Broken Angels (10 page)

The detectives were gathered at the far end of the bar.
Byrne showed up at just after nine. And even though he knew just about every detective in the room, had come up the ranks with half of them, when he walked in the room he chose to stake the near end of the bar with Jessica. She appreciated it, but she still sensed that he would rather be in with that pack of wolves—old and young alike.

by midnight, walt Brigham’s party had entered the serious drinking stage. Which meant it had entered the serious storytelling stage. Twelve PPD detectives bunched around the end of the bar.

“Okay,” Richie DiCillo began. “I’m in a sector car with Rocco Testa.” Richie was a lifer out of North Detectives. Now in his fifties, he had been one of Byrne’s rabbis early on.

“This is 1979, right around the time those little battery-operated portable televisions came out. We’re up in Kensington,
Monday Night Football
is on, Eagles and Falcons. Close game, back and forth. About eleven o’clock we get this knock on the window. I look up. Chubby transvestite, full regalia—wig, nails, false eyelashes, spangle dress, high heels. Name was Charlise, Chartreuse, Charmoose, something like that. Used to call him Charlie Rainbow on the street.”

106
RICHARD Montanari

“I remember him,” Ray Torrance said. “He went about five seven, two-forty? Different wig for every night of the week?”
“That’s him,” Richie said. “You could tell what day it was by the color of his hair. Anyway, he has a busted lip, a black eye. Says his pimp beat the shit out of him, and he wants us to personally strap the asshole in the electric chair.
After
we cut off his nuts. Rocco and me look at each other, at the TV. The game is right at the two-minute warning. With the ads and shit we’ve got maybe three minutes, right? Rocco is out of the car like a shot. He brings Charlie around the back of the car, tells him we’ve got a brand-new system. Real high-tech. Says you can tell the judge your story, right from the street, and the judge will send a special squad to pick up the evildoer.”
Jessica glanced at Byrne, who shrugged, even though they both had a pretty good idea where this was going.
“Of course Charlie
loves
this idea,” Richie said. “So Rocco takes the TV out of the car, finds a dead channel with just snow and wavy lines on it, puts it on the trunk. He tells Charlie to look right at the screen and talk. Charlie fixes his hair, makeup, like he’s going on the
Tonight Show
, right? He gets up really close to the screen, tells all the sordid details. When he’s done, he leans back, like all of a sudden a hundred sector cars are gonna come screaming down the street. Except, right at that second, the TV speaker crackles, like it’s picking up another station. Which it is. Except there’s a commercial on.”
“Uh-oh,” somebody said.
“A commercial for StarKist Tuna.”
“No,”
somebody else said.
“
Oh,
yes,” Richie said. “Outta nowhere the TV says, loud as hell, ‘Sorry, Charlie.’ ”
Roars around the room.
“He thought it was the fuckin’
judge
. Off like a shot down Frankford. Wigs and high heels and sequins flying. Never saw him again.”
“I can top that story!” someone said, shouting over the laughter. “We’re running this sting in Glenwood...”
And so the stories ran.
Byrne glanced at Jessica. Jessica shook her head. She had a few stories of her own, but it was getting late. Byrne pointed at her nearly empty glass. “One more?”
Jessica glanced at her watch. “Nah. I’m out,” she said.
“Lightweight,” Byrne replied. He drained his glass, motioned to the barmaid.
“What can I say? A girl needs her beauty sleep.”
Byrne remained silent, rocked on his heels, bopped a bit to the music.
“Hey!”
Jessica yelled. She rammed a fist into his shoulder.
Byrne jumped. Although he tried to mask the pain, his face betrayed him. Jessica knew how to throw a punch. “
What
?”
“This is the part where you say, ‘Beauty sleep? You don’t need beauty sleep, Jess.’ ”
“Beauty sleep? You don’t need beauty sleep, Jess.”
“Jesus.” Jessica slipped on her leather coat.
“I thought that was, you know,
understood,
” Byrne added, treading water, his expression a caricature of virtue. He rubbed his shoulder.
“Nice try, Detective. You good to drive?” It was a rhetorical question.
“Oh, yeah,” Byrne answered by rote. “I’m good.”
Cops,
Jessica thought. Cops could always drive.
Jessica crossed the room, said her good-byes and good lucks. As she neared the door, she caught Josh Bontrager, standing by himself, smiling. His tie was askew; one pants pocket was turned out. He looked a little wobbly. When he saw Jessica, he extended a hand. They shook. Again.
“You doing okay?” she asked.
Bontrager nodded a little too forcefully, perhaps trying to convince himself. “Oh yeah. Fine. Fine. Fine.”
For some reason Jessica was already feeling motherly about Josh. “Okay, then.”
“Remember how I said I had heard all the jokes already?”
“Yes.”
Bontrager waved an inebriated hand. “Not even close.”
“What do you mean?”
Bontrager stood at attention. He saluted. More or less. “I’ll have you know that I have the distinct honor of being the very first
Amishide
detective in the history of the PPD.”
Jessica laughed. “See you tomorrow, Josh.”
On the way out she saw a detective she knew from South showing a picture of his infant grandson to another cop.
Babies,
Jessica thought.
There were babies
everywhere
.

