Damaged Goods

by Stephen Solomita

  He drove up and around the hill for the next twenty minutes, trying to think of a solution to his problem, even though he knew he wasn’t good at solutions. In the meantime, Jilly began to awaken. Thoughts came first, thoughts devoid of any emotional content, then awareness slowly crept through his thoroughly stoned brain. He noted Theresa cringing against the door, the back of his partner’s head, the rain still falling, the windshield wipers slapping back and forth. A few minutes more and he began to place the various images in a particular time and place, remembering that he was in the city of Boston, looking for his only child.

  “Jackson-Davis?”

  “I done found that old hill, Jilly.” Jackson-Davis turned and grinned at his partner. “But I ain’t found the street on account of I cain’t read the signs.”

  Jilly, after a serious effort, managed to raise his slumped body to a sitting position and look out the window. What he saw brought him fully awake. Knots of druggies, dealers and buyers, milled about on all four corners of the intersection, while prostitutes, barely dressed despite the cold rain, strolled beneath wide umbrellas on the avenues. The whores beckoned to the passing car and the two white men inside, one girl even lifting the edge of her mini to give them a good look at the available merchandise.

  “Holy fucking shit,” Jilly moaned. “Where have you got us to?”

  “You said a hill, Jilly.” This wasn’t going the way Jackson-Davis had expected. “I remember you sayin’ about Patricia livin’ on a hill.”

  “Are you kidding me? This is fucking niggertown. Would my daughter live in fucking niggertown?”

  Jackson-Davis swallowed. “Guess not, Jilly.”

  “Make a left turn, get down the goddamned hill and find a main street.”

  “But, Jilly …”

  “One more word, Jackson, and I’m gonna kill ya.”

  Jackson-Davis made the turn, remembering that sometimes when Jilly Sappone talked real soft it was worse than when he shouted. He glanced into the mirror, watched his partner unfold a map, then turn on the overhead light.

  “Real good, Jilly. Real …”

  “I told you to shut the fuck up.” Jilly studied the map carefully, thinking that, in some ways, this was the best part of being high on dope. Though he was mightily pissed off, he was in complete control. Or, at least, he felt like he was in complete control, which was all he could hope for in life.

  They found Columbus Avenue at the bottom of the hill. According to Jilly’s map, Columbus led directly into central Boston and Beacon Hill, which was where Patricia lived. All he had to do was make a left on Charles Street, a right on Revere, and another right on Myrtle, three simple turns and the deal was done.

  They found the turn on Charles Street easily enough, the road was large and well marked, but then, without any warning, Charles turned one-way against them, forcing Jackson-Davis into a left on Beacon which led away from …

  “Make the first right,” Jilly commanded. He didn’t know the name of the street, didn’t care. With the river on one side and a steep hill on the other, he figured they’d eventually stumble across Myrtle Street. As long as they didn’t cross that fucking river again.

  Eventually turned out to be thirty minutes of pure torture during which he passed Revere three times without being able to turn into it, until he finally happened upon Myrtle from Anderson Street.

  “Which way, Jilly?”

  “No way, just park the goddamned car by that hydrant. I’ll walk from here.” He took inventory while Jackson-Davis maneuvered the car into the only open space on the block. The neighborhood was much fancier than he’d expected, but that might actually work in his favor. Between his neatly trimmed gray hair and beard, his black, London Fog trench coat, and the private security badge pinned to a billfold in his pocket, he’d most likely be able to pass himself off as a cop. As long as nobody got close enough to see the fire in his eyes.

  “You sure you don’t want me to come along?”

  Jilly yanked Theresa down on the seat, covered her with a blanket, ignored her sobbing. “The bitch is still gonna be under this blanket when I come back, right?”

  “Yeah, Jilly. The blanket’ll make her nice and comfy-like.”

  “And you’re gonna keep her quiet, right?”

  “Not a peep.”

  Jilly opened the door, stepped onto the sidewalk, listened to the muted buzzing in his ears. Shitstorm on the horizon? His brain had begun to pulse softly again, the streetlights to flare ominously. He told himself to hold on, to get it done, that he’d have plenty of time to relax, then walked off in search of his daughter.

