3 Quarters (31 page)

“Fuck you, Bobby,” Farrell snapped.

“I think you already did, Moira,” Bobby said, standing, zipping his pants, looking down at her in the kneeling position. “You fucked me like I was never fucked before.”

“Get the hell out of here!” she screamed, getting to her feet and strutting across the office. She grabbed her dress, which she held in front of her like a tiny shield, abruptly looking foolish and pathetic and not very attractive at all.

“So where does all that cash Barnicle brings you go, Moira?” Bobby taunted as he buckled his belt. “The cash in the manila envelopes?”

“I asked you nicely to go,” Farrell said.

“A minute ago you wanted me to come,” Bobby said.

“I could easily scream rape,” she said. “ ‘Disgruntled ex-client gets revenge.' ”

Bobby finished buckling his pants.

“Save that last thought,” he said, and left.

B
obby left the Court Street office building in downtown Brooklyn through a side door. In the past he had met many attorneys there when they wished to surrender a client to the DA's office without marching him through the gauntlet of the press. The secret fire exit was behind the newspaper stand, and it let Bobby out on Montague Street, fifty feet down from Court Street. A soft rain continued to fall. Bobby was anxious about leaving through the main doors onto Court Street. His Jeep was parked there. Someone from the Barnicle crew might be watching it.

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.

B
obby 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 alone 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.”