Speak of the Devil

4

I DIDN’T WAIT FOR THE MAYOR’S AND TOMMY CARROLL’S STATEMENTS to come on the tube. I left the Three Roses and hoofed it up the street to City Hall Park. I noted that both of the police cars that had been parked across the street were gone. An uncommon quiet filled the downtown air between the bar and City Hall. Only my footsteps and my ricocheting thoughts. I was mulling over what Margo had just told me. Someone had taken a shot at the mayor’s girlfriend. And following that, at his citizens.

And following that, at me.

The scene in front of City Hall was a regular Woodstock of media. Focus all those satellite dishes on a single spot out in the galaxy, and we probably could have initiated first contact.

The mayor was standing at the top of the stairs at City Hall. The bank of microphones in front of him looked like a muscular piece of modern sculpture. Dozens of cameras down on the sidewalk were aimed up at him. Just the way he likes it.

I voted for Martin Leavitt. It wasn’t with the utmost enthusiasm that I had flipped the lever next to his name, but he was the devil I knew, and I’d been willing to give him a go. A rigorous district attorney in Brooklyn with an impressive collection of pelts on his belt, Leavitt brought strong law-and-order muscle to the post. Those are two of my issues; I’m biased that way. His prosecutorial zeal aside, Leavitt was also one of those pretty-faced politicians whom people seem to like these days. The younger Redford would have played him in the movie. At least, this was an observation Leavitt himself had been overheard uttering soon after his reelection. Allegedly, anyway. Page Six made some hay with the comment for a few days. The Sundance Mayor. Divorced after a brief marriage during the middle of his political climb to the top, Leavitt was frequently spotted in the company of high-profile women. Scorekeepers noted that the gentleman preferred blondes, though he was not beyond the stretch over to a redhead now and again. Leavitt’s decision to have a dishy pop star sing the national anthem at his inaugural had been viewed by some as refreshing and by others as tawdry. I hadn’t really cared either way myself, except when the singer mangled the high note.

Leavitt was closing in on two years into his term, and until recently, no one could have voiced any major regrets. The city had been in a sinkhole of debt when he took over the reins from his predecessor, and by putting a systematic squeeze on each and every department, Leavitt had prompted cries of mutiny throughout the five boroughs, but he had also managed to raise the levels of efficiency in the hitherto bloated and self-serving bureaucracies that had grown way too accustomed to living fat while their constituencies chewed on bones. In other words, he was putting the financial house in order.

Unfortunately, things had become a little unraveled in the arena that was Leavitt’s strong suit. Law and order. A corruption scandal in his police department had flared up like a flash fire several months back, and with the impression that Leavitt’s primary response to the scandal had been to circle the wagons around the upper brass while feeding some street grunts to the lions, the heat had begun finding its way to City Hall. Initially, the scandal had involved a group of cops in Brooklyn’s Ninety-fifth Precinct who were being accused of, among other things, a years-long pattern of shakedowns of local drug dealers, falsifying evidence or even reselling the evidence for their own gain, swapping drugs for sex with area prostitutes and generally trampling all over the neighborhoods they were sworn to protect. When the name of a noted Brooklyn prosecutor with whom then-Brooklyn D.A. Martin Leavitt had worked closely started appearing in newspaper accounts alongside the names of some of the accused cops, voices in some of the more mad-dog corners of the city had begun calling for Leavitt’s head. Tommy Carroll’s, too, for that matter. I hadn’t seen that it would come to any of that. But then the apparent murder-suicide in early November of a pair of cops allegedly involved in the scandal had guaranteed exclamation points being slapped onto the story. The papers were calling it “The Bad Apple Scandal,” “The Rotten Apple Scandal,” etc. National press was beginning to pick up on it. A definite black eye for the Leavitt administration. Its first direct hit. And some nut opening fire on citizens during the Thanksgiving Day parade was certainly not going to help matters. The darkened skies over City Hall had abruptly grown just that much darker.

