Saints Of New York

by R.J. Ellory

  Was there even the slightest possibility that they were connected?

  Parrish's thoughts were interrupted by the telephone.

  'Got your tox results on the Lange girl,' he was told. 'You ready?'

  Parrish took a pencil, a sheet of paper. 'What you got?'

  'She was benzo'd. A heavy dose.'

  Parrish felt the kick in his gut - the feeling that something was becoming something else. How had he known that this would happen with this girl?

  'Specifically?' Parrish asked.

  'Flunitrazepam. Rohypnol, right? Roofies I believe they call it now.'

  'How much?' he asked.

  'Well, considering that recreational use averages somewhere between one-point-eight and two-point-seven, she was hit with about five or six as far as I can tell. It metabolizes very fast. That's why it wasn't apparent in the urine or the blood.'

  'But the hair?'

  'You can take it from the hair for up to about a month. Depends how much was in the system, but about a month and you can still find it.'

  'Anything else?'

  'No, just the roofies. You want I should send the report on up to your office?'

  'Yes, please. Soon as you can.'

  'No problem.'

  Parrish hung up. Karen, Jennifer and Nicole were out of the ballpark as far as new tox tests were concerned. Blood and urine would have been checked as standard, but hair was done only on request. Had he not asked for it in Rebecca's case it would have remained unknown. This threw a new slant on the thing. She was drugged, heavily, and she was probably fucked while she was out of it. She wouldn't have been capable of resistance. There would have been no fight in her at all. Truth was, she wouldn't have even been aware of what was happening, and if she had survived, she wouldn't have remembered a thing. Her brother? Someone her brother sold her to? And was this porno something else entirely? A snuff movie? Fuck a teenage girl while she's dying of a benzodiazepine overdose, or maybe fuck her once she's dead? Stick it on a DVD and sell enough copies to buy yourself out of a lifetime of addiction? Was that what Danny Lange had planned?

  Parrish switched on his computer and pulled up the number for the Williamsburg 91st.

  He introduced himself to Richard Franco, gave him a brief on what he was working on, and asked about Karen.

  'Standard stuff,' Franco told him. 'Sure we did the tests, but I don't recall there being anything unusual about her, nothing that would have prompted me to ask for anything beyond blood and urine. You got a similar up there?'

  'Maybe. I'm just following on the adoption connection on another case from last week.'

  'Hell, I don't know what to say. It was the best part of a year ago now. I don't really remember much about it. You want I should dig up the file and send it over to you?'

  'I already saw it. I came over a couple of days ago and had a look through it.'

  'Well, that's all there is, I'm afraid. Anything else I can help you with?'

  'I don't think so, not at the moment. I'll call you if I think of anything.'

  Parrish thanked Franco and hung up.

  He sat back and considered the conversation. It was a sad state of affairs when the death of a teenage girl occasioned such comments as I don't recall there being anything unusual about her. Nothing beyond the fact that she was sixteen and found dead in a dumpster.

  Radick appeared. 'I'm outta here,' he said. 'You want a ride?'

  'Sure, if you don't mind. I want to stop by and see my daughter on the way back if that's okay.'

  'Sure, if you're not going to be long.'

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Shortly after six they were over the other side of Flatbush.

  Radick came to a stop on Smith Street near Carroll Park.

  'You don't have to come in,' Parrish said.

  'It's fine. I don't mind.' Radick came out of the car, waited for Parrish to show him the way.

  Caitlin Parrish shared an apartment with two other trainee nurses, but Parrish found her alone.

  'Jesus, Dad, you should call before you come over. I'm going out.'

  'Hey, sweetheart,' Parrish said. 'Good to see you. How are you? I'm fine. And how are you? I'm good thanks. Come on in, why don't you? Have a cup of coffee, take a weight off.'

  'Okay, okay,' she said. 'We can do without the sarcasm.'

  Radick appeared back of Parrish.

  'Oh, this is Jimmy Radick. He's my new partner.'

