The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  And he was tormented by it. He was having a second child with another woman, and the knowledge of his betrayal was tearing him apart. Caroline had told him that she wanted nothing from him, except that he keep her safe until the baby was born.

  ‘And after that?’

  But, as with Jimmy Gallagher’s mother, she declined to answer the question.

  ‘We’ll see,’ she would say, then turn away.

  The child was due to be born one month before his wife was likely to give birth. They would both be his children, yet he knew that he would have to let one go, that if he wanted his marriage to survive – and he did, more than anything else – then he could not be a part of his first child’s life. He wasn’t even sure that he could offer more than minimal financial support, not on a cop’s salary, despite Caroline’s protestations that she didn’t want his money.

  And yet he didn’t wish to let this child simply disappear. He was, despite his failings, an honorable man. He had never cheated on his wife before, and he felt his guilt about sleeping with Caroline as an ache so strong that it made him reel. More than ever before, he felt the urge to confess but it was Jimmy Gallagher who dissuaded him one evening after a post-tour beer in Cal’s.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Jimmy said. ‘Your wife is pregnant. She’s carrying the child that you’ve both wanted for years. After all that’s happened, you may not get a second chance like this one. Apart from what the shock might do to her, it’ll destroy her and it’ll destroy your marriage. You live with what you did. Caroline says that she doesn’t want you to be part of her child’s life. She doesn’t want your money, and she doesn’t want your time. Most men in your situation would be happy with that. If you’re not, then the loss is the price that you pay for your sins, and for keeping your marriage together. You hear me?’

  And Will had agreed, knowing that what Jimmy said was true.

  ‘You have to understand something,’ said Jimmy. ‘Your old man was decent and loyal and brave, but he was also human. He’d made a mistake, and he was trying to find a way to live with it, to live with it and to do the right thing by all concerned, but that just wasn’t possible, and the knowledge of it was ripping him apart.’

  One of the candles was sputtering as it neared the end of its life. Jimmy went to replace it, then paused and said: ‘You want, I can put the kitchen light on.’

  I shook my head, and told him that the candles were fine.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ he said. ‘Somehow, it doesn’t seem right telling a story like this in a brightly lit room. It’s just not that kind of story.’

  He lit a new candle, then resumed his seat and continued his tale.

  At Epstein’s request, a meeting was arranged with Caroline. It took place in the back room of a Jewish bakery in Midwood. Jimmy and Will drove Caroline to the rendezvous under cover of night, the by-now heavily pregnant young woman lying uncomfortably under some coats on the back seat of Jimmy’s mother’s Eldorado. The two men were not privy to what passed between the rabbi and Caroline, although they were together for over an hour. When they were finished, Epstein spoke with Will and asked him about the arrangements that had been made for Caroline’s lying-in. Jimmy had never heard that phrase used before, and was embarrassed when it had to be explained to him. Will gave Epstein the name of the OB-GYN, and the hospital in which Caroline intended to deliver her baby. Epstein told him that alternative arrangements would be made.

  Through Epstein’s agencies, a place was obtained for Caroline in a small private clinic in Gerritsen Beach itself, not far from PS 277 on the other side of the creek from where she was staying. Jimmy had always known that the clinic was there, and that it catered to those for whom money was no great object, but he hadn’t been aware of the fact that babies could be delivered behind its doors. Later, he learned that it wasn’t usually the case, but an exception had been made at Epstein’s request. Jimmy had offered to lend Will money to cover some of the medical costs, and he had accepted on condition that a firm schedule of repayments was agreed upon, with interest.

  On the afternoon that Caroline’s water broke, both Jimmy and Will were on the 8 to 4 tour, and they drove together to the hospital after Mrs. Gallagher had left a message for Jimmy at the station house asking him to call her as soon as he could. Will, in turn, phoned his wife, intending to tell her that he and Jimmy were helping Jimmy’s mother with some stuff, which had a grain of truth embedded in the substance of the lie, but she was not home and the phone rang unanswered.

  When they arrived at the clinic, the receptionist said: ‘She’s in eight, but you can’t go in. There’s a waiting room down the hall on the left, with coffee and cookies. Which one of you is the father?’

  ‘I am,’ said Will. The words sounded strange in his mouth.

  ‘Well, we’ll come get you when it’s over. The contractions have started, but she won’t give birth for a couple of hours. I’ll ask the doctor to talk to you, and maybe he can give you a few minutes with her. Off you go.’ She made a shooing movement with her hands, a gesture she had presumably demonstrated to thousands of useless men who had insisted on trying to clutter up her labor wards when they had no business being around.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she added, as Will and Jimmy resigned themselves to a long wait, ‘she’s got company. Her friend, the older lady, she arrived with her, and her sister went in just a few minutes ago.’

  Both men stopped.

  ‘Sister?’ said Will.

  ‘Yeah, her sister.’ The nurse spotted the look on Will’s face, and instantly became defensive. ‘She had ID, a driver’s license. Same name. Carr.’

  But Will and Jimmy were already moving, heading right, not left.

  ‘Hey, I told you, you can’t go down there,’ shouted the receptionist. When they ignored her, she reached for a phone and called security.