19

Byrne made himself a plate from the small buffet, put the food on the bar. Before he could take a bite, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned, saw the boozy eyes, the damp lips. Before Byrne knew it, Walt Brigham had him in a bear hug. Byrne found the gesture a little strange because they had never been that close. On the other hand, this was a special night for the man.

They finally broke, did the manly, postemotional things: cleared throats, straightened hair, smoothed ties. Both men stepped back, scanned the room.

“Thanks for coming, Kevin.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it.”
Walt Brigham was as tall as Byrne, a little round-shouldered. He had

a thicket of pewter gray hair, a neatly trimmed mustache, big nicked hands. His ocean blue eyes had seen a lot, and all of it floated there. “Can you believe this collection of thugs?” Brigham asked.
Byrne looked around. Richie DiCillo, Ray Torrance, Tommy Capretta, Joey Trese, Naldo Lopez, Mickey Nunziata. All longtimers.
“How many sets of brass knuckles you figure there are in this room?” Byrne asked.
“Counting mine?”
Both men laughed. Byrne ordered a round for the two of them. The barmaid, Margaret, brought over a pair of drinks Byrne didn’t recognize.
“What are these?” Byrne asked.
“These are from the two young ladies at the end of the bar.”
Byrne and Walt Brigham looked over. Two female patrol officers— fit and pretty and still in uniform, somewhere in their mid-twenties— stood at the end of the bar. They each raised a glass.
Byrne looked back at Margaret. “You sure they meant us?”
“Positive.”
Both men looked at the concoction in front of them. “I give up,” Brigham said. “What are they?”
“Jager Bombs,” Margaret said with a smile, the one that always signaled a challenge in an Irish pub. “Part Red Bull, part Jägermeister.”
“Who the hell drinks this?”
“All the kids,” Margaret said. “Gives them a boost so they can keep partying.”
Byrne and Brigham looked at each other, mugged. They were Philly detectives, which meant they were nothing if not game. The two men raised their glasses in thanks. They both downed a few inches of the drink.
“Holy
shit,
” Byrne said.
“Slainte,”
Margaret said. She laughed as she made her way back to the taps.
Byrne glanced at Walt Brigham. He was handling the strange potion with a little more ease. Of course, he was knee-shot drunk already. Maybe the Jager Bomb would help.
“Can’t believe you’re putting in your papers,” Byrne said.
“It’s time,” Brigham said. “The street is no place for an old man.”
“Old man? What are you talking about? Two twenty-somethings just bought you a drink.
Pretty
twenty-somethings, at that. Girls with guns.”
Brigham smiled, but it sank fast. He got that remote look all retiring cops get. The look that all but shouted
I’m never going to saddle up again.
He spun his drink a few times. He started to say something, checked himself. Finally he said, “You never get them all, you know?”
Byrne knew exactly what he meant.
“There’s always that one case,” Brigham continued. “The one that won’t let you be.” He nodded across the room. At Richie DiCillo.
“You’re talking about Richie’s daughter?” Byrne asked.
“Yeah,” Brigham said. “I was the primary. Worked that case for two straight years.”
“Oh, man,” Byrne said. “I didn’t know that.”
Richie DiCillo’s nine-year-old daughter Annemarie had been found murdered in Fairmount Park in 1995. She had been attending a birthday party with a friend, who was also killed. The brutal case had made headlines in the city for weeks. The file was never closed.
“Hard to believe all these years have passed,” Brigham said. “I’ll never forget that day.”
Byrne glanced over at Richie DiCillo. He was telling another of his stories. When Byrne had met Richie, back in the Stone Age, Richie was a monster, a street legend, a drug cop to be feared. You said the name DiCillo on the streets of North Philadelphia with a hushed reverence. After his daughter was killed he got smaller somehow, an abridged version of his former self. These days, he was just going through the motions.
“Ever catch a lead?” Byrne asked.
Brigham shook his head. “Got close a few times. I think we interviewed everyone in the park that day. Must have got a hundred statements. No one ever came forward.”
“What happened to the other girl’s family?”
Brigham shrugged. “Moved away. Tried to track them down a few times. No luck.”
“What about the forensics?”
“Nothing. But that was back in the day. Plus there was that storm. It rained like crazy. Whatever might have been there was washed away.”
Byrne saw the deep pain and regret in Walt Brigham’s eyes. He understood, having a folder of the bad ones tucked away on the blind side of his heart himself. He waited a minute or so, tried to change the subject. “So, what’s in the fire for you, Walt?”
Brigham looked up, fixed Byrne with a stare he found a little unsettling. “I’m gonna get my license, Kevin.”
“Your license?” Byrne asked. “Your private investigator license?”
Brigham nodded. “I’m gonna start working the case on my own,” he said. He lowered his voice. “In fact, between you, me, and the barmaid, I’ve been working it off the books for a while now.”
“Annemarie’s case?” Byrne had not expected this. He’d thought he was going to hear about some fishing boat, some RV plans, or maybe that standard setup that all cops have about one day buying a bar somewhere tropical—somewhere bikini-clad nineteen-year-old girls went to party on spring break—the plan on which no one ever seemed to pull the pin.
“Yeah,” Brigham said. “I owe Richie. Hell, the city owes him. Think about it. His little girl is murdered on our beat and we don’t close it?” He slammed his glass on the bar, raised an accusatory finger to the world, to himself. “I mean, every year we pull the file, make a few notes, put it back. It ain’t fair, man. It ain’t fucking
fair
. She was just a kid.”
“Does Richie know your plans?” Byrne asked.
“No. I’ll tell him when the time is right.”
For a minute or so they fell silent, listening to the chatter, the music. When Byrne looked back at Brigham, he saw that far-off look again, the shine in his eyes.
“Ah, Christ,” Brigham said. “They were the prettiest little girls you’ve ever seen.”
All Kevin Byrne could do was put a hand on the man’s shoulder.
They stood that way for a long time.