  He found her building on the next block, a four-story town house with a shielded lock on the front entrance. Patricia’s apartment was on the top floor, but Jilly rang Apartment 1A, announced, “Police,” into the intercom, then waited patiently while an old man shuffled down the hallway to check him out.

  “Police,” he repeated, holding up the phony badge.

  The man peered at the badge for a moment, then up at Jilly, then back at the badge. Finally, he stepped back to let Jilly into the hallway. “What’s this about?”

  “I’m looking for a young woman named Patricia Sappone, a college student.”

  “There’s a couple of girls up on the fourth floor. Four B, I think, but I don’t know their names.” He squinted up at Jilly through watery eyes. “What’d they do, Officer?”

  Jilly threw the old man a reassuring smile. “Sorry to disappoint you, sir, but they didn’t do anything. Patricia Sappone witnessed an assault a few months ago and I need to go over her testimony.” He leaned forward. “Just between you and me, the cops who interviewed her the first time around screwed it up real bad. Took her address, but didn’t get her apartment or her phone number. It’s the new element on the force. The affirmative-action bullshit crew. That’s what I like to call ’em.”

  He winked, turned his back, started up the stairs. Thinking that maybe the old man would call the real cops, but he’d be out before they responded. One way or the other.

  As he climbed the winding staircase, he switched the nine millimeter from his belt to his coat pocket. There was always the chance that Patricia, though she hadn’t seen him in fourteen years, would recognize him through the peephole. In that case he fully intended to forgo the pleasure of her company, to empty a clip through the door.

  He needn’t have worried because there was no peephole on the door to Apartment 4B, no way for anyone inside to see his face without opening the door first. And once that door opened, even if they had the safety chain attached, he’d be inside.

  His knock was answered after a minute by a soft, “Who is it?”

  “Police.” Jilly held up the badge with his left hand, kept his right in his pocket.

  The door opened a few inches and a face appeared in the crack. Jilly, who’d been worried about his own ability to recognize his daughter, knew the Asian girl peering out at him definitely wasn’t Patricia.

  “What’s it about?”

  “I’m looking for a woman named Patricia Sappone.”

  “Patty? She’s not home.”

  “Will she be coming home soon?”

  “I don’t think so, but I’m not really sure. Patty went back to New York to be with her mother. She left an hour before you got here.”

  The shitstorm ripped into Jilly’s brain with the sudden fury of a cyclone descending to earth. The first lightning bolt jerked him upright, the second ran down through his arms to yank at his fingers. All his fingers, including the one wrapped around the trigger of his nine-millimeter Colt. At first, Jilly thought the resulting explosion was just part of the show, but when the girl in the doorway let out a scream, then slammed the door in his face, he realized that something was seriously wrong. Unfortunately, he didn’t fully understand what it was until his attempt to rip the gun out produced a spent shell which bounced off the side of his coat to land in a small puddle of blood next to his right foot.

  THIRTEEN

>   STANLEY MOODROW SWUNG HIS legs over the edge of the bed and pulled himself into a sitting position. The box spring squealed in protest, echoing the complaints of his own body. According to the battered wind-up alarm clock on the night table, it was 5:47, much too early, he decided, for a sixty-year-old …. He stopped, automatically corrected himself: for a nearly sixty-year-old man to be up and about.

  BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

  “I’m comin’.”

  He looked back to see if the buzzer had awakened Betty, then remembered that she wasn’t there, that she was in California with Marilyn, that a man named Jilly Sappone lay in his immediate future, that he had a dozen things to do.

  “I’m comin’,” he repeated.

  He lurched to his feet, threw on a robe, padded off down the hall to open the door for his former partner. “What happened, Jim? You finish early?”

  Tilley stepped into the apartment, held out a copy of the Daily News.

  “Finish?” he said. “No such thing. I still have to generate tonight’s paperwork. The whip tells me I haven’t met this week’s quota. Check out the headline.”

