THERESA KALKADONIS WASN’T GOING to cry anymore. She was sure of that, sure the crying time was past. That was partly because she wasn’t thinking about her mother, about wanting to go home, and partly because Uncle Jilly had changed. Now, he mostly sat next to her with his chin on his chest, eyes all droopy, like Mackie, her stuffed dog.
Theresa wondered if Mackie was lying between the pillows on her bed. That was his place. She hoped mommy would take good care of him, now that she couldn’t do it herself. Now that she had put her old life behind her.
“Good-bye, Mackie.”
She didn’t mean to say it out loud, but she must have, because Uncle Jilly was suddenly looking down at her.
“Didn’t I tell you about cryin’? Didn’t I?”
The words came slowly, bubbling out like the water in Theresa’s bathroom sink when the toilet was filling up. Theresa wondered if she was supposed to answer. When Uncle Jilly was real angry, it was better not to say anything. Saying things didn’t help. Only she couldn’t hear any anger now, so maybe he really wanted to know, maybe he forgot what he said before about crying.
“She ain’t cryin’, Jilly.”
Theresa looked up. Uncle Jackson was staring at her through the rearview mirror. He tossed her a big wink.
“Then what’s she doin’, Jackson-Davis, fartin’ through her mouth?” Jilly laughed at his own joke, a rough snort that quickly worked its way from his nose down to his chest where it ended in a phlegmy cough. Theresa watched him roll down the window and spit, then dropped her eyes to her lap when he turned back. “So what were ya doin’, Theresa? Fartin’ through ya mouth?”
She could feel him looking down at her, though she didn’t move her head. When Uncle Jilly took his medicine, his eyes were like the eyes of Mr. Cambesi’s pet snake. You couldn’t tell what they were seeing. She guessed that was better than before, when Uncle Jilly didn’t have any medicine, but his snake eyes still frightened her.
“Doggone, Jilly, she’s just a little kid. She probly ain’t even heard of fartin’. I swear to the good Lord above, Jilly, you shouldn’t be usin’ that language.”
“Swear to who, Jackson?”
“To the good Lord.”
Theresa raised her eyes, knowing, somehow, that Uncle Jackson was drawing Uncle Jilly’s attention away from her and toward himself. That’s what he always did when Uncle Jilly got mad at her, and this time it was working. Uncle Jilly’s mouth was right next to Uncle Jackson’s ear and he was scratching the back of Uncle Jackson’s neck with his middle finger.
“Tell me something, Jackson.”
“Sure, Jilly.”
“Do you remember when you were in the room with Carol Pierce?”
Theresa could see Uncle Jackson’s face in the mirror. He had that pouty look he got when Uncle Jilly was making fun of him. The one mommy said would stay there all the time if Theresa put it on too often. Like he was gonna cry.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“You remember what you did to her?”
“That was different.”
“Different than what?”
Uncle Jackson shook his head—as if Uncle Jilly’s finger was a bug he wanted to make fly away—but he didn’t answer.
“What I wanna know, Jackson,” Uncle Jilly whispered, “is if the good Lord above was watchin’ you when you worked on Carol Pierce?”
Theresa couldn’t put any images together with Uncle Jilly’s words, but she knew he was saying something important, something her new life required her to learn. So she concentrated real hard—just like she did when she was reciting her ABCs—and tried to picture Uncle Jackson at work.
“Ain’t gonna do that no more.” Uncle Jackson shook his head from side to side.
“That right?”
“It’s the God’s truth, Jilly.”
“Too bad, cause I had somethin’ real nice all set up for ya. Guess I’ll have to handle it myself.”
Theresa was still thinking about Uncle Jackson’s job when Uncle Jilly dropped back onto the seat next to her. She wanted to look up at him, but her head seemed frozen, like a Popsicle on a stick. It just wouldn’t move.
Moodrow drained his fourth Pepsi of the afternoon, belched softly, rubbed his swollen gut by way of apology. It was nearly seven-thirty and a blazing orange sun hung just above the flat roofline of a Pathmark drugstore on the other side of William Floyd Parkway. Time, Moodrow thought, for the vampire to rise from his grave.
“Whatta ya think, Moodrow? Think I should give Carlo another call? Make sure he’s still in there?”
Moodrow tossed the empty can into the Volvo, then rolled up the window and started the engine. The temperature was dropping fast. They’d need some heat before too long.
“We going somewhere?”
Moodrow looked over, noted the crumbs on Gadd’s sweater, wondered if there was something about surveillance that wilted investigators. Maybe the boredom, or the cramped quarters. “Just warming it up,” he said. “Carlo’ll be coming out soon. We’d better switch seats.”
“If you knew when he was coming out, why’d we get here so early? We could’ve gone to a movie. Read a book. Enriched our miserable lives.”
“Just a feeling.” Moodrow stepped out of the car without acknowledging the joke. He walked around to the other side, opened the door, then simply stood there, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. All irrelevant considerations—Betty, the foundation, Jim Tilley, the FBI, even Theresa Kalkadonis—had vanished without a trace, like gangsters in a New Jersey swamp. Carlo Sappone himself had been reduced to something less than human, to a resting moth awaiting the appetite of a mother robin.
“Hey, Moodrow, either get inside or close the damn door.”
“What?” He squatted down, stared at Gadd as if trying to place her.
“First, it’s getting dark and the overhead light’s on.” She pointed to the glowing dome light. “But even if it wasn’t, you’re much too big to be inconspicuous. If Carlo should happen to look out the window and see you hopping around, he’s not gonna think you’re the Easter bunny on a trial run.”
Moodrow nodded agreement, slid inside, closed the door. “If Sappone makes the tail,” he said without preamble, “if he flies, I want you to come right up on his bumper. This Chevy used to work for the Alabama State Police and it’s got enough horses to run with almost anything on the road. Carlo’s sure to think we’re narcs. He’ll pull over, eventually, try to bluff us.”
Gadd let her eyes follow Moodrow’s back to the house. The wall closest to them, part of the garage, had no windows, which was good and bad. Good because they couldn’t be spotted from inside; bad because there were no cars parked in the driveway and Carlo would appear without warning. If he went right, away from William Floyd Parkway, they’d have a hell of a time catching up before he vanished into the suburban night.
