Hurt Machine (17 page)

Nick spoke for both of us. “Yeah, kid, we know. We were cops once.”

“Who you muscling for, Joey?” I asked.

The kid went green and Nick came to his rescue.

“Moe, let’s just say he works for friends of mine and leave it at that, okay?”

“Fine. Business must be booming in this shitty economy,” I said. “People are desperate to get loans wherever they can, but then when they have to pay the principal back with the vig on top … You must be doing a lot of convincing these days.”

“Fuck, yeah. Busy all the time. I’m making out pretty good.”

“This is all very interesting, but what’s this got to do with—”

“He’s coming to that, Moe. Relax. Go ahead, Joey, tell him.”

“A few months ago, a guy comes to me that I used to work with in a firehouse in the Bronx. He says he heard I was looking to pick up extra cash since I got out of the joint. Sure, I says. Why would I turn down extra cash, right? So he says he got a friend that wants to talk to me about a job, but when I ask him what kinda job, he don’t answer. All he says is that it ain’t about collections and I should talk with this other guy and he’ll fill me in. He gives me a phone number for this other guy and—” Joey stopped abruptly, nodding toward the waiter headed our way.

“Cold antipasto platter,” said the old man as he laid the dish at the center of the table. “Enjoy.”

Nick forked some Genoa salami, provolone cheese, and a roasted pepper, ripped off a hunk of bread and made a little folded sandwich. He washed it down with wine and finally noticed Fortuna’s silence. “You like a jukebox, kid, or what? I gotta put a quarter in you every time I wanna get sound out? Tell the fuckin’ story already or we’ll still be here when they open up tomorrow morning.”

By the sour expression on Joey’s face, it was evident he didn’t appreciate Nick’s sarcasm or his ordering him around, but my guess was that Joey wasn’t here out of the goodness of his heart and he was either doing someone a favor or being paid handsomely—maybe by Nick, maybe not—to be here and tell me his story.

“So I called the guy and he says he’s asked around about me and that he heard I could be trusted because I didn’t give up the names of the guys I was dealing ’roids with and I did the full bid inside instead of rolling over on my partners. So he asks me if I’d be interested in picking up some extra ’scarole for a job. I asked how much and for what. Before he tells me, he asks if I get squeamish about hurtin’ women. I told him I didn’t get off on it or nothin’, but if a bitch borrowed money and didn’t pay back on time, she got treated like the rest of ’em. Their fingers and arms break jus’ like everybody else’s.”

“Is this going somewhere?” I asked, sipping on the wine.

“Let the man talk and you’ll see,” Nick chided.

“The guy says he’ll pay me five large to t’row a scare into this bitch, that I can hurt her all I want and that if she died, he wouldn’t shed no tears over it. He said just to make sure it was slow and that it hurt. I told him I wasn’t gonna kill nobody and that if I was, five large wasn’t large enough. He said ten was the best he could do, but that if he had some more time, he might be able to come up with another five. I said that I still wasn’t interested in killin’ nobody, especially a woman, but that five grand would buy him a lot of hurt. He said he’d send me half the money and information about where I could find the woman.”

With a sense of where this was going, I speeded up the process. “He sent you the money?”

“Twenty-five hundred in used twenties and this,” he said, sliding a folded piece of paper across the table to me.

Tucked inside the paper was a grainy newspaper headshot of Alta Conseco. Alta’s address and phone numbers were printed on the paper. Even knowing what was coming, I felt my eyes get big when I saw the photo.

“Did you kill her?”

“No, man. What are you, fuckin’ crazy? You think I’d come in here and tell you this shit if I—”

“Calm down, Joey,” I said. “I’m not stupid and I don’t think you are either, but I had to ask. So, what happened after you got this package?”

“I recognized the bitch. I mean, the guy even sent me a newspaper picture, right? I read the papers and I listen to the news. No way I was gettin’ mixed up in this shit. It’s one thing to put some hurt on some loser nobody ever heard of. It’s somethin’ else to do somebody who’s got reporters following them around. I kept callin’ that number until the guy answered. I told him I wasn’t interested and asked him where I should send the money back to.”

