Bad to the Bone by Stephen Solomita Read Free Book Online Page A

wonderfully talented babies. But you can’t escape your fate. Not me and not her. When she was eighteen, she decided she needed a psychologist and she went to one of the Hanoverians, Samuel Brooks. Only they didn’t call themselves Hanoverians. They called themselves Therapists and I didn’t have no idea what my daughter was getting into. Three months later, Florence disappeared into that prison they call a commune. The one on Ludlow Street. At first I got letters describing her wonderful new life, then she cut me off altogether. They told her that her family was responsible for all her suffering and she could save herself only by putting them out of her life.”
    Connie Alamare began to cry. Not from sorrow, Moodrow noted, but from rage and frustration. “That was the last time you heard from her?” he asked calmly.
    “Three years ago, I got a snapshot in the mail. On the back, she wrote, ‘Me and my son, Michael.’ That was it. No return address. I tried to reach her. I had messages delivered to Ludlow Street. I hired a private detective, a mariulla , a thief. He tried to muscle his way into the commune, but they kicked his ass. After that he stayed in his office and sent me bills every month. I wouldn’t say that I gave up, but I didn’t see what I could do. I accepted the fact that I wouldn’t see my daughter (or my grandson) until my daughter wanted to see me. Then, about two months ago, the cops found her in a vacant lot in the Bronx. They identified her by fingerprints and I took her into the house after the doctors advised me to put her in a home. The nurse is out picking up medicine. Usually she stays with Florence every minute.”
    “What was the cause of all this? What do the doctors say?”
    “The doctors say she had a stroke.”
    “Bullshit.” Moodrow was old-fashioned. He wasn’t in the habit of using street language in the presence of a strange woman, no matter how coarse, but the diagnosis of stroke shocked him. “People don’t get dumped in lots in the Bronx for having strokes. What do the cops say?”
    Connie grinned broadly. “At last,” she crowed. “At last I got a man with guts. You find a girl like this in a lot in the Bronx, you gotta know someone did something wrong. She was wearing a three-hundred-dollar outfit, for Christ’s sake.”
    “Please, Connie.” Moodrow ignored the compliment. “What do the cops think?”
    “All the cops wanted to do was dump her off on me and forget about it. The doctors said it was a stroke, right? If no crime was committed, why should the cops be involved? Well, I got a lawyer, a real finocchio with Italian suits and a stretch Mercedes. So much marble in his house, you think you’re in a Greek museum. He took it up the line, from the detective who took her fingerprints to the lieutenant to the precinct commander to the borough commander to One Police Plaza where the hotshots work. They sent some people out, but they couldn’t even give her an address. They couldn’t tell us where she lived for the past years. Or who her friends were. Or how she made a living. Or where her son is. Finally I get to this guy with all the white hair, the chief of all the detectives. ‘No crime was committed.’ That’s all the strunza can say. ‘No crime was committed.’ If I want to take it farther, I should hire a private investigator. Then he recommended you.”
    “Franklyn Goobe,” Moodrow sighed.
    “You and him didn’t get along?” Connie asked hopefully.
    “He was a bigshot in the cops and I was a precinct detective. Getting along doesn’t really have anything to do with that relationship. In the army, a colonel doesn’t get along with a lieutenant. Orders come down and you do what you’re told, like it or not.” Moodrow deliberately left out the fact that he’d manipulated the NYPD (and Franklyn Goobe) as much as possible. His new employer was trying to make the cops into adversaries and Moodrow didn’t see the point of it. Not at this