  Caitlin - brunette, five-five, slim and bright and sharp as a pin - extended her hand and shook with Jimmy Radick. 'Good to meet you,' she said. 'For your sins eh?'

  Radick frowned.

  'They gave you my dad as a partner for your sins.'

  'Seems that way.'

  'So come in, both of you, but I am in a hurry. Like I said, I'm going out. You want coffee then you're going to have to make it yourself.' She hurried down the hallway and disappeared through a doorway on the right.

  'Where are you off to?' Parrish called after her. He stepped into the apartment hallway, waved Radick in, closed the door behind him.

  'I'm going out to meet my pimp, and then I'm going to have sex with three different guys, and after that I figured I might get some crank and sit up all night smoking and talking shit with black people.'

  'Caitlin—'

  She appeared in the hallway, her blouse untucked, her feet bare, her hair loosely pinned back.

  'Dad, seriously, you have to stop asking . . . and more importantly, you have to stop worrying yourself about what I might be doing and where I might be going.'

  'Force of habit,' Parrish replied.

  'Well, get another habit, for God's sake. A year or so and I'll be in Manhattan, either that or London.'

  'London?'

  'I'm kidding, Dad. Lighten up.' She disappeared back into her room.

  'Coffee?' Parrish asked.

  'Sure,' Radick said.

  Parrish made himself busy in the kitchen. Radick walked on through to what must have been the girls' communal lounge room. A TV, a stereo, a couple of bookcases. Peanuts, The Tommy- knockers by Stephen King, Introduction to Diagnostic Medicine, DVDs of Scrubs, Grey's Anatomy and 24. Predictably diverse, at the same time appropriate.

  Caitlin came into the room. She approached Radick hurriedly. The expression on her face was somewhat awkward.

  'How long have you been with my dad?'

  'Yesterday,' Radick replied.

  'He drinks. You know that, right?'

  Radick didn't reply.

  'He drinks and he gets morose. There's a lot of history between him and my mom and he doesn't deal with it very well—'

  'Miss Parrish ... I don't know that you should be tell—'

  She pressed a slip of paper into Radick's hand. 'That's my phone number here, my work number and my cell. Call me if he gets too fucked up, okay? Call me if you start worrying about him.'

  'Miss Parrish—'

  'Seriously. Call me—'

  'Coffee,' Parrish said, and Caitlin turned suddenly. She smiled as he came into the room.

  'I thought you were getting ready,' Parrish said.

  'I am. I just came in here for a barrette and I cannot find it.'

  Caitlin passed her father and left the room.

  Parrish handed Radick a coffee cup, told him to take a seat.

  Radick stuffed the slip of paper into his jacket pocket and took a chair near the window.

  Parrish set his coffee cup on the table, said he'd be a moment.

  Before long there were raised voices in back of the apartment. This was some father-daughter thing that Radick really didn't want to be involved in. He drank his coffee, sat patiently, tried not to listen but it was difficult. Frank was going on about her job, where she was going to be working. Sounded like he wanted her to be one place, she wanted to be another. Sounded like the sort of discussion that would only ever become a disagreement, an argument, a bone of contention. To Radick she seemed more than capable of making up her own mind, deciding where she wanted to
live, where she wanted to work. But what the hell did he know? He was twenty-nine. He wasn't married, never had been, had no kids, no relationship. This was way beyond his territory, and he was glad of it.

  Ten minutes and Parrish was done. He reappeared, that apologetic expression on his face that people wore when they felt guilty for having subjected a stranger to some of their life issues.

  He didn't apologize however, merely told Radick that they were leaving.

  Radick set his cup down. He followed Parrish to the door.

  'Thanks for the coffee, Miss Parrish,' he called back, but there was no answer.

  He dropped Parrish off at his apartment building, glanced in the rear-view as he pulled away from the sidewalk. Parrish stood there for a moment as if he was trying to remember something important, and then he seemed to shrug his shoulders disconsolately before walking up the steps.

