MOODROW, AS HE WAITED for Betty to find a glass, to fill it with wine, to take a seat at the table, to absorb the story Leonora Higgins patiently repeated, cursed himself for the manipulative cop bastard he actually was. He knew that Betty, who’d risked her own life to save a child, then stayed in that child’s life through the intervening years, would, at the very least, refuse to decide for him. He knew that if he kept his own expression close to indifference, let the mask announce that it was no big deal, that he’d heard it all before, she’d eventually confuse the fate of Theresa-Marie Kalkadonis with the fate of her cousin, Marilyn. As if preserving the life of the child would save the adult.
It went exactly as Moodrow expected. Betty, confronted with the utterly irrational, asked herself an obvious question: Why had Jilly Sappone kidnapped an innocent child? That question led to a second and a third. Why did Marilyn, at age fifty-three, run head-on into a drunk speeding in the wrong direction on the Santa Monica Freeway? Marilyn who’d kept all those appointments with the gynecologist, taken the yearly mammograms, quit smoking, switched to a low-fat diet, jogged every other day through the southern California smog.
Unbidden, a line from an old Neil Young song floated up into her mind: “Helpless, helpless, helpless.” Just like a child in the hands of Jilly Sappone.
“What do you want to do, Stanley?”
Moodrow, already prepared, took a deep breath, then lied through his teeth. “There’s not much I can do.” He turned slightly, addressed himself to Leonora Higgins. “You say I know all the players and you’re right. I actually went to school with Carmine Stettecase. But the local cops know the players, too. Ditto for the feds who must’ve been called in on the kidnapping. The problem, for everybody, is that the players are bad guys. Why would they talk to me?”
Higgins toyed with a silver ring on the forefinger of her right hand. She was pretty sure that Moodrow wanted the job, that they were going through some kind of ritual. Her role, as she understood it, was to play along, make the capture of Jilly Sappone little more than handing out a traffic summons. She looked across the table at Betty, then cursed Moodrow, then cursed herself.
“The Department of Corrections was supposed to notify Ann Kalkadonis before releasing Jilly Sappone. They didn’t and now Ann doesn’t trust law enforcement. It’s really that simple.”
“Did she happen to mention why Jilly Sappone went to her apartment, what Sappone was after?”
“No.”
“Did she tell you she ratted him out fifteen years ago? That she passed over his bloodstained clothing?”
“No.”
Moodrow looked down at his empty glass, decided against a refill. “Let’s back up. Make it, say, five or six years before Sappone went up for the murder. Carmine Stettecase, who’d been protecting Jilly, finally decided that enough was enough, that Jilly Sappone was out of control, bad for business. Standard mob procedure demanded that Carmine eliminate his problem, but Jilly was half-assed related. I mean, how can Carmine live in the same house with his son’s mother-in-law if he whacks the nephew she raised from five years old? No, what Carmine did was tell Jilly to get out of New York, that he was fired. And what Jilly did was get drunk and beat the crap out of a cabdriver who wouldn’t take him to Brooklyn. The cabdriver, a Russian immigrant who didn’t know enough about the Land of Opportunity to fear Jilly Sappone, said he was willing to testify.
“Now, what I’m telling you here is a story I got in bits and pieces from my snitches, but this part of it rings true. If Carmine Stettecase wanted to save Jilly Sappone, who couldn’t make bail, he would’ve had somebody pay the cabdriver a visit. That’s what everybody in the DA’s office expected. Only Carmine never made a move and Jilly went upstate, did two years of a six-year bit, settled down in Philadelphia when he got out. The way I heard it, Carmine broke out the champagne the day of the sentencing.
“Now, move forward a few years, to maybe nine months before Jilly got popped for the murder. Suddenly, he turns up on the Lower East Side with a wife—her name, back then, was Annunziata—and a kid. Both of them, the wife and the kid, are beaten so bad they look like cockroaches just before the shoe comes down. Not that either one of them complains. No, what they do is take it, try to hide the bruises, stay inside most of the time. They give us—meaning, the cops and the social workers—an excuse to look the other way.
