Songs of Innocence (Hard Case Crime (Mass Market Paperback))

by Richard Aleas

  But he wanted so badly to be asked. So I did.

  A pained smile slid onto his face. “I’m her father,” he said.

  He stuck out his hand and shook firmly when I took it. “Doug Harper,” he said.

  “Robert Lee.” It was the first name that came to mind.

  “You’re probably wondering why the different last name,” he said. “And why I was standing way the hell over there.” He nodded toward the distant crypt. “Her mother and I...we had a falling out. Many years ago. Many, many years.”

  His eyes filled with tears then. It was the first time I’d noticed any resemblance to his daughter at all. I’d seen the man several times before, through the plate glass window at Fiorucci’s where he sold overpriced Oxfords and wingtips, walking down the street on his way home, sitting out on the fire escape of his second floor apartment with a paperback and a beer. I’d even snapped a few photos of him, though all Dorrie had needed was his address; old habits die hard. But for all that, this was the first time that I’d seen him up close, in person. And his eyes...I could definitely see her in his eyes.

  Not in his narrow, lined face, not in his slight build, his lank, flat hair. He was dark where she’d been pale, wiry where she’d been voluptuous. But his eyes were soft and deep, like Dorrie’s, and troubled and sad like hers, too.

  “Robert,” he said, and stopped. He turned to face me, looked up at me with a mixture of embarrassment and defiance. “Twenty-one years ago, Robert, I lost my other daughter, my older daughter. Catherine.” He nodded toward the other grave. “A short time after that I lost my wife, my family. After that, my job. Now I’ve lost my younger daughter. And there’s not a person on earth I can talk to about it.” He smiled at me apologetically. He had bad teeth. “Would you come have a drink with me, Robert? If you don’t mind listening to an old man whine about how unfair life is?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll have a drink with you.”

  We followed the gentle curve of the walkway down to the cemetery’s front gate. Doug led me slowly down Front Street and then along West Wingohocking. That’s how you know you’re not in New York City anymore—the streets have names like “West Wingohocking.” He made an abrupt turn onto North Bodine and climbed the four steps it took to reach the front door of a pub whose only sign said PUB.

  The windows were dirty, and the light filtering through them cast pale brownish shadows on the walls and the high-backed chairs at the bar. Doug pulled one of the chairs out, climbed up into it, and ordered a rum and coke. I took the seat next to his, asked the bartender to get me a beer.

  “What kind?” the bartender said, and I almost replied, Dreher. Sumting Hongeiryen.

  “Whatever you’ve got,” I said, and watched him pop the cap off a bottle of Budweiser.

  Doug took a long drink, swallowing till the glass was drained and the ice clicked against his teeth. “Give me another,” he told the bartender.

  Off to one side a small television set was showing CNN, the crawl at the bottom of the screen telling us something about troop escalations in the Middle East. The sound was turned down but you could still hear them chattering.

  “When was the last time you saw Dorrie?” I asked. I wasn’t deliberately being cruel, or anyway that’s what I told myself. It’s a question a stranger would have asked.

  He shrugged, didn’t answer. “That’s what she called herself? Dorrie?”

  “Yes.”

  “She wrote to me once,” he said. “Maybe six months ago. A long letter. What she’d been doing, how she’d been taking classes at Columbia. Even included a picture of herself. My god, she was...lovely. It was like seeing Catherine, only grown up.” He took a mouthful of his drink, held it, swallowed. “She signed the letter ‘Your daughter, Dorothy.’ I guess she thought I wouldn’t know who it was if she’d signed it ‘Dorrie.’ ”

  “You opened it?” I said. “The letter?”

  He looked at me strangely. “Of course I did. Why?”

  “She showed me that letter. It came back unread.”

  He closed his eyes. “No. No. Not unread.”

  “It said ‘refused.’ ”

  “Right. Refused,” he said. “I did refuse it. But I opened it first. ‘Dorothy Burke’ on the envelope, how could I not open it? Burke’s her mother’s name. She took it back when she got rid of me.”

