Sharon's boss called his cell phone. He didn't recognize the number and answered it. Her name was DeAnn Forbes. They'd met a couple times, but he didn't know her very well.
DeAnn said, "I'm worried about Sharon, we all are. Is she all right?"
"Stressed out. Just needs some time off." He had to be careful what he said.
"Imagine my surprise," DeAnn said, "when I got an email saying she was taking a leave of absence. I couldn't believe it. Sharon's our top rep and I had to try to explain to our clients what was going on and didn't have a clue. Ray, can you help me out, can you tell me what the hell's going on?"
What was he going to say? He'd been kicked out of the Secret Service, went home and Sharon wasn't there, and based on the mail and phone messages, she hadn't been around for days. He was thinking about the article in the Free Press about the guy who reported his wife missing. She worked in Puerto Rico during the week and came home on weekends to see her husband and two kids. The husband said they'd had an argument and his wife decided to go back to Puerto Rico a day early. The husband said she was picked up in a dark sedan. He didn't know anything more.
Two weeks later the Macomb County Sheriff's Department went to his house with a search warrant and found the wife's torso in a garbage can in the garage. The husband confessed he'd cut up her body in his dad's machine shop and strewn her body parts in a wooded area behind their house. A detective working the case said, when the wife's missing the husband is always the main suspect.
Ray said, "Sharon will call you, explain everything when she's ready."
DeAnn said, "Does she have cancer, can you tell me that?"
Ray said, "She's not dying." He hoped she wasn't.
DeAnn said, "Tell her we love her and she's welcome back whenever she wants."
Ray was suspicious, didn't believe it. Sharon would've called, not sent an email. That wasn't like her. She was conscientious and responsible, loved her job, and made a lot of money, more than he did and he was well paid for a federal agent. It didn't seem plausible that she'd just up and leave with someone like Joey Palermo, either. But she had to be lonely, starved for attention and affection. He certainly hadn't helped the situation. She was alone most of the time and when he came home he made her miserable. He couldn't see it before or maybe he didn't want to stop and consider her point of view. It was as if his life had been out of focus and now everything was in perfect register. He wanted her back and wondered if what he was feeling was possessiveness or love. Did he still love her? Did he ever?
But if she planned to go away with Joey she would've told someone, wouldn't she? Her sister? Her friends? The way she did it didn't make sense. That's why Ray had his doubts. Until he knew better he'd have to assume something was wrong, something had happened to Sharon.
He drove downtown to the McNamara Building, where he'd worked for the first two years as an agent. Parked in an open lot across from the office, went in the building and asked for Jim Teegarden.
Teeg came down and got him, shook his hand and said, "Good to see you, Ray. This take you back?"
"Deja vu all over again."
Teeg was compact and meticulous, dark hair going gray, wearing a blue Oxford-cloth shirt with heavy starch, gold cuff links, and a designer tie. They took an elevator up to the tenth floor, a bullpen of cubicles where Ray had worked. He said, "Looks exactly the same. Like I walked out yesterday."
"What'd you think, the Service was going to change?"
Teegarden had fifteen years in. He was a GS-15, same as Ray had been, and had his own office. Ray stood at the window, glancing at the GM Building a few blocks away, and beyond it the Detroit River and the shoreline of Canada. With the casinos and new construction Detroit looked better than ever. But Ray didn't care, he liked it the way it was. Liked its rustbelt, blue-collar charm.
Teeg said, "Here's Joey, take a look."
He had a stack of photographs in his hands, sliding three off the deck like he was dealing cards, and arranged them on his desk that didn't have anything on it except a phone. Ray stood there looking down at a black-and-white shots, a close-up of Joey's face. Nice-looking guy, heavy beard, dark hair slicked back, Joey grinning, Joey smoking a cigar in the second one, getting in his car in front of the Messina Spaghetti Company, his office, a two-story cinderblock building on Grosbeck.
The next series showed Joey in his boat on Lake St Clair; Joey outside the Roostertail, the riverside, partying with his buddies, and Joey on a street in downtown Detroit, making his daily collections.
