CHAPTER 30
Joe and I saw the press conference on the television in his hospital room. Mike Gajovich had been relieved of duty pending a criminal investigation, his brother jerked from command of District Two along with him. The chief of police delivered the message with a firm voice, but he didn’t look at the camera. The mayor stood awkwardly next to him, trying to look grim and reassuring at the same time.
Beside me, Joe’s breathing was shallow but steady. His face matched the white sheets on the bed, except for his eyes, which were red and rimmed with dark purple circles. A handful of tubes ran from his body, and monitors hummed behind the bed, keeping watch. He could talk, but it took a lot out of him, so we didn’t say much. He kept his head on the pillow, but his eyes followed the television closely. When the press conference had concluded, I stood up and turned the television off. Joe spoke while my back was to him.
“No Richards.” The words came out in a rattling whisper, a hell of a lot of effort behind them, and I turned and nodded at him.
“They wouldn’t let him speak at a press conference,” I said. “Too much risk he’d tell it like it is.”
It was the first time I’d been alone with Joe since his condition had stabilized, and I still had trouble looking at him without feeling awash with guilt. The first thing he’d said when he saw me was “Thanks for the swim.”
He didn’t remember much of it. I’d talked him through it, but there had been a dozen cops in the room for that, it seemed, spilling out into the hallway, all of them taking notes and whispering to one another. We’d talk about it again sometime when it was just the two of us. But not today.
Jimmy Cancerno had died inside the Hideaway. Ramone Tavarez had been picked up four hours after the fire, and four hours after that he’d offered a confession to the murder of Anita Sentalar. Jack Padgett had handled the details of the setup, and recruited Jerome Huggins, but Ramone had fired the killing shot. He’d been paid fifty thousand dollars for the hit by Cancerno. Ramone said he was planning to buy an SUV with the cash. One with leather seats.
Ramone would still be charged with first-degree homicide, but his confessions carried value. He offered Padgett up for the murder of Larry Rabold and said word of Rabold’s involvement with the corruption task force had spread to Mike Gajovich’s brother, the District Two commander. There was no telling exactly what the Gajovich brothers would be charged with by the time it was all done, but it was safe to say they’d run neither the city nor the police department.
“If I’ve ever seen a more beat-up pair of guys, I can’t remember the boxing match.”
Amy stepped into Joe’s room and regarded us with a frown and raised eyebrows. I would have raised my own in response, but they were gone. The fire had taken care of that and left mild burns across my face, neck, and arms. I’d spent an hour in the shower trying to lose the smell of smoke and still hadn’t succeeded.
Amy took Joe’s hand and squeezed it, smiling at him as she studied the tubes leading from his body.
“Great to have you back with us,” she said.
“Thanks.”
You could tell he wanted to say more, but he was fading again, the medication and the trauma beating him back into sleep even as he tried to fight out of it. Amy kissed the back of his hand and placed it gently back on the bed, then stepped across the room to face me. She ran the tips of her fingers lightly over my burns.
“Make me look rugged, don’t they?” I said. “Sexy.”
“Keep on telling yourself that, soldier.”
She dropped her hand, glanced at Joe, whose eyes were closed now, then spoke in a hard-edged whisper.
“So you want to explain why the hell you needed to call me at five in the morning and make me drive out to see some lunatic living in an abandoned house?”
“You told him what I asked you to?”
She nodded. “That he should tell Cal Richards everything he told you, but leave Scott Draper out of it.”
“And he seemed agreeable?”
“Absolutely. I drove him to meet Richards. He said he didn’t want to see any other cops until he’d seen Richards.”
“Good. That’s what I told him to do.” I dropped into one of the chairs at the foot of Joe’s bed, and Amy took the other. She leaned forward and rested her hand on my knee.
“What happened last night, Lincoln? Three hours after I left the hospital, you’d found Corbett, killed Cancerno, and burned down a building. I’ve got to hear the story.”
“Hear it, or write it?”
“Hear it.”
So I told it. I’d had some practice—Cal Richards alone had made me go through it a half dozen times, and he’d been the third detective to get to me.
“And what, exactly, was with the message to Corbett?” she asked.
I’d stolen a cop’s cell phone and called her from the bathroom as dawn broke over the city.
“Cancerno was at the bar to kill Draper,” I said. “I was at the bar because I thought Draper was working with Cancerno. If he ever had been, the partnership no longer seemed to be amicable. I don’t want to drop the hammer on Draper for those fires until I hear why he did it.”
“Do you know what he’s told Cal Richards?”
“Draper?” I shook my head. “No, I don’t. But Cal was still asking me about the fires this morning.”
“And what did you say?”
“Not much. Just pointed out that Cancerno was ready to burn the Hideaway last night. Let him take it from there.”
“The story will be all over the front page tomorrow,” she said. “I only wrote some of it, but I did offer a headline suggestion for the sidebar: ‘Gradduk Not Guilty.’ ”
“Got a hell of a good sound to it.”
We sat quietly for a while and watched Joe. His chest rose and fell under the blankets, his heart thumping away, smooth and steady.
“He’s going to be okay,” Amy said.
“Yes. Dr. Crandall’s eight hours of surgery got it done.”
She kept her hand on my leg. “So it’s over.”
“Yes,” I said again. It was almost over.
Sometime that afternoon, while I talked to police and doctors attended to my partner and Scott Draper, Ed Gradduk was buried without ceremony, at his mother’s request.
It was late the next day before I saw Draper. He called me as soon as he was released from the hospital and asked me to meet him outside. I walked out of Joe’s room and down the steps, came out into a hot, bright day with a sky so blue it seemed artificial.
Draper was standing at the corner. When I got closer, I saw his face was a ghastly collage of bruises and stitches. There was a cast on his nose and a bandage over his right eye. But the rest of him looked fine, strong and sturdy.
He put out his hand. “Thanks for coming down. Now, and the last time.”
I shook his hand. “Thanks for pulling me out of the house fire a few nights ago. Too bad you didn’t stick around at the time. Maybe some things would have gone a little easier on a lot of people.”
“Let’s take a walk,” he said.
We walked north on West Twenty-fifth, the cars buzzing past us. It was late in the afternoon, the heat as intense as it would get all day, and after only a block of it I could feel my pores begin to open up. The storm that had cooled things off was forgotten now, the sky clear, the air still. The heat would continue to build till the next storm blew through. August in Cleveland.
“Cops cut me loose,” Draper said eventually. “A lot of questions first, sure, but at the end of the day it seems I’m just a victim to them. They seem to think Cancerno was punishing me for helping you, and I didn’t discourage that line of logic. Problem is, I know it’s not the truth, and you know it’s not the truth. Corbett came by to see me in the hospital. Told me what he told you.”