by Con Lehane
“They’re holding him at the twenty-six.”
Twenty-six was the 26th Precinct in Manhattan, nowhere near Maimonides in Brooklyn. Not near Adele’s apartment either. It was uptown in Harlem and covered McNulty’s neighborhood on the Upper West Side.
Cosgrove wasn’t finished. “I got something else. The cops in Nassau found your parrot. There’s a group on Long Island that specializes in finding lost parrots.” He sighed dramatically. “We got a group for everything in New York.”
“That’s Long Island, not the city.”
“Same thing. Most everyone out there’s from the city.”
Not only did the group find the parrot, some of the volunteers knew the parrot, Buster, because Jayne Galloway was one of the lost-parrot group volunteers.
“The parrot got loose. That happens.” Mike said.
“All the windows and doors were closed.”
“It could have gotten out before her death. It could have been missing for days.”
“She would have searched for it, told someone, contacted the lost-parrot group.”
“You want to say someone let it out? You got that and Dr. Dean’s car in the victim’s garage. You want me to talk to Nassau County about the suspicion Mrs. Galloway was murdered. If I do, the person of interest is your pal McNulty.”
“I think not.” Ambler told Mike about receiving Jayne Galloway’s phone call after Sandra Dean’s death and that she and McNulty were at Jayne Galloway’s the night they left the city after Ted Doyle’s murder.
“And how do you know this?”
Ambler realized he’d made a mistake.
Mike was a bulldog. If you let something slip, he latched on and didn’t let go. “We’re not talking about harboring here, are we?”
“McNulty’s father had a heart attack. He’s in the hospital. That’s why McNulty is in the city.” Ambler paused and made a half-hearted effort. “I was going to call you…”
Mike laughed, not something he did often. “Yeah. I’m hard to reach sometimes.… And you get busy, things slip your mind. I know how that is.”
“Okay, Mike, you made your point.” Neither explanation nor apology would do any good. Mike would forgive or he wouldn’t. “There might be something else.” Ambler told him about Dillard Wainwright. “Besides the research she did in the library, she was in email contact with him shortly before her death. Now, he’s been missing from his job and his home since right around the time of the murders.”
Mike had a way of creating a different sort of silence, even on the phone, when he listened intently. “His name is on the list you gave me. You’re not saying he was one of her, uh, love interests?”
“I’m saying he might be a suspect in her murder.”
Mike grumbled. “Hard to keep up with your expanding list of suspects. But I’ll try. Right now, we have the bartender to talk about. He was breaking into his apartment.”
“His own apartment?”
“They’re holding him for Connecticut. If you’re on your good behavior they might let you see him at the precinct. He’s already lawyered up, so I’m not going to talk to him. Check with his lawyer.”
Ambler called David Levinson, who picked up the phone on the second ring. “Yep, he called me. The asshole. I told him I knew a hundred good criminal defense attorneys and begged him to call one of them.” The lawyer paused for effect. He liked to hear himself talk, yet Ambler usually enjoyed his banter. He was also, thanks to McNulty, working on an appeal for Ambler’s son, Johnny’s dad. “Of course, McNulty wouldn’t hear of it. He’d have to pay.… I’m on my way uptown.”
Ambler said he’d meet him at the 26th Precinct after he dropped Johnny at school. Again, he had to take a cab and Finnegan wasn’t available, so it wasn’t cheap.
Surprising to Ambler when he got to the precinct, David Levinson was sitting with the cops behind the desk chuckling and trading wisecracks. He’d had arranged to have donuts and coffee delivered from the donut shop on Broadway. It was coffee-break time and Levinson was one of the boys. He’d done pro bono work for the police union, it turned out, so the cops put up with him.
“McNulty’s in the query room,” Levinson pointed his donut toward a hallway. Ambler followed the hallway to a door marked INTERROGATION. He knocked. Something buzzed so he opened the door. McNulty, wearing jeans and a blue workshirt that was too big for him, sat at a metal table on a metal chair; two other chairs were around the table, all of them bolted to the floor. A tape recorder on the room’s only shelf wasn’t running. The walls were gray and bare, except for a large mirror in the middle of one wall that was obviously, even to Ambler, a two-way mirror.