  The door to room eight was closed when they reached it, and the corridor was empty. They knocked, but there was no reply. As Jimmy reached for the handle, his mother appeared from around the corner.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

  Then she saw the guns.

  ‘No! I just went to the bathroom. I—’

  The door was locked from the inside. Jimmy stepped back and kicked at it twice before the lock shattered and the door flew open, exposing them to a blast of cool air. Caroline Carr lay on a raised gurney, her head and back supported by pillows. The front of her gown was drenched with red, but she was still alive. The room was cold because the window was open.

  ‘Get a doctor!’ said Will, but Jimmy was already shouting for help.

  Will went to Caroline and tried to hold her, but she was starting to spasm. He saw the wounds to her stomach and chest. A blade, he thought; someone used a blade on her, and on the child. No, not just someone: the woman, the one who had watched her lover die beneath the wheels of a truck. Caroline’s eyes turned to him. Her hand gripped his shirt, staining it with her blood.

  And then there were doctors and nurses. He was pulled away from her, forced out of the room, and as the door closed he saw her fall back against the pillows and lie still, and he knew that she was dying.

  But the child survived. They cut it from her as she died. The blade had missed its head by a quarter of an inch.

  And while they delivered it, Will and Jimmy went hunting for the woman who had killed Caroline Carr.

  They heard the sound of the ignition as soon as they exited the clinic, and seconds later a black Buick shot from the lot to their left and prepared to turn on to Gerritsen Avenue. A streetlight caught the face of the woman as she glanced toward them. It was Will who responded first, firing three shots as the woman reacted to their presence, turning left instead of right so that she would not have to cross in front of them. The first shot took out the driver’s window, and the second and third hit the door. The Buick sped away as Will fired a fourth time, running behind it as Jimmy raced for their own car. Then, as Will watched, the Buick seemed to wobble on its axles
, then began to drift to the right. It struck the curb outside the Lutheran church, then mounted it and came to a rest against the railings of the churchyard.

  Will continued running. Now Jimmy was at his side, all thoughts of their own vehicle abandoned when the car had come to a stop. As they drew nearer, the driver’s door opened and the woman stumbled out, clearly injured. She glanced back at them, a knife in her hand. Will didn’t hesitate. He wanted her dead. He fired again. The bullet struck the door, but by then the woman was already moving, abandoning the car, her left foot dragging. She dived left onto Bartlett, her pursuers closing the distance rapidly. As they turned the corner, she seemed frozen beneath a streetlight, her head turned, her mouth open. Will aimed, but even injured she was too fast. She stumbled to her right, down a narrow alley called Canton Court.

  ‘We have her,’ said Jimmy. ‘That’s a dead end. There’s just the creek down there.’

  They paused as they reached Canton, then exchanged a look and nodded. Their weapons held high, they entered the dark space between two cottages that led to the creek.

  The woman was standing with her back to the bank, caught in the moonlight. The knife was still held in her hand. Her coat was slightly too long for her, and its sleeves hung over the second knuckles of her fingers, but not so far as to obscure the blade.

  ‘Put it down,’ said Jimmy, but he was not talking to her, not yet. While his eyes remained fixed on the woman, he laid the palm of his hand on the warm barrel of Will’s revolver, gently forcing it down. ‘Don’t do it, Will. Just don’t.’

  The woman twisted the blade, and Jimmy thought that he could still see traces of Caroline Carr’s blood upon it.

  ‘It’s over,’ she said. Her voice was surprisingly soft and sweet, but her eyes were twin shards of obsidian in the pallor of her face.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Jimmy. ‘Now drop the knife.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you do to me,’ said the woman. ‘I am beyond your law.’

  She dropped the knife, but at the same time her left hand moved, the sleeve of her coat pulling back to reveal the little pistol concealed by its folds.

  It was Jimmy who killed her. He hit her twice before she could get a shot off. She remained standing for a second, then tumbled backward into the cold waters of the Shell Bank Creek.

  She was never identified. The receptionist at the hospital confirmed that she was the same woman who had claimed to be Caroline Carr’s sister. A false Virginia driver’s license in the name of Ann Carr was found in her coat pocket, along with a small quantity of cash. Her fingerprints were not on file anywhere, and nobody came forward to identify her even after her picture appeared on news shows and in the papers.

  But that came later. For now, there were questions to be asked, and to be answered. More cops came. They flooded the clinic. They sealed off Bartlett. They dealt with reporters, with curious onlookers, with distressed patients and their relatives.

  While they did so, a group of people met in a room at the back of the hospital. They included the hospital director; the doctor and midwife who had been monitoring Caroline Carr; the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for legal affairs; and a small, quiet man in his early forties: the rabbi, Epstein. Will Parker and Jimmy Gallagher had been instructed to wait outside, and they sat together on hard plastic chairs, not speaking. Only one person, except for Jimmy, had expressed sorrow to Will at what had occurred. It was the receptionist. She knelt before him while he waited, and took his hand.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘We all are.’

  He nodded dumbly.

