Richard Hawke - Speak of the Devil

“You are a creep, Jigs.”

He put the cigarette back behind his ear and gave another glance at the students. “Maybe I am,” he said wistfully.

Our beers arrived.

“Your burger will be right out, Fritz,” Jimmy said. “The cow put up a good fight.” He took off again.

Jigs picked up his beer. “So what’s that brilliant mind of yours telling you? Who do you suppose thought it would be fun to kill a bunch of people, then give a million dollars to a nun? Who comes up with an idea like that?”

I took Jigs’s question into my beer. I didn’t know what in the world I’d been thinking, expecting Nightmare to waltz into the Cloisters and pick up his loot. Even with his no-touch insurance policy in place, it would have been an absurd risk to take. Tommy Carroll was running around hanging video cameras and planting fake nannies on the street while I was flattening my feet all day in a fake mustache and glasses, and for all we knew, our creep could have been sitting snugly at home saying Hail Marys to dirty pictures the whole time. Red tie. Green tie. Wisconsin. NOW THAT I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION. Okay. He got it. And it turns out he didn’t even want the million bucks.

I watched as Jimmy mixed a martini for a guy in a baseball cap down at the other end of the bar. He chilled, he mixed, he shook, he poured. A martini at Cannon’s. If God really were Irish, like they say, the joint would have been in cinders. Past the end of the bar, on the wall, was the pay phone. A chesty woman in a blue denim shirt was hollering in it above the bar noise.

“Shit,” I said.

Jigs cocked his head. “Something good usually follows ‘shit’.”

“The money,” I said. “The note made a specific point that the convent keep the money.”

“If it were me calling the shots, I’d have gone halfsies with them.”

“No. What I mean is, he wants the nuns to have the money, but they don’t have the money.”

Jigs rubbed his fingers absently along his scar. “We have the money.”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed. This guy expresses himself in bold statements.”

“You mean he might not be happy if he finds out the sisters didn’t get the money?”

“Right.”

“And he might decide to express that unhappiness?”

“I need to talk to the nuns.”

“You think he’s going to check with them?”

“For all I know, he was spying on us when we left the Cloisters. If he was, he saw who was holding the bag and who wasn’t.”

Jigs toed the backpack. “That sister couldn’t have lifted this bag if her life depended on it.”

“Doesn’t matter. The note made a point of it. So did his phone call. I could’ve carried the bag to her car for her. Or delivered it to the convent myself. Damn. We should have taken the money to her car and arranged a switch for later.”

“Who knows, Fritz? Maybe he was planning to knock the nun over the head and steal the money. The guy’s a loony bin. There’s no telling where he’s coming from.”

I slid off the stool. “I’m going outside to call the convent. If this guy calls them to see if they got the money, I need them to say yes.”

“You’re going to ask a Daughter of Christ to lie?”

“It’s for a good cause.”

I went out to the sidewalk. There was nothing about the lights of upper Broadway worth writing a song about. I called Information on my cell phone and got a number for the Convent of the Holy Order of the Sisters of Good Shepherd. I dialed and asked to be put through to Sister Mary Ryan. While I waited, I kicked myself for not contacting Tommy Carroll from the Cloisters to have him place a tap on the convent’s phone. The sister came on a minute later.

“Sister Mary? It’s Fritz Malone.”

“Mr. Malone. I was just going to call you.”

“I need to ask if you-Why were you going to call me?”

“We just received a call,” she said. “Sister Anne received it.”

My heart sank. “From him?”

“He wanted to find out if we had received his gift.”

“What did Sister Anne tell him?”

“She told him that we received his gift but under the circumstances, we could not possibly accept it. She asked if he would come to the convent and meet with her.”

“She shouldn’t say that. That is definitely not a good idea.” A fire engine was tearing up Broadway, its siren blaring. I had to wait it out. When I could hear again, I said, “I guess it doesn’t matter. I assume he said no.”

“No, no. That’s just it, Mr. Malone. That’s why I was about to call you. He said he would love to come by. We’re expecting him any minute.”

I CALLED TOMMY CARROLL’S CELL NUMBER AS JIGS AND I SPED UP THE West Side Highway. Jigs’s old Ford Fairlane swayed like a waterbed as he coasted from lane to lane.

Carroll picked up on the third ring. He answered snarling. “Where the hell have you been! Do you know what’s going on? What the hell’s this crap about a nun picking up the money?”

I gave him the short version. Jigs was leaning on his horn. A slow-moving car in front of us drifted to the other lane.

“Holy hell,” Carroll muttered when I told him about Sister Anne’s invitation to the killer. “What is she planning to do, serve him tea and hear his fucking confession?”

“We’ll be there in eight minutes,” I said.

Jigs looked over at me. “Six.”

Carroll asked, “Who’s we?”

“I’ve got Jigger Dugan with me.”

“Jigger… That’s just great, Fritz. How the hell did he enter the scene?”

“I brought him in. No offense, but I preferred having an independent contractor watch my back on this one. I didn’t want to end up with another bag over my head.”

“You’ve got Francis Dugan and a million dollars cash in the same car? You tell that punk he lays a fingernail on any of that-”

“You’re breaking up,” I said. I cranked the window partway down and stuck the phone into the wind for a few seconds. Jigs chuckled. I pulled the phone back in. “Do you want to weigh in with a plan, Tommy? We’re almost in Riverdale.”

“Philip Byron is missing.”

“I heard. But that’s not the point. What do you want me to do when I get to the convent?” This time the connection really did break up. “I missed that. Say it again.”

“I said shoot to kill.”

I took a beat. “You mean like with Diaz?”

Carroll exploded. “Now, you stick to the point, you prick! Leave Diaz out of this. If you confront this bastard and determine it’s definitely him, you take him out!”

“Take him out? Not in? No citizen’s arrest?”

“Out.”

“If he’s just sitting there talking to a nun, I’m sure as hell not going to waltz in there and shoot him. Are you nuts?”

Jigs glanced at me. “That’s nuts.” He swung into the right lane to take the next exit.

Carroll conceded. Not happily. “Okay, then, contain him. If he’s already in the convent, let it stand. You and Dugan stake out the exits, then wait. I’m sending a blue-and-white up there. Give me the address. I’m coming up, too.”

I gave him the address.

“Whatever the hell you do, do not let this guy slip away. If you’ve got a problem with it, you tell Dugan he’s got my okay to take the bastard out. Dugan’s got no problems with pulling a trigger. You tell the little mick he can dip his dirty paw into that bag of money if he gets this guy.”

“I’m not telling him that, Tommy. We’ll keep the creep from getting away, but that’s it. And tell your boys not to come in roaring with the lights and sirens. We have no idea what kind of firepower he’ll be bringing. I don’t think you want a bunch of nuns being held hostage in their own convent. That is a nightmare.”