  Radick drove home. He was not averse to a few shots of some- thing-or-other himself, but he knew if he started with Parrish they would wind up in a bar someplace, Parrish telling Radick his life story, feeling sorry for himself, starting down the slow decline. Radick wanted definition between work and personal. He didn't want to be Frank Parrish's drinking buddy. He wanted to be his partner. He knew of John Parrish - the mighty John Parrish, stalwart of the OCCB and the Brooklyn OC Task Force. The man had been a beast, and if his first couple of days with Frank were anything to go by he reckoned John would have been a little disappointed how his son turned out. But Frank Parrish had been good. One of the best, or so the rumors went. The man could teach you things. He had seen things, done things, solved crimes that no-one else had. He was a small legend, but a legend all the same. He was not his father. Hell, no-one was like John Parrish. But even if Frank had taken a percentage of his father's brilliance, and if that percentage was watered down five times and then five times again, even that would be enough for Jimmy Radick.

  Parrish stayed home for no more than half an hour. He should not have walked out to DeKalb Avenue, but he did. He stood there at the corner, looked back towards his apartment on Willoughby, then left to Clay's Tavern. He vacillated. He always vacillated. He went left. He always went left.

  Frank Parrish was a loyal drunk. He was loyal to Bushmills, loyal to his corner booth, loyal to the tunes he chose from the jukebox. Tom Waits' 'I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You' and 'Shiver Me Timbers'; Miles Davis' 'It Never Entered My Mind'; Stan Getz's 'Desafinado', and finally, predictably, so predictable that someone would call it from the bar . . .

  Hey, Frank.

  What?

  Do it.

  Do what?

  Play Misty for me.

  And Frank would smile, and amble to the jukebox, and drop a quarter in and punch the buttons, and Errol Garner would lull them all into a hazy, drunken sense of nostalgia.

  Frank Parrish would stay until eleven, sometimes eleven-thirty, and then he would find his way home.

  His father had drunk here. It wasn't Clay's Tavern back then, it was The Hammerhead, but a change of name hadn't changed the decor, the atmosphere, the reminders. Talking with Doctor Marie Griffin was proving easier than he'd imagined. Yeah, maybe it was time to talk. The asshole was dead, after all.

  He found his corner booth. He ordered a double and collectedit. He waved a 'hi' to a couple of regulars propping up the east wing of the bar. Retired cops. Guys who eased out the last two or three years of their thirty back of a desk someplace, and now spent their time talking about the good old days and wondering why they'd been so desperate to leave. Spend thirty years a cop you're gonna die a cop. There was no easy way out of it. It was not a job, it was a vocation. After that it became a passion, an addiction, a crutch, a belief. Either that, or you got out. Cops didn't marry well. They were lousy fathers. They walked out of the house into a world that no-one else could see, as if only they could perceive the thin veneer that lay between what people believed was reality and reality itself. Reality was behind the crime scene tape. Reality was found at the tip of a stiletto, down the muzzle of a .38, back of a sawn-off Mossberg pump-action shotgun as it unloaded its guts into half a dozen diners in a restaurant on Myrtle Avenue. Reality was a stabbing, a beating, a strangulation, a drowning, a suicide, an overdose, a hanging. Reality was twelve- year-old junkies, fifteen-year-old hookers. It was stealing and running and hiding, and backing up into a corner while the world looked for you, and knowing full well that soon the world would find you and it would all be over.

  Reality was people like Rebecca Lange, a girl who wore red nail varnish and reminded Frank Parrish of Caitlin. That was what it had come down to - a dead girl who reminded him of his daughter, a daughter he could still argue with about nothing at all.

  And then there was John Parrish, the Saints of New York, the whole fucked-up mess of Frank's own history that had somehow followed in the wake of his father - a man who wore one face for the world, but was someone else entirely.

  Three double Bushmills and Frank Parrish realized that the road he had started walking down with Marie Griffin was long and winding, and it didn't really have a destination.

