Criminal Conversation

by Ed McBain

  The papal stationery was provided by a forger in Rome, premised on a letter stolen from the Vatican mailbox.

  The letter was typed on a Macintosh Ilsi computer, in English, by an associate in Milan whose native language was Italian. It had all the authenticity of someone writing uncertainly in a second language:

  Sr. Alonso Moreno

  Rancho Palomar

  Puerto Ospina

  Putumayo, Colombia

  Dear Sr. Moreno:

  His Holiness has learned from your request for a private audience and wishes to converse with you the availableness of several dates this summer.

  Please be advised that to the middle of February, will be coming to Puerto Ospina on their way to Bogota two holy fathers of the Franciscan Order to consult with you. They are the friars Luigi Di Bello and Giuseppe Fratangelo. It is the wish of His Holiness that you make them welcome.

  Yours forever in Christ,

  It had taken two days for the stationery to be copied and printed and another two days for the letter to be typed and posted from Rome. The letter was picked up at the local post office by two of Moreno’s men on the twelfth of February, and driven to the Puerto Ospina ranch that same day in one of Moreno’s private Toyota Land Cruisers—what the Colombian soldiers called narcotoyotas. The very next day, the holy fathers Di Bello and Fratangelo arrived by dusty jeep at the front gates of Moreno’s riverside fortress on the Equadorian border.

  Each was wearing the long brown, hooded cassock of the Franciscan order, roped at the waist. Each wore a black wooden cross hanging from a silken black cord. Each wore sandals on his otherwise bare feet. Under the cassocks, each carried a nine-millimeter Uzi manufactured in Israel and equipped with a silencer. In a mixture of broken English and Sicilian Italian, they produced a letter written in English, introducing themselves to two armed guards who spoke only Spanish.

  One of the guards got on a walkie-talkie and said something in rapid-fire Spanish. The two Franciscan friars stood solemnly, piously, and patiently waiting. The riverfront was alive with the sound of insects. Father Di Bello slapped at a mosquito and mumbled a Sicilian curse neither of the guards understood. At last, someone drove down from the main house in a Mercedes-Benz. He read the letter of introduction slowly, clearly struggling with the English, and then his face brightened, and he bowed to each of the priests in turn, and said in an English as halting as their own, “Please to come. Por favor. Please, my sirs.”

  The grounds were sumptuous. Tropical flowers bloomed everywhere along the road as the Mercedes climbed higher and higher, away from the river. Fountains flowed. There were statues of nude women in all the gardens; the good fathers averted their eyes.

  Moreno greeted them effusively, explaining in his very good English that he had no Italian, and that he hoped they could understand his poor English. Di Bello and Fratangelo nodded and beamed and told him in their hopelessly fractured English that they could only stay overnight, “Just’a for la notte, eh?”—although Moreno couldn’t recall having invited them—because there was other church business they had in Bogota. It might be good, therefore, if they discussed at once the dates available for Mr. Moreno’s audience with His Holiness, which, they assured him, His Holiness was eagerly anticipating. Actually, what Di Bello said was, “He looks very much forward, eh?” Moreno was on the edge of wetting his pants.

  He poured some California wine for the prelates and then offered to show them through his mansion before dinner, an invitation they eagerly accepted because their instructions were to kill him in his bed, and to accomplish this, they had to know where he slept. He showed them his billiards room, and asked if they played, and he showed them his music room, with its grand piano (and asked if they played) and his Wurlitzer jukebox with its two hundred selections. He escorted them to a vast paneled dining room with a table that could have seated at least fifty guests, and he showed them his bar, and his living room decorated in furniture Fratangelo thought looked sumptuous but which some ungrateful guests had described—out of Moreno’s earshot—as “cheap Miami shit” and he showed them the bedrooms where they’d be spending the night, and at last he showed them his own bedroom on the second floor of the house with a mirrored ceiling over the bed, and a rose-trellised balcony looking down the hillside to the river.

  Over a splendid dinner served outdoors, Japanese lanterns lining the terrace and the paths winding down to the river, they discussed the dates that might be suitable—there were several in July and several more in August—and Moreno graciously submitted that whichever date was convenient to His Holiness would be more than convenient to him. Di Bello suggested that perhaps the beginning of July might be preferable …

  “Not so hot like August, eh?” he said.

  . . . and Moreno said the beginning of July would be fine. He poured more wine for the priests and they toasted the forthcoming audience, and Moreno casually mentioned that he was a heavy contributor to the Catholic Church here in his own land, and he would love to make an offering to the Church in Rome as well. Fratangelo tut-tutted this aside, and gave Di Bello a look of unmistakable surprise, which caused Moreno to believe he’d probably pulled a gaffe. He immediately added, “If His Holiness would not consider it unseemly,” which neither Di Bello nor Fratangelo with their limited English understood. So they both merely nodded sagely and said that they had to get an early start tomorrow morning, so perhaps they all ought to call it a night.

  At a minute past midnight, they left Di Bello’s bedroom and went upstairs to the ballustraded corridor that ran past Moreno’s bedroom. An armed guard was standing just outside the door. From the end of the corridor, firing with the silenced Uzi, Di Bello took out the guard with a single shot.

