I stared defiantly into the camera. It took five seconds, but the buzzer finally rang, and I pushed my way in before he changed his mind.
I took the elevator to the seventh floor, and Spence opened the door. I expected he would look like shit, and he did not disappoint.
Until his run-in with The Chameleon, Spence Harrington had worked out in his home gym two hours a day. The Spence who stood at the front door had vacant eyes and a bloated face. I knew enough about his drug habit to know that lack of exercise was not the cause.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “If it isn’t the twelve-step Avon lady. If you’re here to give me one of those Nancy Reagan Just Say No lectures, don’t waste your time. I’ve been hearing them since I was smoking weed back in high school.”
“Hey, I’m not here to lecture you. Just talk.”
“I’m talked out, dude, so let me give it to you short and sweet. These painkillers I’m on—they’re not like my coke habit. These are not recreational. They’re prescribed by a doctor.”
“From what Kylie tells me, you’re taking a lot more than the doctor prescribed.”
As soon as I said it, I wanted to take it back. He had pushed me right where I didn’t want to go, and I was sounding like Kylie’s drug enforcer. His eyes flared with contempt.
I looked down at his bare feet, which were a dozen different shades of red and purple. “I owe you an apology, Spence,” I said, trying to backpedal. “If Kylie and I had caught the bastard who did that to you sooner…”
“Look, Nancy, I’m sure you mean well,” he said, still barricading the door. “But go home. I already have a support group. I’ve got a program, a sponsor, meetings, and slogans up the ass. Right now, all Kylie and I need is a little space till I get this pain under control.”
He started to shut the door, and I leaned into it.
“What pain, Spence? The foot pain? You and I both know that’s long gone. The only pain you have now is knowing you’re a junkie, but if you pop enough pills, you can make that go away. And if it doesn’t, you’ll be uptown at three in the morning looking for a coke dealer.”
“Fuck you, Zach,” he said, pushing hard on the door.
“Bring plenty of money, Spence,” I said, pushing back, “because you’re going to need a lot of coke once she walks. And trust me, she will. You think it hurt the last time she dumped you? This will be worse.”
He eased up on the door and stuck his face in the opening. “Worse for who, Zach? The last time around, I got clean, and Kylie and I got married. If I remember correctly, you’re the one she dumped.”
My well-intentioned intervention had crashed and burned. I rammed the door hard and knocked him off his damaged feet. He hit the floor, and I stood over him.
“She was a twenty-two-year-old kid who wanted to become a cop,” I yelled, “and the last thing she needed was a boyfriend who spent his whole day pounding blow. Yeah, she took you back, but don’t count on her making the same decision again. Her job is even more important to her now, and she’s not going to let a coked-up, pill-popping husband fuck it up for her.”
He looked up at me, dumbfounded. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I kept going.
“I don’t have any Nancy Reagan lectures, Spence. Just think about this—what makes you feel better, the Percocet or your wife? Because you damn well can’t have them both.”
I stepped back from the door, and he got up on his knees and slammed it shut.
I stood there seething—filled with anger both at him and at myself for being stupid enough to think that I was the miracle worker who could rehabilitate Spence and patch up his floundering marriage.
Obviously, I had seen too many soap operas as a kid, and they had completely screwed up my thinking.
Chapter 64
It was 11:30 when I finally got to Cheryl’s apartment.
“You look like you could use a drink and a hug,” she said. “Not necessarily in that order.” She wrapped her arms around me and pressed her lips to mine.
I scooped her up and held her tight, and my body went straight into sensory overload. All five of my senses were on point. I shut my eyes, turned off my hearing, and let touch, taste, and smell have themselves a field day.
Her mouth tasted like wine, her hair smelled like jasmine, and the feel of her body close to mine helped me block out the first twenty-three and a half hours of an exceptionally grueling day.
We stood there for at least a minute without uttering a sound. Finally she whispered in my ear, “You missed a fantastic movie.”
