Richard Hawke - Speak of the Devil

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.”

MARGO SPARED ME THE TRUDGE UP FOUR FLIGHTS. SHE MET ME AT LA Fortuna, right down the street from her apartment. It’s a dark cozy place with old opera LPs and framed photos of opera singers all over its brick walls. Margo once ran into Pavarotti here. He was sitting alone in the garden out back with a cappuccino and a basket of biscotti, reading a paperback copy of Lonesome Dove . She managed to join him, using her own enthusiasm for the book as a wedge, and by the final biscotti, Pavarotti had agreed to let her interview him for part of a fluff piece she was putting together for New York magazine. The tenor wrote her a three-page appreciation letter after the piece appeared.

The owner of the cafe beamed like a brand new mother as I stood at the pie counter trying to decide.

I put my finger on the glass. “The blueberry looks like the one today.”

She pulled out the pie and slid a large slice onto a plate, using her knife to scrape some of the extra goop. She indicated Margo. “And what will it be for the princess?”

Margo answered, “I’m not really hungry, Mrs. Valella. I’ll just steal a few bites from the big guy.”

“You want the cappuccino?”

“Two,” I said. “The big guy doesn’t share everything.”

Margo and I retreated to one of the small tables next to the wall. Enrico Caruso looked over my shoulder as I took my first bite of pie. His mouth was wide open, as if he expected me to funnel a forkful his way. Margo looked like rain on a sunny day.

“You could have been killed.”

I nodded. “ ‘Could have’ is the road to unnecessary suffering. I wasn’t.”

“But you could’ve been.”

“That’s true for everyone,” I said. “You never know when the bus is going to flatten you. It’s why you want to seize the moment.” I tapped my fork against my plate. “How about a piece of pie?”

She ignored me. “At the exact moment you were running around getting shot at less than a block away, I was probably sitting in bed painting my stupid toenails.”

“It would have been stranger had it been the other way around.”

“Oh, shut up. Think about the families, Fritz. Think about all the funerals they’re going to be having over the next couple of days. And there I was painting my toenails. I feel horrible.”

“Are we juxtaposing the tragic with the trivial?”

“I guess we are.”

“And are we getting anything out of it? I mean besides anguish?” She screwed her mouth up into a pucker. With Margo, this is usually the equivalent of a pitcher going into his windup. I waited, but she simply remained that way, her eyes narrowing to slits. Finally, I asked, “Do you have something to say?”

She unpuckered. “Forget it.”

“Look, the whole city is shaken up,” I said. “Unfortunately, that’s the point of these kinds of things.”

“The point. I like that.”

“See? You’re edgy.”

“How about we don’t talk about it?”

“Okay.” I picked up the fork and shoveled the piece of pie into my mouth. “They sure do good pie here, eh?”

She was crying. And I was an idiot. It was quiet crying. A pair of tears ran down her cheeks, followed by another pair. I felt something on my leg. It was the toe of Margo’s shoe. She was locating my shin, and when she found it, she gave it a not insubstantial kick.

“I hate you,” she said in a barely audible voice. She reached a hand across the table and I took it. Mrs. Valella arrived with our cappuccinos. She gave Margo the sort of sympathetic look only an Italian mother can give.

“He will keep you safe and warm, princess,” she said to Margo, setting down the cappuccinos. She shot me a withering look.

Right?

WHEN WE GOT BACK TO MARGO’S, I EXPLAINED THE SITUATION TO HER as best I could. Before leaving City Hall, I had been sworn to secrecy, and had I thought that telling Margo might in any way put her in danger, I’d have remained mum. And she would have understood. But I needed to talk it out-so much of it made no sense to me-and next to her father, Margo is the best sounding board I know.

I swore her to secrecy. She crossed her fingers and said, “Sure.” The tears were gone.

“I have a job,” I told her by way of getting into it. We were in Margo’s living room. One entire wall of the room was taken up with books. Floor-to-ceiling. A former boyfriend of Margo’s built the shelves for her. He even installed one of those moving ladders that glides along a horizontal pole for reaching the high shelves. Good craftsman, but in the end, a lousy boyfriend. I was seated in a wicker chair across from the wall of books. Margo was in no one place for longer than twenty seconds. We were due at her parents’ for Thanksgiving dinner, and she had promised her purple cabbage casserole. She flew in from the kitchen and landed a cutting board in my lap.