Speak of the Devil

by Richard Hawke

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said.

  The blood was still oozing from the wound, but as I watched, the pulsing seemed to lessen. I picked up my gun and raised myself to look over the upturned tables.

  A blue and red light was flashing on the faces of the people gathered outside the restaurant. The cavalry had arrived. I flipped the safety back on and holstered my gun. There was a small crowd of people standing near the remains of the coat-check closet. As I stood up, two of the people moved away, and I saw what they’d been staring at. It was the Asian coat-check woman. I recognized her red beret. It was still on her head, which was still on her shoulders, which were still part of her torso. But that was where she stopped.

  My kicking the nearest upturned table proved enough-I discovered later-to run a hairline fracture on my little toe. I turned not a few heads from the grisly sight as I unceremoniously lost it.

  “Goddammit!”

  CAPTAIN REMY SANCHEZ OF MIDTOWN NORTH’S HOMICIDE DIVISION did some kicking of his own, but he had wisely picked a safer target: a harmless piece of plaster exploded into dust against the toe of his shoe.

  “Copycat, my ass. What kind of a fool do you take me for, Malone?”

  The fact is, I didn’t take Remy Sanchez for anything remotely close to a fool. Sanchez was a thirty-odd-year veteran of the force who, through patience, solid work and, some would say, an uncanny ability to learn little tidbits about his superiors that those superiors would as soon no one know, had climbed steadily up the thin blue ladder from his days as a beat cop in Fort Apache in the Bronx to the point where he could now look out over a vast array of uniformed men and women and tell them what the hell they were supposed to do. He was a gentle-looking man. The eyes of a poet. Tight black curls showing inroads of gray. Married with children. I had met his wife on several occasions. She was quiet, nice. One got the feeling that if anyone ever harmed a hair on her head, calm and steady homicide captain Remy Sanchez would quietly see to it that it was the last hair on the last head that the person ever had the opportunity to harm.

  He obviously wasn’t buying the copycat story. I hadn’t thought he would, but it was my job to stick with it.

  “Okay, Malone. Look me in the eye and tell it to me again. Roberto Diaz takes a shot at Miss Gilpin as he’s spraying bullets all over the Thanksgiving Day parade, and not fifteen hours later, some fry brain who has also gotten the bright idea to go after the mayor’s special friend is up and running with a fripping bomb that he manages to place in the coat-check room of a joint where Miss Gilpin is sipping merlot with a private eye?”

  “Chardonnay,” I said. Sanchez showed me the fire in his poet’s eyes.

  Crime-scene tape had been set up outside the damaged restaurant to keep the onlookers at a distance. Half a dozen ambulances were parked in front, along with two fire trucks and I couldn’t say how many cop cars. The news media had also arrived in force, and minicam lights were floating and bobbing on the sidewalk as if a band of coal miners were outside the restaurant doing calisthenics. I spotted Kelly Cole, as well as some reporters from the Times, whose offices were just up the street.

  “Malone!” Kelly started toward me, but Sanchez directed one of his cops to head her off.

  “You’re welcome,” he said to me.

  The injured were being taken out on stretchers. Remy Sanchez and I stood next to the EMS crew stabilizing Rebecca for her trip to the ambulance. She had gone into shock soon after I’d tied off the tourniquets. A little crying, a little laughing, a fixation with the flowers in her dressing room that she wanted delivered to area hospitals.

  “I’m going with her,” I said to Sanchez as the EMS crew kicked the collapsible gurney up to its rolling position.

  “The mayor is on his way here,” Sanchez said.

  “Of course he is. And if I were you, I’d make sure that not a single one of your men or women make a peep to the media about her.”

  “I don’t like this,” Sanchez said. “I don’t care if Diaz was killed, you can’t tell me this isn’t related. There’s a connection, and I’m going to find out what it is.”

  “Hey, when you find out, let me know.”

  The EMS crew was clearing the way to take Rebecca out. I looked around and grabbed a damp tablecloth off the floor. I asked Sanchez, “You got a handkerchief?” He pulled one from his pocket. I stepped over to the gurney. “Miss Gilpin?”

  Her head had been secured. Only her eyes could move. I was surprised to see how much venom they held.

