3 Quarters (32 page)

“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 boss 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 . . .”

She sat there waiting to be taken. Bobby had never liked the idea of taking advantage of liquored-up, emotionally ravaged women. But there were no rules left. He couldn't trust Sandy. He still thought she might be a plant, sent here by Barnicle to fuck information out of him. Barnicle was probably low enough to order his own woman to use sex to learn what she could from Bobby. The racket must come first.

“Bobby, I don't want what happened to Dorothea to happen to me and my baby,” Sandy said. She hung her head and softly began to sob. Bobby put the .38 in his pants pocket and lifted Sandy's chin. Her face was runny with tears. He wanted them to be real.

“No one has really held me in so long I feel like I'm drowning,” Sandy said. “Hold me, Bobby, okay? Just hold me . . . .”

Bobby opened his big arms, and Sandy fell against his chest. He could feel the pressure of her firm breasts. She put her hands around him and hugged him. His hands almost drifted to her buttocks. He stopped himself. She was firm and warm and ready. He lifted her from her feet and laid her on the bed. She lay there, vulnerable. Through a corner of the curtain peeled away from the porthole window, Bobby saw the red tinge of the spire light of the Empire State Building blinking through the rainy city sky.

This was getting harder and harder to do, he thought. He looked down at Sandy and gently pulled the top sheet over her.

“Dorothea doesn't know how lucky she is,” Sandy said.

“Get some sleep,” Bobby said. “I'll be out on the sofa.”

“Bobby, promise me that if anything happens to me that my son winds up with my aunt in New Jersey,” Sandy said. “Not with Lou Barnicle . . . please, Bobby . . . .”

“Nothing is going to happen to you or your baby, Sandy. Get some sleep.”

Lou Barnicle sat alone in his brand-new BMW, parked on the rotunda above the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin. He lit a Cuban cigar with a gold Tiffany lighter and looked down at the white-and-blue Silverton rocking slightly in slip 99-A. Through the Seco Ni-Tec starlight nightscope, which he gave most of his surveillance operatives, he'd seen the ghostly green image of Sandy Fraser appear on the deck of the boat. He knew that inside the boat she was busy with his enemy.

When she is finished with him,
Barnicle thought,
I'll find out what she's learned and whatever she's told him.

This Sandy Fraser fell into my life like a gift,
he thought.
When she stumbled into our three-quarters pension operation at the medical board, the lady lawyer sent her to me for explanations and protection. And eventually I'll turn the fucking tables on the lawyer, too.

Only one other person has more power in this operation than me. Only The Fixer, that anonymous, obnoxious voice on the phone. Eventually I'll turn the tables on that pompous prick, too, and run the whole fucking operation. But in the meantime I'll work for him because he holds the cards. And the money. If I stick to his scam for now, I'll get more money, status, and power than I ever dreamed possible. Who the fuck could have imagined all this on the day I left the academy thirty years ago with a little tin badge?

Eventually, what I can't accomplish with the badge, I'll do with balls and brains on the other side of the badge,
Barnicle thought.
Because I understand power. These assholes think I'm working for them. But they've sat in fucking offices too long, on flat asses, like bean counters, tallying money and not realizing what and who it can buy. I know the miserable fucking streets and the flunkies who are willing to the on them in the name of blind loyalty. The flat asses in the suits just don't get it—when I work for them, they are really working for me. Me, Lou Barnicle, self-made man, who made his money the old-fashioned way: I stole it. But even beyond the law, these pricks like The Fixer and the lady lawyer think there are rules. Gullible assholes. The law has an Out-of-Order sign hanging off it. The law is out of order.

The only one who could really ruin it all, who can hurt me, stop me, is Bobby Emmet. Only he knows that both sides of the fence are filthy. If I let him stick around, eventually he'll figure it all out. He survived again this afternoon. Got more lives than a fucking cat with horseshoes up its ass. But maybe it's for the better. I have to learn to control my temper, submerge my fucking ego. As long as I know what he knows, while he learns it, then Bobby Emmet is working for me, too, without even knowing it.

And Bobby Emmet is a brilliant fucking investigator. More resourceful and more ballsy than any cop I've ever met. If I use him right, manipulate him, then whatever he learns about the other scumbags in the scam, about The Fixer and the lawyer and everyone else, I also learn. That's called leadership. There are just a few more links to connect before I own the whole fucking chain.

Let Bobby Emmet find those missing links, and when he does, he won't even know he's been working for me. Me, Lou Barnicle.

I'll hear from The Fixer in the morning and I'll tell him this latest piece of news,
Barnicle thought.
The Fixer will tell me how to proceed.

But tonight, sweet Sandy, be good to Bobby Emmet. While he's fucking you, I'm really fucking him.

B
obby spent almost two hours of the next morning on line getting the Jeep out of the tow pound on West Street. He paid the $185 tow fine, $50 for illegal parking, and another $645 that Gleason owed in unpaid tickets. He was glad to have the Jeep back. He drove out of the pound to an auto glass shop on Eleventh Avenue and had the rear window replaced for another $150. Another hour of his life, wasted.

At high noon Maggie Emmet stood under the Delacorte Clock dressed in Guess jeans, a Michael Jordan T-shirt, and a pair of white Air Jordans.

“Nothing like rooting for the home team,” Bobby said.

“Michael plays on everyone's home team,” Maggie said, taking him by the hand and walking south from the clock into the park, readjusting the omnipresent JanSport backpack. “He is ‘The Man.' Speaking of which, I have a man who wants to meet you. He's in the parking lot of Tavern on the Green.”

“Who we meeting?”

“Mr. X,” she whispered with histrionic flair, cupping her hands and looking both ways.

He'd learned a long time ago not to probe too deeply with Maggie, who as a preteen kid lived in a fantasy world of intrigue, derring-do, and secret agents. Her mother once dragged the child to a psychologist to find out why she was always talking to herself, sometimes taking a soda bottle into the bathroom and talking to it for hours. Connie was convinced Maggie was disturbed because Bobby was an undercover cop. He was so involved in deception and melodrama that it was affecting their daughter. The shrink told Connie to calm down; Maggie's behavior was perfectly normal. She just had a fertile fantasy life, and someday she might write fiction or be an actress or something else that required imagination.