The Good Guys Read online

  “I gotta go,” Bobby said.

  “Want me to come?”

  “That’s okay,” Bobby said in a fading voice, followed by the sound of the front door closing.

  The second man shouted after him, “Call me, okay? I’m there.” And again, a second later, “I’m there.”

  Slattery turned off the tape recorder and sat down at his desk. “That’s it.”

  O’Brien was incredulous. “What are you talking about, that’s it?”

  Slattery held up both his hands in restraint. “I mean, there’s nothing we can do right now. By the time we got to a location for the Russians, the place was quiet. Just a gas station. Whatever they did there, it was over. There was nobody there. We didn’t want to bust in and let them know we were there. The place is under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Anybody comes or goes we’re tracking them.”

  “What are you, kidding me?” O’Brien said with frustration, indicating the tape. “You heard that. I mean, if there’s the slightest chance . . .”

  Slattery shook his head. “There’s not. I’m telling you, we’re all over it.”

  Russo spoke with more determination than O’Brien had ever heard. “When we go in, I want to be there.”

  Slattery agreed. “That’s fair. Look, we need to get as much intelligence out of this place as possible before we take them down.” O’Brien could hear every day of Slattery’s long career in his voice as he continued, “I swear to God, Russo, if there was a chance we could make a difference, we wouldn’t wait. And when we’re done, somebody’s gonna go for this. But we got a shot here to find out what the Russians and the Italians are up to. We’ve been trying to get here for a long time. So we’re gonna wait and that’s it.”

  “I’m outta here,” Russo said. And seconds later she was gone.

  O’Brien sighed deeply. “Well, partner,” he said to Slattery, smiling wanly, “I think I’ll be moseying along.” And then he took off after his partner.

  Being an FBI agent, a cop, a law enforcement officer of any kind, is a strange job. It requires you to put aside your normal human emotions while you’re on the clock. On some levels it’s a janitorial job, cleaning up the mess caused by exploding tempers and greed and accidents and pure stupidity. Responding to depravity, brutality, sadism, even death, is just part of the job. Destroyed lives aren’t supposed to affect you when you’re on the clock. From the first day of instruction you’re taught to deal with it professionally, then move on to the next assignment.

  Of course it isn’t that easy. Changing gears abruptly is a really hard thing to do. For some people it’s impossible. Sometimes the time you need to decompress just isn’t there, so you just suck it up and keep moving forward.

  Connor caught up with Laura Russo at the elevator bank. They rode down together without saying a word. Finally, as they walked briskly up Broadway, he asked, “What do you expect him to do?”

  “Oh, it’s not Slattery,” she told him calmly. “I just need a little time, that’s all.”

  He anticipated a long discussion about the job and responsibility and dealing with human suffering, after which she would have calmed down enough for them to get back to work. Truthfully he needed the cooling-off period too. Instead, she walked in thoughtful silence for several blocks. He stayed right with her. Eventually her pace slowed and she began glancing into shop windows. She stopped in front of a small lingerie boutique. Its single window was given to an elaborate display. Painted in lifelike detail onto a white paper screen which covered the entire back of the window was a black limousine with its rear door partially opened. And emerging from that door was a single long, slender mannequin’s leg, wearing a sharply pointed black high heel and a silk stocking held up by a garter. Finally she asked O’Brien, “Nothing’s changed, right? It’s still all about finding Gradinsky?”

  O’Brien was staring at the window display, his mind envisioning the nonexistent woman. “He’s the mystery guest.”

  Laura was also focused on the titillating display and said knowingly, “But he’s still a man, isn’t he?” She looked at O’Brien, busy with his fantasy. “We really haven’t thought too much about that, have we?”

  Geri Simon had taken a “personal day.” “Use ’em or lose ’em,” was the way she described it. With the traffic on the Henry Hudson Parkway it took O’Brien and Russo almost an hour to find her small, neat house on Spencer Avenue in North Riverdale. It was the home in which she had grown up and lived in all her life, and there she still remained, single and resigned to it, sharing it with her elderly mother.

