The Devil’s Daughter, page 19
Despite her telling me not to be sad and not to mope around the apartment, that’s exactly what I do. For the better part of a week, I wander around the place in a torn undershirt, listening to Sinatra. I’m not that much of a fan really. I like this new kid Bennett better. He has a jazzier delivery and can make Berlin and Cole Porter sound like they were orchestrated by Billy Strayhorn. But Frank’s “In the Wee Small Hours” fits my mood, and I play his version of Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well” over and over again, hoping that it turns out to be true.
After a couple of days, V calls. The conversation starts off stilted, and I get annoyed when she asks if I’m all right for the third time. I ask how she likes her new apartment. She says she likes it fine and that she’s gotten a cat. We go on like this for a while, filling each other in on the inane and mundane until I say, “You left a bunch of your stuff here. I can box it up and you can come by and collect it anytime you like.”
“You don’t have to do that,” V says, and I hear a quiver in her voice. “I sort of left those things behind on purpose.”
I’m not sure what to say to this, so I change the subject, but when we hang up a few minutes later, I feel better.
When the four walls finally begin to close in, I decide to go up to Minton’s and see Monk and his combo. I take a table at the back and listen to them lay down their improvisational licks: brilliant as usual. By the end of their second set, I’m on my fourth Maker’s Mark and more than a little worse for wear. The combo goes on a break, and Monk ambles through the crowd, taking a seat next to me.
“So she dumped you, huh?” he says like he can read the heartbreak on my face. When I tell him that he’s right, Monk instantly contradicts me, “Nah, she’ll be back. You’ve been pissing her off lately, but she’s devoted to you, boyo.”
“I’m not too sure about that.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because she told me.”
“When was that?”
“She came in by herself Saturday night. I bought her a drink and we had a little chat.”
Despite the boozy haze clouding my brain, it occurs to me that if V appeared in Minton’s on her own, it was with the express purpose of passing a message to me through Monk. She probably could tell that I didn’t believe her when she said we weren’t through. Or maybe she’s breaking up with me by inches so I can get used to the idea before she administers the coup de grâce.
I test out this second theory on Monk, and he looks at me like I’m nuts. “You really are white, aren’t you, Jack?” he says, and he doesn’t mean it as a compliment. I might decide that I’m being paranoid when I sober up, but in the meantime I manage to convince myself that V is handling me. I say this to Monk like it makes perfect sense, but he rolls his eyes. “That’s your wounded pride talking,” he tells me, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being indulged.
I don’t see her coming, but I shouldn’t be surprised. Lucy Garrett has a habit of turning up whenever I least expect her.
She says, “I knew I’d find you here,” and lays a hand on my shoulder like we’re old pals. “You really ought to think about being a little less conspicuous, though. I mean, if I know where you are . . .” Then, instead of finishing her sentence, Lucy kisses me on the top of my head.
She sits down uninvited, reaches across the table for my glass, and drains it without asking whether I mind. It’s then that I notice she isn’t pregnant, not anymore. She must have found some moonlighting doc to abort the kid, that or it was Hayden, or she’s given birth and given the baby away.
There are any number of things I want to ask her, but because I’m in the bag and it’s the obvious question I settle on, “Where the hell have you been?”
“Around,” she says, like it isn’t a cliché, and she giggles in an infuriatingly coquettish way. Then she says, “Daddy wants to talk to you.”
Despite being loaded, I smell a rat. Why send the kid to deliver this message? And what does Daddy want from me now? What’s she doing with her old man anyway? I figured Lucy was holed up with Bob Carson or the guy who took out the Dugan brothers.
“About what?” I ask, like I expect an honest answer.
Lucy grins and gets to her feet. “Ask him yourself. He’s waiting outside in the car,” she says and heads for the door like she’s sure I’m going to follow, which, like an idiot, is exactly what I do.
CHAPTER 36
I should have known better. It might have been the booze or the way curiosity can make you stupid. I should have sat tight, ordered another round, and let Lucy Garrett wander off into the night, but I didn’t.
