Midas

8

Justin couldn’t quite place the noise. Some kind of horrible bird? A fire alarm? Maybe a smoke detector. Whatever it was, it was awful and it seemed to be emanating from the middle of his hungover brain.

He opened his eyes-a big mistake-then rolled over in his bed. He waited for sunlight to come streaking through the window and put an end to his hazy darkness, but no light came. He realized it was still dark outside. And that damn noise kept hammering away at him.

It took another moment or two to realize the sound wasn’t vibrating inside his head. It was coming from the end table next to his bed. From the general direction of the telephone. No, it was actually coming from the telephone. An evil invention, Justin decided. The world would be a lot better off with nice quiet tin cans and some string.

Justin sighed, regretted every shot and every beer he’d downed the night before, then picked up the phone and heard:

“What the hell are you trying to do to me?!”

“Hello?” he croaked.

“You told me there was no trouble! You said it was just a favor! You almost got me goddamn fired a year ago and what, now you’re trying to finish me off?! And you don’t even return my calls?!”

“Wanda?”

“Of course it’s Wanda. Who the hell else do you think it is? I left five goddamn messages for you!”

“I never check my machine. What time is it?”

“Well start checking! And it’s six.”

“In the morning?”

“Wake up, Jay! I’m not kidding around here! Why the hell didn’t you tell me what I was getting into?!”

He sat up-another mistake-and tried to rub his eyes to full awake position. He had a plastic bottle of Fiji Water next to his bed, which he grabbed and swigged down half the water in two gulps.

“Wanda, I swear to God, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I spent half the night being interrogated about your goddamn fingerprints!”

Now he was awake. “Tell me.”

“I am telling you, you asshole. I want you to tell me!”

“I get you’re angry. But what happened?”

“You set me up, is what happened. I put through the prints and found the same thing-no clearance. So I called in a favor, trying to bypass the clearance. You got me curious, too, you bastard. And within five fucking minutes, I got a call.”

“From who?”

“It doesn’t matter. But I spent the whole day and night in D.C. I didn’t get home till after midnight.”

“You had to go to Washington?”

“Will you pay attention, please? You sent me to get you absolutely top-secret, classified information, you bastard! And I almost got my ass fried.”

“Wanda, I swear, what I told you is everything I know. I don’t have a clue what’s going on, I don’t have any idea who this guy is. All I know is that somebody’s getting away with murder.”

“Murder?”

He sighed. And told her about the airplane manifold and the conversation he’d had with Ray Lockhardt.

“Thanks for telling me before.”

“Look, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t tell you.”

“And why is that?”

“The people you were conversing with last night, did you tell them why you were looking for the info?”

“Of course I did.”

“Did you tell them about me?”

Her voice softened for the first time in the conversation. “Yes. You didn’t tell me there was anything to hide here.”

“It’s not a problem. I didn’t know there was anything to hide. But clearly there is. So it’s better you didn’t know the plane was sabotaged. Less for you to have told them.”

“What I should do is go tell them now.”

“Yeah. That is what you should do. Of course, it means they’ll definitely come after me next. To find out if I know even more.” He gave her a few moments to mull it over. “So is that what you’re going to do?”

She didn’t answer. They both stayed quiet for a while. Her breathing was a little softer and less rapid. He took another long swig of water.

“So, Wanda,” he said finally. “Did you get the pilot’s name?”

“You’re an asshole, Jay,” she said. “I can’t tell you anything. Haven’t you been listening to me?”

“Yeah. But there’s something else I haven’t told you. Something that happened after I spoke to you.” He gave her all the details of his bizarre conversation with Cherry Flynn in Oklahoma City. “The guy’s fingerprints have been removed and his FAA file is gone. Right now, we’re the only two people who know he was murdered. Except for the people who killed him. Or ordered him killed. And whoever’s covering the damn thing up.”

“You think it’s this guy Heffernan?”

“I don’t know if he did the mechanical work. But he’s certainly involved. He knows what happened. But the guy’s too low-level to pull the other strings. He didn’t get the file pulled or the prints classified.”

“Jay, I don’t think we should talk about this on the phone anymore.”

“Okay. Fair enough. How about if I come up there tomorrow night. We can have dinner.”

“Don’t bother. I’m not getting sucked into this, Jay. I’m not getting involved in this one.”

“We could eat at my folks’ house. They’ll be happy to see you.”

“Jay. .”

“You like duck? Their chef makes a superb duck.”

“Goddammit, Jay. .”

“Let’s say seven-thirty tomorrow night.”

“Let’s not say anything!”

“Dress informal.”

“Make it eight, you asshole. Some of us work.”

Justin hung up the phone. Finished off the bottle of water. Decided he’d better gulp down about a dozen aspirin before he went to the station, so he swung his legs out of bed and went in search of the aspirin bottle. As he was fumbling to open the childproof top, the phone rang again. Justin swore, wondered how the hell he’d gotten so popular, and, through his fog, made his way back to the phone.

