Cover Story

by Gerry Boyle

  She paused.

  “Talking,” she said, and I could see her smile.

  I didn’t answer. We were barreling down St. Nicholas, past the park. Donatelli hit the brakes and swung hard onto 165th. I looked between them. The blue car was gone. The Honda was there, but the hood was down and the men working on it had left. The Range Rover was where I had left it.

  “It gets dark, that car is history,” Donatelli said. “Tomorrow morning, it’s in Jersey someplace in pieces.”

  He pulled up to it.

  “That’s the building,” I said. “And next door is where I went down the fire escape.”

  They looked at 486. It was quiet. Tranquil.

  “Want to see it?”

  They looked at each other and shrugged.

  “Hey, why not?” Donatelli said. “I need to stretch my legs.”

  We got out. I looked around warily. Donatelli stretched and groaned loudly. We walked across the street, Ramirez reluctantly bringing up the rear.

  “Used to be crack city up here,” Donatelli said. “ ’Til Fiore got in and we kicked the scum out. And you know who thanked him the most? People who live in places like this. They could walk down the street for a change.”

  I didn’t say anything. Led the way up to the third floor, went to the Yolimars’ door and knocked.

  “What are we doing here?” Ramirez said.

  “I just want you to meet these people,” I said. “They’ve got two people missing. Got picked up, then released, then disappeared.”

  “Happens, McMorrow,” Ramirez said. “It’s called being a fugitive from justice.”

  “I know that. But this is different. There’s—”

  The door opened a crack, the chain still on. It was the older woman. Behind her, the apartment was quiet.

  “Hi,” I said. “It’s me again.”

  She showed no recognition.

  “I wanted to see if Maria would talk to these detectives. About Julio. And Georgie.”

  A blank stare.

  “Is she home?” I said.

  “She go to work,” she finally whispered. “She gotta work all night.”

  “Hey, listen, McMorrow,” Ramirez said, behind me. “We’ve got stuff to do. We can’t—”

  “Shhhh,” the woman said. “The babies. They’re sleeping.”

  She repeated it in Spanish.

  “Hey, senora, we’ll vamoose,” Donatelli said.

  She closed the door. He smirked at me.

  “So that’s your Deep Throat?”

  “She’s not there. But come on.”

  I led the way, walking quickly to give them no chance to negotiate. They followed, Ramirez muttering “Christ” behind me. I went to the stairs and made my way up. The door still was open, the flattened can was on the gravel. I led the way to the end of the building, scanning the ground for spent shell casings. I couldn’t find any.

  “They fired from here,” I said, at the edge of the roof. “I was on the other side. The board fell down.”

  I peered over. There it was, in the rubble. Donatelli and Ramirez peered over, too.

  “Yeah, there’s a board all right,” Ramirez said, looking down. “And there’s the busted tricycle you rode across on.”

  “You think I’m making all this up?”

  “No,” she said. “But I’m beginning to wonder about everything else you’ve told us.”

  “Well, screw you, then.”

  “Easy,” Donatelli said, backing away.

  “I kicked out a window and went down the fire escape over there,” I said. “You want to see the cut?”

  I bent and pulled my pants leg up, yanked my sock down. The blood was dried, the slice long and thin.

  “Oh, please, McMorrow. Keep your clothes on,” Ramirez said.

  “There’s something here, I’m telling you,” I said, standing up. “Julio Yolimar was a cousin of Georgie Ortiz. He’s the guy who killed Butch’s wife.”

  Donatelli looked at me, suddenly interested. Ramirez shook her head.

  “Well, that fits, doesn’t it?” she said. “The man’s obsessed. On a vendetta. Butch pulls the files on the guy’s family? Ten years later? What’s he saying, these people helped kill his wife?”

  “No.”