I was too far back to hear the mayor, so I stepped over cables to a Channel 4 van. The side door was open. A pair of engineers were seated on canvas stools, smoking and watching the mayor on their monitor.

“… shake the spirit of this great city. We won’t let it happen. That’s not what we’re about. I want to repeat, there is nothing to suggest that what happened this morning at the Thanksgiving Day parade was a terrorist attack. This was, it appears, a lone gunman. The gunman has been apprehended, taken into custody-”

Leavitt paused as a barrage of questions from reporters took him out midsentence. I could hear the cries both live behind me and in the news van’s speakers. Leavitt raised his hands like a man at gunpoint and rode out the cacophony.

“We don’t have that information confirmed. As you can imagine, first reports on something like this come flying in from all sorts of sources. Including you folks in the media. We do have him. That much I will confirm. As to his condition? Was he shot? All that? You’re going to have to wait-” The mayor looked directly into the cameras. “You are going to have to wait as I am going to have to wait, so that we get one story and one story only. Perhaps Commissioner Carroll will be able to update us on all that, I don’t know. He will speak in a moment. I-”

Again the mayor was interrupted. This time the tiniest trace of a smile came over his face as he listened to the yapping.

“Have I heard from Miss Gilpin directly? No, I have not. Do I know that she is safe and unharmed? Yes, I do.”

Another barrage. Another smile. This one not quite as tiny.

“How do I know that? I’m the mayor. I know people in high places.”

One of the engineers snorted. “Dude knows Rebecca Gilpin in low places, too.”

I left the van and made my way back over to City Hall. Blue police barricades had been set up at the bottom of the steps. The reporters were calling out their questions to the mayor from behind the barricades. Commissioner Carroll stepped to the bank of microphones, which struck him near the abdomen. Behind him, whispering into Leavitt’s ear, was Philip Byron, the deputy mayor. The mayor was nodding in almost exaggerated agreement to whatever it was Byron was saying to him. He looked like a circus horse.

I worked my way forward and spotted a Times reporter I knew well enough to hail. Henry Greene. He was leaning forward on the barricade, holding a handful of papers he had rolled into a cone.

“Greene!” I called out.

The reporter turned. He waved me over. “Well, if it’s not my favorite German-Irish dick.”

“You should be careful, using that kind of language.”

He indicated the barricade. “How punk is this? Leavitt’s got us in a mosh pit.”

“You’re all animals. I don’t know why he waited so long.”

“Animals. Right.”

“So what are you hearing?” I asked. “Sound like straight dope so far?”

The reporter shrugged. “Fifty-fifty. They’re holding back on some things. They always do.”

I considered the report Margo had mentioned, that the parade shooter had been shot by the police. It’s possible that this was simply a mistake resulting from the early chaos, but my better senses told me that wasn’t the case. I should have been coming clean to the authorities that very minute in a well-lit room at a police precinct near Central Park, all the lousy coffee I could stomach, eager faces crowded around to hear my tale. Instead, I was scheduled to pop into City Hall for a hush-hush confab with the police commissioner as soon as he finished addressing the cameras. Greene was right. They were holding back. And I was one of the things they were holding.

Commissioner Carroll repeated the bare bones of what the mayor had said. He wanted to assure everybody that the crisis was already over. He offered his condolences to the families of the dead and wounded, got in a plug for the professionalism and efficiency of the New York City Police Department and suggested to people that they include an addendum to their normal Thanksgiving Day prayers. As he turned from the podium, Greene brought the cone of papers to his mouth and shouted out, “Commissioner! Why can’t you give us an update on the gunman’s condition? Can you tell us if he was acting alone? There’ve been reports of two gunmen. Can you comment? Is there anyone else out there we should know about?”

Carroll started to turn back to the microphones. As he did, he spotted me. He darkened, then leaned forward to speak directly into the microphones. “You know what we know.”

