3 Quarters Read online

  He crossed Montague Street, moving carefully back toward Court Street, stopping to gaze in windows of shops. He slipped into the shelter of a pay phone bubble next to the entrance of the subway. He pretended to dial a number. Through the side panel he could see a man inspecting the smashed back window of the illegally parked Jeep. The man was Lebeche. He pushed his head inside the Jeep, then took his head out, walked across the street, and climbed into the passenger door of a Buick. Behind the steering wheel was Daniels. They both looked over at the Jeep. Stakeout.

  Bobby decided to leave the Jeep where it was; at least he’d be free of Lebeche and Daniels for a while. Bobby checked his watch. It was 6:58 PM. The Jeep would be towed in the morning rush hour, and he would pick it up in broad daylight in the safety of the car pound.

  He hurried down the subway stairs, bought a token from a drowsy attendant, bounded down another flight of stairs to get the N train to Thirty-fourth Street in Manhattan. A blind black man sang “I Only Have Eyes for You,” with his eyes closed, a Seeing Eye dog and shoe box for change at his feet. Bobby dropped in a dollar and leaned against a pillar and listened to the old song.

  He hadn’t been in the subway for so long it felt exciting to hear the echoing voice of someone singing for his supper, mixed in with far-off trains and the commotion of citizens eager to get home.

  After a short wait, he boarded the N train that carried him into the safety of the black tunnel. He took a seat in the half-empty car and found himself intrigued by the advertisements about AIDS, child abuse, Preparation H, high-school-equivalency diplomas, when the door leading from the next car clanked open. It sounded like a cell.

  For the first time he could ever remember, the sight of a police uniform filled him with dread. The uniformed cop moved through the car with a rattle of keys, his radio crackling. He’s walking directly toward me, Bobby thought, and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep, unwilling to look the cop in the eye. He saw again the hooded men in NYPD jackets and shirts, punching him with NYPD rings, kicking him, flailing with police batons and police blackjacks.

  “Hey, buddy,” the cop said, shaking Bobby.

  Bobby opened his eyes, looked up into the young cop’s face that was the color of bubble gum.

  “Careful sleeping on the train, huh? Could wake up dead.”

  Bobby gave him a false smile, feeling edgy, needing sleep.

  He reached Thirty-fourth Street in less than twenty-five minutes and hurried through the night-shift subway crowd to the street. As night began to fall, he walked to the Empire State Building, signing in at a security desk where a night guard sat passively, and took the stairs down to Gleason’s office. There was something important he needed to collect there.

  Before he unlocked the office door, he could hear someone’s voice playing on the answering machine. He quickly opened the door and heard Tom Larkin’s message about meeting him in the Kopper Kettle tomorrow at four being replayed. Gleason was obviously checking the machine with the remote code. Bobby wanted to talk to him. He switched on the light and moved quickly to the desk. As a message from his daughter Maggie began to play, he snatched up the phone to interrupt the playback. “Hello, Izzy?”

  The playback stopped, and Bobby heard a short silence and then a click from the other end of the phone. Gleason had hung up. Bobby sat back on the swivel chair and called the Chelsea Hotel and asked for Gleason. The operator said he was out. He must have been checking the messages from a pay phone.

  Bobby hit the message replay and listened to Larkin’s message again and the next one from his daughter Maggie. “I love ya, miss ya, and you can meet me tomorrow at noon near the Delacorte Clock in Central Park. Important. Bye.”

  Bobby smiled. He’d be there. He sat silently, his muscles sore, his brain numb, his nerve endings scorched. He needed food and sleep. Maybe Gleason could make sense of Larkin’s cryptic message, he thought. He certainly couldn’t. Bobby pulled open the deep filing drawer of the desk. Gleason’s bottle of vodka rocked back and forth inside the drawer like a striptease dancer. He reached into the drawer, past the alluring bottle, and took out a box of shells and the .38 Smith and Wesson.

  He left the holster where it was. He had always carried his gun in the right-hand pants pocket, where, oddly enough, it was usually undetectable. Even when someone patted you down for a gun, they usually only checked for holsters around the belt line, under the arms, or at the ankles. Very few people thought of looking in your front pants pocket.

