by R.J. Ellory
“I can get him later for something bigger and hand it to you.”
“I can do my own work.”
“I know you can, but I got this guy here and he’s cooperating with me on something big . . . something very big . . .”
“You’re IA, right?”
“Yes, I told you.”
“So something big for you is gonna be something on a cop, right?”
“I can’t say.”
Benedict nodded. He looked down at his shoes, looked back up at Walsh. “Think we’re done here, Detective.” He started to turn.
“Yes, it’s a cop,” Walsh said. “But bad. Multiple homicide . . . maybe.”
“That so?”
“Looks like it.”
“And Moran is your CI?”
“Unofficially.”
“And you made him a deal already?”
Walsh didn’t say anything. He maintained Benedict’s gaze, direct and unerring.
Benedict looked at his shoes again. “Tell you something, Detective Walsh . . . Way it works, as far as I can see, is that you already owe me for this.”
“I can see that.”
“You already got one of my busts thinking that his charge is gonna vanish, and when he comes on back in here he’s gonna shout for his lawyer. He’s gonna tell his lawyer that he made a deal with you. And that lawyer’s gonna be all over me like a bad case of something.”
“This works the way it works. We’re playing the same game here.”
Benedict stepped closer. He lowered his voice. “I’ll tell you how I think it works. How I think it works is this . . . You come here and tell me you need me to do something. I listen to you. I understand your predicament, of course. And believe me, I am sensitive to your situation, Detective Walsh, and I am also the only person who can fix this.” Benedict paused. He seemed to be taking pleasure in this. “Taking everything you have told me into consideration, I guess you know what am I thinking?”
“You’re thinking you want something in return.”
Benedict smiled.
Walsh had predicted the way this conversation would go. He was self-assured. He was in control. “What you got?”
“I got an officer-involved shooting review a week on Monday,” Benedict said.
“And what do you need?”
“I need it postponed for a month . . . No, better make it two.”
“And is this your first review on this case?”
“Third and final.”
“Postponed already?”
“Twice.”
“And you want me to get it postponed again?”
“That’s the deal. You get the OIS review postponed for two months and I’ll drop the bust on Moran. Then you got your informant and I got what I need. Everyone walks away happy.”
Walsh looked at the man. He was IA. He could get an OIS review postponed with a phone call. He had no intention of letting Benedict know how easy it would be. He had his trade-off.
“Okay,” Walsh said.
“You’re gonna fix it?”
“I am.”
Benedict extended his hand. Walsh took it.
“I get word that the review is postponed and Moran’s paperwork takes a vacation.”
“Deal.”
“Deal.” Benedict let go of Walsh’s hand. “Good doing business with you.”
Benedict turned and walked away.
Walsh watched him go, and then he left the precinct house and headed back to his car.
He sat for a while. He turned the radio on, anything to drown his thoughts, but it merely served to irritate him. He thought about what he’d just done, how smoothly he had done it. It had been necessary. This was the way the game went, this was the field, and these were the moves. He was good at this. This was his territory. There were lines. There were spaces between the lines. You recognized where those spaces were, and you used them to your advantage.
From his pocket he took the slip of paper upon which he’d written Bernie Tomczak’s name and address. That’s where he was headed now. Some other buddy of Laurence Fulton, someone who’d known something about this house that Fulton and the rest of the crew had robbed. He would speak to Tomczak, find out if he knew anything beyond what Moran had already told him.
Walsh started the engine and turned the car around. Tomczak’s place was up on East 128th near the Harlem River Drive. It was a good half hour through the early-evening traffic, more if there was gridlock. That gave him time to consider his situation, to consider his next move, the move beyond that, and to see the different possibilities that could arise from the play he was making. Maybe he was a natural. Maybe, after all was said and done, this was what he was really meant to be doing.
32
CITY IN PAIN
The woman had made an effort. There was no question about that. Her apartment was in the same kind of rundown tenement building as that of so many others in this neighborhood, but once inside, Madigan could see that Maribel Arias had done her best to leave the world outside the walls. Nevertheless, the world had found her, and that world had cut her head off and left it in a Dumpster behind an empty store eight blocks northeast of where he now stood.
The super had let him in. The remnants of crime scene tape were still adhered to the frame of the outer door, but Faber and whoever else was interested had been and gone.
Evidently there was nothing of further consequence here.
Madigan found pictures of the daughter, Melissa. There was no question in his mind as to her identity. With her was a woman who looked very similar to the pictures of Maribel in Faber’s case file. This was undoubtedly Isabella, the missing mother. He took a seat in the small kitchen. He held the picture there in front of him and looked at the three faces. One dead, one hospitalized with a gunshot wound, one missing. This was the Arias family as he knew it. The girl’s father? No idea. Isabella Arias was more than likely unmarried, and if not then at least estranged, or she wouldn’t be using her own family name. There was no record of his name save in Isabella’s memories.
Madigan left the picture on the kitchen table and went through the remainder of the apartment. Cheap ornaments, cheap furnishings, cheap artificial flowers in a plastic vase on the windowsill in the bedroom. She was fighting against a tide. The tide had pulled her under and she’d drowned.
