Roses Are Red Read online

We were laughing, just like always, as we dug into the extra-cheese pizza and milk. We exchanged news of our days. Jannie held center court again, elaborately describing her second CT scan, which had lasted half an hour. Then she proclaimed: “I’ve decided to become a doctor. My decision is final. I’ll probably go to Johns Hopkins like Daddy did.”

  Nana and Damon finally got up to leave around eight. They’d been at the hospital since just after three.

  Jannie announced: “Daddy’s staying for a while extra because he had to work and I didn’t see enough of him today.” She motioned for Nana to give her a hug and they held on to each other for a long moment. Nana whispered something private in Jannie’s ear, and she nodded that she understood.

  Then Jannie waved Damon over to her bedside. “Give me a big hug and a kiss,” she commanded.

  Damon and Nana Mama left with a lot of bye-byes, and extra waves, and see-you-tomorrows, and brave smiles. Jannie sat there with her cheeks wet and shiny, crying and smiling at the same time.

  “Actually, I sort of like this,” she told them. “You know that I have to be the center of attraction. And everybody stop worrying — I am going to be a doctor. In fact, from now on, you all can call me Dr. Jannie.”

  “Good night, Dr. Jannie. Sweet dreams,” Nana spoke softly from the doorway. “I’ll see you tomorrow, darling girl.”

  “Night,” Damon said. He turned away, then turned back. “Oh, all right — Dr. Jannie.”

  She and I were quiet for a few moments after Nana and Damon left. I came over and put my arm around her. I think that the parting scene had been too much for both of us. I sat on the edge of the hospital bed, and I held her as if she would break. We stayed like that for a long time, talking a little bit, but mostly just holding on to each other.

  I was surprised when I saw that Jannie had fallen fast asleep in my arms. That’s when the tears finally started to roll from my eyes.

  Chapter 36

  I STAYED IN THE HOSPITAL with Jannie all night. I was as saddened and afraid as I’d ever been; the fear was a living thing constricting my chest. I slept some, but not much. I thought about the bank robberies a little — just to put my mind somewhere else. Innocent people had been savagely murdered, and that hit home with me and everybody else.

  I also thought about Christine. I loved her, couldn’t help it, but I believed she had made up her mind about the two of us. I couldn’t change it. She didn’t want to be with a homicide detective, and I probably couldn’t be anything else.

  Jannie and I were both awake around five the next morning. Her room looked out on an expansive sunroof and a small, flowering garden. We sat quietly and watched the sunrise through the window. It looked so stunningly beautiful and serene that it made me sad all over again. What if this was our last sunrise together? I didn’t want to think like that, but I couldn’t help it.

  “Don’t worry, Daddy,” Jannie said, reading my face like the little necromancer she could be sometimes. “There’ll be lots of pretty sunrises in my life. . . . I am a little scared, though. Truth be told.”

  “Truth be told,” I said. “That’s the way it always has to be between us.”

  “Okay. So I’m very scared,” Jannie said in a tiny voice.

  “Me, too, little girl.”

  We held hands and stared at the glorious orangish-red sun. Jannie was very quiet. It took all of my willpower to keep from breaking up. I started to choke and hid it with a false yawn that I was sure didn’t fool her.

  “What happens this morning?” Jannie finally asked in a whisper.

  “The rest of the pre-op workup,” I told her. “Maybe another blood test.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “They’re vampires here, you know. It’s why I made you stay the night.”

  “Good thinking on your part. I fought off a few dastardly attacks in the wee hours. Didn’t want to wake you. They’ll probably give you your very first shave.”

  Jannie put both hands over her head. “No!”

  “Just a little in the back. It will look cool.”

  She continued to look horrified. “Yeah, right. You think so? Why don’t you get a shave on the back of your head, too? Then we can both look cool.”

  I grinned at her. “I will if you want me to.”

  Dr. Petito walked into Jannie’s room and heard us trying to cheer each other up.

  “You’re number one on our list,” he told her, and smiled.

  Jannie puffed up her little chest. “See that? I’m number one.”

  They took Jannie away from me at five minutes past seven in the morning.