“What happened when you told him you weren’t interested?”

“Man, he went like freakin’ batshit on me. Cursin’ at me in Spanish, callin’ me faggot and cunt and—”

I interrupted him. “Spanish?”

“Yeah, you learn those curse words pretty fast inside. He told me he’d kill me if I ever said a word to anybody and he sounded like he meant it. What a fuckin’ temper on that guy. He went off, man. He gave me a PO box to send the money to, but I told him I was keepin’ the paper to make sure he stayed away from me. I’m tellin’ you, he was crazy, that guy.”

“You never got his name?”

“Are you kiddin’ me? That was the whole point of workin’ over the phone.”

“Did he have an accent?”

“Only when he was screamin’ at me and cursin’.”

“But this friend of yours,” I said, “the one you used to work with in the Bronx, he knows the—”

Joey shot out of his chair. “I’m not goin’ there. Forget it. If I didn’t give up no names or roll over on anybody to save myself jail time, I ain’t gonna give you no names. The only reason I’m here now is because my boss told me I had to talk to Nicky, but that’s it. I told you what I had to tell you. What you do with it ain’t none of my business.” He grabbed the paper and newspaper photo and shoved them in his pocket.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Let me ask you a few more questions and then we’re done.”

Joey sat, but looked ready to bolt at any time.

“The guy you used to work with in the Bronx, the one who hooked you up, I don’t want to know his name, but he doesn’t work in the Bronx anymore, does he? He works in Queens, right?”

Joey didn’t run, but kept silent. That was answer enough for me.

“And this unnamed guy, he’s Puerto Rican, right?”

That did it. Joey stood up and bent over the table, looming right above me. “Look, I was here because I was told to talk to Nicky, but I don’t know you and I don’t like you. You jam me up with any of this and I’ll do to you what that guy wanted me to do to the bitch. You hear me, old man?” He reached for my collar, then stopped. I guess he didn’t like how my .38 felt against his ribs.

“I may be old, but my finger still works pretty good. All the steroids and HGH in the world won’t do you much good from point-blank range, asshole, so step back and get the fuck outta here. I don’t give a shit about you, but I owe Nicky, so you’re safe.”

He didn’t need to be told twice and was gone. I ate very little of the meal, good as it was, nor did I hear much of the background music over the sound of Jorge Delgado singing to me from the grave.

TWENTY-SIX

It wasn’t time to go to Detective Fuqua, not yet, anyway. So far I had some interesting, even compelling circumstantial evidence that pointed to Jorge Delgado, but nothing that would stick—as if anything would really stick to a dead man. Besides, I had a problem with things that came together too quickly and nested so seamlessly. People’s lives weren’t like model airplanes. They didn’t come with glue or parts that fit perfectly together according to the instruction sheet. They were sloppy, messy things full of competing impulses, conflicting emotions, and unresolved feelings. It had been my experience that unresolved feelings were like that undigested food people carried around in their gut: it festered and grew into the things that eventually ruined us, turned us ugly, and sometimes killed us. Unresolved feelings, I thought, were probably at the root of more pain and destruction than any other single cause in the history of humankind.

Twice before I had worked cases where the parts seemed to fit perfectly together, but the model came out wrong, all wrong. The first time was in the early eighties when Moira Heaton, a state senator’s intern, disappeared from her boss’s office on Thanksgiving Eve. After some digging, I thought I had her killer nailed. The other time was when I was looking for Sashi Bluntstone. The kidnapper and alleged murderer was practically served up on a silver platter like John the Baptist’s head. In both cases all the evidence—circumstantial and substantive—pointed one way and in both instances the evidence was wrong. I had been manipulated into taking what I had at face value. The prime suspects turned out to be false positives. So, no, I didn’t trust seamlessness and it didn’t escape my notice that on the same day I stumbled across Delgado as a suspect, I got that call from Nick. It doesn’t get more seamless than that. This time I wanted to be sure to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s before I shouted that the sky was falling.