  Moodrow unfolded the newspaper, read the block letters below the paper’s logo. NO REFUGE. His eyes dropped to the two photos, one of Jim Tilley and several other detectives outside the NYU dormitory, one of a gurney sliding into an EMS ambulance. He studied them for a moment, then read the caption at the bottom of the page: “State-of-the-art security system fails to prevent tragedy. Four girls attacked in NYU dorm. Story on page 3.”

  “The Post go with it, too?” he asked.

  “The Post and Newsday. It’s ‘life in the fishbowl’ time.” Tilley set a paper bag on the table, removed two coffee containers and a half dozen frosted crullers. “How many days you think I have? Before they start screaming?”

  Moodrow grunted. They meant Tilley’s NYPD bosses; all politicians, in and out of power; the entire media, from the New York Times editorial page to the fulminating Rush Limbaugh; a thoroughly cowed (and cowering) public.

  “I’d say you got maybe fifteen minutes.”

  “Wanna hear the kicker?” Tilley popped the lid on one of the Styrofoam cups, added a packet of sugar.

  “Shoot.”

  “Two of the girls were white, one was Asian, one was black. The black girl’s name is … no, was Keesha Montgomery, daughter of City Councilman John Montgomery. Keesha was beaten to death with a table leg. A weapon, as they say, of convenience.”

  Moodrow nodded sympathetically, then took off for the bathroom. Knowing that despite Tilley’s pro forma cop protest, the investigation was a no-lose proposition for a precinct detective. If Jim found the mutts before the case was transferred out to the Sex Crimes Unit, a matter of forty-eight hours at the outside, and if he played it smart by allowing the lieutenant and the precinct commander to steal the collar, he’d most likely be promoted to Detective, First Grade. On the other hand, if he failed to pull the perps out of the proverbial hat, the job would move away, become somebody else’s responsibility. By the time the cops were ready to give up, he’d be too far removed to take the blame.

  That’s not the way it was going to be with Jilly Sappone, of course. There was no out for Stanley Moodrow, no way to shift responsibility. The simple fact that the media wasn’t looking over his shoulder meant less than nothing to him. Moodrow looked over his own shoulder.

  His teeth brushed and bladder emptied, Moodrow went back into the kitchen and sat down at the table. He yanked the lid off the second Styrofoam coffee container, added two sugars, took a long satisfying drink.

  “So, what’s up, Jim?”

  Tilley opened his briefcase. “We got some possibles on Sappone’s partner.” He took out several sheets of paper and laid them on the table. “Plus, something real interesting on Jilly himself. I got a medical report here says that Sappone is brain damaged. Something about …” He picked up a single sheet, scanned it quickly. “According to this report, Jilly is some kind of an epileptic. Seizures in the temporal lobes. The doc says that unless he has brain surgery, Jilly is a hundred percent guaranteed to reoffend upon release.”

  Moodrow broke a piece off one of the crullers, popped it into his mouth, took a moment to let the glaze dissolve on his tongue. “I must be missing something here. Does this help us in some way? Maybe we should get him on Prozac.”

  “Can’t you see what’s happening?” Tilley stared at Moodrow through bleary eyes. “The fucking doc set up a perfect insanity defense. Correction: temporary insanity defense. Jilly could have the surgery and claim he’s cured. His lawyer can use the goddamned state to prove his case. I don’t …”

  “Jim, this time the doc ain’t lyin’. Jilly Sappone is strictly damaged goods.” Moodrow raised a hand, saw that it held the rest of the cruller. “Damn, but I’m hungry.” He took his time finishing it off, chewing slowly, licking his fingertips clean. There was something he had to tell his ex-partner, but he didn’t quite know how to put it. How to break through Tilley’s evident paranoia. “Sappone was just a little kid, five, six, seven, when his old man got blown away. They were in the car together, parked at the curb after a trip to grandma’s, when two shooters opened up from close range. They weren’t trying for Jilly, but a slug fragmented on his father’s skull and Jilly caught a piece of it. From what I understand, it’s still sitting there.”