  Chapter 37

  I HELD A SPECIAL IMAGE in my mind of Jannie dancing with Rosie the Cat, singing “Roses are red.” I let it play over and over again that long, terrible day at St. Anthony’s. I suspect that waiting in hospitals is as close as we get to being in hell before our time, or at least in purgatory. Nana, Damon, and I didn’t talk much the whole time. Sampson and Jannie’s aunts came by for short stints. They were devastated, too. It was just awful. The worst hours of my life.

  Sampson took Nana and Damon to the cafeteria to get something to eat, but I wouldn’t leave. There was no word of how Jannie was doing. Everything at the hospital felt unreal to me. Images of Maria’s death came flashing back to me. After my wife was wounded in a senseless drive-by shooting, she had been brought to St. Anthony’s, too.

  At a few minutes past five, the neurologist, Dr. Petito, walked into the waiting room where we were gathered. I saw him before he saw us. I felt ill. Suddenly, my heart was racing, thudding loudly. I couldn’t tell anything from his face, other than that he looked tired. He saw us, waved a hand, and walked our way.

  He was smiling, and I knew it was good.

  “We got it,” Dr. Petito said as soon as he reached us. He shook my hand, then Nana’s, and Damon’s. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered as I held his hand tightly, “for all your sacrifices.”

  About fifteen minutes later, Nana and I were allowed into the recovery suite. Suddenly I was feeling buoyant, pleasantly light-headed. Jannie was the only patient in there. We walked quietly to her bedside, almost on tiptoe. A gauze turban covered her little head. She was hooked up to monitors and an IV

  I took one hand. Nana Mama took the other. Our girl was okay; they got it.

  “I feel like I lived and went to heaven,” Nana said to me, and smiled. “Don’t you?”

  Jannie stirred and began to wake up after about twenty-five minutes in the recovery room. Dr. Petito was called and returned moments later. He asked her to take some deep breaths, then try to cough.

  “You have a headache, Jannie?” he asked.

  “I think so,” she said.

  Then she looked over at Nana and me. She squinted first, then she tried to open her eyes wide. She was obviously still groggy. “Hello, Daddy. Hello, Nana. I knew you’d be in heaven, too,” Jannie finally said.

  I turned around then, so that she could see what I’d done.

  I had shaven a spot back there. It was just like hers.

  Chapter 38

  TWO DAYS LATER, I returned to the robbery-murders, a case that both fascinated and repulsed me. Work was still there, wasn’t it? The investigation had survived without me. On the other hand, no one had been caught. One of Nana’s favorite sayings came to mind: If you’re going around in circles, maybe you’re cutting corners. Perhaps that was the problem with the investigation so far.

  I saw Betsey Cavalierre at the FBI office on Fourth Street. She wagged a finger at me, but she also smiled in a friendly way. She had on a tan blazer, blue T-shirt, jeans, and she looked good. I was glad to see her. That first smile of hers seemed to finally break the ice between us.

  “You should have told me about your little girl — the operation. Everything okay, Alex? You haven’t slept much, have you?”

  “The doctor said he got it all. She’s a tough little girl. This morning she asked me when we could start our boxing lessons again. I’m
sorry I didn’t tell you before. I wasn’t myself.”

  She waved off my last few words. “I’m just happy that your daughter is fine,” she said. “I can see the relief on your face.”

  I smiled. “Well, I can feel it. It brought lots of things into focus for me. Let’s go to work.”

  Betsey winked. “I’ve been here since six.”

  “Show-off,” I said.

  I sat down at the desk I was using and started to look through the mountain of paperwork that had already accumulated. Agent Cavalierre was at the desk across from mine. I was glad to be back on the line. One or more killers were out there murdering bank tellers, managers, families. I wanted to help stop it if I could.

  An hour or so later, I looked up and saw Agent Cavalierre staring my way with a blank look on her face. She’d been lost in her thoughts, I suppose.

  “There’s someone I need to see,” I said. “I should have thought of him before today. He left Washington for a while. Went to Philly, New York, Los Angeles. Now he’s back. He’s robbed a lot of banks, and he’s violent.”

  Betsey nodded. “I’d love to meet him. Sounds like a swell guy.”

