The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  ‘No, Vermont. When she’s old enough, she can vote socialist and start signing petitions to secede from the union.’

  She raised a glass of water. ‘Well, to Sam, then.’

  ‘To Sam.’

  We ate and talked about old school friends, and her life in Pearl River. It turned out that she had made it to Europe after all, with Mike. The trip had been a gift for their tenth wedding anniversary. They went to France and Italy and England.

  ‘And was it what you’d expected?’ I asked.

  ‘Some of it. I’d like to go back and see more but it was enough, for now.’

  I heard movement above us.

  ‘Dad’s awake,’ she said. ‘I just need to go help him get organized.’

  She left the kitchen and went upstairs. After a moment or two, I could hear voices, and a man coughing. The coughs sounded harsh and dry and painful.

  Ten minutes later, Amanda led an old, stooped man into the room, keeping a reassuring arm around his waist. He was so thin that her arm circled him, but even bent over he was nearly as tall as I was.

  Eddie Grace’s hair was gone. Even his facial hair had disappeared. His skin looked clammy and transparent, tinged with yellow at the cheeks and a reddish-purple below the eyes. There was very little blood in his lips, and when he smiled, I could see that he had lost many of his teeth.

  ‘Mr Grace,’ I said. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  ‘Eddie,’ he said. ‘Call me Eddie.’ His voice was a rasp, like a plane moving over rough metal.

  He shook my hand. His grip was still strong.

  His daughter stayed with him until he had seated himself.

  ‘You want some tea, Dad?’

  ‘Nah, I’m good, thank you.’

  ‘There’s water in the jug. You want me to pour some for you?’

  He raised his eyes to heaven.

  ‘She thinks that, because I walk slow and sleep a lot, I can’t pour my own water,’ he said.

  ‘I know you can pour your own water. I was just trying to be nice. Jeez, but you’re an ungrateful old man.’ She said it with affection, and when she hugged him he patted her hand and grinned.

  ‘And you’re a good girl,’ he said. ‘Better than I deserve.’

  ‘Well, as long as you understand that.’ She kissed his bald pate. ‘I’ll leave you two alone to talk. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.’

  She looked at me from behind him, and asked me silently not to tire him out. I nodded slightly, and she left us once he was comfortably seated, but not before touching him gently on the shoulder as she pulled the door half closed behind her.

  ‘How are you doing, Eddie?’ I asked.

  ‘So-so,’ he said. ‘Still here, though. I feel the cold. I miss Florida. Stayed as long as I could, but I wasn’t able to look after myself, once I started getting sick. Andrea, my wife, she died a few years back. I couldn’t afford a private nurse. ’Manda brought me up here, said she’d look after me if the hospital agreed. And I still got friends, you know, from the old days. It’s not so bad. It’s just the damn cold that gets me.’

  He poured himself some water, the jug shaking only slightly in his hand, then took a sip.

  ‘Why’d you come back here, Charlie? What are you doing, talking to a dying man?’

  ‘It’s about my father.’

  ‘Huh,’ he said. Some of the water dribbled from his mouth and ran down his chin. He wiped at it with the sleeve of his gown.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, clearly embarrassed. ‘It’s only when someone new comes along that I forget how little dignity I have left. You know what I’ve learned from life? Don’t get old. Avoid it for as long as you can. Getting sick don’t help none either.’

  He seemed to drift and his eyes grew heavy momentarily.

  ‘Eddie,’ I said gently. ‘I wanted to talk to you about Will.’

  He grunted and turned his attention back to me. ‘Yeah, Will. One of the good ones.’

  ‘You were his friend. I hoped that you might be able to tell me something about what happened, about why it happened.’

  ‘After all this time?’

  ‘After all this time.’

  He tapped his fingers on the table.

  ‘He did things the quiet way, your old man. He could talk people down, you know? That was his thing. Never got real angry. Never had a temper. Even the move for a time from the Ninth to Uptown, that was his decision. Probably didn’t do much for his record, requesting a transfer that early in his career, but he did it for a quiet life. Of all the men who might have done what he did, he wasn’t the one I’d have picked, not in a million years.’