It was a piece of cake finding out who the fireman was who had acted as the middleman between Delgado and Joey Fortuna. No need for me to go to Doyle and Devo for that. Fortuna had all but told me the guy was Puerto Rican and it wasn’t much of a leap to guess he had worked out of the same firehouse as Delgado. A few little lies and a few fifty dollar bills later and I had a name: Nestor Feliz. I waited outside the firehouse until Feliz’s shift ended and approached him as he opened his car door.

“Nestor Feliz?” I asked in that same antiseptic voice I used as a cop. It got people’s attention and it fucked with their equilibrium. He looked up, scared. Nestor had a guilty conscience about something. I held up my leather case that contained my old badge, but didn’t open it. Then I lied a bit about what was inside the leather case. “If I show you my gold shield, this will be an official conversation. If I don’t, we can have a nice little unofficial chat at a local bar and leave it at that.”

He stalled for time. “What’s this about?”

“Nestor, I can feel my fingers about ready to show you my shield.”

“Okay. There’s an Irish pub on Austin Street off Queens Boulevard.”

“I’ll follow you there.”

Parking was easier to find than usual in Forest Hills. Irony was, the pub Feliz had chosen was only a few blocks away from the 112th Precinct and I had little doubt that half the people in the bar with us were real cops, not retired old farts playing pretend. We found a quiet table in a corner. I bought Nestor a Bud and I had a Dewars. The alcohol was meant to prove this was all very unofficial.

“So, Nestor, let’s get something straight. I’m not looking to hurt you, but if you bullshit me once, I’m gonna come down on your head like a tornado.”

“What’s this about?” he repeated.

“Jorge Delgado.”

Nestor went from looking worried to angry. “He’s dead.”

“No shit! I know that. C’mon.”

“Georgie was a great fireman, a hero. Let him be. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Okay, fair enough. I’m gonna give you another name and if you say to me, ‘She’s dead,’ I’m gonna cuff you and march you down the street to the One-One-Two and book you. You ready? You understand?”

“Go ahead, yeah.”

“Alta Conseco.”

Now he went from looking angry to nauseous, which, in a way, was all the answer I needed. “I didn’t have nothing to do with that shit.”

I had to be careful here, because as much as I detested scum like Joey Fortuna, I couldn’t betray the deal Nick Roussis had made in order to get him to talk to me. It wasn’t important to me to know how Nick got word about Joey or with whom he had made the deal. You do business in New York City, you have dealings with all sorts of unsavory types. Ridiculous taxes and exorbitant fees weren’t the only reasons prices in the city were high. There were all sorts of invisible taxes and hidden fees too. Part of every dollar you spent on trucking or carting refuse or construction went into some gangster’s pocket and it wasn’t just the Mafia, the Irish, the Chinese, the Columbians, or the Russians anymore. Organized crime was a growth industry and everyone from the Indians to the Israelis to the Dominicans to the Haitians to the Vietnamese were looking for their taste. Don’t think for a second that Aaron and I were somehow above it. We weren’t. We knew where the money went and that’s why I couldn’t hurt Nicky.

“My bullshit-o-meter is starting to click away here, Nestor. Word on the street is that you were a middleman between a hitter and Jorge Delgado. I don’t have the hitter’s name, not just yet, but if I start digging around out there, I’ll find it and I’ll find him. He’s not gonna go down by himself, not for murder one.”

“Georgie was pissed at those two EMTs. When he got that way, there was no calming him down. I tried, I swear. I tried, but he just got madder. I made a few phone calls, that’s all. One guy took the job, but when the guy found out who Georgie wanted him to hurt, he backed out. When Georgie told me he offered the guy money to kill her, I told Georgie I was out of it. I mean, we was all mad at the two EMTs, especially us Puerto Ricans, but I didn’t want to kill nobody.”

“But how about Georgie? After you told him you didn’t want to be part of it anymore, did he let it go?”

“It wasn’t Georgie’s way to let things go. He was a stubborn man.”

“What happened when he found out Alta Conseco had been murdered?”