by Con Lehane
Liz was drunk—angry and despondent both.
“John is worried about you.”
She focused her bleary eyes on Ambler. “Poor son of a bitch. Ain’t he got enough to worry about?”
Searching for Liz through old haunts in the East Village brought back memories, so he’d almost come to expect that when he found her she’d be the Liz he’d loved so long ago. On an East Village street, he passed a thin girl with black hair, big eyes, red lips, and alabaster skin, a dead ringer for Liz when she was young. So taken was Ambler by the resemblance, he stopped and stared and almost spoke to the girl.
Liz wasn’t ready to talk about John, but with prodding and the price of a couple of drinks he got her to focus by talking about his latest visit—John had put on some weight, most of it muscle. She nodded, her eyes still locked on his. Seeing into the past? Seeing into the future, for all he knew. When he stopped talking, and she sat with her head slightly bent, staring into the space in front of her, he caught a glimpse of her faded beauty. Her prettiness had always been plaintive. Nothing about her said good-time girl. Instead, she sucked your heart right out of you with vulnerability and sadness. What struck Ambler was that it was still there, the plaintive beauty.
“Tell John I’m okay, that I’m doin’ good.” When she turned to face Ambler there were tears in her eyes. “Or tell him the truth. I don’t want him to see me like this. I never did.”
“He doesn’t blame you.”
“He don’t have to,” said Liz, clinging to her glass of amber liquid like it was a life preserver.
* * *
Mike Cosgrove began his workweek reading the medical examiner’s report on James Donnelly for the third time. Nothing in it led anywhere. The man had two bullet wounds to the head. The angle of the first one suggested he’d turned his head before he was shot so the bullet entered under his chin, its trajectory upward, through his mouth into his brain. He turned to his left and was shot on that side. The ME said the gun was in the shooter’s left hand. If the same held true for Yates—he was shot on the left side of his head—it would reinforce the connection between the murders, and they’d know the shooter was left-handed.
Everything pointed to the murders being connected, except something concrete—not a single piece of concrete anything. The only witness to the first murder was Friar Tuck, the library director. If he could describe the assailant, they’d have something to show the girls in the park who witnessed the Yates murder but who were too traumatized by it to recall anything. If he had a picture or even a composite to show them, it might jar something loose. He didn’t trust the friar, despite Ambler’s thoughts on the subject. He’d been waiting to reinterview him until they finished running a check on him. But he was thinking he might not wait any longer.
Although he wouldn’t say so, Ray had latched on to the case, not surprising since everything happened right under his nose. But there was the problem of him protecting his friends, holding back information he thought the police wouldn’t understand. Before you know it, you’ve altered the landscape, like driving a bulldozer through the crime scene. He couldn’t tell him to butt out. There you go. That’s the problem with cops having friends. You make allowances for them, and soon you’re not doing your job right. The way priests take vows; that’s how it should be with cops. You wanna join the force, you take a vow of friendlessness.
He called across the squad room to his partner and told him he was headed to the library to reinterview Harry Larkin. Ford’s job was to put together the days in the life of James Donnelly.
He called ahead to make an appointment, so Larkin was waiting for him in his office, a nervous wreck, his paw clammy when they shook hands, sweat beading on his forehead, his eyelashes fluttering a mile a minute. Cosgrove had suspects break down and confess who didn’t look as anxiety-ridden as this guy did. What the hell was he worried about? He couldn’t have shot Donnelly, gotten behind the desk, and shot at himself.
“Mr. Larkin, I know this is a disruption to your work, and I apologize for that. I don’t want you to think I’m questioning you again because I didn’t believe you the first time around. That’s not the case. In reinterviewing people, even if we ask the same questions, we sometimes find the answers are different. People mention something they didn’t think of the first time, or they remember something differently, or they provide fuller answers when the pressure isn’t so intense, and in the case of a murder, that pressure can be pretty heavy. So we understand each other?”
Harry nodded the entire time Cosgrove spoke, not taking his eyes off his face, about as relaxed as if someone were holding a gun on him.
“Do you recall the sequence of events? For instance, how long were you in your office before Donnelly arrived?”
“Not long, less than an hour.”
“How long after Donnelly came through the door did the gunman come through?”
“Right away.”
“Wouldn’t someone either knock or need an access card to open the door?”
“Yes.”
“Did the person knock?”
“No.”
“Use an access card?”
Larkin took some time answering. “I suppose. It’s possible he came in before the door completely closed behind Mr. Donnelly, or the door didn’t click shut.”
“You said ‘he.’ The killer was a man?”
Harry’s eyelashes stopped fluttering. “I assumed it was a man. I don’t know.”
“What was the assailant wearing?”
“I don’t think I saw. Dark clothing. A hat.”
“What was Donnelly wearing?”
Larkin didn’t remember. “A tie, I think.”
“Anything else?” Cosgrove smiled.
Larkin didn’t get the joke. “A jacket, not a suit. He had a beard. He didn’t have a hat.”