  Inside the bedroom, Fratangelo pumped six equally silenced shots into Moreno’s face. Theiv—as a token nod to the anniversary of a more famous Chicago slaying many years ago—Di Bello plucked a single red rose from the trellis outside and left it on Moreno’s blood-soaked pillow.

  The apartment was flooded with roses.

  Valentine’s Day had come and gone three days ago, but there were roses in the living room and roses in the kitchen and dining room and roses everywhere Sarah looked in the bedroom. Roses in vases on the nightstands flanking the bed and roses on the fireplace mantel and roses on the hearth and roses standing in vases under the bank of windows fronting Broome Street. Each bouquet carried a small white card:

  Sarah,

  I love you,

  Andrew

  She was beginning to believe him.

  “I thought of sending a dozen on Sunday …”

  “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “I hope this makes up for it.”

  “They’re wonderful,” she said.

  “I got this for you, too,” he said.

  She knew it was lingerie even before she opened the gift-wrapped package from Bendel.

  “Try it on,” he said.

  She went into the bathroom. There were roses in a vase on the countertop. She took off her clothes and then slipped the short white nightgown over her head. She was wearing red pumps. She felt like the devil’s bride the white gown scantily covering her, the high-heeled red shoes. She posed for him in the bedroom door, one hand over her head and resting on the jamb.

  “Oh, yeah, I got this, too,” he said, and handed her a tiny box.

  She hoped against hope—but what else could it be? How on earth would she be able to explain … ?

  “Open it,” he said.

  “Andrew …”

  “Please,” he said.

  She undid the ribbon.

  As she’d feared, there was a ring in the box. A ring with a slender black band and an oval black crown with some sort of signet.

  “It’s bronze,” he said. “I bought it in an antiques shop on Madison Avenue.”

  “Andrew, it’s … beautiful! But …”


  “The figure is some kind of half-man, half-goat,” he said.

  “A satyr,” she said, nodding. “But, Andrew, how can … ?

  “That’s a bird he’s holding. It’s supposed to be Roman.”

  He slipped the ring onto the third finger of her right hand. Wearing the short white gown and the red shoes and the black ring on the hand opposite her gold wedding band, she felt truly like the devil’s bride. She did not know how she could possibly wear the ring, it had to have cost a small fortune. She could not even imagine wearing it on a chain around her neck. Michael would surely question how it had come into her possession. But neither could she refuse it. He took her right hand in his. He brought the hand to his lips. He kissed her hand.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too,” she said.

  Lying beside him in bed, the black ring on her right hand, her left hand resting on his chest, her head on his shoulder, she tried again to understand how she could possibly love someone about whom she knew absolutely nothing. She supposed adolescents could fall instantly and madly in love with someone simply on the basis of looks and personality but that was only because there was so little else to know about a teenager. Didn’t an adult have to know someone before she could love him? And yet, what other man had ever filled an entire apartment with roses for her? The only other man who’d ever bought her a ring was Michael. Her engagement ring, and then the wedding band she now wore on her left hand. Someone she did not know at all had filled her life with roses and slipped an ancient Roman ring onto her finger. Black, no less. She had never owned a black ring in her life. Before this evening, she hadn’t even known that bronze could turn black.

  I love you, too, she had told him.

  And now she tried to learn who this man she loved was.

  “Are your parents still alive?” she asked.

  “Oh yes.”

  “Where do they live?”

  “Well, my mother lives in Connecticut. My father’s in Kansas.”

  “Are they separated?”

  “Sort of.”

  “What does your father do?”

  “He used to be a building contractor.”

  “What does he do now?”

  “He’s retired.”

  “How old are they?”

  “My father’s fifty-two. My mother’s fifty.”

  Only sixteen years older than I am, she thought.

  “Where in Connecticut?”

  “Stonington.”

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “Two sisters.”

  “Older or younger?”

  “Older.”

  “I’ll bet they spoiled you rotten.”

  “They did.”

  “Where’d you go to school?”

  “Kent and UCLA.”

  “What’d you major in?”

  “Business administration.”

  “When did you graduate?”

  “I didn’t. I got kicked out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, suspended, I guess they called it.”

  “Why?”

  “Drunk and disorderly.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I’m serious. I beat up four guys who poured spaghetti sauce in my bed.”

  “Why’d they do that?”

  “I guess they thought it was funny. Anyway, I was already beginning to lose interest in school. I used to go up to Vegas a lot, gamble, fool around, you know. The two didn’t mix.”

  “I’ve never been to Vegas.”

  “I’ll take you there sometime.”

  “Why’d they separate? Your parents.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. One of those things.”

  “Did your father want it? Or your mother?”

  “Neither of them. It was something that just happened.”

  “My sister’s going through a divorce right this minute.”

  “I know. Pretty woman.”

  “Yes.”

  “But not as pretty as you.”

  “Thank you.”

  She was silent for a long while. Then she said, “You shouldn’t have bought me the ring, Andrew.”

  “I wanted to.”