“Jilly, of course, was as crazy as ever, the kind of mutt citizens cross the street to avoid. What I figured, at the time, was that he’d self-destruct before long and that’s exactly what happened. One day, a stiff—later identified as Alfonse Chavez, convicted hijacker—turned up in an alley near Grand and Ludlow, dead from a single .22-caliber round. We naturally made it for an execution, pure and simple, the kind of homicide where you do the scutwork for a few days, then pass it off to a task force. In this case, Organized Crime.
“But then, miracle of miracle, a witness comes forward. One Harold ‘Buster’ Levy, owner of Levy Plumbing Supply, known to be a loan shark and connected to Carmine Stettecase, swears that he saw Jilly Sappone kill Alfonse Chavez. Buster claims that he was in his shop, located fifty feet from the crime scene, having sex with a housewife named Carol Pierce when he heard loud voices outside. Being that it was after hours, he naturally took a peek.
“Three hours later, Annunziata Sappone comes into the Seven with a set of bloody clothes—shirt, jacket, pants, underwear—says her husband asked her to wash the blood out, but she couldn’t do it. Plus, she’ll testify in open court.
“A gift from God, right? Up to and including Carol Pierce, who remembers the incident without any encouragement, and a third witness who wanders into the precinct two days later. Even Jilly eventually saw the light. He took a plea, fifteen to life instead of twenty-five, and justice was done.”
Moodrow stopped abruptly. His head was starting to throb again, a matter, he decided, of pure conscience. And the funny part was the guilt he felt at that moment had nothing to do with his sympathy for Betty. No, his feelings were genuine; he was determined to support her through the bad times, wanted to protect her, though he knew that was impossible. Unfortunately, another side of him needed to track Jilly Sappone, to pursue him, bring him down, hold his bloody head aloft. And that particular desire, despite his pounding head, was closer to lust than anything else he could name.
“Do you think Jilly was framed?” Not surprisingly, the question came from Betty, who’d spent most of her working life defending criminals.
“Not by us. I said it was a gift from God.” Moodrow, on impulse, splashed another inch of bourbon into his glass. “I didn’t say we played God.”
“What about Carmine Stettecase?” Leonora asked. “Could he have set it up?”
Moodrow waved the question away. “He didn’t try to stop it, which amounts to the same thing. Don’t forget, Buster Levy worked for Carmine. Still does, for that matter. Leonora, you didn’t mention any homicides. I take it Buster Levy is still among the living.”
“They worked him over, Stanley, but he’s alive.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yeah, why didn’t Jilly kill Buster Levy? You think he didn’t know how? Or maybe he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger?” The questions were purely rhetorical and Moodrow continued without a pause. “Jilly wants Carmine to know what’s coming. He left Buster alive to spread the news. It’s that simple.”
“What about Ann?” Leonora leaned over the table. After twenty years in law enforcement, she loved to talk up a case. It was one of the few pure pleasures the job afforded. “Sappone didn’t kill her, either.”
“He did worse. He took her child.” Moodrow, tired of staring down into his glass, raised it to his mouth and drank. “Did you get anything on his partner? It has to be someone he knew in prison.”
“Not yet. But what I can do, if you want to come in on this, is have the robbery and the assaults transferred over to Jim Tilley. That would give you access.”
Moodrow stifled the urge to smile. Leonora had set it up nicely. “That brings me back to the original question. What, exactly, am I supposed to do about Jilly Sappone that the locals, the feds, and Carmine Stettecase can’t do?”
Betty Haluka supplied the answer Moodrow expected. Somehow, it didn’t please him all that much.
“Maybe Ann just needs to know that somebody’s on her side, committed to her and only her.”