“You said he’d been in a day or two before. What did he want?”
“I think I told you. He wanted access to one of our collections that wasn’t open to the public yet.”
“What collection was that?”
“The Yates collection.”
Cosgrove went methodically through the rest of his questions. After the initial interview, he’d written Larkin’s answers as best he remembered in the murder book. He’d compare those answers to the ones he got today. Really, he wasn’t looking for contradictions. Witness observations weren’t reliable. He wanted to open the guy up. Larkin had to have seen more than he said he did. He could have repressed it. He could be holding out. Sometimes, being in a different frame of mind changed what someone remembered seeing. It could also be he was afraid—told to keep his mouth shut or he’d be next. That kind of threat happened with drug killings and gang killings. He didn’t see it in a library killing, though he could be wrong. Library killings didn’t have much of a track record.
“It’s likely Mr. Donnelly saw the shooter’s face. Did he say anything, utter a sound, like surprise or recognition?”
“Not that I recall.” Larkin never took his eyes off him.
Long before he got to the end of his questioning, Cosgrove knew he wouldn’t get anything. He considered getting tough, but held back because he thought the guy was too smart to fall for any tricks he could think of at the moment. Still, he couldn’t let go. He sat and looked at the man expectantly, watching him squirm.
After a few minutes, Harry spoke, his voice cracking. “Is there anything else you want, sir?”
What the hell? Something in the guy’s manner reminded him of what Ray said about him—a former priest, an ethical person. “You used to be a priest—”
“Yes?” Harry leaned forward.
Cosgrove sat back. “I’m curious. I’m a … I was … I am a Catholic. Not a very good one, I guess. I was wondering—”
“Why I left the priesthood?” He seemed to take an interest in the question. “I’m still a Catholic, “catholic” with a small c. I found myself at odds with the institutionalized church. Your ambivalence about being a
Catholic, I suspect, comes from difficulties with the institutionalized church, too, rather than with the fundamentals of belief.”
“That’s a little deep for me.” Cosgrove cleared his throat. “Philosophical differences, that’s it, not anything else?’
“What do you mean anything else?”
Cosgrove’s answer was a hard glare. “I’m going to level with you. I’m not going to threaten you or try to trick you—”
“Is that what you normally do?”
Cosgrove hesitated. “As a matter of fact, it’s what I do a lot of the time. The point is I’m not doing it here.” He felt the heat at the back of his neck and heard his voice rising, so he took a breath. “The truth is you know more than you’re saying. I want to know what you’re holding back.”
Harry waited a long moment. “I knew Nelson Yates and James Donnelly years ago. I was a priest at the time.”
“You didn’t want to tell us about that?”
“I didn’t see what it had to do with what happened. I was a college chaplain. Anything I learned in that role would be confidential.”
“You’re telling me if someone confessed a murder, you’re not going to tell me?”
“Officer—I’m sorry I don’t know how to address you—I don’t hear confessions anymore. I haven’t in years, so the question is moot.”
“Call me Mike. Maybe someone told you something that would be helpful. What if I arrest you for withholding evidence?” He drilled Harry with an iron glare.
“I still wouldn’t talk about it. However, no one confessed a murder to me … Mike.”
“I’m not saying that. You know something.”
“What do I know?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you know I know it?”
“That’s why you’re not under arrest … Harry.”
It was another fruitless interview. That was okay. You had to do a bushel of those to get to the ones that did produce something. Cosgrove sat on a bench at the bottom of the staircase above the entrance rotunda and watched the crowds entering and leaving the building, a constant flow. When you ran out of leads, you needed to be careful of wishful thinking, differentiate what you actually knew from something you wished you knew. He took out his pad and began a new list: what he knew for sure; whom he needed to interview again.
* * *
“It’s a lunchtime talk at the library,” Ambler said. “I’m not competing with your book.” Max had found out Ambler was planning a talk on Nelson Yates and complained to Harry.
“The book won’t be finished for a couple of years. What you’re doing is sensationalism, using the poor man’s death for your own purposes.”
“Which are?”
Max Wagner’s beady eyes got beadier; his jaw jutted out farther. “I don’t know … to disrupt my biography project.”
“How about I want to find out who killed Nelson?”
Max’s eyes were squinted almost closed. “The police will take care of that. Don’t tell me you think you’re going to solve the crime.”
“I’m not going to tell you anything. But I would like to ask you something.”
“Don’t think you’re going to interrogate me like you’ve done with everyone else.” He folded his arms across his chest.
“Was James Donnelly writing a biography of Nelson?”
“How would I know?”
“Nelson might have told you or Donnelly might have told you himself. The question is did you know?”
Wagner laughed. He might have meant to sound contemptuous but it came out a nervous cackle. “Nice try. I said I won’t be interrogated.”
“Let’s try something else. Do you and Mary Yates still have a deal or did that fall through when Nelson died?”
