And there was another thing he'd realized he needed to do, it seemed like it had to happen soon.
Without Ty there to navigate, it took him a while to find the place again. The streetlight in front was out, leaving the green and yellow door and the blank eyes of plywood-covered windows in shadow. This time there was no bodyguard at the door, but he spotted Carla's red Honda just down the street. A few kids on the sidewalk down the block, otherwise a quiet night in this part of Brooklyn.
He parked, went to the stoop, knocked at the door, waited. For a long time, nothing, just the giant, complicated white noise of the city night. Then a thump and a rattle, and the door opened a crack. He recognized the young woman who had led him upstairs the first time.
"I'd like to talk to Carla Salerno. And Mudda Raymon, if she'll see me. Tell her it's Morgan Ford—she'll know who I am."
The door shut and he heard it locked again. But after another minute it rattled again and then opened wide. Carla came out onto the stoop.
"What are you doing here, Mo?" she asked suspiciously. She was barefoot, wearing a big white shirt open over a gray tank top and skirt. He thought she looked thinner, older, but it could have been the bad light.
"I wanted to see Mudda Raymon again. And you."
"Oh, now you're a big believer?" She shook her head. "Come on, Mo. What—you think that's somehow going to get me back?"
She was so far wrong that it touched him. "You still doing okay? You feel like your life's on track?" Suddenly that mattered a lot to him.
She snorted disdainfully. "This is pretty juvenile, Mo. I mean, I thought you'd be handling this better. I really did."
"No, Carla, listen. I really do want to see Mudda Raymon. She's . . . last time, she said some interesting things, they've kind of come back as significant. I've got this case, I don't know where to go with it, and—"
"And a ninety-year-old Jamaican grandmother is going to help you."
"I'll take any help I can get."
A jet angled slowly overhead, eclipsing the vague stars, drowning them in noise as it slid down toward La Guardia. Carla turned away, wrapping her shirt tighter around her even though it was hot and muggy on the stoop. She looked down the block at the kids. "Well, she can't help you, Mo," she said bitterly. "She died on Thursday. She'd been terminal for years. So your sudden conversion is a little late. I'm just here helping out the family for a few days." Before he could say he was sorry, she whirled around to face him again. "So does that allow you to get real about why you're here? Because I'd really like you to get real about us and stop trying to hang on to something that wasn't working!"
Mo stood there, half pissed at her for the attitude, half wanting to hold her one more time as they straightened this out. Yes, this was partly about her and him. But not how she thought.
"You've got it wrong, Carla. I've been seeing somebody else, it came up really fast and it's really good. It's . . . serious. It's a lot of things I've wanted for a long time."
"And, what, you felt you just had to let me know?" she asked skeptically.
He thought about that. "Yeah, basically. I . . . yeah, I just thought you should know." He shrugged. It sounded lame.
"What do you want—my permission?"
"No. Look, I don't know. Closure, maybe." Or some old-fashioned thing, wanting it to be clean and aboveboard and honorable. Like love was a thing that once given was supposed to be willingly relinquished if it was no longer wanted. Like letting it go was important, even when you both were moving on, even when there was someone else. Like it deserved some minimal ceremony.
Now she saw he was serious. "Mo, you give yourself closure on these things."
He nodded reluctantly. "Yeah. You're probably right."
She held her shirt tight around her, arms crossed. That wonderful shape. After another minute she sighed. "Whatever. Okay. You have my permission. You have closure. Okay? And now I'm going back upstairs." She turned, went inside, and shut the door.
Mo drove out of Brooklyn, thinking it was too bad about Mudda Raymon. He'd gotten his hopes up, he'd been serious when he'd said he'd take help from any quarter. Also thinking about how it had gone with Carla, wondering what he'd expected that was any different, and why he didn't feel happier now that it was done.
He didn't get back to the mausoleum until eleven. Carla's mom's big dark house, the oak-shadowed lawns, the echoing front rooms, his semisqualid bachelor domicile in back. He checked the answering machine. No messages. He'd kind of hoped Rebecca might've called in. He sat on the bed, feeling emotionally wrung out. Then the telephone rang and made him jump.