  “Face it, McMorrow. Butch cracked up. It isn’t his fault. Maybe I would’ve, too. Maybe not. Butch Casey isn’t the only one who life’s handed a crappy deal. But he’s chasing around with all these bullshit theories and then he goes and kills the mayor of New York City in a bathroom. He’s whacked out.”

  She started across the roof. I looked at Donatelli.

  “Hey,” he said. “I mean, it’s mildly interesting, if you’ve got nothing else to do. But we got a dead mayor, McMorrow. What can I say?”

  “What deal was she handed?” I said.

  Donatelli glanced at me.

  “Ramirez?”

  “Yeah.”

  He hesitated.

  “She don’t talk about it, so don’t say I told you.”

  “I won’t.”

  “She had a kid. He was two. Got sick and died, just like that. Some weird infection. Husband couldn’t take it and walked. Moved in with his secretary or something. Now she’s got no kid and no husband. Works like eighty hours a week.”

  “And every bust is a little bit of payback?”

  Donatelli shrugged.

  “Whatever gets you by,” he said, and started across the roof.

  I followed, down the stairs, out to the street. Standing on the sidewalk, Donatelli paused. He asked me when I’d be coming in to go over things again. I said maybe in the morning. He asked if I was staying at the artist’s place, and I said I didn’t know.

  “Be careful in this neighborhood,” he said.

  “What for?” I said. “It’s my imagination, right?”

  I walked to the Rover, got in, and watched them drive to the end of the block and stop. They waited. I waited. We sat there, the three of us, like stubborn children. I started the motor and turned the air on high. Sat some more. Finally, they pulled out, took a left.

  I put the Rover in gear and was wheeling it around when the phone rang.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Jack McMorrow?” a man’s voice said.

  He sounded young. New York.

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  “That don’t matter. What matters is this lady by the name of Roxanne Masterson. She lives at 43 Ocean View, South Portland, Maine, which is a condo right on the harbor there. She drives a dark green Explorer, Maine registration 9871Y. Her unlisted phone number is 799-3121. Her car phone number is 877-9989. Her office is on Forest Avenue in Portland, Maine, and she starts work most days about eight in the morning. She’s thirty-one, five-seven, a hundred and thirty pounds. Roxanne has a very nice body, a real pretty face, too. Thick dark hair, big eyes. I can personally think of any number of guys who would be glad to tie her to her bed, rip her clothes off, and put the boots to her. Maybe they could take her right out of her car and bring her to some hick motel. Let me tell you how that works. You still there, bucko?”

  25

  I didn’t answer. He was talking about renting a motel room, closing the blinds. Said it could happen because there were no cops in Maine.

  “But most of all it could happen because her boyfriend is in New York fucking around with shit of which he knows nothing about.”

  He paused. I waited.

  “So you been warned, pally. You go back to goddamn Maine and you find your little lady and you lock the doors and you stay there with her. Or we’ll find her. You got that, Jack?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I said, you got that, Jack?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Too bad,” he said. “I was kinda looking forward to it. That Roxanne, she’s a babe. You know what she wore to work today? This black skirt, pretty short. A white T-shirt and a vest. And you know, when she climbs in that Explorer, the skirt goes way up. Outstanding legs, Jack. And I’
m a leg man, myself.”

  There was a click and the phone hissed. I hit the button and dialed Roxanne’s number at home. A robot voice came on, asked for my mobile authorization code. I slammed the phone down, pressed for the operator. Another robot answered, said operators were busy and calls would be answered in the order in which they were received.

  I threw the phone on the seat and drove.

  At Broadway I took a right, floored the Rover, weaved around a livery cab. I saw crowds. Stores for tortillas and sneakers, soda and beer. I ran the lights, and saw the discount liquors, the same one. I pulled over, hit the flashers. Cars honked behind me as I climbed out, and there was the same guy, back on the phone.

  I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned. Remembered me and the cops. He dropped the receiver, started to put his hands up, looked past me for my backup.

  “Hey, who you roustin’, man? I didn’t do nothin’.”

