A lifeboat appeared from above the earnest seamen, lowering on cables. A slender-waisted woman in a modified sailor suit designed to give her bare arms and legs maximum freedom and exposure was standing in the middle of the lifeboat singing her little lungs out. Even from the rear of the bar, I could catch the tinny sounds of her voice. Her face was framed by a headful of blond ringlets that I was sure was a wig, topped by a sailor cap of her own, raked at the jauntiest of angles.
I recognized the face.
“What’s on your screen right now?” I asked into the phone.
“… They’re showing a reporter standing in front of City Hall. Why?”
“Switch channels.”
“Okay.”
“You’re looking for a girl singing in a lifeboat.”
“A what?”
“It’s a show. Broadway musical. You got it?”
“I got it.” She laughed. “Gosh, Fritz, let’s run right out and buy tickets! It looks great.”
I asked, “Who is she?”
“The singer?”
“The singer-sailor. Who is she?” Margo writes for magazines. She knows who all these people are. The scene on the television had switched. I was looking at the same woman, without the blond ringlets, this time sitting on a cushy chair being interviewed by Katie Couric. The sailor woman was a redhead, which was how I had remembered her.
“That’s Rebecca Gilpin,” Margo said.
“And Rebecca Gilbert is?”
“Gilpin. Don’t they have People magazine under your rock? Rebecca Gilpin of the TV show Trial Date?”
“Trial Date. Is that where a couple go out together first to see if they might want to actually go out together?”
“You’re not as obtuse as I know you’d like to be. You’ve heard of Trial Date.”
She was right. I had. It was a popular TV show. Cops, robbers, lawyers, judges, juries, witnesses and suspects. I wasn’t sure what its particular twist was, but it must have had one. It had been around for a while.
“Rebecca Gilpin is on the show?”
“She was. She left it.”
“What did she play?”
“She was a prosecuting attorney. She was the character with no scruples. Lie, cheat, sleep with the enemy.”
On-screen, Rebecca Gilpin and Katie Couric were enjoying a huge laugh together. Sisters. On top of the world.
“So now she’s on Broadway?”
“Yep,” Margo said. “Lies, cheats, sleeps with the enemy and she can dance and sing. Whatta gal, eh?”
I frowned. The old guy sitting under the television set launched into a world-class smoker’s cough. “Rebecca Gilpin was Mother Goose in the parade today,” I said.
“I know.”
“The guy who killed all those people took a shot at her first.”
“They’re not certain about that,” Margo said.
“I am. I was right there.” The picture on the screen switched from the Today show footage. We were back to the scene of the parade, post-shooting. I asked, “Do you know if she was hit?”
The television showed two policemen. One was holding the pointy Mother Goose hat that Rebecca Gilpin had been wearing. The camera zoomed in as the cop holding the hat turned it in his hand to show something to his colleague. It was a pair of small holes. One going in, one going out. The second cop produced a large plastic bag. The hat went into the bag.
“Apparently, she’s fine,” Margo said. She added, “One bright spot for the mayor.”
“The mayor? What do you mean?”
“You really do live under a rock. You don’t know about the mayor and the Broadway star? Are you completely out of the zeitgeist?”
“Mayor Leavitt and Rebecca Gilpin are an item?”
Margo laughed. “An item.”
“And everyone knows this?”
“Everyone but you, my sweets. Common knowledge.”
The old guy beneath the television set hadn’t stopped coughing. Ten more seconds of this and his ruined lungs would be on the floor.
“I’ll call you,” I said. And I hung up.
4
I DIDN’T WAIT FOR THE MAYOR’S AND TOMMY CARROLL’S STATEMENTS to come on the tube. I left the Three Roses and hoofed it up the street to City Hall Park. I noted that both of the police cars that had been parked across the street were gone. An uncommon quiet filled the downtown air between the bar and City Hall. Only my footsteps and my ricocheting thoughts. I was mulling over what Margo had just told me. Someone had taken a shot at the mayor’s girlfriend. And following that, at his citizens.