When we walk out of the club, I expect to see Garrett’s limousine at the curb with his chauffeur behind the wheel. Instead, the only car idling in front of Minton’s isn’t a car at all, but a panel van.
“Okay, what’s the deal?” I say to Lucy. “Where is he?”
“You’ll find out,” she says in a singsongy voice like she’s a little kid.
But Lucy has some very grown-up friends. One of them brains me with a sap or something heavier like a baseball bat because my world goes atilt all of a sudden and then fades to black.
When I come to, I’m sitting on a cement floor in a dank warehouse that reeks of fuel oil and piss. There isn’t much in the way of light, but I can hear water dripping somewhere and a compressor humming monotonously in the darkness. I’m also gagged, bound hand and foot, and Lucy Garrett is sitting in front of me in a lawn chair, holding a very large gun.
“Surprise!” she says with the same grin on her face she had in Minton’s, and if I wasn’t trussed up like a Christmas turkey and she wasn’t armed, I’d strangle her with my bare hands. She gets to her feet, walks over to me, and pulls the rubber ball gag out of my mouth. I guess she wants to chat before finishing me off.
“You’re cute when you’re tied up like that, Jack,” she says, enjoying my predicament. “Do you and Vicky play this game or does she like her sex straight?”
This is meant to provoke me, and it does, but I try not to let it show. “Here’s what I don’t get,” I say instead because V is the last person on earth I want to discuss with this little psychopath. “Your old man gives you everything you could possibly need. You do what you want whenever you want. What’s in all of this for you? Or is it only about payback?”
“It’s fun,” Lucy says, flipping her hair over her shoulder, flirting with me before she does me in. But there are still a few things I want to know.
“The Dugans, those nice guys watching over you while you were jonesing? You murdered them, didn’t you?”
“Do you know what’s really amazing?” she says. “What you guys will do if you think you’re going to get your dick sucked. I mean, you should see the look of hope on your faces.”
I can imagine Eddie Dugan making this mistake, but I thought Joe had more sense. Still, it does explain why, when I found Eddie, his pants were down around his ankles. I just can’t believe Joe fell for the same gag.
But Lucy wasn’t packing that night. Bud and I made sure of that before we deposited her in V’s bedroom. And Eddie always had his gun on him. Lucy must have grabbed it while she had him otherwise engaged. In fact, I think that’s Eddie’s .45 she’s holding on me now. Maybe she did the Dugans on her own.
“And Muffy Palmer? What sin did she commit?”
“You mean other than being annoying?” Lucy snorts. “You know, for a girl with braces and bad breath, you’d think Muffy would have learned to keep her mouth shut.”
“Why? Who did she talk to?”
“You.”
I didn’t think she had it in her, but Lucy must have murdered Muffy. And Kimberly Hutton. And Rex Halsey too. Rex had been around the block more than once and should have seen her coming, but Lucy’s right about guys and sex, particularly when blow jobs are on offer. Male brains can cease to function at the prospect—that, and I guess Rex hadn’t realized that he’d outlived his usefulness.
“Five murders, Lucy,” I say. “Five that I know about anyway. Did you do them all on your own or did somebody help out?”
“You know, I like you, Jack, I really do. I’ll probably feel bad later, but I’ll get over it. And just so you know. I didn’t kill anybody.”
“No? Then who did?”
Instead of answering, Lucy smirks at me like I’m supposed to guess.
“It’s Carson, isn’t it?” I say, plowing ahead. “He’s not only sweet on you, but he’s the only guy with pockets deep enough to go up against your father.”
Lucy’s smirk turns just pained enough for me to read it as phony. “Good old Uncle Bob,” she says. “You know, he used to bounce me on his knee when I was little. I’d giggle and laugh and pretend he didn’t have his hand up my dress. Uncle Bob was hard for me even then.”