  “How can I possibly wear it?”

  “Wear it when you come here. I don’t care about the rest of the time. Just wear it when you come here.”

  “All right.”

  “While you’re here, I want you to take off the other ring. I want you to wear only my ring while you’re here.”

  “All right. I’ll find a place to hide it. I’d love to wear it all the time, it’s so beautiful …”

  “No, just when you’re here,” he said. His voice lowered. “Take off the other one now.”

  “All right.”

  She took off her wedding band and placed it on the nightstand alongside the telephone. She felt no guilt taking it off. She slipped it from her finger as though Michael no longer existed. Andrew kissed her finger where the ring had been.

  “Now take my cock in your hand,” he said. “The right hand. The hand with my ring.”

  “Here they go again,” Regan whispered.

  “Better turn it off,” Lowndes suggested.

  “Shhh,” Regan said.

  The bedroom bug was in the telephone on the nightstand alongside the bed. There were similar bugs in the kitchen counter phone on the second floor, and in the conference room phone on the first floor. New York Telephone had reported that there were three unpublished phones in the apartment above the tailor shop. Freddie Coulter had subpoenaed the phone company for the numbers, and then had subpoenaed again for cable-and-pair, terminal location, and pair-and-binding information. He’d put his access line in the same terminal that contained the target’s phone lines, coming off the already existing B-P posts. Before entering the tailor shop again, he’d revisited the terminal box on the rear of the building, and shorted out all the phones, disabling them. It took him a total of nine minutes to bug all three phones.

  But while he was in there, and just for good measure, he went to each room, found a wall with a good aural sweep, and unscrewed a 110-volt outlet from it. He then replaced each outlet with a one-watt radio transmitter. On the outside, this looked like any functioning wall outlet, which in fact it still was. Behind the faceplate, however, was the complicated circuit board that sent out the voice signal. Each transmitter had a range of some two to three blocks and required its own receiver. The devices were strictly emergency backups, and would be used only if, for one reason or another, the phones went out. In the bedroom, the fake outlet was on the wall close to the dresser. Freddie replugged a lamp into it, tried the lamp to make sure it still worked, and then started packing his tools.

  The new application for a court order had this time cited reasonable suspicion as well as probable cause, and had requested both a wiretap and a pen register in addition to the bugs. The wiretap would enable them to listen to and record both ends of any telephone conversation. The pen register would print out only telephone numbers dialed from the premises, but it would also record the time and the duration of any call whatever, incoming or outgoing. All minimization requirements were still in effect. If Faviola’s mother called to talk about her homemade lasagna, for example, the investigators would have to shut down at once.

  Everything had been in place since Valentine’s Day.

  This was the first time Regan and Lowndes had heard a woman talking.

  “Hold it tight,” Faviola said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Fuckin’ woman gives me a hard-on,” Regan said.

  “Better turn it off,” Lowndes suggested.

  “Can you see the ring moving up and down on your cock?” she said.

  “Got to be a pro,” Regan s
aid.

  “The black ring you gave me, moving up and down on your stiff cock?”

  “Turn it off,” Lowndes warned.

  “I don’t want you to come yet,” she said.

  “Then you’d better …”

  “I want you to beg me to come.”

  “If you keep on …”

  “No, no, not yet,” she said.

  “She’s letting go of it, the cunt,” Regan said.

  “You’re gonna blow the whole fuckin’ thing!” Lowndes shouted.

  “So will she,” Regan said, and laughed.

  “For Christ’s sake, Johnny, turn it off!”

  “Let’s see just how hard we can make you, all right?” she said. “Let’s see what rubbing this ancient Roman ring on your cock can do, all right? My hand tight around you, the black ring rubbing against your stiff cock …”

  “Must be a magic ring,” Regan said.

  “Johnny, please!”

  “The satyr and the bird,” she whispered.

  “Jesus.”

  “Are you my satyr, Andrew?”

  “Jesus, you’re …”

  “Am I your bird, Andrew? No no no, not yet, baby. Not till I want you to. Not till I say you can. Just keep looking at the ring. Just keep watching that black ring, Andrew. My hand tight on your cock and the ring moving …”

  “Good enough,” Regan said, and turned off the equipment.

  3: March 9–May 9

  Mr. Handelmann’s eyes narrowed the moment she showed him the ring. She hadn’t gone to a neighborhood shop because she didn’t want anyone who knew Michael to mention that his wife had come in asking questions about a ring. She’d settled on the Handelmann Brothers’ shop on Sixty-Third and Madison, close to the school, because she’d bought several pieces of jewelry from them in the past; most recently a pair of earrings for Heather’s Christmas present. Andrew had told her the ring was Roman, but she wanted to know more about it. Where in the Roman Empire? When? She felt she had to know all this, just in case Michael stumbled across it and asked about it. She didn’t think this could possibly happen. She’d buried it at the back of her lingerie drawer, under a pile of panties she never wore anymore. But in the event, she would tell him exactly what she’d just told Handelmann. She had bought the ring in an antiques shop in the Village and had paid seven hundred dollars for it. And then fill him in on the details she hoped to get today.