  ‘Do you remember why he requested the transfer?’

  ‘Ah, he wasn’t getting on with some of the brass in the Ninth, he and Jimmy both. They were some team, those two. Where one led, the other followed. Between them, I think they managed to spit in the eye of everyone who mattered. That was the flipside of your father. He had a devil in him, but he kept it chained up most of the time. Anyway, there was a sergeant in the Ninth name of Bennett. You ever hear of him?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘Didn’t last long. He and your father, they locked horns, and Jimmy backed Will, same as always.’

  ‘You remember why they didn’t get on?’

  ‘Nah. Clash of personalities, I think. Happens. And Bennett was dirty, and your father didn’t care much for dirty cops, didn’t matter how many stripes they carried. Anyway, Bennett found a way to unlock the devil in your father. Punches were thrown one night, and you didn’t do that while in uniform. It looked bad for Will, but they couldn’t afford to lose a good cop. I guess some calls were made on his behalf.’

  ‘By whom?’

  Eddie shrugged. ‘If you do right by others, you build up favors you can call in. Your old man had friends. A deal was cut.’

  ‘And the deal was that my father would request a transfer.’

  ‘That was it. He spent a year in the wilderness, until Bennett took a beating from the Knapp Commission for being a meat eater.’

  The Knapp Commission, which investigated police corruption in the early seventies, came up with two definitions of corrupt cops: the ‘grass eaters,’ who were guilty of petty corruption for tens and twenties, and the ‘meat eaters,’ who shook down dealers and pimps for larger amounts.

  ‘And when Bennett was gone, my father returned?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Eddie made a movement with his fingers, as of someone dialing a rotary phone.

  ‘I didn’t know my father had those kinds of friends.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t either, until he needed them.’

  I let it go.

  ‘Do you remember the shooting?’ I asked.

  ‘I remember hearing about it. I was four-twelve that week. Me and my partner, we met up with two other guys, Kloske and Burke, for coffee. They’d been over at the precinct house when the call came in. Next time I saw your father, he was lying in a box. They did a good job on him. He looked like he’d always done, I suppose, like himself. Sometimes, these embalmers, they make you look like a wax dummy.’ He tried to smile. ‘I got these things on my mind, as you can imagine.’

  ‘They’ll see you right,’ I said. ‘Amanda wouldn’t have it any other way.’

  ‘I’ll look better dead than I ever did alive, she has her way. Better dressed too.’

  I brought us back to my father. ‘You have no idea why my father might have killed those kids?’

  ‘None, but like I said, it took a lot to make Will see red. They must have turned it on real bad.’

  He sipped some more water, keeping his left hand beneath his chin to stop it from spilling. When he lowered the glass he was breathing heavily, and I knew that my time with him was growing short.

  ‘What was he like, in the days before it happened? I mean, did he seem unhappy, distracted?’

  ‘No, he was the way he always was. There was nothing. But then, I didn’t see him much that week. He was eight-four, I wa
s four-twelve. We said hello when we passed each other, but that was about it. No, he was with Jimmy Gallagher that week. You should talk to him. He was with your old man on the day of the shooting.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Jimmy and your old man, they always hooked up for Jimmy’s birthday. Never missed it.’

  ‘He told me that they didn’t see each other that day. Jimmy was off. He’d made a good collar, he said, some drug thing.’

  A day off was a reward for a solid arrest. You filled out a ‘28’, then submitted it to the precinct’s clerical guy, the captain’s man. Most cops would slip him a couple of dollars, or maybe a bottle of Chivas earned from escorting a liquor store owner to the bank, in order to ensure a prime day. It was one of the benefits of handling paperwork for the precinct.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Eddie, ‘but they were together on the day that your father shot those two kids. I remember. Jimmy came in to meet your old man when he came off duty.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure. He came down to the precinct. I even covered for Will so that he could leave early. They were going to start drinking in Cal’s then finish up at the Anglers’ Club.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Greenwich Village Anglers’ Club. It was kind of a private members’ place on Horatio Street. A quarter for a can.’

