“You see the paper yet?” Spivack continued.
“No, not yet. Why, is it in there?”
“Is it in there? Are you kidding? That Wit guy came through in a big way. Wait’ll you see the stories. Alfonseca’s gonna go apeshit.”
“Let’s hope so. I’ll speak to you later.”
I showered and dressed, kissed Katy and Sarah, and headed to the newsstand under the subway station on Sheepshead Bay Road. Spivack was right. Wit had done more than we’d asked for. The Post headline said it alclass="underline"
MYSTERY VICTIM SAYS IVAN WAS TERRIBLE
The story on page 3 detailed the saga of a woman, a thinly veiled Moira Heaton, who had been an intended victim of Ivan Alfonseca. The woman, abducted outside her office in late 1981, claimed to have been driven to an unknown location, where her abductor attempted to sexually assault her. Her would-be attacker, however, proved to be “woefully” inept. Frustrated and embarrassed, Alfonseca had strangled her, leaving her for dead. That was all she remembered, she said, having only recently awoken from a coma in an upstate hospital.
Of course the story was utter bullshit. The reporter credited several unnamed sources for the story and quotes contained within. Those quotes were full of particularly insulting and inflammatory adjectives. The alleged victim seemed very fond of the words “limp,” “tiny,” and “impotent.” She said her attacker had “cried like a little girl when his laughable attempts at penetration failed.” The story in the Daily News was equally damning. Wit hadn’t bothered trying to plant the story in the Times.
I crossed the street to the bagel store and got a coffee. When the pay phone came free, I dialed Pete Parson’s home number.
“Parson,” he answered.
“See the papers today?”
“About old limp dick? Yeah.”
“Your son’s on today, right?”
“Don’t worry, Moe, Captain Peter Parson Jr. of the Department of Corrections, City of NewYork, will make sure Mr. Alfonseca gets complimentary copies of today’s papers and all the translation help he needs. Anyways, you know what Rikers is like. That story got back to him before the papers ever made the island. His compadres are probably whistling at him already, calling him pato and maricon. He’ll go fuckin’ nuts.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “let’s hear him brag his way outta this. Thanks, Pete, and thank your son for all of us.”
“He’s glad to do it.”
Now there was nothing we could do but wait. I went to the Brooklyn store to do it.
I was wrong-waiting wasn’t the only thing I would have to do. Klaus rolled his eyeballs as I strode through the doors of Bordeaux in Brooklyn.
“If I were you,” he warned, waving several pink message slips at me, “I’d start digging myself a foxhole in the basement. If things get bad enough, I’ll just shovel the dirt back over you.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Worse. I don’t know what you did to get these people so upset, but you did a very commendable job of it.”
I snatched the slips out of his hand and walked back to the office, which, I had forgotten, was still in disarray. My life had been so consumed by the case that I had neglected to clean up after my all-nighter. The files were everywhere, spread all over the desk, the floor, and the adjoining room. I picked up enough to allow safe passage. I’d already suffered enough in my life from a careless piece of paper thrown on the floor. What I was actually doing was avoiding.
I turned on the radio, still tuned to the news channel which had first alerted me to Ivan the Terrible’s existence. The papers, apparently, weren’t the only branch of the media to run with the story Wit had so carefully planted. Someday, if I worked up the courage, I’d have to ask Wit how much personal capital this had cost him. I suspect he had called in more than a few favors.
I called John Heaton first because his pain and confusion would be worst of all, and lying to him would be most difficult.
“Where the fuck’s my money?” he screamed in my ear. “It’s been two days since you spoke to me.”
Oddly, I was quite relieved. Either he hadn’t yet seen the papers or he hadn’t made the connection or he was too drunk to care. I wasn’t about to ask which.
“How much do I owe you again?”
“Five.”
“Okay, will you be at the club today?”
“After four.”
“I’ll be in later,” I said.
“When?”
“Later.”
“Cash.” It was a demand, not a polite request.
“Cash.”
I thought about calling Brightman back, but decided against it. Politicians can never be trusted to keep their traps shut, even when it’s in their best interest. No, he’d have to stay in the dark. Thomas Geary, on the other hand, was technically my employer. If he hadn’t called me first, he’d have stayed in the dark too. But he’d probably already called Spivack, who would have, as agreed, referred him to me. Unlike John Heaton, Geary would not be so easily placated.
Geary’s wife, Elizabeth, picked up the phone. We chatted for a moment. She said the expected things about Katy. I thanked her on my wife’s behalf and lied about what fun the fund-raiser at the Waldorf had been.
“Hold on, will you, please, while I fetch Thomas.”
She placed the phone down softly. I could hear her retreating footsteps. Within seconds I heard another set of footsteps, these louder, much more rapid.
“How dare you tell Spivack not to talk to me? What are you playing at, Moe?” Geary demanded.
I decided not to pretend, but not to tell him the truth either. “Spivack’s just following your orders. He’s giving me his fullest cooperation. As far as playing goes, I’m not playing at anything.”
“Then what’s this nonsense in the papers. Obviously, this mystery woman is meant to-”
“Look, you told me to find out what happened to Moira Heaton. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“But this, really!”
“If my work offends your delicate sensibilities, fire me. Otherwise, leave me alone and let me do my job.”
“I hope this doesn’t blow up in your face.”
“Don’t you mean your face. I’m working for you, remember?”
“Are you? That’s odd, I must have missed something. I don’t recall signing a contract with you or handing you a retainer or taking any sort of action one might reasonably construe as enlisting your services.”
“Now who’s playing?”
“I don’t play.”
“That makes two of us.” I hung up the phone, hard.
I was several things, but not a fool. It hadn’t escaped my notice that Geary had taken pains to make certain no paper trail existed tying him to me. No money had changed hands. My retainer would be discussed later, he had said. In politics it’s called deniability. In Brooklyn it’s called covering your ass. At worst, Geary could be accused of unwisely helping out a man who had once kindly employed his daughter. One thing was for sure, if the planted stories pissed Ivan off half as much as they’d pissed off Geary, the scheme would work like a charm.
Speaking of charms, I had to see if Larry McDonald’s were working on the Queens district attorney. The plain truth was that no matter how outraged Ivan Alfonseca might be at the moment, he probably was neither crazy nor stupid enough to confess to kidnapping and homicide without some incentive to do so. Larry’s assignment was perhaps the most difficult of all. He had to convince the DA’s office not only to keep our plan a secret, but to offer something to Alfonseca in exchange for an admission of guilt.
In the topsy-turvy world of criminal justice, this was quite a dilemma. On the strength of his Bronx convictions alone, Ivan the Terrible was unlikely ever to see the light of day again. It was the inverse of buying a gift for the man who has everything. What could you offer a man who already knew he was going to prison for the rest of his miserable life? Never mind that the Queens DA was even more unlikely to complicate a high-profile, slam-dunk case with hypotheticals. It would have been different if Moira Heaton had been a confirmed homicide. Then the DA would have been happy to clear the case. But for now, maybe forever, Moira’s would remain just one of tens of thousands of unresolved missing-persons cases.