by R.J. Ellory
Things always look better looking backward. Slow down, take a sidestep and you’ll never get there. Hindsight may well be the cruelest and most astute adviser, but until something is past there ain’t no such thing.
This is not going to be the end for me. This is not the thing I will be remembered for.
This is not going to be the thing that kills me.
28
GOOD TIMES
Finding Moran was the easy part. Everything else was a different story. Moran was heavy-set, taller than Walsh, and when he opened the door to the walk-up he looked down at Walsh with an expression of certainty. Walsh was a cop. There was no doubt in Moran’s mind.
“Richard Moran?” Walsh asked.
“Who’s asking?”
Walsh had his ID out. “Detective Walsh, 167th Precinct.”
“And if I am?”
Walsh took a step back. He didn’t want to appear too aggressive. “A friend of yours was killed and I wanted to see if you could help me—”
“And why would I want to do that?”
Walsh hesitated. He looked back and to the left, across the hallway toward a woman coming out of her apartment with a squalling baby. “No reason,” he said, turning back to Moran. “Except maybe self-preservation.”
“How so?”
“What goes around comes around,” Walsh said. “He was into a thing, the thing went bad, and anyone who was connected might run into some difficulty.”
“Who’s to say I even know what you’re talking about? Who’s to say I was connected?”
“You were his friend?”
Moran shrugged his shoulders. “I got a lot of friends.”
“Sure you have, but I don’t think Fulton did.”
Moran frowned. “Larry Fulton?”
“Yeah, Larry Fulton.”
“Shee-it.”
“You didn’t know he was dead?”
“Nope, didn’t know a thing.”
“Well, he is,” Walsh said. He took another step backward. “Someone shot him in the stomach with a .44. There ain’t a great deal of his cheery smile left.”
Moran looked genuinely concerned for a moment, and then he seemed to realize that giving anything away was a mistake. His expression was deadpan once again.
“But, hell, you know how it is,” Walsh said. “Shit like this happens every which way each and every day. If you didn’t know he was dead, and you don’t know anything about what he was working on, then I’ll leave you to your business.” Walsh turned, his hands in his pockets, and took a step down to the sidewalk.
“Hey, wait up,” Moran said.
Walsh turned.
Moran came out of the doorway. He had on a sleeveless T-shirt, jailhouse tats scattered up and down his arms, around his shoulders, the base of his neck. His jeans were scuzzy, his boots worn-out, the laces hanging loose. He looked three days short of dereliction, and yet there was something about the way he was dressed that seemed contrived. Maybe he looked this way because he was supposed to look this way, to fit in, to belong.
“When’d he get it?”
“Yesterday.”
“He alone?”
“Can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Walsh didn’t reply.
“Hey, man, it’s a give-and-take scenario here.” Moran smiled, held out his hands in a conciliatory fashion.
“He was not alone,” Walsh said. He didn’t move, still standing there in the hallway, hands in his pockets, everything about his body language saying he was really not that interested, that he really had other more important places to be.
“And what would you say if I said that he told me he was doing a thing?”
Walsh nodded slowly. “I’d say that I was interested in what he might have said to you.”
Moran held Walsh’s gaze. Everything that was going on behind his eyes was right there, as clear as day.
“Whatever it is, I can help you,” Walsh said.
“You don’t know what it is,” Moran replied.
“Do I want to know?”
“That depends on whether you want to know anything else.”
“And this is a conversation you want to have in the hallway?”
“You ain’t gonna wanna sit in my kitchen, man. I don’t have no old lady cleanin’ up after me.”
“You think I give a crap about your housework?”
Moran smiled. “Well, maybe I’m not so concerned about the dirty dishes as something else.”
“Then I’ll just see the dirty dishes, my friend, and I won’t see the something else.”
“You don’t have no warrant; you don’t have no probable cause. I’m inviting you in here and that’s all.”
“That’s all, Richard.”
Moran laughed. “Hell, man, no one calls me Richard.”
“What do they call you?”
“They call me Cutter.”
“Is that what you do?”
“I do a lot of things, man, but we ain’t talkin’ about me today. We’re talkin’ ’bout Larry Fulton and what he might have told me.”
“So lead the way,” Walsh said, and when Moran turned and went back in the apartment Walsh followed him.
Moran had been right. The place was a sty. The kitchen sink was stacked high with dishes, the smell of rotting food from the trash can almost overpowering, but it was the presence of mason jars, coffee filters, surgical tubing, and bottles of hydrogen peroxide that gave up the show. Moran was cooking tina—smalltime sure, but big-time had to start somewhere.
“A sideline,” Moran explained, aware of the fact that here was traction on him if Walsh needed to press him for information.
“I don’t see anything,” Walsh replied.
“We all got selective blindness when we need to, right?”
“Right.” Walsh took a seat at the table. He didn’t look at the upended coffee cup, mold growing on the spill of liquid that must have gone unattended for weeks. He didn’t concern himself what whatever filth he might find on his jacket and pants when he left. He just sat there and waited for Moran to talk.
