going to have to go out there, sooner or later.

  Lily pulled up in front of the warehouse on the bombed-out block in Sheepshead Bay. It had to be the place; it looked like it was locked down, but no other building on the block held even the possibility of having actual humans inside it. She crunched across the broken glass on the sidewalk and raised her hand to pound on the metal door, but it opened before she had the chance to strike it.

  Ainsley was on the other side, looking grave. “Where is he?”

  “In the back seat. Still passed out, or pretending.”

  After they managed to drag him inside and lower him into a chair, Lily looked around. Nondescript black bikes were parked around the outer wall, looking for all the world like the ones in any photo or video anyone had managed to get of the assaults she’d been reviewing for the last month or so. Ten in total. But that’s not why I’m here, is it, she reminded herself. She engaged the safety, then set the guy’s gun down on a card table against the wall a few feet away from where they’d restrained him.

  “I thought we’d need some help,” Ainsley explained, walking back to close and bolt the door.

  Two other girls waited inside: Khady, and another one that Lily hadn’t met before, but suspected was probably the Jamaican that Officer Waters had mentioned picking up with them in Sunset Park. Fucking right again.

  “Khady,” Ainsley said stiffly, “you already know my sister. Lily, that’s Vea.” She hesitated, trying to explain why she’d brought them, and Vea in particular, who was a stranger to Lily. “Vea’s, um…well, she’s just…good at handling stuff.”

  This must be the “someone who knows the system” that Ainsley had referred to earlier. But she’d used some other name on the phone. Empress? Lily couldn’t remember. It was too much work for her to stay cool and focused. It was like trying to think clearly with an army of four-year-olds banging pots and pans next to her.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket. It was Gary Crick. She frowned and looked back at the man cuffed in the chair. Still out. She glanced at the others. “Hang on, this might be important.” She picked it up. “Sparr.”

  “Lily, it’s Gary. Listen, I looked at the disclosures and, uh, well, it’s weird. He’s got a couple of trusts with Lyonsbank, like you asked about. And, uh, they add up to…well, more than a cop ought to have, considering that there was no inheritance due to his dad’s dotcom losses.”

  Lily hurried him along. “Okay, okay. How much?”

  “Almost three million.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. It’s spread out among different assets, so it doesn’t look like that much. But a lot of it is tied up in this one fund that I’m very familiar with, that made a ton of money short-selling around the crash.”

  “Which makes this something you can’t talk to me any more about.”

  “Exactly.”

  Lily breathed hard, integrating the new information. “Okay, thanks, Gary.”

  “Whatever you’re looking for, I hope it helps.”

  “I think it does.” She hung up, tossed the phone back into her pocket, and turned back to the girls, who were looking back and forth between her and the man in the chair.

  “Okay,” Lily sighed. “Let’s wake him up.”

  “What was that call?” Ainsley asked.

  Lily shook her head. “Too much to get into now. I think the police commissioner took money from the Schulzes to cover up their involvement with Dad’s death—that they got wind of my investigating it, and that they sent this guy—whoever he is—to, uh, stop any further investigation.”

  Vea walked over with a plastic cup of cold water from the shop sink and tossed it in the guy’s face. “Wake up, Sleepin’ Beauty!”

  Lily twitched a bit, wishing Vea had checked with her before doing that, but she decided it didn’t matter. She spent a moment watching the guy sputter and shake himself out of unconsciousness, then slapped his face a couple of times, in much the way one slaps a limb that has fallen asleep. “Come on, sunshine, we don’t have all day.” She was cool. Her voice was cool. Inside was a riot of heat and jangling nerves, but outside, she was icy and serene as the peak of a mountain.

  Ainsley took hold of his shoulder and jostled him. “Come on,” she commanded. “Tick tock, motherfucker.”

  Lily stopped and looked sidelong at Ainsley. “Did you seriously just quote Pulp Fiction?”

  Ainsley shrugged. “It was on last night.”

  Lily rolled her eyes but didn’t
say anything more. She saw his mouth twitch in something like a smile at that exchange. He was awake. She planted a foot in between his legs and told him, with perfect calm, “I have my foot on this chair. This chair is going to go backwards into the cement floor if you don’t stop playing possum and open your eyes so that we can have a friendly conversation.”