  “But if you opened the letter—”

  “I did it carefully, so I could seal it up again, drop it back in the mailbox.”

  “Why? Why would you do that?”

  He seemed at a loss for an answer—his mouth opened, but nothing came out. Finally he said, “I’d ruined her sister’s life, her mother’s life, my own. I didn’t want to ruin hers.”

  “Do you understand how that made her feel?” I said. “Her own father, she finally finds you after all this time, sends you a letter, and not only won’t you meet her or talk to her, you send her letter back—”

  “I couldn’t meet her. I couldn’t. Sending that photo back was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I, I...” He wound down, came slowly to a halt. “I’m not a good father. She was better off without me.”

  “Probably,” I said, thinking maybe I’d stepped over the line to deliberate cruelty now. Dorrie wouldn’t have wanted that. I stopped talking, drank my beer.

  “I went to her apartment once,” he said. “Went to the address that had been on the envelope, all the way uptown. I got as far as standing outside the building. I was going to push the button, say, Hello, it’s your father. I had my thumb on the button. But I couldn’t do it.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “After twenty years? After all the things I’m sure Eva must have told her about me? I couldn’t face her. Not like that.”

  “You should have.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  His glass was empty again and the bartender filled it without being asked. On the TV, some talking heads were going on about urban violence. Hell of a topic.

  “You want to hear something terrible?” he said. “I was at Cornerstone all weekend. Drying out. Too much of this stuff.” He raised his glass. “Then I walk out on Monday morning, head across Sixth Avenue to Universal News, pick up the paper, and what’s the first thing I see?” He rotated the glass slowly between his fingers, like a jeweler examining a stone for a flaw. He didn’t seem to find one.

  “My daughter’s dead. There’s two days of sobriety out the window.”

  I was learning more about him than I really wanted to know. So he was a drunk, and a coward, and yes, a lousy father. Dorrie had deserved better. Didn’t we all.

  I took another swallow of my beer, pushed the bottle away, got to my feet. “Sorry I can’t stay, Doug. I have to get back to the city.”

  He didn’t answer, and I realized that he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking past me at the TV screen. I followed his gaze.

  The banner on the screen said “MANHUNT.” Above it there were two faces, the newsreader’s and, in a little box over the newsreader’s shoulder, mine. With hair. But it didn’t matter.

  “The search continues,” came the low voice from the TV, “for suspected murderer John Blake, in whose Manhattan apartment police found the body of 27-year-old Jorge Garcia Ramos. The police report that Blake is now wanted in connection with a second killing as well, that of Ramos’ girlfriend, 25-year-old Candace Webb, who was found strangled to death early this morning on West 32nd Street.”

  I looked over. Doug Harper glanced nervously at me and then back at the screen.

  Over the newsreader’s shoulder, the photo of me had been replaced by a photo labeled “WEBB.”

  It was a photo of Di.

  I felt my throat constrict, my heart start to pound. Di. Strangled—and on West 32nd Street. I remembered her repeating like a mantra, the last time I’d seen her, I’m going to kill them, I’m going to kill them both. Why the hell had she actually tried to do it? I pictured her facing Miklos, his enormous hands reaching out toward her t
hroat. She’d told me if I went up against him I’d better have a gun. Well, if she’d had one, it hadn’t been enough.

  Another dead woman, I thought. Another funeral. And for what? For what?

  I groped in my pocket, dropped some small bills on the bar. “That’s awful,” I said, my voice sounding weak and strange in my ears. “Someone like that on the loose.”

  Doug just looked at me. I didn’t see fear in his face, or anger. Just a troubled expression, as though he didn’t know what to think.

  “What?” I said, and when he didn’t answer, “What? You want to ask me something, Doug?”

  He shook his head.

  There was a payphone on the wall and I figured he’d be dialing the police the instant the door closed behind me. My own damn fault. I should never have talked to him, should never have come out for a drink.

