My Brother's Keeper (31 page)

‘You calling in a negotiator?'

‘Not a hostage situation, Lou. You can't take yourself hostage.'

‘You going to try talking to her?'

‘Yeah. When we find her, we'll tell her to come out with her hands up. She either comes out on her own or we go in and get her.'

Lou looked at the disabled Ford and the demolished Corvette, its front end crushed, and the double yellow lines down the middle of Lombard Avenue that seemed to bisect them both. Haggerty was face down in the street. He tried to get a look at him and his girlfriend, who he assumed was Angel Divine, collapsed on top of him. He could see her blonde hair with its fiery splashes of red. He could see her blood-stained jeans. She was wearing silver cowboy boots. Looked like good leather and expensive stitching, Lou thought. She probably wanted to be buried in them.

He looked back down the street toward City Hall only a few blocks away, where the face on the statue of William Penn looked bored by all this petty human drama, his gaze cast westward as if he were more interested in the Penn Relays at Franklin Field than what was playing out just below him. What did he care? What did anyone care if the city's founding father refused to look down from his pedestal? He'd managed to remain unscathed by the sun and the wind and the cold for all these years; naturally he'd be indifferent to the actions of one wasted nightclub owner and the women that wanted to fuck him and those that wanted to kill him. He cared even less what the cops had to say about it.

The circle of armed officers seemed to tighten around the park. Onlookers had pointed them toward the wall where the crumbling trellis still sat and the crawling vines had supplanted what was left of the roses, leaving only a tangled bed of pickers and wild, unruly bushes with thick, succulent leaves, oily with poison. They'd seen a woman run behind it. They'd seen the gun.

Some of the cops were wearing flak jackets. Others had on helmets. Most of them had either rifles or shotguns aimed at the ready. They jockeyed for position, waiting for the word from command to make their move. The snipers were sighting in their scopes, adjusting for wind and distance.

‘Let me give it a try.'

‘Give what a try?'

‘Talking.'

‘You expect me to let you go walking in the park all alone? Have a little chat with Miss Annie Oakley in the red cocktail dress? Are you crazy?'

‘Why not? You want the police assassinating a woman on the six o'clock news? What do you have to lose?'

‘I don't want to lose any cops. And even though you're the biggest fool I've ever known, I don't want to lose you either.'

‘You brought me here for a reason, Mitch. It wasn't to be a spectator.'

‘Do you know the person in the park, Lou?'

‘I might.'

‘Do you think you can talk her out without getting yourself killed?'

‘It's worth a shot.'

It was eerily quiet in Judy Garland Park considering it was the middle of the day. There was no traffic noise, no wind. The birds were silent in the trees. There was very little sound at all. Even the crowds forming at both ends of Lombard Avenue seemed to be holding their collective breath. And then, as if on cue, she appeared: the woman in the red dress, stepping gracefully from behind the battered wall.

It really was a very grand entrance, one spiked heel at a time coming across the stone walk, her legs smooth and muscular under the flesh-colored stockings. The dress was short and red, a liquid, candy-apple red that seemed to flow from her breasts to her hips as if she'd been dipped in a vat of red paint. The moment she was on her feet, she'd smoothed the wrinkles out of the thin material, her movements slow and sensual, running her hand over the glowing red dress until it was flat against her skin and then teasing a lock of blonde hair. The other hand held a large black automatic pistol.

They all stared in amazement as a gust of wind whipped between the buildings and ran across the ground into the park. It looked as if it might tear the dress right off her and she held it down with a hand between her thighs, her face hidden behind an expressionless mask of heavy make-up, red lipstick and rouge.

Her blonde hair hung in long spiral curves, the wind pushing it off her shoulders and over her face. And now that she was out in the sun, it shimmered in the cold light, appearing almost crystalline as if it had been frozen in place by a lot of spray and suddenly exposed to the wind, it was ready to crack.

‘Lights, camera, action.'

‘Mitch, let me talk to her.'

Mitch reached through the window of the police car, grabbed the mic and keyed it up, turning the knob on the transmitter until the public address system crackled and squealed.