Greene called out again: “Is it true that the officer who was shot is one of the men involved in the Bad Apple scandal?”

Carroll paused, then turned abruptly away. As he started into the building, a young woman holding a cell phone to her ear approached him. He stopped and said something to her. Harshly. She folded the cell phone immediately and bobbed her head obediently as the commissioner continued to unload on her. It was a short harangue. Carroll concluded it and continued into the building, Mayor Leavitt and Philip Byron close on his heels. I saw the young woman scanning the faces of those of us at the barricade.

“I’ve got to go get the turkey into the oven,” I said to Greene. I reached down and tapped his cone of papers. “By the way, nice technology.”

I left the reporter and made my way to the far end of the barricade. The young woman Carroll had dressed down spotted me and made her way over.

“Mr. Malone?”

“You’re Stacy.”

“Follow me, please.” She spun on her heels and gave me a very pleasant target to follow up the stairs. She paused at the door. “Are you carrying?”

She was all of twenty-five. Stretching, maybe twenty-six. Shoulder-length blond hair. Cute as a chipmunk. Serious as an anvil. Vassar. Bryn Mawr. One of those types of places. Dressed like a sexy librarian.

I asked her, “Who taught you to talk that way?”

No smiles from Stacy. “Are you?”

I patted myself down. “I’m not.”

She waved off the security man standing at the door. I followed her inside. “Commissioner Carroll wants to see you right away,” she said as we crossed the lobby. “I’m taking you to his mobile office. He might be a few minutes.”

“Which is it?” I asked. “Right away or a few minutes?”

She stopped and did an about-face. If I hadn’t had good brakes, I’d have bowled her over. Her expression was tragically intense. All that prettiness, wasted.

“We’re in a crisis here, Mr. Malone. I hope you can appreciate the gravity of the situation.”

I looked into her cornflower-blue eyes and recalled the bullet from the Beretta sailing over my head as I tumbled to the steps at the Bethesda Fountain, not yet two hours ago. Then I recalled Tommy Carroll unloading a few barrels of his own into the young woman.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We’re all on jangly nerves right now. Just take me where you need to take me. I’m sure you’re in for a long enough day as it is.”

Her expression couldn’t seem to locate a pleasant position. A tiny display of red flared up on her smooth cheeks, then vanished. “People are dead.”

I nodded. “I know they are.”

“We lost one of our own.”

“McNally.”

“It’s Thanksgiving.”

Very efficient recap. I had nothing more to add. I kept my yap shut as Stacy led me to a second-floor office.

“Would you like anything? Coffee?”

“Coffee would be good.”

I took a seat in the small mobile office. This was where the police commissioner worked when he was in City Hall, as opposed to down the block at police headquarters. I was familiar with the place from my father’s tenure. The office was small and not richly appointed-a large desk, a black telephone, a television set on a rolling metal cart, a couple of chairs. The window looked out onto the side of the building that faced Brooklyn. The view included an open area near the subway entrance. That past spring a local sculptor had installed several absurdly oversize picnic tables where people could sit and have lunch on nice afternoons. The idea of the giant tables was that adults could reexperience the sensation of being a youngster, the table hitting them near the chin, their legs dangling well above the ground. On first hearing about these tables, Margo had dragged me downtown to sit at one of them and share a sandwich and chips. It didn’t make me feel like a kid again. It made me feel like a foolish adult.

Tommy Carroll came through the office door like a train going into a tunnel. Had my chair been in his way, I’d have ended up on the floor. He came around the side of his desk and threw himself into the large leather chair. It squeaked its complaint as he swiveled it around to face me. His gaze traveled over my shoulder. “What?”

It was Stacy. She had appeared at the door holding my cup of coffee. “Mr. Malone asked for some coffee.”

“Well, give it to him and get out.” She handed me the paper cup. I tried to hand her a smile, but she wasn’t accepting gifts. “Door,” Carroll said gruffly as she exited.