Teegarden put three more shots on top of those, showing Joey with a baseball bat. He was in a batters stance, and it looked like the inside of a restaurant. There were tables in the background but nobody sitting at them. Another shot showed Joey swinging for the fence. And in the third one, Joey was outside the restaurant, big smile, bat resting on his shoulder.
Teegarden said, "Surveillance photos, courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "
Ray said, "He ever play ball?"
Teegarden said, "He only swings at things that don't move — inanimate objects, and people."
He slid three more photos off the deck: busted-up cases in a jewelry store, smashed car windows on a dealership lot and the shattered storefront window of a fur shop. He could read the name on the door in the left side of the frame: Dietrich Furs.
Ray said, "He likes to break things, I see."
Teegarden said, "You don't pay for protection, this is what happens."
"They've got pictures of what he did and people he threatened, right? What's the problem?" Ray said.
"Call the police," Teegarden said, "and you might end up like this."
Teegarden showed him a guy on the floor of a party store, head resting in a pool of blood.
"I see your point." Ray didn't understand how Sharon could fall for someone like Joey Palermo. She was too smart, too aware.
Next, he put down pictures of two fat, balding old men wearing black horn-rim glasses.
"This is Vincenzo 'Vito Uno' Corrado," he said, pointing to the photo on the left. "The boss of all bosses. And this is Joey's father, Joseph 'Joe P.' Palermo, the under-boss."
Ray said, "They all have cute nicknames, huh?"
"They'd have a field day with you," Teegarden said. "I could see Ray 'His Eminence' Pope in a second."
Ray said, "That's not bad. I'd have to be the top wop with that name."
"Vito's got stage two prostate cancer," Teegarden said. "And Joe P.'s got a heart condition, takes Coumadin."
"What's Coumadin?"
"Blood-thinner medicine."
"Doesn't say much for the vitality of the Detroit Mafia, " Ray said, "does it? What's Joey's title, where's he fit in?"
"Runs a street crew, he's a lieutenant. They go into a store, tell the proprietor he needs protection. The guy objects, tells them they're crazy, you saw what they do."
Ray said, "Interesting business model."
"Is he still bothering Sharon?"
"He calls the house," Ray said. "Leaves messages."
"He obviously doesn't know what you do, or did."
"I'm not sure," Ray said.
"What's Sharon say?"
"She doesn't."
Teeg stared at him probably wondering what the hell was going on, but didn't say anything.
Ray said, "Where's old man Palermo live?"
"Bloomfield Village," Teegarden said.
"You have an address?"
"What're you going to do?"
"I don't know." And he didn't, but if anyone knew where Joey was, his dad did.
Ray cruised by the house, a 4,500-square-foot red-brick colonial with a circular drive on a street called Glengarry in the heart of the Village, one of the wealthiest areas of suburban Detroit.
"What a country," Teeg had said. "The mob under-boss living among affluent professionals: doctors, lawyers and auto executives."
He drove one block over and looked between two houses and saw the back of Joe P.'s place. Ray drove home and had an early dinner. He cooked a strip steak on the grill and had a baked potato and a bottle of Sam Adams. He got in bed at seven and set his alarm for 2:00 a.m. He woke up before it went off, 1:57, got up and put on black Levis and a black turtleneck. He unlocked the gun box in his closet and chose the Walther PPK over the Colt because it was small and light, easier to carry.
Ray went back to Bloomfield Village and parked on Williamsbury. It was very dark, the moon a sliver. He felt odd, out of his element. He opened the car door — he'd disconnected the interior lights — and got out and pressed the door closed. He walked between two houses that were big and spaced apart, looked like there was an extra lot between them. Both had swimming pools that were covered for the season. It was so quiet the only thing he heard was the sound of his footsteps on the hard grass. It was cold and clear and smelled like fall and when he let out a breath he could see it.
The back of Joe P.'s place was straight ahead. Ray hopped a white picket fence and crossed the yard to the back of the house. There was a brick patio with nothing on it. He noticed a small sticker on one of the windows that said: Protected by Alert Security Services. Ray didn't believe it. Why would the under-boss of the Detroit Mafia need a security system?
There were French doors that opened onto the patio. He tried the handles, no give at all. The doors were locked top and bottom with deadbolts. He moved along the back of the house to the garage, three-car attached, single door and a double. Next to the garage doors was a glass-paneled entry door.
