The Shadow Box (50 page)

“You satisfied?” he asked as he climbed into the pas
senger side. ”I mean, shouldn't I get out again so you can
pat me down?”

But his feelings weren't hurt that badly. He would have
done the same thing. Moon pulled out and made his first
right turn onto a residential street. He watched his mirror.
No one followed. Johnny G. could not resist a little
sulking.

“Moon . . . how long have you known me?”

Since his first communion, was the answer. But this was
now. Those people Michael worked for want him dead
and they're all very rich. If he knows Julie, Julie's been
scheming up ways to get some of their money. Anyone
can get tempted. Maybe not Johnny so much. But anyone,
Johnny included, can be used.

“Screw it,” said the younger man. “Stop and let me out.”

A sigh. “You want I'm sorry? I'm sorry.”

“It's not even that. Let me out, Moon. This is a bad
idea.”

Moon slowed but he kept the car moving. ”I visited
with your father,” he said.
“
I went to see Jake but I
stopped off to see your father before I left.”

Johnny G. was silent for a long moment.

“Hang a right,” he said abruptly. “Let's both of us go
see him.”

Ten minutes into listening to Hobbs, and pouring him
another shot of Popov, Doyle agreed to call Moon and Michael off. He said he would need to get on his Priva-
Fone. He would get the word out to all his people that
we're declaring a one-day truce.

“Never mind all
what
people,” he told the increasingly slopped Bart Hobbs. “We have a network. You'd be sur
prised how many want a piece of those bastards.”

This last had the hoped-for effect. It told Hobbs that
he'd done the right thing and that he'd done it just in
time. Doyle, of course, could only pretend to make the call because Moon might be anywhere and the closest
thing he had to a network was Aaronson who didn't
want
to talk to him and the Giordanos who weren't so crazy
about him either.

But he had to step into the outer office and make a
show of playing with his phone. A temptation came over
him. He tapped out the number of his broker. What he
was going to do now is what he pays Aaronson for but
Aaronson would give him an argument.

“What I want you to do,” he told Vincent Keating, his
Merrill-Lynch broker, “is sell all my Upjohn and Pfizer
and go short on AdChem.”

Keating asked him why he was whispering. Doyle said
he had a cold. Keating asked him how short. Doyle picked
a number. Keating said this is stupid because if Doyle had
heard certain rumors about AdChem they've been around
a long time and the market has already shrugged them off.
Doyle said do it anyway.

Keating said that with the time difference the German
exchange won't open for another twelve hours and Doyle
has that long to come to his senses before he loses his
ass. Doyle said put the order in now. Also sell the Coca-
Cola, the GM, and the Microsoft. Put it all on AdChem
to fold.

He'd make seven hundred thousand minimum.

What the hell, he thought. He hit the memory code for Villardi's Seafood Palace. A voice answered, he asked for
Julie Giordano, Giordano came on.

“You wanted to make money on this? Here's what
you do.”

Giordano said, “Hold it. Let me go to the office.”

Doyle said, ”I don't have all day. What you do, you
take every dime you don't have on the street and you put
it on AdChem to go down.”

“Brendan
...
in my office.”

“Here's the price you want.” Doyle told him. He
started to explain what going short meant but Julie yelled
something about the bar and abruptly hung up on him.

Oh, yeah. Shit. The kid with the wire.

But since when was a stock tip an indictable offense? Insider trading? Hey, this is the German exchange. If that
kid is smart, he'll put down a few bucks himself.

If Johnny's impulse to visit old Rocco sounded strange
to Moon, he didn't feel that he was one to talk. His hunch
was that if Johnny felt the need to be with family, then
family is what this is about.

“Julie been busy?” he asked.

No answer. Johnny changed the subject.

“You worked for my father once. Is that true?”

Moon nodded. “Some. For a while
.
”

“Collecting?”

“Some.”

“Would he have dealt pills? I'm talking medicine
now.”

“No.”

He went quiet again.

But that answered one question, thought Moon. Julie
wants to deal pills and Johnny doesn't. The cemetery gate
was just ahead.

The Giordano family plot was smaller than Vatican
Square but only because the popes had a little more
money.

Cemeteries, Moon had noticed, are laid out a lot like
cities. First there's the tenements. Thousands of them, all
with just one little stone marker and where caskets get
piled one on top of the other because that's the cheapest
way to die. Next there's the row house section where the monuments are bigger but they butt right up against one
another. And then a high-rise section where the caskets
and urns are cemented into walls, some of which have
terraces so you have a place to put flowers.

After that, there's the suburbs. Those graves, like where
Jake was buried, have a little more grass around them and
a nicer view. Finally there's the country estates like Rocco
Giordano had. They have columns, marble benches, and
statues of angels and saints. Rocco's had a life-sized Saint Anthony with a little stone bird lighting on his hand. From
the look of it, it gave a lot of real life birds the same idea.

Rocco himself would not have spent the money. It was
Julie who did. Rocco lived his whole married life in the
same frame house on Newkirk Avenue with a yard just
big enough to grow zucchini and plum tomatoes. Here he could have grown wheat except that the ground had to be
kept clear for when his wife and sons would need their
plots. Moon could never understand buying graves in ad
vance. He'd feel funny looking at ground that he's going
to be under.

Moon had time to reflect on all this because there wasn't
much conversation from Johnny. Johnny, at the moment,
was kneeling on a marble prie-dieu saying a prayer to
Saint Anthony. He seemed about through. That was good
because Moon could use a little updating.

“Moon . . .” Johnny G. blessed himself as he rose. He
paused to brush soot from his knees. ”I might have to go
against my brother.””

Moon nodded. He waited.

“The pill thing. You know he wants a piece, right?”

”I figured.”

“Will you fight him?”

“Depends.”

“On whether he goes in?”

“Depends on with who.”

“On whether he goes in with the people who killed Jake?”

Moon could hear Jake calling from three rows back.
Saying, 
“
Moon
...
never threaten. Never warn.''
But a
warning to a friend is part of being friends.

“First way,
I'll
talk to him,” he told Johnny G. “Sec
ond way I'll stop him.”

“This is my brother, Moon.”

”I know.”

“This is hard for me.”

”I know that too.”

“If
I'm
going to go against family, I need to know
I'm right.”

“Johnny . . . what is it you want?”

”I need to know why Jake died. I need to know all
of it.”

Chapter 31

P
arker was
furious.

The good news of the day was that Julie Giordano was
extremely
interested in talking a deal. The meet is set for
noon tomorrow. The bad news is that Doyle's bird dog,
Aaronson, was barely conscious because he'd been
pumped full of Nembutal. At the rate he was breathing,
they'd be lucky to get three words out of him.

“But Meester Parker. It was only to quiet him. Meester
Parker, please don't hit me for this.”

“Hit you? No, I won't hit you. I'll just shove that sy
ringe right up your ass.”

At least the new man, Yahya, knew what to try.
D-amphetamines. Stimulants. The only bad thing about
Yahya is you can't give him an order without getting a
science lecture. “This man is obese. He might be hyper
tensive. Give him too much, too fast, and his heart will—''

“Hey! You want to get paid? Shut the fuck up and give
it. I need him awake. Today, Yahya. Today.”