TEDDY BIRNEY WAS A short fat man in a sportcoat that looked like last night’s leftovers. He walked fast, talked fast, thought fast, and bounded into Costello’s at a breakneck clip. He looked around with slow, circular eyes that missed nothing, and saw Greco waving from one of the booths in back. Herbie, New York’s most famous and worst waiter, gave Teddy a dirty look. Teddy brushed him away and settled into the booth beside Greco.
Greco introduced him to Celia as the Daily News’s top crime reporter. Teddy blushed as he always did when confronted by a pretty woman, and sucked the foam from a beer Greco had waiting for him. Teddy had a column that all the research said was money in the bank.
“So how’s the underworld, Teddy?” Greco asked.
“Same old stuff. You got your Satanic cult killers, you got your slasher who’s in love with little old ladies, you got your wealthy wife in a permanent coma while hubby is chasing skirts through the after-hours scene, you got your seventy-year-old choirmaster diddling the boy sopranos in the organ loft, and you got your shopping-mall ghoul leaving pieces of cheerleaders in trash cans. Same old stuff.” He sounded like the winner of a fast-talking contest. His face was getting redder. “How are your sunset years?”
“Soothing, Teddy, very quiet and soothing.”
“So what’s on your mind? You hawking a tip or what? The Police Commish is a secret child molester? Old news, old news.” He lit a cigarette and coughed something wet and thick in his throat.
“No, nothing like that. I need to pick your brains—”
“Good luck. If you find anything, let me be the first to know.” He grinned at Celia and drank some more beer.
“I got a name. Strikes me as somebody I’ve heard of before, but I’ll be damned if I can place him. Friborg. Irwin Friborg.”
Teddy Birney pulled his lower lip like a rubber band and let it snap back into place. He dribbled ash onto the table. “Why? What’d he do?”
“He died.”
“And how did that happen?”
“Do you know the name?”
“I’m thinking. How did he depart this vale of tears?”
“A woman shot him.”
“The woman in the case. You don’t sound retired.”
“Who was Friborg?”
“I’m working on it. Who’s the woman?”
“This is off the record, Teddy—”
“Whatever you say, sport. Who is she?”
“Lady’s name is Zoe Bassinetti.”
“No kidding? She the wife of that think tank character? Eduardo … whatever his name is?”
“Emilio. Yeah, she is.”
“Murder, I take it?”
“Maybe self-defense. Friborg offed her dog—”
“Doggie defense? That’s novel—”
“Who was Friborg?”
“Hey, you oughta remember Friborg. He was the liaison in the old days between the Commish and Internal Affairs. That’s where you must of come across his name, back in your fink days. Maybe even met him—”
Greco shook his head. “I don’t think I ever met him, but you’re right, that’s where I heard the name. So Zoe killed a cop—”
“No, he’s not a cop anymore, not the NYPD, anyway.” Teddy lit another cigarette off the first, sucked until he got it going. “I don’t know where he is now.” He pulled his lip again, revealing a set of yellow-stained teeth.
“Try and remember,” Celia urged him. “You look like a man who’s got a computer bank in his head.”
“Well, I am pretty good, come to think of it. Let’s see, he left New York, but where the hell did he go? When did the lady kill him?”
“Last night,” Celia said.
“Where?”
“Her home. Sutton Place—”
“So why haven’t I heard about it?”
“Come on, Teddy,” Greco interrupted. “We don’t know. I saw the body. She and her boyfriend must have stashed him somewhere. We just want to know who Friborg was working for.”
“Well, seems to me I heard Mr. Friborg went to Washington a few years back. I could be wrong, so don’t hold me to this. But I’d say he went down there and hired on with the CIA, the FBI, maybe even the IRS. He had a nasty streak, did Irwin. Oughta been right at home down there. Some enforcement agency or other. That’s the best I can do, Pete.” He finished his beer and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Make any sense?”
“If it does, it’s bad. I hope to hell you’re wrong.”
“Whatever. Quid pro quo. Tell me what’s going on. Just background me and I’ll take it from there. Your name never comes up. You know damn well you can trust me. You trusted me with your life once upon a time.”