  Russo dropped off O’Brien at Stromboli’s Pizza Café on Riverdale Avenue where he devoured a meatball hero while she went alone to Simon’s house. Certain conversations are easier just between women. Simon had initially claimed to be too busy for visitors when Russo phoned from the office, but reluctantly agreed to see her when Russo claimed it involved Gradinsky’s life.

  The house remained rooted firmly in the late 1950s, from the faded white doily on top of the RCA Victor TV to the three-way illuminated log-set in the faux fireplace. Geri Simon had put on just enough makeup to try to make it appear that she wasn’t wearing any at all. They sat at the kitchen table because, Simon explained, indicating the bedroom where her mother was resting, “She doesn’t want me to smoke in the living room.” She made a face. “She says the smell gets into her curtains.” Simon lit a cigarette and savored a long puff. “You want something to drink? Some tea maybe?”

  “No thanks,” Laura said. “I just had some coffee.”

  “Sure.” Simon leaned close to Russo and said in a subdued, husky voice, “Now, tell me about Peter. You found him?”

  It was “Peter,” Russo noticed. “Geri, I had a long conversation with Natalie Speakman,” she said. Simon leaned back as if that name were a great wind. “She told me all about their relationship.”

  Simon pursed her lips and eyed Russo warily. “That’s why it was so friggin’ important for you to see me right away? To tell me that?”

  Russo could feel Simon’s anger rising. “This isn’t easy for me either, believe me on that.” She gently placed her hand on top of Simon’s. “But I have to ask you this. Before Natalie were there other students . . . graduate assistants maybe?” Laura knew the answer; what she needed were the specifics.

  She knew the answer because she had been in precisely the same situation. Larry Carty had been her first professor of forensic science. He was also her friend, her mentor, and eventually her lover. Unhappily married, misunderstood and unappreciated, burdened but brilliant, he had taken her under his wing and onto the convertible sofa in his office. Their romance lasted two semesters, which, she later discovered, tied his existing record. Their breakup was for her own good, he had explained to her. He was trapped at the university, and as much as he cared for her, he refused to hold her back from what he knew would be an outstanding career. There could be no greater proof of his love for her than the fact he would let her go. If she stayed and did not fulfill her potential, he would never forgive himself.

  She had believed him right up until the day she met her replacement. Oddly enough, though, long after the storm had passed, she retained warm memories of him. And when she made her first arrest, she had called him with the news.

  “What do you want me to say?” Simon asked. “Peter . . .” She waited for the right words. “Peter is a complicated man.” She tapped the ash from her cigarette into a restaurant ashtray, then looked away. “I’ve known Peter a long time,” she said, “a long time.” She looked directly at Russo. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” She was fighting tears; she wiped her eyes. “The smoke,” she explained.

  “Of course.”

  “Everybody in the department knows about Peter and his . . . his friends. It’s no secret, you know.” She considered that. “I think Grace knows too. I mean, how could she not after all these years?”

  Russo pushed gently. “Does he keep in contact with any of them?”

  Ger
i was looking straight down now. “Oh, you know, a couple of them, I guess.” It took some time for the meaning of that question to sink in. “You think?”

  Russo nodded. “It makes sense. The special ones, the ones he trusts, I need their names and addresses.”

  Geri Simon nodded in agreement and stood up. “I’ve got them in the office. Give me a minute to tell her ladyship.”

  THIRTEEN

  Control. That’s the bottom line: Control your territory, control the people you do business with, control your personal life. Even control the times, the places, and the way you lose control. Do that successfully and you control your destiny. In this world everything counts. People are continually probing to find your weakness—and when they find it, they will exploit it. Maintaining your cool counts most. Cool is a lifestyle. It earns respect, and it is respect that makes all the difference.

  Bobby Blue Eyes was cool his whole life. The Sinatra of the school yard. Nothing fazed him. He was always in control. Always focused. He earned respect. Out of control, out of sight was the way he described it. Or, sometimes, mind over everyday matters. And so he sat in his car, staring straight ahead but seeing nothing, both hands tightly gripping the steering wheel, desperately trying to regain control of his emotions.