  Bobby patted the pound and a half of precision steel resting against his muscular right thigh. He knew it was trouble waiting to happen.

  33

  Bobby had rigged the chain across the entrance to the deck of The Fifth Amendment so that when the clasp of the D-clamp was pulled backward, a tiny square of aluminum foil would fall out.

  It had.

  Which meant someone had unclasped it and walked on board in his absence.

  Bobby took the .38 out of his pants pocket.

  Before stepping on board, he paused to listen for sounds beneath the whine of the night wind, the slapping waves, and the nostalgic music of a houseboat party where yesterday’s hippies, who were today’s millionaire boat bums, were listening to Bob Dylan singing “Mr. Tambourine Man.” The times they really weren’t achangin’ that much, he thought.

  He rechecked his steps. He’d stopped at the security desk to ask Doug the dockmaster if anyone had entered looking for him; no one had, but there was a party on one of the houseboats tonight and Doug hadn’t kept tabs on everybody who came through the security gate. “Someone might have slipped in with the party people,” Doug had said.

  Bobby climbed to the stanchion above the cabin door, holding on to an upper railing, his boots planted on the top of the doorframe. He dangled his gun hand and gently tapped on the cabin door with the barrel. He waited for an anxious moment. Then the cabin door swung open and someone wearing a baseball cap stepped out. Bobby dropped from his overhead perch, his two hundred plus pounds thudding onto the deck, and threw his left arm around the intruder’s neck, sending the hat flying off and a coffee mug falling to the floor, spilling ice cubes and a pink drink. He placed the pistol to the back of the intruder’s long-haired skull.

  “Move and it’ll be the last time you ever do,” Bobby whispered, and then he felt the round firm butt against his crotch. Heard a startled feminine yelp. Smelled perfume on the night air. Felt two soft warm hands prying at his left arm, trying to dislodge it from the throat. Bobby loosened his grip, and his left hand glided down from the thin long neck over female breasts.

  Sandy Fraser turned to Bobby, clutching her throat.

  “Jesus Christ, Bobby,” Sandy said in a choking voice that was also slightly slurry with booze. “I dropped by to pick up my cup. Some greeting.”

  Sandy bent and picked up her name-stenciled coffee mug that Bobby had taken with him when he left Gibraltar Security the day he got out of jail. Bobby could smell vodka, cranberry juice, and lime. And clean hair and a fragrant scent and all the other special odors of a woman. In the moonlight he could see that Sandy was wearing tight blue jeans, a dark blue polo shirt, and expensive running shoes.

  “Sandy,” Bobby said, stepping back, jamming the pistol back into his pants pocket. “How the hell did you get in here?”

  “I put my arm through some guy’s arm and walked right through the security gate,” she said, her eyes a little glazed with liquor. “When he turned right, I turned left. I knew the name of your boat, so I checked with a secretary I know at Harbor Patrol, and she told me where the boat was docked. It’s listed in your attorney’s name.”

  “Clever,” Bobby said, but knowing she was lying, because the boat was still in Izzy’s dead father’s corporation’s name. Which meant she probably got the name of the boat and its location from Barnicle, who probably got it from Cis Tuzio. Gleason was right: trust no one. Not Gleason; not Barnicle; not Sandy.

  “I was staring to worry I’d have to spend the night alo
ne here,” Sandy said, smiling, dangling the coffee cup with one finger. “Make a girl a drink?”

  “How many you have already?”

  “Enough to know I need more. Coming here wasn’t easy . . . .”

  Bobby looked past her into the cabin, put her in front of himself as a human shield, and stepped inside in a half-combat stance with his gun outstretched.

  “You don’t trust me, do you?” Sandy said. Bobby reached inside the door and switched on the galley light. She looked offended. Without high heels she was shorter than he had thought she was.

  “No,” Bobby said. “I don’t trust you, Sandy. You live with Lou Barnicle.”

  “You used to be a nice guy,” Sandy said, disappointed, as she walked to the refrigerator, took out more ice, and mixed herself another drink, loudly and sloppily, dropping cubes, spilling booze.

