My voice was calm and my gun hand was steady. “There are two chairs over by the wall. Go over there slow and sit. We’re gonna talk. I might not even call the cops if you cooperate.”
This was much better treatment than they deserved, breaking into my fucking office at ten o’clock at night, but I wanted information not satisfaction.
Too bad Salvo thought he had the advantage on me. He thought I hadn’t noticed he’d set a revolver down on the file cabinet top, and when he went for it, I put one in his head and bloody brain matter glopped onto the far wall. Goddamnit, there went the information I wanted, dripping down the plaster.
Ears ringing from the rattling roar of the gunshot, I swung the.45 over toward Rossi, to see if he was smart enough to hold up his hands. But he was going for a rod in a holster under his shoulder, figuring that me killing his partner would give him time. I wondered when he’d last been sent out on a real job, because if he’d been any slower, I could have just slapped the thing out of his hand. Instead, he was just fast enough to get himself killed. The bullet in his forehead shut his life off like a switch and he thudded sideways into Velda’s desk, knocking over and shattering her favorite vase.
There would be hell to pay for that.
When he slid down, he accidentally shut the drawer he’d opened, then sat there, legs straight out in front of him, staring into nothing, his right hand still open and reaching for the gun he never even touched.
“OK, then,” I said. “We’ll do it your way.”
Salvo was similarly situated by the file cabinet, and I got one piece of information out of him, anyway — that black curly hair had shifted, revealing itself as a wig.
I shook my head, holstered the.45, and walked back to Velda’s desk, stepping around the bloody array of brains that had showered our new carpet. So much for preventing a mess in the outer office.
I reached for the phone, to call Pat at home.
“Leonardo Rossi,” Pat said, “and Salvatore Ferraro.”
I was sitting behind my desk, the big rangy homicide captain in the client chair opposite, while in the outer office his elves were scurrying — a crime lab team, a photographer, and a plainclothes dick, with a couple of uniformed men in the hall. The bodies hadn’t been hauled away yet.
“I better call Velda,” I said absently. “If she comes into work tomorrow and finds crime scene tape blocking the way, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Pat leaned forward and the gray-blue eyes narrowed. “Don’t duck me, buddy. What brought these two long-in-the-tooth goombahs away from the bocce ball court and into your little trap?”
“My what?”
“Come on, Mike. Don’t shit a shitter. You were waiting for them. How, why, did you know they were coming?”
“Why don’t you tell me, Pat?”
Now he leaned back and his smile was cold. “When you visited the Chief, he gave you something. Or you took it. What, Mike? This is an investigation into the homicide of one of this city’s great chiefs of police. Don’t hold out.”
“Like you held out on me?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I grunted at him. “You knew two guys had searched the Chief’s nursing home room last night. Guys matching the description of those two overripe lasagna lads, right? And I bet they were seen at the hospital this morning, too. You knew that when you hauled me in for the DA and Milroy to roast.”
He sighed heavily. Searched his pockets for a deck of smokes and came up with an empty package; he crumpled it up in a crinkly wad and tossed it on my desk. “Why the hell did you have to quit smoking?”
“Your concern for my health is touching, good buddy. Of course, you might have told me a couple of old-time Mafia cannons were on the prowl.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t know that’s who they were till just now. They do go way back. Before the war. Vito Madoni’s crew, if you can believe that.”
I showed no reaction. “Gino Madoni’s little brother.”
“Yeah. Here’s a piece of history I bet you didn’t know — the Chief, back when he was a rookie detective, shot Gino and killed his ass. Had him cold on a bank guard killing.”
“You don’t say. Man, no detail slips past you, does it, Pat?”
“The Chief’s also the guy who sent brother Vito to jail, ‘41 I think it was, and after that, the Madoni family was never a major mob player. If I remember, those two in your reception area are Bonetti boys now, or were until they retired a year or so back.”
I rocked in my chair, saying nothing.
Pat said, “What?”
“A couple of Mafia enforcers come out of retirement, to kill the Chief. Suggest anything to you, Pat?”
“Sure it does. Revenge.”
“When he’s almost dead anyway? No. I think this has more to do with there being no statute of limitations on murder.”
“What murder?”
“I don’t know. But I got a feeling that over there at Homicide, you may have a few unsolved ones on the books.”
“Mike, we have thousands of unsolved homicides, dating to Prohibition. You know that.”
“Well, I should let you go back home then, and catch some Zs, so you can get to work on them tomorrow, nice and fresh.”
“Mike, unless you cop to the Chief giving you some item that those two were looking for, this case will be closed by noon tomorrow. You may not like revenge as a motive, but everybody else will.”
“You know what they say — a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” I got to my feet, yawned. Busy evening. “I’m surprised your buddy Milroy wasn’t along for the ride.”
Pat shrugged as he stood. “Me too, actually. I called him and gave him the opportunity. He made me promise to keep him in the loop on this one.”
“He passed up an opportunity to bust my balls?”
“Yup. Said I could fill him in tomorrow. Maybe he’s mellowing in his old age... Listen, you’re free to go, Mike.”
“You mean I can leave my own office? Why are you so good to me?”
He just smirked and batted a wave at me, letting me have the exit line.
Only I didn’t exit. I sat back down at my desk and thought some more, while some morgue wagon attendants in the outer office were taking out the trash.
The next morning I caught a cab over to One Police Plaza, near City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge, a thirteen-story pyramidal glass-and-concrete tribute to the Holiday Inn school of architecture. The baroque old building on Centre Street had been good enough for the Chief, but the army of button-down bureaucrats who had replaced him, and who were making the likes of Captain Pat Chambers obsolete, required more modern digs.
Milroy, on the eleventh floor, had a civilian secretary/receptionist seated outside his glassed-in office. I could see the inspector at his desk and he could see me. The secretary, attractive despite horn-rimmed glasses and pinned-up hair, wanted to know if I had an appointment, and I just nodded to where her boss was waving at me to come in.
I did so, shutting the door behind me. I stuck my hat on the coat tree. Milroy didn’t rise, just sat there going over a stack of computer printouts. Without looking at me, he gestured to the chair opposite him, and I sat. As I waited for him to grant me his attention, I took the office in.
It was twice the size of Pat’s glassed-in cubicle, with a round table off to one side for conferences. Industrial carpet. A coffee machine. The walls were filled with framed citations of merit and photographs of Milroy with various NYPD chiefs of police over the years, as well as every mayor from the last three decades. His desk was neat and arrayed with framed family photos — his pleasant-looking wife and their two clean-cut sons at various ages, the boys as young as grade school and as old as college.