“Hey, tell me something, Moodrow. It’s almost dark and the street lamp’s on the other side of the road. If somebody backs out of that garage, how are we gonna know who it is? How are we gonna know it’s not Sappone’s grandmother on a laxative run?”
“Whoever it is, they’re gonna have to get out and close the garage door.”
“What makes you think the door’s not automatic?”
Moodrow answered without turning to face her. “Because I checked it when we drove by.”
Gadd closed her eyes for a moment, thinking, It’s not bad enough that I have to obey this old bastard’s commands like a trained puppy, I also have to come off looking like a complete jerk. What I should’ve done is drive out here by myself. Then I could have come off like a jerk without anybody noticing.
“Game time.”
She looked over at Moodrow, then at the house. The garage door was opening up and out, pushed by an invisible hand from inside. A moment later, a heavily customized van backed onto the driveway and stopped. Carlo Sappone emerged, strode up to the garage door, and closed it with a single, smooth motion.
“He’s wasted, look at him.” Moodrow licked his lips and rubbed his hands together, both gestures totally unconscious. “The mutt’s doin’ his own product.”
Gadd watched Carlo Sappone walk back to the van. Skinny, verging on gaunt, his obviously expensive clothes hung on his narrow frame like hand-me-downs from an older brother. She couldn’t see his face, but she could easily imagine the red-rimmed eyes, the runny nose, the tight, nervous jaw.
“Don’t you ever get tired of being right?”
She threw the car into reverse, turned around without flipping on the headlights, then inched up to the edge of the road.
Theresa endured the long, boring ride from Worcester, Massachusetts, to the northern outskirts of the Bronx by pretending she was Mackie, her stuffed dog. You could leave Mackie any place you wanted and he was always waiting in exactly that same place when you came back. It didn’t matter how long you were away or where you went. One time, her mommy and daddy had taken her all the way to Disney World, in Florida, and they stayed so long that she nearly forgot Mackie. But there he was, flopped on her pillow, his black button eyes and round white nose tilted up. As if he was expecting her any minute.
Of course, Mackie was part of her old world, not her new one. In her old world, she made the grown-ups happy by doing things. Things like brushing her teeth without being reminded or reciting the alphabet without making a mistake. Her new world was a lot more complicated. Uncle Jilly hated it when she did something. He didn’t want her to eat or talk or wash her hands before dinner; he didn’t even want her to go to the bathroom. And he could be very mean, like when he put her in the trunk.
Uncle Jackson was different. He liked it when she played his baby games and sang his baby songs, but when she recited the alphabet, he got very angry and called her a “highfalutin darn show-off.” She didn’t know exactly what that meant except that she shouldn’t recite the alphabet, a fact she dutifully added to a growing “do and don’t” list—her Book of Rules.
It was her daddy who first told her about the Book of Rules. “It’s in the book,” he’d say whenever she asked why she had to do something like go to bed at eight o’clock. “It’s in the Book of Rules.”
She’d almost forgotten about the Book—like she’d almost forgotten about the monster under the bed—but the Book was very important in her new world. That was because the monster had come out and was sitting right next to her.
“Jackson?”
“Yeah, Jilly.”
“Gimme the phone. I gotta make a call. And slow it down. We’re gonna be makin’ a stop pretty soon.”
Theresa wanted to watch Uncle Jilly use the special phone, because she’d never seen one like it in her old world. But she knew better. Looking directly at Uncle Jilly was a definite don’t.
“It’s Jilly. We on?”
She could hear a tinny voice coming from the phone, but she couldn’t understand the words.
“Yeah, yeah. Twenty minutes.” He stopped again. “Don’t give me no fuckin’ bullshit about you gotta go and pick up the package. Not when ya chargin’ me twice what the shit is worth. Wait, wait, wait. Don’t say nothin’. I’m gonna be over your way in about twenty minutes, maybe a half hour at the fuckin’ most.” He was yelling now, the roar of his voice filling the small car. “You ain’t there to meet me, I’m gonna come lookin’ for ya.”
Theresa heard him click the little button that shut the phone off, then take a deep breath.
“Hey,” he said, “you wanna talk to ya mommy? Huh?”
At first, Theresa didn’t realize that Uncle Jilly was speaking to her. Uncle Jilly hardly ever spoke to her now that she had stopped crying.
“What’s the matter with this fuckin’ kid, Jackson? She sits there like a fuckin’ doll and when you talk, she don’t answer. I swear, it’s gettin’ me pissed off.”
“Theresa?” Uncle Jackson was grinning at her in the mirror. “Didn’t you hear what ol’ Jilly just said? About gettin’ to speak with your mommy? You wanna speak with your mommy, don’t ya?”
What was she supposed to say? What response did her new world require? Theresa wasn’t sure and when she turned slightly to find Uncle Jilly’s black snake eyes fixed on her own, she became even more confused.
“My mommy’s gone,” she finally whispered. “You … she got hurt.”
Jilly’s nasty laugh echoed in the small space. “Fuckin’ kid’s smarter than she looks.” He grabbed her left earlobe and twisted sharply. “I’m gonna call ya mommy and talk to her for a minute. Then I’m gonna put you on the phone. Ya better not clam up on me, kid, ’cause if ya do, I’m gonna rip this ear right off ya fuckin’ head.”
He held her close to him while he dialed the telephone, close enough for her to understand the man’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Hello.”
“Which little piggy stayed home?”
“That you, Jilly?”
“Hey, that’s answerin’ a question with a question. I’m surprised the nuns didn’t teach ya better.”
“I’m not a Roman Catholic. I’m a Lutheran.”
“That ain’t what I asked ya. I asked ya which little piggy stayed home. As in, who am I fuckin’ talkin’ to?”
“This is Agent Ewing. I spoke to you last time you called.”
“Did you do what I told ya to do?”
“What’s that, Jilly?”
Theresa watched Uncle Jilly closely, hoping for some hint of what was expected from her. He was breathing real fast through his mouth, which he always did when he got mad. What she didn’t know was who he was mad at, her or the man on the phone. She wanted to wriggle away, to slide across to the other side of the car, but the arm wrapped around her waist was rock-hard.
“You wanna play fuckin’ games?” Jilly’s eyes were blazing. “Cause I got games you never dreamed about.”