"Who's your new guy?" The flat voice of Gus Grisbach.
"Gus—thanks for calling! Flannery, Richard K. Flannery."
"As in Westchester district attorney Flannery."
"As in, yeah." For an instant Mo thought of adding Tyndale Boggs to the list, but his instincts rebelled. He chided himself for losing objectivity but then gave himself the excuse that Gus wouldn't approve of prying into a fellow PD investigator. Sleazy legal officials and arrogant Feds were more his cup of tea.
Gus didn't say anything for a few seconds. But at last he said, "Yeah, okay. I'll call you." Another pause, Mo thought he'd hung up. But then Gus spoke one more time: "So tell me, Ford—you some kind of a masochist? Because from where I sit, between this and the last one, you look like a guy who's asking for pain."
43
MONDAY MORNING, first order of business was a conference in Marsden's office, bringing Mike St. Pierre and the senior investigator up-to-date on what they were still calling the Pinocchio murders. The hard part for Mo was getting the others excited about the junkyard initiative while avoiding telling them why he was so hot on it: Yeah, see, a coincidence, this ninety-year-old Jamaican witch, now dead, thought it figured in, and then later it shows up in an analysis of Ronald Parker's free-associating babbling. Nor could he tell them the big picture: programmed human killing machines, the Geppetto scenario. For the first time, it came home to him what Biedermann was up against. This case really was about control of information—who knew what, when. How to survive and move toward a solution knowing as little or as much as you did.
His argument went that with the similar MOs their best bet was to establish a link of contact between Parker and Radcliff. The psychologist thought the junkyard was significant in Parker's babblings and might therefore relate to Radcliff, too. St. Pierre took it at face value, but throughout the exercise Marsden looked at Mo appraisingly, skeptical black, slit eyes over pouches. Marsden finally said, "Yeah. Yeah, you guys go get your junkyard battle plan sketched out. Yeah. And then, Mo, come see me, we got stuff to talk about."
Back out to the main room, going over the leads, looking at maps, taking notes. The plan was for St. Pierre to get the basics on Radcliffs background, then do some legwork in the community to put together a picture of his habits, his hangouts, his associations. From there, Mo could covertly look for a link back to Geppetto. The most important part of the whole thing, and nobody else knew about it.
On that score, Rebecca had assigned herself the job of looking into Radcliffs psychological past. Maybe she was right, Geppetto did tap into social-services and penal systems to acquire subjects with psych profiles appropriate to his needs. If so, they could conceivably track both Parker and Radcliff back, look for the same windows that Geppetto had once climbed through.
St. Pierre's firstjob, though, was to get maps of solid-waste disposal facilities. In theory, the hypothetical dump could be anywhere, but Mo was certain it would be nearby. All the crimes had occurred within fifty miles, and if Geppetto was Flannery—or even Zelek or, God forbid, Ty—he'd have to have his conditioning "lab" near his office for his double life to be logistically feasible. So St. Pierre would locate disposal sites in southern New York State and adjoining areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Once they had assembled a master list, Mo and St. Pierre would requisition a few uniforms to help tour dumps in New York State while other task f
orce members checked out New Jersey and Connecticut sites. A total of maybe ten guys looking at a lot of territory, a lot of maps, a lot of trash. But you had to start somewhere.
When St. Pierre was gone, Mo reviewed the minimal information they'd gotten so far: Radcliffs driver's license application and photo. Thirty years old, longish blond hair, fairly handsome face marred by a smug half-smile, a supercilious look in the eyes. Six foot two, 210 pounds—a pretty big guy. They'd made some other inquiries, looking for a criminal record, and Mo expected more shortly.
But there was Marsden in his office doorway, leaning against the door frame and staring daggers, the irritated skin next to his nose like a red warning flag. Mo put on an apologetic face and went in.
Marsden shut the door, went back to the other side of his desk, sat heavily in his chair.