  “The phone,” I said. “Police emergency.”

  I grabbed the swinging receiver, dialed as he backed away. Punched in my card number. The phone played a bit of music, then clicked a few times.

  “Come on,” I said.

  Finally, a ring. Another. A hiss and Roxanne’s voice: “I can’t come to the phone right now . . .”

  I called her office, got another machine. Called back to the condo and, a finger in my ear, shouting over the traffic, left a message for her to call me. I called her car phone, got “the mobile mail box.” Left a message there, too. Told her to call me in the car and at Christina’s. I said I’d keep trying. Told her to go to a friend’s, to go to a restaurant, not to be home alone.

  I’d explain.

  And I did, to Clair, who answered the phone in the shop in his barn.

  “Slow down,” he said.

  “But he knew what she wore to work today,” I said.

  “He acted like he knew. You don’t know what she’s wearing. Maybe he made it up.”

  “Yeah, but he talked about her climbing in her car, and—”

  “Jack, she’s okay.”

  “But Clair, this guy was serious. I had somebody take a shot at me today.”

  “Well,” Clair said.

  “They missed.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “But this guy, he sounded—”

  “Jack, Roxanne’s okay. I think she might be on her way up here.”

  I stopped talking.

  “I tried her in the car, couldn’t get through.”

  “Maybe she was talking to somebody else, Jack.”

  “Why’s she coming up there?”

  “Needed a break, I guess. Things have been a little hectic.”

  “Reporters?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Clair said. “And you’re a pushy bunch, you know that? This one fella, he flew up from Boston or some goddamn place, drove all the way up from Portland. He came flying in the dooryard in this little purple car last night. Started asking all kinds of questions. I didn’t say much. Just got in the truck and told him I was going up to the shooting range.”

  “Clair,” I said, “this is serious.”

  “I know, but let me finish my story. So we go rattling up across the ridge, reasonable pace, but you know, that old tote road’s still a little rough in places, and around West Montville, his little car is losing some spare parts from underneath, starting to sound a little rough, seemed to me.”

  “Clair.”

  “And we come out on Mountain Road, and you know the skidders got that road all tore up. Ruts two feet deep. Almost got stuck other side of Hogback, ’fore I crossed Halfmoon Stream and popped out on 220. Quite a little bit of water still flowing through there, for this time of year. ’Course, we have had some rain.”

  “Clair.”

  “Don’t you want to know what happened to the reporter in the little car?”

  “No.”

  “I couldn’t tell you, because I never saw him again.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So you over the panic stage now?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Because you’re no good to anybody when you’re panicking. I’ve seen too many guys get brainlock at just the wrong time. Now’s the time to think straight. Be deliberate. Be rational.”

  “But you know this is no joke.”

  “With Roxanne? Yes.”

  “You know what they’re saying in these stories about you?”

  “Oh, yeah. They found my file at the Pentagon or wherever the hell they keep it,” Clair said. “But you know, they never ‘say’ anything. It’s all innuendo and implication, little sneaky jabs. Tripping over each other, shoveling the garbage, looking for the next scandal. Oh, well. This, too, shall pass.”

  I heard a tool clink in the background.

  “So, Jack. Now somebody’s taken a shot at you. I told you not to wear those gold chains.”

  “You got a minute? I’ll tell you what’s happened.”

  “Tractor’s running, so just give me the high points,” Clair said.

  But he didn’t mean it. I had his ear.

  I started with the Boxer watching the loft. Tilbury the professor. What I heard at the courthouse, what the woman said about Lester John. Julio and Georgie and their connection to Butch, to each other. The guys on the roof, the guy on the phone.

  “Huh,” Clair said. From the barn, I could hear Mozart. On Broadway, it was merengue and blaring horns. I looked up the street, saw a blue car, but it was a livery cab.

  “You think these cases were fixed?” Clair said.