‘Drop the gun!' His voice boomed and every officer seemed to come to attention, gripping their guns a little tighter. ‘You're surrounded! Drop the gun! Now!' The officers had begun moving, a converging army of blue still behind cover but getting closer. ‘Drop the gun and get down on the ground!'

She didn't seem to hear him. The way she looked around it seemed as if she wasn't sure where she was. She gazed up at the sky, at the sun burning through layers of white clouds as they rushed by overhead, trying to catch a lift on the jet stream. She followed them longingly with her eyes as if she'd awakened on some remote island, surveying the vast ocean spreading out on all sides and realizing for the first time that she might never leave.

Lou was able to see her face now. Her make-up had begun to wrinkle and crack. Lou imagined her putting it on in front of a mirror until she'd been unrecognizable even to herself. And now it was falling apart. Lou recognized the face as he stared at her from no more than thirty yards away, the face beginning to look as much like a man as a woman.

He came up along the opposite side of the wall and let her see him. He was asking for the gun, his hand out as if there would be some exchange, as if he had something to negotiate with, something to trade, some way he could strike a bargain they could both agree to. Whatever he had to offer, it didn't seem like much.

‘Give me the gun.' A few more steps and repeating. ‘Give me the gun. Please.'

‘I know you.'

‘You almost killed me.'

‘And now you want me to finish the job.'

‘It's not worth it.'

‘Oh, no? Well, I'm done now anyway. I'm tired. I just want to go to sleep.'

‘I know. Put the gun down, Billy, and it'll all be over.'

‘I don't think so. I don't have to listen to you. You're not my father. You're just a nobody.'

‘Franny sent me. She needs you.'

‘Franny's dead. They're all dead.'

‘No, she's not. She's getting better. She's in the hospital. She'll be out tomorrow. You can see her.'

‘She tried to help me.'

‘I know.'

‘She knows what it's like. She's the only one who understood.'

‘I understand, Billy.'

‘No you don't.'

‘Billy!'

He raised the gun in his trembling hand, not pointing it but simply raising his arm in the same orchestrated movement in which he'd stepped from behind the wall, self-conscious and self-possessed and vaguely predatory, a Hollywood starlet on the red carpet, playing the only role she knew to the bitter end.

Lou wasn't sure where the first shot had come from, a line of trees at the park's edge maybe, one of those snipers putting a round right through Billy Sapphire and he wouldn't know it until the initial burn brought the blood to his throat and his legs went weak. Lou was yelling for them to stop, yelling so loudly he was sure the whole world must have heard. And his only answer was the great volley of gunfire that seemed to come down from the heavens like a sudden hail storm on a clear day.

That first shot had only brought more. Every cop on the street took their turn, aiming at this woman in the red dress waving a gun around, her body twitching spasmodically, the red dress now riddled with bullet holes and saturated with her life's blood.

Lou hadn't taken more than a few steps from the time the gunfire started to the time it ended though time itself had seemed to stand still. Now, in the brief silence, he stood over the mangled corpse, staring into a set of lifeless eyes.

Mitch came up alongside him. The officers stormed the scene, pushing forward with their guns still smoking, some of them reloading as they came as if the blood-soaked body at their feet might spring up and lunge at them with its last dying breath.

None of them touched her and Lou couldn't help thinking how unreal it had all seemed, like one of his dreams again, wondering if he would wake up and it would all disappear, wondering too if Sapphire had planned it to unfold this way, as if this was the way he wanted it to end. And still, Lou felt as if he'd seen it coming and was unable to stop it.

He looked through the blood-smeared make-up and the splintered dress and the blood-stained pearls that still circled her neck. The blonde wig had been twisted around and pushed back from the force of the trauma and the heavily applied make-up had peeled away enough to reveal the face underneath. It was the face of a boy. A boy who was caught in his own dream and couldn't wake up.

Mitch kneeled and pushed the gun away from Billy Sapphire's slim hand. He saw the flash of color on his nails and thought it was blood before he realized it was polish. He picked it up and felt its weight. He popped out the magazine and racked the slide, locking it back and making it safe. He was crouching over the body, examining the gun. He stood with it in his hand and turned to Lou.

