Broussard took a long pull of his cigarette, and exhaled loudly. “You’re playing CYOA, aren’t you, Dempsey.”
Dempsey shrugged, his owl eyes still on the expressway.
“CYOA?” Angie chattered.
“Cover Your Own Ass,” Broussard said. “Major Dempsey does not want to be known as the cop who lost Amanda McCready, two hundred thousand dollars, and two lives in one night. Right?”
Dempsey turned his head until the toothpick pointed directly at Broussard. “I would not want to be known as that cop, no, Detective Broussard.”
“So I will be.” Broussard nodded.
“You did lose the money,” Dempsey said. “We let you play it your way, and this is how it turned out.” He raised his eyebrows at the Lexus as two coroner’s assistants pulled Gutierrez’s body from the driver’s seat and laid it in the black bag they’d spread on the road. “Your Lieutenant Doyle? He’s been on the phone since eight-thirty with the Police Commissioner himself, trying to explain. Last time I saw him, he was trying to stick up for you and your partner. I told him it was a waste of time.”
“What exactly,” Angie said, “was he supposed to do when they opened up on him like that? Have the presence of mind to grab the bag and dive off the cliff with it?”
Dempsey shrugged. “That would have been one alternative, sure.”
“I don’t fucking believe this,” Angie said. Her teeth stopped chattering. “He risked his life for—”
“Miss Gennaro.” Broussard stopped her with a hand on her knee. “Major Dempsey is not saying anything Lieutenant Doyle isn’t going to say.”
“Listen to Detective Broussard, Miss Gennaro,” Dempsey said.
“Someone’s got to take the fall for this cluster fuck,” Broussard said, “and I’m elected.”
Dempsey chuckled. “You’re the only one running for the office.”
He left us there and walked over to a group of troopers, speaking into his walkie-talkie as he looked back up at the quarry hills.
“This isn’t right,” Angie said.
“Yes,” Broussard said, “it is.” He flicked his cigarette, smoked down to the filter, into the street. “I fucked up.”
“We fucked up,” Angie said.
He shook his head. “If we still had the money, they could live with Amanda being still missing or dead. But without the money? We look like clowns. And that’s my fault.” He spit into the street, shook his head, and kicked the tire at his feet with the back of his heel.
Angie watched a Forensics tech slide Amanda’s doll into a plastic bag, seal it, and write on the bag with black marker.
“She’s in there, isn’t she?” Angie looked up at the dark hills.
“She’s in there,” Broussard said.
20
When dawn arrived, we were still there as the tow truck pulled the Lexus down Pritchett Street and turned into the rotary toward the expressway.
Troopers moved in and out of the hills, returning with bags filled with shell casings and several shards of bullets recovered from rock face and dug out from tree trunks. One of them had also recovered Angie’s sweatshirt and shoes, but no one seemed to know who that trooper was or what he’d done with them. Over the course of our vigil, a Quincy cop had placed a blanket over Angie’s shoulders, but still she shivered and her lips often looked blue in the combination of streetlights, headlamps, and lights set up to illuminate the crime scene.
Lieutenant Doyle came down from the hills around one and beckoned Broussard with a crooked finger. They walked up the road to the yellow crime scene tape strung around the mill building, and once they’d stopped and squared their shoulders toward each other, Doyle exploded. You couldn’t hear the words, but you could hear volume, and you could see as he jabbed his index finger in Broussard’s face that a “Shucks, we tried” attitude wasn’t informing his mood. Broussard kept his head down through most of it, but it went on a while, a good twenty minutes at least, and Doyle seemed only to get more agitated. When he was spent, Broussard looked up, and Doyle shook his head at him in such a way that even from a distance of fifty yards you could feel the cold finality in it. He left Broussard standing there and walked into the mill building.
“Bad news, I take it,” Angie said, as Broussard bummed another of her cigarettes from the pack sitting on the hood of the car.
“I’m to be suspended sometime tomorrow pending an IAD hearing.” Broussard lit the cigarette and shrugged. “My last official duty will be to inform Helene McCready that we failed to recover her daughter.”
“And your lieutenant,” I said. “The one who approved this operation. What’s his culpability?”