"Okay. Tell me what the fuck's going on." Mo feigned a surprised look, but Marsden wasn't having any. "Oh, look. How dumb am I, huh? I'm too tired to play games here. Let's hear it."
Mo had spent half the night thinking feverishly, Why not tell it all to Marsden? Maybe the wily old senior investigator could help find a way out of the maze.
But opening this up would be scary. On the Flannery thing, you didn't even suggest you were suspicious of a powerful district attorney unless you had a hell of a lot more to go on than Mo had at this point.
Besides which, how much credibility would Mo have, given the guy he was accusing happened to be the very DA currently working up charges against him?
And then, forget Flannery, there really were issues of what you could call "national security" here. This had become a big issue, completely beyond Mo's experience. Maybe it was best to keep old government nightmare bungles secret, lay them to rest. And, as Zelek had correctly pointed out, he really didn't want to mess with Biedermann's show: Blowing the Geppetto scenario open now could easily squirrel the SAC's chances of catching the puppet-master. Most important, spilling to Marsden might set something in motion, increasing the odds that he and Rebecca would become Geppetto's targets. Or Biedermann's.
Marsden was waiting.
"What would you do," Mo hazarded, "if you'd started an investigation and it seemed to lead to, oh, say, some government thing?"
"A government thing." Marsden's head bobbed on his jowly neck, eyes closed, like Great, here goes another Mo Ford special.
"Like a . . . maybe an intelligence-community problem. Or national-security-related.''
That was it for Marsden. He shook his head, waved his hands, enough. "You know, Mo, I was looking forward to reaming your ass this morning. But you know what? I'm too tired. I don't have what it takes. I'm due in for the bypass end of the week, I gotta conserve my strength, I gotta avoid blowing a gasket before Saturday. But I'm gonna tell you two things."
Marsden did look tired, more sad than mad, as if Mo were a big disappointment to him. Mo would have preferred the reaming, this was tragic. Marsden really was a man running out of gas. Now he heaved a sigh, looked back at Mo. "Off the record, as a guy who has some misguided respect for your work, I was gonna tell you something I thought you should know. Which is that Flannery's level of interest in you is very high. Too high, more than called for. He's been talking to me, to everyone in Major Crimes, fishing for shit on you. Also to Dodgson and Paley up in Albany, going over every little glitch in your file, maybe refreshing their memories about you in unflattering ways." He gave Mo a meaningful look with his slits.
That gave Mo a chill. Dodgson and Paley were budding Ken Starrs from Internal Affairs who had conducted previous internal reviews on him. No, not just Ken Starrs, more like Terminator robots, right out of the movies, tireless and unstoppable.
Marsden went on, "Point being, Flannery's acting like he means business on screwing you some big way. If not on Big Willie, something else. I was gonna ask you, A, what'd you do to get Flannery after you like this? It seems almost like something personal. You insult him, call him a jerk, or what? You screwing his girlfriend? Or, B, I was gonna ask, maybe Flannery has good cause to go after you like this, and I don't know what it is? You wanna give me a heads-up on some fuckup you haven't told me about?"
Flannery's extreme hard-on for Mo made sense for only one reason, Mo was thinking. He sensed Mo was getting close to him, he was looking for ways to sabotage Mo's investigation. But all he said to Marsden was "No. Nothing, none of the above. I swear to God."
Marsden looked at him with weary skepticism, a long look obviously intended to allow Mo to change his tune. When he didn't, Marsden bobbed his head again. "Okay. So on the other stuff you mentioned this morning, I'm gonna tell you one more thing. You've got this fucking . . . impressionistic way of running an investigation. You intuit this and you suspect that, you see suggestive stuff over here, inferences over there. And pretty soon, you've come around so your head's up your ass." Marsden had started low but was getting more and more worked up as he went on: "Now, you look to me like a guy up to his neck in hot water. Do I have that right? My point is, you want me to help, you gotta put something in front of me on this deskl Some paper, a name, a piece of evidence, a photograph. Something! If you can't do that, you'd better give up the artsy stuff and the national security shit. I can't do anything to protect you unless you show me something worth going out on a limb for."
