alive.
“We might as well tell you, then,” Ortiz said, “we talked to some people at the Hotel Pennsylvania and they ID’d you and Angela Petrakos. So it’s just as well you admitted it. Now, you want to tell us where you went after you left the hotel that night?”
“I went home,” Max said. It was nice to tell the truth for a change. Being honest was so foreign to him it gave him a rush. He’d have to try more of it.
“You never saw Detective Simmons that night?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Did you ever meet a man named Thomas Dillon?” Granger asked.
“No,” Max said, hoping the British accent wasn’t coming out again.
“Were you aware that Angela Petrakos had been living with Dillon?”
Now Max felt feverish, realizing what an idiot he’d been for believing all those stories about Angela’s roommate. He would’ve killed for a half bottle of Stoli.
“Angela led me to believe that she lived with a woman.”
“So you never went to her apartment?” Ortiz asked skeptically.
Max shook his head.
Ortiz and Granger continued to grill Max for about another half an hour. Max continued to deny knowing anything about Angela and Dillon’s relationship or any murder plot to kill his wife. When Ortiz suggested the possibility that there might be “a fourth person,” someone Max had hired to try to kill Angela this afternoon, Max could tell McCullough wanted him to bring up Bobby Rosa, but Max told the detectives he had absolutely no idea what had happened in the park today. He was going to add, What the hell’s happening to our city? but was scared it would come out in that fucking accent.
Finally Max was taken back to the holding cell. About a half an hour later, McCullough came to the cell and said, “I have some good news for you – they’re dropping the assault charges.”
“That’s very nice of them since I didn’t assault anybody.”
“And they’re going to let you go on your own recognizance.”
“For good?”
“No, just for now. They want to see what happens with Angela and get her side of the story. If they get a confession out of her you might be off the hook, so let’s just hope, for your sake, she pulls through.”
Twenty-Five
Little Girl Lost
Bobby couldn’t stand lying in bed anymore, staring at the fucking cracks in the ceiling, so he went into the living room and lifted himself out of his wheelchair onto the couch and turned on NY 1, the local twenty-four-hour- a-day TV news station. He watched the same bit on Angela’s shooting three times, wondering each time, How the fuck could she not be dead? What the fuck was with that?
Finally, he fell asleep. When he woke up, at a little after six, the news was running a different segment about the shooting with a different reporter live on the scene. The reporter said that Angela was in critical but stable condition. He also said something about the cops finding a body in her bathtub soaking in Drano, which he figured answered the question of what she’d meant by “got rid of.” Bobby still didn’t know how the hell she’d survived those shots. He’d thought the one in her chest had gotten her for sure, but the bullet must’ve just missed her heart. He didn’t get this because Bobby Rosa never, never missed a fucking target. Was he losing his touch? It was bad enough that he couldn’t walk and that it took the stars aligning just to be able to bang a chick, but now was being in a wheelchair affecting his ability to kill people?
Bobby knew there was no way he would be able to fall back asleep now. He put on some clothes and went down to the deli and bought a couple ham and egg sandwiches on rolls, a large black coffee, and a copy of the Daily News. Back in his apartment, he wolfed down the sandwiches and read the newspaper articles about the Riverside Park shooting. Like on TV, there was no mention of Max Fisher and no mention of any possible suspects. He didn’t know if this was good or bad. Fuck, he didn’t know shit about anything anymore.
Later, Bobby was finishing his bladder routine when he noticed something funny and muttered, “The hell is that?”
It looked like a blister down there, then he looked closer and noticed that there were others clustered around. Bobby laughed. If he’d caught herpes a few years ago he might have been upset, but now he couldn’t feel any pain down there so what the hell difference did it make?
Bobby started to plan his mother’s funeral. He got hold of a funeral home on Amsterdam Avenue and arranged for them to pick up the body from the morgue at the nursing home. Then he called Information in Brooklyn and got the phone numbers of a few of his mother’s oldest friends. One of them, Carlita Borazon, had died a couple of years ago, her husband told Bobby, but her two other close friends – Anna Gagliardi and Rose-Marie Santos – were alive and well. They both seemed very upset when Bobby broke the news.
After he got off the phone with Rose-Marie, Bobby turned on the TV. There was an update on the Riverside Park shooting. A spokesman from the hospital said that Angela was out of her coma. She was awake and alert, but still in critical condition.
“Fuck!” Bobby shouted and threw the remote at the TV.
He got the address of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital from the phone book, then went down to the street and took the Broadway bus uptown to 168th Street. The hospital lobby was crammed with reporters and camera crews, but no one paid much attention to him, some guy in a wheelchair. It took a long time, but Bobby finally made his way through the halls to the nursing station and found a clipboard that showed what room Angela was in. He half expected to see a pair of cops stationed outside the door and was prepared to just keep rolling if there were, but the door was open and there was no one outside it, so he just went in.
Angela looked like shit. Her face was white and there were tubes coming in and out of her body. How the hell had she survived? The luck of the Irish, that’s how. Ask any Brit – it’s friggin’ impossible to kill those mothers. No wonder the Irish made such a big deal about funerals. It was so hard to put a mick in a box, they actually celebrated when they got one there.
Bobby wheeled close to the bed. The easiest thing would have been to smother her with a pillow, like what that Indian did to Jack Nicholson in that Cuckoo’s Nest movie. But that would be crazy with the door open and cops in the building.
Angela was sleeping or resting, but when Bobby touched her wrist her eyes opened. She turned her head slowly in his direction.
“Don’t try to talk,” Bobby said. “I just came by to see how you were doing.”
“I’m doing okay,” Angela said weakly.
She squeezed Bobby’s hand. Bobby felt uncomfortable, but he left his hand there anyway.
“Did the cops talk to you yet?” Bobby was trying not to sound too anxious.
Angela shook her head.
“That’s good,” Bobby said. “That’s real good. What about what happened in the park? Did you see who shot you?”
Again Angela shook her head, then said, “All I remember is lying on the ground bleeding.”
“Some kid with a gun probably took a pot shot at you,” Bobby said. “Fucking kids these days – running around, shooting people for kicks. I ever get my hands on them…”
He let the threat hang there, to show how much he cared about her. Man, he was a great actor.
Now Angela was squeezing Bobby’s hand tighter. She was trying to say something, but Bobby couldn’t hear her.
Then Bobby said, “Don’t worry, everything’s gonna be all right. I just talked to your doctor and he said you’ll
