THE FIRST THING GINNY Gadd shouted when Moodrow came through her door was, “You’re late.” Followed quickly by, “What happened, you run out of rumpled suits?”
“That’s just it,” Moodrow shouted back, “I’m late because I had to go home and change.”
They were shouting for two reasons. First, a baritone sax, accompanied by piano, bass, and drums, was blasting its way through an extended solo. The music was coming from a back room and, presumably, could be turned down. That wasn’t true of the jackhammer ripping up the Sixth Avenue asphalt.
“Lemme shut off the stereo.”
Moodrow watched Gadd disappear into the back room, noted the way her butt pushed against the seat of her jeans, and decided to mention her the next time he spoke to Betty. This despite Betty’s never having a jealous moment. Despite his own unthinking fidelity.
“That was Gerry Mulligan.” She was standing in the doorway, looking impossibly youthful in an oversize black cable-knit sweater. “With Thelonius Monk. Would you believe it? Mulligan sounds like he’s just going through the motions. Maybe he couldn’t keep up.”
Moodrow nodded, gestured to the room behind Gadd. “You live back there?”
The question drew a blush that ran up into her jugged ears. “You want to hear the sad story?”
“Sure.”
Gadd crossed the room, held up a blue coffee mug. “You want?”
“Yeah.”
She filled the mug, added milk and two spoons of sugar, then turned back to him. “You ever had a lover who moved away from you? I’m not talking about physically here.” She waited for his, “Yeah, I guess so,” then continued. “Buddy and I were college students, at Columbia, when we met. I suppose we shared the same ambitions, but that was nine years ago and I can’t remember well enough to be sure we actually spoke about it. After graduation, I went into the cops and he went on to get his MBA.”
“A match made in hell,” Moodrow observed, taking the mug.
“It’s funny you should look at it that way.” Gadd went back to her desk and sat down. “Because there was never any real violence, physical or psychological. Buddy went to work for Price, Waterhouse; I bounced from tour to tour. He spent his days behind a desk on the fortieth floor; I spent mine with the mutts and the mopes. I can look back now, look back and know there was never any real hope for us, but I must have fooled myself at the time because I didn’t make any preparations for living by myself. Two months after I left the job, Buddy moved to Greenwich, Connecticut. That wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t taken the furniture—his furniture—with him. Or if I could have afforded the uptown apartment we shared.”
“So you ended up here?”
She shrugged. “I’m just getting started and I can’t pay two rents.”
The jackhammer stopped abruptly, leaving her words to echo in the unexpected quiet. It was a silence neither was tempted to break and Moodrow took advantage of the moment to examine her more closely. Or, better yet, to examine his own growing attraction, an attraction he carefully termed fatherly.
Her face was small and symmetrical, her features, taken one by one, unremarkable. Only her eyebrows, thick, dark crescents that swept down to frame the corners of her eyes, held any hint of character. She might have chosen to pluck them (or shave or wax them, Moodrow wasn’t sure of the process), but she’d clearly decided to let her face speak for itself. That was why, he decided, she wore so little makeup, why she projected so much confidence, despite the crappy office and the bed in the back room.
“So what happened with the suits?” she finally said. “I figured you were the kind of detective who picked a fresh suit off the closet floor every morning.”
“And dumped orange juice on the lapels before venturing out to face the public?”
“Tomato juice seems more appropriate.”
“Nice.” He stood up, spread his arms wide. “This is my undercover outfit. Whatta ya think?”
He was wearing a navy blue, Members Only jacket over a gray polyester shirt, charcoal slacks, and a pair of foam-soled Rockport Walkers.
“Well, I have to admit you don’t look like a working cop.”
“What’d I tell ya.”
“No, what you look like is a retired cop who’s about to take his grandson to a baseball game.” Her mouth jumped into a mischievous grin. “The white socks give you away.”
Moodrow sat back down. “Damn, and I was trying for sporty sophisticate.”
The jackhammer started up again, slamming into their conversation. Moodrow sipped at his coffee, reminded himself that the city—his city—was literally falling apart. Construction sites were a permanent feature on every bridge and highway; water mains spouted like blowing whales. In the early 1980s, when the work had begun, orange signs at every site had announced the Koch administration’s good intentions: WE’RE REBUILDING NEW YORK. The signs were gone, now, but the work continued. The FDR Drive along the East River had been under repair for more than fifteen years.
Gadd started to speak, then shook her head and got up to shut the windows. Back in her seat, the jackhammer reduced to a muffled roar, she shuffled the paperwork on her desk for a moment, then looked up at Moodrow.
“Maybe we oughta get to work,” she said. “Being as the city isn’t gonna let us play.”
Moodrow crossed his legs, leaned slightly forward, and let his hands drop into his lap. A narrow smile pulled at the edge of his lips as he realized just how much he’d been looking forward to this next step. As if there was no possibility that Santa would leave coal instead of presents under his tree. “Your move, Gadd.”