  His eyes opened, and he looked up at her. He wasn’t a bad looking guy, for an older man, she supposed, though there was something weaselly about his face that she couldn’t pin down. He looked around, seeming surprised. “Detective. This doesn’t look like a police precinct.” He clucked his tongue. “Highly unorthodox.”

  “So is trying to murder a cop,” she answered. “Maybe you’d like to tell me who sent you?”

  He wheezed out a chuckle. “No, I would not. And you are making a huge mistake right now, Detective.”

  “We began this conversation with you trying to choke me, so I don’t really see how we can go downhill from here.”

  He eyed her up, sly and sharp, but said nothing.

  “Violence is not my thing,” she went on. “But these girls are actually pretty good at it. So, the only way you walk out of here at all, much less in one piece, is by answering my questions.” She felt sick at the thought of actually having to carry through on her words. But she needed the truth. She needed to know if she was right.

  “You know, they didn’t tell me you were so attractive—”

  Lily punched him in the mouth, not hard, but hard enough to stop him from talking. She was vaguely aware of the impressed look that crossed Ainsley’s face. “Try something more original.” She rubbed her open palms down the outside of her jacket. “So, who sent you?”

  He spit a little blood, not enough to be impressive, and smiled. “You already know, right?”

  “Yeah, I know who sent you. I want you to kindly say it for me in so many words, out loud.”

  Ainsley was chomping at the bit. “Come on, let me smack him around with the pipe a little.”

  Lily closed her eyes. Goddamnit, Ainsley, shut up. “Who do you work for?”

  “Oh,” he said grandly, “it ain’t like that at all. I don’t work for the people who want you dead. I work with them. It’s more of a…partnership.”

  “And who is that?” she repeated.

  Ainsley walked over and socked him a second time, harder than Lily had. His head snapped back further this time.

  “Talk!” Ainsley shouted at him.

  Lily waved her back with a calm hand, keeping her eyes focused on his face. “Shall we keep going? Or do you want to wait until she gets out the pipe? Or maybe you want to wait till the blonde gets out her cigarette lighter?” She gestured toward Khady, who took her cue and pulled out the lighter she’d had in her pocket when she lit those cigarettes earlier and started flicking it repeatedly.

  His eyes darted around over all of them, and a look of comprehension slowly dawned on his face: That’s right, Lily thought with satisfaction, you’re in trouble.

  Lily dragged a metal chair over and sat down in front of him, legs crossed, calm, and almost looking relaxed. “Let’s start with something easy. What’s your name?”

  He hesitated, looking between them.

  Lily heard a door swing open behind her at the other side of the warehouse. The other girls looked up. The guy in the chair looked over her shoulder, suddenly stunned. Something had caught him very much off guard.

  “His name used to be Francis Burton, but that didn’t sound guinea mobster enough. Did it, Francis?”

  Lily turned around and saw her. She strode into the room, tall, dressed in black riding gear, red hair knotted up off of her neck, with eyes dark and dangerous as any Lily had ever seen. It took her several solid seconds to absorb what she was seeing—foreign expressions on a familiar face.

  “Didn’t know you were still here, Empress,” Vea remarked, unruffled.

  Empress, that was the name Ainsley had mentioned. But…

  “Yes, well, I’m not really feeling up for this tonight, but I couldn’t let you idiots fuck this up.”

  The guy in the chair—Francis, he had a name now—forced a smile. “Didn’t know I would be seeing you tonight, or I woulda worn some cologne. You liked that Drakkar Noir I used to wear, didn’t you, Caroline?”

  Lily’s head started to spin. “Aunt Caroline?” What the hell is going on here? Why didn’t Ainsley mention this before? Why does my fucking aunt look like Katey Sagal in Sons of Anarchy?

  She nodded at Ainsley. “Take your sister into the other room and catch her up.”

  “No, no, you can explain later,” Lily interrupted. “Who is this guy?”

  Caroline smiled. “He works for the Corrato family. He calls himself Frankie Beanbags.”

  “I didn’t pick that name,” he grumbled.

  “Oh?” Lily asked with interest. “Why’d they call you that?”

  “You’re a detective, figure it out,” he snapped.

  Lily smirked. Caroline smiled, beatific and creepy. It was possibly the scariest thing Lily had ever seen.