byrne left the bar, turned onto Third Street. He thought about Richie DiCillo. He wondered how many times Richie had held his service weapon in his hand, consumed by anger and rage and grief. Byrne wondered how close the man had come, knowing that if someone took his own daughter away, he would have to search far and wide for a reason to go on.

As he reached his car he asked himself how long he was going to pretend it hadn’t happened. He had been lying to himself about it a lot lately. This night, the feelings had been strong.

He had felt something when Walt Brigham hugged him. He saw dark things, had even smelled something. He would never admit any of this to anyone, not even to Jessica, with whom he had shared just about everything over the past few years. He had never smelled anything before, not as a component of his vague prescience.

When he’d hugged Walt Brigham he smelled pine needles. And smoke.
Byrne slipped behind the wheel, strapped in, put a Robert Johnson disk into the CD player, and drove into the night.
Jesus,
he thought.
Pine needles and smoke.

20

Edgar Luna stumbled out of the Old House Tavern on Station Road, his gut full of Yuengling, his head full of bullshit. The same kind of refried bullshit his mother force-fed him the first eighteen years of his life: He was a loser. He’d never amount to anything. He was stupid. Just like his father.

Every time he got within one lager of the limit, it all came flooding back.
The wind pinwheeled up the nearly empty street, flapping his trousers, making his eyes water, giving him pause. He bunched his scarf around his face, and headed north into the gale.
Edgar Luna was a small balding man, acne-scarred, long since delivered unto every malady of middle age—colitis, eczema, fungal toenails, gingivitis. He had just turned fifty-five.
He was not drunk, but he was not all that far from it either. The new barmaid, Alyssa or Alicia or whatever the fuck her name was had shut him down for the tenth time. Who gave a shit? She was too old for him anyway. Edgar liked them younger.
Much
younger. Always had.
The youngest—and the best—had been his niece Dina. Hell, she had to be, what, twenty
four
now? Too old. By plenty.
Edgar rounded the corner, onto Sycamore Street. His shabby bungalow greeted him. Before he could get his keys out of his pocket he heard a noise. He spun around a little unsteadily, rocking a bit on his heels. Behind him two figures stood silhouetted against the glow of the Christmas lights across the street. A tall man and a short man, both dressed in black. The tall one looked like a freak—close-cropped blond hair, clean-shaven, a little sissy looking if you asked Edgar Luna. The short one was built like a tank. One thing Edgar was sure of, they weren’t from Winterton. He’d never seen them before.
“Who the fuck are
you
?” Edgar asked.
“I am Malachi,” the tall man said.

they had made the fifty-mile ride in less than one hour. They were now in the basement of an empty row house in North Philadelphia, in the center of a block of derelict row houses. There wasn’t a light for nearly a hundred feet in any direction. They had parked the van in an alleyway behind the block of houses.

Roland had carefully selected the site. These structures were set for rehabilitation soon, and he knew that as soon as the weather allowed they would be pouring concrete in these basements. One of his flock worked for the construction company that was in charge of the concrete work.

