Resolved (16 page)

“He'll just go bother someone else, won't he?”

“Yes, it wouldn't be particularly Christian of us, would it? We'd be almost as bad as the cardinal archbishop there, shuffling his nasty priests. On the other hand, he seems to have an intention toward you, a focus. Blocking that might set him back a little. I mean to say, we can only do what we can do.”

“What
will
you do?”

A deprecatory chuckle. “Oh, you know, tricks of the trade, tricks of the trade.” He suddenly looked doubtful. “You'll keep this mum, won't you? I don't believe it's exactly canonical anymore.”

Lucy made a lip-pinching gesture, then asked, “Will it take long?”

“Oh, consider it already done, my dear,” said Father Skelly, and he gave her a sly look.

M
ARLENE HAD BEEN BUYING HER MEAT AT
A
GNELLI'S FOR
nearly twenty years, and she superstitiously attributed to her patronage the fact that it was the last Italian butcher surviving in the ruins of Little Italy. When she had first moved to Crosby Street, back in the days when living in lofts had been the illegal dodge of the penurious rather than the privilege of the wealthy, there had been half a dozen Italian butchers. All but Agnelli's had been replaced by Asians. Marlene had nothing against Asians, but she is not going to buy meat from one—fruit, yes, meat, no—racism, maybe, but there it is.

She puts the dog into a stay and walks in to the dingle of the bell. Agnelli's is an old-fashioned place, which Marlene does not mind at all. The floor is hexagons of black-and-white tile, the ceiling is tan stamped tin, supporting lazy ceiling fans, each with a pigtail of flypaper. The windows are nearly obscured with hand-painted signs announcing specials, but space has been left for a shelf of bright green excelsior, on which rests a tray of pork chops and a tripod of legs of lamb, decorated with lace paper doilies. Within, two sides of the room are fronted by gleaming white porcelain and glass display cases. Salamis and hams hang from chromed racks. The man behind the case looks up when the bell rings and, when he sees who it is, says, “Hey, look who's here! Long time, Marlene!”

Joe Cotta the assistant butcher is dark and squat, with the big-eyed, friendly face of a little boy. He has been the assistant butcher at Agnelli's for nearly as long as Marlene has been a patron, but she does not recall ever seeing him alone in the shop before. Joe is terrific with a crown roast, but he sometimes forgets to collect the money, and it is painful to watch him make change. She says, “How's it going, Joe?” and looks around for the responsible adult, but there does not seem to be anyone out front. Maybe Paul Agnelli is cutting meat in the back.

“Oh, not too bad,” says Cotta. “Not too bad. We ain't seen you around much, Marlene. What, you're going to the supermarket?”

“Never, Joe. How's the veal today?”

“Veal what? We gotta roast, we got scallopine…”

“I'm making it marsala. So…you're all alone here or what?”

Cotta reaches in the case and lifts out a limp white slab of meat. “Look at this here, for marsala? It's like paper.”

“Looks terrific…give me two pounds.” Cotta wraps the meat in white waxed paper. Marlene moves her position to see if there is anyone in the cutting room, but from what she can see of it, it looks empty.

“Mrs. A stepped out?”

“Oh, no, the two of them're down at the court. I'm here all by myself.” He hands her a neatly wrapped package with a smile.

“Court? What, a traffic thing?”

“Oh, no, Marlene, it's real serious.” He lowers his voice and leans forward confidentially. “They said Paulie did a—what do you call it, the kind where you go with a girl's too young and like that?”

“Statutory rape?”

“Yeah, that. Anyway, Paulie's in big trouble, because she says he did, even though he didn't. A colored girl. Mrs. A? Holy Jeez, I thought she was gonna have a heart attack. They got Biaggi for the lawyer, but Mrs. A says he's not doing much.”

“Nick Biaggi? Oh,
marrone!
He must be seventy-five. Why don't they get someone else.”

“I don't know. You know Paul. He thought it was all like a joke, and then it hit him he could go to jail.”