It closed with a delicate click.

The commissioner balled his hands together on the desk. “I’m supposed to be in Tortola.”

I wasn’t sure what I had expected him to say, but “I’m supposed to be in Tortola” would have been way down on the list.

“Nice place, Tortola,” I said. “I went down there a couple of years ago. Very good snorkeling. I went nuts for the parrot fish.”

Tommy Carroll picked up a remote and switched on the television. A grim-faced blond woman with helplessly blue eyes was holding a microphone to her chin. Kelly Cole. Ubiquitous Kelly. Channel 4.

“According to Mayor Leavitt, the gunman has been-”

Carroll muted the sound. He frowned. “What were you and Greene talking about just now?”

“Nothing.”

“He’s a wiseass. That question about McNally? A good cop is killed defending the people of this city, and this pipsqueak reporter thinks he can get smug on me.”

“That’s his job,” I said.

“To smear the New York City Police Department?”

“Seems to me the cops over in the Ninety-fifth have been doing a fine job of that all on their own.”

Carroll scowled. “I thought I told you to stay at the Three Roses until we were finished up here.”

I pulled the twenty out of my pocket and placed it on the desk. “Sorry, Tommy. The place was making me feel like I needed to take a shower.”

“We’ve got a real problem going on here, Fritz.”

“As they say in the old country, ‘No shit, Sherlock.’ ”

“The mayor and I are counting on you to cooperate.”

“Cooperate with what?”

Carroll unballed his hands and leaned back in the chair. He gazed out the window over his left shoulder. It occurred to me that those picnic tables near the subway entrance were probably a decent fit for the commissioner. He looked out the window a few seconds, then let out a gravelly sigh and turned back to me. “The shooter has been identified as Roberto Diaz. Born in Puerto Rico. American citizen. Lived in Brooklyn. Divorced. Last worked for a company called Delivery on Demand. It’s a messenger service.”

“I see.”

“He left a month ago. Quit.”

“Okay.”

Carroll leveled me with a look. “You didn’t shoot him.”

“I didn’t what?”

“You didn’t shoot him, Fritz. Just start getting that notion into your head. You’re not leaving this office until it’s there.”

I leaned back in my chair. I noted again the commissioner’s labored breathing. Tommy Carroll had been a heavy smoker ever since I’d known him. He’d quit lately. I wondered if he’d quit too late. He dipped his large chin toward his chest, his eyes inviting me to speak.

“I shot him, Tommy. I hit him in the right shoulder.”

He was wagging his head even before I’d finished talking. “You didn’t shoot him, Fritz. Officer Leonard Cox shot him.”

“Who is Officer Leonard Cox?”

“He’s the cop who shot Roberto Diaz.”

“Did he shoot him in the right shoulder?”

Carroll nodded.

“Did he shoot him out by the Bethesda Fountain?”

Another nod.

“While giving chase?”

“Of course. What else?”

“Well, I don’t know what else, Tommy. Since we’re obviously stringing fantasies together here, maybe this Officer Cox shot Diaz because Diaz was running around with a flowerpot on his head, and the new rule is no flowerpots on the head on national holidays. I don’t know. What the hell is this all about?”

As Carroll was raising a hand in a gesture to quiet me down, the phone on his desk rang. He picked it up, still looking at me, and listened a few seconds. Then he said, “No. Not yet.” He listened a few more seconds, then grunted and hung up. “That was the mayor.”

“I hope he’s not wearing a flowerpot on his head.”

“You’re talking to him in five minutes.”

“Okay, Tommy, can we get everything out on the table? Why was I taken away from the scene and shoved onto the floor of a police cruiser with a bag over my head? Why was I taken to the Municipal Building? Was Diaz run through the same routine? Where is he now? And last but not least, why am I supposed to start pretending that I didn’t shoot the guy in the shoulder, or anywhere else, for that matter? I’m seeing the mayor in five minutes? Fine. I’ll give you two of those minutes to tell me exactly what the hell’s going on, or I’m walking out of here.” I indicated the television, where Kelly Cole was still yammering into her microphone out in front of City Hall. “Forget Greene. Kelly and I are old pals. You can tell the mayor to tune in to the Channel Four News for all the latest.”