‘It's empty, Lou. It was empty the whole time.'

TWENTY-EIGHT

L
ou had resigned himself to the idea that funerals were a fact of life. A revelation he'd made a couple years ago at the Mass for Charlie Melvyn at St Gabe's. He'd stood outside smoking for much of the eulogy, wondering what the hell Father Kane could say about Charlie that most of his friends from the neighborhood didn't already know. When he finally went inside and took his place among the other pallbearers, the casket had been closed and there was nothing left to do but carry his old friend out.

Lou had worn his dark blue sport jacket over a light blue shirt. He was wearing the same thing today. His pants were a soft wool blend and if he had to describe the color, he would have said copper, the color of an old penny. He wore brown loafers with leather laces that seemed to come slowly untied no matter how tight he tied them, women always whispering in his ear for him to tie his shoes. He'd shaved, though, and Maggie was thankful for that.

She was on his arm in a pair of black pants with gray pinstripes, a gray shirt, a shiny black belt with a silver buckle and a matching black jacket. She wore heels, the big square ones that brought her very close to Lou's height. There were four or five guys smoking cigarettes outside St Peter's Cathedral and Lou and Maggie walked past them up the wide granite stairs. They looked like cops.

Mitch was sitting in the back row and they slid in next to him. Joey and Betty sat across the aisle. Organ music filled the church with an Irish funeral dirge saved only for cops and firemen and soldiers.

Jimmy was laid out in a charcoal-gray suit and a raspberry-red tie with a white shirt and his hair brushed back with a layer of gel, his skin a light brown as if he'd spent the day at the shore.

Mitch leaned in close and murmured grossly, ‘He never looked better.'

‘Franny might have something to say about that.' Franny was in the front row next to her brother, Tony. Lou couldn't see her face but even from behind she looked like she'd aged. ‘Gargling with bourbon again, Mitch? I thought you were on the wagon.'

‘Very expensive bourbon. Breakfast at Francesco's.'

‘Is that anything like Breakfast at Tiffany's?'

‘Mimi threw me out last night. Frankie's renting me a room on the second floor. We're taking it day by day.'

‘After thirty years she decides to call it quits? What pushed her over the edge?'

‘I don't know. The hours, the distractions. She said I don't talk to her anymore. Said I ignore her, don't respect her. Maybe she just didn't want to share me with the Philadelphia Police Department anymore. I don't know. I guess I don't blame her.'

‘Hell of a thing to come home to after sweeping bodies off the street all day.'

‘For now, home's a single room over a bar. Looks like I might have to get used to it.'

‘Join the crowd.'

The organ music faded and Father Penn took his place on the pulpit facing the congregation. His cheeks were red and his nose was red and even his round head was red under the sparse gray hair. He must have been humbled, Lou thought, speaking to all those cops and ex-cops, the high-ranking and the low, their wives and children, all those unbelievers who assumed to know more about death than he did. He recited a few psalms and a few homilies and his words seemed to float over the congregation and get lost somewhere amidst the arched dome of stained glass. Nobody really seemed to be listening. The janitor sitting alone in the balcony, waiting to clean up, was probably listening. But he'd heard it all before.

‘I have more good news.'

‘Never doubted it.'

‘DNA report came back on Sapphire. Just preliminary. There's a lot of shit we're trying to match him up to.'

‘And . . .?'

‘Billy Sapphire does not have one drop of Haggerty blood in his veins. Not a drop.'

‘Don't tell me.'

‘The mother, as you know, is the late, great Valerie Price. The father is our boy up there, Jimmy Patterson.'

The most reverend Father Penn concluded his eulogizing for one day and his distracted flock chanted ‘Amen' in unison. Lou and Mitch stared dumbfounded at the face of Jimmy Patterson as two ushers closed the lid on the casket, turning the screws on both sides, cranking it down tight and sealing it shut. They wheeled Jimmy down the center aisle to the main doors where Lou and Mitch and Jimmy's brother and a handful of cops were waiting to carry him down the stairs and into a waiting hearse.