  And he thought of his father, what he should have said to the man:

  No, I don't love you. I don't even respect you. I know who you are. I see the rosettes and the plaques, the medal ribbons, the citations and commends, and I listen to you and your buddies talking your smart shit over Schlitz and hot dogs in the back yard, and I see right through you all. I see right through the host of motherfuckers that you really are.

  And it isn't the money that pains me. It isn't the cheating, the backhanders, the bribery. It isn't even the killing. The thing that pains me is that you spent all your time lying to people, and you didn't even admit how much you were lying to yourself. At least I know I fucked up. At least I possess enough humility to see that. I screwed up my marriage, screwed up my kids, but hell, I can at least admit it, you know? That's what galls me. That's what makes me ashamed to be your son.

  And he thought of Caitlin, and he wondered whether he really should ask Jimmy Radick to keep an eye on her. Just for her own good. Just to make sure she was staying on the right side of the road.

  Eleven-thirty Frank Parrish made his way home to his apartment.

  Arriving in the austere and undecorated living room, nothing more than a sofa, a table and chair by the window, a TV set and an old stereo unit with a turntable, he resigned himself to the fact that whatever he had started with the counsellor woman would now have to go on. His father had been dead for sixteen years. That did not seem so long ago until he realized that Caitlin had been four years old at the funeral. To consider it this way made it seem like forever.

  The TV did not distract him, and so he turned it off. He sat at the table, the drapes inched apart, and through the window he looked down towards Willoughby Avenue. Directly west, no more than three or four blocks, was Brooklyn Hospital. North-west, again little more than half a dozen blocks, was Cumberland. Caitlin could work at either. He could see her every week, perhaps a couple of times. They could meet for lunch in Auburn Place or St. Edwards. They could pretend that they were close until they became so. They - he - could make up for the past ten years of noise and bullshit that had pulled the family apart.

  Frank fetched a bottle from the cupboard above the sink. He poured three fingers, returned to the window, tried to focus on Rebecca, the manner of her death, the reason, the rationale, the possible resolution.

  Her face haunted him. The short hair. The painted nails.

  He wondered if she had known her life was going to end, or if she had been strangled as she slept, waking only in those last handful of seconds before everything guttered and was extinguished.

  He wondered if she had seen her killer's face, or if he had tied a scarf around his face, had worn a baseball cap tipped down low so she saw nothing but the muscles in his jaw line as he tightened his grip.

  He wondered if Rebecca had tried to fight back, even though against someone so much stronger s
he had possessed no hope at all.

  He wondered if she had pleaded, begged, prayed even . . . prayed to God for respite, for release, for forgiveness for whatever she might have done that had brought this upon herself.

  Honestly? Frank Parrish would have liked to believe in God, but he felt that faith should be mutual. It should be reciprocated. And he knew, with certainty, that God did not believe in him.

  He fell asleep on the sofa shortly before two. He was still dressed - pants, socks, shirt. An empty bottle sat on the floor, beside it a glass.

  He seemed to remember waking near to dawn, but he made no effort to move. He just rolled over, buried his face in a cushion, and tried to push away the images of a dead Rebecca.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2008

  'Marty Krugman was small time, a wig salesman. He ran a wig store someplace and he had these late-night TV commercials, but beyond that he ran bets for people. Every once in a while he got something going with someone that added up to a few bucks. One of these people was a guy called Louis Werner. Lou was not a smart gambler. He was impulsive, went on the fly, and he wound up owing Marty something like twenty grand. This is 1978 now, you understand. This is a lot of money. So Marty is giving Lou a hard time about this money, and Lou is thinking of every which way he can get Marty off his back, because Marty is the kind of guy that just gets onto you and he won't let go.'

  'Frank, I thought you were finally getting to Lufthansa today.'

  'I am. Lou Werner was the Lufthansa cargo supervisor. There was nothing, just nothing that Lou didn't know about Lufthansa's traffic, in and out.'