Madigan felt sober, as sober as possible under the circumstances. Seeing the woman’s apartment had cleared his head somewhat. Seeing her apartment made her real, and that reality occasioned another reality, and yet again one more. It resulted in a slow acceptance and appreciation for his situation. He was in a corner, but he was still on his feet, could still punch well for his weight. He could drop now, or come out fighting. It was going to be smart-fighting, using his mind more than his fists. Come out like a dockyard slugger and he was screwed. This had now been elevated from checkers to backgammon.
So where now? How did he find out what had happened to Isabella Arias? The hospital. See if the daughter had received any visitors, if anyone had requested permission to visit. Didn’t matter what situation you were in, if your kid was sick, you were going to want to see them, to be there, to do anything and everything you could. Unless you were Vincent Madigan, of course. If you were Vincent Madigan, it was a long-shot that you were even going to know about it until well after the fact.
Madigan took the photo from the kitchen and left the building. He let the super know he was done on the way out, thanked him for his help.
“They find out who killed her?” the super asked.
Madigan shook his head. “Still going.”
“Hell of a shame. Real nice girl. Her sister too.”
“You knew the sister?”
“Sure, knew her as good as Maribel. She was over here with Melissa all the time. Real nice people.”
“Have you seen Isabella since Maribel was murdered?”
“Sure. She’s been here a couple times. Think she wanted some bits and pieces, stuff that the kid left here,
maybe something to remember her sister by.”
“How’d she seem?”
“A mess. Helluva mess. Usually so cheerful, both of them, and then this happens.” The super was dismayed. “Jesus, what the hell is this world coming to, eh?”
“When was the last time you saw Isabella?”
“What are we now? Wednesday, right? Saw her Monday evening, maybe eight, eight thirty. She was here for twenty minutes, no more, and then she was gone.”
“Her daughter wasn’t with her?”
“Nope, no daughter.” He paused. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Melissa since we heard of Maribel’s death.”
“How did Isabella seem then . . . on Monday night.”
“The same. Looked a wreck. Looked like she’d slept in her clothes, and that is just not her, you know?”
Madigan gave the super his card. “You see her again you call me. She may be in danger, and I need to get her under some sort of protective watch.”
“You think someone was after the pair of them?”
“We don’t know,” Madigan said. “We really don’t know. But I have to make sure that if someone was after the two of them then they don’t get to Isabella.”
“She’s a tough lady. She has her own mind. I’ll tell her what you said, but there’s no guarantee she’ll call you.”
“I appreciate that, but you just tell her I’m on her side, interested in her welfare . . . and her daughter’s too.”
“Sure thing.”
Madigan left then, headed to the car and turned back up toward 135th Street and the fastest route to Harlem Hospital. If Isabella Arias had heard of her daughter’s condition—from a friend, a contact, even read it in the city papers—then there was little doubt in Madigan’s mind that she would make an effort to see the girl. What mother could possibly leave her child in a hospital bed and not attempt to see her?
The roads were clear and Madigan made good time. He parked behind the hospital, put a police notice behind the windshield so as not to get towed, and headed inside. He knew where he was going, but the receptionist called him back, asked for ID, said that Melissa Arias had been moved to another unit.
Madigan didn’t want to ask why.
The receptionist sensed his alarm. “She must be doing better,” she told Madigan. “She was in ICU; now she’s in the Rehabilitation Ward. They wouldn’t have transferred her if they didn’t reckon she was going to pull through.”
Madigan’s first emotion was one of relief, but his second was one of alarm.
His thoughts went back to the Sandià house, the possibility that the girl might have seen something.
Madigan followed the signs to the Rehab Ward, found it down the corridor and to the right of ICU. Melissa was still being drip-fed a half dozen ways, but there was no tube in her nose or mouth, and she seemed to be breathing unaided.
Madigan stood there and listened to her. Her eyes closed, her body motionless. She was so utterly, utterly frail.
He felt uncertain then, of what he didn’t know. He needed to sit down. He fetched a chair from an adjoining room. Seeing the girl again had unsettled him. He had felt sure of what he needed to do, and now doubt had once again crept in.
The sound of her breathing, the almost unreadable flickering of her closed eyelids, the drip-drip-drip of glucose and saline and painkillers. The same age as Lucy, sure, but Madigan could see nothing but Cassie at eight years old, how fragile and delicate and perfect she had seemed to him . . .
Madigan looked up as something moved in the corner of his eye. Out there in the corridor. He frowned, got up. He felt unnerved, scared even?
She was walking away. A nurse. Looked like a nurse—same pale blue tunic dress. Madigan called after her.
“Excuse me? Nurse?”
The nurse glanced back, and Madigan caught her profile.
He started to walk faster.
She heard his footsteps quickening. She started to walk faster herself, and all of a sudden Madigan was sure. Absolutely sure.
“Isabella,” he said. “Isabella Arias?”
She glanced back once more, and he saw the wide eyes, the fear present in them, and it was then that she started to run.
