Melancholy Baby

by Robert B. Parker

  “You’re sure he received this information?” I said to the director.

  She looked at her screen some more.

  “Yes, we overnighted it to him, and he signed for it.”

  I took the printout and folded it and slipped it into my bag. I looked at Sarah. She was still short of breath. Her face was pale, with reddish smudges on her cheekbones. She looked like she had a fever.

  “Anything else you wish to ask the director?” I said to her.

  She shook her head. I nodded and stood and put my hand out to the director.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said.

  She stood and shook my hand.

  “I hope things work out,” she said, not at all sternly.

  Then she looked at Sarah. “DNA is not the only thing that makes a parent,” she said, and put her hand gently on Sarah’s shoulder.

  Sarah nodded and stood. I put a hand on her arm and steered her out of the office and down the narrow back stairwell to where we’d parked on the street. In the car, we were quiet. I started up and drove slowly toward Mass Avenue. Sarah rode with her head turned away from me, looking out the window.

  Without looking at me, she said, “If he’s not my father, and she’s not my mother . . . who the fuck am I?”

  We stopped for the light at Mass Avenue. I had nothing to say. I put my right hand out and patted her thigh. Then the light changed and I turned left toward the expressway.

  43

  I settled into my chair next to her desk. The box of Kleenex was there, where it always was. She was at her desk, sitting sideways, facing me, her chair slightly tilted, her legs crossed. Today she had on a camel-colored suit with a wine-colored top, and a quiet gold necklace.

  “I was thinking about my Rosie dream,” I said.

  Dr. Silverman nodded.

  “Do you understand about dogs?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a dog?”

  “Yes.”

  My God, two personal revelations. She must really like me.

  “Then you know,” I said, “the degree to which one can love them.”

  She nodded her head once, very slightly. Getting herself back under control.

  “I realize this isn’t a breakthrough discovery, but I think the dream was symbolic.”

  Dr. Silverman looked noncommittal.

  “And I think, in the dream, Rosie is love.”

  Dr. Silverman cocked her head slightly and raised her eyebrows. It was her code for “Please pursue the thought.”

  “If she represents love, and in the dream, I’m afraid because she’s off her leash . . .”

  She nodded her head very slightly, so that it was barely visible, another clue that said “Keep going.” Sometime, I’d have to ask why tiny clues were okay, but you weren’t allowed to say, “Oh, boy, that’s interesting!”

  “Help me with this,” I said. “Are dreams warnings? Wish fulfillments? What?”

  “Dreams are sometimes simply dramatizations of the circumstance we are in.”

  “It’s saying this is how you are?”

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s not saying this is how you want to be?”

  “Probably not,” she said.

  “Okay, so I’m afraid to what? Let my love off the leash?”

  “You say in the dream Rosie running loose makes you fearful?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of what?”

  “I’ll lose her.”

  “Lose love?” Dr. Silverman said.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “In dreams, things often represent more than one thing.”

  I sat. Dr. Silverman waited.

  “Me?” I said.

  She smiled. Bingo! What a good girl am I.

  “But not instead of love. Rosie is love, and Rosie is me, and I’m afraid I’ll lose love if I let go, and I’m afraid I’ll lose what? Me, if I let it run?”

  I was excited. I felt like something was happening.

  “And you felt how when you thought of the dream afterwards?”

  “While I was awake?”

  Nod.

  “I liked it that Rosie was running free,” I said. “The opposite of how I felt in the dream.”

  Dr. Silverman nodded.

  “So, which is it?” I said.

  “Both,” Dr. Silverman said.

  44

  I came home from Dr. Silverman’s with my head resonating inarticulately. Sarah was watching television at the far end of the loft, smoking cigarettes and drinking Coke. Someday, I’d have to discuss smoking in my home, but today was not the time. There was a message on my answering machine to call Detective Second-Grade Eugene Corsetti, Manhattan homicide. I sat on my bed and hugged Rosie until she rebelled, then I called Detective Corsetti.

  “Thanks for calling back,” he said. “Just routine. I got a homicide down here, and the vic had your business card in his wallet.”

  “Who’s the victim,” I said.

  A part of me already knew what Corsetti would say.

  “Lawyer, fella named Peter Franklin.”

  “I know him,” I said.

  “Can you tell me what your relationship was?”

  “How did he die?” I said.

  “Your relationship to the victim?”

  “If you have my card, you know I’m a private detective,” I said.

  “I do,” Corsetti said.

  “He was connected sort of indirectly to a case I’m working on.”

  “How so,” Corsetti said.

  I thought how to phrase it.

  “Oh, God,” I said. “I’ll come down there.”

  “We can probably do this by phone,” Corsetti said.

  “No, it’s complicated. And maybe you can help me, too.”

  “For the record,” Corsetti said. “Were you in New York last night, between about six p.m. and midnight?”

  “I was here,” I said. “Having dinner with a young woman and a male friend at the male friend’s restaurant.”

  “Could I get phone numbers?”

  “The young woman is here,” I said. “I’ll put her on. The man’s name is Spike, and I’ll give you the restaurant phone number.”

