The Sisterhood - Michael Palmer [117]
“Enough!” Ulansky cracked the word like a whip. Quigg’s ashen face spun toward him. The narcotics investigator inserted himself between the two men like the referee in a prizefight. He put a calming hand on Dockerty’s chest, only to have it slapped aside. For an instant he wasn’t certain the Irishman was acting. “John, calm down. Just calm down. That temper of yours has gotten you in enough hot water with Internal Affairs as is, so just get a hold of yourself.” He turned benevolently to Quigg, noting with satisfaction that a trace of color had returned to the man’s cheeks.
“Marcus, I want to help you out, I really do,” he said, reassurance flowing from every word. “But you’ve got to realize what you’re up against. You’re sitting here balancing your career, your freedom, and your health against a name. Just a name. That’s all the lieutenant is asking for. I know you’re frightened about what will happen if you give it to us, but just think about what will happen to you if you don’t. At least the detective here can offer you some hope. Can the name we want offer you that?”
Ulansky scrutinized the man’s face. He saw fear and uncertainty, but not defeat—not the capitulation he had expected by now. He looked at Dockerty and shook his head.
“I … I want to speak to my lawyer,” Quigg said.
Dockerty shot across the room, grabbed the man by his lapels, and pulled him to his feet. “You get nothing until I get some answers.” Reluctantly, he released his grip. “We’re taking you with us, Quigg,” he said. “I want you to see firsthand what jail is all about. We still have business, you and me. Come on, creep, let’s go.”
Marcus Quigg felt the knifelike pain beneath his breastbone and thought for a moment that it was all going to end right there. The wafer-thin aneurysm that had replaced much of the muscle of his heart was stretching. He had wanted to tell them at the outset that he was no crook. He wanted to tell them now that the illegal prescriptions were strictly nickel-and-dime stuff—Band-Aids to try and hold together his failing business and his failing health and his wife, terrified of being left alone with four children. He wanted to tell them, but he couldn’t.
What difference did it make anyway? He asked himself the question over and over as Dockerty snapped handcuffs on him and led him from the store. So this Shelton was in trouble because of what he was doing. Well, he was in trouble, too. Big trouble. The goddamn balloon in his chest was stretching and his doctor had said it could be a year or a month … or an hour. She had said there was nothing that could be done for him. Would Dockerty understand? Would he understand that, after a whole life of trying to do what was right, all he had to show for it was a frightened wife, four kids who needed to eat, and a ball of blood in his chest that could explode at any time?
Quigg felt the knot in his gut and tasted acid percolating in his throat. He wanted to tell them and just go home to his own bed. But he knew what would happen. He knew the money would stop. He knew the additional thousands of dollars he had been promised when the whole mess was over would never come.
As he was shoved into the back seat of the detective’s car, Marcus Quigg silently cursed Dr. Margaret Armstrong and the misery she had brought him.
A pot of coffee, a shower together, and suddenly the evening had passed into crystal night. A birch log fire had transformed Joey’s living room into a musty womb. Stretched on the couch, David and Christine alternated brief conversation with prolonged gazes at the velvet sky,
“Red silk,” David said, fingering the robe he had borrowed from Rosetti