“Down on your knees, hands behind your head.”
I swung my feet to the floor, stuck my head out the door, and saw Parisi kneeling on the pavement. Freitas and Wargart stood over him, their guns drawn. Wargart swung his pistol my way.
“Get out of the car and drop to your knees.”
“He was going to kill me,” I said.
“That’s a lie,” Parisi said.
“Just do it, Mulligan,” Freitas said. “By and by, we’ll all pop into the station for a nice little chat. See if we can get this thing sorted out.”
Freitas covered us while Wargart cuffed Parisi. Ten minutes later, a squad car with two patrolmen inside pulled up. Wargart shoved Parisi into the backseat, and we watched it roll away. The homicide twins holstered their weapons, gripped my arms, and led me through the gloom, lighting the way with their flashlights. They’d left their car near the street.
It was a gray Honda Civic.
Wargart shoved me into the backseat and climbed in beside me as Freitas took the wheel.
“Where’s your Crown Vic?” I asked.
“At the station,” Wargart said.
“Where’d you get this heap?”
“Borrowed it from impound. Been using it for undercover.”
“For tailing me, you mean.”
“From time to time.”
“Why?”
“We thought you’d eventually lead us to the rest of Alfano’s money.”
“So why were you following Parisi tonight?”
“We weren’t. We were sitting on your Mustang outside the Omni. When Parisi grabbed you, we decided to tag along. See what was up.”
“Lucky for me,” I said.
At the station, the homicide twins escorted me to an interrogation room, removed Parisi’s handcuffs, and recuffed me with my hands in front. Then they nudged me into a chair, locked me inside the room, and swaggered off to get Parisi’s side of the story. I figured they’d be gone for an hour or two. But in five minutes they were back.
“Parisi must have lawyered up,” I said.
“Good guess,” Freitas said.
“Going to read me my rights?”
“Why would we do that?” Wargart said. “I thought you were claiming to be the victim here.”
“I’ve got nothing to say until I speak with my lawyer.”
Yolanda stormed in a half hour later, kicked the homicide twins out, sat across the interrogation table from me, and took notes as I spilled my story. When I was done, and she finally looked up, her face was a battlefield of fear and suppressed rage. She reached into her bag for a tissue to wipe tears from her eyes.
“I almost lost you tonight.”
“You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
She reached across the table and held my cuffed hands in hers for a moment. Then she regained her composure, summoned the homicide dicks, and stood in the corner while I answered a barrage of hostile questions.
“That’s quite a tale,” Wargart finally said.
“It’s not a tale,” Yolanda said. “Charge him or release him.”
“We’re gonna need more time to sort this out,” Wargart said. “So for the time being, we’re charging him with possession of stolen goods.”
“Stolen goods?” Yolanda said. “What stolen goods?”
“The money we found in his apartment,” Freitas said.
“That was planted,” Yolanda said.
“We don’t know that,” Freitas said.
“Can you hold Parisi as well?” Yolanda asked.
“For illegally discharging a firearm,” Freitas said. “It’s a bullshit charge, but it will have to do for now.”
I spent the next three days in a holding cell.
Late Thursday afternoon, the homicide twins cut me loose without an explanation or apology. When I walked out of the station house, I found Yolanda waiting at the door. She hugged me hard and drove me to the Omni to pick up Mister Ed. Three parking tickets were tucked under the wipers.
That evening she cooked for me again. This time, the music was by Michael Bublé, but the dinner conversation was all business.
“Parisi has been charged with kidnapping and attempted murder,” she said.
“Can they make it stick? It’s just my word against his.”
“They’ve got more than that,” she said. “For one thing, he broke into your apartment before he scooped you up and left a suicide note on your computer.”
“How can they be sure he wrote it?”
“One of your neighbors spotted him sneaking down the fire escape. The time stamp on the note is a match for the time and date.”
“Have you seen the note?”
“No, but Freitas pulled me aside and described what was in it.”
“Tell me.”
“You confessed to killing Romeo Alfano and stealing the two hundred grand. You knew the cops had found some of the money in your apartment, and you felt the walls closing in. You didn’t see any way out. So you decided to take your own life.”
“Anything else?”
“He included a sorrowful farewell to the woman you love.”
“That would be you,” I said.
“So I’ve heard.”
“Okay,” I said. “Now I get how he was planning to get away with it. He was going to say that he picked me up for questioning and then cut me loose. His questions panicked me, so I wandered down to the waterfront and shot myself with my gun.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Has he confessed?”
“No. But there’s more.”
“What?”
“Freitas and Wargart got a court order to open Parisi’s safe deposit box at Citibank. Inside, they found nearly two hundred grand in hundreds. Romeo Alfano’s prints were on a few of the bank bands.”
“They’re charging him with that, too?”
“With grand larceny.”
“What about Alfano’s murder?”
“They still don’t know if it was Parisi or Mario Zerilli,” she said. “From the sound of it, they may never find out.”
“But chances are, Parisi’s going to die in prison,” I said.
“Yes.”
“It’s a shame, really.”
“Why on earth would you say that?”
“Stephen Parisi was a damned good cop, Yolanda. For thirty years, he was relentless and flat-out incorruptible. And how was the state of Rhode Island prepared to reward him for his years of faithful service? By slashing the pension he and his wife were going to retire on. He didn’t plan his crime. He just walked into a hotel room I sent him to and stumbled on two hundred grand in cash. And in a moment of weakness, he took it. Under the same circumstances, I might have done the same thing.”
“He was going to kill you, Mulligan.”
“It wasn’t personal. He needed a patsy to pin the crime on, and I happened to be handy. I’ll never forget the tortured expression on his face when he pointed the gun at me and ordered me out of the car. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I can’t help but wonder, when it came right down to it, if he could have pulled the trigger.”
“I guess we’ll never know,” she said.
“I bet he doesn’t know either.”
Whatever Mario Zerilli’s part in the drama had been, he was apparently going to get away with most of it. He may not have shot Romeo Alfano, but he probably killed Templeton. Yet the only charges pending against him were last spring’s gay-bashing outside the Stable and the assault and gun charges from the incident at Whoosh’s store. He’d probably serve less than ten years for all that. And when he gets out, I thought, he’ll be back to making trouble for me about the bookmaking business.
I was relieved that it was all over for now, but nothing about the way things had turned out felt right.
After I helped Yolanda clear the dishes, she put Tony Bennett on the stereo. We held each other on the couch for a while, but when Bennett started crooning “Tender Is the Night,” we got up and danced.
That night, she wasn’t the tender lover I had grown accustomed to. This time, she responded with urgency. She even bit me.