She nodded, accepting the obvious. “Well,” she said, “it looks like we’ve got a hit. One of the credit cards was used.”
“Where?”
“Long Island.”
“That would be Carlo Sappone, right?”
“How did you know that?” Gadd waved off his response. “And how did you know they were going to use the card?”
“Carlo Sappone was a guess. He’s Jilly’s first cousin, Josephine Rizzo’s nephew. I didn’t know he was on Long Island, but I was pretty sure he was still close to the family. As for using the card …”
Moodrow jerked to a halt when the pounding outside the window stopped again. An angry voice drifted up, almost a whisper after the roar of the jackhammer.
“Ya stupid cocksucker. Ya cut the fuckin’ cable. Now we’ll be here all morning.”
Gadd scratched her chin. “I love New York.” She waited for Moodrow’s smile. “You were saying about the cards?”
“Right.” Moodrow tapped the bandage on the back of his head. The wound had begin to itch, but he was afraid to dig in, afraid of opening it again. “You asked me how I knew Jilly was going to use the cards, correct?”
“Correct.” Her eyes were somewhere between quizzical and amused.
“Well, ask yourself this: If Jilly wasn’t gonna use ’em, why would he steal ’em in the first place?”
The obvious struck Gadd like a fastball slamming into a catcher’s mitt. “But using them was such a risk.” It was all she could manage.
“If the criminals weren’t stupid, where would we be?” The cop cliché rose to Moodrow’s lips unbidden. “Besides, it wasn’t all that much of a risk. The cards were forgeries, so that leaves the cops out of it. How could Jilly Sappone know that Stanley Moodrow would get next to Buster Levy? How could he know what Ginny Gadd can do with a computer? If you look at it from Jilly’s point of view, he’s been having a run of very shitty luck.”
Gadd cocked her head to one side and shrugged. “Your reasoning,” she admitted, “is beyond dispute. As for Carlo Sappone, I have an address, a phone number, and a piece of his rap sheet.”
“His rap sheet? How’d you get that?”
“I’m tied into a system called Lexis. They’ve got conviction records for forty-seven states in their database. Convictions, mind you, not arrests. Carlo Sappone’s a coke dealer, been convicted three times, in 1982, 1986, and 1990. Altogether, he’s done six years and four months, county and state time. He’s on parole, even as we speak.”
“Are you telling me that anybody can get this information?”
“Don’t get pissed, Moodrow. It’s a matter of public record.”
Pissed? Moodrow’s emotion was closer to despair. He’d been going to Jim Tilley with his hat in his hand, a beggar, pure and simple, whenever he needed a rap sheet. Meanwhile, every other private investigator had the information at his fingertips. Correction: her fingertips. He looked over at Gadd’s computer, successfully resisted an urge to empty his .38 into the screen, then turned back.
“Last night,” he said, “we talked about a trade. Favor for favor. You put Jilly with Carlo and Carlo with an address and a phone number. That’s your favor. My favor is a mug shot of Jilly’s partner. His name, by the way, is Jackson-Davis Wescott.”
Gadd leaned back and put her feet up on the desk. “You know, Moodrow, you’ve got a way of springing nasty surprises on people. I’ve always associated that particular ability with being a prick.”
“Sticks and stones, Gadd.” He got up, crossed the room, and filled his coffee mug without asking permission. When he was seated again, he pulled a folded copy of Wescott’s photo out of his jacket pocket and laid it on the desk. “You might as well take this, being as I can get Carlo Sappone’s address on my own.”
Ginny Gadd watched Moodrow’s larynx bob as he drained the mug. Somehow, the motion was more obscene than an upraised finger. “You keep sucking on that, you’re gonna dissolve the glaze.”
Moodrow cupped the mug in his palm. “So, what’s your next move?”
“Me?” She smiled her nastiest smile. “What I’m gonna do is go directly to Carlo Sappone’s domicile and ask him if he knows where his cousin Jilly is hiding. In fact, I might not even bother driving. Maybe I’ll just give him a call the minute you walk out the goddamned door.”
Moodrow sat up straight. He was trying for righteous indignation, but an obscene giggle betrayed his true inner state. “Yeah,” he admitted, “that’s exactly what I’d do if I was in your shoes.” He took a deep breath and started over. “The problem, Gadd, is that when I put the big question to Carlo, he’s most likely gonna lie to me. Now, the way I see it, Theresa Kalkadonis doesn’t have time for bullshit; if someone doesn’t get to her soon, she’s gonna be dead. That’s if she’s not already dead. To be honest, I didn’t think she had much of a shot when I caught the squeal, but now that I’m close, I can’t afford to let Carlo Sappone tell me fibs.” He tapped the desktop with one finger. “It sets up like this: If you wanna come along, I could use your help. But you can’t draw any lines. I don’t know what’s gonna happen when I catch up with Jilly Sappone, but you can take one thing to the bank. If I have to shoot him down like a dog, if it comes to that, I’ll do it without thinking twice. Being as you’re still young and still ambitious, you might not wanna deal with the consequences.”