“No, Jilly.” The man’s voice was very calm, as if he was trying to soothe a frightened puppy. “She’s here, just as you asked.”
“Good. Now put the bitch on the phone.”
“Hello, Jilly?”
“Is that my ever-lovin’ wifeykins? Is that my sweet honey-girl?”
Even though her crying time was past, Theresa felt like she wanted to sob. Mommy was part of her old life and she couldn’t think about her old life without becoming very, very sad. That was why she didn’t think about her old life.
“Please, Jilly … Theresa …”
“Fit as a fiddle. Except for when her right hand got crushed with the pliers.” Uncle Jilly’s laugh boomed out. “But she’s a southpaw, right? So it ain’t no big deal.”
Theresa held her right hand up to her eyes. What was Uncle Jilly talking about?
“I’m okay, mommy. My hand’s okay, too.” Theresa shouted the words into the telephone, then squeezed her eyes shut. She was sure Uncle Jilly would kill her for talking before he said to, but Uncle Jilly just kept on laughing.
“Theresa? Theresa?”
Uncle Jilly jammed his fingers over her mouth before she could answer.
“Listen up,” he said, his voice suddenly cold enough to send a shiver up the back of Theresa’s neck. “Because I ain’t got a whole lotta time here. See, I got no reason to hurt the little brat. Theresa ain’t done nothin’ to me, if ya catch my drift. But that don’t mean I won’t go into one of my shitstorms. Ya with me on this?”
“I’m listening, Jilly.”
“Okay, so what ya gotta do is gimme some kinda reason to hand her over. Like before I go off. Y’understand?”
“Tell me what you want.”
“What I want is my fourteen fucking years back.”
“I can’t give you that.”
“Well then, we got something in common, bitch.” He paused, wiped his wet mouth with the back of his hand. “Because I got somethin’ you want. Somethin’ I can’t give back.”
When Uncle Jilly finally shut off the phone and loosened his grip, Theresa slid over to the opposite side of the car. Before she could make any sense of what had happened, Uncle Jilly leaned forward and tapped Uncle Jackson’s shoulder. “A little ways up,” he said, “you’re gonna see a sign for the Cross Bronx Expressway. Take the exit for the east Bronx. We’re goin’ to the zoo.”
“The zoo?” Uncle Jackson seemed very excited. “That’s just great, Jilly, but you better keep a sharp eye out. Bein’ as you know I cain’t read no signs.”
“Would you mind telling me exactly what you’re waiting for?” Gadd put the Caprice in gear and pulled out onto Montauk Highway. She was careful to keep two vehicles between their car and Sappone’s van, as instructed, but she had the definite feeling she could ride on Sappone’s bumper without his noticing. “Because if this goes on much longer, the mope’s gonna overdose and we’ll end up taking him to the hospital.”
They’d been following Sappone for more than an hour, trailing him as he bounced from one bar to another along a seemingly endless series of commercially zoned roads that crisscrossed Suffolk County’s southern shore like varicose veins on the back of a dowager’s thigh. Privately owned businesses lined both sides of the road, sharing strip-mall space with the inevitable fast-food operations and the company-owned gas stations. McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Citgo, Exxon, Gulf, Texaco … the list went on and on and on.
The terrain itself was table-flat, the buildings no more than two stories high. As if the county planners had conspired with nature to create a world so lacking in definition as to be without any character at all.
“What it is,” Gadd said, once she realized that Moodrow wasn’t going to respond, “is that I’m used to vertical. Horizontal makes me seasick.”
What it is, Moodrow said to himself, is that your nerves are showing.
Still, she was right about Sappone. He was distributing powder (most likely to bartenders running a little coke business on the side) and clearly sampling the product as he made his rounds. With each ten-minute stop, he looked a little more like a mature gobbler on the weekend before Thanksgiving. Getting him off the street would be no problem. Getting him off the street without being seen by some misguided citizen was something else again.
Moodrow forced his attention back to the detailed map spread across his knees. Even if the abduction—there was no other word for what he planned to do—went smoothly, they still had to transport Carlo to some private place. Transport him without getting lost on the way. Once Sappone was in the car, of course, both he and Gadd would have enough to do without reading a map.
Sappone’s van made a right turn onto Route 110, a road marked Broadway on Moodrow’s Hagstrom map. Gadd dutifully followed, stopping directly behind him at a traffic light. Even with her window rolled up, she could hear the heavy thud of a bass drum pounding inside the van.
“I got a bad feeling here, Moodrow. I got a feeling our boy’s on his way home. It sounds like he’s celebrating.”
Moodrow shook her off, his finger tracing Route 110 as it wandered north through the town of Amityville, past the Southern State Parkway and Republic Airport to the Long Island Expressway. Satisfied, he carefully folded the map and laid it on the seat.
“Carlo’s got at least one more stop to make. We’ll take him there. You all right?”
“Me? What could go wrong? I step on the gas; I step on the brake; I turn the wheel. It’s not exactly particle physics.” The light changed to green and she allowed Sappone to put some distance between himself and the Caprice before following. “You hear that music? How loud it is? It’s hard to believe he’s riding around in a bloodred van with smoked windows and ear-splitting music if he’s still carrying drugs. It’s goddamned suicidal.”
Sappone’s van pulled to the curb before Moodrow could respond. The street was dark, every store closed with the exception of the Landmark Tavern in the middle of the block.
“Circle around, then pull in next to the pump in front of his van. We’ve got him now.” Moodrow pressed his palms into his thighs, took a deep breath, told himself to calm down. Sappone would have to walk right past him to get back to his van.
“Do you know you’re grinning from ear to ear?”
Moodrow touched his mouth, was surprised to feel teeth instead of lips. “We’re gettin’ close, Gadd. I can tell because I always twitch when I get close.”
Gadd kept her eyes glued to the rearview mirror. When Sappone turned into the club, she spun the car into a U-turn, came back down the road, made a second U-turn, and parked. Moodrow was out of the car and leaning back through the open window before she could shut off the headlights.
“This street runs all the way up to the Long Island Expressway. According to the map, it wanders a little bit, so be careful; if we make a wrong turn, we’ll be weaving through these developments for the next two weeks. Take the Expressway east to exit 70, then your first right. It’s a long way out, at least an hour from here, but that’s to our advantage because he’ll be coming down by then.”