  “What’s Spike’s last name?”

  I told him and then I put Sarah on and she confirmed.

  Back on the phone, I said to Corsetti, “How did he die?”

  “I’ll check with the restaurant, but you sound okay to me.”

  “Damn it,” I said. “How did he die?”

  “He was executed,” Corsetti said. “Shot once in the chest that put him down, and once in the head. Perp pressed the muzzle right against his forehead.”

  “I’ll drive down in the morning. Can I see you, say, at one?”

  “Sure,” he said. “You don’t have to come to the station. I’ll meet you someplace.”

  “Saint Regis Hotel?” I said. “In the lobby?”

  Corsetti whistled softly.

  “Pretty snazzy for a shoofly,” Corsetti said.

  “I’m a pretty snazzy shoofly,” I said.

  “Besides looking for someone snazzy,” Corsetti said, “how do I recognize you?”

  “Five-seven, one hundred thirty pounds, blond hair, late thirties.”

  “What’ll you be wearing?” Corsetti said.

  “Tomorrow?” I said. “How do I know what I’ll be wearing tomorrow?”

  “Dumb question,” Corsetti said, and hung up.

  45

  Detective Corsetti and I sat in a couple of wine-and-gold armchairs in the lobby of the St. Regis, to the right of the front desk, and talked about the murder of Peter Franklin. Corsetti wasn’t very tall, only about my height. But laterally, he filled the armchair entire
ly, and very little of his width appeared to be fat.

  “You’re right,” Corsetti said. “You are snazzy.”

  “You’re kind of cute yourself,” I said.

  “I know,” Corsetti said. “Talk to me about Franklin.”

  “I was hired,” I said, “by a young woman who doubts that her parents are really hers. One day, two thugs beat her up and told her to lay off. I tracked them back to Franklin. They say he hired them.”

  “You talk to him?” Corsetti said.

  He was more casually dressed than some of the St. Regis patrons. He had on a leather bomber jacket, and an adjustable Yankee’s cap worn backwards.

  “Yes.”

  “Lemme guess,” Corsetti said. “He denied everything.”

  “Almost. One link in the connection was a disbarred lawyer named Ike Rosen.”

  Corsetti made a note of the name.

  “In New York, or Boston?” Corsetti said.

  “New York, West Ninety-second Street.”

  Corsetti wrote that down.

  “What was the connection?”

  “Rosen worked for the same firm as Franklin, until they fired him.”

  Corsetti scribbled again.

  “You coulda told me this on the phone,” he said. “What else you got?”

  “The young woman that hired me is named Sarah. Her father’s name was George. . . .”

  “ ‘Was’?”

  “I’m getting to that,” I said. “George used to be a radio announcer. About 1981 or ’2, he was working at a radio station in Moline, Illinois. Lolly Drake worked there at the same time, when she was just starting out.”

  “Franklin represents her, or did,” Corsetti said.

  “You’ve been busy,” I said.

  “Hard to believe I’m still second-grade, isn’t it?”

  “My guess would be that you might annoy your superiors,” I said.

  “Naw, I say it’s a height issue,” Corsetti said. “You said something about George.”

  “He finally agreed to a DNA test,” I said. “And two days later he was shot to death.”

  “What about the test?” Corsetti said.

  “He is not the girl’s biological father,” I said.

  Corsetti wrote that in his notebook and then sat back in the tight armchair and tapped his lower teeth with the butt end of his Bic pen.

  “How was he shot?” Corsetti said after a time.

  “In the chest,” I said. “Which put him down, and in the forehead, very close.”

  “Like Franklin,” Corsetti said.

  “Yes.”

  “Where?” Corsetti said.

  “In a parking lot, back of a building in Boston.”

  “Any sign he knew the killer?”

  “No.”

  “Who’s running the case in Boston?”

  “Detective sergeant named Frank Belson,” I said.

  Corsetti wrote that down in his notebook and looked at his notes for a moment and closed the notebook.

  “Franklin lived uptown, on Fifth, opposite the park.”

  “Corner of Seventy-sixth,” I said.

  Corsetti nodded.

  “Doorman said he always ran in the park at night, after work,” Corsetti told me. “Which was sometimes pretty late, because a lot of times he worked pretty late.”

  “That where you found him?”

  “Dog walker found him about seven in the morning by the pond, near Seventy-second Street.”

  “Shot in the chest,” I said, “and then in the forehead.”

  “Yep.”

  “Head shot was from very close.”

  “Yep.”

  “Any hint he knew the shooter?” I said.

  “Nope.”

  We were quiet. The lobby was high-ceiling and Gilded Age. Everything gleamed. Some of the people coming and going looked like business travelers. Some looked like tourists. None of them was wearing a baseball cap backward.

  “What do you think?” I said.

  “You got any ballistics on the gun in Boston?” Corsetti said.

  “No.”

  “I’ll call Belson,” Corsetti said. “We got a nine-millimeter down here.”

  “At the scene, Belson said it could have been a nine.”

