Damaged Goods (41 page)

By the time he reached Avenue A and Fourth Street, two blocks from home, Moodrow was ready to once again acknowledge the possibility that Jilly Sappone would return to his wife’s apartment. It wasn’t going to happen, of course. Even if he somehow got free of his keepers, Sappone would go for his stashed weapons, maybe try to get back into that uptown apartment. The cops would be waiting, as they’d be waiting in front of Ann’s building. Given any sort of excuse, they’d shoot him down like the rabid dog he was.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the bottom line, not even close. No, for Stanley Moodrow, all the probabilities were rendered meaningless by the simple fact that if Sappone actually got through, if he somehow did to Ginny Gadd what he’d done to Carol Pierce, Stanley Moodrow would not be able to live with the results. And the only serious question, given that admission, was whether or not he had enough clean underwear for an extended stay.

The question, still unanswered, was rendered meaningless a few minutes later as Moodrow crossed Avenue B and started to walk into the block. The FBI came at him from both ends of the street, a dozen agents in three cars, waving their automatics like cowboys, demanding that he lie flat on his face, like any other criminal. Moodrow, as he dropped slowly to his knees, found himself strangely calm, as if he’d been on this end of an arrest many times before. He noted the level of force, pronounced it overwhelming, finally decided that he approved of the operation, that it was just what he, if he was in Holtzmann’s place, would do.

B
ETTY HALUKA DIDN’T BEGIN
to panic until after the eleven o’clock news. Up until that point, she’d been able to convince herself that Moodrow’s visit to Ann Kalkadonis had uncovered some new piece of information, that perhaps Moodrow was sitting on a stakeout, unable to leave the car. She’d phoned Ginny Gadd, of course, and Ann Kalkadonis, but there’d been no answer at either place, though Gadd did have an apparently defective answering machine which disconnected immediately after the beep. Betty wasn’t upset by the lack of response—Ann had wanted to see Moodrow because she was leaving the city and Gadd was with Moodrow now, pursuing whatever they’d decided to pursue. It was that simple.

Then the news came on, a litany of the day’s violence recited alternately by the coanchors, Sue Simmons and Matt Lauer. There was a murder on Ninety-fifth Street, another in a Lexington Avenue subway car, a ten-year-old wounded in a Brownsville drive-by, a pair of lice-infested toddlers found wandering in a reputed crack house. Finally, after a commercial break, Matt Lauer introduced a long piece on the still-unsolved nursing-home fire, then mentioned New York’s other unsolved crime, the execution of Theresa Kalkadonis. Jilly Sappone’s mug shot, silent and unyielding, propelled Betty from her chair to the telephone.

She tried Ann Kalkadonis and Ginny Gadd again, with the same result, then Leonora Higgins. Leonora’s phone rang four times before her answering machine picked up and Leonora’s disembodied voice urged her to leave a message. Betty, feeling just as disembodied, briefly explained the situation before hanging up. She was rummaging in the closet, looking for Moodrow’s phone directory, when the telephone rang back in the kitchen.

Betty, always optimistic, charged across the room, grabbed the receiver and half shouted, “Stanley, where the hell have you been?”

But the voice on the other end of the line wasn’t that of her lover.

“It’s not Stanley, it’s me, Artie, calling from Los Angeles. Long distance.” His tone was crisp and efficient, as if arranging an appointment with a client. “You were supposed to call me tonight. I’ve been waiting.”

Betty groaned. Artie, I’m sorry. I’ve got some problems out here and I just forgot. How’s Marilyn?”

“The same, but the hospital wants to throw her out.”

“Into the street?”

“Very funny.”

“Artie, I don’t …” She stopped, decided to push one of his many buttons. “This is long distance, Artie,” she said, “it’s costing a fortune.”

“You’re right.” His voice dropped a half octave, became conspiratorial. “What they say is she’s not getting better. I’m talking about the doctors. She’s not getting better and the insurance won’t pay for the hospital beyond the end of the week. What I’ve gotta do, they say, is arrange for long-term care which means a nursing home. Betty, it’s $6,000 a month and they want I should pay every penny out of my own pocket. How will I do this? Marilyn’s breathing is good now, her insides are working. It could take years before …”

Artie paused, maybe expecting a response, but Betty didn’t intend to prolong the conversation. Not when Artie lived in a two-million-dollar house.