Carroll looked as if he would be quite happy to see my head come off my neck and crash to the floor in pieces. He cleared the telephone to the edge of the desk with his arm, as if making room to lunge forward and grab me by the collar.

“Leavitt knew about the shooting in advance.”

The words came in loud and clear, but I had to run them through the filter several times just to be sure. “He knew Diaz was gong to shoot up the Thanksgiving parade?”

“Not exactly. He didn’t know the specific details of what was going to happen. He didn’t know the where or the who or the when.”

“But he knew?”

“He’d been warned that something might happen.”

“And he did nothing to stop it?”

“You’re not listening. I just told you. He didn’t know what or where or when. Believe me, we were working on it. The parade was an obvious target. I tried to get him to cancel the damn thing, but in this town that’s like asking someone to cancel Christmas. Leavitt wasn’t about to do something like that. Especially now, with all this other crap coming down. People like a parade. It gets their mind off stuff. The whole point was not to go public.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Diaz contacted the mayor a couple of weeks ago. Of course he didn’t give us his name. It was a note. He made… let’s just say he made some demands. I can’t go into details.”

“Can I assume they were unreasonable demands?”

“Of course they were. You know how it is, we hear from nutcases all the time. It’s almost always them just blowing off steam. Nothing comes of it. This guy, who could say? He wasn’t specific about his threats. They never are. But we weren’t sitting on our thumbs. We were working to worm him out, but obviously he acted before we could get to him.”

“What were the demands?”

“I just told you, I can’t go into details.”

“Is that what I should tell Kelly Cole?”

“You’re not telling Cole anything. Maybe I haven’t impressed on you the seriousness of this whole thing. We have seven known dead out there, including one of our own. We’ve got more who are injured. Some of them pretty badly. So we might lose a few more.”

“Half an hour ago you were calling these numbers lucky.”

“Fuck half an hour ago. Now is now. There’s nothing lucky about any of this. It’s a nightmare. But it’s not half the nightmare it’s going to be if word gets out that the mayor was warned in advance. You know how it works. It doesn’t matter that no one knew where or when or any of the details at all. The only thing that matters is the mayor was told someone was ready to do some real fucking damage in this city, and that for all our efforts to stop the guy, the damage was done. We’re not putting that word out. Simple as that.”

“So you’re manipulating the truth.”

“Fuck the truth.”

“Nice,” I said.

“That’s how it is.”

“So what about Rebecca Gilpin?”

“What about her?”

“The shooter aimed at her first. I was right there. The first bullet was a head shot on Mother Goose.”

“What of it?”

“What do you mean, ‘what of it’? Apparently the whole world knows that Leavitt is fluffing the pillows with this woman. Come on, Tommy. Diaz was trying to kill the mayor’s lady friend. Don’t tell me he wasn’t. He was making it personal.”

Carroll grumbled, “I told him to pull her from the parade just in case. Easy enough to do. Put out the word that she’s got a twenty-four-hour flu. He presented it to her. Let me tell you something, Fritz, this is a woman who doesn’t listen. If you’ve got two seconds, I can tell you how much patience I’ve got for celebrities.”

“Okay, so why are you trying to twist the truth about who shot Diaz?”

“Politics.”

“Explain, please.”

“You’re a citizen. We’re damn lucky you’re a licensed snoop, even though the gun you used wasn’t the one you’re licensed to shoot. But at least you’re not some trigger-happy Joe Everybody grabbing a gun and running around trying to be a hero. But even with you being a private dick, it’s not a good picture. Vigilante justice is something we can do without.”