Judging by the expression on her face, I’m fairly sure Lucy is making this up, but whatever Carson did or didn’t do, he isn’t the big news. Garrett is. That bastard and a bunch of his well-heeled buddies are abusing underage girls, and they’ll go to any length to make sure nobody finds out. Lucy isn’t the femme fatale she makes herself out to be. It’s a defense. She’s as much a victim as any of those other girls. And she’s telling the truth. Lucy Garrett didn’t kill anyone.
“Who are we waiting for, Lucy?”
She decides to play coy. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lucy started sucking her thumb.
“He’s gonna make you the fall guy, you know?”
“Who: Daddy? No, he isn’t. He wouldn’t dare.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I have his movies.”
Of course she does.
“Do you know what I think? I think you ought to give those movies to me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I’m the only one who can get you out of this mess.” Lucy thinks her father won’t come for her, not for his own flesh and blood, at least not while she has those movies. I’m not so sure.
“When are they coming back for me?” I ask.
“Who’s they?” she says, nipping at a hangnail. Lucy’s making a show of pretending to be calm, but her knee’s pumping up and down like a piston. It’s not a reflex. She’s scared.
“It’s got to be soon. What do you say you untie me?”
Lucy smooths her skirt, then ties her hair back into a ponytail. “Okay, let’s say you’re right about Daddy blaming everything on me. But what am I supposed to do? Just let you go? I can’t do that. Anyway, he’s not going to hurt me. He loves me.”
“I’ll bet that’s just what your mommy said right before your daddy put her away.”
This seems to sink in. I don’t lean on it any harder now because I feel sorry for the kid, besides its poor salesmanship.
“He made her have an operation, you know? Dr. Hayden did something to her brain. That’s what Uncle Bob told me.” Garrett must have paid Hayden to lobotomize his wife. It keeps her quiet and easier to warehouse. “I hardly remembered her, but she remembered me. I tried to be nice, I really did, but I didn’t know what to say. You know, all she does all day in that awful place is eat stale cookies and stare out the window.”
“That’s exactly what your daddy has in store for you, you know? Maybe something even worse.”
Lucy mulls this over for a moment, pouts, then says, “Why do you always have to be so mean?” before hauling herself out of her lawn chair and cutting me free.
CHAPTER 37
I can hear the heart monitor whine when I begin to flatline. I can feel a guy pounding on my chest while another uses an Ambu bag to try to force air into my lungs. I can hear the two of them talking, judging the odds of making it to the hospital before I check out or whether they should call it then and there and let me go.
Luckily, I can also hear the tentative bloop, bloop, bloop of the monitor when my heart kicks back in and they realize it’s not my time. I don’t remember much else. Either I passed out in the ambulance or they shot me up with something because the next thing I know, V’s sitting on the edge of my hospital bed with tears in her eyes and a smile on her face.
“You bastard, Jack”—which isn’t the first thing I expect her to say. Still, I want to take her in my arms—not only because I’m glad she’s there but because I’m relieved to be alive. I try to do just that, but a searing pain like somebody shoving a red-hot poker in my gut gets in the way. I also don’t count on the maze of tubes running out of my nose and arms, which makes moving at all nearly impossible.
V takes pity on me. She leans forward, gently brushes her lips against mine, and says, “I never would have forgiven you, you know?”
“For what?” I’m not sure that voice is mine. It’s thin and raspy, but I know it’s me because my throat feels like it’s on fire when I speak.
“For getting yourself killed. It would have been just like you, Jack Coffey, leaving me in the lurch when all I was trying to do by taking that apartment was teach you a lesson. I didn’t leave you, you big dumb idiot. I love you.”
I can’t tell you how indescribably happy this makes me, though it’s hard to show it given that I’m medicated within an inch of my life. Apparently, I’ve also been unconscious for a couple of days, so I’m groggy.
