A Dark and Broken Heart

by R.J. Ellory

  Madigan ducked down instinctively, despite the fact that the car had pulled to a stop facing in the opposite direction. He waited. He watched. He wished he had binoculars. He did have his cellphone. He could at least take some snaps of the car and its occupant.

  Madigan worked his hand into his inside jacket pocket and retrieved the phone. He got it set up just as the sedan door opened.

  A foot on the street, a hand on the roof as the driver pulled himself up and out.

  Madigan was unable to take a picture.

  He froze. He could not believe his eyes.

  He took two or three pictures then—rapid-fire—and then the phone slipped from his hands and clattered into the footwell. He left it there as he watched the occupant lock the door of the sedan and start across the street toward Sandià’s building. Jesus Christ Al-fucking-mighty.

  Madigan was breathless, speechless, utterly dismayed. There was no way in the world he would ever have suspected this man of being in Sandià’s employ . . . But then there had to be a good few people at the precinct who would have said the same thing about Madigan.

  Madigan leaned back. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He reached for another cigarette and lit it, almost immediately grinding it out in the ashtray.

  Okay. Okay. He had to get his thoughts together. He had to arrange things. He had to work out what he was going to do and how he was going to do it. He needed to speak to Bernie, to Walsh . . . He needed to get Sandià’s money out of the house and prepare for what was happening next.

  Jesus Christ Almighty.

  Madigan struggled with it. He could not refute the evidence of his own eyes. But it made as much sense as anything else. This man had access to every case that was being worked on. Any file, any document, any report. And his viewing of such things would not be questioned in any way. This man was in a perfect position to provide Sandià with anything he needed.

  The only question that then troubled him was whether this second insider knew of Madigan’s relationship with Sandià. Surely not. Surely Sandià was not so dumb as to compromise his contacts by informing one of the other’s existence? Madigan felt sure that Sandià would not have done this. After all, he had known nothing of this man, had he? Above and beyond everything, Sandià was a businessman. The extent of his influence and control was determined solely by what he knew and what others did not.

  Madigan started the car. He pulled away and headed back to the rental site. By one he was away again. He had to make some calls, pay some visits, share some words with Walsh about the next stage of his operation.

  Bernie Tomczak was about ready to die of loneliness by the time Madigan showed up at the motel.

  “Jesus Christ, Vincent, how long are you gonna keep me holed up in this fleabag freakin’ joint?”

  “Calm down, Bernie. We’re going to go out. We’re going to get a drink, get something to eat, and we’re going to talk. There’s something I need you to do for me, and I need you to be straight and clearheaded and calm about this.”

  “What thing? What do you want me to do?”

  “Get your jacket,” Madigan said.

  Bernie did so, slipped it on, followed Madigan out of the motel to the car.

  They drove north, away from Mott Haven toward the Bronx, and then Madigan headed west toward High Bridge. He wanted to be away from home, away from anyone who might recognize either himself or Bernie Tomczak.

  Madigan pulled over and they walked a block or two. He chose a nondescript diner near John Mullaly Park. He ordered a turkey and white cheddar sub. Bernie said he’d have the same. Madigan asked for fries as well, a side salad, a couple of beers. He had an appetite. It felt good to have an appetite. He wondered whether it was because he was off the pills.

  The food came, the beer also.

  Bernie held up the bottle. “What the hell is this?” he asked. “You’re drinking barley pop now? What the hell is going on with you?”

  “Shut your mouth unless you’re putting food in it,” Madigan replied. “We eat, then we talk.”

  “Something’s awry with you,” Bernie started, and then he shook his head. “What am I saying? Something’s always awry with you.”

  “Eat, Bernie,” Madigan said.

  “Okay, okay. I’m eating already.”

  Bernie Tomczak ate, every once in a while glancing up at Vincent Madigan and wondering what was going on behind the intense and unsettling expression.

  When they were done eating, they talked. They talked for an hour. Bernie asked questions, Madigan answered them to the extent that he was willing, and when he was done Bernie Tomczak just sat there for a while in silence.

  Half an hour later Madigan pulled over outside the motel in Mott Haven and let Bernie out.

  “Speak later,” Madigan told him. “I’ll come get you or call you here. Don’t try and reach me.”

  Bernie said nothing, merely nodded and walked back toward the motel entrance.

  Madigan turned around once more, headed toward the Bronx. He wanted to see Isabella Arias. He wanted to talk to her as well. He wanted to let her know something of what he was going to do and why.

  53

  WATERMELON MAN

  “You look like you slept good,” Madigan said.

  “I found some pills in your medicine cabinet and I took one and I feel like crap.”

  “What tablets?” Madigan asked.

  “I don’t know . . . sleeping tablets, downers of some sort. They knocked me out. Completely knocked me out, and now I feel like shit.”

  “You had some coffee?”

  “No. I thought to make some, but I couldn’t be bothered.”

  “Jesus,” Madigan said. In his voice was a tone of exasperation.

  “Hey,” she said. “You can fuck off with that attitude. You’re not the one stuck in this crappy house on your own worrying about your daughter.”