Gadd nodded thoughtfully. Hoping her partner wasn’t as crazy as he looked at that moment.
“I could put the question to Sappone in the car,” Moodrow continued. “That’d save a lot of time. Only I’m afraid he’ll lie and I have no way to get back to him if he does. I figure an hour in the backseat with me for company …” Moodrow snuck a look at the door to the Landmark Tavern, willing it to open. When it remained closed, defying his psychic abilities, he turned back to Gadd. “What I’m gonna do here is convince Sappone that I’ve been sent by Carmine Stettecase. You can see the point, right? Carlo might lie to the cops, but he can’t bullshit Carmine. Not unless he plans to leave town.”
“That sounds great, Moodrow, but where do I fit in?”
“You remember that movie? The one with Angelica Huston and whats-his-face?”
“Jack Nicholson.” Gadd smiled. “I think it was called Prizzi’s Honor.”
“That’s the one. You’re gonna be a hit lady.”
“Does that make you a hit gentleman?” Gadd’s head jerked up before Moodrow could answer. “Enough with the small talk,” she said. “Our boy’s on his way.”
Moodrow didn’t move a muscle. “Lemme know when he draws even with the car.”
Gadd watched Sappone hesitate in the doorway, take a deep breath, rub his nose with the back of his hand. Drops of sweat ran down the side of his neck and into his collar. She’d seen it all before, of course, seen it on the mean streets of New York. The man was halfway to an overdose.
“What’s he doing?”
“I think he’s waiting for the sweat to dry.” She glanced at Moodrow. His eyes were tightly focused, though on what she couldn’t say. “Look, this guy’s heart is probably close to exploding.” She slid over a bit, put her hand on Moodrow’s cheek and kissed him. “I don’t know what you have in mind, but if you hit the bastard too hard, you’re liable to put him in the morgue.” She drew back a few inches and smiled. “He’s moving. Twenty feet away … fifteen … ten … five … now.”
Moodrow spun, took a single gigantic stride. He was expecting some kind of resistance, but Sappone simply continued walking until Moodrow wrapped a hand around his throat, then slammed a fist into his right kidney. The pain buckled Sappone’s knees, but he didn’t fall. Instead, his body rose momentarily, then flew across the space between himself and the Caprice. The resulting collision would have been devastating if Gadd hadn’t already opened the back door. As it was, Sappone’s momentum carried him across the seat and against the far door. Moodrow’s body followed, pinning the much smaller man.
“Do me a favor, Carlo,” Moodrow said as the Caprice pulled away from the curb, “and don’t make me kill you in the car. The last time I killed somebody in a car, they crapped their pants and I had to ride with the stink for weeks.”
Jilly Sappone did everything he had to do without once losing his temper. That, Theresa realized, was because the first thing he did (the first thing he had to do) was take his medicine. Theresa watched him open the folded paper, raise it to his nostrils, suck in the white powder, toss the paper out the window. She watched him sit there holding his breath until his eyes closed and he sank down into the seat.
When he opened his eyes again, he caught her by surprise, caught her looking directly at him, but he didn’t get angry as she expected. Instead, he smiled at her.
“Wrap that blanket around yourself, kid.”
“C’mon, Jilly,” Uncle Jackson said, “you promised there wouldn’t be no more goin’ in that darn trunk.”
“I said no more unless it was necessary, Jackson.” Uncle Jilly looked at her, but she was careful not to raise her head. “Whatta ya think, kid, is it necessary?”
Theresa didn’t answer, because she didn’t know what Uncle Jilly wanted her to say.
“Hey, I’m talkin’ to ya.” He reached out and turned her head to face him. “Do ya think it’s necessary?”
“There’s a sign up ahead, Jilly. Better see what it is or I’ll miss my turn.”
Uncle Jilly let her go with a final instruction: “Wrap yourself in the fuckin’ blanket and do it now.” He looked out through the windshield for a moment. “Okay, Jackson, this is it. You wanna keep all the way to the right here. If we make a wrong turn, we’re gonna end up in New Jersey.”
Uncle Jackson must have done everything the way Uncle Jilly told him, because when they were on the new highway, Uncle Jilly leaned back, saw that she had the blanket around her, and smiled again.
“Where we gettin’ off, Jilly?” Uncle Jackson asked. “I don’t see a zoo no place around here.”
“We’re gettin’ off at the Bronx River Parkway. Make sure ya don’t miss the sign.”
“But I cain’t read no sign.”
“Then why don’t ya shut ya fuckin’ mouth and keep drivin’ till I tell ya what to do?” Uncle Jilly waited a minute, then turned to face Theresa. “I ain’t gonna put ya in the trunk. That’s because ya been a good girl and ya done everything I asked. But I don’t want anybody to see ya when we get to the zoo. That’s why ya gotta wrap yourself in the blanket and lay down on the seat. Understand?”
Theresa nodded, but Uncle Jilly had already forgotten about her. He was leaning forward, speaking into Uncle Jackson’s ear. “Ya know what we’re gonna do?”
Uncle Jackson shook his head. “Uh-uh.”
“Ya don’t remember I told ya this morning that we’re gonna pick up some weapons?”
“Yeah, I remember now.” Uncle Jackson was looking at Uncle Jilly in the mirror. His head was bouncing up and down. “Guess that means we ain’t goin’ to the zoo, right?”
“Just to the parking lot. That’s where we gotta meet a guy named Espinoza. He’s gonna sell us the guns.” Uncle Jilly was being very patient, pausing between every sentence until Uncle Jackson nodded to show he understood. “Now the thing is, Jackson, if a dude sells guns, he has guns. And a dude that has guns might use guns to rip his customers off. You gettin’ this?”
“Sure.”
Uncle Jilly shook his head. “It’s fuckin’ hopeless.” He tapped Uncle Jackson’s shoulder. “Take this exit comin’ up. Go to the light, make a left, then another left, then get on the parkway.”
They rode in silence for a few minutes. Theresa, wrapped tightly in the blanket, looked out the window, but it was already dark and there wasn’t much to see except for the other cars. She was getting very tired, but she didn’t want to fall asleep, not with Uncle Jilly talking about guns.