“For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have forgiven you either.” Janie is standing at the foot of my bed with her arms folded across her chest and an exasperated look on her face. “You owe me three-weeks’ salary, and my rent is due tomorrow.” Janie isn’t the sentimental type, but her cheeks are wet too. “So, are you going to end the suspense and tell us what happened or what?” she says.
I wish I could, but the truth is I barely remember a thing.
I remember grabbing the gun out of Lucy’s hand when three gunmen blew into the warehouse just as she untied me. I remember taking out two of them before a bullet spun me around and dropped me to the floor. I guess I got off a couple of more rounds before I blacked out because I’m still here and breathing—which wouldn’t have been the case if I didn’t. After that, it’s anybody’s guess. I don’t have a clue.
“Is this your idea of taking it easy?” A doc walks into my hospital room with a stethoscope hanging from his neck. I recognize him. He’s the guy who stitched up my scalp in the emergency room after the slab brained me. I never caught his name, but I’m guessing he saved my life when the ambulance brought me in. I took one in the chest that collapsed a lung and another in the side, so it must have been pretty touch and go. I make a mental note to send him a bottle of something nice so he knows how much I appreciate him.
“What can I say? I’ve always had a problem with authority,” I croak and manage a grin in case the doc doesn’t realize I’m joking.
“You know, you’re down a kidney, Mr. Coffey. Fortunately, you have a spare, so you should be able to go home in a few days, but saving you was a close-run thing, so in the future do try to avoid getting hit over the head or shot again.”
I spend most of the next week laid up in St. Vincent’s. Despite the web of IVs, the hanging bottles of saline, antibiotics, and blood platelets, and having to piss in a bedpan, I’m having a pretty good time. It’s against hospital rules, but V insists they set up a cot for her so she can sleep next to my bed, and whenever she’s not working, she’s by my side. Janie isn’t quite as devoted—why should she be?—but she visits every afternoon. Bud puts in a couple of appearances, thrilling the nursing staff, who invent reasons to come in and take my temperature and blood pressure whenever he’s around. Monk comes by with Miles Davis in tow, which is weird because I don’t know Miles all that well. He doesn’t say anything, just sits in a corner smoking reefer until the head nurse comes in and says the smell is bothering her other patients. Toots shows up one night after visiting hours, trailing a phalanx of waiters. They’re carrying in trays laden with his best sirloin and baked potatoes with all the trimmings, and I don’t have the heart to tell him that they’re not letting me eat solid food. I can barely sit up and usually don’t like being the center of attention, but everyone seems so happy I’m still alive, that I can’t help but enjoy myself—that is, until Bernie Rothstein shows up.
Bernie shoos everyone out of the room, including V, closes the door, takes off his hat, pulls a up chair, and says, “Okay, smart guy, tell me what the fuck happened.”
I go into my spiel about not remembering anything, but Bernie isn’t buying it. “I don’t mean who shot you, Jack. I already know that. We collected three stiffs in a warehouse over on Eleventh Avenue. What I want to know is how they got that way.”
“I guess I’m a good shot.”
“It’s hard to miss when you’re a foot away.”
This makes no sense to me. None of the shooters got closer than twenty yards. “What are you talking about, Bernie?”
“Judging by the powder burns and the round one guy took to the back of his skull, I’d say the man was executed. You didn’t do it?”
I want to tell Bernie that it wasn’t me, but that would mean giving up Lucy Garrett, and for the moment I’d just as soon keep her out of it. Instead, I ask, “Were you able to make any of the stiffs?”
“Two guys from your neck of the woods,” he tells me. Then after consulting his casebook, he says, “Patrick Healey and Ed O’Bannon. Do you know them?”
I didn’t make them when they came at me, but I went to Cardinal Hayes with both of them. They were seniors when I was a freshman, so it wasn’t like we were buddies, but everyone in Hell’s Kitchen knows they run errands for Hughie Mulligan’s Westies. It’s supposed to be penny-ante stuff—collecting debts and shaking down shopkeepers, that sort of thing. I guess they graduated to attempted murder, namely attempting to murder me.