“Okay, Teddy. But this story is just the tip of a big mean iceberg, you read me?”
Greco stood in the rain staring at the Le Baron, which had a wet ticket stuck under the windshield wiper. He’d left it by the fire hydrant. Now he grabbed the ticket, crumpled it up, and jammed it into his Yankee jacket pocket.
“Give it to me,” Celia said. “Please. You came here for my sake. The least I can do is pay the ticket.”
“Can it, Slats,” he growled. “I’m not mad at the ticket, I’m mad at what Teddy had to say. Forget it. Let’s just get outa here.”
“We’re going to Palisades right now?”
“Sooner the better.”
“Do you think they’ll just let us see him?”
“Gotta be resourceful. Think like this Linda Thurston of yours. She’d think of something. We’ll just have to make them understand it’s a matter of life and death, that’s all. But,” he cautioned her, “once we warn him, we’re out of it, understand? If people like Friborg are involved, then the serious side of the Washington bunch is involved, and that’s where you and I had better bail out. Got that?”
“I’m not going to run away, Peter.”
He sighed and unlocked the door for her, and she got in. When he was behind the wheel he reached under the dashboard. She heard a metallic thud, and he pulled his hand out with a gun in it.
“Oh, God, Peter! What’s that for?”
“It’s a Walther PPK for intimidating people—”
“Isn’t that a little melodramatic?” She blinked. “I hope—”
“Look, I found a dead man last night and got half brained for my trouble. That may not rile up your blood, but it sure as hell does mine—”
“Okay, okay. Look, before we go, I think I’d better use the bathroom. I don’t want to make you start looking for a gas station at the crucial moment—”
“Right, go then. Hurry up. I’ll wait down here and shoot anybody who tries to tow me away.”
He was smiling to himself, watching her bound up the stairs from the sidewalk. She wore a yellow slicker jacket and jeans. She had long legs and a high, firm rear end, and it was fine by him. He wondered about the men in her life, who they were and where they might be. She hadn’t mentioned anyone in the slightly more than twenty-four hours he’d known her. He remembered the smell of her hair as he’d fallen asleep last night … or rather this morning. She smelled just fine, and he was wondering if he was about to commence making a fool of himself.
Then he heard her screaming.
The sound pierced the closed doors and windows of the brownstone, and he knew it was Celia. He was out of the car with the Walther in his hand and up the steps, where he was stopped by the locked door. He began pushing the buzzer through the wall, finally heard the answering buzz and was through the door, hurling himself up the narrow staircase, knowing he was making himself a hell of a target, knowing he had to get to Celia.
She was standing outside her doorway and the screaming had stopped. She was staring at him, her wide mouth open and her large dark eyes full of fright. She was pointing into the apartment, shocked into silence. At just that moment, in one of those crazily inappropriate mind tricks, she looked like Mary Tyler Moore doing a very long take.
The top half of a man extended through the doorway onto the hall carpet runner. He was staring the walleyed stare of the dead. His face was terribly pale, showing a thick black overnight growth of beard, and looked like he’d seen a ghost and died of fright. But Greco knew there had to be a bullet hole or two somewhere. Even as he looked quickly at the corpse, he was thinking ahead, recognizing a full-blown nightmare when he saw one.
He stepped across the man and went into the apartment with his Walther ready to go to work.
Another man was stretched out behind the couch. A lamp with its ceramic base shattered lay beside him. Some records had been swept off the stereo cabinet as he fell. An eyelid flickered, the eye came into view like a bloodshot marble.
Greco knelt, felt for a pulse in the throat. Celia gasped behind him, covered her mouth with one hand. There was faint throbbing in the man’s throat. The eyes were halfway into eternity and had given up any hope of getting back to shore. He’d lost a lot of blood from a chest wound. His white shirt was soaked with it. He was almost gone, bubbles of pink saliva expanding, bursting on his gray lips.
Greco leaned down. “What is it, man? Who did this? Why were you here?” He put his ear close to the lips and felt the last frail breaths.
“Pete … for chrissake …”
“Louie. It’s bad, Louie,” Greco said.