  “Rebecca. It’s fucking Rebecca.”

  “Rebecca, I’m sorry about this. But I think an incognito exit would be favorable.” I unfolded the handkerchief and set it over her nose and mouth and eyes, then lowered the damp tablecloth on top of her.

  “Looks like she’s dead,” Sanchez muttered.

  The gurney started forward. I turned to Sanchez.

  “Hold that thought.”

  MY LEFT SHOULDER WAS DISLOCATED. I’VE HAD THIS HAPPEN TO ME once before. That time it had resulted from a plunge off the top of a building. A man with a gun had encouraged me to take the leap. Four flights down into an industrial garbage bin, just like you see them do in the movies. I’d landed on eggshells and coffee grounds, but those aren’t what separated my shoulder. It was the thing underneath the eggshells and coffee grounds. An accordion. A nice-looking one, too. Red mother-of-pearl. Shiny white keys. The thing gave out a discordant yelp when I hit it. I’m sure I did, too.

  The EMS crew popped my shoulder back into its socket at Barrymore’s. The doctor at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt outfitted me with a sling and a handful of painkillers and moved on to the more seriously injured. Rebecca was in surgery, having her leg worked on. I’d been able to get Margo on the phone before she heard about the explosion on the news, a phone call that had featured yet another long silence from her end of the line. “You do know,” she had said finally in a quiet voice, “a very nice, stable dentist did ask me to marry him once.”

  I was still waiting for Rebecca to emerge from surgery when Martin Leavitt arrived. He was flanked by his deputy mayor. Leavitt came on like a hurricane. “Where is she?”

  He spotted me sitting on one of the molded plastic chairs in the waiting area and veered in my direction. “What the hell happened? What were you two doing in a public place? I thought you were supposed to protect her. Do you call that protecting? Goddammit, what happened?”

  His face was the color of my chair. Philip Byron pulled up behind him and watched with a look of bland amusement. I couldn’t tell if he was amused at my being dressed down or at his boss’s outburst. Maybe both.

  “I’m waiting,” Leavitt fumed, planting his hands on his hips. All heads in the waiting area were turned in our direction.

  I rose slowly from my chair. My God, I was aching. “What say we go somewhere private?”

  Leavitt took a beat, then looked around at the gawkers and understood what I meant. He snapped, “Philip.” Byron lost the amusement and quickly escorted the two of us through the swinging doors into the ER hallway. “We need a room,” he said to the first person he saw. A fellow in green scrubs led us into a small, dimly lit room with a solid metal table in the middle and a hulking X-ray machine hanging from the ceiling. No chairs. As I leaned against the table, Leavitt opened his mouth to speak, but I beat him to it.

  “She’s going to be fine,” I said. “So am I, thank you. There’s a woman who was handling the coat check at Barrymore’s who is not fine. I’d say she was in her mid-twenties. Attractive Asian girl. She’s dead, Mr. Mayor. I’m guessing the bomb went off very near her waist, because she was blown apart. Add her to the tally from the parade this morning, and I think we can all agree that it’s been a bad day.” This last part I emphasized with a simple barking of the words “bad” and “day.” The mayor blanched.

  I continued, “If you want to try tagging me with the blame for Miss Gilpin’s injuries and cutting me loose, go right ahead. I’ll even give you my services gra
tis for the day. It’s your call. I’m in or I’m out. Executive-decision time. I’m sure you’re up to it.”

  “Look,” the mayor began. “What I-”

  I wasn’t finished. “Whatever the hell this is all about, this shooting, this goddamn explosion… something is not being handled right.”

  Philip Byron spoke up. “You can’t talk to the mayor like that.”

  I ignored him. An image of Margo having joined Rebecca Gilpin and me for drinks after the show flashed through my head. I held up a finger and placed it directly in front of the mayor’s nose. Solid as a tree. No trembling.