I understood. “But a cop chasing the perp, winging him in the shoulder and taking him into custody, that’s a good story. That’s clean. That’s ‘Hero Cop Saves City from More Hell.’ Am I reading the headlines correctly? A good apple? Is that what you’re angling for? A little positive news for once?”

“It’s close.”

“Close. What am I missing?”

Before he could answer, the office door opened and in walked Martin Leavitt. Without a word, he strode to the television set, where he moved his hand over the controls like a wizard doing a little conjuring. He turned to the police commissioner. “Where’s the sound?”

Carroll picked up the remote and pushed the mute button. Kelly Cole’s voice was twice as loud as any of us were prepared for.

“… this horrifically tragic day. A spokesman for St. Luke’s confirmed just a few minutes ago that the still-unidentified gunman died of wounds inflicted during the shootout with police that had resulted in the gunman’s being taken into custody. Apparently, the suspect was struck-”

I was out of my chair. “Died? I shot him in the fucking shoulder!”

“You didn’t shoot him,” Tommy Carroll said flatly. “We just went over that.”

Mayor Leavitt slammed his hand against the television’s power button. The screen went blank. His face was pale as chalk. “We’ve got a problem.”

Carroll rose from his chair. “No, we don’t. We’re fine. Fritz here is on board. We’ve just got to talk it all out a little more.”

Leavitt turned to his police commissioner, looking at him as if the man had just grown avocados out of his ears.

“No.” He pointed at the blank television. “Not that. I just got a call. From him.”

“From who?”

“Him. The goddamn nightmare. Who do you think?”

Carroll looked confused. “The nightmare just died at St. Luke’s Hospital, Martin. You heard the girl. Settle down. It’s over.”

“No. You’re not listening. I just got a call. From him. There’s no question about it. It was him.” Leavitt was working to keep the waver out of his voice. He was only somewhat successful.

Tommy Carroll came out from behind his desk. He stepped to within five inches of the mayor. A huff and a puff and the mayor would’ve gone down. Carroll’s voice came out with an eerie softness. “The shooter wasn’t our guy?”

Leavitt was shaking his head. “He must have been put up to it by our guy. A triggerman. A partner. Something like that. I don’t know. The point is, our guy is still out there. He’s not dead.”

Carroll repeated dully, “He’s not dead?”

“And he’s not finished. Do you want to know what he said?” The mayor ran a hand through his hair. He took a few seconds to compose himself. God help me, for a moment I thought the man was going to cry. “He asked me if now I believed him. He said the nightmare has just begun. That’s a quote. The nightmare. So you know this is the guy, Tommy. And by God, you can be sure this time I do believe him. I sure as fuck believe him. The bastard.”

I watched as the police commissioner’s face went from putty to crimson. I briefly thought he might put a fist right through the handsome mayor’s face. Then he spun in the direction of the television. The towering police commissioner was a hell of a lot quicker than I would have expected. Squeezing a growl through his clenched teeth, he swung his arm backward, clamped hold of the television and shoved it right off the metal stand. It crashed to the floor. The tube exploded with a loud pop. An instant later, the office door flew open and Carroll’s assistant ran in. The commissioner took one heavy dinosaur step in her direction.

“Get the fuck out of here!”

Stacy fled. I went over to the door. The young woman was running down the hallway as if fleeing a fire. I closed the door. Carroll’s cheeks were puffing with rage. Leavitt raised his hands as if appealing to a crowd for calm. Which, in a sense, he was.

“Okay. Hold on. Just stop. Slow down.” He took a beat. “We’ve got a problem. We need to solve it.”

The steadiness had returned to his voice. He stepped around Tommy Carroll and over to the desk, where he picked up the phone and hit a few buttons. “Philip. We’re in Tommy’s office. Get in here.” He disconnected the line. Looking up at me, he shook the phone receiver in my direction.

“I’m not offering you a choice, Mr. Malone. Simple as this. You are cooperating.”