Jilly, like every other committed druggie, had an infallible nose for dope. When he’d first smelled it out, on the day he’d been released from prison, he’d immediately filed the information away for later use. Then he’d ripped off Patsy Gullo’s heroin and almost forgotten about Twenty-seventh Street. Almost.
As his head began to clear, Jilly focused his attention more sharply. With his eyes raised a few inches above the low wall, he could see the south side and back of his ex-wife’s building, as well as two cops parked in a brown Caprice on the west side of Third Avenue. The cops were making no effort to conceal themselves, sitting there with the windows open, elbows hanging out, as if their view of the front door guaranteed Ann Kalkadonis’s safety.
Jilly, of course, had never expected to go through the lobby. He was interested in a narrow strip of concrete running along the back of the building to a service entrance in the basement. If he approached this ramp from the north side of Twenty-seventh Street, the cops wouldn’t be able to see him or the door at the bottom. At least not the cops parked on Third Avenue. Thinking it over on the trip from his motel room, Jilly had figured that windowless steel door would be his biggest problem. If it was locked, which it usually was, he’d have to stand around, make himself a perfect target while he waited until somebody opened it from the inside.
Jilly put his palms on the ledge, pushed himself up a little higher, and laughed out loud. “My lucky day,” he said, then quickly amended the statement. “My
last
lucky day.”
Somebody had tied the wide-open basement door to a faucet on the wall of the building, that somebody undoubtedly being a representative of B&A Moving and Storage whose truck was parked at the curb. As Jilly watched, smiling to himself, two burly men came through the opening, one after the other, each pushing a dolly loaded with household furniture.
Once Jilly started moving, his body decided to wake up, get with the program. By the time he reached the second floor he was taking the steps two at a time. He paused in the hallway for a moment, inhaling the stink of piss and mold as if it was an aphrodisiac, then came out of the building, took a right without glancing at the cops, and began to walk east toward Second Avenue. Halfway down the block, he crossed the street and headed back the way he’d come. His right hand, despite the need to appear as natural as possible, remained by his waist, ready to dip beneath Agent Bob’s jacket. There was always the chance that the cops or the feds had another team out there, one he hadn’t spotted. If that was the case, he was determined to bust a few caps before he packed it in.
As he approached the moving truck, Jilly kept his eyes focused on the fat man standing inside, half expecting him to turn, weapon in hand, shout, “Police, motherfucker. Keep your hands where I can see ’em.” But the man continued to pack a mix of furniture and taped brown boxes into the front of the truck, ignoring him altogether. The same was true of the two cursing workers struggling to pass an enormous leather couch through the basement door.
“It don’t fuckin’ go, man,” the taller of the two said as Jilly slipped past. “We’re gonna have to take it out the fucking front.”
“I’m not gonna put it back in that elevator,” the second man replied. “And I’m not walkin’ it up them stairs, neither.”
They continued to argue, ignoring Jilly who stopped a few feet away to consider his next move. He was standing at one end of a wide corridor running the full length of the building. A series of doors on either side led to the boiler and compactor rooms, various storage areas, the building’s communal laundry, the super’s little office, and the elevators. Jilly had been this way on his first visit, but he’d come through fast, looking for those elevators and nothing else. Now he needed to get his bearings.
“Could I help you?” A short, broad-shouldered man wearing a blue cotton uniform stepped out of a room twenty feet away. He was standing in the middle of the hallway, feet wide apart, a fuck-you sneer plastered to his face. “You a tenant?”
“I’m lookin’ for the super.” Jilly forced himself to smile. He could feel the molten core at the base of his personality begin to bubble upward, knew that if he didn’t close the furnace door, it would own him.
“Whatta ya want him for?”
“I’m a salesman. You know, janitorial supplies, like that.”
“We got somebody.”
“Are you the super?” Jilly’s hand was already moving toward his waist.
“Uh-uh.” The man held his smirk for a moment longer, then relented. “Last door on the left.”
“Thank you.” Jilly, momentarily disappointed, consoled himself by deciding to retrace his steps when he finished with his wife, pay the man a last visit. Then, smiling, he squeezed past his interrogator and walked down the hall to the super’s office where he found an elderly black man, telephone in hand, sitting behind a battered wooden desk that seemed to fill the tiny room. The man was tall and wiry-strong, with a prominent forehead made even more prominent by a raised scar that ran over his left eye like a second eyebrow. He glanced up as Jilly entered, then returned to his conversation.