“You could always bring Marilyn home,” she finally said. “And take care of her yourself.”

That stopped Artie cold. “Betty,” he said, after a series of false starts, “I have to make a living.”

“I understand, Artie. What I’ll do is call you next week, see if there’s any change. When Marilyn’s settled, I’ll come out to Los Angeles. In the meanwhile, you keep your chin up.”

Artie hung up without another word and Betty, still angry, began to leaf through the phone book. Then she remembered Jim Tilley.

“Damn,” she said to herself as she dialed his number. “You must’ve taken an extra dose of stupid pills this morning. Where is your goddamned brain?”

As if to confirm her self-judgment, Tilley answered on the second ring. After listening patiently while she detailed everything she knew and everything she feared, he spoke with no trace of anxiety in his voice.

“Stanley had identification, Betty. That means if he was in the hospital, you’d know it, because somebody from the cashier’s office would’ve called for his insurance ID number. Those people don’t fool around.” He hesitated briefly, then continued when she didn’t challenge his assertion. Or his weak attempt at humor. “He might’ve been arrested, although I can’t believe they wouldn’t let him make a phone call. What I’ll do is see if he’s in the computer. Remember, it’s not like the old days when they could bounce you from precinct to precinct, one step ahead of your lawyer. Now, you go into the computer when you’re booked and the computer tracks you through the system.”

“And if he’s …” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

“Dead, Betty?”

“Yes, or lying somewhere hurt.”

“Look, when he left, he was heading for the Kalkadonises’ apartment and he was planning to come right back when he was finished. That means whatever happened to him, happened between here and there. This is Manhattan we’re talking about, with tens of thousands of people walking around. You can forget about him lying in some alley.”

“Make me feel better, Jim. Tell me why he can’t be … the other.”

“Because I would’ve heard about it. The Kalkadonis apartment is in the One-Three. Half the cops in the house know Stanley. Plus, if a cop went down, even a retired cop, it would’ve made the news. But what I’ll do is call the ME’s office. I’ve got friends there, so it won’t be a problem.”

Betty felt the muscles in her neck and shoulders relax, her breathing open up. Jim was right. The odds against Moodrow being in some terrible trouble were huge.

“Look, Betty,” Jim continued, “when I spoke to Stanley this morning, he told me the feds were on his back. I can’t help you with that, but Leonora used to be an agent. Have you tried her?”

“I left a message on her machine.” She carried the phone over to the stove and turned on the burner under the tea kettle. It was going to be a long night, but she was now ready for it. She was going to handle it step-by-step, piece it together as if Stanley Moodrow was a client.

“Look, Jim, will you call me as soon as you know anything? I don’t care if it’s four o’clock in the morning.”

“As soon as I know anything for sure.”

Despite Jim’s assurances, Betty called every hospital below Fifty-seventh Street, spending most of the next two hours on hold. Wasted calls to Ann Kalkadonis, Ginny Gadd, and Leonora Higgins followed. By the time she finished, it was almost two o’clock in the morning.

She found a blanket in the hall closet, wrapped herself in it, and lay down, fully dressed, on the couch. Her body craved sleep, but her mind was jumping from thought to thought like a flamenco dancer on a bed of hot coals. It was after three before she finally drifted into a troubled sleep in which Marilyn’s broken body became Theresa Kalkadonis lying by the side of a road, in which a small body bag swelled like an inflatable boat, until there was only one person big enough to fill it.

The ringing telephone yanked her awake half an hour later. For a minute, Betty didn’t know where she was and she fought her way out of the blanket, convinced it was a shroud. Then she shook her head clear, half staggering across the room to grab the receiver. It was Jim Tilley, calling to say that Moodrow was definitely not in custody and even more definitely not in the morgue.

“So, it’s good news and bad,” Jim concluded. “We know where he’s not, but not where he is. What I’m gonna do is take a couple of days off, make myself available until he shows his face. I’ll be over as soon as I get a few hours’ sleep.”

Betty, after hanging up, glanced at the clock. It was almost four o’clock and she was wide awake. Resigned to her fate, she went into the kitchen, shoveled a few scoops of coffee into the basket of Moodrow’s percolator, then added water and set the percolator on the stove. She was about to light the burner when the phone rang again.