“Lemme give this one more try, Jackson. Ya remember when ya were back in Clinton?”
“Yeah.”
“And ya remember some of the boys in the joint, they wanted to hurt ya real bad?”
“You mean like the niggers, Jilly? Like the niggers wanted to tear me a new …?” He looked at Theresa in the mirror. “Like what they wanted to do?”
“Now ya got it.” Uncle Jilly put his hand on Uncle Jackson’s shoulder. “And do ya remember the look they had, the look in their eyes just before they came after ya?” He waited for Uncle Jackson to say, “I sure do,” then continued. “Well, if ya see that look tonight, it means we got big trouble. It means we gotta be prepared to defend our sacred honor.”
By the time they rolled into the Buffalo parking lot of the Bronx zoo and parked next to the red car, Uncle Jilly had forgotten all about her. He must have, because he didn’t ask her to lie down on the seat like he said he would. Instead, he and Uncle Jackson got out of the car, walked up to a short fat man, and shook hands. They spoke for a minute before Uncle Jilly took a roll of bills out of his pocket and handed it to the fat man, who counted it really fast, then opened the red car’s trunk.
Theresa couldn’t see what Uncle Jilly was seeing, but it must have made him happy, because when he turned around with the box in his hand and started walking toward her, he was grinning. The grin stayed on his face while he opened the trunk of their car and put the box inside and closed the trunk again, but it disappeared when Uncle Jackson started shooting.
“I seen it, I seen it,” he screamed. “You ain’t tearin’ me no motherfuckin’ new asshole.”
Uncle Jackson’s gun went off six times before Uncle Jilly got to him. Theresa counted the shots, then counted the clicks. One click, two clicks, three clicks, four clicks. Then Uncle Jilly and Uncle Jackson were running back to the car and the car was flying out of the parking lot.
“I seen it, Jilly,” Uncle Jackson said. “That damned look. I seen it real, real clear.”
At first, Theresa thought Uncle Jilly was going to use his own gun. Use it to kill Uncle Jackson. But then he started laughing. He laughed for a long time, his chest bouncing up and down like he just couldn’t stop, like he’d just seen the funniest thing in the world.
Moodrow had planned to ride in utter silence, had actually encouraged this twice in the first few miles by slamming his elbow into the side of Carlo Sappone’s head. Unfortunately, the shots, though well delivered, had the opposite of the intended effect. They stimulated Carlo’s already pumping adrenal glands to even greater efforts, the hormone then chasing the cocaine through his brain and into his tongue.
“What? It’s money, right? It’s money you want and, baby, I got it. Down in my basement I got a safe it’s packed with cash. That’s cause I got a buy comin’ up tomorrow. Sixty-five large, man. It’s a score, a fuckin’ score, all ya gotta do is jump off the Expressway at William Floyd Parkway. Take ten minutes at the most and ya walk away split-tin’ sixty-five large. Hey, it couldn’t hurt, ya know what I mean?”
Moodrow slowly turned his head, letting it swivel like a tank turret until his eyes were inches away from Sappone’s.
“You’re really getting me pissed off, Carlo,” he said. “I mean really pissed off.” He took out the .25 automatic, laid it on his lap, watched Sappone’s eyes widen. Hoping it would shut the man up.
“This ain’t right. I mean it just ain’t right. I haven’t done nothin’ to nobody. Like I never step on nobody’s toes, like I don’t owe nobody, like I don’t mess with nobody’s old lady. I’m a fuckin’ good guy.”
Moodrow glanced from the side of Gadd’s face to her reflection in the rearview mirror. Was she repressing a grin? A smirk? He couldn’t be sure. But she was definitely holding the car’s speed down. Old ladies in Hyundais were passing them like they were standing still.
“Okay,” Sappone said, “I think I got this figured out. Somebody’s got a grudge against me for somethin’ I don’t even know nothin’ about, right?” He paused, tried to pull his head back far enough to focus on Moodrow’s eyes. “Hey, somebody else wants my territory, that’s fine with me. I’m already gettin’ tired of the life, plus my woman’s bustin’ my balls I should take a test for the Post Office. Hell, man, I got a kid, she’s not even a year old. Ya wanna see a picture?” He stopped again, rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “Kids need their fathers, right? Ain’t that what’s fuckin’ wrong with America these days? Kids growin’ up without no fathers? You don’t want that on ya conscience, do ya?”
“You can’t have something on your conscience,” Moodrow observed, “unless you have a conscience.”
“Yeah, I could definitely see that. But think about this …”
Moodrow put his left forefinger to his lips, then raised the automatic and laid it against Sappone’s temple.
“If you don’t shut the fuck up,” he whispered, his mouth inches away from Sappone’s ear, “I’m gonna open the door, pull the trigger, push you out, see how far you roll before somebody runs you over.”
“All right, all right. I won’t say another word. But just think about what I been tellin’ ya, because I’m willin’ to do whatever it takes to walk away from this.” He made a cross on his left breast. “Sacred word of honor.”
Moodrow was tempted to put the question to Sappone right then and there. The man was ripe, that was obvious enough, but making Sappone talk (assuming he really did know where Jilly was living) would lead to another problem. What was to stop Carlo, once he was released, from warning Jilly? There was fear, of course, but who Carlo would be most afraid of was anybody’s guess. Handcuffing the man to a tree in a place where he wouldn’t be found until the following morning—that was the kind of guarantee Moodrow needed. He wasn’t about to settle for anything less, even if it put another hour between himself and Jilly Sappone.
They rode in merciful silence, the traffic thinning out as they pierced the heart of the Long Island pine barrens. The headlights of oncoming cars revealed a dense, seemingly impenetrable curtain of scrub pine and dwarf hardwoods that turned solid black as the cars rushed by. Carlo Sappone’s hopes seemed to darken as well. Moodrow could smell the pungent mixture of cocaine sweat and pure terror rising off the man’s body like fog off the surface of a swamp.
Carlo only stirred once. As they came up on the exit for William Floyd Parkway, a mile from his home, he turned to gaze at the off ramp. When it slid by, he looked up at Moodrow.
“This is really gonna happen, right?” His voice was soft, wistful, surprised.