  “Your daughter is fine. I told you that,” Madigan said.

  “I have to get out of here,” she said. “This is bullshit. I can’t stay locked up in here forever.”

  “It won’t be long now,” Madigan said.

  She opened her mouth to respond, hesitated, and then shook her head.

  “I’m going to make some coffee,” Madigan said. He crossed the room and drew the blinds. Why, he didn’t know. All of a sudden he felt as if he needed to hide. The room was in semi-darkness. It changed the mood between them suddenly.

  “Sit there,” he said, indicating the couch.

  She did as she was asked, but resentfully. A couple of hours waiting in the car for someone to show up at Sandià’s had made Madigan stir-crazy. Isabella had been in the house since Wednesday. He had some small inkling of how she must feel.

  But now, now it was all different. Now he had some small appreciation for the extent of this thing. Now he truly understood how much was at stake, and what would happen if it all went to hell. He was screwed both ways if he fucked this up.

  Madigan did as he said—made coffee, good and strong. He poured a cup for each of them and took it back into the front room.

  Isabella looked worried, more so than previously.

  “So what’s happening?” she said. “What’s going on? How long do I have to stay here?”

  “Hopefully not that much longer,” Madigan replied. “There’s a couple of things I need to do, and if everything goes the way I want it to go then you’re going to be off the hook in the next day or two.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, and then she raised her hand. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “Me off the hook means that you’re going to handle Sandià, right?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  She closed her eyes then. She just sat there with her hands around the coffee cup, and Madigan heard her exhale. There was something about her body language—a profound overwhelm, a shadow of defeat.

  “You think I’m going to get myself killed,” Madigan said.

  “Yes,” Isabella replied. “You go up against San
dià and you’re going to get yourself killed, and then where the hell will I be? In this house, completely unaware of what’s going on. Sooner or later they’ll put two and two together and they’ll do to me what they did to Maribel.”

  “That is not part of the plan.”

  “You know who you’re dealing with, right?”

  “I do.”

  “You do? Really? You know why he’s called Sandià?”

  “I’ve heard the stories—”

  “Stories? There’s only one story here. Only one story that gave him that name. The Watermelon Man, right? You’ve heard that story?”

  “Yes, I have . . . Of course I have. Anyone who works down here, anyone who has anything to do with this man has heard the story.”

  “But you didn’t know her, right?”

  “Her?”

  “The mother. The boy’s mother.”

  Madigan shook his head. “No, I didn’t know her.”

  “I did,” Isabella replied. “Eloisa, that was her name. That was her name from before. She changed it later, of course, but back then she was called Eloisa.”

  Isabella shifted back. Her face was little more than shadows.

  “And you spoke to her about it?”

  “I did,” Isabella replied. “I knew her. I spoke to her. I was there when she found out what he’d done. And I knew the boy as well . . .”

  Madigan’s eyes visibly widened.

  “Oh yes,” Isabella said before Madigan had a chance to speak. “I knew the whole family. I knew what happened, why it happened, and I know what Dario Barrantes did. And when Maribel told me that she was in love with this guy, this David Valderas, I told her to stay away from him. Don’t get involved with anyone who works with Sandià. That’s the law down here. That’s the law if you want to see tomorrow, next week, Christmas. Stay the hell away from Sandià and his people . . .”

  “She didn’t listen,” Madigan said.

  “Listen? When did she ever listen to me? No, she didn’t listen. Of course she didn’t listen. She was in love. He was a good man really . . . This is what he told her. And he loved her too, and he had some money coming to him and he was going to take her out of this life and give her the life she deserved. The same story. Always the same story from these people. Well, he gave her that life, didn’t he? He gave her exactly the life that she deserved. Short and brutal. Painful. A horror of a life. That’s what he gave her.”

  Isabella’s fists clenched. The cup slid between her palms and hot coffee slopped over the rim and scalded her.

  “Christ!” She stood up suddenly.

  Madigan took the cup from her, set it on the floor. She shook her hand, held it for a moment.

  “You okay?”

  She didn’t acknowledge Madigan’s question.

  She sat down again.

  Madigan lit a cigarette.

  Isabella asked for one.

  “You don’t smoke,” he said.

  “Did, then I quit, now I’m starting again.”

  Madigan frowned.

  “What, you worried I’m gonna die of cancer before Sandià gets to me?”

  Madigan handed her the pack of cigarettes. She took one, lit it, inhaled deeply.

  “Like riding a bike, right?” she said, and she smiled awkwardly. She closed her eyes, shook her head slowly. “You really know him?” she asked Madigan. “You really know the kind of man he is?”

  “I think I do,” Madigan replied.

  “I don’t think anyone knows what kind of man he is. Not the women he sleeps with, not the people who work for him. I think the only ones who know who Dario Barrantes really is . . . God and the devil. God because He made him, the devil because that’s who owns his soul . . .”

  Madigan smiled wryly.

  “You are not a religious man, are you, Vincent?”

  “Can’t say that I am.”