Moran was silent for some time. He lit a cigarette and smoked most of it before he spoke. He surveyed his stained fingers, the backs of his hands, even the sole of one sneaker, and then he shook his head slowly and said, “We had some good times.”
“You and Larry.”
“Sure, me and Larry, ’cept no one called him Larry. I was Cutter, he was Bone, like in that movie, right?”
“Right.”
“We did a bunch of stuff together. Little things, nothing big. We did a while together in the box, and then when we came out we sort of hung around a while.”
“He was doing a three-to-five. What were you doing?”
“I was doin’ a seven-to-ten, but I busted it in five and a half. We spent the last three years in the same room.”
“He was a good guy?”
“You tellin’ or askin’?”
“Asking.”
“Sure, he was a good guy. Had his moments, like everyone, you know?” Moran nodded toward the stove. “He did a little too much crank, man, and that can get to you. Wears off the varnish, right? Makes everything sharp and awkward. He didn’t sleep good. He was burning himself up a good deal.”
“Was he trying to get out?”
Moran laughed. “Hell, man, who isn’t? Shit, I bet you’re even trying to get out of something. ’S what it’s all about, isn’t it? Life is getting stuff you want, getting rid of stuff you don’t.”
“Yeah, s’pose it is.”
Moran was quiet again. He lit another cigarette, reached over and picked up the spilled coffee cup to use as an ashtray. He smiled. “If I’d known we were having guests, I woulda cleaned up some.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Walsh replied.
“Oh, I won’t. You can be sure of that.”
Walsh smiled. “So what do you need me to fix?” he said, affecting as nonchalant a tone as he could. He needed to
sound anything other than desperate. He needed to sound like whatever Moran had to tell him he could find in a dozen other places. In reality, the tension was almost unbearable. Within hours of taking this on he had located someone who could give him something of real use.
Moran cleared his throat. “I got a thing going on. It ain’t a big thing, but it’s number two for me. And if I got number two, then number three ain’t gonna be far away and then I’m a lifer.”
“What is it?”
“A possession beef.”
“What?”
“Some coke, a bit of weed, nothing heavy.”
“How much?”
“Gram of powder, maybe a half ounce of the weed.”
“Not enough for intent, but enough for a term.”
“Hell, I don’t know. It blows hot and cold, man. Seems like one week they want to get you inside as fast as possible, another week they want to keep you on the street.”
“Places get overcrowded,” Walsh said. “Has more to do with numbers than anything else. Numbers and politics determine whether you get a term.”
“Well, I don’t wanna risk it, you know what I mean? I ain’t goin’ up on a beef and just wishin’ on a star, right?”
“Right.”
“So you can sort it out?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe ain’t worth shit.”
“You ain’t told me anything worth shit, Richard.”
“Oh, but I got something, baby. I got something hot and heavy.”
“And if what you got is so hot and heavy why haven’t you angled for a let-up on the possession bust?”
“’Cause I didn’t know the motherfucker had gotten himself shot, did I? Jesus, the thing only went down yesterday.”
“The thing?”
“The gig that Bone had goin’ on.”
“You knew he had a gig yesterday?”
“Maybe.”
Walsh paused. It was like teaching a blind guy to play checkers.
“So—”
Moran shook his head. “I’m gonna need assurances.”
Walsh frowned. “Assurances? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I know some shit, and—like I said—it’s good shit, hot and heavy shit, and it’s worth a good deal to whoever has an ear for it.”
“I have an ear for it.”
“So I need an assurance from you, and if you don’t have the stripes to give me an assurance, then I need someone up the ladder to give the go-ahead.”
“Who’s the arresting officer?”
“Some asshole called Levin.”
“You know which precinct?”
“One I went to was the 158th.”
Walsh didn’t hesitate. “I can straighten out things at the 158th.”
Moran leaned forward. He looked directly at Walsh, and there it was. There was the psycho, the killer, the tin man, the crank cooker, the unpredictable whacko who’d stab someone in the eye with a pencil for a wrap of coke.
Walsh didn’t flinch.
“What does that mean?”
“Means I have a couple of friends at the 158th. I make a call, your paperwork goes walkabout, and lo and behold we don’t hear a thing about it for six months. And then the ADA and whoever the hell else doesn’t give a crap about it because we’re not looking for possessions anymore—we’re looking for suppliers—and even if we were still looking for possessions it wouldn’t matter because there’s no paperwork on you anyway.”
“You’re tellin’ me straight?”
Walsh leaned forward. He met Moran’s unflinching gaze. “Straight as a highway.”
“How do I know to trust you?”
“You don’t.”
“We’re doin’ this on a handshake.”
Walsh shook his head. “We’re not doing anything, Richard. I don’t know who you are. You don’t know who I am. This conversation never took place. All that happens is you tell me what you have. I make a call. We both walk away happy—depending, of course, on whether or not what you got to tell me is worth shit.” Walsh heard himself talking, and all of a sudden he was ten years younger, smart and fast and on the ball. It felt good. He was lying backward and sideways at the same time, but it felt good because he was doing it for the right reasons. This was how the game worked, and this was a game he could play.