Moodrow didn’t answer and fifteen minutes later, at Exit 70, Gadd turned off into a landscape so dead black they might as well be driving down into a cave. She made the first right, as instructed, onto a two-lane road, and gradually eased the Caprice up to sixty miles per hour.
“Ya think I could have one last snort? Like for old times’ sake?”
Moodrow, having other things on his mind, carefully maintained his great-stone-face impression. His eyes were riveted to the cone of illumination thrown by the car’s headlights. When they swept past a white, red-roofed house with the single word GRACE’S painted on its siding, he breathed a sigh of relief. The place was a glorified hot-dog stand, the only restaurant within miles. He and Betty had stopped there on their visit to eastern Long Island the previous summer. Which meant the Shrine wasn’t more than a couple of miles down the road.
“Rrrrrrrrrroar, rrrrrrrrroar.” Jackson-Davis bounced his plastic dinosaur along the top of the front seat. He’d found the tyrannosaurus in his McDonald’s Happy Meal and now he was pretending to entertain little Theresa. What he was really doing was entertaining himself. Wishing that someone had given him a plastic dinosaur when he was growing up. Thinking his life would’ve turned out a lot different if his old ma had given him a plastic dinosaur instead of sinnin’ with Reverend Luke.
He looked over at Jilly, wondering if maybe he should say what he was thinking, but old Jilly was spooning the last of his third icecream sundae into his mouth. Bitter experience had taught Jackson that Jilly didn’t like to be interrupted when he was eating.
Jackson-Davis shifted his focus to little Theresa. She looked so cute with a napkin spread across her lap, nibbling at the edges of her little hamburger like she was eating an ear of corn.
“How is it?” he asked. “Ain’t that a deeeeee-licious hamburger.” His old ma us to say it like that: “deeeeee-licious.”
Theresa looked at Jilly, then back at him. “It’s fine, thank you.” Then she looked over at Jilly, again, ready for an explosion.
But Jilly didn’t explode. Instead, he tossed the remains of his sundae out the window, leaned against the seat, and closed his eyes. They were a few blocks off the Long Island Expressway in the town of Little Neck. Their small house was still an hour away and he was very tired.
If he’d kept to his original plan—his game plan—he’d already be moved out of that house. But, of course, his game plan hadn’t included shooting himself in the leg or staying overnight in Worcester, Massachusetts. That didn’t mean he couldn’t move. After all, there was no furniture, no dishes, no silverware to pack. How long could it take him to throw his small wardrobe into a plastic trash bag? Only he was tired after all the driving and his leg was starting to throb.
“Hey, Jackson.”
“Yeah, Jilly.”
“You remember what I said about movin’ today.”
“Sure do, Jilly. Only it ain’t today no more. It’s tonight.”
Jilly resisted the urge to slap his partner, knowing that if he indulged that urge every time it rose into his brain, Jackson’s ugly face would be swollen to the size of a pumpkin.
“Now, listen up, Jackson. This is important.” Jilly waited for Jackson-Davis to face him. “Whatta ya think about movin’ tonight? Because, what it is, I’m worried about that punk, Carlo. Sooner or later, somebody’s gonna figure they can find us by findin’ him. I mean let’s face the truth, Carlo’s a fuckin’ coke junkie and he’ll give us up in a hot second. You with me here?”
Jilly watched Jackson’s face work as he considered the question, watched his eyes roll, his nose twitch, his mouth scrunch up. The performance was so disgusting that Jilly was instantly sorry he’d brought the subject up.
“Darn it all to heck, Jilly, I just can’t, for the life of me, see why you gotta use that language around little Theresa. Ain’t you got no respect for innocence?”
Moodrow had almost given up when he saw the small metal sign in the grass by the side of the road. There wasn’t much to it, just an arrow and the single word SHRINE.
“Take the right,” he told Gadd.
The Caprice swerved onto an even narrower side road without slowing down. A few seconds later, the lanes separated and the car’s headlights swept over a full-size, intensely white replica of Michelangelo’s Pietà. It was gone in a moment, seeming to Moodrow almost an afterimage, a dream memory, yet it had the desired effect on Carlo Sap-pone.
“What kind of fuckin’ place is this?” he asked.
“It’s where people come to pay for their sins,” Moodrow replied. He pressed the .25 into Sappone’s ribs. “Slow it down,” he said to Gadd. “I don’t wanna miss the trail.” A few seconds later, a small wooden sign mounted on metal strips swam up in the headlights. “This is it. Right here.” The car slowed further, then came to a stop with the lights illuminating a single word, “CALVARY.”
Moodrow reached across Sappone’s body, pushed the door open. “Last stop, Carlo. Everybody out.”
Slowly, as if nursing an injury, Sappone slid his right leg over the edge of the seat. His foot grazed the asphalt, then came back into the car. He turned to Moodrow, a half smile on his sweating face.
“I don’t wanna hear no sad stories,” Moodrow said. “I’m in a hurry.”
He shoved Carlo out, followed quickly, breathed in the cool, country air. A steady breeze whistled through the pines, forming a base for the repetitive, metallic cry of some animal. Moodrow, his left hand gripping Sappone’s right bicep, listened for a moment.
“What is that?” he asked.
“What’s what?” Gadd, four-cell flashlight in hand, was standing behind him. Her voice was chipper, actually cheery.
“That noise. What is it, some kinda bug?”
“Tree frogs,” Sappone said. “Spring peepers. It’s like a mating call.”
Gadd ran the flashlight beam through the scrub for a moment. “Must be invisible tree frogs. Invisible alien tree frogs from outer space.”
Moodrow grunted, then dragged Sappone onto a narrow path leading up through the trees. He could feel Carlo tremble, feel the man’s fear through his fingertips as they followed the narrow beam of light. Moodrow was expecting some kind of resistance, a last stand, but Sappone stumbled along in silence until he caught sight of the first statue, a kneeling Roman soldier leaning on a shield. The soldier was looking up, one hand in front of his face, as if to ward off a blinding light.
“Oh, Lord,” Carlo moaned. “Lord, Lord, Lord.”
His knees buckled, but his forward progress continued because Moodrow simply dragged him along, refusing to allow the smaller man to fall. Then the second statue, a soldier on one knee holding a spear, jumped into focus as if the flashlight beam was a theatrical spotlight exploding onto a darkened stage.