“None.” Broussard leaned against the bumper, sucked back on the cigarette, exhaled a thin stream of blue smoke.
“None?” Angie said.
“None.” Broussard flicked ash into the street. “I take the fall and all the responsibility, admit to covering up pertinent information so I could get all the glory for the collar, and I won’t lose my badge.” He shrugged again. “Welcome to department politics.”
Angie said, “But—”
“Oh, yeah,” Broussard said, and turned to look at her. “The lieutenant made it very clear that if you speak to anyone about this entire affair, he’ll—let me see if I got this—’bury you up to your eyelids in the Marion Socia murder.’”
I looked off at the mill building door where I’d last seen Doyle. “He’s got shit.”
Broussard shook his head. “He never bluffs. If he says he can get you for it, he can.”
I thought about it. Four years ago, Angie and I had killed a pimp and crack dealer named Marion Socia in cold blood under the southeast expressway. We’d used unregistered guns and wiped them clean of prints.
But we’d left a witness, a gangbanger-to-be named Eugene. I never knew his last name, and I’d been pretty sure at the time that if I didn’t kill Socia he’d kill Eugene. Not then, but soon. Eugene, I decided, must have taken a few pinches over the years—a career with Shearson Lehman hadn’t seemed in the kid’s future—and during one of those pinches he must have offered us up in return for a lighter sentence. Given the utter lack of evidence tying us to Socia’s death in any other regard, I’m sure the DA had decided not to follow up, but someone had tucked the information away and passed it along to Doyle.
“He’s got us by the balls, is what you’re saying.”
Broussard glanced at me, then at Angie, and smiled. “Euphemistically speaking, of course. But, yeah. He owns you.”
“Comforting thought,” Angie said.
“This week’s been full of comforting thoughts.” Broussard tossed his cigarette. “I’m going to go find a phone, call my wife, tell her the good news.”
He walked off in the direction of the cops and vans circled around Gutierrez’s Lexus, his shoulders hunched, hands dug in his pockets, his steps just a bit uncertain, as if the ground felt different underfoot than it had half an hour ago.
Angie shuddered against the chill and I shuddered with her.
The divers went back to the quarry as morning rose in gradations of bruised purple and deep pink over the hills, and yellow tape and sawhorses were used to block off Pritchett and Quarry streets as the cops prepared for morning rush hour. A contingent of troopers formed a human barrier to the hills themselves. At 5 A.M., troopers were left stationed at the access points of all major roads, but traffic was allowed to flow through checkpoints, and the highway on and off ramps were opened. Pretty soon, as if they’d been waiting just around the bend, TV news vans and print reporters camped out on the expressway, clogged the breakdown lane, and shone their lights down on us and across at the hills. Several times a reporter called down to Angie to ask why she wasn’t wearing shoes. Several times Angie answered with her head down and her middle finger rising up from where her hands lay on her lap.
At first the reporters had shown up because word had leaked that someone had unloaded a few hundred rounds from an automatic weapon in the Q
uincy quarries and two corpses had been found on Pritchett Street in what looked like a professional execution. Then, somehow, Amanda McCready’s name slid down off the hills with the dawn breeze, and the circus began.
One of the reporters on the expressway recognized Broussard, and then the rest of them did, and pretty soon we felt like galley slaves as they shouted down to us.
“Detective, where is Amanda McCready?”
“Is she dead?”
“Is she in the quarry?”
“Where’s your partner?”
“Is it true Amanda McCready’s kidnappers were shot last night?”
“Is there any truth to the rumor that ransom money was lost?”
“Was Amanda’s body retrieved from the quarry? Is that why you’re not wearing shoes, ma’am?”
As if on cue, a trooper crossed Pritchett Street with a paper bag and handed it to Angie. “Your stuff, ma’am. They sent it down with some pancake slugs.”
Angie kept her head down and thanked him, removed her Doc Martens from the bag, and put them on.
“The sweatshirt’s going to be a harder act to pull off,” Broussard said, with a small smile.
“Yeah?” Angie slid off the hood and turned her back to the reporters as one of them tried to vault the guardrail and a trooper pushed him back with an extended nightstick.
