by R.J. Ellory
“You have someone else on the payroll,” Madigan said. “You have someone inside the department on the payroll, someone who gives you information, someone who tells you what you need to know. I have a very strong suspicion that this person may have been working with your nephew and they were going to rip you off for that money, and then your nephew was going to use that money to put some people together, and he was going to come after you. He wanted the territory, Dario. He wanted your territory and he was prepared to do pretty much anything he needed to get it. He had his own relationship with whoever else you have on the payroll, and they figured to take you and me out of the picture and put themselves in our places . . .”
Sandià was silent.
His expression did not change.
That—perhaps—was the most unnerving thing of all. Sandià’s initial reaction—one of dismissal—was merely superficial. The truth—harsh though it was—was that Sandià trusted no one. He knew he could trust no one, not even his own family.
That moment, the fact that there was nothing at all in Sandià’s eyes scared Madigan more than anything he had ever seen. If Sandià’s nephew had in fact tried to rip him off, then the nephew would have been killed. It was business. It had always been business, would always be business.
And then Sandià spoke. His voice was low, a whisper almost, and though the words meant one thing, the feeling behind them was something else entirely. It was as if Sandià was saying things in an effort to convince himself of something he wished to believe, and yet knowing—all too well—that Madigan’s words could be just as true.
“This is crazy, Vincent. I know you do some pills and whatever, Vincent . . . but this is crazy—”
“Is it?” Madigan asked. “Is it so crazy?”
“So if that’s the case, then how did my nephew end up dead?”
Sandià just asked the question directly. He was not angry, his voice still barely more than a whisper, and his gaze was unerring, riveting, fixed on Madigan.
It took everything that Madigan possessed to meet that gaze and not look away. Not for a moment. Not for a heartbeat.
“Because whoever else you have working for you had no intention of taking you down. He’s making too much money. He’s onto a good thing. He is approached by this kid, he hears him out, he goes along with it, and he figures he can do the work himself. He can take the money from the house, he can off your nephew and the delivery crew, he can kill his three accomplices. He’s away scot-free, he’s more than three hundred grand in profit, he keeps his relationship with you, and the only person who knew that he was aware of the money delivery is dead.”
“No, Vincent, this is not possible . . . You don’t know what you’re saying. My own nephew? You think Alex did this thing? That he wanted to overthrow me? My own sister’s boy?”
“He wasn’t your son, Dario. He was your nephew. He told you what you wanted to hear. He made you believe he was with you all the way, but all the time he had this thing going on, this thing to be the big boss, the master of the house. And he works at this thing behind the scenes; he talks to whoever he can trust. Why does he approach your other police contact? Because a police contact is already compromised. He’s a better bet than someone inside the family, right? This guy has to be careful whatever he does. He can’t go blabbing around the place. He can’t up and say whatever he likes to you. You’re dealing with this guy like eggshells already. He knows that. This isn’t like someone who can just disappear into Witness Protection if they decide to give you up. This is a cop. This is a brother-in-arms. This is someone who’s going to vanish like no one else. Why? Because the department doesn’t want this in the papers. They don’t want this on the news. There’s nothing that hurts the department’s image more than a dirty cop. They’re going to do whatever they have to keep word of this out of the press. If your contact gives it all up, then they’re going to hide him somewhere. He tells them he’s been working with you. He says he’s on graft, kickbacks, he’s doing deals for you, he’s passing information, and has been for years. They’re scared like you wouldn’t believe. This is going to take their reputation back to how it was in the forties. They give him immunity. They listen to everything he has to say. They prepare their case. They get you, your whole family, everyone. They close everything down, and our man is in Boise, Idaho, with a different name, a different life. You’re never going to find him. It’s all over. End of story. But, then again, it could go the other way. Your nephew plans to take you down, he tells your police contact, the contact tells you. What are you going to do? You’re going to get rid of your nephew, but then you’re going to have to get rid of the cop as he can tie you to the death of your nephew. Think about it. The smartest thing to do is kill your nephew, take the money, and everything is back to battery.”
Sandià was silent. He was hearing what Madigan had to say. He was looking for anything and everything he could recall that would confirm or deny what Madigan was suggesting. What had Alex said? How had he seemed? How had he responded to such and such? That time he said so and so . . . Could that have been a lie? The wheels were going in Sandià’s mind. Madigan could hear them. Two things were working for him. One was a small facet of human psychology: Give someone reason to doubt, and they automatically look for reasons to confirm that doubt, not refute it. The second was Sandià’s hard-earned suspicion of everyone. A man like Sandià could not maintain such an empire without distrusting everything he heard and everything he saw.
“And if this is true, then why did this other person, this cop, the one in league with my nephew, why did he not go ahead and take me down?”
“Why would he? Why would he need to do that? What possible reason could he have for doing that? You think he wants to be put through the ringer, to have his whole life closed down around him? You think he wants to wind up in Boise, Idaho? He already has it good. He already has you paying him whatever you pay him, and if it’s equivalent to what you give me, well, unless he’s crazy . . .”
