Bust (25 page)

Max hesitated for a second, then said, “There’s one problem you need to know about. A big one.”

McCullough looked at him, waiting. Max wasn’t sure he could trust the guy, but what choice did he have? He had to figure out some way to take care of Rosa and he couldn’t do it if he was spending the rest of his life in jail.

Max leaned close to McCullough and whispered through the bars, “The problem is, it’s true, I
was
having an affair with Angela. And there’s this guy — his name’s Bobby Rosa — he has these pictures of Angela and me...”

“What kind of pictures?”

“He got into our hotel room the other night,” Max said, “while Angela and I were... well. We were in bed, and he took photos. Then he came to me and asked for a quarter million dollars. I said no, of course. What am I gonna do, start paying off a blackmailer, right? But if those photos get out, it would be bad. I mean, wouldn’t it?”

“The detectives told me about that hotel room. They say they have surveillance video from the hotel showing the two of you going into the room. I don’t know that having photos of you actually in the room would make things a lot worse.”

Max didn’t have an answer to that. He wanted to tell McCullough the rest, wanted to tell him about the cassette Rosa had played for him, about Dillon admitting to
Rosa on the tape that Max had hired him to kill his wife. But he couldn’t.

“I agree the affair makes things a little more complicated,” McCullough continued, “but your case isn’t impossible. If it turns out Angela’s the one who killed Thomas Dillon and poured Drano on him, it’ll be easy to show she’s unstable. As long as you’re telling me the truth, I think we’ll be able to build up a solid defense.”

As long as you’re telling the truth.
Always a goddamn catch.

“What about Bobby Rosa?” Max said, trying again.

“So he has some pictures of you having sex. So what? It’s not like he has pictures of you killing somebody.”

This was hopeless. He’d have to find a way to handle Rosa himself.

Max shot a glance at the homeless guy on the floor and lowered his voice further. “Do me a favor, don’t tell anybody about Rosa, all right?” He hated that he was almost pleading with this teenager, this freaking child. “Forget I ever mentioned his name.”

“Mr. Fisher, if it’s going to come out, it’s better if we’re the ones who disclose it—”

“Don’t. Just don’t.”

“But—”

“No.” Max wanted to grab him and bang his head against the bars, get him to fucking pay attention for Chrissakes.

“What if Rosa had something to do with the shooting? What if he was working with Thomas Dillon—”

“Look,” Max said, “we didn’t discuss your fee yet, but you came highly recommended and I’m willing to pay top dollar for you to take me on as a client. But if I’m your client that means you work for me. Those pictures Rosa has could be a big embarrassment, especially if turns out Angela is involved with the murders. I don’t want the
police finding the pictures and the whole story going public. Do you get it?”

Reluctantly, McCullough agreed not to bring up Bobby Rosa’s name to the police. He stayed with Max for a while longer, discussing strategy, then an officer came and led them into a small interrogation room with a square table. Ortiz and the tall detective sat on one side of the table, and Max and McCullough sat across from them on the other. In the middle of the table a little recorder was going. Ortiz began grilling Max, asking many of the same questions he’d asked the other night. Before answering each question, Max looked at McCullough, but McCullough had a blank expression, like a kid in the back of the class who didn’t do his homework assignment, and didn’t interrupt one time. These days it seemed like they handed out law degrees on street corners — you can probably get one online; answer a few questions and, boom, you’re a lawyer. Max just hoped this McCullough knew what the hell he was doing. But Max had to take it easy. He knew the cops would love it if he started chewing out his own goddamn lawyer in front of them. His lawyer was his ace, his only good card in a shitty hand. His father, a poker addict, used to say,
Doesn’t matter about a bad hand, it’s playing it badly that matters
. Max finally understood what the hell the bastard had been talking about.

Then Granger, the tall detective, asked Max if he was “involved” with Angela Petrakos.

“Yes,” Max said. “We’d been having an affair for the past few months.”

