by R.J. Ellory
He tried to remember if the bullet had ever been recovered from the room where the girl had been found.
Had Crime Scene ever come back to him on that?
He should know that. He should know such a thing with certainty, and yet he could not remember.
He opened the restaurant door for her. The place was dark and empty. Here they would go unnoticed.
“Thank you,” she said, and she stepped ahead of him and walked to a booth in the far right-hand corner.
As Madigan passed the bar he caught the attention of waiter. “Menu?” he asked.
The waiter nodded, brought menus to where they were sitting and asked for drink orders.
“Just water,” Isabella said. “No more alcohol.”
“Jack Daniel’s,” Madigan said. “Double, straight.”
She ordered chicken-fried steak, a bowl of fries, a salad. Madigan had the same because he couldn’t be bothered to read the menu. The food came. It was acceptable. She cleaned the plate and Madigan ate more than he wanted, but he felt he needed it. He could not recall the last time he’d eaten a meal of real substance.
She wanted coffee. The waiter brought it. Madigan ordered another double, and she raised an eyebrow.
“I am bulletproof,” he said.
“You are driving,” she replied.
“I am, yes, but I am a cop, and if I get stopped they won’t bust me.”
She shook her head disparagingly.
There was silence for a moment, and Madigan broke it with, “Your sister is dead.”
Isabella looked at him. Had she not cried for a week, she perhaps would have cried some more.
“And your daughter is in the hospital. She’s going to be okay, you know?”
Isabella said nothing. Her expression didn’t change. Madigan believed she would look like this for a long time to come, as if a twelve-wheel hauler had driven through her life and left nothing but wreckage.
“They told you this?” Madigan asked.
“No,” she replied. “I have been there three times. I went back yesterday and she was gone. I didn’t know where they had taken her. I was panicking. Then I asked someone and they told me she had gone to the Rehab Ward. Apparently if you go to Rehab you’re unlikely to die.” She spoke matter-of-factly. She was holding everything inside as best she could. She was trying to convince herself that she could cope with this, that she was strong enough to deal with everything that was happening to her, with what had happened to her daughter, her sister.
Madigan watched Isabella’s hands. Her fingers fought with one another, her fists clenching, unclenching, her knuckles white with the tension of what she was feeling.
“Where have you been since your sister was killed?”
She shook her head.
“It’s okay. You don’t need to tell me,” Madigan said. “I went to your apartment. I spoke to the super. He said you had been there to collect a few things.”
Again there was not a word.
“I am not the person who is investigating your sister’s death,” Madigan went on. “I am investigating the robbery of a house where your daughter was staying—”
Isabella looked up suddenly. Her eyes flashed angrily. “She wasn’t staying anywhere!”
“She was being held there, right?” Madigan asked.
No response.
“Someone kidnapped her . . . Someone came to your apartment and they took her, right? You or she tried to hide in the bathroom. You had your foot against the bottom of the door, but you couldn’t stop what was happening, and they took her. Is that what happened?”
“They took her,” Isabella said. “They took us both. We escaped in the street, but they came after us and they caught her . . .”
She bowed her head. Her hands went to her face. Her whole body rose and fell sharply as she stifled her sobbing.
“They caught her and took her to this house?” Madigan asked, and then he reached forward and touched her arm.
She moved her arm suddenly, rejecting his effort to console her, his attempt at reassurance. And she leaned back against the wall of the booth and simply glared at him.
“Who the fuck are you?” she said. “What do you want from me?”
“I want to help you find out what happened to your sister, and I want to see you get your daughter back.”
“Why? What does it matter to you? You’re a cop. You people are just as corrupt as . . .”
She didn’t finish the sentence.
“As corrupt as who?” Madigan prompted. “As corrupt as the people who took your daughter?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Madigan didn’t press the issue. She would talk in her own time, or perhaps she would not.
“Do you have somewhere to stay?” he asked.
“I have an apartment I cannot go to. I have people looking for me . . .”
“You can’t go on staying where you’ve been staying already?”
“I have been in a motel. I have very little money. I can stay somewhere one more night, maybe two if it’s cheap—”
“I have a place,” Madigan said.
She smiled sarcastically. “That’s nice for you.”
“I have a room you could use.”
She looked at him. Her expression was suspicious, untrusting, even vindictive. To her, Madigan merely symbolized much of what was wrong with the world.
Madigan raised his hands. Look, he was saying. No tricks.
“What?”
“A room. I have a house. I live alone. You can stay there for a while. It isn’t great. In fact, it’s really crappy. But no one will look for you there and you will be safe.”
“No way . . . What the hell are you—”
“It’s real simple, Miss Arias. I know who robbed the house where your daughter was. I think I know who shot her. I certainly know who owns the place . . .”
“You know who shot my daughter?”
“I think I know,” Madigan repeated. “I’m not sure. But I am sure about whose house it is, and I just want you to tell me why your daughter was kidnapped and why she was being held there.”