  ‘I don’t know if—’ she began, then stopped. ‘No, I know it won’t help, but maybe you might like to see your son?’

  She led him to a glass-walled room and pointed out the tiny child who lay sleeping between two others.

  ‘That’s him,’ she said. ‘That’s your boy.’

  They were called into the meeting room minutes later. Those present were introduced, all except for one man in a suit, who had followed the two cops into the room and was now watching Will carefully. Epstein leaned toward Will and whispered: ‘I’m sorry.’

  Will did not reply.

  It was the deputy commissioner, Frank Mancuso, who formally broke the silence.

  ‘They tell me you’re the father,’ he said to Will.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘What a mess,’ said Mancuso, with feeling. ‘We need to get the story straight,’ said Mancuso. ‘Are you two listening?’

  Will and Jimmy nodded in unison.

  ‘The child died,’ said Mancuso.

  ‘What?’ said Will.

  ‘The child died. It lived for a couple of hours, but it seems that there was some damage caused by the knife wound to the womb. It died as of—’ He checked his watch. ‘—two minutes ago.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Will. ‘I just saw him.’

  ‘And now he’s dead.’

  Will tried to leave, but Epstein grabbed his arm.

  ‘Wait, Mr. Parker. Your child is alive and well, but as of now, only the people in this room know it. He’s already being taken away.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Somewhere safe.’

  ‘Why? He’s my son. I want to know where he is.’

  ‘Think, Mr. Parker,’ said Epstein. ‘For a moment, just think.’

  Will was silent for a time. When he spoke, he said: ‘You believe that someone is going to come after the child.’

  ‘We believe that it’s a possibility. They can’t know that he survived.’

  ‘But they’re dead. The man and the woman. I saw them both die.’

  Epstein looked away. ‘There may be others,’ he said, and, even amid his grief and confusion, the cop in Will wondered what Epstein was trying to hide.

  ‘What others? Who are these people?’

  ‘We’re trying to find that out,’ said Epstein. ‘It will take time.’

  ‘Right. And in the meantime, what happens to my son?’

  ‘Eventually, he’ll be placed with a family,’ said Mancuso. ‘That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘No’, said Will, ‘it isn’t. He’s my son.’

  Mancuso bared his teeth. ‘You’re not listening, Officer Parker. You don’t have a son. And if you don’t walk away from this, you won’t have a career either.’

  ‘You have to let him go,’ said Epstein gently. ‘If you love him as a son, then you have to let him go.’

  Will looked at the unknown man standing by the wall.

  ‘Who are you?’ Will asked. ‘Where do you fit into all of this?’

  The man didn’t answer, and he didn’t flinch under the glare of Will’s anger.

  ‘He’s a friend,’ said Epstein. ‘That’s enough for now.’

  Mancuso spoke again. ‘Are we all singing from the same hymn sheet, Officer? You’d better tell us now. I won’t be so good natured if this matter raises its head outside these four walls.’

  Will swallowed hard.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Mancuso.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ repeated Will.

  ‘And you?’ Mancuso turned his attention to Jimmy Gallagher.

  ‘I’m with him,’ said Jimmy. ‘Whatever he says goes.’

  Glances were exchanged. It was over.

  ‘Go home,’ said Mancuso to Will. ‘Go home to your wife.’

  And when they passed the glass-walled room again, the cot was already empty, and the receptionist’s face was creased with grief as they passed her desk. Already, the cover-up had begun. Without words to convey her sympathy for a man who had, in one night, lost his child, and the mother of his child, she could only shake her head and watch as he disappeared into the night.

  When Will at last returned home, Elaine was waiting for him.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Her eyes were swollen. He could tell that she had been crying for hours.

  ‘Something came up,’ he said. ‘A girl died.’

/>   ‘I don’t care!’ It was a scream, not a shout. He had never heard her utter such a sound before. Those three words seemed to contain more pain and anguish than he had ever thought could be contained inside the woman he loved. Then she repeated the words, this time forcing each one out, expelling them like phlegm from her mouth.

  ‘I don’t care. You weren’t here. You weren’t here when I needed you.’

  He knelt down before her, and took her hands in his.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I had to go to the clinic today.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Something was wrong. I felt it, inside.’

  He tightened his grip, but she would not, could not, look up at him.

  ‘Our baby’s dead,’ she said softly. ‘I’m carrying a dead baby.’

  He held her then, and waited for her to cry, but she had no more tears left to shed. She simply lay against him, silent and lost in her grief. He could see his reflection in the mirror on the wall behind her, and he closed his eyes so he would not have to look at himself.

  Will led his wife to the bedroom, and helped her to get between the sheets. The doctors at the clinic had given her some pills, and he made her take two.

  ‘They wanted to induce it,’ she said as the drugs took hold. ‘They wanted to take our baby away, but I wouldn’t let them. I wanted to keep it for as long as I could.’

  He nodded, but he could not speak. His own tears began to fall. His wife reached up and wiped them away with her thumb.

  He sat beside her until she fell asleep, then stared at the wall for two hours, her hand in his, until slowly, carefully, he released it and let it fall to the sheets. She stirred slightly, but she did not wake.