Dennis Lehane - Gone, Baby, Gone

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Someone abducts that girl, ransoms her, and kills her. Simple as that?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because she’d seen her kidnappers’ faces? Because whoever was up in the quarries last night smelled police, knew we were trying to play both ends up the middle? I don’t know. Because people kill kids.”

She stood up. “Let’s go see Cheese.”

“What about sleep?”

“We can sleep when we’re dead.”

The sleet that had visited us briefly last night had returned this morning, and by the time we reached Concord Prison it sounded like nickels pelting the hood.

This time I wasn’t with two members of law enforcement, so Cheese was brought out into the visitors’ room and faced us through a pane of thick glass. Angie and I each picked up a phone in our cubicle and Cheese reached for his.

“Hey, Ange,” he said. “Looking fine.”

“Hey, Cheese.”

“Maybe, I get out of here someday, we could have a chocolate malt or something?”

“A chocolate malt?”

“Sure.” He rolled his shoulders. “A root beer float. Something like that.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Sure, Cheese. Sure. Give me a call when you’re released.”

“Goddamn!” Cheese slapped the glass with his thick palm. “You know that.”

“Cheese,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Chris Mullen’s dead.”

“I heard. Terrible shame.”

Angie said, “You seem to be handling it well.”

Cheese leaned back in his seat, appraised us for a moment, scratched his chest idly. “This business, you know? Motherfuckers die young.”

“Pharaoh Gutierrez, too.”

“Yeah.” Cheese nodded. “Sad about the Pharaoh. Motherfucker could dress. Know what I’m saying?”

I said, “Rumor I hear is Pharaoh wasn’t just working for you.”

Cheese cocked an eyebrow and seemed momentarily bewildered. “Come again, my brother?”

“I hear Pharaoh was a Fed.”

“Shit.” Cheese smiled broadly and shook his head, but his eyes remained wide and slightly unfocused. “You believe everything you hear on the street, you should-I dunno-become a motherfucking cop or something.”

It was a weak-ass analogy and he knew it. So much of who Cheese was depended on everything coming out of his mouth smooth, fast, and funny, even the threats. And it was pretty obvious by his grasping speech that the possibility of Pharaoh being a cop had never occurred to him until now.

I smiled. “A cop, Cheese. In your organization. Think what that’ll do to your cred.”

Cheese’s eyes regained their cast of bemused curiosity, and he leaned back in his chair, settled back into himself. “Your boy Broussard, he come to see me about an hour ago, tells me Mullen and Gutierrez are no more out of the kindness of his heart. Said he thinks I aced my own boys. Said he gonna make me pay. Said I’m responsible for him getting suspended, his old-coot partner getting sick. Pissed off the Cheese, you want to know the truth.”

“Sorry to hear that, Cheese.” I leaned in toward the glass. “Someone else is real pissed off, too.”

“Yeah? Who’s that?”

“Brother Rogowski.”

Cheese’s fingers stopped scratching his chest and the front legs of his chair came forward, touched the ground. “Why’s Brother Rogowski irate?”

“Someone from your team piped him in the back of the head several times.”

Cheese shook his head. “Not my team, baby. Not my team.”

I looked at Angie.

“That’s unfortunate,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Too bad.”

“What?” Cheese said. “You know I’d never raise a hand to Brother Rogowski.”

“’Member that guy?” Angie said.

“Which?” I said.

“The one a few years back, bigwig in the Irish mob, you know him-” She snapped her fingers.

“Jack Rouse,” I said.

“Yeah. He was, like, the Irish godfather or something, wasn’t he?”

“Wait,” Cheese said. “No one knows what happened to Jack Rouse. Just he pissed off the Patrisos or something.”

He looked at us through the glass as we both shook our heads slowly.

“Wait. You’re saying Jack Rouse got clipped by-”

“Sssh,” I said, and held a finger up to my lips.

Cheese placed the phone on the table for a minute and looked up at the ceiling. When he looked back at us, he seemed to have shrunk by a foot, and the dampness in his bangs plastered the hair to his forehead and made him look ten years younger. He brought the phone back up to his lips.

“The bowling alley rumor?” he whispered.

A couple of years ago, Bubba, a hit man named Pine, myself, and Phil Dimassi had met Jack Rouse and his demented right hand, Kevin Hurlihy, in an abandoned bowling alley in the leather district. Six of us had gone in, four of us had walked out. Jack Rouse and Kevin Hurlihy, tied, gagged, and tortured by Bubba and a few bowling balls, never stood a chance. The hit was sanctioned by Fat Freddy Constantine, head of the Italian Mafia here, and those of us who walked back out knew that no one would find the corpses and no one would ever be dumb enough to go looking.

“It’s true?” Cheese whispered.

I gave Cheese the answer in my dead gaze.

“Bubba’s gotta know I had nothing to do with him getting piped.”

I looked at Angie. She sighed, looked at Cheese, and then down at the small shelf below the glass.

“Patrick,” Cheese said, and all the pseudo-Superfly intonations had left his voice, “you have to let Bubba know.”

“Know what?” Angie said.

“That I had nothing to do with this.”

Angie smiled and shook her head. “Yeah, sure, Cheese. Sure.”

He whacked the glass with the back of his hand. “You listen to me! I had nothing to do with this.”

“Bubba doesn’t see it that way, Cheese.”

“So, tell him.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because it’s true.”

“I don’t buy that, Cheese.”

Cheese pulled his chair forward, squeezed the phone so hard I expected it to crack in half. “Fucking listen to me, you piece of shit. That psychotic thinks I piped him, I might as well shiv some guard, make sure I stay locked in solitary for life. That man is a walking fucking death sentence. Now you tell him-”

“Fuck you, Cheese.”

“What?”

I said it again, very slowly.

Then I said, “I came to you two days ago and begged for the life of a four-year-old girl. Now she’s dead. Because of you. And you want mercy? I’m going to tell Bubba you apologized for having him piped.”

“No.”

“Tell him you said you were sorry. You’ll make it up to him somehow.”

“No.” Cheese shook his head. “You can’t do that.”

“Watch me, Cheese.”

I took the phone away from my ear and reached out to hang it up.

“She’s not dead.”

“What?” Angie said.

I put the phone back to my ear.

“She’s not dead,” Cheese said.

“Who?” I said.

Cheese rolled his eyes, tilted his head back in the direction of the guard standing watch by the door.

“You know who.”

“Where is she?” Angie said.

Cheese shook his head. “Give me a few days.”

“No,” I said.

“You don’t have a choice.” He looked back over his shoulder, then leaned in close to the window and whispered into the phone. “Someone will contact you. Trust me. I got to clear some things first.”

“Bubba’s very angry,” Angie said. “And he has friends.” She glanced around the prison walls.

“No shit,” Cheese said. “His pals, the fucking Twoomey brothers, just got dropped for a bank job in Everett. They’ll be rotating in here next week for processing. So stop trying to scare me. I’m scared. Okay? But I need time. Call off the dog. I’ll send a message to you, I promise.”