In the middle of the frigid basement room, Edgar Luna was naked, his clothes already burned, bound to an old wooden chair with duct tape. The floor was packed dirt, cold, but unfrozen. In the corner of the room, a pair of long handled shovels waited. Three kerosene lanterns lit the space.

“Tell me about Fairmount Park,” Roland said.
Luna glared at him.
“Tell me about Fairmount Park,” Roland repeated. “April 1995.” It looked as though Edgar Luna was trying frantically to poke

around his memory. There was no doubt that he had done many bad things in his life—reprehensible things for which he had known there might one day be a dark reckoning. That time had come.

Merciless
115

“Whatever the fuck you’re talking about, what . . . whatever this is about, you got the wrong man. I’m innocent.”
“You are many things Mr. Luna,” Roland said. “Innocent is not one of them. Confess your sins and the Lord will show you mercy.”
“I swear I don’t know—”
“I, however, cannot.”
“You’re
crazy
.”
“Admit what you did to those girls in Fairmount Park in April 1995. The day it rained.”
“Girls?”
Edgar Luna asked.
“1995? Rain?”
“Surely you remember Dina Reyes.”
The name shook him. He remembered. “What did she tell you?”
Roland produced Dina’s letter. The sight of it made Edgar shrink.
“She liked pink, Mr. Luna. But I expect you knew that.”
“It was her mother, wasn’t it? That fucking
bitch.
What did she say?”
“Dina Reyes ate a handful of pills and ended her sad and sorrowful existence, an existence you destroyed.”
Edgar Luna suddenly seemed to realize that he would never leave this room. He struggled mightily against his bindings. The chair rocked, creaked, then fell over, crashing into a lamp. The lamp tipped and splashed kerosene onto Luna’s head, which suddenly caught fire. Flames slapped and licked up the right side of the man’s face. Luna screamed and slammed his head against the cold, packed dirt. Charles calmly walked over, struck out the fire. The acrid smell of kerosene and burned flesh and melted hair filled the confined space.
Braving the stench, Roland got close to Edgar Luna’s ear.
“How does it feel to be a captive, Mr. Luna?” he whispered. “To be at the mercy of someone? Isn’t this what you did to Dina Reyes? Brought her to the basement? Just like this?”
It was important to Roland that these men understood exactly what they’d done, experienced the moment the way their victims had. Roland went to considerable lengths to re-create the fear.
Charles righted the chair. Edgar Luna’s forehead, along with the right side of his scalp, was blistered and bubbled. A wide swath of hair was gone, replaced by a blackened, open sore.
“He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked,” Roland began. “You can’t fucking
do
this, man,” Edgar hysterically screamed.
Roland did not hear the words of anyone mortal. “He shall triumph over them. They shall be so utterly vanquished that their overthrow shall be final and fatal, and his deliverance complete and crowning.”
“Wait!” Luna struggled against the tape. Charles took out the lavender handkerchief, and tied it around the man’s neck. He held him from behind.
Roland Hannah set upon the man. Screams rose high into the night.
Philadelphia slept.