“Christ!” I said.
“Got another mind-fuck for you,” Bubba said.
I wasn’t sure I could handle one more twist in my already knotted brain, but I said, “Shoot.”
“There’s a rumor going around about Pharaoh Gutierrez.”
“I know. He was teaming up with Mullen to take over Cheese’s action.”
“No, not that one. Everyone knows that one. Thing I’m hearing is that Pharaoh wasn’t one of us.”
“Then what was he?”
“A cop, Patrick,” Bubba said, and I felt everything in my brain slide to the left. “Word is he was DEA.”
21
“DEA?” Angie said. “You’re kidding.”
I shrugged. “Just what Bubba heard. You know street info: could be total bullshit, could be total truth. Too soon to tell.”
“So, what? Gutierrez was undercover for six years, working Cheese Olamon’s operation, and then he gets involved in the kidnapping of a four-year-old and he doesn’t pass that info on to his superiors?”
“Doesn’t add up, does it?”
“No. But what else is new?”
I leaned back in the kitchen chair, resisted an urge to punch the wall. This was one of the most infuriating cases I’d ever worked. Absolutely nothing made sense. A four-year-old girl disappears. Investigation leads us to believe the child was kidnapped by drug dealers who’d been ripped off by the mother. A ransom demand for the stolen money arrives from a woman who seems to work for the drug dealers. The ransom drop is an ambush. The drug dealers are killed. One of the drug dealers may or may not be an undercover operative for the federal government. The missing girl remains missing or at the bottom of a quarry.
Angie reached across the table and put her warm hand on my wrist. “We have to at least try to get a few hours’ sleep.”
I turned my wrist, took her hand in mine. “Is there one single thing about this case that makes sense to you?”
“Now that Gutierrez and Mullen have been whacked? No. There’s no one else in Cheese’s organization who could pick up the slack. Hell, there’s no one in his organization who’s smart enough to have pulled this off.”
“Wait a minute….”
“What?”
“You just said it yourself. There’s a power vacuum in Olamon’s organization now. What if that was the point?”
“Huh?”
“What if Cheese knew Mullen and Gutierrez were planning a coup? Or maybe he knew Mullen was, at least, and he’d heard whispers that Gutierrez wasn’t who he claimed to be?”
“So Cheese set all this up—the kidnapping, the ransom demands, et cetera—just so he could take out Mullen and Gutierrez?” She dropped my hand. “You’re serious?”
“It’s a theory.”
“An idiotic one,” she said.
“Hey.”
“No, think about it. Why go to all this trouble when he could have hired a couple of jack boys to pop Mullen and Gutierrez while they slept?”
“But he’s also pissed at Helene, wants his two hundred grand back.”
“So he tells Mullen to kidnap the kid, set up this elaborate child-for-money ruse, and then he has someone whack Mullen while it’s going down?”
“Why not?”
“Because then where’s Amanda? Where’s the money? Who was firing from those trees last night? Who knocked Bubba out? How did Mullen not know he was being set up? Do you realize how many people in Cheese’s organization would have had to be in on this huge, complicated conspiracy to pull it off? And Mullen wasn’t stupid. He was the smartest guy in Cheese’s crew. You don’t think he would have sniffed out a plan from the inside to kill him?”
I rubbed my eyes. “Christ. My head hurts.”
“Mine, too. And you’re not helping.”
I scowled at her and she smiled.
“Okay,” she said, “back to square one. Amanda is abducted. Why?”
“Two hundred grand her mother stole from Cheese.”
“Why didn’t Cheese just send someone around to threaten her? I’m pretty sure she would have buckled. They’d know that, too.”
“It could have taken them three months just to figure out the money wasn’t impounded by the police in the raid on the bikers.”
“Okay. But then they’d have moved fast. Ray Likanski had black eyes the day we met him.”
“You think he got them from Mullen?”
“Mullen would have given him a lot worse than black eyes if he thought he’d ripped him off. See, that’s what I’m saying. If Mullen thought Likanski and Helene had ripped the organization off, he wouldn’t kidnap Helene’s kid. He’d just kill Helene.”
“So maybe it wasn’t Cheese who had Amanda abducted?”
“Maybe not.”
“And the two hundred grand was a coincidence?” I tilted my head, cocked an eyebrow at her.
“You’re saying that’s a big coincidence.”
“I’m saying that’s a coincidence the size of Vermont. Particularly when the note found in Kimmie’s underwear said the two hundred grand equals a child’s return.”
She nodded, pinched her coffee cup handle, and turned the cup back and forth on the table. “Okay. So we’re back to Cheese. And all those questions about why he’d go to all this trouble.”
“Which, I agree, makes no sense and doesn’t sound like Cheese’s MO.”
She looked up from her coffee cup. “So where is she, Patrick?”
I touched her arm, slid my hand under the cuff of her bathrobe. “She’s in the quarry, Ange.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Someone abducts that girl, ransoms her, and kills her. Simple as that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she’d seen her kidnappers’ faces? Because whoever was up in the quarries last night smelled police, knew we were trying to play both ends up the middle? I don’t know. Because people kill kids.”
