Gone, Baby, Gone - Dennis Lehane [94]
“You’re saying that’s a big coincidence.”
“I’m saying that’s a coincidence the size of Vermont. Particularly when the note found in Kimmie’s underwear said the two hundred grand equals a child’s return.”
She nodded, pinched her coffee cup handle, and turned the cup back and forth on the table. “Okay. So we’re back to Cheese. And all those questions about why he’d go to all this trouble.”
“Which, I agree, makes no sense and doesn’t sound like Cheese’s MO.”
She looked up from her coffee cup. “So where is she, Patrick?”
I touched her arm, slid my hand under the cuff of her bathrobe. “She’s in the quarry, Ange.”
“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.”
22
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