  Think, Bobby ordered his mind, think. Don’t react. Be smart. Maintain control. It was hard, so damn hard. Pure, raw emotion was ripping apart his insides. No-good motherfucking Russians. Cocksucking bastards. Kill every fucking one of them. Tear out their lungs and feed them to the dogs. Get even, get even.

  He smashed his right fist into the dashboard.

  Think. Don’t be stupid. Don’t fuck up. Think. Don’t do something you’re gonna regret. Get control. He took several long, deep, calming breaths. He closed his eyes and tried to calm his emotions. Fuckers! Long, deep breaths. Behind his eyes he felt the beginning of tears. He stopped that quick. No tears. There weren’t going to be any tears. Not from him, not one. Maybe later, a long time later, after he’d taken care of business.

  Long breaths. All right, first things first. He needed to be absolutely certain whose voice he’d heard on that phone. He knew, he just had to be sure. He drove several blocks into Chinatown, stopping next to a pagoda-like enclosure sheltering two pay phones. He took the roll of quarters from his glove compartment; his New York quarters, he called them, for pay phones and parking meters. While the phone was ringing he was struck by a horrendous thought—he wasn’t sure that he wanted her to answer it.

  Ronnie picked up on the third ring. “Hello?” She was out of breath.

  He knew. He couldn’t breathe. “It’s me,” he managed. “What are you breathing so hard about?”

  “I was in the basement doing laundry. What’s up?”

  “There weren’t any calls for me, were there?” Much better than “I was just calling to see if you were still alive.”

  “No. Why?” Normally Bobby called home only once a day, usually in the late afternoon to tell her if he would be home for dinner and what time to expect him. “Is something wrong?”

  He sniffled. “No, nothing. Everything’s fine. Listen, I’ll call you later.” He hung up the phone. Scratched into the reflective cover of the coin box were the words “Trust God.” He’d seen the same two words scratched in the same scrawl on just about every pay phone in Manhattan, but they had never registered before. Bobby made church when he could, which admittedly was not on any regular basis, but always on Easter Sunday and Christmas Eve, plus the regular family and friend baptisms and first communions. But “Trust God”? For what? he wondered, and put another quarter in the pay phone.

  His heart was pounding as he dialed Pam’s number. The phone was answered after the second ring. He could hear the laughter in her recorded voice. “Hi, it’s me. Either I’m here and I know it’s you and don’t want to talk to you, or I’m not home. Leave a message with your phone number and if I don’t call you back, you’ll know which one it is.”

  After the tone, as optimistically as he could manage, he said, “Hey, it’s Bobby. Call me at the number soon as you get this message, okay?” “The number” being the phone at the club. He started to hang up, then added, just in case, “I miss you.”

  As he drove to the apartment on Sullivan Street, he tried to remember what she’d told him about her schedule. He was having a hard time focusing. She had said something about working a flight to Paris. That’s why she wasn’t answering her phone. Besides, how the fuck could the Russians even know about her? Hey, Ronnie knew everything, and if Ronnie didn’t know about Pam, and she was living with him, there was no fucking way the commies could know about her. No way. The Russians were tough guys, not smart guys.

  He drove at the speed limit, even stopping at a yellow light. Set a steady pace, he reminded himself, no need to race. When you moved too fast, when you did things without thinking through to the consequences, that’s when you made mistakes. So it was keep moving forward, but set a pace. When he got to her apartment, though, he didn’t waste time looking for a parking spot. He pulled right into a garage, the one thing every real New Yorker hates to do. “When’ll you be back?” the attendant asked.

  “When I’m back,” he said. He reached under the floor mat in the back and grabbed the keys to the apartment. He wasn’t stupid enough to keep them on his key chain where Ronnie might find them and wonder what doors they opened.

  In the foyer he leaned on her buzzer hard and waited for a response. C’mon, baby, he thought, please. When his mind wandered to places he didn’t want to go, he willed it to focus on the moment. Finally he gave up and used his key to open the door.