Ray looked in but couldn't see much. He turned and stood facing the backyard and threw an elbow and broke the bottom left pane. He watched and listened, didn't see or hear anything. He reached through the broken pane and unlocked the door and went in. There was a dark-colored Lincoln Town Car and a silver Ford Edge. There were trashcans, and patio furniture taking up most of the third space.
He tried the door to the house. It was locked but it moved, gave half an inch or so. He flipped a switch on the wall and six recessed ceiling lights came on. He studied a pegboard attached to the wall that had rakes and shovels and brooms and saw a crowbar. He went over and picked it up off the hook and went back to the door and jammed the tapered end of it into the seam between the edge of the door and the jamb, and bent the crowbar back, heard the wood groan, and the door came open.
Ray went through the kitchen and dining room and living room into the foyer. It had a marble floor and a grand sweeping staircase that rose up to the second floor. He started to go up the stairs and stopped, glanced left into a room with paneled walls and a fireplace.
He went back down, crossed the foyer and went in the wood-paneled room. He sat behind the desk, and turned on a small lamp that was on the desktop. It had to be Joe P.'s office, the room fifteen by fifteen, two chairs and a table against the far wall in front of a window that looked out on the front yard. He checked the drawers looking for something from Joey, a letter, a postcard, but didn't find anything.
It was 4:05 when he took out his cell and dialed the number on the desk phone, Ray reasonably sure it was Joe P.'s private business line that only rang here, the number different from the one Teegarden had given him. The only unknown: who else was in the house? Joe P. and his wife for sure, but what about his bodyguard, a big dude named Angelo who had played defensive end for another Joe P., Joe Paterno at Penn State.
The phone on the desk rang, and even though he was expecting it, the sound startled him. God it was loud. It rang ten times before he heard voices at the top of the stairs.
"I know it's the middle of the night. Don't worry about it, go back to bed."
Ray heard someone come down the stairs, and come across the foyer, and come in the room, a silver-haired guy about five seven, wearing a bathrobe and black glasses with big frames that reminded him of Aristotle Onassis. Joe P. reached over the desk for the phone and brought it up to his face and said, "This better be fucking important."
Ray said, "It is."
Joe P. turned and said, "You have any idea who I am?"
He put the phone back in the cradle.
Ray drew the Walther PPK and said, "Who else's in the house?"
"My wife."
Ray said "What about Angelo?"
"He don't stay with us."
A voice from upstairs said, "Joe, who you talking to?"
"I'm on the fucking phone, will you go back to bed."
Ray said, "That's no way to talk to the little lady."
Joe P. said, "What do you want, the silverware, a TV? Help yourself and get the fuck out of here."
He talked tough for an old man in a bathrobe. Ray said, "Where's Joey?"
"I don't know. Why don't you call him. I'll give you his number."
Ray pulled the hammer back on the PPK. "Let's start over, okay? Pretend I just walked in, haven't said a word. Where's Joey?"
Joe P said, "You think you can come in here, intimidate me in my own house? I got twenty clowns like you work for me."
Ray crossed the room and placed the barrel of the Walther against Joe P.'s cheek, felt teeth under wrinkled skin and said, "Then you know I'll shoot you dead, eh goomba? Pull the trigger, blow your fucking head off. Then go upstairs, find out what Mrs P. knows. See if she wants to talk, be a little more co-operative. I started with you because I figured you'd understand the gravity, the serious nature of the situation," he said, giving it a little bureaucratic embellishment.
"Who you with?"
"Want me to say it again?"
"What do you want him for?"
"I want to talk to him."
Joe P. didn't say anything. He probably thought he was still thirty and in shape. That's the way it worked. In his head, Ray still thought he was twenty-one. "All right, you don't want to talk, let's go upstairs."
Joe P. leaned back against the desk. Could barely hold himself up. He coughed and grabbed his chest, struggling, trying to stay on his feet but couldn't, and went down on the floor, legs kicking for a few seconds, then he stopped moving, eyes bulging out of their sockets, staring up at Ray. The clock next to the phone said 4:23 a.m.