The bell dings and an elderly woman in black comes in. Joe Cotta starts to move away toward the new customer, but Marlene waves her package at him, and says, “Joe, that's two pounds at five ninety-five a pound, makes eleven ninety, and I'm giving you a ten and two ones.” Cotta takes the bills and rings the sale up and places them in the cash drawer. Marlene hands him a business card. “Joe, listen, tell Paulie to give me a call at home. I'm a little worried about this, and I still know a lot of the players in the sex crimes bureau. Maybe I could help.”

“Uh-huh. Okay, I'll tell him, Marlene.” He turns away. “Nice seeing you again. Mrs. Alloni, what can I get for you today?”

Marlene forgets about getting her dime, places her veal in her net bag, and walks out into the heat. She snaps her fingers and, like a shadow, the dog falls into step. She makes a few more purchases and walks home. There is a dark blue Ford parked in front of her building. It is not the sort of vehicle one usually finds on Crosby Street in the middle of the day; her pace slows, her pulse rises.

She feels a surge of relief when Jim Raney gets out of it.

They hug, a little stiffly. “To what do I owe?” she asks.

“I need to talk to someone,” he says. “I think I'm going crazy.”

She steps back and looks him in the face, and sees someone who has not been getting all the sleep he should: pouchy eyes, little lines. No more Peter Pan.

“You better come up, then,” she says.

She makes iced tea. The boys come out and say hello, and help unload the groceries, checking them out for anything interesting (yes! tortoni cups). Raney is an old pal, practically an uncle. Zak asks him if he's still hauling that old Browning around and Raney says that he is and they will have to drag it out of his cold dead hands, and Zak explains to him how much better off he would be with the Glock or the Beretta. Giancarlo tells the Irish joke about the old guy who calls the airlines and asks how long the flight was from New York to Dublin and the girl says, “Just a minute, sir,” and he hangs up and says, “Jaysus, I'd no idea they'd got so fast.” Then Marlene chases them out and sits down across from the detective at the kitchen table.

“So. What's driving you crazy? And may I say that you came to the right place if you're into the blind leading the blind.”

“Yeah, well, I thought you'd be sympathetic being as how you got a history with this thing. This is about Felix Tighe.”

“The late Felix. What about him?”

“You know his ex-wife was murdered.”

“I didn't know. Was it in the papers?”

“Yeah, but she changed her name. Married a guy on the job, as a matter of fact. They had a little girl, nine. The perp got her, too.”

“Wait, this was that thing in Forest Hills? That was Mary Tighe?”

“Yeah. And the way they got done, it was a Felix kind of scene. Mean. Sadistic.”

“But he's dead.”

“Right. So after that a skell named Steve Lutz, who was a chief prosecution witness at Felix's trial, gets killed by a bus bomb. And, of course, there's Pete Balducci, one of the arresting officers, who gets it with another bomb. And now, just the other day, who has a bomb placed in his car?”

“Henry Klopper,” says Marlene. “Who happened to be Felix's lawyer.”

“Yeah. And as the other arresting officer, I'm starting to get a little nervous.”

She stares at him, and then a laugh bursts from her throat. After a second or so, he laughs along with her.

“Yeah, it's really hilarious, Marlene. I knew I could count on you.”

She wipes her eyes. “God, I'm sorry. It's just—I don't know—it's so
Friday the Thirteenth
. Hey, evil man comes back from the grave and starts killing the people who put him in jail—happens all the time.”

“You can see why I haven't brought it to the attention of the higher authorities: ‘Uh, Chief, I cracked the Manbomber case. I know who the guy is, and you won't even have to go for the death penalty, because the fucker's already dead.'”

“Okay, coincidence,” says Marlene, “always our first thought, but that's looking a little thin after four incidents. So maybe a surrogate, an agent. Felix met someone skilled with explosives in the joint and they fell in love. With his dying breath, Felix gives him a list of people to clip.”

Raney is nodding. “Uh-huh, yeah, that was actually my first thought. But what's wrong with it is Mary and her girl, Sharon. If they got it with a bomb, that story would look a lot better. Them being raped and tortured to death, you'd have to figure a really sick fuck, another Felix, practically, for the job. So that's a hard trifecta—devoted to Felix Tighe, who as I recall wasn't the kind of human being to generate a lot of devotion, plus the sophisticated bomb-making skills, plus the psycho angle. Not many guys around could rape a little girl in front of her mother and then slice the two of them up the way he did.”