  The apartment was on the third floor. He took the wooden steps two at a time, just as he did when he couldn’t wait to see her. On the second floor he heard two people arguing in the rear apartment, the one directly beneath Pam’s. When he got to her apartment, he rapped several times on the door. Habit, mostly, this time coupled with wild hope. He didn’t wait very long, though, before unlocking the door. He took a couple of steps inside and quietly shut the door behind him. The place felt empty and very cold. Then he reached under his jacket and purposefully took out his gun.

  He moved forward silently. He listened for any sound, searching for the slightest sign that something unusual had happened here. He walked past the bedroom, the bathroom, and the kitchen to the end of the hall and stepped into the living room. Sunlight was pouring through the window; specks of dust were floating through the light. But nothing was even slightly out of its place. He checked the window, which opened onto the fire escape landing. It was locked, and the wooden rod he’d jammed in there to prevent it from being opened was still in place. No one had gotten into this apartment from the fire escape.

  Room by room he moved through the apartment. Everything was Pam-neat, where it was supposed to be. Where she’d put it. In fact, he had almost convinced himself that she really was working that flight to Paris when he slid open the door of her bedroom closet.

  Her blue and white Pan Am overnight bag was sitting on the floor, hooked to the aluminum trolley she used to wheel it through airports. He stuck the gun back in his waistband and kneeled down in front of the bag and guided the zipper around two corners. Then he flipped open the lid. And took a deep, long breath. Ah fuck. Her travel kit was there, with all of her makeup inside. She always referred to the makeup kit as Dracula, because without it she wouldn’t go out in the daylight. And she never traveled without it.

  Bobby sat on the side of her bed. The message light on her answering machine was blinking. He hit the play button. There were four calls. The first call was from some girlfriend, a name he didn’t know. Both the second and third calls were from a Pan Am dispatcher, the first call wondering where she was, the second call informing her they were bringing in a flight attendant on reserve. The fourth call was the call he’d made from Chinatown. It seemed like he’d made that call years earlier. He didn’t bother listening to it. He erased all the messages.

  He j
ust sat there for a while, head bowed, hands clasped between his legs. Eventually he lay back on the bed, as he had done so often the past few months. This time, though, he buried his head in her pillow and inhaled her perfumed scent. He was so cold, so terribly cold, that still fully dressed he slipped beneath her heavy floral quilt and pulled it over him. She’d hate this, he thought. I’m lying in the bed with my shoes on. And he had never felt so empty and alone in his life.

  He lay there for several hours, watching the afternoon move across the room and finally fade into twilight. She was dead, he knew that. He accepted it. And as much as he fought it, as much as he tried to push the awful thoughts out of his mind, he couldn’t help wondering what they’d done to her. How had they tortured her before killing her? That scream, that hideous scream, would live in his mind forever. He would never be free of it.

  What had happened in this apartment? Where’d they come from? Where’d they take her? He had so many questions and no answers. His mind played games, trying to grab hold of the day and yank it back into the past, trying to see what had happened hours earlier.

  Not knowing was much worse than learning to deal with reality. It was possible, he understood, that he might never know what happened to her. Sometimes people just disappeared and were never seen again. That was a fact of his life. Oh gees, he thought; not knowing would definitely be the worst, having to live the rest of his life with the most terrifying nightmares his imagination could conjure up.

  As the hours passed, his thoughts moved haltingly from despair to action. He couldn’t just lie there, he had to do something. He had to respond to them. Anything. Finding her was impossible; there was no trick his mind could play to change that. He wouldn’t even know where to start looking. Call the cops? No way. The only thing they could do was cause problems, and he couldn’t give them any information. But finding the people who did this? He didn’t know exactly how to do that. The parking lot attendant had their phone number. But getting it wouldn’t do him any good unless he could crawl through the wire to find out where it ended. He could go back up to that lot and wait for one of their people to show up with the cash for the driver. That was a connection. It probably would get him into their organization, but they would certainly be looking out for him there.