  “Well,” Corsetti said. “I don’t know what the hell is going on. But we can’t assume it’s a bunch of coincidences and forget it.”

  “No.”

  “Where’s Lolly Drake fit in,” Corsetti said.

  “She knew both victims,” I said.

  “So do you,” Corsetti said.

  “I got an alibi,” I said.

  “I know,” Corsetti said, “I called that restaurant.”

  I smiled. “I wonder if Lolly’s got one.”

  “We could ask her,” Corsetti said.

  “Ask her?”

  “Yeah, she tapes over here on the West Side every afternoon.”

  “You want to ask Lolly Drake if she has an alibi for two murders?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t you want to clear that with somebody at work?”

  Corsetti shook his head.

  “I’ve been a cop,” I said. “Somebody with a profile like Lolly Drake . . . you cover yourself.”

  Corsetti grinned at me.

  “Perhaps you have mistaken me,” he said, “for someone who gives a shit.”

  46

  Lolly Drake broadcast from an old theater, way west of Broadway, near the river. There were larger-than-life pictures of Lolly everywhere in the building. Lolly with movie stars. Lolly with senators. Lolly in Los Angeles. Lolly in Rome. Lolly with a cute dog. Lolly with a foreign dignitary. Lolly in London. Lolly on a horse. Lolly at the White House. Lolly in San Francisco. Lolly on a riverboat. In every picture, her face was framed by thick, auburn hair. Her famous green eyes stared from the photos as if they could penetrate your soul.

  While Lolly finished taping her third show of the day, we sat in her office with her manager, whose name was Harvey Delk, and a lawyer named Curtin, from Harrop and Moriarty.

  “Lolly will be really drained,” her manager said. “It’s always hard for her to come down on the three-show days.”

  Corsetti smiled and nodded pleasantly. He sat in his chair, looking contented, his fingers locked across his stomach. It was a stomach you’d expect to be fat, but it wasn’t. Corsetti was built like a bowling ball, and was probably no softer.

  It was a big office, and nicely furnished, but utilitarian at heart, with cinder-block walls painted yellow, and a thick, coffee-colored rug over the vinyl flooring. On the monitor, Lolly could be seen sitting on a couch behind a coffee table. When the guest was particularly captivating, she leaned over the coffee table toward him. It allowed a dignified show of cleavage.

  “Truth is not merely fact,” she was saying, “it is also feeling, honestly expressed, don’t you think?”

  The guest, a young actor promoting a new movie, nodded.

  “It’s love,” he said, “and honest passion.”

  I looked at Corsetti. He smiled at me benevolently.

  On screen, Lolly looked at the audience.

  “You know my mantra,” she said. “Where secrets exist, love cannot.”

  The audience applauded. Corsetti nodded vigorously in agreement.

  “She’s really something,” Corsetti said, “isn’t she.”

  “Something,” I said.

  “It’s what attracted me to the role,” the actor said, “the authentic honesty of the part.”

  “You can be proud of that,” Lolly said. “Men are beginning to get it.”

  “Well, if we are,” the young actor said, “it’s because you ladies have shown us the value of honest emotion.”

 
Lolly beamed at him.

  “And we’re getting damned tired of it,” she said.

  The audience applauded loudly. Lolly reached across and patted the young actor’s hand.

  “And the name of the movie again?” she said.

  “Timeless.”

  “And it’s opening when?” Lolly said.

  “January sixth,” the actor said, “in New York and LA. January thirteenth in general release.”

  Lolly turned her head toward the studio audience. “I’ve seen a private screening of Timeless,” she said. “And it’s fabulous.”

  She looked back at the young actor. “And you’re fabulous in it, Bob.”

  She looked into the camera.

  “I hope every one of you will see it. Bring the kids. It will do them some good to encounter honest emotion. There’s not enough of it around.”

  The young actor looked modest. The audience roared into sustained applause. The credits began to roll. Lolly and the young actor began to chat without sound until the screen went gray.

  “She really nailed it,” Corsetti said to her manager. “Not enough honest emotion these days. Is that right on the money, or what?”

  The manager was a heavy young man, wearing an oversized double-breasted black suit, a white shirt, and a platinum-colored tie. The suit was probably supposed to conceal his weight. It didn’t. Nothing does.

  “Miss Drake has a real grasp on the core values of this country,” the manager said.

  The door opened and Lolly Drake came in. She was a little older than she looked on camera, but she was good-looking, and her eyes were everything they seemed to be in her pictures. Her dark green suit was beautifully cut. I paid close attention. My mother had watched Lolly Drake since she had gone national, and worshipped her. It could earn me many points that I’d met her. Lolly stopped inside her office door and looked at us.

  “Who are they,” she said to her manager.

  “Police, Lolly. You remember, I . . . ”

  Lolly nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes. What do you want?”

  Corsetti smiled at her and took out his badge. “Detective Eugene Corsetti, Miss Drake.”

  He nodded at me.

  “Sunny Randall,” he said.

  “I suppose it’s about Peter,” she said.

  “It is,” Corsetti said.