“You okay?” Ambler asked.
McNulty rolled his eyes. “Couldn’t be better.”
“What happened?”
“I made a mistake.” His smile was rueful. “I didn’t have my apartment key, so I was picking the lock. A long time ago, I learned from a friend in the business how to pick locks. I’m pretty good at it.”
“A locksmith?”
McNulty scowled. “A burglar.… The old lady across the hall heard me, so she started screaming like a fucking banshee. Beats me why’d she scream about an old lady. By the time I quieted her down—she freaked out again when she realized it was me and not an old lady—the night doorman had called the cops. He’s the spare guy—my luck—and the jerk didn’t recognize me either.”
“Were you dressed like Mrs. Doubtfire?”
McNulty grimaced. “The regular night guy’s a friend of mine. He was off last night. How was I supposed to know?” When McNulty didn’t see any police watching the place, he slipped in when the door man was occupied. He wasn’t going to turn on the lights or do anything in the apartment except crash for the night.
“More bad luck. A couple of cruisers were in front of the all-night coffee shop on the corner. They were told a robbery was in progress, so they’re surprised to find a matronly lady, even more surprised when they found she had balls.”
Ambler glanced at the two-way mirror. “Do we need to be circumspect?”
McNulty gave the mirror a hard stare. “What do I have to hide? My life’s an open book. My turncoat lawyer is watching through the window with the cops. Tell me whatever you want.”
“Sandra’s mother called me not long before her death. I believe she had something to tell me about Ted Doyle’s murder, or why Sandra was in hiding, or who killed Sandra, something that had bearing on Sandra’s death. Why did you and Sandra go to her mother? Why did Sandra run away after Ted Doyle’s murder if she was innocent?”
McNulty spoke softly, despite what he’d said about being overheard. “Sandi headed that way when we left the city. She didn’t tell me why. I didn’t know we were going to see her mother until we got there. Sandi was wound pretty tight. We didn’t talk much. She was afraid; that’s why she ran. I took it she was afraid of whoever murdered the guy.” He met Ambler’s gaze with the familiar flicker of mischief in his eyes. “Why I went with her? I’ve asked myself that.” His expression said the rest.
“Was her mother expecting you?”
McNulty looked into the two-way mirror, maybe he was looking at himself. “She was expecting her. I was a surprise. Sandi wasn’t telling me, or her mother either, everything that was going on. When push came to shove, Sandi took her own counsel. She wanted to get her daughter back before her husband found out what happened.”
“The murder in her hotel room? She didn’t tell him about it?”
McNulty shook his head. “I don’t know all of what she told her husband. I only overheard some. But I’d say not that. She spoke to him on the phone a couple of times over a couple of days. She was lying to him. He’d found out something about her. She told him she was sorry and wanted him to say it was okay for her to come home. She wanted her daughter.” McNulty stood up and walked around in the small space of the query room. “I’m used to working standing up. I’m not used to sitting so much.”
He sat down again. “
She may have been lying to me, too. Those days with her are a blur. We talked. She cried a lot and slept on and off.” He glanced at the mirror again and spoke softly. “We did other things. I thought I knew what she wanted; now I’m not so sure. I don’t know if I believe what she told me. She was in trouble, deep trouble; she was desperate. She’d use me or anyone else to get herself out of it. Was that what she was doing—using her mother, using her husband, using me? I don’t know. What I know is she wanted to be with her kid.”
Ambler felt a wave of sadness and a rush of sympathy for McNulty, for Sandra Dean. “What was the trouble?”
McNulty met Ambler’s gaze with a fathomless gaze of his own. “I thought it would come clear. She’d get to a place where she’d see her way out and she’d tell me. The answer was right around the corner, coming any minute.… And it never did come.”
“Did she tell you anything about the murdered man?”
“No.”
“She never told you who he was, why she was with him, why she was with another man when she was making plans with you?”