“Don’t yell at me again,” he said, expecting it to be Wanda. “I think my head’s going to fall off.”

“Then stay away from me,” a man’s voice answered. “I’ve seen enough headless bodies in the last twenty-four hours to last me a lifetime.”

It was Chuck Billings, the head of the Providence bomb squad. “And here I thought I’d be waking you up and you’d be docile as hell.”

Justin apologized for his unfriendly greeting, then told Chuck why he’d been trying to get in touch with him.

“They’re keeping me crazed busy,” Billings said. “It’s why it took me so long to get back to you. Genuinely nuts what’s going on. And today’s a really bad day. That’s why I’m calling so early. I think the president might even be showing up here. Major photo op.”

“Can you give me any time at all, Chuck?”

“How about we get together tomorrow? Right before lunch. I can probably even get you into the site, show you a few things.”

Justin agreed, thanked him, then went back to trying to open the aspirin bottle. When the top popped off with relative ease, he took it as a good omen. After slipping three aspirin into his mouth, followed by another half bottle of Fiji Water, he decided things were definitely improving.

His eleven o’clock meeting with Mayor Leona Krill went relatively smoothly. Justin showed up on time, he was extremely polite, and he didn’t have any particular problems with the specifics that she wanted to discuss. They agreed on the new salary. He listened quietly while she explained the parameters of his new job and the new responsibilities that came with it. They agreed to set up a bimonthly meeting, lunch if possible. Justin was ready to leave-he was already craving more aspirin, not just for his head but for his back, which was stiff and aching; he really had to start working out again-when she brought up the need for a new hire.

“We have room in the budget for another officer.” When he looked questioningly, she explained. “In essence, you’ve replaced Jimmy. Now we need to replace you.”

“Okay. That makes sense. Good. We can use it.”

“I’d like you to hire a woman, Jay.”

He didn’t answer for a moment. It wasn’t an off-the-wall request. He had nothing against women police officers. But he was curious about the reason-there was always a reason with politicians, even small-time local ones-so, when he spoke, all he said was, “Why?”

“Several reasons. One, it’s time we had a woman in the department. It’s the proper thing to do. Two, I think it’d be a good thing politically.”

“A lot of women voters in East End.”

“That’s right.”

“What if a woman’s not the best candidate?”

“Then I wouldn’t ask you to hire her. But that’s number three: someone’s come very highly recommended.”

He raised an eyebrow. “By whom?”

“Not one of my gay acquaintances, Jay, if that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t live in quite that circumscribed a world.”

That is what he’d thought. “Sorry. I didn’t mean. .”

“That’s all right. I have no idea what this woman’s sexual orientation is. But I’d like you to interview her. She has a superb reputation and it sounds like she’d be a good fit.”

“Okay.”

Mayor Leona Krill handed over a resume and stuck out her hand for Justin to shake.

“No more kissing?” he asked.

“I just like to keep you off guard,” she answered.

“You’re doing a good job so far,” he said. And headed back out to Main Street.

The rest of the day was spent on normal police department business. Justin was surprised how, after a day of talking on the phone to locals about various complaints, passing along instructions to the officers who now worked for him, paperwork, explaining to the head of the town council the pluses and minuses of a proposed roundabout near one end of town, and meeting with the head of the school board about the need for speed bumps on the road in front of the high school, when he looked up at the clock, it was nearly six-thirty in the evening.

At seven-thirty, he met Bruno Pecozzi at the restaurant in the Schooner Hotel on Main Street. Bruno was staying at the Schooner, probably the nicest place to stay, sit, eat, or drink on the entire east end of Long Island. The hotel was built in the late 1700s and it still reeked of colonial charm. The owner, who’d been married six times and, over the years, managed to lose just about everything but the hotel in his various divorce proceedings, kept one of the great wine lists in the country, maintained a superb humidor in the lobby, and always managed to lure top-notch chefs. He kept several tables for regulars and, by the front door, he always made sure there were three backgammon tables so anyone could come in, sit in a comfortable chair or sofa, have a relaxing drink, and play away for hours on end. During the summer, Justin thought the place was a hellhole of tourists and frantic singles. During the winter, it was one of the great places on the East Coast.

Justin shook his head when he saw where Bruno was sitting: the absolute, prime, A-number-one table in the front room. The so-called celebrity table. Bruno winked at him when Justin walked in, and motioned for him to come sit down.

Bruno said right up front that he was paying-it was on the movie studio-and he told Justin to pick the wine. Justin figured what the hell, and ordered an ’82 Cheval Blanc. For his dinner, he ordered a Caesar salad and a pepper steak, medium rare. Bruno had exactly the same-except he asked for two steaks.

