“Okay, Rico, you’re right. You don’t owe me shit. I heard this speech the last time I was here.”
“And you’ll hear it again.”
“No, I won’t,” I said, noticing the near-empty bottle of no-name scotch next to his bed. “I’m going now. Maybe I’ll be back. If I bother coming back, then we’ll negotiate the terms of our deal. I’m making a lot of deals these days, old buddy. Don’t be stupid and fuck this one up.”
You have a better chance at winning the lottery than finding a fully functional public phone in that part of Manhattan. If it wasn’t the homeless rigging coin slots to trap quarters to be fished out with a crooked piece of wire, it was inept crackheads and a sprinkling of other assorted assholes who ripped apart phones in futile attempts to get at the coin boxes.
Not a month ago, Aaron bought a cellular phone. The man spends his entire life in two places: the Manhattan store and at home. What, he couldn’t be without a phone on his car rides to and from work? I mean, who the hell wants to be tethered to a phone twenty-four hours a day? Talk about an invention destined to fail. Then again, the idea of a portable phone seemed pretty appealing to me right at the moment. It was a brief flirtation. I found a working phone three blocks north of the Mistral Arms.
Miriam picked up. “Hello.”
“Hey, little sister.”
“Don’t little sister me! How could you drag us into this, Moses? We’re on vacation with our kids. With our kids, for chrissakes!”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry! You’ve jeopardized Ronnie’s career. I can only imagine what would be going on here if his folks hadn’t left for a cruise yesterday.”
“If I could’ve thought of any other way of doing it, I wouldn’t have called Ronnie. You know that. But her life was in danger, is in danger and-”
“No kidding! You mean people don’t get shot for fun?”
“Miriam-”
“Isn’t this what they have cops and hospitals for?”
“No, not for situations like this, they don’t! Look, I can’t unring the bell, but I’ll try and do my best to clear this up quick. How is she?”
“Better. Ronnie’s got her on some heavy pain medication, so she’s in and out of it. But she says she needs to see you, that it’s very important.”
“Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can. You guys need anything?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to, Moses. Didn’t you teach me that?”
I took that as a cue to hang up.
Ditmas Park is a section of Brooklyn that is of a different time and place. It’s a small neighborhood of tree-lined streets, period lamp-posts, and oversized Victorians on plots of land barely big enough to contain them. Some streets even have grassy center islands. With a little imagination, you could almost see horse-drawn carriages rolling along the shady thoroughfares, men tipping their hats to giggling young ladies in floor-hugging cotton dresses who twirled their parasols.
Whereas many of the neighbors had let their houses succumb to the ravages of aluminum siding and stucco, Ronnie’s parents had scrupulously maintained the spindle work and clapboards and character of their old manse. But I wasn’t there to admire the turrets and wraparound porch, nor was I thrilled at the prospect of squaring off with my sister. I hated when she was right.
Ronnie answered the door. “Come on in. Mir took the kids to the movies, so you don’t have to put on your body armor.”
“She’s right about this, Ron. I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in this shit.”
“Well, no, but that sort of doesn’t matter at this point.”
“I guess not, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. My sister tells me the patient’s improved.”
“Improved, but not out of the woods. I flushed the wound and repaired what damage I could find. I have her on pain medication and
“I understand.”
“You’ve got one more day, Moe. Then she’s going straight to the hospital.”
I ignored that. “Where is she?”
“Downstairs in my old room.”
“Is she lucid?”
“Pretty much.”
“Thanks, Ronnie. I’ll call you if I need you.”
“Moe, take it easy on her, and don’t stay too long.”
“Got it.”
It was so odd seeing Carmella Melendez in what was essentially a high school boy’s bedroom. Although she wasn’t particularly tall, she seemed too big for the bed. Maybe that’s the wrong way to put it. She seemed too grown-up for the bed. Her skin was pale, but her breathing was regular and unlabored. Her eyes were shut, so I pulled a chair up and waited.
“Moe,” she whispered.
“Hey, nice to have you back.” I brushed a strand of hair off her cheek.
“Murphy’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“And the girl, the one who stepped in front of me?”
“Her too.”
Carmella clenched the sheets, tears pouring out of her eyes. I let her cry.
“Listen, you’ve gotta stay calm. Doctor’s orders. You can’t open up that wound again.”
“I’ll try.”
“My sister said you needed to see me.”
“I got a call at home from Murphy yesterday, about an hour after I left work. He said he got tipped off about Chief McDonald. I told him that you needed to hear about it. That’s why I called you to come to Rip’s.”
“What about Larry?”
“The informant said he was dirty.”
“Is that so?”
“You don’t seem so surprised, Moe.”
“I think I’ve assumed that Larry was dirty all along. I mean, something had to be going on here to push Larry over the edge or get him killed. Did the informant say how the chief was dirty?”
“If he did, Murphy didn’t tell me.”
“Did Murphy tell you who tipped him off?”
“Just that it was another cop.”
“We were set up.”
“I already figured that out for myself. I am a detective, you know.” She tried smiling, but it didn’t work.
“Okay. So you have no idea who the cop was that tipped Murphy off, huh?”
“No.”
“I do. Detective Bento was also in Rip’s last night. He was standing in a crowd about twenty feet to your right. I didn’t recognize him at first, but Murphy did and that’s when he realized we’d all been set up. When Murphy tried to warn you, all hell broke loose.”
“Bento? But I didn’t get hit in my side. I got shot from-”
“-the front. I know. The first shooter, the one that clipped Murphy and hit you, was standing over my right shoulder. His piece was so close that my ears are still ringing. Then Bento started firing at me.”
“That’s weird,” she said. “If the guy who shot me was that close to you, why didn’t he just-”
“-shoot me in the back and then go after you and Murphy? Good question. I guess I’ve had my head stuck so far up my ass since last night I hadn’t thought about it. Maybe he didn’t recognize me from the back. Did you get a look at who shot you?”
“Not really. You know how dark Rip’s is. I saw his outline mostly, his hair. He was a big man, big shoulders, taller than you. Older too. I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup.”
“It’s a start.”
“Moe, there’s something else.”
“What?”
There was a light knock on the door and Ronnie stuck his head in. “Only another minute or two, Moe. She’s got to rest.”
“Okay, Ron. I promise. And bring some stuff down for her pain.”
He shut the door.
“Your family’s been great to me. Your sister is so pretty.”
“Someone had to get the looks in the family.”
“There are plenty of looks to go around with the Pragers.”
“So what’s this other thing?”
“I have a snitch, Vinny Cee, a real low-life cokehead. He does some dealing to support his habit. He says he’s got something for me on Malik Jabbar.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I-” She began coughing. “I was planning on seeing him with you today, but I-” The coughing was getting worse. “I guess someone had other plans.”