  “You used to be a sweetheart,” Bobby said. “Now you’re Barnicle’s bimbo.”

  She whirled, swinging a punch at his face. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her closer to him.

  “He sent you to pick my brains, didn’t he?”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Why are you here, then? Feel sorry for the ex-con? Kiss me where it hurts. Never mind: you couldn’t find where it hurts.”

  “I’m here because I’m scared,” she said, a single tear bulging from her left eye.

  Bobby looked at her, wanted to believe her, but couldn’t. He handed her the coffee mug and led her from the galley area into the bedroom of the cabin. She took a deep gulp of the vodka concoction. Bobby locked the door.

  He half covered the porthole with a black curtain and turned on the bedside lamp. Sandy sat on the bed. Invitingly. She gave Bobby a longing he didn’t want. He was devoted to Dorothea. He’d waited this long for her, he could wait some more. But jail could do strange things to a man. Still, he knew he couldn’t let the time he’d spent in jail influence his mission on the outside. No matter how strong the temptation.

  “Where’s your baby?” Bobby asked. “Home with Dada?”

  “He likes to say he’s the father of my baby,” Sandy said, raising the cup to her mouth with two hands and taking a sip. “But I already told you: he’s not. And he’d kill me for saying that.”

  Bobby’s eyes narrowed. “Then why continue with the charade? You sleep with him, right? Why? Status? Money? Security? Or is it his amazing personality?”

  Her eyes drifted to the door.

  “Why don’t you stop judging me and listen to me?”

  She was right, he thought. He was judging her the way everybody else was judging him. “Okay,” Bobby said. “I’m listening.”

  “I was being set up for a crime I didn’t commit,” she said. “At the police medical board. Major pension fraud. Then I was introduced to a woman at a party, who told me I could make my problems go away by being . . . nice to a certain gentleman who found me attractive.”

  “What guy?”

  “That, I can’t tell you,” Sandy said. “Not yet. Not until I’m sure I can get my kid somewhere safe.”

  “All right, so what happened?” Bobby said.

  “He was married. I was lonely. I slept with him. I got pregnant. On purpose. He didn’t know it. The woman told me that was part of the deal. Plus, I’m not getting any younger and I wanted that baby. I would never have made trouble for the guy. I might have never told him. Anyway, I intended to raise my baby on my own. Then the father found out about the baby.”

  “What did he do?” Bobby asked.

  “He panicked, wanted me to give him up for adoption when he was born,” Sandy said. “He offered me money. But the woman who set all this up threw the frame-up at work in my face again. I was being blamed for arranging approval signatures on three-quarters medical pensions. They made it look like I was the middleman between the crooked cops and the corrupt doctors. It was bullshit, but they had me nailed pretty good on paper. My initials and fingerprints were on all the forms. They had phone records of me talking to some of these cops, who I went on innocent dates with. Some not so innocent. They had me so good they said I would give birth in jail.”

  “Was the woman who played matchmaker Moira Farrell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did Barnicle come into it?” Bobby asked.

  “Barnicle came to me and said that the DA could send me away, that I’d lose my baby, but that he could straighten it out if I did what he said,” Sandy murmured. “The first thing I’d have to do was move in with him. Have the baby, pretend it was his, let him sign the birth certificate.”

  “This didn’t seem strange to you?” Bobby said. “I mean every day thousands of deadbeat fathers run away from their kids. And Lou Barnicle wanted to put his name on one that wasn’t his?”

  “I was scared to death,” Sandy said. “He was offering me protection. I was facing jail time, the best years of my life. I had no money for a good lawyer. I have no real family, just an aunt in Jersey. Without my job and medical benefits, I was looking at welfare or the joint. The alternative was to live in a beachhouse with a new car and a nanny and an allowance and fancy meals. What the hell was I supposed to do? I went along with it, sure. And sure, it made me sick. It did make me feel like a bimbo. Still does. That’s why I sent you the letter about the three-quarters pension scam they were running.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because I knew the kind of cop you were,” Sandy said. “Once I got involved with Barnicle, all the cops I met through him were crooked. Every goddamned one of them. I started to believe the whole PD was rigged. Bobby, this is a big operation. The one cop I knew who was straight and in a position to do something about this racket was you. I was hoping that if you blew it open, I could get out from under these people.”