“Skip the extra side dishes,” he told the astonished waiter, “but bring two slabs of meat.” When the waiter scurried away, he raised his wineglass toward Justin and said, “Salut.”

They sipped the excellent wine and made small talk for a bit. Justin told Bruno that he was now the police chief, which got a laugh out of the big man. Bruno told Justin that he was screwing the female star of the movie he was working on-the married female star-which got an equal laugh in return. During the banter, Justin got the feeling that Bruno had something else on his mind. He waited, and, sure enough, Bruno soon held his hand up and said, “You know, this is kind of hard for me, I’m not good at this stuff, but I wanna get this out in the open. I know I’m years too late, but I’m really sorry about what happened to Alicia. I didn’t know your little girl but I’m sorry about her, too.”

“Thank you.”

“I wanted to come to the funeral, you know, but I didn’t think it was appropriate.”

“I appreciate it, Bruno.”

“I want you to know something else. We told that shithead to stay away from you. We told him to leave them alone, too.”

Justin didn’t need a name to know who Bruno was talking about. Louie Denbo. He was the thug Justin had arrested, had spent a year investigating, compiling enough information to send him to prison for the rest of his life. On the night before his trial was to begin, Denbo was the one who’d sent two men to Justin’s house. The men who’d shot Justin four times. The men who’d killed his daughter and driven his wife to suicide.

After spending two years in prison, Louie Denbo had been stabbed to death by a fellow inmate. The prison authorities never found the man responsible.

“Anyway,” Bruno said, “I just thought you should know. We warned him. And he got his, the stupid prick.”

And now, for the first time, Justin realized what had happened. He knew what Bruno was telling him. It wasn’t an accident-or even a prison brawl-that caused Denbo’s death. It was a hired hit. Retaliation for crossing the line and disobeying orders.

Justin was surprised that this news didn’t change anything inside him. There was no sudden gratification or sense of closure. The man who’d ruined his life was dead, had been for several years. It didn’t matter to Justin how he’d died or who’d killed him. It didn’t bring back the people he’d killed. So he just nodded at Bruno, acknowledging the info, and took another sip of the superb red wine.

The food came and they shifted the talk to more normal topics: cop and killer talking about movies and music-Bruno enthused about the new Roman Polanski movie and the live bootleg Phish CD of their farewell concert; he was a major Phish fan and until they’d broken up he’d followed their concert schedule whenever possible-and sports and politics. Eventually, the conversation got around to the bombing of Harper’s.

“I saw the guy, you know,” Bruno said, polishing off the last of his side of broccoli rabe.

“What guy?”

“The bomber. The guy with the briefcase.”

“What do you mean, you saw him?”

“We were shootin’ a couple of blocks from the restaurant. Second unit crew, buncha extras, couple of the actors. He walked right by.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“Well, I didn’t know fuck-all when I saw him. But I been readin’ about it. They traced the guy’s path. So I know I seen some Arab guy with a briefcase walkin’ past the shoot. I noticed him ’cause I saw him stop when he saw all the extras dressed as cops. It scared him. He must’ve thought they were real. I remember thinkin’ he was a guy who was doin’ something wrong somewhere or other. Some people look at stuff, know how much it’s worth. That’s their skill. Some people see things, tell you whether they’re beautiful or not. Me, I know when people are scared. It’s my talent. Useful in my line of business. And I noticed this guy ’cause he was scared. But I’ll tell you somethin’ else. Guys who do shit like this, I mean, ready to kill themselves for whatever, they don’t get scared when they see a bunch of cops. They think, ‘Fuck them, they hassle me I’ll take ’em with me.’ This guy was scared. Too scared to blow himself up.”

“You don’t think he did it?” Justin sounded incredulous.

“I’m just saying there’s more than meets the fucking eye, Jay. There usually fucking is.”

“You tell this to the police or. .?”

“Oh sure. I waltzed in to the FBI and explained all my theories to them ’cause we’re such good buddies.”

“Bruno, if you’re convinced you’re right, this is the kind of thing you have to tell somebody.”

“What? My hunch that the guy was too chickenshit to blow himself up? Anyway, I’m tellin’ you. You pass it along. You’re goin’ up to see your FBI buddy tomorrow, ain’t ya?”

Justin let his fork clatter down to his plate. “How the hell do you know that?”

Bruno sat back in his chair, let an easy grin spread across his wide face. “Gimme some credit, Jay. I know a lot of stuff.”

“What, do you have the Feebies’ phones bugged up there?”

Bruno kept the grin on his face. “Hey, they bug us, don’t they? It’d only be fair if we did.”

Justin regained his composure enough to signal the waiter and ask for a double espresso.

“You eatin’ dessert?” Bruno asked.

“I’m trying to watch my weight.”

“Yeah, me too.” Bruno turned to the waiter. “So just bring me one piece of cheesecake instead of two, okay?”