  “Our culture . . . everything is steeped in religion. Everything means something; everything is symbolic. Everything is seen by God, and everything is punishable. They love to hand you the guilt . . . They love to make you terrified for your soul, the souls of your family. Don’t do this, don’t do that . . . So when someone turns against the church, when they become a criminal, a murderer, they really turn against everything that the culture represents. People like Barrantes . . . they are the worst. They have gone to the dark side of their soul completely.”

  “I’ve seen some pretty fucked-up people in my time—”

  “But to do what he did? To do that to a young boy, a boy who hadn’t even started his life . . . and for money?”

  Madigan shook his head. “I don’t know details. I heard what I heard. I heard a number of different things. Urban legends . . .”

  “No, not urban legends.” Isabella took another drag of the cigarette. He watched the bright tip of the cigarette, the wreath of smoke, the way her face looked as she exhaled from her nostrils . . .

  “It was there,” she said. “Right there in East Harlem. Right in that building where he sells his drugs and his guns and his women. He did that thing to that boy, and I knew the boy’s mother . . . I saw what he did and how it killed her too.”

  “So tell me,” Madigan said. “Tell me your understanding of what happened.”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yes,” Madigan said. “I really want to know.”

  “The guy . . . Angel, they used to call him. His name was Angelo Torresola. He was Puerto Rican. He came here . . . when? I don’t know, maybe thirty years ago. He was young, no more than eighteen or nineteen, and he was always in some sort of trouble. Never serious, just kid stuff. But then something happened and he ended up inside. It broke him, made him crazy. There was the girl I told you about. Eloisa. He got her pregnant. They were just kids, nothing more. He was in his early twenties by the time he came out, and Eloisa had moved on, had taken the kid with her. Maybe it was jail that broke Torresola, maybe the fact that Eloisa had disappeared with his son, but he was out of it. He was off the radar. He was a great deal more dangerous then than before he went inside. And then there was Barrantes . . . and he’d already started to cut East Harlem into pieces and divide things up like he had some God-given right to do what he wanted with people. And Torresola was home, and he’d heard about this guy Dario Barrantes while he was in jail, and so it started. The territorial disagreements, the little wars, the shootings, the stabbings . . . like a gang culture. People on Torresola’s side, people on Barrantes’s side, and they would never agree. Once the first stone has been thrown, there is no way to revert to negotiations. After the first casualty it becomes a matter of pride, of principle . . . And they brought the whole neighborhood down with them . . .”

  “Torresola I heard about. He was dead by the time I knew Barrantes,” Madigan said.

  “And when was that? When did you and Barrantes meet?”

  “Ninety-five . . . early ninety-five.”

  “Then Torresola himself was only just dead . . . a handful of months, and the boy, Torresola’s son? You should have seen that boy. He was the one who should have been called Angel.”

  “Barrantes killed the boy, right?”

  Isabella smiled. It was a mournful expression, as if remembering someone she loved who had passed, perhaps remembering a time before all this, when things were good, when she had her daughter with her and she was not in hiding from the world.

  “A watermelon,” she said. “It started because of a watermelon.”

  She reached for another cigarette, lit it, gave it to Madigan, and then lit one for herself.

  “What happened?” Madigan asked.

  “Torresola was out of prison. It was ninety-three, just after Christmas. I remember that because I had just turned seventeen. I was thinking about college, stuff like that. I met a boy then . . .” She glanced away for a moment. “Should have held on to him. He was good. He was the right one, you know? He lives outside of New Jersey now, has his own engineering firm. He has a lot of money, a wife, four
kids.” She looked back at Madigan. “Could’ve been me. That could have been me out there in New Jersey with a good husband and four kids.”

  “You can’t go backward,” Madigan said. “If you’d have stayed with him, you’d never have had Melissa.”

  Isabella’s eyes flashed. The hurt was there. The hurt of truth. She waved the comment aside. “So Torresola . . . Angel, right? He was out. He was in his early thirties. He was the tough guy. He had all his people behind him, and here was this other one, this Dario Barrantes, and he had come muscling in on East Harlem, a territory that belonged to Angel before he went to jail. Eloisa was nowhere to be found. Angel tried to find her, sure, her and the boy, but she had disappeared. It was always the way. He was looking so hard he didn’t see her. She was right there under his nose. She changed her name. She called herself Veronica. She had married someone else, had a couple more kids, and he didn’t even recognize her. The better part of fifteen years had passed and she had grown up. She knew who he was, but she had another life. She didn’t want to be involved with these people. And the boy? Angel’s boy? He looked like his mother. He didn’t look like Angel Torresola. She’d changed his name as well. His name was now Dominic Campos . . . twelve, maybe thirteen years old. That was the old life, the life with Angel Torresola, and she wanted her son to stay away from it. She had plans to move, to get out of East Harlem, and her husband was a good man, a simple man, and he knew nothing about her former life as Eloisa, and he did not know the identity of Dominic’s father. He was an auto mechanic. He had a small place, a little shop, you know? He fixed cars for people. That’s what he did. He was about as far from the world of Dario Barrantes and Angel Torresola as you could get.”