And following that, at me.
The scene in front of City Hall was a regular Woodstock of media. Focus all those satellite dishes on a single spot out in the galaxy, and we probably could have initiated first contact.
The mayor was standing at the top of the stairs at City Hall. The bank of microphones in front of him looked like a muscular piece of modern sculpture. Dozens of cameras down on the sidewalk were aimed up at him. Just the way he likes it.
I voted for Martin Leavitt. It wasn’t with the utmost enthusiasm that I had flipped the lever next to his name, but he was the devil I knew, and I’d been willing to give him a go. A rigorous district attorney in Brooklyn with an impressive collection of pelts on his belt, Leavitt brought strong law-and-order muscle to the post. Those are two of my issues; I’m biased that way. His prosecutorial zeal aside, Leavitt was also one of those pretty-faced politicians whom people seem to like these days. The younger Redford would have played him in the movie. At least, this was an observation Leavitt himself had been overheard uttering soon after his reelection. Allegedly, anyway. Page Six made some hay with the comment for a few days. The Sundance Mayor. Divorced after a brief marriage during the middle of his political climb to the top, Leavitt was frequently spotted in the company of high-profile women. Scorekeepers noted that the gentleman preferred blondes, though he was not beyond the stretch over to a redhead now and again. Leavitt’s decision to have a dishy pop star sing the national anthem at his inaugural had been viewed by some as refreshing and by others as tawdry. I hadn’t really cared either way myself, except when the singer mangled the high note.
Leavitt was closing in on two years into his term, and until recently, no one could have voiced any major regrets. The city had been in a sinkhole of debt when he took over the reins from his predecessor, and by putting a systematic squeeze on each and every department, Leavitt had prompted cries of mutiny throughout the five boroughs, but he had also managed to raise the levels of efficiency in the hitherto bloated and self-serving bureaucracies that had grown way too accustomed to living fat while their constituencies chewed on bones. In other words, he was putting the financial house in order.
Unfortunately, things had become a little unraveled in the arena that was Leavitt’s strong suit. Law and order. A corruption scandal in his police department had flared up like a flash fire several months back, and with the impression that Leavitt’s primary response to the scandal had been to circle the wagons around the upper brass while feeding some street grunts to the lions, the heat had begun finding its way to City Hall. Initially, the scandal had involved a group of cops in Brooklyn’s Ninety-fifth Precinct who were being accused of, among other things, a years-long pattern of shakedowns of local drug dealers, falsifying evidence or even reselling the evidence for their own gain, swapping drugs for sex with area prostitutes and generally trampling all over the neighborhoods they were sworn to protect. When the name of a noted Brooklyn prosecutor with whom then-Brooklyn D.A. Martin Leavitt had worked closely started appearing in newspaper accounts alongside the names of some of the accused cops, voices in some of the more mad-dog corners of the city had begun calling for Leavitt’s head. Tommy Carroll’s, too, for that matter. I hadn’t seen that it would come to any of that. But then the apparent murder-suicide in early November of a pair of cops allegedly involved in the scandal had guaranteed exclamation points being slapped onto the story. The papers were callin
g it “The Bad Apple Scandal,” “The Rotten Apple Scandal,” etc. National press was beginning to pick up on it. A definite black eye for the Leavitt administration. Its first direct hit. And some nut opening fire on citizens during the Thanksgiving Day parade was certainly not going to help matters. The darkened skies over City Hall had abruptly grown just that much darker.
I was too far back to hear the mayor, so I stepped over cables to a Channel 4 van. The side door was open. A pair of engineers were seated on canvas stools, smoking and watching the mayor on their monitor.