Marsden had thumped the desk hard with his bunched fingertips, on this desk, face swelling red, before getting himself back under control. Calming again, he looked truly ill.
Mo looked at him with concern. "What time are you in surgery Saturday, Frank?" he asked. "I'd like to come keep Dorothea company. She must be worried sick."
With another hour left before he had to leave for the task force meeting, Mo worked the telephone directories, making lists. He looked under disposal services, dumps, garbage, junk, landfills, recycling, refuse, salvage, trash, waste. He also referenced antiques, art, entertainment, restaurants, taverns. In Brooklyn there was a dance club called The Junkyard, in the Village a gallery called Trash Art, and in Yonkers a bar called The Dump. In Greenwich, he found an antique store called Jane's Junkyard, and in Danbury a recycled-goods outlet called Good Junk, Inc. Then he remembered autos and made a list of auto salvage yards and used-parts outlets, then came up with surplus and scrap and listed surplus goods suppliers and scrap-metal reprocessing companies.
A long list, given that their target region included one of the most heavily industrialized areas in the world, a major producer of waste of all kinds.
Dumps or junkyards came in all shapes and sizes. Over the years, Mo had gone to crime scenes in cute, stinking rural landfills covered with thin grass and seagulls, and in urban metals-reclamation yards with mountains of crushed and shredded steel beneath gigantic cranes, processing conveyors, smoking smelter chimneys. What exactly had Geppetto and his puppets done in the "junkyard"? Something for Rebecca to zero in on. They had to draw a bead on that and select only the most promising sites to look at in person. Because there was no way they were going to check out the scores of possibles he had listed here.
Of course, it could all be for nothing. Maybe the "dump" was something else entirely, a code word, a symbolic phrase selected for reasons they couldn't know.
Mo dropped off the lists for St. Pierre to review, then left for the drive to Manhattan. Flannery and Biedermann would both be at the task force meeting, that should be fun, two big macho egos, all that testosterone. Tomorrow they'd put St. Pierre's lists of Sanitary District sites together with Mo's lists, prioritize the sites, and spend their days touring stinking landfills and dumps and salvage yards.
It was shaping up to be a great week.
A good-size crowd, twelve representatives from eight agencies and jurisdictions. Biedermann posed at the head of the conference table with his jacket off, shirtsleeves rolled up over beefy forearms in a workmanlike way. He looked tired, though, overextended, as did everyone else in the room. Flannery had even let a faint haze of white stubble crop up along a male-pattern-baldness line on his
shiny dome, confirming Mo's suspicion that he shaved his head. Rebecca looked tired, too, but in a lovely way. When Mo came into the room, she shot a glance at him and then looked quickly away with a tiny, secret smile.
"Okay," Biedermann said. "Lots of ground to cover. I understand we've had some developments over the weekend. Chief Panelli and Detective Ford, maybe you can bring us up to speed on this event in Briarcliff Manor Saturday."
They took turns telling about Byron Bushnell's raid on the house of Dennis Radcliff, Bushnell's claim Radcliff had killed his wife, the puppeteer paraphernalia found in the house. Their theory was that Radcliff had begun a sexual relationship with Irene not long after she'd started cleaning for him and, in early April, had suggested they go for a picnic or tryst near the old power station, where he'd killed her.
The news that they had a probable name for the Pinocchio killer sent a stir through the group. Happy cops, feeling they were closing in.
Flannery had chosen the seat at the end of the table opposite Biedermann and had been absently rubbing his stubble as he listened. Now he asked, "So what do we know about Radcliff?"
Panelli passed around a handout and summarized, "My people tell me he has a history of juvenile problems, vandalism and assault, psych referrals. That's anecdotal in our department—his juvie records are sealed. But we learned he was convicted of aggravated rape in college, spent five years in Massachusetts jails. Released in '97. We don't know what he's been doing since, doesn't leave much of a paper trail. It'll take a while to get more."