She stood up. “Let’s go see Cheese.”
“What about sleep?”
“We can sleep when we’re dead.”
22
The sleet that had visited us briefly last night had returned this morning, and by the time we reached Concord Prison it sounded like nickels pelting the hood.
This time I wasn’t with two members of law enforcement, so Cheese was brought out into the visitors’ room and faced us through a pane of thick glass. Angie and I each picked up a phone in our cubicle and Cheese reached for his.
“Hey, Ange,” he said. “Looking fine.”
“Hey, Cheese.”
“Maybe, I get out of here someday, we could have a chocolate malt or something?”
“A chocolate malt?”
“Sure.” He rolled his shoulders. “A root beer float. Something like that.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Sure, Cheese. Sure. Give me a call when you’re released.”
“Goddamn!” Cheese slapped the glass with his thick palm. “You know that.”
“Cheese,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows.
“Chris Mullen’s dead.”
“I heard. Terrible shame.”
Angie said, “You seem to be handling it well.”
Cheese leaned back in his seat, appraised us for a moment, scratched his chest idly. “This business, you know? Motherfuckers die young.”
“Pharaoh Gutierrez, too.”
“Yeah.” Cheese nodded. “Sad about the Pharaoh. Motherfucker could dress. Know what I’m saying?”
I said, “Rumor I hear is Pharaoh wasn’t just working for you.”
Cheese cocked an eyebrow and seemed momentarily bewildered. “Come again, my brother?”
“I hear Pharaoh was a Fed.”
“Shit.” Cheese smiled broadly and shook his head, but his eyes remained wide and slightly unfocused. “You believe everything you hear on the street, you should—I dunno—become a motherfucking cop or something.”
It was a weak-ass analogy and
he knew it. So much of who Cheese was depended on everything coming out of his mouth smooth, fast, and funny, even the threats. And it was pretty obvious by his grasping speech that the possibility of Pharaoh being a cop had never occurred to him until now.
I smiled. “A cop, Cheese. In your organization. Think what that’ll do to your cred.”
Cheese’s eyes regained their cast of bemused curiosity, and he leaned back in his chair, settled back into himself. “Your boy Broussard, he come to see me about an hour ago, tells me Mullen and Gutierrez are no more out of the kindness of his heart. Said he thinks I aced my own boys. Said he gonna make me pay. Said I’m responsible for him getting suspended, his old-coot partner getting sick. Pissed off the Cheese, you want to know the truth.”
“Sorry to hear that, Cheese.” I leaned in toward the glass. “Someone else is real pissed off, too.”
“Yeah? Who’s that?”
“Brother Rogowski.”
Cheese’s fingers stopped scratching his chest and the front legs of his chair came forward, touched the ground. “Why’s Brother Rogowski irate?”
“Someone from your team piped him in the back of the head several times.”
Cheese shook his head. “Not my team, baby. Not my team.”
I looked at Angie.
“That’s unfortunate,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Too bad.”
“What?” Cheese said. “You know I’d never raise a hand to Brother Rogowski.”
“’Member that guy?” Angie said.
“Which?” I said.
“The one a few years back, bigwig in the Irish mob, you know him—” She snapped her fingers.
“Jack Rouse,” I said.
“Yeah. He was, like, the Irish godfather or something, wasn’t he?”
“Wait,” Cheese said. “No one knows what happened to Jack Rouse. Just he pissed off the Patrisos or something.”
He looked at us through the glass as we both shook our heads slowly.
“Wait. You’re saying Jack Rouse got clipped by—”
“Sssh,” I said, and held a finger up to my lips.
Cheese placed the phone on the table for a minute and looked up at the ceiling. When he looked back at us, he seemed to have shrunk by a foot, and the dampness in his bangs plastered the hair to his forehead and made him look ten years younger. He brought the phone back up to his lips.
“The bowling alley rumor?” he whispered.
A couple of years ago, Bubba, a hit man named Pine, myself, and Phil Dimassi had met Jack Rouse and his demented right hand, Kevin Hurlihy, in an abandoned bowling alley in the leather district. Six of us had gone in, four of us had walked out. Jack Rouse and Kevin Hurlihy, tied, gagged, and tortured by Bubba and a few bowling balls, never stood a chance. The hit was sanctioned by Fat Freddy Constantine, head of the Italian Mafia here, and those of us who walked back out knew that no one would find the corpses and no one would ever be dumb enough to go looking.
“It’s true?” Cheese whispered.
I gave Cheese the answer in my dead gaze.
“Bubba’s gotta know I had nothing to do with him getting piped.”
I looked at Angie. She sighed, looked at Cheese, and then down at the small shelf below the glass.
“Patrick,” Cheese said, and all the pseudo-Superfly intonations had left his voice, “you have to let Bubba know.”
“Know what?” Angie said.
“That I had nothing to do with this.”
Angie smiled and shook her head. “Yeah, sure, Cheese. Sure.”
He whacked the glass with the back of his hand. “You listen to me! I had nothing to do with this.”
“Bubba doesn’t see it that way, Cheese.”