“It’s Leonora. I just got in.”

Under other circumstances, she and Betty might have spent an hour discussing why she was coming home at four in the morning, who he was, and the exact nature of his intentions. Now, she settled for, “I’m glad you called.”

“Your message didn’t get into specifics. …”

“He’s gone, Leonora, that’s the only damn specific I’ve got.”

When Jilly Sappone awakened at first light on the following morning, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up without exhibiting any sign of his inner excitement. His movements were quick, but deliberate, as if he’d planned every muscular contraction, every breath, every beat of his heart. This was it, the seventh game of the World Series, the final act in the Jilly Sappone story; he wanted to drain every last drop of glory.

He listened, briefly, to the light buzz of Agent Bob’s snoring as it drifted down from an upstairs bedroom. Then he pulled on his trousers, walked quietly into the bathroom and opened the mirrored door to the medicine chest. Again he stopped, again he listened, again he heard only the natural sounds of the house, the hum of the refrigerator, the ticking of the wall clock in the living room, the groaning of the bedsprings as Ewing tossed in his sleep. Satisfied, he quickly wrapped the mirror in a heavy towel, then flushed the toilet, turned on the water in the sink and shattered the glass with the heel of his hand.

Catching the edges of the towel between his fingers, he pulled it away from the frame without allowing a single shard of glass to fall to the tiled floor. Then he shut off the water in the sink and carried the package, handling it as if it held his own beating heart, through his bedroom and over to the wall next to the air conditioner before laying it gently on the carpet. Finally, he unplugged the air conditioner, chose a long, narrow shard of glass, and began to saw through the cord where it entered the machine.

When Jilly had the entire cord in his hand, he stopped again. Ewing’s snores had grown louder, the familiar sounds of water running in the sink and toilet apparently lulling him into a deeper sleep. As Jilly listened, one ear cocked toward the empty stairs, he felt an odd mixture of anticipation and regret. Curiously (to himself, at least) he found that he had nothing against Agent Bob Ewing, felt no inner rage, either at the fact of his imprisonment or the double-cross Ewing had admitted to a day before. Instead, he experienced a profound inner calm, as if his hands were being guided. As if he’d rehearsed it all a thousand times before and was simply following a memorized script.

Yet, at the same time, he was looking forward to the next day of his life as if it was Christmas morning and he was four years old and his father was still alive. Jilly Sappone had only two memories of his father. The first was of his father bursting into his room on Christmas day, a child’s football helmet jammed onto his head. The second was a confused jumble of sunlight on broken glass, a two-inch patch of hairy scalp, dripping knots of pink tissue on his face, chest, and lap, his own blood running down into the collar of his starched white shirt.

Carefully, so as not to cut himself, Jilly stripped the insulation from the last few inches of the cord, exposing the inner wires, then knelt just to the side of the door leading to the outer room and wrapped the wires around the steel bar closest to the floor. Finally, he carried the glass-filled towel back into the bathroom and laid it gently on the floor of the shower.

Back in the outer room, he slid the mattress and the bedclothes to the floor, exposing the bed’s steel frame and its platform of small springs. Noise didn’t matter now, it was time for Agent Bob to rise and fry, but Jilly paused anyway. He took a deep breath and held it for a moment, then let it slowly wash over his tongue and lips. Ewing continued to snore away and Jilly wondered, briefly, if the agent was locked into a happy dream, if he was holding onto a woman, caressing her breasts with the tip of his tongue. If he was so lost in his dream that he wouldn’t wake up at all.

Time to find out, Jilly decided. With a grunt, he hoisted the bed frame up onto his right shoulder, ran forward several steps, and slammed it into the Plexiglas window. Then he began to scream.

“What, what, what?” Bob Ewing snatched his gun off the night table and leaped out of bed. Sappone’s insane rant, a series of choked obscenities surrounded by a high-pitched wail, seemed to fill the room. Then a second crash shook the small house and Ewing’s confusion was instantly replaced by a mixture of rage and panic. Sappone could not be allowed to escape; Sappone could not be allowed to live.

Ewing took the stairs two at a time. He could see Jilly Sappone through the bars, see him raise the bed frame, slam it into the window, then raise it again.