Angie dropped the blanket and raincoat off her shoulders, and several cameras swung our way at the news of her bare flesh and black bra straps.
She looked at me. “Should I do a slow strip, move my hips a bit?”
“It’s your show,” I said. “I think you have everybody’s attention.”
“Got mine,” Broussard said, staring openly at the press of Angie’s breasts against black lace.
“Oh, joy.” She grimaced and pulled the sweatshirt over her head, pulled it down her torso.
Someone on the expressway applauded, and someone else whistled. Angie kept her back to them as she pulled thick strands of her hair from the collar.
“My show?” she said to me, with a sad smile and small shake of her head. “It’s their show, man. All theirs.”
Poole’s status was changed from critical to guarded shortly after sunrise, and, with nothing to do but wait, we left Pritchett Street and followed Broussard’s Taurus over to Milton Hospital.
At the hospital, we argued with the admitting nurse over how many of us could go into ICU when none of us were Poole’s blood relatives. A doctor passed us and took one look at Angie and said, “Are you aware your skin is blue?”
After another small argument, Angie followed the doctor behind a curtain to be checked for hypothermia, and the admitting nurse grudgingly allowed us into ICU to see Poole.
“Myocardial infarction,” he said, as he propped himself up on the pillows. “Hell of a word, huh?”
“It’s two words,” Broussard said, and reached out awkwardly and gave Poole’s arm a small squeeze.
“Whatever. Friggin’ heart attack was what it was.” He hissed against a sudden pain as he shifted again.
“Relax,” Broussard said. “Christ’s sake.”
“The fuck happened up there?” Poole said.
We told him the little we knew.
“Two shooters in the woods and one on the ground?” he said when we finished.
“That’s the way it’s looking,” Broussard said. “Or one shooter with two rifles in the woods and one on the widow’s walk.”
Poole made a face like he bought that theory about as much as he believed JFK was killed by a lone gunman. He moved his head on the pillow, looked at me. “You definitely saw two rifles get dumped over the cliff?”
“I’m pretty sure,” I said. “It was nuts out there.” I shrugged, then nodded. “No, I’m sure. Two rifles.”
“And the shooter at the mill leaves his gun behind?”
“Yup.”
“But not the shell casings.”
“Right.”
“And the shooter or shooters in the woods get rid of the rifles but leave shell casings everywhere.”
“That is correct, sir,” Broussard said.
“Christ,” he said. “I don’t get this.”
Angie came into the ward then, dabbing at her arm with a cotton swab, flexing the forearm up against the biceps. She came over to Poole’s bed and smiled down at him.
“What’d the doctor say?” Broussard asked.
“Low-grade hypothermia.” She shrugged. “He shot me up with chicken soup or something, said I’d keep my fingers and toes.”
Color had returned to her flesh—not nearly as much as usual, but enough. She sat on the bed beside Poole and said, “The two of us, Poole—we look like a couple of ghosts.”
His lips cracked when he smiled. “I hear you emulated the famous cliff divers of the Galapagos Islands, my dear.”
“Acapulco,” Broussard said. “There are no cliff divers in the Galapagos.”
“Fiji, then,” Poole said, “and stop correcting me. Again, kids, what the hell is going on?”
Angie patted his cheek lightly. “You tell us. What happened to you?”
He pursed his lips for a moment. “I’m not real sure. For whatever reason, I found myself walking down the hill. Problem was, I left my walkie-talkie and my flashlight behind.” He raised his eyebrows. “Bright, wouldn’t you say? And when I heard all the gunfire, I tried to head back up to where I’d come from, but no matter what I did, it seemed like I kept moving away from the noise, instead of toward it. Woods,” he said with a shake of his head. “Next thing I know I’m at the corner of Quarry Street and the off-ramp from the expressway, and I see the Lexus shoot by. So I walk after it. Time I get there, our friends have received their head taps and I’m feeling kind of dizzy.”
“You remember calling it in?” Broussard asked.
“I did?”
Broussard nodded. “On the car phone.”
“Wow,” Poole said. “I’m pretty smart, huh?”
