by R.J. Ellory
God bless you, Bernie, Madigan thought. God bless you, you dumb drunk gambling Pollock motherfucker.
“Oh,” Madigan replied. “Oh Christ . . .”
Madigan paused to think of the Subway bag in his jacket pocket, the pieces of the .22 inside it.
“I don’t know what the hell to do, Vincent . . . I just wanted to—”
Madigan raised his hand. “Hold up there,” he said. He got up from the desk and walked to the window. He buried his hands in his pockets, stood there in silence for a minute or so, his expression pensive.
“Okay, okay, okay,” he said. “So Fulton does this job. He tells his buddy Moran that the fourth guy was a cop, but there’s no evidence to indicate this. Bernie Tomczak denies there was a cop. But you made an agreement with Moran about the possession bust, and then you have this situation with the uniform at the 158th.”
“Right.”
“But the worst thing is the conversation you had with Tomczak has been recorded.”
“Right.”
“Recorded on what?” Madigan asked.
“His cellphone.”
Madigan returned to the desk and sat down.
“So what do I do?” Walsh asked.
“You do nothing.”
“Huh?”
“You do nothing. Absolutely nothing. You go on dealing with your regular caseload. You drop this storage unit thing. Drop it like a stone. I’ll tell Bryant that I’m going to run it alongside the thing with the girl who was shot. The one in the hospital. They’re one and the same case, for Christ’s sake. It makes sense. I’ll speak to Moran. I’ll speak to Bernie Tomczak as well. I’ll twist his arm somehow and get the phone off of him. You have to step away from this now. You’re compromised. Anything you do has the potential to make the situation worse . . .”
“Vincent . . . Christ, I don’t even know how this happened. If you can help me on this, it would be—”
“It’s gonna be fine,” Madigan said. “We look after each other, okay? We take care of things. We’re on the same side here.”
“I’ll owe you, Vincent . . . Seriously, if there’s something I can do for you—”
“I’m sure there will be, Duncan. I’m sure there will be. But don’t worry about it for now. You go do whatever you have to do on your other cases. I’ll take care of this thing, and if there’s something I need from you to help out on it then I’ll let you know. Otherwise, this conversation never happened.”
“Vincent . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“Say nothing. You understand me? Don’t say a word to anyone. Like you said before, what we say in here stays in here.”
Walsh got up. He shook Madigan’s hand.
Madigan walked him to the door.
“I won’t forget this, Vincent,” Walsh said.
“Neither will I,” Madigan replied, and he opened the door for Walsh and watched him walk down the corridor to the stairs.
Even as Madigan closed the door, a faint smile on his lips, even before he had a moment to congratulate himself on the way this was playing out, his cellphone rang. He knew who it was before he looked at the screen. He pressed the green button.
“Yes,” he said.
“You gotta come see him.”
40
DESIRE
I have all the pieces.
Walsh is backed off. He has tied himself in knots around this thing, and he cannot move. He will do nothing on the storage unit murders. Not until I say so. Isabella Arias is an eyewitness to a Sandià murder, and no one knows where she is but me. Sandià will want to find her more than anything, but as yet he has not even spoken her name to me. He should have had someone at the hospital. How easy would it have been to find a nurse, pay her off, get her to report back to him regarding any visitors? Too easy. And David Valderas, whoever the hell he was, will be an out for me in the deal with Sandià. Bernie is on my side, God bless him. Jesus, who the hell would have expected that? Beat the guy half to death on Monday, and he comes back two days later as my savior. But then he wants out too. He wants his one-eighty debt to vanish, and then he can start over. Is that what we’re all fighting for here? A chance to start over? Even Sandià . . . Not from his life, not to escape from who he is, but to be free of the Valderas killing. That was a mistake. A big mistake. People like Sandià should never get their own hands dirty. That’s why they have people, people like me, people to break bones and dent heads for them. And then there’s Moran, but Moran is unimportant, a sidebar to the main story. And if I make all these pieces fit together, and they tell the story I want, then I will be home free. No debt to Sandià, no connection to the robbery, and thus no implication in the murders of Fulton, Williams, and Landry.
Home free.
What could go wrong?
Everything, that’s what.
Everything could go wrong, and if there is one thing I have learned by experience it’s that everything that could go wrong will go wrong.
Never expected a smooth ride, but I didn’t expect anything as rough as this.
You want something? You just have to desire it enough.
It’s a tightrope.
Have to step careful now.
The drop is long and sudden and I would never survive it.
41
BAD INDIAN
Madigan couldn’t help it. He had to take something before he went out to see Sandià again. Just a little something—three inches of Jack Daniel’s to wash down a couple of Librium—and the edges wore off a little smoother and he felt grounded.
By the time he got out to Paladino he was less anxious. He felt settled in what he had to do. The game had changed, and changed fast, but it had swerved in his favor. Having Isabella in his house was a three of aces, but Walsh’s confession and request for help was a royal flush.