  I sat back. Jimmy had assured me that he wasn’t with my father on the day of the shooting. Now Eddie Grace was directly contradicting him.

  ‘You saw Jimmy at the precinct house?’

  ‘You deaf? That’s what I said. I saw him meet your old man, saw the two of them leave together. He tell you something different?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Grace again. ‘Maybe he’s misremembering.’

  A thought struck me. ‘Eddie, do you and Jimmy stay in touch?’

  ‘No, not so much.’ His mouth twitched, an expression of distaste. It gave me pause. There was something here, something between Jimmy and Eddie.

  ‘So does he know that you’re back in Pearl River?’

  ‘If someone told him, maybe. He hasn’t been to visit, if that’s what you mean.’

  I realized that I was tensed, sitting forward in my chair. Eddie saw it too.

  ‘I’m old and I’m dying,’ he said. ‘I got nothing to hide. I loved your father. He was a good cop. Jimmy was a good cop too. I don’t know what reason he’d have to lie to you about your old man, but you can tell him that you talked to me. Tell him that I said he should tell the truth, if that’s what you want.’

  I waited. There was more coming.

  ‘I don’t know what you expect to get out of this,’ said Eddie. ‘Your father did what they accused him of doing. He shot those two young people, and then he shot himself.’

  ‘I want to know why.’

  ‘Maybe there isn’t a why. Can you deal with that?’

  ‘As long as I tried.’

  I debated telling him more, but instead asked: ‘You’d have known if my father was . . . screwing around, right?’

  Eddie reeled slightly, then laughed. It brought on another fit of coughing, and I had to get him some more water.

  ‘Your old man didn’t “screw around,”’ he said, when he’d recovered. ‘That wasn’t his style.’

  He took some deep breaths, and I caught a gleam in his eye. It wasn’t pleasant, as though I’d seen him eyeing a young girl up and down on the street and had watched as the sexual fantasy played out in his mind.

  ‘But he was human,’ he continued. ‘We all make mistakes. Who knows? Someone say something to you?’

  He looked at me closely, and that gleam remained.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Nobody said anything.’

  He held my gaze for a while longer, then nodded. ‘You’re a good son. Help me up, will you? I think I’ll watch some TV. I’ve got an hour in me yet before those damn drugs send me to sleep again.’

  I assisted him in getting out of the chair, and helped him into the living room where he settled himself on the sofa with the remotes, and turned on a game show. The sound drew Amanda from upstairs.

  ‘You two all done?’ she asked.

  ‘I believe so,’ I said. ‘I’ll be going now. Thanks for your time, Eddie.’

  The old man raised the remote control in farewell, but he didn’t look away from the TV. Amanda was escorting me to the door when Eddie spoke again.

  ‘Charlie!’

  I went back to him. His eyes were fixed on the television.

  ‘About Jimmy.’

  I waited.

  ‘We were friendly but, you know, we were never really close.’ He tapped the remote on the armrest of his chair. ‘You can’t trust a man who spends his whole life living a lie. That’s all I wanted to say to you.’

  He hit a button, changing the channel to an afternoon soap. I returned to where Amanda was waiting.

  ‘Well, was he helpful?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You both were.’

  She smiled, and kissed me on the cheek. ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for, Charlie.’

  ‘You have my number,’ I said. ‘Let me know how things go with your father.’

  ‘I will,’ she said. Then she took a piece of paper from the telephone table and scribbled a number on it. ‘My cell phone,’ she said. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘If I’d known it was that easy to get your number, I’d have asked a long time ago.’

  ‘You had my number,’ she said. ‘You just never used it.’

  With that, she closed the door, and I walked back down the hill to the Muddy Brook Café, where Walter was waiting to take me to the airport.

  12

  I was frustrated to be forced to leave New York with questions unanswered about Jimmy Gallagher’s whereabouts on the day my father became a killer, but I had no choice: I owed Dave Evans, and he had made it clear that he needed me at the Bear for most of the coming week. I also had only Eddie’s word that Jimmy and my father had met that day. It was possible that he could have been mistaken, and I wanted to be sure of the facts before I called Jimmy Gallagher a liar to his face.