Sappone began to cry, then actually wail as Gadd’s flashlight swept relentlessly forward to reveal a white-robed Christ standing with upraised hand and face, then a flat, gray building with a square of stone pushed off to one side of an open doorway.
Moodrow half carried Sappone through the door, pushed him down into the long, rectangular sarcophagus inside, then stepped back. He took the flashlight from Gadd and shoved it to within a foot of Sappone’s face.
“You like game shows?” he asked.
Sappone shook his head, nodded, shook it again. He couldn’t stop crying long enough to form a sentence until Gadd slapped his face. Then he took a sharp breath, whispered. “I don’t know.”
Moodrow cocked the little automatic, producing a sharp click that sent Carlo back to blubbering. Gadd slapped him again, this time much harder.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Sappone almost shouted. “I like game shows.”
“Good,” Moodrow said, “because I’m gonna ask you some questions. If you get them right, you win a nice prize. On the other hand …” He let his voice trail away, let the silence surround them for a moment. “First question: Who sent us?”
Sappone finally managed an expression beyond pure terror. While it wasn’t exactly hope, it did show interest in the possibility of a life beyond the grave.
“What’s the matter,” Gadd said, “cat got your tongue?”
“I’m tryin’ to think.”
“That’s all well and good, Carlo,” she continued, “but letting the buzzer go off without giving an answer may not be in your self-interest.”
As he waited, the silence as enveloping as the darkness outside Sappone’s illuminated face, Moodrow felt his heart pounding in his chest. He’d been moving from point to point with perfect confidence. As if he was certain that Carlo Sappone knew where his cousin was hiding. Now that the moment of truth had finally arrived, his own doubts threatened to overwhelm him.
He told himself that, no matter how it came out, he’d made all the right moves, that he’d been forced by circumstance to race headlong into the investigation, to keep his face forward, that even if his assumptions were correct, even if this miserable coke junkie led them directly to Jilly Sappone, Theresa might be already beyond help.
“Carmine sent ya,” Carlo finally whispered. “Carmine Stettecase.”
Moodrow’s breath whooshed out. He started to ask the next question, realized he was panting and his knees were shaking.
“Why?” he finally said. “Why did Carmine send us?”
“I didn’t mean nothin’ bad for Carmine,” Carlo whined. He was looking directly into the flashlight beam, as if into Moodrow’s eyes. “I swear to God, man. When Josie called me last year, told me Jilly was gonna get out, when she sent the retard over? Swear to Christ, man, I didn’t know Jilly was gonna go crazy. What was I, fifteen years old when he got sent upstate?”
Moodrow dropped to one knee, pushed the flashlight closer to Sappone’s face, watched a bead of sweat roll the length of his nose to hang from the fleshy tip like a drop of snot.
“Where is he, Carlo?”
“Are you gonna kill me if I tell ya?” The question was innocently put, the query of a child.
“No, I’m not. I can’t kill you, because you might be lying to me and if you’re dead I can’t ask you again.” He tapped Sappone’s forehead with the edge of the flashlight. “See, what I plan to do is handcuff you with your arms around one of those trees outside. If you’re tellin’ me the truth, I won’t have to come back and somebody’ll find you in the morning. Me, I’ll be too busy with Jilly to worry about you.” He dropped the beam of light onto Carlo’s face and waited.
“Jilly’s got a house.”
“Where?”
“On Middle Island Road. Six-twelve Middle Island Road. In Medford.”
Moodrow started to rise, then remembered the most important part. “What township, Carlo. If you don’t tell me the goddamned township, I’ll never find it on the map.”
“The place is called the Shrine of Our Lady of Long Island,” Moodrow said, “and the reason I remember is because of the vans and the kids.” Having surrendered the map to his partner, he was driving with a heavy foot, steering the Caprice back toward the Long Island Expressway and not giving much of a damn for the speed limit. He was more than eager now, and the car seemed to echo his haste, jumping forward with every tap on the gas pedal. “What somebody did—or some group, I don’t know which—was buy up a big parcel, fifteen, twenty acres at least, and cut a path through the woods. Then they carved out niches between the trees and set up the Stations of the Cross. Were you raised Catholic?”
Gadd shook her head, kept her eyes glued to the map. “My father hated organized religion, used to rave about it. My mother didn’t give a damn one way or the other.” She held the flashlight close to the map, found herself squinting nevertheless. “Go west on the Expressway, to Exit 64. I’ll figure out what to do next while we’re riding.”
“Got it.” He eased the Caprice onto the Long Island Expressway, then accelerated up to seventy-five. “What I was saying about the vans. Me and Betty, we visited the Shrine last summer. Betty called it a ‘functioning artifact,’ something like that, which was why she wanted to see it. For me it was mostly boring, because I was raised Catholic, so the Stations weren’t exotic. Besides, this was in August and it was blazing hot. By the time we came out the far end of the trail I was soaked with sweat.”
Moodrow stopped abruptly. His mind kept pushing ahead to Jilly Sappone’s house in Medford, running through the possibilities. A direct assault was clearly impossible. They couldn’t walk up and knock on the door, demand entry. Jilly would kill them, even if he thought they were cops. But that didn’t necessarily mean they had to sit in the car and wait for Jilly to come out. They might find the house unoccupied, try a little b&e, prepare a nice surprise for Jilly when he eventually came home. That would depend on how close the neighbors were, how much shrubbery surrounded the house. Or he could get Jim Tilley on the horn, let the NYPD notify the Suffolk County cops and the FBI.
“What happened with the vans?” Gadd was looking over at him, the map lying across her thighs.
“Yeah, the vans.” Moodrow glanced down at the speedometer, eased off the gas slightly. “All I could think about, when we finally got back to the parking lot, was the air conditioner in the car. I’d parked it under a tree so I figured it wouldn’t be too heated up. Then I noticed these vans, there must have been six or seven of them, unloading kids at the entrance to the Stations. Some of these kids had no hair, like it’d fallen out from chemotherapy. And all of them had that kind of gray complexion people get when they’re terminally ill.