“Or a gambler, Vincent. A gambler and a drunk. Maybe whatever I give him is irrelevant. Maybe he’s just like you. Maybe I could give him a million dollars a month and it wouldn’t matter a damn because he just spends it on cards and booze and football games . . .”
“I don’t think so, Dario.”
“And why not, Vincent? Why don’t you think so?”
“Because I’m your wild card, my friend. You don’t think I know that? You don’t think I understand that you’re far too smart to have two crazy people working for you? I know you too well, right? I know you have irons in fires all over. I know you have to keep some things straight, and some things can just run wherever the hell they’re going to. I know you don’t have the attention to worry about two crazy men. You keep me around because I’m the dangerous one. Like a smart investor, you keep some stocks in the old reliables, and you put some money on the wildcat shit that could go bust tomorrow—but maybe not . . . it might just come good and make you a fortune. That’s the way you work, my friend. I’ve known you too long and I’ve seen too much to doubt you for a second.”
Sandià smiled. For a moment he appreciated the compliment, and then his humor vanished as he remembered the point of this conversation.
“You’re telling me my own nephew—Alex Calvo—my own nephew was going to betray me?”
“All I’m telling you is that there’s too much here that doesn’t make sense for anything else to make sense. I’m saying there’s a chance, a possibility . . . That’s all I’m saying.”
“And that I need to talk to whoever else I have to talk to . . .”
“I’m not telling you your business. All I’m saying is that there was this rumor that a cop might have had something to do with this robbery, that a cop might have had something to do with the murder of your nephew . . . and a cop might just have had the opportunity to do this. More important, if it was someone on your payroll, then who better to know when that money was being delivered?”
“A
nd if what you say is true, then answer me this. Why would a cop tell me that a cop had been involved? If whoever it was that did this is a cop, why would he implicate himself?”
Madigan smiled. “It’s the oldest trick in the book. By implying that you could be involved, you exonerate yourself. Offense is the best form of defense.”
Sandià leaned back, pressed his hands together as if in prayer, and rested his elbows on the arms of the chair. He closed his eyes.
He stayed motionless for a good four or five minutes.
Madigan could feel his own heart beating. He didn’t dare move.
Those minutes stretched away into eternity, and Madigan watched as his own life seemed to be swallowed by that void. If he’d got this wrong . . .
“Vincent.”
Madigan opened his eyes. He didn’t realize he had closed them.
“Vincent . . . I have to make some calls. I have to deal with some things.” Sandià got up from his chair. He came around the desk.
Madigan rose also, and for a moment they stood face-to-face, no more than two or three feet apart, and Sandià looked into Madigan’s eyes as if to expose the past, determine the present, predict the future. Madigan did not flinch, he did not glance away; he just looked right back at Sandià as if there was no one else in the world.
Sandià raised his arms and gripped Madigan’s shoulders.
“I have killed men,” he said quietly. “Even my name . . . it was earned, Vincent, as you know, by something I did that I had to do. I am not a man to find weakness in people. I try to find their strengths. I can use a man’s strengths. I can use his honesty and his integrity and his strength. I need a man to be courageous, to tell me the truth, to never lie to me. I need to be able to rely on people. You know that. You know that it is not possible to do what we do with deception and falsehood around us, except where we intend there to be deception and falsehood.” He inhaled slowly, exhaled again. He shook his head, but never once looked away from Madigan. “If what you are saying is true . . . If there is even a shred of truth in this, then I will find this out and I will make my decisions. If I find you have lied to me, Vincent . . .” Sandià left the statement hanging.
Madigan did not say a word. He did not breathe.
“Good,” Sandià said. “So go, do whatever you have to do, and I will make my calls and speak to people, and we will find the truth together.”
Madigan nodded, a barely noticeable dip of the head, but he did not look away.
“And if you are right . . .” Sandià said, and then he released Madigan’s shoulders and walked back to the desk. “If you are right, my friend, then it will be a sad day for this family . . .”
“I understand,” Madigan said. “But I had to come to you, Dario . . . I had to tell you what I suspected—”
Sandià raised his hand and Madigan fell silent.
“Your loyalty has never before been in question, Vincent, and it is not in question now. Not yet. Let me resolve this for myself, and then we will speak some more.”
Madigan walked to the door.
“Thank you, Vincent,” Sandià said.
Madigan said nothing. His hand on the door, the door opening, the sense of release, of relief, the letting go of everything, the feeling that he could scream, that he could just run from the building into the street, his heart like a machine, his heart ready to implode, collapse, to just stop in its tracks, his expression blank as he fell to the sidewalk, his life over, everything gone, everything that was anything now meaningless . . .
The weight of his feet as he walked to the elevator. Pushing the button. The sound of the gears and cables. Waiting for Sandià to open the door behind him, to call him back . . .
Vincent . . . just one thing before you go . . .
The elevator arriving. Stepping inside. His finger on the button, looking back toward the door he had just exited.
His mouth and throat like dust.
His eyes wide, almost disbelieving of the scenario that had just played out before him.
Everything was real, but unreal.
The elevator reached the ground. The doors opened. Passing the guys in the corridor, retrieving his gun, and then there was daylight, and the sound of the world beyond the walls of Sandià’s empire.