  “By who? I mean, these aren’t high rollers. Lester John was snatching pocketbooks. Julio and Georgie I picture as a couple of smash-and-grabbers. They go to jail, who cares?”

  “You ought to find out who bailed that guy.”

  “I can try.”

  “Who the judge was. Who the prosecutor was.”

  I remembered the clips.

  “Fiore himself, at least for Julio and Georgie. I’m not sure about Lester.”

  “This DA’s investigative people. They operate independently?”

  “Very. It’s like New York’s CIA.”

  “Maybe one of Fiore’s guys was taking payoffs,” Clair said. “Maybe Fiore, too.”

  “Why? He doesn’t need money from some two-bit thief. He chewed these people up. Stepped on them like they were bugs. That’s how he got elected.”

  “But he didn’t step on these two.”

  “Maybe somebody else did,” I said. “Because where are they?”

  I looked around. The guy with the beeper was fifty feet up the block, glaring at me and slowly moving closer.

  “I’m going to call Roxanne again,” I said.

  “She said she might come up, have dinner,” Clair said.

  “Clair, don’t let her stay in our house alone. And try to get her to stay with you for a couple of days, until I can get back.”

  “She’ll be in good hands up here. What about you? You can’t just jump in the truck and leave?”

  “Cops have my truck. And they want me to stay within reach for a little while, anyway. And—”

  “And you’re into this and you don’t want to walk away from it.”

  “Now I don’t know. I think Butch was on to something. I think he found the scab, and I’ve started picking it off. But is it worth it?”

  “Why didn’t he pick it off himself?” Clair said.

  “I think he was going to. He said he wanted me to write about what he found.”

  “Then why’d he do what he did, or at least what they say he did?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he didn’t.”

  “I’ve half a mind to come down there and keep you from screwing things up,” Clair said.

  “No. Just ask Roxanne to call me right away. And keep an eye on her.”

  “Jack, she said she might come up,” Clair said. “She didn’t say for sure.”

  26

  On the way downtown, I called Donatelli’s pager. He didn’t call ba
ck. I called Midtown South but he wasn’t there. I asked for Ramirez, and the woman said they’d left together. I called the pager number again, and drove.

  Just above the Village, the phone finally rang and I grabbed it.

  “Hey, McMorrow,” Christina said. “Where are you?”

  “Just above Broadway and Fifth. Headed back.”

  “You eat red meat?”

  Meat?

  “I guess. Why?”

  “I’m thinking takeout. There’s this place in Williamsburg, they do porterhouse for two. It’s really fantastic.”

  “Oh?”

  “For tonight. I don’t think we can go out, not the two of us.”

  “No?”

  “Oh, lots has happened,” Christina said, her voice bright over the cellular hiss. “The police have called. That was before lunch. Somebody named Ramirez. She was in a real snit. Bit of a bitch. Said she wants to talk to you, and the district attorney does, too. At his office. And, let’s see, there’s been a black car on the corner since ten o’clock, before that it was a white one. The Times has called over and over. You’re supposed to call Ellen and Robert something.”

  “I’ll call them.”

  Christina hesitated.

  “Well, Jack, they weren’t just calling for you. They wanted to talk to me. They say they have to disclose who you were with at the hotel and where you’ve been staying.”

  “Why?”

  “Ellen says it’s a conflict of interest for the newspaper to withhold this information from the readers.”

  “That’s a crock.”

  “But she said she won’t give the specific address.”

  “But you’re in the phone book, aren’t you?”

  “It just says Brooklyn.”

  “It still stinks. Ellen is the reason I met up with you here in the first place. Now she’s using that.”

  “Well, whatever,” Christina said.

  Whatever? It seemed oddly philosophical.

  “Oh, and Roxanne called. I just talked to her on the phone.”

  “She did?” I barked.

  “Don’t worry, McMorrow. I didn’t get you in trouble.”

  “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

  “She was worried about you.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She didn’t say specifically. Maine, I guess.”