“Was it as good the eighth time as the first seven?”
“Zach, I may be a grown-up scientist on the outside, but inside I’m still a little girl who believes in fairy tales. It was just as wonderful this time, and it will be just as wonderful every time I watch it. You’re a man. You wouldn’t understand.”
She stepped back. She was wearing fitted black yoga pants and a hot-pink curve-hugging V-neck T-shirt.
“I thought you said you were wearing sweats,” I said.
“I was, but watching Julia Roberts transform from a streetwalker to a lady inspired me.”
“You both clean up well.”
She led me to the sofa and poured me some wine.
“So how was your day?” she said.
“Not the best. It started with a violent kidnapping and ended with me flinging my partner’s drug-addled husband to the floor. How was yours?”
Her mouth opened, first in shock, then it morphed into something resembling a puzzled smile. Or maybe it was a condemning frown. Whatever it was, it was a look I hadn’t seen before. Certainly not from her.
“Run that drug-addled husband bit by me again,” she said.
I had decided early on that win, lose, or draw with Spence, I wasn’t going to hold back on Cheryl.
“Despite my doctor’s best advice,” I said, “I went to see Spence tonight. I guess you’d call it an intervention.”
“No,” she said. “I’m more inclined to call it a misguided, self-serving bad decision, but let me withhold judgment until I’ve heard the details.”
“Sure, Doc,” I said, taking a strong pull on my wine. “Do you want me to lie down on the couch while you go and get a pad and pen?”
The joke fell flat. This time I knew a condemning frown when I saw one. “Please just spell it out,” she said.
I launched into my story, starting off with my good intentions, working my way past Spence’s initial resistance, and elaborating on his steadfast denial. She didn’t say a word until I got to my dramatic ultimatum.
“Your Percocet or your wife?” She let out a hoot. “Brilliant technique, Doctor Jordan. Where did you get your degree—the Dirty Harry School of Addiction Therapy?”
“Do you want to hear the rest of the story, or do you want to sit around and critique my methodology?” I said.
“He just slammed the door in your face,” she said. “I thought you were done. Is there more?”
“Yeah. I stood there feeling like crap. I realized I should have listened to you, but I didn’t. Case closed. I walked back to the elevator, and before I could even hit the button, he opened the door and told me to come in. So I went back.”
Her expression softened. “And then what happened?”
“Nothing. He just stared at me. I wasn’t sure if he was going to take a punch at me or call Kylie and tell her what an asshole I was. And then he turned around and started walking toward his bedroom. Halfway there, he stopped and gave me a nod to follow him. So I did.”
“Into the bedroom?”
“Through the bedroom and into his bathroom. He went to the medicine cabinet, took out a bottle of pills, opened it, and shook one out into his hand. Then another. And another. He stared at them, and I really thought he was going to pop them all into his mouth. But he didn’t. He just held his hand over the toilet bowl and dropped them in. Slowly. One at a time. Then he turned the bottle over and dumped the entire lot of them into the wat
er.”
“Oh, Zach,” she said, touching her hand to her chin. “That’s amazing. And then what?”
“We both stood there. Neither of us said a word. I don’t know how long, but it was a while. I didn’t want to stare at him, so I just kept looking down at all those pills floating in the bowl. Finally, I looked up at him and said, ‘Are you going to flush?’ And he looked back at me with these big sad brown eyes, and he said, ‘Give me a goddamn minute, will you? This ain’t as easy as it looks.’ Then he gave me this big bear hug, we broke, he flushed, and he went into his bedroom to call a rehab. My first intervention, and I’m batting a thousand. I’m thinking after this cop gig, maybe I should hang out a shingle and open a practice.”
“What will it say—‘World’s Worst Therapist’?”
“Criticize all you want, Dr. Robinson, but you can’t argue with results.”
“You’re right. Maybe the sign should just say ‘World’s Luckiest Therapist.’”