  “Listen,” I said, leaning close and lowering my voice. “I didn’t kill either of them.”

  “I don’t need to—”

  “Listen.” He shut up. “I didn’t kill them. You need to know, this is all about Dorrie. The police don’t understand that. I’ve been looking into her death, I made some people angry at me, and things have gone horribly wrong, but I didn’t kill anyone. If you call the police—listen to me.”

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “If you call the police, they’ll put me in jail and I’ll never find out what happened to Dorrie. You’ll never find out. Do you understand?”

  “What do you mean you’ve been ‘looking into’ her death?”

  “I’m a private investigator,” I said.

  “I thought you went to school with her.”

  “I did.”

  “And you’re trying to find out...what? How she died? I thought they knew how she died.”

  “I’m trying to find out why she died,” I said. “There was something bad going on in her life, and I’m going to find out what it was. But only if you don’t turn me in.”

  It was pointless. His face had paled and he was having trouble meeting my eyes. I knew he was going to do it.

  “Fine,” I said. “Do what you want. But for once in your goddamn life, maybe you could think of your daughter first.”

  I walked out.

  Through the filthy window, I saw him head straight for the payphone.

  Chapter 24

  I felt like the last pawn on a chessboard, rooks and knights and bishops closing in on every side. I was inching toward the far side of the board and I wasn’t going to make it.

  The return ticket in my pocket was useless now—they’d be watching the train station. You could fly from Philadelphia to New York in theory, but I couldn’t in practice. They’d be looking for me there, too, now that Dorrie’s father had tipped them off.

  What was left? As I raced through an intersection on the way back toward the cemetery I thought: I could steal a car. But I couldn’t. I’d lived in Manhattan all my life. I barely knew how to drive a car.

  Did I know anyone in Philadelphia who could help me?

  I didn’t know anyone in Philadelphia, period.

  Except for Doug Harper and his former wife, and they were no friends of mine.

  As I passed Greenmount’s front gate I saw the hearse that had brought Dorrie’s coffin at the curb, a Lincoln Town Car with scuffed bumpers and New York plates. The Volvo was behind it. The hearse’s driver, a beefy linebacker type with buzz-cut hair and a chip of beard under his lower lip, was pacing up and down between the two, smoking.

  I ran up to the guy. “You heading back to the city?”

  “When the lady lets me go.” He had a Russian accent.

  “She’s still inside?”

  “Paperwork,” he said, and shrugged at the ways of a world that wouldn’t even bury you without getting forms signed in triplicate.

  “I need to head back that way myself,” I said, trying to make my voice sound casual. It sounded fake as hell to me. “You mind driving me in?”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “I came on the train,” I said.

  He drew firmly on the butt end of his cigarette, then threw the remnant to the ground, stepped on it. He was trying to figure out why this guy who’d come in on the train wasn’t going back the same way. Or else he was trying to remember where he’d seen my face before.

  “I’ll ride in the back. You won’t even know I’m there.”

  He scratched at his soul patch.

  “Hundred dollar,” he said, and eyed me warily to see whether he’d aimed too high.

  I fingered the dwindling supply of bills in my pocket. I needed to save some for later. “I can’t pay you that much,” I said, and he started to shrug again, to turn away, but I put a hand on his shoulder. “I can’t pay a hundred—but I’ll give you sixty and this ticket, which you can turn in for another sixty. That’s one-twenty.” I pulled my return ticket out of my pocket, slightly crumpled, along with three twenties. “You’re driving back anyway,” I said. I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice, while listening with half an ear for police sirens.

  He snatched the money and the ticket out of my hand, inspected the ticket on both sides, as though maybe I was trying to pawn a forgery off on him.

  “It’s good for thirty days,” I said. “You just walk up to the counter, hand it to them, and they’ll give you cash for it.” Behind him, through the metal gates of the cemetery, I saw the front door of the main building open. A short woman in a black coat and hat stepped out. Eva Burke. She was talking to a man, hadn’t looked this way yet.