Someone said something, Madigan failed to respond, and then he turned back and tried to smile.
The door, the sidewalk, the hundred yards to his car.
All of it in slow-motion while the rest of the world ran at five, ten, twenty times its normal speed.
Opening the door, climbing in, closing the door, his hands on the wheel, his forehead down against his hands. He was screaming inside, but everything was silent.
It was a long time before he started the engine and pulled away.
52
STRAITS OF LOVE AND HATE
Madigan’s heart didn’t slow until he was a half dozen blocks from Sandià’s place.
He kept thinking about Alex Calvo, Sandià’s nephew. Sandià would be turning the thing over in his mind again and again. He would chew on it until he had it all figured out. Until he believed he had it figured out. Why had Alex not colluded with Valderas? Why had he gone to Sandià and reported Valderas’s betrayal? Because he was already in collusion with someone else, that’s why. And why would Alex want to overthrow Sandià in the first place? Simple . . . The same reasons as everyone else—money, greed, power, control, jealousy.
Sandià would now no longer be saddened by the death of Alex Calvo in the robbery that Tuesday morning. He would no longer be grieving for his nephew. He would be considering the fact that someone had simply done his dirty work for him. Calvo had become the renegade, the traitor, and now he was no longer a threat. But the other cop? The fourth man? Was he the real traitor? This was the seed of doubt that Madigan hoped to have planted in Sandià’s mind, and Sandià—by his nature—would now want nothing more than to challenge this man.
Madigan just hoped he could make it back in time.
He stopped at a car rental place on East 118th, took a nondescript compact, and gave them an extra fifty bucks to look after his own car until he returned. He showed them his ID and they didn’t ask questions.
Madigan drove back to Paladino and parked up a half block from the tenement entranceway. If everything moved as he hoped it would, then it wouldn’t be long before someone showed up. The only question was who, and whether or not Madigan would recognize them. It could be any cop from any precinct in the city. If he came away empty-handed on the ID, then he was screwed.
Ten thirty and Madigan was already on a knife-edge. He needed to take a piss. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t go anywhere. He wished he had a plastic bottle or some such in the car, something he could piss into and get rid of later.
Self-doubt was the foremost consideration in his mind. He had misjudged everything and everyone. He had talked himself into an inescapable trap of his own devising.
He put the radio on low. He listened to some jazz station out of Long Island.
The music merely served to irritate him further, and he switched it off again.
He thought about Isabella. He thought about Melissa. He wondered what he would do with them if this thing ever ended. Maybe that would be a decision he wouldn’t have to make. Maybe they would both be dead. Maybe they would make it through, and he would be dead. He thought about everything that had happened since he and Bernie Tomczak had met in an alleyway only five days earlier. Five days, and everything had changed. The most important five days of his life. No way back, no way over, no way around this. It was straight ahead now, straight ahead and through whatever got in the way. He would either overcome it and see the other side, or it would stop him dead. Literally.
And if he did make it through, what then? Where would he go? Sure as hell he couldn’t stay in the department. Or could he? Could he actually pull something like that off? If he dealt with Walsh, with IA, with his own stats, his record, could he just hang in there, make twenty-five, ta
ke a pension? He’d be forty-eight, not so old, a good twenty, thirty years ahead of him. The money from the Sandià robbery would be gone. That had to vanish someplace soon. That had to be the incontrovertible evidence to put someone other than himself in that house on Tuesday morning, to put someone else behind the guns that killed Sandià’s crew. Could he deal with that? Could he live a life somewhere on a PD pension?
Madigan glanced in the rearview. He recalled that moment when he’d pulled over in front of the chop suey joint. After the meeting with Landry and Williams and Fulton. He’d looked at that same reflection. From how many mirrors in how many restrooms in how many bars had that worn-out face looked back at him? Too many? Or too few? Maybe he’d just lock himself in a motel room and drink himself to death. Maybe that would be simpler. He remembered that thought. He remembered many such thoughts. Seemed the world was full of dark places. He’d seen most of them, lived in a few, and even the ones he’d never visited felt somehow familiar.
Nothing was certain. Nothing was dependable.
Madigan watched the front of the building and he prayed that someone would show up.
By noon he couldn’t bear it. His nerves were shredded. His bladder was ready to rupture. He’d chained a half dozen smokes, felt nauseous and light-headed. He could sit there for the rest of the day and no one could show up. What if Sandià’s man was way up high in the department? What if he was District, even the Chief’s Office? There was no way in the world someone like that would be seen around Paladino. If that was the case, then this was a hide into nowhere. If he did not know the identity of Sandià’s other source, then . . .
Madigan shifted in the seat. He glanced back over his shoulder and caught something move in the corner of his eye.
He turned back.
A car drew to a halt a half block up ahead. It was a nondescript sedan, precisely the kind of vehicle provided for duty use from the car pool. Would make sense to use a car pool vehicle. Just as Madigan had said to Sandià about the second source, offense was the best form of defense. Be seen down here in something other than a PD vehicle and it would raise more questions. In a PD vehicle you would be on nothing but PD business, right? Who would be dumb enough to make a personal visit to Sandià’s territory in their own car?