“… shake the spirit of this great city. We won’t let it happen. That’s not what we’re about. I want to repeat, there is nothing to suggest that what happened this morning at the Thanksgiving Day parade was a terrorist attack. This was, it appears, a lone gunman. The gunman has been apprehended, taken into custody-”
Leavitt paused as a barrage of questions from reporters took him out midsentence. I could hear the cries both live behind me and in the news van’s speakers. Leavitt raised his hands like a man at gunpoint and rode out the cacophony.
“We don’t have that information confirmed. As you can imagine, first reports on something like this come flying in from all sorts of sources. Including you folks in the media. We do have him. That much I will confirm. As to his condition? Was he shot? All that? You’re going to have to wait-” The mayor looked directly into the cameras. “You are going to have to wait as I am going to have to wait, so that we get one story and one story only. Perhaps Commissioner Carroll will be able to update us on all that, I don’t know. He will speak in a moment. I-”
Again the mayor was interrupted. This time the tiniest trace of a smile came over his face as he listened to the yapping.
“Have I heard from Miss Gilpin directly? No, I have not. Do I know that she is safe and unharmed? Yes, I do.”
Another barrage. Another smile. This one not quite as tiny.
“How do I know that? I’m the mayor. I know people in high places.”
One of the engineers snorted. “Dude knows Rebecca Gilpin in low places, too.”
I left the van and made my way back over to City Hall. Blue police barricades had been set up at the bottom of the steps. The reporters were calling out their questions to the mayor from behind the barricades. Commissioner Carroll stepped to the bank of microphones, which struck him near the abdomen. Behind him, whispering into Leavitt’s ear, was Philip Byron, the deputy mayor. The mayor was nodding in almost exaggerated agreement to whatever it was Byron was saying to him. He looked like a circus horse.
I worked my way forward and spotted a Times reporter I knew well enough to hail. Henry Greene. He was leaning forward on the barricade, holding a handful of papers he had rolled into a cone.
“Greene!” I called out.
The reporter turned. He waved me over. “Well, if it’s not my favorite German-Irish dick.”
“You should be careful, using that kind of language.”
He indicated the barricade. “How punk is this? Leavitt’s got us in a mosh pit.”
“You’re all animals. I don’t know why he waited so long.”
“Animals. Right.”
“So what are you hearing?” I asked. “Sound like straight dope so far?”
The reporter shrugged. “Fifty-fifty. They’re holding back on some things. They always do.”
I considered the report Margo had mentioned, that the parade shooter had been shot by the police. It’s possible that this was simply a mistake resulting from the early chaos, but my better senses told me that wasn’t the case. I should have been coming clean to the authorities that very minute in a well-lit room at a police precinct near Central Park, all the lousy coffee I could stomach, eager faces crowded around to hear my tale. Instead, I was scheduled to pop into City Hall for a hush-hush confab with the police commissioner as soon as he finished addressing the cameras. Greene was right. They were holding back. And I was one of the things they were holding.
Commissioner Carroll repeated the bare bones of what the mayor had said. He wanted to assure everybody that the crisis was already over. He offered his condolences to the families of the dead and wounded, got in a plug for the professionalism and efficiency of the New York City Police Department and suggested to people that they include an addendum to their normal Thanksgiving Day prayers. As he turned from the podium, Greene brought the cone of papers to his mouth and shouted out, “Commissioner! Why can’t you give us an update on the gunman’s condition? Can you tell us if he was acting alone? There’ve been reports of two gunmen. Can you comment? Is there anyone else out there we should know about?”
Carroll started to turn back to the microphones. As he did, he spotted me. He darkened, then leaned forward to speak directly into the microphones. “You know what we know.”
Greene called out again: “Is it true that the officer who was shot is one of the men involved in the Bad Apple scandal?”
Carroll paused, then turned abruptly away. As he started into the building, a young woman holding a cell phone to her ear approached him. He stopped and said something to her. Harshly. She folded the cell phone immediately and bobbed her head obediently as the commissioner continued to unload on her. It was a short harangue. Carroll concluded it and continued into the building, Mayor Leavitt and Philip Byron close on his heels. I saw the young woman scanning the faces of those of us at the barricade.