  “I’ve known Tommy Carroll a long time. He worked with my father. Any obedience you’ve gotten from me so far, and my putting up with this need-to-know bullshit, that’s because of Tommy. But I just want you to know before you say another word that, Tommy or no Tommy, we’re finished with all that. You can bounce me or not bounce me, I don’t really care. But I am now officially curious. I want to know exactly what the hell is going on. Need-to-know basis? I damn well need to know, and I damn well intend to. This is my city, too, Mr. Mayor, and this is my body. And I am not sticking it between your girlfriend and the next who-knows-what until I get some answers and know some things. Call me nosy, but I either get those answers from you or from Tommy Carroll or from whoever else happens to know them, or I start kicking over trash cans and knocking down doors. That’s what I’m trained to do. Ask Tommy, if you want to. I’m good at it.”

  My finger was no longer without a wobble, so I withdrew it. In any case, Leavitt no longer looked like he was ready to bite it off. Philip Byron did, though. He looked like he wanted to eviscerate me for speaking this way to his boss. As for the boss himself, he was considering me with a placid gaze.

  “Tomorrow,” Leavitt said. “Gracie Mansion. Can you make it for breakfast?”

  9

  STOCKY LITTLE APELIKE FIGURES WITH POINTY DEVIL’S TAILS AND forearms the size of car batteries were taking turns beating me about the head and shoulders with baseball bats. There were three of them, and each time one swung its bat down over its head, the force of the blow lifted the creature right off its feet. Big flat hairy feet, like you might expect from the Abominable Snowman. The beating was being conducted in a decidedly democratic fashion, each creature taking turns. Almost metronomic. Bam-bam-bam. I was doing what I could to protect myself, but my efforts were only diverting the blows onto my neck and arms. Eventually, a voice deep down in my cerebral cortex told me to wake the hell up. I opened my eyes and the apelike figures disappeared.

  I took a good long time in the shower. Not wanting to be groggy, I’d skipped the painkillers the night before, and now the pain in my shoulder was killing me. I dressed and went down to the corner market, bought the Post and some aspirin, which I washed down with a cup of burnt coffee. I probably could’ve managed without the sling, but I couldn’t see a reason for being excessively macho.

  Gina Lombardi was putting out her mother’s sign as I came out of the market. She frowned at my sling. “What happened to you?”

  I opened my palm to her and tapped it. “Can’t you see? Right here? This line means my shoulder is going to get dislocated.”

  Gina laughed. “Sorry. I just don’t see it.”

  “Right. Neither did your mother last time I let her pore over my palms. No warning whatsoever. What kind of racket is she running in there, anyway?”

  “Did Mama tell you that you have a long lifeline?”

  “Something like that. She also said I would never be a millionaire, but I wouldn’t starve.”

  “So far, so true?”

  “So far,” I said.

  Gina shrugged. “So she missed a shoulder. You think this is rocket science?” She set the metal sign on the sidewalk. She had a few ears of Indian corn with her, and she attached these to the sign with some brown twine. I told her I liked the harvest touch. She tapped the side of her head. “Mama. She is always thinking.”

  I walked up to Houston and flagged a cab. The Post was in high-octane mode over the Thanksgiving Day horrors. Lots of pictures. There was a photo of Officer Leonard Cox, the city’s newest hero, as well as a blurry shot of Roberto Diaz. It turned out that McNally, the cop Diaz had gunned down, had been Leonard Cox’s partner. The two had been working the parade together. Usually a fluff detail. Nothing new had come out yet on Diaz. Peppered throughout the accounts was speculation that the bombing at Barrymore’s might well be related to what had happened earlier in the day at the Thanksgiving parade. Silence on that particular subject from the police commissioner’s office was not going unnoted. Amazingly, Rebecca Gilpin’s presence in Barrymore’s at the time of the blast had been suppressed. She was mentioned only in relation to the parade shooting. Somebody in a place of power had clearly expended some capital to keep the actress’s presence at the restaurant out of the news. According to police sources, speculation was centering on the bomb at Barrymore’s having been in a bag that someone had left with coat check. The coat-check woman wouldn’t be offering any description, and no other witnesses seemed to be surfacing.

  The cab dropped me off at Eighty-eighth Street. I relinquished my pistol to a security guard outside the gate at Gracie Mansion and submitted to a mild pat-down. There were two police cruisers as well as an unmarked car parked in front of the mayor’s residence. Looking around the side of the mansion, I saw a police boat anchored in the East River about two hundred yards offshore, rocking in the choppy morning current.