“He paid to have it done that way.”

“Right, I thought of that, too. Except Felix didn't have any money that we know of. His mom had the fortune, but that all got eaten up with civil suits because of that chicken ranch day-care center she was running. He could've had some stashed, but if you were a fucking totally depraved, skilled bomber and a guy who's doing twenty-five to life gave you a shitload of money for doing a set of crimes that would have every single fucking cop in the universe on your ass forever…I mean, why wouldn't you just say, ‘Sayonara sucker'? Come to that, Felix was no dummy himself. How could he believe in a deal like that? It's not like he was the Mob. He couldn't really get back at somebody who shafted him.”

“He could pay in installments,” she says. “The perp sends him clippings and he releases another wad of cash, but that assumes money, and it assumes another agent faithful to Felix on the outside, the guy who's writing the checks, and then you've got the same problem. So, where are we going with this?”

She can see some color coming back into Raney's face now, and his swimming pool eyes are lit with more of the old fire.

“Okay, just let me spin the whole thing out,” he says, his hands gesturing in circles. “This's been rolling around in my brain all month. Maybe you'll call the guys with the butterfly net after you hear it, but I got to tell someone.”

“Be my guest. You want some more tea?”

“No, I'm good.” He takes a couple of deep breaths. “So, now I'm thinking, not friendship, not money—a cult. There
was
a cult, if you recall. Felix's dear old mom ran it.”

“Irma Dean, the day-care queen.”

“That was her. Worshiping the dark forces and all that shit. The thing was, she thought that Felix was the reincarnation of his late dad, who she thought was the next thing to Satan. And she raised Felix in all of that, just like we got raised in the Church.”

“But Felix wasn't into that,” Marlene objects. “Or am I not remembering this right? It was the other brother who was the demonic assistant. Felix was in denial because she was bonking him. They had that whole sexual thingy together, Felix and Irma.”

“Yes, but what if there was another brother? Or, if not another brother, a—what d'you call it—an initiate. Felix dies in prison, and that unleashes the revenge killings. Now
this
bastard is the spawn of Satan, et cetera.”

“Stretching it.”

“Yeah? Shit, Marlene, I know I'm stretching it! Stretching is all I got, because what I
really
believe is beyond stretching. It's beyond fucking
sane!”

She watches him sit back in his chair and rub his face. “And what is that, Jim?”

“I think he's alive,” he says. “The minute I walked into that crime scene in Forest Hills and I found out who the vics were, I said to myself, Oh, shit, Tighe's escaped.
He
did this. It was a fucking signature, practically. And then I remembered he was dead. Supposedly. I actually called the fucking prison, Auburn, and confirmed it. The body went out to a cousin here in the city. But what if…” he floundered, “I don't know, some strange mix-up?”

“He
is
dead. You think he snuck out of Auburn like Sleeping Beauty? Christ, you
know
they autopsy all prisoners who die inside. What, he's carrying his brains and his guts in a shopping bag while he does these crimes? Also, there's Judge Horowitz.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean Horowitz was the only other person specifically targeted by the Manbomber. The bastard wanted him so bad that he took two cuts at him before he got him, and as far as I know the judge had nothing whatever to do with Felix Tighe. The judge in Felix's case was old Tim Rooney, as I recall, now deceased. So that weakens the link between the Manbomber and Felix. I assume that you all've checked out all the people Horowitz might have pissed off.”

Recalling the FBI presentation, Raney says, “Yeah, yeah, a million cross-checks, but there's no clear pattern, and there's no obvious bad guy that all the deaths would benefit. There were people who might have wanted to hurt Horowitz, but nobody recent and the others are still in prison. That's basically the argument that the bombs are random, and anything that looks like a connection is coincidence—the whole six degrees of separation deal. But in this case I don't buy it.”

Without thinking very hard about it, Marlene says, “I agree,” and is rewarded with a grateful look. In fact, she doesn't know whether she agrees or not, but only that it is pleasant to be brought out of herself in this way, to be distracted by the needs of someone who is not a family member.