nose. “Is he…”
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s been dead awhile.”
“It’s like nobody even noticed,” she said, her voice remorseful, distancing herself from the crime and focusing on the facts. Just like I had. This allowed you to see the story from a more comprehensive angle and was a by- product of journalism. Right now, it was all I had to keep myself from breaking down.
“But why would he come here?” she added.
“Well, when you gotta go, you gotta…” I left the joke unfinished. This wasn’t the time.
“If you’re dying,” Amanda said, “and your world is about to end, there has to be a reason to come here if not for help. There’s no phone. It’s like he was checking up on something.”
“Maybe he knew whoever attacked him hadn’t searched the bathroom. Think about it. You’re lying on the floor. Some guy’s just bashed you with a big hunk of metal, you’re laying there dying while he’s tearing your home apart. What could be so important that you’d ignore medical help to find it?”
“The package,” Amanda said. “What DiForio and that man in black wanted. Maybe that’s what was so important. Maybe that’s what the killer missed. You think that maniac who found us in St. Louis did this?”
“Maybe. It would make sense. But I honestly don’t know.”
The package. The reason John Fredrickson had assaulted the Guzmans. What the newspapers assumed I’d stolen. What a stranger was trying to kill me for. What the cops thought I was hiding. Gustofson had it, and whoever killed him failed to find it.
But one thing was for certain: it was here in the bathroom with us.
Amanda looked at me, and suddenly she reached forward and wrenched open the porcelain top to the toilet. We gazed inside. Nothing but water, levers and rust. She replaced the top.
“So where…” she said, thinking aloud. I maneuvered around Gustofson’s body and opened the cabinet beneath the sink. Nothing but Rogaine, unidentifiable pill boxes and an unopened pack of condoms. The medicine cabinet was stocked with hair gel, cologne and shaving gear, but nothing to arouse suspicion.
I stepped back and surveyed the bathroom. There had to be something. My eyes went to the ceiling, looking for a fake smoke detector, anything. I kicked over the hamper, sifted through a pile of dirty clothes with my shoe. Nothing.
Amanda checked behind the toilet, as I silently gave her credit for being brave enough to do so. She came up, her eyes defeated.
“There’s nothing here,” she said. “Maybe Hans did just come here to die on the toilet. He knew he’d thrown his life in the shitter and that’s where he wanted it to end.”
“No,” I said, still searching. “There has to be something.” Then I looked at the bathtub and saw it. Tiny chips of blue paint were sprinkled by the drain. As I looked closer, tiny cracks emerged in the tiling, invisible if you weren’t looking for them.
Slowly I brought my hands up to grip the hot and cold knobs. I turned them. No water came out. Amanda’s eyes went wide.
I turned around, looked at her, nodded.
I yanked both knobs as hard as I could. There was a terrible crunching sound as the knobs tore away from the wall, spraying blue paint and dust everywhere. Tiling cascaded down into the bathtub as the room filled up with steam and dust. Coughing, I waved the detritus away and peered into the two-foot wide, six-inch high hole I’d created. Inside was a thick manila envelope sealed inside a plastic bag.
“Is that…” she said.
“Be some coincidence,” I said. “Now let’s see what all the fuss is about.”
37
After freeing the plastic sheaf from the wall, I carried it into the living room. The small edgewood dining room table had been wiped clean during the break-in, candlesticks bent and twisted and dinnerware shattered. I blocked Gustofson’s body from my mind, ignoring the dried blood, the acrid smell. I would have preferred to examine our finding anywhere but a dead man’s apartment, but we had nowhere to go. Time was running out, each second bringing an increased sense of dread. When was the last shoe going to drop, our last free seconds melting away? This envelope held the answers to so many questions. A lot of people were willing to kill for this, and I had no doubt that what happened to Hans Gustofson could happen to me as well.
I placed the package on the table, my breathing long and slow. I gently slipped my fingers inside, finally touched what people had died for, had killed for. I ran my hand along the envelope’s grainy surface, still sharp, untouched by the elements. It was fastened with a red drawstring. Unwinding the twine, I took a deep breath and opened the envelope.
A binder slid out onto the table. The cover was shiny and black. I ran my hand over its smooth surface. Silence drummed in my ears as I slowly lifted the cover to see what lay inside.
There was a photo of two men mounted on the first page, and an index card pasted below it with two names written in thick ink. The photo looked at least twenty years old. Both men were wearing overcoats. And they looked like they didn’t want anyone else to know they were meeting.
Detective Lieutenant Harvey N. Pennick
Jimmy “Eight Ball” Rizzoli
I turned the page. Another photo, another index card. Another detective. Another guy with a cliched nickname. I flipped the pages. More photos, more cards, more cops, more crooks. The book was full of them. Immediately it dawned on me. I knew what the connection was. The revelation made my head swim.
I knew how Hans Gustofson was connected to Michael DiForio. What John Fredrickson had been looking for at the Guzmans’ house. That many more lives were at stake than just mine and Amanda’s. That I’d stumbled onto something big, something huge, and oh, God, there was a whole lot more at stake than my insignificant life.
Within these pages were images that could ruin a city.
Or control it.
Fear rushed through my veins like a bad drug, seizing hold of my body. I stood up to compose myself. I felt dizzy, unbalanced. Whispering, under my breath. Oh God, oh Jesus, oh shit, oh fuck.
Amanda was staring at me. She was looking at the last page, the page I’d stopped on. The page that tied it all together.
“Is that…” she said, her voice trembling like she was walking a tightrope thousands of feet above ground. “Are those…”
“Yes,” I said weakly. “That’s Officer John Fredrickson and Angelo Pineiro.”
Inside this album were pasted hundreds of photos. Policemen. Politicians. Government officials. All captured by the steady eye of Hans Gustofson. The negatives were neatly tucked away in the back for safekeeping.
In some photos they were taking money, in others they were buying or selling drugs. Some were having sex with women. Some were having sex with men. All their faces were clear as day. The subjects were all unaware. Taking bribes. Some men seemed to be playing to the camera-they knew about Hans taking their picture from the shadows. Some photos looked twenty years old, some as fresh as the moonlight streaming through the window.
Some cops were in uniform and some were in plainclothes, easily distinguishable from their posture and countenance that they knew what they were doing was so, so wrong.
The patsy’s name was written on the index card. First and last, middle initial. Rank. Their office. Also listed were their associates, the men or women they were photographed with. I recognized many of them. I recognized the name Angelo Pineiro. Blanket.
The Right Hand of Lucifer.
Oh, God…
Some of the faces looked sad, remorseful. Faces that once held dreams of nobility but had since been reduced to this. Some were happy, jovial, looking like they’d known their associates for years. Unrepentant for their crimes, or disillusioned to the point of apathy.
“Jesus,” Amanda said.