“I told you—or maybe I told Adele—she said it wasn’t like that.”
“Did you believe her?”
“I did then.”
“Do you now?”
The expression in his eyes went dark. “I don’t know.”
They were quiet for a moment. Ambler had more questions but wasn’t sure McNulty had the answers. People remember their view of things, and even then they don’t remember everything. He tried one more time. “What about her husband?”
“What about him?”
“What did he know? Did she tell him about the murder?”
“I told you, no.”
“He must have known something? Did he know she’d been unfaithful? Did he know she was with you?”
McNulty took a deep breath and sat back as well as he could in the uncomfortable metal chair; he made an effort to gather his thoughts. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what she was doing. Any minute, I expected the cops to come barreling through the door. I was thinking about her and me together, how that was going to happen. At the time—being the idiot I am—I thought she was thinking that, too.” He lifted a baleful gaze toward Ambler. “You’re asking me to make sense of what was going on when what was going on made no sense. I was in the middle of it, not like you looking at it from the outside saying, ‘Well, what have we here?’”
McNulty was frustrated. Ambler didn’t want to make it worse, so he spoke carefully. “I’m trying to understand how she came to be speaking with her husband and what she told him.” Ambler recalled his first meeting with Simon Dean when he’d told him his wife and McNulty were most likely together. Did he already know that at the time? Or did Ambler reveal that his wife was with another man and could that have led to Sandra Dean’s death? Might he be responsible for her murder?
Ambler adjusted himself on his own uncomfortable chair. “Could her husband have killed her?”
McNulty frowned. “The only one I know didn’t kill her is me.” He looked at Ambler curiously. “Where did that come from?”
Ambler told him what he’d said to Simon Dean.
“I don’t think it was like that with him. She felt sorry for him, like she wronged him. If she thought he’d kill her, why would she go home to him? That’s what she was trying to do. And who killed the guy in New York?”
“How did her husband know where she was?”
“As far as I know, he didn’t. From what I heard of the phone call, she let him think she was in the city. How would he know where she was?”
“That’s what I asked you.”
McNulty shook his head and looked quizzically at Ambler. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Ray. I have great faith in you.” He leaned back and spread himself out again as best he could in the chair he sat in. “You’re wasting your time. If I knew why Sandi was killed, that would help. I don’t. She was scared something or someone would catch up with her. Someone she wrote about in her journal? Someone from her past? I don’t know.” He leaned toward Ambler. “Are you catching my drift? I don’t know what the fuck happened!”
A knock on the door and it opened; David Levinson stuck his head in. “Your turncoat attorney here. You’re on your way up the river, McNulty, figuratively speaking.” Levinson chuckled, his usual cheerful self. “Don’t worry, pal. I’ll get you out if it’s the last thing I do.” He took a moment to glance about the query room. His tone changed then to a kind of resonating baritone, a courtroom voice that caused you to sit up and take notice. “I’m taking my dad to visit your dad tonight. We’ll keep an eye on him. I’ll see you at the arraignment in Stamford. I’m waiving extradition. The jails are nicer in Connecticut.”
Ambler walked out with David Levinson leaving McNulty behind. In front of the precinct house, Levinson hailed a cab and told Ambler he’d drop him at the library. On the way downtown, Levinson said, “My dad and Kevin McNulty went underground together during the red scare witch hunt days in the fifties. Neither Brian nor I saw our fathers for two years. We have a common mistrust of the state. He won’t let on—tough guys don’t cry. He’s scared. He believes he’s doomed.”
“Is he?”
“We’ll try some things, establish an alibi for the time of the murder if we can, poke some holes in the case the police are building, dispute the basis of the charges against him. I don’t know what makes for a murder conviction in Connecticut. In the Bronx, he’d most likely walk.”
“What would be different?”
“Juries. Community standards. I don’t know the cops in Stamford. I don’t know the ADAs. To people up there, I’m a slick city lawyer. He’d do better with a local attorney. But a murder trial is expensive, twenty grand or more at the low end. He’s stuck with me.”