“No shit …” The man struggled to swallow, as if it made a difference anymore.
“Why, Louie?”
“Some … book or something … the General … funny, I don’t hurt anymore … Pete … whatta mess …”
“What book?”
“General’s … scared … shitless …” He sighed heavily, and Greco thought for a moment he was gone. “Everybody … dyin’ for a … for a stupid … book—” He coughed, licked weakly at his lips.
“Who did this? Who shot you?”
“Sy … sy …”
“Say it, Louie. Time’s almost up—”
“Psycho …”
“Psycho?”
“Psycho … Branch …”
Then he gave a gentle little cough, like an apology, and died.
Celia was leaning over, close to Greco. She smelled the blood. “What did he say? Could you hear him?”
Greco sighed and nodded. He closed the man’s eyes with his fingertips. “You know what Teddy said about Friborg? CIA, FBI, IRS, all that?”
She nodded, trying not to look at the dead man.
“Well, Teddy was almost right. He just left out Psycho Branch.”
“What’s that? Sounds like a joke.”
“If it’s a joke, it’s the absolute worst. Psycho Branch works for all the alphabet agencies—the worst, the dirtiest jobs, the stuff other people won’t touch. When you start talking about bad dudes, you start with Psycho Branch. It doesn’t have a real name, it isn’t funded openly by anyone, it doesn’t even exist. The funding is hidden in twenty different budgets. It just is … it’s just Psycho Branch.”
“He just told you that?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he call you Pete?”
“That he did. I knew this guy a long time ago. Louie Manfredi. Mafioso. Hit man, general muscle, works mainly in the drug trade. Knew him from the undercover days … used to shoot a little pool with old Louie here.”
“The Mafia’s in my apartment,” she said weakly. Her voice trembled and she started to stand back up. Her legs weren’t all that steady.
“Seems so. Mafia here, Psycho Branch at Bassinetti’s.” He rolled his eyes and made a helpless gesture with his hands. “Slats, we’re up to our asses in alligators. We’re in the middle of a Hitchcock movie he never got around to making—‘The Woman Who Knew Too Much.’ You’re the woman.”
She pushed herself up on the back of the couch and felt her breath catch in her throat, her stomach drop away.
“Oh, no,” she whispered, “there’s another one. He’s right in the middle of Linda Thurston.”
Greco got up and looked across the couch at the body huddled against the cardboard boxes. He circled the couch and didn’t have to check to see if the guy was alive. Also, he wasn’t Mafia. He had the Friborg look, all that calm, neat, weird control that hallmarked Psycho Branch. “Well, he didn’t bleed on her…” He stared down into what had been a man’s face. The back of his head was all over the wall. He didn’t want Celia to see the mess. “Come here,” he said, taking her arm and leading her to a chair. She sat down with her back to the wall.
“You okay, Slats? You look a little peaked—”
“Oh, Peter, I don’t know.” She felt sick to her stomach. It was like finding Cunningham’s ear. Worse. Only now she had Peter. “I don’t understand any of this…” She couldn’t stop shivering. “Psycho Branch, the Mafia, I don’t know …”
He took her cold, clammy hand in his. “It all comes back to Palisades.”
“Hold me a minute, will you?”
He knelt in front of her. Her eyes were blank with shock.
“I want to be brave about this, like Linda Thurston, but I’ve got three corpses in my living room and I don’t know their names or why they were here, and I don’t know what Linda Thurston would have done because I’ve never actually written a book and they wouldn’t be scary like this anyway because she’s sophisticated and goes to opening night parties and this is all so horrible and I can smell the blood and—”
He took her face in his hands. “You want a kiss from a one-eyed tough guy?”
“Oh, God, I do, I do …”
He pressed his mouth against hers, his fingertips tracing the line of her jaw, willing her to be still, slowly pulling her to him.
She began to cry, but he didn’t stop kissing her and didn’t stop holding her. She’d been alone and on the road for so damn long, and all of a sudden she felt as if she were home. Real life, a real person kissing her. It wasn’t like being on stage. It wasn’t like being with an actor. It was just like being with a one-eyed tough guy. Peter Greco.