Angie smiled and took a handkerchief from the cart by Poole’s bed, wiped his forehead with it.
“Christ,” Poole said, his tongue thick.
“What?”
His eyes rolled away from us for a moment, then snapped back. “Huh? Nothing, just these drugs they got in me. Hard to concentrate.”
The admitting nurse parted the curtain by Broussard. “You have to go. Please.”
“What happened up there?” Poole slurred.
“Now,” the nurse said, as Poole’s eyes rolled to the left and he smacked his dry lips, batted his eyelashes. “Mr. Raftopoulos is not up to this.”
“No,” Poole said. “Wait.”
Broussard patted his arm. “We’ll be back, buddy. Don’t you worry.”
“What happened?” Poole asked again, his voice fading into sleep as we stepped back from the bed.
Good question, I thought, as we walked out of ICU.
As soon as we got back to the apartment, Angie hopped in a warm shower and I called Bubba.
“What?” he answered.
“Tell me you have her.”
“What? Patrick?”
“Tell me you have Amanda McCready.”
“No. What? Why would I have her?”
“You took out Gutierrez and—”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Bubba,” I said, “you did. You had to.”
“Gutierrez and Mullen? No way, dude. I spent two hours with my face in the dirt at Cunningham Park.”
“You weren’t even there?”
“I got hit. Someone was waiting, Patrick. I took a fucking sledgehammer or something in the back of my head, knocked me cold. I never even made it out of the park.”
“All right,” I said, and felt clouds of oil swimming through my head, “tell me again. Slow. You got to Cunningham Park—”
“At about six-thirty. I take my gear, I cut through the park toward the trees. I’m just about to go into the trees and make my way to the hills when I hear something. I start to turn my head and fu
cking—crack—someone hits me in the back of the head. Which, you know, just annoys me at first, but fucks up my vision too, and I’m starting to duck and turn, and crack again. I go to one knee, and I take a third hit. I think there might have been a fourth, but next thing I know I’m waking up in a pile of blood and it’s like eight-thirty. Time I get into the trees again, the woods are crawling with Staties. I go back, go to Giggle Doc’s.”
Giggle Doc was the ether-snorting doctor Bubba and half the mob guys in the city used to repair injuries they couldn’t report.
“You okay?” I said.
“Got some serious ringing in my head and things are still going black and then clearing, but I’ll be all right. I want this motherfucker, Patrick. No one knocks me down, you know?”
I knew. Of all the things I’d heard in the last ten hours, this was by far the most depressing. Anyone fast enough and smart enough to take Bubba out of the equation was very, very good at his job.
Another thing: If you were to deal with Bubba in that way, why leave him alive? The kidnappers had killed Mullen and Gutierrez and tried to kill Broussard, Angie, and me. Why hadn’t they just shot Bubba from a distance and been done with him?
“Giggle Doc said one more swing probably would have severed the tendons in back of my skull. Man,” he said, “I am fucking pissed.”
“As soon as I know who it was,” I said, “I’ll pass it along.”
“I’ve been sending out my own questions, you know? I heard about the Pharaoh and Mullen from Giggle Doc, so I’ve got Nelson making some phone calls. Heard the cops lost the money, too.”
“Yup.”
“And no girl.”
“No girl.”
“You picked a fight with some serious motherfuckers this time, dude.”
“I know.”
“Hey, Patrick?”
“Yeah.”
“Cheese would never be stupid enough to send someone to take a pipe to my head.”
“Not knowingly. Maybe he didn’t expect you to be there.”
“Cheese knows how tight me and you are. He’s got to half figure you’d bring me in for backup on something like this.”
He was right. Cheese was too smart at covering his bases not to expect Bubba might be involved. And Cheese also had to know that Bubba was capable of rolling a grenade into a group of Cheese’s men just on the off chance he’d kill the guy who’d piped him. So, if Cheese had given the order…again, why hadn’t he made it a termination contract? With Bubba dead, Cheese wouldn’t have to sweat reprisal. But by leaving him alive, Cheese’s only alternative, if he wanted to have any organization left by the time he got out of stir, was to hand over at least one of the players in the woods that night to Bubba. Unless he had other options I couldn’t envision.