“Shit,” he said. “Oh shit.” And then he was running too, down along the corridor, down past the other Rehab Ward suites, and Madigan knew where she was headed, the Fire Exit signs flashing by on the edge of his field of vision. He heard the alarm go, and he knew she was around the corner and had wrenched open the door to the stairwell.
Another nurse appeared at the doorway of a room.
“False alarm!” Madigan shouted. “Get the thing switched off!” His hand was on his badge and he flashed it as he went by.
“Do it!” he shouted over his shoulder.
He was through the fire escape door then, and he could hear her down below, hear her footsteps on the concrete stairs, and he was shouting, “Isabella! Isabella! Stop! I can help you! I am here to help you!”
But she kept on going, and already Madigan was beginning to feel the tension in his chest, the light-headedness, the intense cramp in his gut as he barreled down another flight of stairs and almost lost his balance.
He grabbed the handrail and took another narrow corner of the well, and down he went—another flight, and yet another—and from the sound of her footsteps he believed he was gaining on her, and it spurred him on. And then he could see her hand as she took another corner two flights below. Madigan sped up, barely kept his footing as he went down another three, five, nine steps. His heart was pounding. His breath came short and fast. He felt sick. He believed his heart would burst in his chest before he ever managed to catch her, and then he had his gun in his hand and he was shouting, “Goddammit! Stop running, for Christ’s sake! Stop running or I’m gonna fucking shoot you!”
It was another two flights before he caught her.
He was breathing heavily, almost unable to stand, and Isabella Arias was backed up into a corner of the well, her face varnished with sweat, her eyes wide, her mascara streaked across her upper cheeks, her hands clenched in tight fists. She looked like a cornered animal, ready to unsheathe claws and strike back any way she could before she died.
“Isabella Arias,” he gasped, and he held his gun in such a way as she could see it without aiming it at her directly. “You run again I’m gonna shoot you in the goddamned head, okay?”
She said nothing. She glared at him.
“You understand me?”
An almost imperceptible nod of the head.
“Okay, okay . . . so calm the hell down. I am not here to arrest you, all right? I am not here to take you in. I came here to see your daughter—” Madigan tugged the last two prints of Melissa out of his pocket. “See?” he said. “I am trying to find out who shot her, okay? This is what I am doing here. Nothing else. I need to talk to you. You can help me find out what happened.”
Isabella looked at him with disdain and contempt. “Screw you,” she hissed through her teeth.
“I know you lost your sister . . . and now this has happened . . .”
“You are police,” Isabella snapped. “You are police. You people don’t care what happens to us . . . You are just pigs . . .”
Madigan lowered the gun further. He was still breathing heavily, still feeling the tight fist of tension and nausea in his chest. He looked at the woman, and he saw fear and hatred and anger and pain and grief and a thousand other things.
And he felt it.
He felt it good.
He stepped back and closed his eyes for just a second, but that look in her eyes went right through him, and for a second he didn’t even know his own name . . . he just felt the piercing nature of her stare, and he was no longer anonymous, no longer inconspicuous, no longer a ghost . . .
Madigan looked back at her and he could see himself. He could see what he had become, and it terrified him.
“I am here to help you,” he repeated, and the words came out slow and staggered. I. Am
. Here. To. Help. You.
Isabella Arias sneered contemptuously. “People like you,” she said, “are only ever interested in helping themselves.”
Madigan could not reply.
“My sister is dead . . . murdered by that bastard. And now my daughter is shot and lying in a hospital, and there is nothing I can do to protect her . . . And you think I don’t know about the police . . . You think I don’t know he is paying you to always look the other way . . .”
“Who are you talking about? Who murdered your sister?”
Isabella Arias—fierce and scared, her eyes wide, her hands clenched in fists, her whole body shaking with rage and hate—just looked back at Madigan with utter contempt.
“Fuck. You,” she said, emphasizing each word so precisely. “You cannot help me. No one can help me. He will find me and he will kill me, and then he will kill my daughter . . . And there is nothing anyone can do to stop him . . .”
33
SECRET FIRES
It did not take a great deal of time, nor a great deal of work, for Walsh to find Bernie Tomczak. He was in a bar no more than three or four blocks west of the 167th, and when he saw Walsh come in the door his eyes went this way and that. Bernie could not have known that Walsh was looking for him, but Bernie knew cops.
“Jesus,” Walsh said when he sat down across from the man. “Who the hell did you have an argument with?”
Bernie said nothing. He shook his head.
“Hey, I have nothing on you,” Walsh reassured him. “I spoke to a couple of people who spoke to a couple more, and I was told I might find you here.” Walsh looked around the small, dimly lit watering hole. It was suitably atmospheric to obscure all manner of transactions, suitably crowded and noisy to minimize the chance of being overheard, but it was a dump. No question about it. Aside from nursing what appeared to be a fractured jaw, both eyes blackened, a map of tiny hemorrhages across the upper half of both cheeks, Bernie was also holding on to a glass of something or other.
“Can I get you another one of those?” Walsh asked.