  I picked up my car at the Portland Jetport, and got back to my house in time to shower and change my clothes. For a moment, I found myself walking in the direction of the Johnson house to pick up Walter, but then I remembered where Walter was and it put me in a black mood that I knew wouldn’t lift for the rest of the night.

  I spent most of the evening behind the bar with Gary. Business was steady, but there was still time for me to talk with customers and even get a little paperwork done in the back office. The only moment of excitement came when a steroid jockey, who had stripped down his winter layers to only a wife-beater and a pair of stained gym pants, came on to a woman named Hillary Herman who was five-two, blond, and looked as if a soft breeze would carry her away like a leaf. When Hillary turned her back on him and his advances, he was dumb enough to lay a hand on her shoulder in an effort to regain her attention, at which point Hillary, who was the Portland PD’s resident judo expert, spun and twisted her would-be suitor’s arm so far behind his back that his forehead and his knees hit the ground simultaneously. She then escorted him to the door, dumped him in the snow, and threw his clothes out after him. His buddies seemed tempted to make their displeasure known, but the intervention of the other Portland cops with whom Hillary was drinking saved her from having to kick their asses as well.

  When it was clear that everything had calmed down, and nobody was hurt who didn’t deserve to be, I started bringing cases to the bottle coolers from the walk-in. It was still an hour before closing, but it didn’t look as if we were about to be hit by an unanticipated rush, and it would save me time later. As I was bringing out the third case I saw the man who had taken a seat at the far end of the bar. He was wearing the same tweed jacket, and he had a notebook open beside his right hand. It was Gary’s end of the bar, but as he moved to serve the new arrival I indicated to him that I wanted to take care of it,
and he went back to talking to Jackie Garner, for whom he seemed to have developed a worrying fondness. Even though Jackie was trying to talk to a pretty but shy redhead in her forties, he seemed grateful for Gary’s company. Jackie didn’t do well with women. In fact, I couldn’t recall Jackie even dating a woman. Usually when a member of the opposite sex spoke to him, he developed a confused expression, like an infant being spoken to in a foreign language. Now he was blushing, and so was the redhead. It looked as if Gary was acting as a go-between in order to keep the conversation flowing. If he hadn’t been helping them along, they might have lapsed into total silence or, if they blushed any more, simply exploded.

  ‘How you doin’?’ I said to Notebook Man. ‘Back for more?’

  ‘Guess so,’ he replied. He was shrugging off his jacket. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, his tie was loose, and the top button of his white shirt was undone. Despite the casualness of his attire, he gave the impression that he was about to get down to some serious work.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Just coffee, please.’ When I came back with a cup of fresh brew, and some creamer and sweeteners, there was a card beside the notebook, facing me. I placed everything on top of the card without looking at what was written on it.

  ‘Beg your pardon,’ said the man. He lifted his cup, then picked up the card and handed it to me. I took it, read it, then put it back on the bar.

  ‘Nice card,’ I said, and it was. His name, Michael Wallace, was embossed on it in gold, along with a box number in Boston, two telephone numbers, an e-mail address, and a Web site. The card named his profession as ‘Writer and Reporter.’

  ‘Hold on to it,’ he said.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Seriously.’

  There was a set look on his face that I didn’t much like, the kind that cops wore when they were door-stepping a suspect who wasn’t getting the message.

  ‘“Seriously”?’ I didn’t care for his tone.

  He reached into his satchel and removed a pair of nonfiction paperback books. I thought that I recognized the first from bookstores: it detailed the case of a man in northern California who had almost managed to get away with killing his wife and two children by claiming that they had drowned when their boat got caught up in a storm. He might have succeeded had a lab technician not spotted tiny chemical traces in the saltwater found in the lungs of the recovered bodies, and matched it to solvent stains found in the sink of the boat’s galley, indicating that the husband had drowned all three victims in the sink before tossing their bodies overboard. His reason for the killings, when he eventually confessed, was that ‘they were never on time for anything.’ The second book seemed to be an older work, a standard serial-killer volume concentrating on sex murderers. Its title was almost as lurid as its subject matter. It was called Blood on the Sheets.