  Bobby considered what she was saying. It fit Barnicle’s modus operandi. Frame someone to neutralize a threat. He’d done it to Bobby. In this case they framed a beautiful, vulnerable woman. But for what? Sex? Barnicle could afford all the bimbos on the make or prostitutes he wanted with the money from the three-quarters scam.

  “What did you have to do in exchange for Barnicle’s deal?” Bobby asked.

  “Just move in with him and go to work for him,” Sandy said. “Promise that I wouldn’t reveal the real father’s identity unless Barnicle told me to. So I moved in, pretended it was his kid, even let him sign his name to my son’s birth certificate. I didn’t have a choice, Bobby.”

  “Do you sleep with him?”

  “When he’s interested,” she said, dropping her eyes to the floor. “Which is rare. I’m sure he has other women. I’m his public woman. His prop. I’m not proud of it. But I do what I have to do to stay out of jail and keep my kid safe.”

  “How long is the statute of limitations on the pension scam?”

  “Seven years,” she said, looking up again, her eyes a mascara mess. “I’ve put in over a year as Barnicle’s woman. I don’t know if I can do it any longer. He thinks he owns me. If I cross him, he can have me indicted, and he’ll go into court and win custody of the baby because he’s the father of record.”

  “He can’t do any of that if you help me put him in the joint,” Bobby said.

  She took a small sip of her drink and looked at Bobby. Either she was telling a terribly sad and diabolical story or she was a terrific actress. Bobby didn’t dismiss the thespian theory.

  “Who is the real father of the baby?” Bobby asked.

  “That I can’t say,” she said, gulping more booze.

  “Why not?”

  “They’d kill me if it got out right now,” Sandy said. “Worse, it was suggested that maybe they’d kill the baby and let me live. Blame it on me. I couldn’t handle that. I’m not that heroic. You and me know that these people have ways of making people disappear and how to frame someone else . . . .”

  “Yes, they do,” Bobby said. “And the three-quarters scam goes higher than Barnicle, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Sandy said. “He gets phone calls from his b
oss all the time. He calls him The Fixer. I don’t think he even knows who’s really running it. I know this: He’s afraid of the top banana.”

  She finished her drink. “Can I make another one?”

  Bobby grabbed the cup, unlocked the door, walked into the galley, packed it with ice, poured in a shot and a half of Absolut, and splashed it with cranberry juice. He knew Sandy didn’t need it but figured it would keep her talking. He brought it back to her. Sandy took another sip right away.

  “Tell me about Dorothea,” Bobby said, sitting closer to her, looking her deep in the eyes, trying to find the sweet dame from the medical office who always treated every cop like her brother or a boyfriend. “Tell me everything you know about her.”

  “I love Dorothea,” Sandy said.

  “That’s not telling me a goddamned thing. I love her, too.”

  “She’s one of the best women I ever met,” Sandy said. “I . . . oh, goddamnit . . .” She took another big gulp of the booze. “The truth? I was envious; shit, I was jealous of Dorothea for making you fall in love with her. No man ever fell for me the way you did for her.”

  “But who was . . . is she, Sandy? I realized when I was in jail that I knew next to nothing about her except that I loved her and that I was charged with killing her.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Who did she come to New York to see?”

  “There was another man,” Sandy said.

  Bobby’s heart sank and jealousy wormed through him.

  “Who?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me,” Sandy said. “But he wasn’t a lover. He was like a sugar daddy without having to be too sweet.”

  “A relative?”

  “I don’t know,” Sandy said. “But I know she got her money from him. The only relative she ever talked about was her mother, who died in disgrace back in Russia . . .”

  “Ukraine,” Bobby said.

  “That’s right,” Sandy said. “Dorothea always made her share of the rent until she moved in with you. Then Barnicle came into my life. Dorothea is missing, and here I am . . .”