  Moodrow paused, then, when Tilley didn’t respond, took another tack. “Look, Jilly’s gonna get brain surgery, all right, but it’s more likely to be done with an ice pick than a scalpel. You understanding me here? The cops are the least of Jilly Sappone’s problems. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

  Tilley’s white-on-white complexion reddened. He looked down at his hands, then back at his ex-partner. “Yeah, you’re right. When I saw the report, I got carried away. It seems like every mope on the street has some kind of an excuse.” His voice dropped to a guttural whisper. “‘See, ya fuckin’ Honor, the reason I butchered that old bitch was because my stepdaddy used to fuck me in the ass.’ After a while you can’t hear it anymore.”

  Moodrow held his partner’s gaze, deliberately refused to let him off the hook. “If you don’t slow down, Jim, the job is gonna eat your whole life. Rose, the kids, your whole fucking life.” He gave Tilley a chance to respond, though what he expected and received was an angry stare. “You gotta back up. You gotta back up or get out altogether. Every time I see you, lately, you sound off like one of those PBA jerks.” He pitched his voice up, ran the next words in a mocking singsong. “They’re back out on the streets before I finish the paperwork. The jails are country clubs and nobody goes there anyway. The liberal judges, the liberal media, the sleazy lawyers, the technicalities.” He slapped his palm on the table. “If there’s anything in life more disgusting than a whining criminal, it’s a whining cop.”

  Again, Moodrow stopped. He could feel Tilley’s anger now, feel it rise up like the stink off a week-old corpse. Nevertheless, he plunged forward.

  “You have to forget about the stats, man. You have to pick and choose your cases, what you’re gonna pursue and what you’re gonna let go. If the silks don’t like it, let them go fuck themselves. Better the job should bury you, than you should bury yourself.” He flicked a contemptuous hand in Tilley’s direction. “How many pounds you lost in the last year? Fifteen? Twenty? That suit hangs on you like a wet blanket.”

  Tilley froze halfway out of the chair. He leaned forward, palms on the table. “Who are you to tell me how to live? You spent your whole life buried in the job.”

  “That’s true.” Moodrow bit into another cruller. “But in thirty-five years, Jim—thirty-five years—I never once lost weight. Think about it.” He chased the cruller with the rest of his coffee. “Meanwhile, let’s get back to business.”

  “Just like that?”

  Moodrow shrugged. “There’s no point in me running my mouth if you can’t hear what I’m saying. I know the feeling because I’ve been there. It’s like being surrounded in a dark alley
, fists and feet coming from all directions. You get to punching back so fast, there’s no time for strategy. You’ve been in the ring, so you know what I’m talkin’ about. If you wanna survive, you gotta force the enemy to fight your fight.”

  “Are you saying that the job is an enemy?”

  “What I’m saying is what you already know. The silks at One Police Plaza don’t give a shit about you. No more than Don King with his fighters. One goes down, another comes up, like pushpins in a cork board.”

  Tilley let himself drop back onto the chair. He knew there was no disputing the truth of what his friend had told him. It was a reality every veteran lived with. The bosses would sacrifice you in a heartbeat, claiming it was for the good of the department when it was really for the good of their own precious careers. It had been that way for a hundred and fifty years and it wasn’t going to change.

  “Stanley, you’re right,” he said. “It’s time to get back to business.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Moodrow began to shovel ground coffee into an ancient percolator. “You ready for another cup, Jim?”

  “Desperate is more like it.”

  Moodrow added water, set the percolator on the stove, turned on the burner. “So what about Jilly’s partner? What have you got?”

  “First things first.” Tilley managed a weak smile. “It seems like maybe Jilly took a little side trip last night. Up to Boston. Looking for his daughter, Patricia.”

  The information brought Moodrow up short. “Maybe? What does that mean?”

  “That means a Boston cop faxed a report to the Seven last night. According to said report, one Mary Ling was confronted in the apartment she shares with Patricia Sappone by a man claiming to be a cop. When said cop asked to speak with her roommate, Mary Ling informed him that Patricia had left to be with her mother in New York. Whereupon said cop shot himself in the foot.”

  Several thoughts rumbled through Moodrow’s brain, the strongest (and worst) of which concerned itself with how much he wanted Jilly Sappone for himself.

  “They get him?”