  “I never thought I’d see you again,” she said to Frankie Beanbags. “I wasn’t mobster-whore enough for you, I guess.” She stepped closer. “You’re going to tell my niece everything, honey. I mean everything.” Her eyes found his gun sitting on the card table. She walked over and picked it up. Not looking at him, she stood turning it over in her hands, musing, “If you catch me on a bad day, there’s no telling what I might do. Remember that about me, Frankie?”

  His face seemed to say that he did.

  Lily’s hand went to her own holster, but she didn’t draw. This Caroline was someone she didn’t know, didn’t recognize, and didn’t know what to do with. She inserted herself in between Beanbags and her aunt, and leaned down into his face. “Frankie, you got sent by Connolly, didn’t you?” she asked him, allowing some quiet menace to seep into her voice.

  “Not exactly,” he hedged.

  “But he’s involved in this somehow, isn’t he?”

  “I do business with him,” he allowed.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  They both heard the sound of the safety catch being released on the gun in Caroline’s hand.

  “Yeah, he’s involved. He didn’t send me, though,” he quickly volunteered.

  “Who did?” Lily pressed. “Is this about Lyonsbank?”

  “It’s not about the bank.”

  Caroline’s voice came from behind her: “Talk faster, Frankie.”

  He took a quick breath, then leveled his eyes right at Lily. “I give you everything, you let me walk out, right?”

  “Fine,” Lily snapped.

  “Okay. So, I’ve been working off and on with Lina Schulze for years. How often does a campaign hack need something dirty done, right?” He met their cold stares and plunged on: “She wanted a high-level cop in her pocket, and she knew about his dad losing a whole lotta money—basically everything—so, she sorta brokered a situation with us. The Corrato family would put him on the payroll, so to speak, and get his family straightened out, money-wise.

  “She had him set up some funds at Lyonsbank, and then leaned on her old man to let us launder the payoffs through the bank. So, he’s in Corrato’s pocket on account of being on the payroll. And he’s in her pocket on account of her father’s bank holding his trusts. And I guess you been nosing around about all that, and she couldn’t have you finding that out.”

  Ainsley stepped closer. “Please, can I fuck him up now?”

  But Lily put out a soothing hand. “Thank you for your forthrightness, Frankie." Cool, cool. Zen calm. "Do you have evidence for all of this? You understand, I need that, or else this will have been a waste of time.”

  “Yeah, in my office in Crown Heights. I got audio of phone calls. I got ledgers of everything we’ve paid out.”

  “Ledgers?”

  “I’m a fucking accountant,” he snapped. “Of course I got ledgers.”

  Lily shook her head. “I
almost got wasted by an accountant.” She looked at him again, not fully believing him. “So you’re the Corrato family’s accountant?”

  “Just for the hookers. In Brooklyn. And this Connolly thing.”

  “Why would you keep all that?”

  “In case they got the idea they didn’t need me anymore, I needed the leverage.”

  She nodded once, then reached into his pocket. She pulled out his wallet. Along with a wad of cash that was probably several hundred dollars, she found some credit cards, and then a few business cards for an accounting service. “American Freedom Accounting. That’s you, I’m assuming?”

  He nodded.

  “Great. Anyone over there now?”

  He shook his head.

  “Good.” She turned to the girls and Caroline. “Can you guys keep an eye on him till I get back? I want this stuff in hand before we decide what to do with him.”

  Ainsley nodded. “I can’t promise I’m not gonna kick the shit out of him a little, though.”

  Lily shook her head and walked back to where he sat. “And this is for trying to kill me.” She drew her gun and pistol-whipped him in the side of the head, then stood for a moment, looking at him slumped down in the chair.

  She turned to her aunt. “Okay, we’re gonna talk about this later, because…well, for obvious reasons.” She looked at the weapon in her aunt’s hand. “Are you sure you’re cool with that thing? You know how to handle it? You’re not going to do anything crazy?”

  Caroline’s smile was not at all comforting. “Yes, I know how to use it. We’ll be fine.”

  Lily was thoroughly unhappy about the situation, but there was nothing for it. “Ainsley, come with me. We have to go break into his office.”

  Ainsley’s face hovered in between worry and eagerness. “Are you sure? Shouldn’t I stay here and… help watch him?”

  “No, apparently you’re good at breaking and entering, and that’s what I need right now.”