“I’ll have someone up after lunch, Ms. Carozzo. I don’t have nobody right now. Remember, this here’s the third time you plugged that drain in the last two weeks.” He rolled his eyes, muttered an occasional “yeah” as he listened, finally said, “Ya’ll wanna blame the plumbing, that’s fine with me, but last time we took a tube of Crest outta the trap. You tole me your little boy done flushed it down there.” He paused again, listened briefly, then ran his fingers through his snow white hair. “After lunch, Ms. Carozzo. First thing.”
Jilly, fighting an urge to lick his lips in anticipation, glanced at a nameplate lying on the super’s desk. Originally of white letters on a black background, it was now so gray and dirty that it took him a moment to read the words,
Leuten Kitt.
“You lookin’ at the name right? My mama called me Leuten because my father was in the army. Leuten is short for lieutenant.”
“No shit?”
“If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.” He flashed Jilly a friendly smile. “Now what could I do you for on this fine, fine morning?”
“You could answer a simple question.”
“I’m listenin’.”
Slowly, as if reaching for his business card (which he was, in a way) Jilly slid a hand beneath his jacket, pulled Agent Bob’s automatic, pressed it against the tip of Leuten Kitt’s nose. “The question of the hour,” he said, “is do you wanna live or do you wanna die?” He cocked the hammer by way of driving his point home, then quickly added, “Don’t be shy now. Because you ain’t got the time to think it over.”
“What I need to know,” Moodrow said as he plucked a jelly doughnut from a greasy paper sack and bit into it, “is why, you being a politician, the FBI would give you the time of day?” He popped the lid on a container of coffee and sipped at the steaming liquid. “Any more than a New York cop would give the time of day to a deputy mayor.” A half hour had gone by since Special Counsel Cooper’s unexpected appearance and Moodrow still wasn’t sure what the man wanted to hear.
Buford Cooper toyed with the crease on his trousers for a moment, then raised a pair of lazy blue eyes to meet Moodrow’s unwavering stare. “Well, they won’t,” he admitted. “Give me the time of day, I mean.”
“Then how’d you get to me?”
“I took advantage of the chaos.” Cooper stood up, pulled off his jacket, folded it carefully before laying it on the table. “With the commander in chief among the missing … Well, let’s just say none of the ranking officers wanted to tell me an outright lie. Not when I already knew you were here.” He walked to the far wall, faced it as if looking out a window. When he spoke again, his tone was almost wistful. “We’ve been under pressure since the day we took office. One scandal after another, most of them pure bullshit. I suppose we can deal with another political crisis—we’ve certainly had enough practice—but it would be nice to see it coming.”
“Pardon me if I don’t cry in my coffee.” Moodrow had always reserved a special position on his mutt list for professional politicians. “Tell me how you plan to get me out of here. Being as you have no direct authority over the FBI.” Determined to maintain an external calm, he resisted the urge to turn and face Cooper. Instead, he finished his doughnut in a single, gargantuan bite, then, one at a time, licked his fingers clean.
Cooper replied without hesitation. “Assuming that I’m satisfied with your story, I plan to simply
walk
you out.” He strolled back to his chair, sat down, shook a Viceroy out of a half-empty pack. “There’s no paperwork on you, none at all. Theoretically, even as we speak, you’re not here.”
Moodrow contemplated the bag of doughnuts for a moment, wanting to reach in, mask his anxiety by stuffing his mouth. Instead, he rolled up the edges of the bag and pushed his coffee away. “You a lawyer?” he asked.
“Of course.” Cooper followed the admission with a faint smile.
“Then you can understand me when I say I’ve got a very circumstantial case here. One that couldn’t be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. At least, not by me.” He waited until Cooper nodded his understanding, then continued. “You aware of the narcotics bust that’s supposed to go down today?”
“Assume I don’t know anything,” Cooper replied. “Because I don’t.” He lit his cigarette and leaned back in the chair.