Ambler stared out the cab window at Central Park sliding past. A golden haze hung over the park. The trees had mostly turned, the leaves varying shades of yellow, some brown, a stunning reddish orange here and there. “What kind of evidence do they have?”
“He was with her. She’s dead. He ran. Throw in some forensic bullshit. His fingerprints will be in the hotel room, his DNA on her. It’s enough to convince some people. We’ll see what we get in discovery.”
After Levinson dropped him at the library, Ambler moped through the afternoon trying to get some work done. This included a screening interview with a researcher who’d applied to use the collection of a defunct paperback publisher of detective novels and adventure fiction in the 1950s. He did the interview, set her up with boxes of correspondence between the editor and his stable of authors, and then browsed through auction catalogs for the rest of the day.
Mike Cosgrove called right before he left work. “The guys in Nassau want to know what they should do with the parrot.”
Ambler had no idea what to do with the parrot. “I guess it belongs to Carolyn. She’s the only heir.” He paused. “Hold on. I think I can help you out.… I’ll call you back.”
Ambler wanted to see Sandra’s email correspondence with Dillard Wainwright, which might be on her laptop. Simon most likely had her laptop and would probably not give it to him. Now he had an idea. He disconnected with Mike and called the cell phone number he had for Andrea Eagan.
“Oh, hello,” she said, her tone stilted, almost a whisper, and after a pause, “I didn’t expect to hear from you.” She lowered her voice even more. “Can I call you back?” He’d started to tell her why he was calling and hesitated. “It won’t be long—” Her tone warned him she wanted him to understand what she meant without telling him.
He did have a glimmering. “Sure. My number—”
“I have your number,” she said so quietly there was almost no sound.
When she was gone, he didn’t know what to do with himself. The questions he wanted to ask her were stuck in his head, blocking any other thoughts. He must have been staring into space for some time. When he looked up, Adele was in the doorway.
“Let�
��s go,” she said.
He didn’t know what she meant. The day had been crazy and his brain was fried; then, he remembered. It was Friday evening. They were taking Johnny for pizza and a movie. He hemmed and hawed. He’d called Andrea from his desk phone and wanted to wait for her phone call, afraid that if he didn’t talk to Andrea now, he might not get the chance. Strangely, he was reluctant to tell Adele for whom he was waiting.
“Well?” Adele’s hand was on her hip, an ominous sign.
“I need to wait for a phone call. Can you hang on a few minutes?”
“I can. I don’t know if Denise can. It’s her Friday night, too, and she can’t leave Johnny alone. Who’s the call from?”
He knew she’d ask. She had an uncanny way of knowing when he didn’t want to tell her something. He gave up and told her. She grumbled but said she’d pick up Johnny, and they’d meet him at the pizza place. He watched her walk away, unhurried, erect, the gentle sway of her hips. She had that way, too, of knowing how to help him when he needed help.
Andrea called a few minutes later. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want Simon to overhear me. Something about you drives him straight up a wall. He was angry that I let you take Sandi’s mother’s papers. He went storming out to his lawyer’s to try to get a court order to get them back.”
Ambler was surprised and not surprised. Simon had turned on him because of McNulty. “We have lawyers, too. I don’t think we’ll need to give up the papers.”
“I think his lawyer told him that. He said he’d get them from you himself. He might. He’s like that.”
“When I first met Simon, I found him an easygoing guy, if maybe a bit straitlaced and old fashioned.” Ambler paused. “Murders have ramifications. I don’t blame him for lashing out when he’s suffering so much.”
“I guess.”
He told her about Jayne Galloway’s parrot.
“Carolyn would love to have the parrot,” she sounded girlish, excited for Carolyn; then she paused. “Simon would have a cow. Let me think about what I can do.”
Ambler moved on to the real reason he’d called. “Do you remember I asked you about Dillard Wainwright?” She did, so he told her about the emails between Wainwright and Sandra Dean. “He’s disappeared. I’m hoping something on Sandra’s laptop will help me find him. I was hoping you’d ask Simon for me. That doesn’t seem like much of a plan after what you’ve told me.”