“It was something you definitely couldn’t ignore. Pitiful, right? Like they were making their own march to the cross. But what caught my attention was that the parents were missing. There were maybe twenty or thirty kids and only six adults, three of them nuns, to herd everybody up onto the trail. Hot as it was, I walked over to one of the vans, spoke to the driver, asked him what was going on. He told me they take the kids to the different Stations and pray for a group miracle. Like the miracle could hit one kid or be shared by all of them. I don’t know why, but it got to me. ‘Shotgun salvation,’ that’s what Betty called it.”
“I see what you mean.” Gadd rolled down the window, took a breath of fresh air. “I guess Theresa Kalkadonis could use a little piece of a miracle right now. Like maybe there won’t be anybody home when we get to Jilly’s house. Better yet, she’ll be there by herself.”
Moodrow, with nothing to add, kept his eyes glued to the road. The darkness seemed to be sucking the car forward, the headlights merely illuminating a path into the whirlwind. Jilly Sappone’s house stood at the calm center of that storm. It was as if there was nothing between the two of them but time.
“I don’t know what Exit 64 is called,” Gadd said. “I can’t tell from the map. Could be Route 112, Medford Avenue, Patchogue Road—it seems like the name of the streets change from town to town. What you have to do is go north, then take the right-hand fork when you get past Horse Block Road. That’ll be Middle Island Road.”
The first sign, EXIT 64/2 MILES, flashed by and Moodrow dutifully moved to the right lane and eased off the gas pedal. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Gadd take an S&W Airweight from her purse, open the cylinder, slide a bullet into an open chamber. Like many cops, she kept the hammer of her .38 on an empty chamber, accepting the loss of firepower in the name of safety. This despite the manufacturer insisting that the weapon cannot discharge with the hammer down.
“When was the last time you fired that piece?” he asked.
Gadd answered without looking at him. “Three days ago,” she said. Then, after a pause, “I used to shoot in department competitions. Best I ever got was a third place, but I met a lot of ranking officers. For all the good it did me.” She hesitated again. “Don’t worry, Moodrow. I’ll hit what I’m aiming at. Assuming I’m not paralyzed with terror.”
“All right, all right.” Moodrow braked sharply as he slid onto the off-ramp. “I’m sorry I brought it up. You can’t blame me for wanting to know.”
Gadd said nothing for a moment, waiting until the car came to a full stop at the end of the ramp. “Take a right. The fork should be at the next intersection.”
They drove the block in silence, pulling up as the light turned red.
“How ’bout you, Moodrow? You fire the gun on the job?”
Gadd was turned to him now, her .38 lying in her lap. As he watched, she emptied her bag onto the floor, then put the revolver inside the bag. She did it, he noted, with her hands, not her eyes, snuggling the weapon into a place where she could get to it fast.
“When I came on the job,” Moodrow said, “if some jerk ran away, all you had to do was fire a single warning shot. After that, assuming he didn’t take the hint, you could kill him and the job would back you up. Didn’t matter if he was unarmed.”
Gadd was about to say, “That’s not what I asked you,” when the light changed and Moodrow accelerated onto Middle Island Road. Two narrow lanes wide and devoid of any on-street lighting, the road curved through the woods with only an occasional house on either side. The first house they came to, set back forty feet, bore the number 238 under a porch light. The second was completely dark, as was the third. The fourth and fifth were set close to the sidewalk. Gadd called out the numbers 446 and 490 as they passed, added, “We’re closing in.”
They drove the next several hundred yards in total darkness, until Middle Island Road took a sharp bend to the right and they passed a dark house, then a house numbered 636. A hundred yards farther on, Gadd announced the number 772.
“We passed it,” she said, “two houses back.”
Moodrow nodded, allowed himself a moment to visualize Jilly Sappone’s home. He pulled up the image of a small, single-story house served by a long, straight driveway. There were no lights of any kind, not even over the tiny porch, the building just a darker shadow against the trees behind it.
“There was nothing close by, right?” he finally asked. “No neighbors?”
“None.” Gadd was smiling, her eyes sparkling despite the car’s dark interior. “Christ,” she said, “it’s a gift.”
“Yeah,” Moodrow agreed, “but we still have to find a place to park and we still have to hike back to the house. You see a way to circle around, come past again?”
“Take a right at the next intersection. Granny Road.”
“Granny? You gotta be kidding.”
Gadd turned to Moodrow, started to respond, thought better of it. She put her handbag on her lap, finding the revolver’s weight somehow reassuring. Her heart was pounding in her chest, but as she’d bought her own ticket, she couldn’t bring herself to start complaining now that the roller coaster was cresting the hill.
Even with no traffic, it took Moodrow almost ten minutes to get back to the intersection of Route 112 and the Long Island Expressway. Roads that seemed relatively short on the map stretched out into the darkness for what seemed like miles. By the time he pulled up to the red light, he was cursing himself for not using someone’s driveway to make a simple U-turn.
There were three cars driving north on Route 112 and Moodrow scanned them impatiently, anxious to make a right turn against the light. The first two carried no passengers and took an immediate left onto the Expressway service road, but the third caught his attention. He could see two men in the vehicle, one in front and one in back. The setup would have been unusual, even in a large sedan, a Cadillac or a town car, but the men were riding in a Ford Taurus. Maybe they were running with the front seat pushed all the way up, but, even so, the man riding behind had to be squeezed in.
As the car slid past Moodrow’s Caprice, the man in back turned to glance out the window. Despite the fourteen years and the tight gray beard, Moodrow recognized Jilly Sappone without hesitation. It might have been the large, sharp nose, Sappone’s most prominent feature, or the way his narrow, probing eyes swept over the Caprice to lock onto Moodrow’s. Either way, the shock charged Moodrow down to his toes. He barely had time to register the Ford’s sudden acceleration when he was seized by a single idea: If I lose Sappone now, I’ll never get him back.
He made the turn, jammed the gas pedal against the floorboard, was almost on Sappone’s trunk before he even considered the near certainty that Theresa Kalkadonis was in the car. By then it was much too late. Even as Moodrow began to fall behind, the sunroof on the Taurus slid back and the flapping edges of a white blanket appeared in the opening. Slowly, inch by inch, the blanket, and the object it so obviously concealed, rose above the retreating automobile. Then, all at once, Jilly Sappone tossed the package into the night air and the blanket flew open, framing the small, frightened child like the wings of an angel.