“How come you didn’t tell me that the other night?” Ortiz asked.

“I didn’t want it coming out,” Max said, “out of respect for my dead wife and her relatives.” He made sure he hit the right somber note. He didn’t go overboard, wiping at
his eyes and sniffling, but he let the words hang there.

Max looked at McCullough who blinked once as a sign of approval, or maybe just to show he was actually alive.

“We might as well tell you, then,” Ortiz said, “we talked to some people at the Hotel Pennsylvania and they ID’d you and Angela Petrakos. So it’s just as well you admitted it. Now, you want to tell us where you went after you left the hotel that night?”

“I went home,” Max said. It was nice to tell the truth for a change. Being honest was so foreign to him it gave him a rush. He’d have to try more of it.

“You never saw Detective Simmons that night?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Did you ever meet a man named Thomas Dillon?” Granger asked.

“No,” Max said, hoping the British accent wasn’t coming out again.

“Were you aware that Angela Petrakos had been living with Dillon?”

Now Max felt feverish, realizing what an idiot he’d been for believing all those stories about Angela’s roommate. He would’ve killed for a half bottle of Stoli.

“Angela led me to believe that she lived with a woman.”

“So you never went to her apartment?” Ortiz asked skeptically.

Max shook his head.

Ortiz and Granger continued to grill Max for about another half an hour. Max continued to deny knowing anything about Angela and Dillon’s relationship or any murder plot to kill his wife. When Ortiz suggested the possibility that there might be “a fourth person,” someone Max had hired to try to kill Angela this afternoon, Max could tell McCullough wanted him to bring up Bobby Rosa, but Max told the detectives he had absolutely no idea what had happened in the park today. He was going
to add,
What the hell’s happening to our city?
but was scared it would come out in that fucking accent.

Finally Max was taken back to the holding cell. About a half an hour later, McCullough came to the cell and said, “I have some good news for you — they’re dropping the assault charges.”

“That’s very nice of them since I didn’t assault anybody.”

“And they’re going to let you go on your own recognizance.”

“For good?”

“No, just for now. They want to see what happens with Angela and get her side of the story. If they get a confession out of her you might be off the hook, so let’s just hope, for your sake, she pulls through.”

Little Girl Lost

R
ICHARD
A
LEAS

Bobby couldn’t stand lying in bed anymore, staring at the fucking cracks in the ceiling, so he went into the living room and lifted himself out of his wheelchair onto the couch and turned on
NY
1, the local twenty-four-hour-a-day TV news station. He watched the same bit on Angela’s shooting three times, wondering each time, How the fuck could she not be dead? What the fuck was with that?

Finally, he fell asleep. When he woke up, at a little after six, the news was running a different segment about the shooting with a different reporter live on the scene. The reporter said that Angela was in critical but stable condition. He also said something about the cops finding a body in her bathtub soaking in Drano, which he figured answered the question of what she’d meant by “got rid of.” Bobby still didn’t know how the hell she’d survived those shots. He’d thought the one in her chest had gotten her for sure, but the bullet must’ve just missed her heart. He didn’t get this because Bobby Rosa never,
never
missed a fucking target. Was he losing his touch? It was bad enough that he couldn’t walk and that it took the stars aligning just to be able to bang a chick, but now was being in a wheelchair affecting his ability to kill people?

Bobby knew there was no way he would be able to fall back asleep now. He put on some clothes and went down to the deli and bought a couple ham and egg sandwiches on rolls, a large black coffee, and a copy of the
Daily News
.
Back in his apartment, he wolfed down the sandwiches and read the newspaper articles about the Riverside Park shooting. Like on TV, there was no mention of Max Fisher and no mention of any possible suspects. He didn’t know if this was good or bad. Fuck, he didn’t know shit about anything anymore.

Later, Bobby was finishing his bladder routine when he noticed something funny and muttered, “The hell is that?”