  It probably had something to do with our scarcity of solid leads that she went with me that morning. We rode in her car to a fleabag hotel on New York Avenue. The Doral was a decrepit, paint-peeling flophouse. A trio of skinny, shopworn prostitutes in miniskirts were just leaving the hotel as we arrived. A retro-looking pimp in a gold lamé zoot suit leaned against a yellow Cadillac convertible, picking at his teeth.

  “You take me to all the nicest places,” Agent Cavalierre said as she climbed out of the car. I noticed she was wearing an ankle holster. Dressed for success.

  Chapter 39

  TONY BROPHY was living the vida loca up on the fourth floor of the Doral. The hotel desk clerk said he’d been staying here for a week, and that he was “a very troubled dude, not a nice person, and a serious asshole.”

  “I don’t think this place is connected with the Doral in Miami,” Betsey said as we took the back stairs. “What a dump.”

  “Wait until you meet Brophy. He fits right in here.”

  We arrived unannounced at his room and unholstered our guns. Brophy was a legitimate suspect in the robbery-murders. He fit the profile. I rapped my knuckles on a scarred, bare wood door.

  “What?” a gruff voice called from inside. “I said what?”

  “Washington PD. Open up,” I called out.

  I heard movement, then someone snapped a few locks on the other side. The door slowly opened and Brophy filled the narrow doorway. He was six-four and close to two sixty, a lot of it bulging muscle. His dark hair was shaved with neat razor lines to the scalp.

  “Asshole D.C. cop,” he said, a nonfilter cigarette hanging from his lips. “And who’s this lovely asshole with you?”

  “Actually, I can talk for myself,” Betsey said to Brophy.

  Tony Brophy grinned down at her. He apparently liked to get a response to his rudeness. “Okay. Speak. Woof.”

  “I’m Senior Agent Betsey Cavalierre. FBI,” Betsey said.

  “Senior agent! Let’s see, what’s the line from all the cop shows on TV? We can do this the hard way — or we can do it the easy way,” he said, and showed off surprisingly even white teeth. He was wearing black paramilitary pants, off-white shower thongs, no shirt. His arms and upper torso were covered with jailhouse tats and curled black hair.

  “I vote for the hard way. But that’s just me,” Betsey said.

  Brophy turned to a skinny blond who was sitting on a lime green retro couch propped in front of a TV. She wore a loose-fitting FUBU shirt over her underwear.

  “You like her as much as I do, Nora?” Brophy asked the blond.

  The woman shrugged, apparently uninterested in anything but Rosie O’Donnell on TV. She was probably high. Her hair was stringy, with the bangs gelled down to her forehead. She had barbed-wire tattoos on both ankles, wrists, and around her throat.

  Brophy looked back at Betsey Cavalierre and me. “I take it we have business to discuss. So, the mystery lady is FBI. That’s very good. Means you can afford any information I might have.”

  Betsey shook her head. “I’d rather beat it out of you.”

  Tony Brophy’s dark eyes came alive again. “I really like her.”

  We followed Brophy to a lopsided wooden table in a tiny kitchen. He sat straddled on a chair, the backrest wedged against his hairy stomach and chest. We had to arrive at a financial agreement before he would give up anything. He was right about one thing — Betsey Cavalierre’s budget was a lot bigger than mine.

  “This has to be good information, though,” she warned.

  He nodded confidently, smugly. “This is the best you can buy, baby. Top of the line. Y’see, I met with the man behind those nasty jobs in Maryland and Virginia. Want to know what he’s like? Well, he’s one cold motherfucker. And remember who’s telling you that.”

  Brophy stared hard at Betsey and me. He definitely had our interest.

  “He called himself Mastermind,” Brophy said in a slow Florida drawl. “He was dead serious about it. Mastermind! You believe it?

  “The two of us met at the Sheraton Airport Hotel. He contacted me through a guy I know from New York,” Brophy went on. “The so-called Mastermind knew things about me. He ticked off my strengths, then weaknesses. He had me down to a T. He even knew about the lovely Nora and her habit.”

  “Think he was a cop? All the information he had about you?” I asked Brophy.

