Rizzo's Fire

Rizzo could hear a slight sigh come through the line. “Of course. How could I ever forget that?”

“Yeah, well, I guessed you would remember,” Rizzo said in the same pleasant manner. “See, at the time you said how grateful you were, how if there was ever anything you could do, I shouldn’t hesitate to call.”

“Yeah, Joe, I remember.”

“So I can assume you meant that?”

“Yes. Of course I did.”

Rizzo smiled into the phone. “Okay then,” he said. “So, here’s the thing…”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

AT EIGHT-THIRTY THE FOLLOWING MORNING, traffic was lighter than usual as Priscilla Jackson drove the Impala toward Manhattan.

“I still say there’s a good chance DeMaris won’t be home when we get there, even if she is still breathing,” Priscilla said to Rizzo. “Friday after Thanksgiving, long four-day weekend.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but we know the office is closed, so she isn’t workin’ today. Like I told you when we went to the literary agencies, it’s best we catch this broad cold, unannounced. It’ll scare her.” He paused before continuing. “And that’s how we want her-scared. The scareder the better.”

“Scare-der?” Priscilla asked. “You mean more scared?”

“Yeah, okay, Professor, what ever the fuck,” Rizzo replied. “You get my point. See, by now Bradley had to warn her we’re comin’, but not until next week sometime, so he probably hasn’t face-to-faced with her yet to firm up her story. If we catch Ms. DeMaris in her hair curlers and skivvies, cup of coffee in her hand, her blood pressure is gonna spike, Cil, believe me.”

“So: bad cop / worse cop?” Priscilla asked.

“Yeah, like we discussed,” he said, enjoying himself. “If she proves to be what most murder-for-profit people are-a spoiled, conniving, self-centered bastard-we lean on her hard. Both of us.”

Priscilla responded. “Which one am I?”

Rizzo pondered it for a moment. “Bad cop,” he said. “I know the script a little better’n you do, so I’ll be worse cop.”

“Okay, boss, what ever you say. I just hope we don’t find this chick lyin’ on her kitchen floor with her eyeballs poppin’ out.”

As she accelerated onto the Williamsburg Bridge, Priscilla was silent. After a few moments, she said, “Imagine the luck of this poor guy Lauria? There had to be-what?-six, seven book-length manuscripts in his apartment? Plus God knows how many short stories? Thousands of freakin’ pages.”

“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “So?”

Priscilla shook her head. “So he decides to write one damn play, and it winds up a big smash under some other guy’s name, Mallard’s name. And it gets them both killed.”

She turned to face Rizzo briefly. “Lauria couldn’t get anything published in over twenty years of writing. Then, his play hits the big time, and he’s dead. It’s just sad, man. Really sad.”

Rizzo pondered it. “Well, I guess. Sad life, sad death. Some guys get dealt a hand like that. And who knows, maybe some of those other books a his are just as good as the play’s supposed to be. If we learned anything from this case, it was that it helps to have some big name on a play if you’re lookin’ to get it produced.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s the same with getting a book published. Maybe we should take one of Lauria’s manuscripts and put Norman Mailer’s name on it, hype it up like a newly discovered work of a deceased American master. We might come up with a best seller.”

Priscilla pursed her lips. “If we can tie Lauria’s murder to Mallard’s, and it breaks big in the news, Lauria gets his fifteen minutes. I oughta take those manuscripts to my agent, Robin Miller. Maybe the poor schmuck will get published after all.”

“Or maybe we should just steal ’em,” he suggested. “Put your name on them if they’re any good. Better yet, put my friggin’ name on them.”

“We can do the same thing Bradley did, only this time everybody who needs killin’ is already dead,” Priscilla said.

“Yeah, Cil,” Rizzo said. “We can be grave robbers.”

They both laughed, and she added, “What other job can offer that kind of opportunity? And you tryin’ to keep Carol away from all this fun.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. Imagine that.”

“Which reminds me,” Priscilla said. “Yesterday at dinner, your mother said something in Italian to your mother- in-law. I got the impression it was about me. What’d she say?”

“You sure you wanna know, Cil?”

She shrugged. “Sure. I can take it.”

Rizzo replied. “Okay. You had just explained to Karen that ah-leech is Brooklyn- Italian slang for anchovies.”

Priscilla nodded. “I remember.”

“Well,” Rizzo said, “I think my mother had the impression your prim and proper WASPY girlfriend wouldn’t put an anchovy in her mouth if her life depended on it.”

“Yeah, probably right,” Priscilla said. “So what’d she say in Italian?”

Rizzo laughed. “She said, referrin’ to you, ‘I bet this one would eat them.’ ”

Priscilla laughed. “Damn,” she said. “Don’t bother to explain, Joe. I get it.”

THE FEAR in Linda DeMaris’s eyes was reassuring, Rizzo thought, as he and Jackson sat across from her at the kitchen table in her small, Lower East Side apartment.

“Recognize that?” he asked deliberately, jutting his chin at the paper he had placed before DeMaris.

She dropped her eyes to the sheet of paper, color coming to her cheeks.

“Pick it up,” he said softly. “Look at it.”

DeMaris, thirty-seven years old with long, jet-black hair and large, beautiful brown eyes, reached a pale hand to the paper, her fingers trembling as she obeyed Rizzo’s order.

“Recognize that?” Rizzo repeated.

Steadying the paper in both hands, she placed it back on the table.

“No,” she said.

Priscilla leaned forward. “No?” she said. “Did you just say ‘no’?”

DeMaris nodded and turned toward Priscilla, avoiding the dark coldness in Rizzo’s eyes.

“It’s… it’s a letter,” DeMaris said.

“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “It’s a letter. A letter from the literary agency where you used to work. And with your signature on it.”

DeMaris nodded but remained silent. “

’Course,” Rizzo continued, a transparent casualness in his tone, “that’s just a photocopy.” He sat back in his chair. “We got the original in the precinct evidence lock-up. In a plastic bag. See, at some point, we’re gonna lift prints off that letter. One set will be Robert Lauria’s. We gotta figure the second set will be yours.”

Rizzo smiled. “You know who Robert Lauria was, don’t you, Ms. De Maris?”

She shook her head. “No, I… I can’t say that I do,” she said. “I see the letter is addressed to him, but I handled hundreds of letters like that, maybe a thousand over the years. I can’t be expected to remember-”

Priscilla cut her off. “Lauria is dead,” she said. “Murdered.”

DeMaris’s anxiety seemed to intensify. Rizzo could only speculate how much or how little Bradley had told her in anticipation of this interview.

“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “And in the same way Avery Mallard was murdered.”

DeMaris sat back in her seat, eyes wide, breathing shallow. “Why are you here?” she asked in a strained, tense tone.

“Do you wanna tell her or should I?” Rizzo asked.