“In that case, we’re gonna have to back up a little.” Now that he’d made the basic decision, Moodrow wanted to tell the story completely—knowing that if he didn’t, Cooper, despite the buddy-buddy manner, would have him going over the details for the next twelve hours. He began with Jilly Sappone’s father and the injury to Jilly, worked his way through Josie Rizzo and her daughter’s marriage, Carmine Stettecase’s problems with Jilly, and the frame-up that sent Jilly to prison.
“The board turned Jilly down when he came up for parole,” he concluded, “then reversed itself when Karl Holtzmann, or maybe his boss, intervened because Josie Rizzo was supplying the FBI with information on Carmine Stettecase and a huge dope deal Carmine was setting up.”
Cooper started to speak, then changed his mind. He signaled Moodrow to continue with a languid wave of his cigarette.
“What I’ve told you so far, that’s the good news.” Moodrow picked up the bag of doughnuts, weighed it in his palm for a moment, then returned it to the table with a little sigh. “On the day he got out of prison, Jilly Sappone teamed up with a former cell mate, Jackson-Davis Wescott. They kidnapped a child on the first day, then committed at least three murders together, one of which I personally witnessed. A few days ago, Wescott turned up in Riverside Park with a knife in his ribs and Jilly Sappone disappeared. I’m saying that Karl Holtzmann and Robert Ewing and the US attorney you mentioned decided to protect Jilly Sappone, at least until after they took Carmine down. I’m saying something went wrong and now Jilly Sappone’s on the loose.”
The silence that followed was entirely obligatory and both men knew it. Cooper, his eyes nearly closed, puffed on his cigarette as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Moodrow, watching him, knew the question to come and was busy preparing an answer that would satisfy Buford Cooper without exposing Stanley Moodrow or Ginny Gadd to the possibility of criminal prosecution.
“You haven’t told me,” Cooper finally said, “your part in …” He spread his hands, smiled again. “In all
this.
”
Moodrow tapped the metal tabletop with the side of his fist. “I’m a licensed private investigator and I was hired, for obvious reasons, by the mother of the kidnapped child. The story I just told you was pieced together in the course of my investigation. Holtzmann was afraid I’d go public before he arrested Carmine Stettecase, so he decided to put me in a cell for the duration, to stash me like he stashed Jilly Sappone.” Moodrow began to fumble with the bag of doughnuts. Now that he’d clearly stated his case, he felt entitled to a reward. “Tell me,” he asked, “what are you going to say when the bodies turn up?”
Cooper ignored the question. “I’m hearing an awful lot of speculation here,” he said.
Moodrow shrugged, mumbled, “Time will tell,” and swallowed hard.
“I suppose it will.” Cooper sat up in his chair. He glanced at his watch, shook his head, muttered, “Welcome to hell,” as he rose to his feet. “I’m going to ask you to sign a release before I let you go.”
“A release?”
“Basically stating that you were here of your own free will, that you do not now and will not in the future hold the FBI or any individual employed by the FBI responsible for your incarceration.”
“That would be a lie.”
“True, but it would at least take care of one of the several dozen problems we’re going to have to address when … when the bodies turn up.”
Moodrow stood and leaned across the table. Unable to control his joy, he giggled in Buford Cooper’s face, then quickly apologized. “What could I say, Cooper? I guess I’m just an emotional guy. Now, where the fuck do I sign?”
What Leuten Kitt said, with his mouth, was, “Yessuh, I wants to live,” but what he said to himself was,
Another white man with a gun.
Leuten Kitt knew quite a bit about white men with guns, having spent virtually all of his third decade at Angola State Prison in the great state of Louisiana. There were no gray stone walls at Angola, just swamps and forests and lots of shotgun-toting white men. Of course, all that was twenty-seven years ago and he’d put his life together since then—come up north, gotten married, raised a family—but the lessons he’d learned in those nine years were never far away.
“You know who I am, nigger?”
“Nossir.” That was one of the most important lessons.
Yessir, Nossir
and bide your time.
“Get up and come around the desk.”
Kitt rose slowly, careful to keep his hands in sight. He walked over to Jilly Sappone, turned his back, submitted to a thorough frisk.
“You ready for the deal, Sambo?”
“Yessir. Ready for anythin’ y’all say.”
“I’m goin’ up to 14D. You know who lives there?”
“Yessir.”
“Turn around and look at me.”