“I’ve got to go get the turkey into the oven,” I said to Greene. I reached down and tapped his cone of papers. “By the way, nice technology.”
I left the reporter and made my way to the far end of the barricade. The young woman Carroll had dressed down spotted me and made her way over.
“Mr. Malone?”
“You’re Stacy.”
“Follow me, please.” She spun on her heels and gave me a very pleasant target to follow up the stairs. She paused at the door. “Are you carrying?”
She was all of twenty-five. Stretching, maybe twenty-six. Shoulder-length blond hair. Cute as a chipmunk. Serious as an anvil. Vassar. Bryn Mawr. One of those types of places. Dressed like a sexy librarian.
I asked her, “Who taught you to talk that way?”
No smiles from Stacy. “Are you?”
I patted myself down. “I’m not.”
She waved off the security man standing at the door. I followed her inside. “Commissioner Carroll wants to see you right away,” she said as we crossed the lobby. “I’m taking you to his mobile office. He might be a few minutes.”
“Which is it?” I asked. “Right away or a few minutes?”
She stopped and did an about-face. If I hadn’t had good brakes, I’d have bowled her over. Her expression was tragically intense. All that prettiness, wasted.
“We’re in a crisis here, Mr. Malone. I hope you can appreciate the gravity of the situation.”
I looked into her cornflower-blue eyes and recalled the bullet from the Beretta sailing over my head as I tumbled to the steps at the Bethesda Fountain, not yet two hours ago. Then I recalled Tommy Carroll unloading a few barrels of his own into the young woman.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We’re all on jangly nerves right now. Just take me where you need to take me. I’m sure you’re in for a long enough day as it is.”
Her expression couldn’t seem to locate a pleasant position. A tiny display of red flared up on her smooth cheeks, then vanished. “People are dead.”
I nodded. “I know they are.”
“We lost one of our own.”
“McNally.”
“It’s Thanksgiving.”
Very efficient recap. I had nothing more to add. I kept my yap shut as Stacy led me to a second-floor office.
“Would you like anything? Coffee?”
“Coffee would be good.”
I took a seat in the small mobile office. This was where the police commissioner worked when he was in City Hall, as opposed to down the block at police headquarters. I was familiar with the place from my father’s tenur
e. The office was small and not richly appointed-a large desk, a black telephone, a television set on a rolling metal cart, a couple of chairs. The window looked out onto the side of the building that faced Brooklyn. The view included an open area near the subway entrance. That past spring a local sculptor had installed several absurdly oversize picnic tables where people could sit and have lunch on nice afternoons. The idea of the giant tables was that adults could reexperience the sensation of being a youngster, the table hitting them near the chin, their legs dangling well above the ground. On first hearing about these tables, Margo had dragged me downtown to sit at one of them and share a sandwich and chips. It didn’t make me feel like a kid again. It made me feel like a foolish adult.
Tommy Carroll came through the office door like a train going into a tunnel. Had my chair been in his way, I’d have ended up on the floor. He came around the side of his desk and threw himself into the large leather chair. It squeaked its complaint as he swiveled it around to face me. His gaze traveled over my shoulder. “What?”
It was Stacy. She had appeared at the door holding my cup of coffee. “Mr. Malone asked for some coffee.”
“Well, give it to him and get out.” She handed me the paper cup. I tried to hand her a smile, but she wasn’t accepting gifts. “Door,” Carroll said gruffly as she exited.
It closed with a delicate click.
The commissioner balled his hands together on the desk. “I’m supposed to be in Tortola.”
I wasn’t sure what I had expected him to say, but “I’m supposed to be in Tortola” would have been way down on the list.
“Nice place, Tortola,” I said. “I went down there a couple of years ago. Very good snorkeling. I went nuts for the parrot fish.”
Speak of the Devil Page 3