“I may not be classically trained,” I said, “but you have to admit, I’ve got some redeeming qualities.”
“I vaguely recall that you do,” she said, taking me by the hand and pulling me up from the sofa. “But you’re going to have to refresh my memory.”
“You know, I think you’re right,” I said as she led me toward her bedroom. “Tonight, I definitely am the world’s luckiest therapist.”
Chapter 65
I was in the office by 7:00 a.m. Kylie tumbled in ten minutes later, looking like a zombie on Ambien.
“If I didn’t know better,” I said, “I’d guess you spent the night sleeping in a homeless shelter.”
“I wish,” she said. “I spent the night in an eight-thousand-dollar-a-month apartment—not sleeping. I was crazy worried about Spence.”
I wanted to tell her that I was pretty crazy worried about Spence myself, but it’s never a good idea to tell a control freak that you tried to take control of her life.
“I finally dozed off at two,” she said, “but I woke up at four and was awake the rest of the night, thinking how much I’d like to be out there tailing Donovan and Boyle.”
“Not a great idea in your condition,” I said. “Yesterday you almost got us killed driving the Batmobile into Queens, and that was after a good night’s sleep.”
We still had three people to interview who knew that Rachael would be in New Jersey. The one recovering from an emergency appendectomy was just a few blocks away at Lenox Hill Hospital. It took us less than half an hour to run over there and clear her.
Two to go—Mick Wilson, the stubborn-ass senior ADA, and the young lawyer assigned to work with him. According to Wilson’s office, they were driving upstate to the Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock to interview a prison snitch. It’s in Washington County, a four-hour drive from the city.
I know Mick well. He was a rock star in the DA’s office, and a front-runner for the top job when the current DA retired.
He didn’t return my voice mails, so I texted him, explaining how important it was to talk to him and his junior lawyer.
He texted right back.
Was I not supposed to tell anyone where O’Keefe was holing up? I guess I should never have posted it on Facebook. Off the grid and won’t be back till late tonight. You can arrest me then.
“Cute,” Kylie said.
“It’s Mick’s way of telling me I’m an asshole for even questioning him,” I said.
“How about the lawyer he’s with? She’s the last one on our list.”
“I would hope that Mick would vet her on our behalf, but I’m sure he thinks anyone he handpicked to work with him is just as above suspicion as he is. We can try to contact her tonight, but I think we’re coming up dry.”
“Then Matt was right,” Kylie said. “Last night he told me whoever kidnapped Rachael might not be connected to the DA’s office. He said it would be easy enough for a pro to hack into the Correction Department’s computer.”
“How come you didn’t tell me that last night?”
“I don’t know. You were so down on Matt I decided not to—”
“Jordan! MacDonald!” It was Cates, using her preferred method of interoffice communication—yelling down the hall.
We went to her office, and she waved at us to shut the door and sit down.
“We may have a break,” she said. “But it’s a delicate situation. I have a friend, Alma Hooks. I’ve known her since she was a kid. She got pregnant at fifteen, had the baby, and worked hard to keep her life on track. She got a master’s in library science from Pratt, and she’s now an assistant librarian at the 125th Street branch of the New York Public Library. Alma is twenty-nine now, a single mom. Her son, Shawn, is thirteen, and she just called to tell me that the boy witnessed the Tinsdale abduction.”
“That was over a month ago,” I said. “And he’s willing to talk to us now?”
“He’s lucky he can talk to anyone. He took three bullets the night before last. That’s the delicate part,” she said. “Alma has convinced him to tell us what he knows about the kidnapping, but that’s it. We don’t ask about the shooting, or what connection young Shawn may or may not have had to Tinsdale.”
“The Tin Man was notorious for hiring baby runners,” Kylie said. “You think Shawn worked for him?”
Cates ran two fingers across her lips, zipping them shut.
“Don’t ask; don’t tell,” she said. “I promised Alma that all we care about is finding out what happened to Tinsdale. Those are the ground rules. You got it?”