“That’s a good part of it,” Leonora said. “But she’s also convinced that Jilly’s coming back to get her and the daughter they had together. Myself, I don’t see any way that can happen. Ann will remain under police guard while she’s in the hospital and be transferred to a safe house on Long Island when she’s discharged.”
“How many daughters are we talking about here?” Betty asked. “How can Sappone come back for a daughter he’s already kidnapped?”
“Theresa-Marie, the child Sappone took, is the daughter of Ann and her second husband, Paul Kalkadonis. Theresa, of course, was born long after Sappone went to jail. Sappone’s own child, Patricia, is eighteen years old. She was away at Boston University when Jilly showed up.”
Betty organized the information in her memory, then pushed her chair away from the table. “I’ve still got some packing to do.” She stood up, reached across the table to embrace Leonora, turned back to Moodrow. “Are you going to take the job, Stanley? It doesn’t sound like it’ll amount to much.”
Moodrow managed an insincere frown. “I assume this is your basic pro bono situation?” he asked Leonora Higgins.
“Not at all,” she replied evenly. “The Haven Foundation funds the shelter and they’ve got deep pockets. They expect to be billed a hundred dollars a day, plus expenses.”
“That’s half what I’ve been askin’, but go ahead, abuse me. I’m used to it.”
Betty reached out, started to cuff Moodrow on the back of the head, saw the bandage as if for the first time. “Just be careful, Stanley,” she said. “I’ve got enough to worry about in California.”
Moodrow watched Betty leave, waiting until the bedroom door closed before turning back to Leonora Higgins.
“The victim, Ann Kalkadonis, when can I talk to her?”
“Tomorrow, Stanley. She’s at St. Vincent’s on the west side. I’ll meet you there at two o’clock.”
“Good, I’ll speak to …”
Moodrow stopped suddenly, then giggled. Though she’d heard it many times before, the odd sound made Leonora Higgins squirm in her seat.
“You wouldn’t consider sharing, would you?”
“I was just thinking about Sappone’s aunt, Josefina. Carmine’s gotta believe, true or not, that Josie knows where Jilly’s hiding—we’re talkin’ about his son’s mother-in-law, don’t forget—and it’s gotta be makin’ him crazy that she won’t tell him.”
“Why is that funny? Won’t he make her tell?”
Moodrow shook his head. “If you knew Josie Rizzo, you wouldn’t ask that question. Carmine might kill her, but he’ll never make her talk.”
“You’re saying this aunt let her daughter marry …? I don’t believe it.”
“Well, Aunt Josie was trying to get her nephew a job with the only major employer in need of his particular talents. What else could she do?” He stood up. “After I take Betty to the airport, I’ll stop in at the house, talk to Jim before I meet you in front of St. Vincent’s. Meanwhile, I wanna spend the rest of the night with Betty.”
“Sit down, Stanley.” A wicked grin split Leonora’s face. “There’s something else you have to know.” She waited until he was sitting, until his expression had passed from surprised to sullen. “The Haven Foundation is funded by a small group of very wealthy women. For a number of reasons, they were reluctant to hire a male investigator.”
“And you talked them into it?”
“Actually, it’s worse than that. They retained someone before I had a chance to talk to them, a licensed investigator named Ginny Gadd. The cops won’t give her the time of day, Stanley. And she’s not having much luck on the street, either. Speed is everything here.”
“So that’s when you suggested me?”
Leonora nodded. “After I outlined your relationship with Jim Tilley and your knowledge of the neighborhood, they decided to make you an offer.”
“And what’s-her-name … Gadd? What did she have to say about it?”
“She said she’ll try to work with you.”
“Yeah, right.”
Leonora slung her purse over her shoulder and stood up. Sometimes, it seemed as if she spent most of her working life babying grown men and women into doing what they wanted to do in the first place. “It’s not like she has nothing to contribute, Stanley. Ginny Gadd specializes in computer investigation. I hear she’s one of the best.”