“Oh, it’s worth shit all right.”
“How do I know we’re even talking about the same gig?”
“Fulton, Bobby Landry, Chuck Williams, right?”
Walsh—once again—felt that narrow twist of electricity along the length of his spine. He said nothing.
“So we’re talking about the same gig, right?”
Walsh nodded.
“I tell you what I know, you make the possession beef go away. This is the deal?”
“That’s the deal.”
“Give me your word.”
“I give you my word.”
Moran leaned back. “I don’t know why the fuck I’m even trusting you—”
“Because you aren’t dumb, and neither am I,” Walsh said. “You don’t think I know what you’re capable of? I turn this over and it goes bad for you, what you gonna do? You’re gonna come after me, right? You’re going to get loaded up on some of that homemade shit and come find me. That stuff inside of you, hell, you won’t even think twice about putting me down.”
Moran smiled. He nodded slowly. “I am the Cutter.”
“So talk.”
“Was a bullshit thing from the get-go,” he said. “I don’t know much, but what I do know counts for a good deal. Some guy set it up. He was the leader of this crew. He was recruiting. He was the one who got Larry into it, and then Larry comes back and says there’s two others as well. Four in all. The head honcho, then Larry, this guy Williams, lastly this other one, Landry. Takes a while to get a handle on the main guy, but Larry got something. Didn’t tell me his name, but he told me something else.”
“And this was the robbery of the house?”
“House? I don’t know, man. I don’t know what they were robbing, but I know what they were robbing, if you get my drift.”
Walsh raised his eyebrows.
“Bank money.”
“You what?”
“They were taking bank money off of someone. Some other crew turned over a bank, the money was traveling, and this main guy—whoever he was—had a gig going on to lift this money.” Moran laughed coarsely. “It was like something out of some goddamned Hollywood movie. Some crew turns over a bank, and before they can get it into their system to clean it up, some other crew comes along and takes it right off of them.”
“You know which bank?”
Moran shook his head. “Not a clue. But I’ll tell you this . . . The main guy, the one that recruited Bone, he didn’t know it was bank money. He thought it was drug money.”
“So how did Larry find this out?”
“Larry knows people. He knows enough people. He can get info on anything.”
Walsh was already working this through. The money was traceable. That money was going to start showing up somewhere pretty soon.
“You say that they robbed a house?” Moran asked.
“Yeah, someplace up in Harlem.”
“There you go, then. It all makes sense. This main guy brings Larry into the crew. Larry does his own homework, finds out that the cash they’re going to lift is bank money, all of it typed and traceable and serial numbers in some system somewhere. But the main guy doesn’t have a clue. Larry had his own guy ready to take his percentage and clean it up for him after the fact. He was going to get maybe seventy, seventy-five on the dollar and get the hell out of here. He didn’t want to be around when those other schmucks started spending their bank money.”
“But if he knew it was marked money, why did he get involved? Soon as the others started spending that money they’d bring them in. One of them was sure to give up Larry on a plea bargain with the DA’s Office.”
“Mexico,” Moran
said. “Hell, man, there wasn’t nothing for him here. He reckoned he’d get the money cleaned within twenty-four hours, be in Mexico in forty-eight, and that would be the end of that.”
“But surely if he was going to Mexico he wouldn’t need to get the money cleaned?”
“I don’t know. Jesus, man, I’m just tellin’ you what he told me. I don’t know what was going’ on with him—”
“Okay,” Walsh said. “But still one hell of a risk.”
“You gotta speculate to accumulate. That’s what he said. Higher the risk, the greater the danger, but the bigger the return.”
“So that’s all you’ve got for me?”
Moran shook his head. “I’ve got something else. This is the shit man, the real shit . . . And hell, if he wasn’t dead I wouldn’t tell you, but he’s dead ’cause someone shot him. And if what he told me is true, then it ain’t only Larry Fulton that had a problem with this guy. I’d say that you have one too.”
Walsh shook his head. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“That’s ’cause I ain’t told you yet.”
“So tell me.”
“We got a deal, right? I tell you this, you make the call, I’m in the free and clear on that possession beef.”
“That’s the deal.”
“Hold on to your freakin’ hat, man—”
“Just tell me . . . Tell me, for Christ’s sake . . .”
“The main guy, the one who brought Larry and the other two in . . . He was a cop, man. He was a fucking cop.”
29
LOVE AND DESPERATION
Maribel Arias’s body had been found in the Yard. That made her the 167th’s problem. Her head had been discovered in a Dumpster behind an empty store near the 125th Street subway station. The rest of her was in garbage bags, the heavy-duty ones used by builders for masonry and pipe work—her legs in one, her arms in another, her torso sectioned in two more. Those bags had been found by a homeless guy rooting around behind the North General Hospital. Used needles, that’s what he was after. Said he sold them on to junkies who used them once again. What remained of Maribel Arias was still on ice with the ME. Eighteen days had elapsed since the discovery, but the case—assigned initially to Charlie Harris, then transferred to a relative newcomer to Homicide, John Faber—had stalled within seventy-two hours and moved nowhere since.