“I can’t trust you,” Isabella said. “What makes you think I can trust you more than anyone else? . . . In fact, in my experience cops are the very last people you should trust—”
“You should trust me because I think we want the same thing,” Madigan said.
“And what would that be?”
“We want our lives back the way they were.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you want your daughter back, and you want to go on with your life without people looking for you. And I want to get back some things that I have lost.”
“Such as?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you can go stay in a motel, and when you run out of money you can walk the streets and take your chances, or you can trust me enough to let me give you a room. For one night, two maybe—however long you want—and you tell me what you know and I will go and take care of all this bullshit.”
She paused, and once again she looked at him just as she had in the hospital stairwell. She looked through him. That was the way it felt.
“You’re serious,” she said.
“I am.”
“So who are you?”
Madigan smiled sardonically. “I was somebody, and then I was nobody, and now I’m trying to be somebody again.”
“Are you for real? Who talks like that? This isn’t a game, mister. These are real people, and my daughter is in a real hospital, and someone took my sister and they really cut her head off. You think you’re in a movie or something?”
“Sometimes, yes . . . Actually, yes, sometimes it does feel like a movie.” He slowly shook his head. He looked down at his empty glass and wanted another drink so badly. Then he looked up at her and smiled. “But the movie’s gotta end sooner or later, right? People gotta go home. People have lives to get on with . . .” His vo
ice trailed away. For the first time he wasn’t thinking about every word he was saying. He’d lied so much and to so many people, about so many things, and every word he uttered had to be weighed and considered just in case he said something that he really shouldn’t. What kind of a life was that?
“You’re some crazy son of a bitch,” she said, “and you want me to come stay in your house?”
“No, not really,” Madigan replied. “I don’t know what the hell I want most of the time, but I think you and I can help each other, and I think that if we do this together then maybe we have a chance. I think if you try and handle this alone then you’re going to wind up like your sister—”
“Enough!” Isabella snapped. “You have no business—”
“I do,” Madigan interjected. “I have a great deal of business talking about this. Your sister is dead and your daughter is shot, and I think I can help you get through the other side of this alive. You? Out there on your own? If this is who I think it is . . . If what I think is going on here is actually going on, then I’d give you a day, maybe two, and then I’ll be pulling bits of you out of Dumpsters all over the city.”
Isabella Arias just looked at Vincent Madigan and there was nothing she could say.
“Tell me who killed your sister,” Madigan said.
“I don’t know.”
“You know the people who came to your apartment, the people who took Melissa?”
“Their names? No, I don’t know their names.”
“But you know who they work for?”
No response, and that was response enough.
“Sandià, right?” Madigan asked. “Melissa was in his house, and if Melissa was taken by Sandià’s people, then Sandià must also have ordered your sister’s murder. Am I getting close here?”
Again, there was nothing in the woman’s expression to even suggest she was hearing Madigan.
“And if they wanted you as well, and you’re on the run, then they must have been holding on to Melissa as a hostage until you turned yourself in to them. Is that right?”
Silence. Her expression was implacable.
“And if they want you that badly . . . bad enough to kill Maribel, bad enough to kidnap your daughter, then you must know something that makes them awful scared . . .”
“Sandià,” Isabella said. “That’s what he calls himself. That’s what people call him. To me he will only ever be Barrantes . . . Dario Barrantes . . .”
Madigan’s reaction was immediate. He had not heard anyone speak that name for years.
Isabella nodded. “You know Barrantes, eh?”
“Yes,” Madigan replied. “I know Barrantes.”
“And you know why they call him Sandià, the Watermelon Man?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And you associate with him? You are one of his people?”
“No,” Madigan said. “I am not one of his people. But I am a cop in the Yard. Everything that happens here has something to do with Sandià, and so we cross paths.”
Isabella closed her eyes and leaned back.
Madigan was aware of his own heartbeat. He was aware of his pulse. He was frightened, tense, agitated. He didn’t know this woman. He didn’t understand how these things had happened, but he believed he had been drawn irreversibly into some dense and complex web. Always on the outskirts, the edges, and now?
“Okay,” she said, interrupting his train of thought.
“Okay?”
“I will come with you,” she said. “That’s what you want, right?”
“Yes,” Madigan said, almost involuntarily. “That’s what I want.”
“So let’s go.”
“Why the sudden—”
“Why? Because you are right. I have enough money for a day, maybe two, and then I am dead anyway. If you work for Barrantes, then so be it. I am dead if I go with you, dead if I don’t. And if I don’t do something, anything, then he will kill Melissa . . .” She hesitated, breathed deeply, seemed to gather herself from the edge of another abyss of grief, and then she was sliding along the seat of the booth and gathering up her jacket.
Madigan rose to his feet. And now? That had been his earlier thought. Now what? Now there was no turning back. He had come this far, and—just as he had considered earlier—the only way off the rollercoaster was to reach the end. You pay your money, you take your choice.