  I was escorted inside by a guy who looked like he could hold down a weekend gig with the Giants. Young, thick, with a military cut and no visible sense of humor. I figured size-17 shoes, but I didn’t ask. Silent Giant passed me off to a woman who introduced herself as Emily Watson. “Not the actress,” she said. “Obviously.” She was around forty-five, skinny as a rail, salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a loose bun, with a sad, brave smile. She reminded me of a school infirmary nurse.

  “Mayor Leavitt will be down in just a minute. He wanted me to ask if you need anything.”

  I had a dozen ready responses to that question, but I pocketed them. “Orange juice,” I said.

  “Right this way.”

  She led me into the dining room. It was powder blue and as perfectly put together as a museum display, which in a way it was. They give tours of Gracie Mansion daily, except for Sundays. And except, I assumed, the day after a pair of major municipal tragedies. The mansion is a stately classical white-frame colonial house built in 1799 by Archibald Gracie. The estate and its eleven acres were appropriated by the city in 1896 to be included in the new Carl Shurz Park, and for many years the house had served as nothing more than the concession stand and restrooms for the park. In the early forties, Big Bad Bob Moses trained his visionary eye on the building and oversaw its transformation into the mayor’s official residence. The first mayor to reside there, Fiorello La Guardia, moved there in 1942. Allegedly, he complained about the drafts.

  I took a seat at the far end of a long table, near three place settings, and I felt very silly when Emily Watson emerged from the kitchen with my crystal glass of orange juice on a little white plate.

  “Fresh-squeezed,” she proclaimed. There was a seed floating on top, in case I had any doubt.

  When Mayor Leavitt appeared a few minutes later, he was shadowed by Tommy Carroll. Leavitt appeared pensive but considerably less haggard than his police commissioner. He was in tan slacks and a blue Brooks Brothers shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Leavitt had “famous-person hair,” as Margo liked to call it. In his case, thick and wavy and cut just so. He gave it a hand-combing as he approached the table, and it fell right back into place. There was a nodding of heads and a muttering of names, and the two took their seats on either side of me.

  Leavitt spoke first. “How’s your shoulder?”

  “Popped out, popped in,” I said. “I’ll get over it.”

  “Rebecca wants me to thank you for what you did for her last night. I want to than
k you, too.”

  What I did for her. I sashayed her in full view from the theater to the restaurant directly across the street so that our mad bomber could have a nice good look at her. I couldn’t have been more boneheaded.

  I asked, “How is she?”

  “I just got off the phone with her. They’re going to keep her in the hospital for a few days. She’ll be confined to bed. Probably crutches after that. But her spirits are good.”

  “No more show.”

  He rolled his eyes. “The damn show. No, she’s officially out of it. That’s at least one headache off our plate.”

  As if cued by the word “plate,” Emily Watson appeared from the kitchen carrying a large tray. She set it on the sideboard and presented each of us with a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon.

  “I forgot to ask if you have any dietary restrictions, Mr. Malone.”

  “I don’t. Pig and chicken are on my menu. Thank you.”

  The tray included a thermos of coffee and a pitcher of cream. Emily Watson set those on the table, clicked her heels and disappeared.

  Martin Leavitt played host, pouring out a cup of coffee for me. I couldn’t tell if he was putting on a charm offensive for my sake or if I was supposed to believe that this was his true nature.

  “I’ve filled Commissioner Carroll in on the concerns you voiced to me at the hospital last night,” he said. I nodded. Carroll was watching me closely. He waved away Leavitt’s offer of coffee. Leavitt had brought a file folder with him. He opened it and pulled out the top sheet of paper. “It goes without saying that none of this leaves this room.”

  He placed a plain sheet of white paper next to my plate. A short letter was typed on it. No date. No address.

  Mayor Leavitt,

  You don’t want to see your lambs slaughtered, do you? For a million dollars you can save your city from horrible pain. Take this seriously. I will hurt the city and the people you love. Trust me, it will be bloody. I hate you so much. You are filth and dirt. If you believe me, wear a red tie to the theater on Wednesday night. If you don’t believe me, live with the results. Enjoy the show.