“So, tell him.”
“Why?” I said.
“Because it’s true.”
“I don’t buy that, Cheese.”
Cheese pulled his chair forward, squeezed the phone so hard I expected it to crack in half. “Fucking listen to me, you piece of shit. That psychotic thinks I piped him, I might as well shiv some guard, make sure I stay locked in solitary for life. That man is a walking fucking death sentence. Now you tell him—”
“Fuck you, Cheese.”
“What?”
I said it again, very slowly.
Then I said, “I came to you two days ago and begged for the life of a four-year-old girl. Now she’s dead. Because of you. And you want mercy? I’m going to tell Bubba you apologized for having him piped.”
“No.”
“Tell him you said you were sorry. You’ll make it up to him somehow.”
“No.” Cheese shook his head. “You can’t do that.”
“Watch me, Cheese.”
I took the phone away from my ear and reached out to hang it up.
“She’s not dead.”
“What?” Angie said.
I put the phone back to my ear.
“She’s not dead,” Cheese said.
“Who?” I said.
Cheese rolled his eyes, tilted his head back in the direction of the guard standing watch by the door.
“You know who.”
“Where is she?” Angie said.
Cheese shook his head. “Give me a few days.”
“No,” I said.
“You don’t have a choice.” He looked back over his shoulder, then leaned in close to the window and whispered into the phone. “Someone will contact you. Trust me. I got to clear some things first.”
“Bubba’s very angry,” Angie said. “And he has friends.” She glanced around the prison walls.
“No shit,” Cheese said. “His pals, the fucking Twoomey brothers, just got dropped for a bank job in Everett. They’ll be rotating in here next week for processing. So stop trying to scare me. I’m scared. Okay? But I need time. Call off the dog. I’ll send a message to you, I promise.”
“How do you know for sure she’s alive?”
“I know. Okay?” He gave us a rueful smile. “You two don’t have a clue what’s really going on. Do you know that?”
“We know it now,” I said.
“You let Bubba know I’m clean when it comes what happened to him. You want me alive. Okay? Without me, that girl will be gone. Gone-gone. You understand? Gone, baby, gone,” he sang.
I leaned back in my chair, studied him for a minute. He looked sincere, but Cheese is good at that. He’s made a career out of knowing exactly which things can hurt people most and then identifying the people who want those things. Need them. He knows how to dangle bags of heroin in front of addicted women, make them blow strangers for it, and then only give them half of what he promised. He knows how to dangle half-truths in front of cops and DAs and get them to sign on the dotted line, before he delivers a facsimile of what he originally promised.
“I need more,” I said.
The guard rapped the door and said, “Sixty seconds, Inmate Olamon.”
“More? The fuck you need?”
“I want the girl,” I said. “I want her now.”
“I can’t tell—”
“Fuck you.” I banged on the glass. “Where is she, Cheese? Where is she?”
“If I tell you, they’ll know it came from me, and I’ll be dead by the morning.” He backed up as he spoke, palms-up in front of him, terror filling his fat face.
“Give me something hard. Something I can follow up, then.”
“Independent corroboration,” Angie said.
“Independent what?”
“Thirty seconds,” the guard said.
“Give us something, Cheese.”
Cheese looked over his shoulder desperately, then at the walls holding him in, the thick glass between us.
“Come on,” he begged.
“Twenty seconds,” Angie said.
“Don’t. Look—”
“Fifteen.”
“No, I—”
“Tick-tock,” I said. “Tick-tock.”
“The bitch’s boyfriend,” Cheese said. “You know?
”
“He blew town,” Angie said.
“Then find him,” Cheese hissed. “It’s all I got. Ask him what his part was the night the kid vanished.”
“Cheese—” Angie started.
The guard loomed up behind Cheese, put his hand on his shoulder.
“Whatever you think happened,” Cheese said, “you’re not even in the ballpark. You guys are so offtrack, you might as well be in motherfucking Greenland. Okay?”
The guard reached over him and pulled the phone from his hand.
Cheese stood up, allowed himself to be tugged toward the door. When the guard opened the door, Cheese looked back at us, mouthed one word:
“Greenland.”
He raised his eyebrows up and down several times, and then the guard pushed him through the door and out of our sight.
The next day, shortly after noon, divers in Granite Rail Quarry found a torn piece of fabric impaled on a sliver of granite that jutted out like an ice pick from a shelf along the southern wall, fifteen feet below the waterline.
At three o’clock, Helene identified the fabric as a scrap of the T-shirt her daughter wore the night she disappeared. The scrap had been torn from the rear of the T-shirt, up by the collar, and the initials A. McC. were written on the fabric with a felt-tip pen.
After Helene identified the shirt fabric in the living room of Beatrice and Lionel’s house, she watched Broussard as he placed the pink scrap back in the evidence bag, and the glass of Pepsi she’d been holding shattered in her hand.
“Jesus,” Lionel said. “Helene.”
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Helene squeezed her hand into a fist and drove the shards of broken glass deeper into her flesh. Blood fell in fat parachutes to the hardwood floor.
Gone, Baby, Gone Page 23