Madigan believed that Sandià wanted nothing more than a progress report on what had been learned about the robbery, but when Madigan entered the room, there was something about Sandià’s manner that told Madigan that he was there for a different reason.
“It’s not possible,” Sandià said.
Madigan walked forward, took a seat.
“It is not possible for someone to simply vanish into thin air.”
“Who are you talking about?” Madigan asked.
“I am talking about a woman called Isabella Arias.” Sandià smiled. “There, I’ve said it. My new policy. Tell the truth. Speak of things as they are. I need this Isabella Arias woman found, and I need her dead.”
“Can I ask who she is?”
“She is the mother of the child who is in the hospital.”
Madigan’s nostrils cleared. The line around him, the parameter within which he could operate, had all of a sudden narrowed a thousandfold. The distance between himself and the sheer number of things that could go wrong had decreased dramatically.
“You need her dead,” Madigan repeated.
“Yes, Vincent, I need her dead,” Sandià said, and he came away from the window and sat on the other side of the desk. “And, yet again, I am speaking the truth. No hesitation, just the truth as it is.” He smiled. “It is somewhat liberating.”
“Can I ask why you need her dead?”
Sandià smiled. “You can ask, Vincent, but I will not answer you. Business is business.”
Madigan nodded. “So I didn’t ask.”
“So tell me, my friend, what news of these people who took my money and killed my nephew?”
“I am working on it. I have spoken to a lot of people. I am getting closer—”
“But you have nothing specific.”
“No, nothing specific.”
Sandià shook his head. His expression was cold, distant. “Then you are of less use to me than I thought.”
“Sorry?”
“Well, you say you have nothing specific, and at the same time I have discovered something very specific. That means that my intelligence network from outside the police department is better than the intelligence netw
ork you have inside the police department, and if that is the case then it means that you are redundant.”
Madigan smiled. “Someone spun you a line.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“You’re telling me that you have some information that I don’t have?”
“Yes, I am.”
“About the fourth man, right?”
Sandià hesitated, and Madigan knew what he was dealing with immediately.
“The fourth man was a cop. Someone told you this, right?” Sandià didn’t reply.
“You have been told that the fourth man was a cop. Is that so?”
“You believed yourself the only bad Indian in the camp, Vincent? You think you’re the only person who tells me what I need to know?”
“I’m the only person who tells you the truth, it seems,” Madigan replied. He could feel his palms sweating. Had it not been for the Librium his heart would have been racing.
“What? You’re telling me that it wasn’t a cop?”
“Who told you this? Someone inside the department?”
“Who told me is my business, Vincent, you know that. You would appreciate it if I gave out your name every time someone asked me how I learned of something?”
“Well, if this information came from inside the department, then it’s already been contradicted. There are people involved here, people who want other people to believe certain things, and they have their own vested interests and motives, and they want certain people implicated who have nothing to do with it. The story you’ve been told is yesterday’s story, and today’s story is a different thing altogether.”
“Vincent, I’m getting angry now . . . What the hell is this you are telling me?”
“I’m telling you that whatever you heard is old news. Leave this thing with me. I will find your man. It may be a cop; it may not be. Right now it looks like it isn’t, but tomorrow everything could change again.”
“Jesus Christ!” Sandià snapped, and he slammed the flat of his hand on the desk.
Madigan jumped, startled, but gathered himself quickly.
Sandià got up. He paced back and forth behind his desk, and then he slowed and stopped. He turned and looked at Madigan. Again Sandià held that distant expression, the absence of emotion, the absence of any real humanity. Suddenly the distance closed and his eyes flashed with anger.
“I need to know what happened, Vincent. I need to know what happened. You have any idea how this makes me look? I can’t even keep hold of my own money. I can’t even protect my own family. This makes me look weak, Vincent. It makes me look like a man who is losing control of his territory.”
“I am handling it, okay?” Madigan said. “You asked me to deal with this thing and I am dealing with it. I need you to tell whoever else you are working with on this, especially if this is someone inside the department, to just back the hell off and let me handle it. I really don’t need someone else muddying up the field here . . .”
“You have to promise me, Vincent. You have to promise me that you are going to take care of this, and fast—”
“I’ve had a day,” Madigan interjected. “One day. There was word that a cop might have been involved. You know where the information came from? A crackhead. Some dumb druggie loser. So I take a look. If it’s a cop then I am very interested. I speak to some other people, more reliable, straight-up people, and now everything points to it not being a cop. Then you tell me I am pretty much useless because you got word from somewhere else that it is a cop. This is old, okay? This is half a day old, and I need you to give me free rein to sort this out, and I will.”
“Vincent, I understand—”
“What are you saying here? . . . You’re saying that you don’t trust me anymore?”
Sandià smiled.
Librium and Jack Daniel’s, Madigan was thinking. Librium and Jack Daniel’s. Shit, this stuff just puts me in a bad mood. Best place to be right now. Offense is the best form of defense.