  “Come on,” I said. “Make up your mind. You want the money or not?”

  Of course he did.

  “Get in,” he said.

  It took a few minutes for him to settle up with Mrs. Burke. I watched impatiently through the dark glass of the hearse’s curtained rear window as another fistful of cash changed hands. This guy was making out okay for a morning’s work. And I didn’t begrudge him his little windfall. I just wanted him to get on the road.

  He walked around to the front and got in. There was a Plexiglas partition between us and it muffled his voice. “You can sit up here if you want.”

  “That’s okay,” I called back.

  “It’s a long ride.”

  It was. But other motorists, and toll booth clerks, and cops, could see the occupants of the front seats. They couldn’t see me back here. “It’s okay,” I said again.

  “Want some music?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Whatever you want.”

  He thumbed the controls for his CD player and a woman’s voice came on, singing in Russian. It was just as well. I wasn’t in any condition to listen to music I could understand.

  The back of the hearse was like the rear of a station wagon, only longer, with a metal grab bar on either side and rubber traction strips along the carpeting. It felt like being in the trunk of a car, only with a little more room and a little more light. A little. I threaded one arm under a grab bar to keep from sliding all over when the driver took a curve.

  I tried not to think about Dorrie’s trip up from New York in this very car, lying where I was lying now, penned tightly in her coffin. It felt like ages ago, not days, that I’d seen her last, that I’d talked to her and held her. It felt like ages ago that I’d been in Susan’s apartment. Two murders ago. Damn it, the story was on CNN now—it wasn’t just local news anymore. How had this happened?

  I thought about asking the driver to drop me somewhere in Jersey, or hell, to turn around and start driving west—anywhere west, anywhere other than back to New York.

  But where could I go? With practically no money and the police after me—and a debt I still hadn’t paid. Because Dorrie’s killer was still free. I’d made a promise to her, and I’d made one to myself, and everything I’d gone through would be for nothing if I abandoned it now.

  I heard the driver say something in Russian and then a reply in Russian from his dispatcher, butchered by static. What were they talking about? For a te
rrible instant I was convinced it was me, that the driver knew exactly who I was and was inquiring about whatever bounty the NYPD might have placed on my head. I tried to listen for the syllable “Blake,” but it was hopeless with the music playing and the partition swallowing half of every word.

  “Hey, mister,” the driver said. He twisted a knob and the singer’s voice dropped off. “When we get to the city, I drop you on the west side, okay?”

  I pictured him pulling into some waterfront garage full of hearses. It made sense that he wouldn’t want to brave midtown traffic just for me. He’d want to unload me as quickly as he could.

  Unless, of course, he was actually planning to deliver me to whichever precinct house Mirsky worked out of.

  “The west side’s fine,” I said. Knowing I wouldn’t wait to be dropped off, that at the first red light I’d pop the back and run like hell. Even though he probably wasn’t planning to turn me in, probably had no idea who I was, probably thought I was just some freak who got off on riding in hearses. But I couldn’t wait and find out, just in case.

  I shot a look at the watch on my wrist. I’d be early for the time I’d worked out with Susan, but not all that early. And the Ramble would be a safer place for me to wait for her than out on the street.

  “Can you go up Central Park West?” I said. “Maybe drop me somewhere in the seventies?”

  He shook his head. “I need to be on Eleventh Avenue.”

  “Could you at least get me to Columbus?” I said.

  The driver’s expression in the rear-view mirror looked pained. “You can’t walk a few blocks?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “it’s just that I’m late for a meeting.” It was an idiotic thing to say. People with meetings don’t ride to them in the back of a hearse.

  He punched his horn, swerved around another car.

  “I’ll give you another twenty dollars,” I said. “Okay?”

  He muttered something.

  “What?” I said.

  “You know how we say in Russian? The dead are less demanding.”