She walked to the door. He followed her as quickly as he could, pausing only to drop enough money on the bar to cover their check. She remembered where he had parked the car and she went on ahead. He caught up with her, grabbed her arm and slowed her down. She did not resist, did not protest. He released her and she walked beside him.
He drove slowly, five miles below the speed limit. They were at his house within ten minutes, and even as he drew to a stop against the curb he knew that something was wrong.
“Wait here,” he said, and he switched off the internal light before opening the driver’s side door. He had his gun in his hand, and he walked past three houses to the left of his own and cut through an alleyway into the rear of the block. He came up behind his own place, saw a silhouette against the rear door, and crouched down. The silhouette was still, and then it moved, and then the silhouette put a cigarette in its mouth and flicked a lighter.
Bernie Tomczak.
Madigan—wondering what the hell Bernie Tomczak was doing in his yard—came up out of nowhere and stuck his gun in the small of Bernie’s back.
“Jesus freakin’ Christ, Vincent!” Bernie exclaimed. The lit cigarette dropped from his lips and bounced in a shower of small sparks on the stoop.
“What are you doing here, Bernie? Come to stick me?”
“Jesus, no, Vincent. What the hell? Christ Almighty, you damn near gave me a freakin’ coronary.”
“Answer the question, Bernie . . . What are you doing here?”
“I came to speak to you. Someone came and visited me. A cop. He came and told me some shit, and I think you should know about it.”
“If you’re bullshitting me, Bernie . . . If this is some kind of—”
“Vincent, just shut the fuck up and listen to me, okay? I got something that’s gonna help you.”
Madigan frowned. He remembered the kicking he gave Bernie just two days earlier, the kicking that had left him looking like a car crash victim. And then he put two and two together.
“You want me to make your debt to Sandià disappear, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, Bernie, you better have something really valuable . . .”
“Vincent, just let me in the goddamned house already. What the hell, eh?”
“Okay, Bernie, but I got someone with me.”
“You on a hot date, Vincent?” Bernie smiled like a fool.
“No, I am not on a hot date, you asshole. I got a witness out in the car, and I need you to go easy, okay?”
“Whatever you say, Vincent. Whatever you say.”
“Jesus, I don’t know why the hell I have anything to do with you.”
Bernie raised his hand and gently tapped Madigan’s cheek. “Because you love me, Vincent, and you’d miss me if I was gone.”
Madigan took out his keys and opened the back door. “Get in there,” he said. “Make some coffee. I’m gonna go get the girl, and no bullshit, okay?”
Bernie Tomczak went on in the house and Madigan closed the door behind him.
Back around the front he told Isabella that there was someone else inside.
“Who?” she asked.
“His name is Bernie Tomczak. He’s an old friend. He’s okay.”
She seemed unperturbed by the fact. She got out of the car and followed Madigan.
It was then, as Isabella Arias and Bernie Tomczak came face-to-face, that Madigan saw something in Bernie’s expression. He did well to hide it, because Isabella seemed to see nothing, but Madigan caught it. A fleeting shift, like the shadow of a cloud across a field, and then it was gone.
Madigan told Isabella to
take a seat in the front. He went out back to the kitchen after Bernie.
“What?” Madigan asked him.
Bernie frowned.
“I said no bullshit, Bernie. What the hell is it with the girl?”
Bernie shook his head. His face dropped. “She’s the dead girl’s sister, right? The one Sandià’s looking for?”
“How the hell do you know about that?” Madigan asked.
“Oh man, you have no idea how much I know about . . . no freakin’ idea at all.”
35
ANGER BLUES
“I don’t know why,” Walsh said. “I don’t know what the hell happened . . .”
“Oh come on, Duncan, you expect me to believe that? You, of all people? Mister Organized, Mister Predictable, Mister Routine . . . Are you even listening to yourself?”
“Carole, I am tired. I am really fucking tired, okay? I can’t use this right now—”
“Well, use it, Duncan, damn well use it. Because what you’ve just told me . . .” Carole Douglas threw her hands up in dismay. “Christ, I can’t even get my head around this.” She got up from the edge of the bed and walked to the door. She started to open it, and then she turned back. “No,” she said emphatically. “We talk about this, and we talk about it now.”
“Carole—”
“You are Internal Affairs, Duncan. You are Internal Affairs. You are supposed to be the cleanest of the clean. You are supposed to be beyond reproach. You are supposed to be setting the example that everyone else follows but you make a deal with some guy to get a possession bust lifted. And then you make a deal with the arresting officer to get a review postponed. And then you make another deal with some lowlife scumbag to make some evidence disappear, and he records it on his cellphone! Jesus Christ Al-fucking-mighty, Duncan, what the hell were you thinking?”
Walsh got up. “Enough!” he yelled. “Enough already, Carole! I told you because I need to work it out. I told you because I trust you. I told you because after six years together I figured you’d be understanding enough of this situation to maybe just listen to what I have to tell you and then try and help me figure something out with being a judgmental bitch—”