“Vincent, seriously, when have we ever really trusted each other? People like you and me do not found a relationship on trust. You tell me what I need to know, and I take care of things for you. It is simply a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
“So let me do what you asked me do, okay? Just let me do what you asked me to do, and get whoever else might be involved out of my fucking way.”
Sandià leaned back in his chair. It creaked slowly, so audible in the tense silence that hung there between them.
“How long have we known each other, Vincent?” Sandià asked.
“What the hell is this? . . . You gonna be the Godfather now?”
Sandià smiled. “You go fuck yourself, Vincent Madigan.”
Madigan laughed. “You spend too much time worrying, you know that?”
“Hey, if I don’t worry, who will? My nephew is dead. He was a young man, pride of my sister, and whoever did this thing must pay. The money—” Sandià waved the comment aside. “The money itself is unimportant. Pocket change, you know? But it is the principle of the thing, the message it sends out. Sandià cannot take care of business. Sandià is losing his grip. Sandià can be taken over by some punk-ass kid out of the barrios . . .”
“Believe me,” Madigan said, “I don’t think anyone has such an idea.”
“I need to make sure no one has such an idea. I can believe all I want, but belief and faith and hope are redundant and worthless commodities in this business. I need to know who did this thing, and I need them dead.”
“And you need the girl’s mother.”
“Yes, Vincent, I need the girl’s mother. More than anything, I need that woman.”
“And the daughter?”
“The daughter is a bargaining chip, nothing more. When she is well enough to move, I will take her again. If I take her now she will die, and she is worthless to me dead. But if the woman is found then I do not need the girl.”
“So if you want me to find her you need to tell me everything you know about her.”
“What I know? What I know is her name. I don’t know anything else about her, and I don’t need to know anything else except where she is. If she is dead then fine, bring me her head in a bag to prove it. If she is not, then I need her however she comes—willingly, unwillingly, it doesn’t matter. She can believe she is coming to see me in order to save the life of her daughter, or she can come because she believes she can make a deal with me—”
“Why would she want to make a deal with you?”
Sandià rested his elbows on the arms of the chair. He pressed his fingertips together. He closed his eyes for a moment. “I ask questions, Vincent. I don’t answer them. I agree to back everyone else away and you will do your work. This is the agreement here. You find out who took my money, you find out who killed my nephew, and you owe me nothing. Your debt is gone.”
“And if I bring you the Arias woman . . . What then?”
“You bring me the Arias woman, dead or alive, and I will not only clear your debt, I will give you another fifty thousand dollars.”
Madigan nodded. “Okay, you have a deal. But I work this alone, at least the robbery and the murders. You can have whoever you like looking for this woman, but if I find her I get the fifty grand.”
“Working with you is never complicated is it, Vincent? It was always the money, right?”
Madigan smiled wryly. “Hey, what the hell else is there? You got enough money then all the shit just goes away.”
“You believe that?”
“I never had enough money to find out one way or the other.”
“But you’re working on it.”
“Aren’t we all?”
Sandià rose from the chair and came around the desk. Madigan stood also. Sandià gripped Madigan’s shoulders. He looked directly at him. “I continue our relationship because you are a thief and a liar and a murderer, Vincent Madigan. I continue it because you and I are almost the same person. You do this thing for me and your life will be a great deal simpler,
I assure you.”
Sandià released him. Madigan turned and walked to the door.
“You find out anything important—I mean really important—and you let me know, okay?” Madigan asked. “Half the game here is knowing what everyone else knows.”
“Well, there’s the difference between you and me, Vincent,” Sandià replied. “I couldn’t give a damn what anyone else knows. Only thing that concerns me is that I know more.”
Madigan smiled. He opened the door, stepped out into the hallway, and closed it silently behind him.
42
THUNDERHEAD
These were new curves. Not only had Sandià spoken of Isabella Arias, but he had admitted the presence of someone else inside the department. To say that this came as a shock to Madigan would not have been correct. Had Madigan thought about it, well, it would have made perfect sense. It was just that he had never really thought about it. Which division, which unit, which precinct—there was no way to know. He could have people anywhere, and—knowing Sandià—he more than likely did. But the closeness of it disturbed Madigan—the fact that Sandià had another incoming line on the robbery and storage unit homicides. And Sandià’s concern for Isabella Arias had been single-minded and definite. Sandià wanted her gone. He needed her gone. It confirmed what Isabella had told him. Fifty grand was nothing to keep Sandià away from a homicide rap, but Sandià would not have wanted to alert Madigan to the seriousness of the task by offering some huge amount. Sandià would have paid five million to avoid the homicide beef, but he was not about to telegraph that to the world. Madigan was still a cop—good, bad, indifferent, he was still a cop—and Sandià could not afford to let his guard down or display all his cards. As Sandià had said, he stayed powerful because he knew more than others. He stayed powerful because of others’ ignorance.