It looked like a blister down there, then he looked closer and noticed that there were others clustered around. Bobby laughed. If he’d caught herpes a few years ago he might have been upset, but now he couldn’t feel any pain down there so what the hell difference did it make?

Bobby started to plan his mother’s funeral. He got hold of a funeral home on Amsterdam Avenue and arranged for them to pick up the body from the morgue at the nursing home. Then he called Information in Brooklyn and got the phone numbers of a few of his mother’s oldest friends. One of them, Carlita Borazon, had died a couple of years ago, her husband told Bobby, but her two other close friends — Anna Gagliardi and Rose-Marie Santos — were alive and well. They both seemed very upset when Bobby broke the news.

After he got off the phone with Rose-Marie, Bobby turned on the TV. There was an update on the Riverside Park shooting. A spokesman from the hospital said that Angela was out of her coma. She was awake and alert, but still in critical condition.

“Fuck!” Bobby shouted and threw the remote at the TV.

He got the address of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital from the phone book, then went down to the street and took the Broadway bus uptown to 168th Street. The hospital
lobby was crammed with reporters and camera crews, but no one paid much attention to him, some guy in a wheelchair. It took a long time, but Bobby finally made his way through the halls to the nursing station and found a clipboard that showed what room Angela was in. He half expected to see a pair of cops stationed outside the door and was prepared to just keep rolling if there were, but the door was open and there was no one outside it, so he just went in.

Angela looked like shit. Her face was white and there were tubes coming in and out of her body. How the hell had she survived? The luck of the Irish, that’s how. Ask any Brit — it’s friggin’ impossible to kill those mothers. No wonder the Irish made such a big deal about funerals. It was so hard to put a mick in a box, they actually celebrated when they got one there.

Bobby wheeled close to the bed. The easiest thing would have been to smother her with a pillow, like what that Indian did to Jack Nicholson in that
Cuckoo’s Nest
movie. But that would be crazy with the door open and cops in the building.

Angela was sleeping or resting, but when Bobby touched her wrist her eyes opened. She turned her head slowly in his direction.

“Don’t try to talk,” Bobby said. “I just came by to see how you were doing.”

“I’m doing okay,” Angela said weakly.

She squeezed Bobby’s hand. Bobby felt uncomfortable, but he left his hand there anyway.

“Did the cops talk to you yet?” Bobby was trying not to sound too anxious.

Angela shook her head.

“That’s good,” Bobby said. “That’s real good. What about what happened in the park? Did you see who shot you?”

Again Angela shook her head, then said, “All I remember is lying on the ground bleeding.”

“Some kid with a gun probably took a pot shot at you,” Bobby said. “Fucking kids these days — running around, shooting people for kicks. I ever get my hands on them...”

He let the threat hang there, to show how much he cared about her. Man, he was a great actor.

Now Angela was squeezing Bobby’s hand tighter. She was trying to say something, but Bobby couldn’t hear her.

Then Bobby said, “Don’t worry, everything’s gonna be all right. I just talked to your doctor and he said you’ll be walking out of here in no time, so you don’t gotta worry about that. Understand?”

Angela nodded.

“But listen,” Bobby whispered, “the police are gonna want to talk to you and it’s very important what you say to them. You listening? They found Dillon in your bathtub, but you don’t have to worry about it. He came after you and you killed him in self-defense — it’s as simple as that. But here’s the important thing — when the police ask you about Fisher hiring Dillon to kill his wife you have to say you know nothing about that. Remember — you knew nothing about that. Whatever you do, don’t finger Max. I don’t wanna see you get in trouble and this is your only way out of this mess. So just tell the police you know nothing about Max — tell them the robbery was all Dillon’s idea. Max had nothing to do with it, got it?”

She managed to smile, then said weakly, “Oh, I understand, Bobby. It’s really sweet of you to try to protect me. But there’s one thing you’ve got to understand, too.” Her voice was fading and she had to pause to take a breath. Bobby had to lean close to hear her say, “I get half the money.”