Free Damaged Goods by Stephen Solomita Page B

nap to find ten or twenty well-armed cops massed outside his door?” He laid his palms on the table, paused for a moment. “I’m not trying to be dramatic here. Do what any cop would do. Run through the possibilities.”
    “Excuse me.”
    Moodrow turned to meet Patricia Burke’s sharp green eyes. He noted the clenched jaw, the slight underbite, the flaming cheeks. She was pissed, too, and that was just fine with him. That was why the bait had been cast in the first place.
    “You seem to be telling us to give up.”
    “Not at all.”
    “No? Didn’t you just infer that Jilly Sappone will …” She hesitated for a moment, took a deep breath. “You said that he’ll kill Theresa before he’ll surrender.”
    “Look.” Moodrow tightened his voice down, forcing Patricia Burke to lean into him in order to hear. “The odds are stacked against Theresa Kalkadonis. That’s the truth of it. But poor odds are no reason to give up. You have to accept your hand and find the best way to play the cards. One or two people have a better chance of surprising Jilly Sappone and his partner, of taking them down before they can hurt the child, than an army of by-the-book cops or FBI agents. Cops and FBI agents have to give suspects a chance to surrender.” He waited until Patricia Burke’s eyes told him she’d digested the information, then continued. “Besides,” he said, “I have an ace in the hole. I went to grammar school with Carmine Stettecase. I know he’s a man who can be persuaded to act in his own self-interest.”
    Moodrow hesitated outside the door to Room 436. He knew what he was going to find inside, had stood at the hospital bedsides of hundreds of beating victims in the course of his career. Ann Kalkadonis’s face would be so badly swollen as to actually appear featureless, a dimpled balloon stretched to the point of bursting. By turns, the color of her skin would range from purple to red to green to a faded, sickly yellow. As if her face had been tie-dyed by Jilly Sappone’s fists.
    “Stanley?”
    Leonora Higgins was standing beside him. He’d wanted to interview Ann Kalkadonis by himself, but wasn’t surprised when the entire committee had insisted on coming along. Leonora had been the compromise.
    “Gimme a second to get ready,” he said. The trick was not to let ordinary human pity stop you from asking the questions that had to be asked. Maybe all you wanted to do was mumble your condolences and get the fuck out, but the man paid you to be a detective and you couldn’t detect without information, therefore …
    “All right,” he said, “let’s go.”
    He nodded to the bored cop sitting beside the door, stepped inside, found no surprises. Ann Kalkadonis was awake, though probably drugged. Her face, as she slowly turned toward him, was every bit as grotesque as he’d expected. At least, the parts that weren’t bandaged.
    “You got older,” she mumbled.
    “Say that again?” He crossed the room, sat on the plastic chair beside her bed.
    “You got older,” she repeated.
    “I guess that means you remember me.” Moodrow crossed his legs, settled back in the chair. “Tell ya the truth, Mrs. Kalkadonis, I’m flattered.”
    “I remember you from the fight.”
    “That was a long time ago.” He looked up at Leonora and motioned for her to take the other chair, before explaining. “Once upon a time, Jilly and I had what cops like to call an altercation. It happened in a bar on Houston Street. Jilly was loud, as usual, sounding off about all cops being scumbag thieves. Me, I was off duty and too close to drunk to walk out. You could say I won the fight, being as how I was standing up when it ended. But the truth is that nobody wins a fight like that. I hurt for a week.”
    Leonora nodded thoughtfully. She’d been setting up Moodrow’s punch lines for two days because she really believed that he was Theresa’s best chance. That didn’t mean she enjoyed being used. “Did he come after you?