  Brophy grinned broadly. “No. Too smart. He might have talked to some cops, though, considering he knew everything. That’s why I stayed and listened to the dude. That, plus he told me this was a high-six-figure opportunity for me. That caught my interest.”

  All Agent Cavalierre and I had to do now was listen. Once Brophy got started there was no stopping him.

  “What did he look like?” I asked.

  “You want to know what he looked like? That’s the million-dollar question, Regis Philbin. Let me set the scene for you. When I walked into the room at his hotel, there were bright lights shining at me. Like Hollywood premiere movie lights. I couldn’t see shit.”

  “Not even shapes?” I asked Brophy. “You must have seen something.”

  “His silhouette. He had long hair. Or maybe he was wearing a wig. Big nose, big ears. Like a car with both doors open. We talked and he said he’d be in touch — but I never heard from him again. Guess he didn’t want me for his crew.”

  “Why not?” I asked Brophy. It was a serious question. “Why wouldn’t he want someone like you?”

  Brophy made a pistol with his hand and shot me. “He wants killers, dude. I’m not a killer. I’m a lover. Right, Betsey?”

  Chapter 40

  WHAT BROPHY HAD TOLD US was scary and it couldn’t get out to the press. Someone who called himself the Mastermind was out there interviewing and hiring professional killers. Only killers. What was he planning next? More bank-hostage jobs? What the hell was he thinking?

  After I finished work that night, I went to St. Anthony’s. Jannie was doing fine, but I stayed another night with her, anyway. My home away from home. She had begun calling me her “roomie.”

  The next morning I waded through files on disgruntled former employees of Citibank, First Union, and First Virginia; and also records of anyone who had made any kind of serious threat against the banks. The mood in the FBI field office was one of quiet desperation. There was none of the buzz and excitement that went along with leads, clues, progress of any kind. We still didn’t have a single good suspect.

  Threats and crank communications to banks are usually handled by an in-house investigative department. General hate mail is most often from people who are denied loans or have had their homes foreclosed. Hate mail is as likely to come from a woman as from a man. According to the psychological profiles I read that morning, it was usually someone having work, financial, or domestic problems. Occasionally, there were seriou
s threats because of a bank’s labor practices or its affiliations with foreign countries such as South Africa, Iraq, and Northern Ireland. Mail at the major banks was X-rayed in the mail room, and there were frequent false alarms. Musical Christmas cards sometimes set off the system.

  The process was exhausting but necessary. It was part of the job. I glanced over at Betsey Cavalierre around one. She was right there with the rest of us, seated at a plain metal desk. She was nearly hidden behind stacks of paper.

  “I’m going to run out again for a while,” I told her. “There’s a guy I want to check out. He’s made some threats against Citibank. He lives nearby.”

  She put down her pen. “I’ll go with you. If you don’t mind. Kyle says he trusts your hunches.”

  “Look where it got Kyle,” I said, and smiled.

  “Exactly,” Betsey said, and winked. “Let’s go.”

  I had read and reread Joseph Petrillo’s file. It stood out from the others. Every week for the past two years, the chairman of Citibank in New York had received an angry, even vicious letter from Petrillo. He had worked in security for the bank from January of 1990 until recently. He’d been fired because of budget cuts that affected every department in the bank, not just his. Petrillo didn’t accept the explanation, or anything else the bank tried to make him go away.

  There was something about the tone of the letters that alarmed me. They were well-written and intelligent, but the letters showed signs of paranoia, possibly even schizophrenia. Petrillo had been a captain in Vietnam before he worked for the bank. He’d seen combat. The police had been to see him about the crank mail, but no charges had been filed.

  “This must be one of those famous feelings of yours,” Betsey said as we rode to the suspect’s house on Fifth Avenue.

  “It’s one of those famous bad feelings,” I said. “The detective who interviewed him a few months ago had a bad feeling, too. The bank refused to go any further with the complaint.”

  Unlike its namesake in New York, Fifth Avenue in D.C. was a low-rent area on the edge of gentrifying Capitol Hill. It had originally been mostly Italian American but was now racially mixed. Rusted, dated cars lined the street. A BMW sedan, fully loaded, stood out from the other vehicles. Probably a drug dealer.