“Totally,” Kylie said.
“Good,” Cates said. “Shawn’s condition was just upgraded from critical to stable. He’s at Harlem Hospital. Get over there before he changes his mind.”
Chapter 66
Joe Salvi was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the Daily News and sipping his second cup of coffee. There were three cell phones in front of him.
“What are you grinning about?” Teresa said from across the room.
Joe hadn’t realized he was smiling. But that was the way it was whenever he spent time with his goomah. Bernice always made him happy, and last night had been no different. Mama was right. Forbidden fruit always tastes the sweetest.
Last night, after they made love, Bernice curled up against him and whispered in his ear. “Joe…the sex…”
She let it hang there. He waited, but she didn’t finish the sentence.
It was a tease. He took the bait. “What about it?” he said.
She nibbled on his ear. “It was age appropriately fantastic.”
He belly-laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes. Bernice was the only one who could come up with something like that, much less say it. He had been reliving the moment when Teresa caught him smiling.
One of the cell phones vibrated, neutralizing her curiosity. “Pick it up,” she said, as though maybe he wouldn’t if she weren’t there to give him orders.
He answered. “Good morning.”
The voice on the other end said only one thing. A number.
Salvi repeated it. “You’re sure,” he stated clearly.
The caller knew it was a question. A brief pause, and then Salvi said, “Grazie. Ciao.”
He tossed the phone to his son, who was standing at the sink. Jojo soaked the cell in cold water, then dropped it into the trash masher beneath the counter.
“You found him?” Teresa asked.
“Both of them,” Salvi said. “They work together. Same precinct.”
“So you want me and Tommy Boy to deal with them?” Jojo said.
At the sound of his name, Tommy Boy squared his shoulders and tugged at the sleeves of his Forzieri leather jacket. He was born Tommaso Benito Montanari, the same as his father, so they called him Tommy Boy from birth. Twenty-six years later, he was six feet eight and 275 pounds, but he was still Tommy Boy. His eyes locked in on Papa Joe for an answer to Jojo’s question.
“No,” Salvi said. “We’re not ready to deal with anything. For
now, you just follow them, and let me know what they do, where they go.”
“What if they split up?” Jojo said. “Should we take two cars just in case?”
“Two cars?” Joe said. “Good idea. And while you’re at it, get some horses, a brass band, and some of those big fucking balloons. What are you thinking? I said tail them, not start a parade. If they split up, stay with this Gideon. Scope him out and report back to me. But don’t do anything.”
“What if the opportunity presents itself? I could—”
“Did I say anything about opportunity? No. I said, do not do anything. Non fare niente. Niente. You clear on that?”
Jojo looked at Teresa and shrugged.
Salvi caught the exchange. “I don’t give a shit what your mother asked for,” he said. “His head on a silver platter, his balls in a glass jar—I don’t care. I want him and his friend together, and then I’ll decide where we go from there. You clear on that?”
“Yeah, Pop, I’m clear.”
Joe turned to Tommy Boy. “These two you’re following—they’re cops. They got eyes in the back of their heads. So drive smart.”
“Maybe I should take Mrs. Salvi’s car,” Tommy Boy said. “The Buick. It’s beige. It won’t stand out like the Escalade.”
Joe tapped two fingers to his temple. “Now you’re thinking. Get moving.”
The two men went to the garage, and Tommy Boy moved the driver’s seat in the Buick all the way back so he could squeeze in.
Jojo got in on the passenger side. “Maybe I should take Mrs. Salvi’s car,” he mimicked, doing his best to imitate Tommy Boy’s deadpan delivery.
“Did I do something wrong?” Tommy said.
“My father pisses all over everything I say, so you have to act like some kind of consigliere? You’re a soldier, Tommy Boy. Nothing more.”
“Come on, man,” Tommy Boy said, turning left onto Cross Bay Boulevard. “I’m almost thirty years old. I’m family. I’m too smart to be a soldier all my life.”