Max began gathering up papers from desk he was working at and stuffing them into file folders, putting the folders into the archive box on the table in front of him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. More to the point, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m busy. I’ve had enough of this. Tell Harry—”
“Nelson didn’t want you to write his biography.”
Wagner paused. Where he was at first shoving fistfuls of papers into the file in front of him, he now opened the file, rearranged and straightened the papers he’d shoved into it. “That’s ridiculous. Nelson was senile. If he said that, he forgot he did two minutes later.”
“He seemed pretty sure to me. He said you’d defame him.”
Wagner frowned. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. If Nelson was worried about what I’d write, he wasn’t worried about untruth.” His voice rose. “It’s the truth he was afraid of. The book’s going to be a blockbuster, shocking, compelling. But it won’t be the story Nelson Yates would have told.”
Chapter 12
“It’s stress,” Maximilian Wagner told Laura Lee after an awkward lovemaking session. She got furious when he didn’t stay around long enough for her to finish what he’d started.
“Stress, my ass.” Laura Lee pushed his hand from her shoulder and turned her back to him.
“I’ve got a lot on my mind, sweetheart. Ray Ambler grilled me for a half hour today. He thinks I killed Jim Donnelly and Nelson.”
“Did you?”
“That’s not funny. He keeps digging around, one thing leads to another, and you don’t know what he comes up with.”
“Maybe he’ll find Emily Yates.”
“That would be something. Somebody better find her soon.”
“Hiring a private detective is a waste of money. Nelson already did that, remember?”
“They have more sophisticated tools now.”
“You can do the book without her. Make something up. Isn’t that what you usually do?”
He sat up in a rage, and grabbed for her hair, but caught himself, her hair bunched in his hand, before he yanked it. “You bitch—”
Laura Lee rolled over and sat up, shoving her face close to his, the sheet falling away, her breasts brushing his arm. She leaned toward him, her teeth snapping. “Your gangster upbringing is showing.” She pulled back the sheet and lowered her face to his lap. Sighing, he lay back.
In a moment, he was rock hard and she mounted him. He gritted his teeth, clenching his toes, steeling himself, afraid to come until she did. When she did finally, in wave after wave, at the top of one of the waves, she reared back and slapped him hard in the face. In a moment, she shuddered to a stop, fell on top of him, and pressed her mouth hard against his before rolling off him. He shook off the slap and cleared his head. She’d hit him right at the peak of his climax.
Later, after Laura Lee smoked a cigarette, a habit she refused to give up, he paced as best he could around the small bedroom. “I’m on edge,” he said, sitting on the bed beside her. “I have this feeling of dread. I think about the murders.… I don’t know what I think.”
“You’re afraid you’re next.” Laura Lee smiled.
* * *
Adele noticed the young woman before she saw Johnny walking beside her. She was pretty in a completely natural way, little or no makeup, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a faded lightweight leather jacket and worn, tight-fitting jeans. Her face was pale, little color in her cheeks so the skin was an unworldly white, and she was thin, alarmingly thin. It was late afternoon, overcast, and cool enough for a jacket. Adele followed them for a block getting up her nerve. Finally, she approached the woman as she waited to cross Ninth Avenue.
“Hello,” she said brightly. “I’m sorry to bother you. I’ve met your son. He’s shined my shoes. I wanted to introduce myself. He’s a wonderful boy.”
Johnny looked up at her with an amazed expression of expectation. Whether he expected wondrous things or unmitigated disaster was unclear. The woman’s face showed surprise, more than surprise; she stared at Adele incredulously and spoke not a word.
“Hello, Johnny,” Adele said. “I’ll need some shoes shined again soon.”
He stared at her, s
peechless also.
When the light changed, mother and son crossed the street, leaving Adele on the corner watching them. After a few seconds, when the walk light was blinking red, she charged across the street. When she reached them on the other side, the woman turned to face her.
“I don’t want you around my child,” she said. “I don’t know what you want from him. He has all the mother he needs.”
Adele’s stomach sank. Johnny’s mother couldn’t have hurt her more if she’d shoved a knife into her chest. Fighting for breath, she stammered. The woman watched without sympathy.
“He was on the street, alone, at night,” she said finally. “I only wanted to watch out for him.” She needed to speak carefully, if she wasn’t going to alienate the boy’s mother. “I didn’t know what his situation was.” She looked at Johnny and back at his mother. “I’m glad to see he’s well cared for. He’s such a good boy. I’m sure you’re proud of him.” Watching her eyes, Adele could see her waver. “You can never go wrong praising a child to a mother,” Raymond told her once. “He’s so self-sufficient, too. How old is he?”
“Eight,” she said. When the hardness left her eyes, replaced by a softer expression, she seemed sad, more than sad, really, she seemed wounded and vulnerable from the wound. It was almost too much to hope for, but she began talking. “You’re the woman from the library, aren’t you?” Not waiting for an answer, she said. “I worked there once, on 42nd Street, at the main library—”
“Are you a librarian?” Adele’s eagerness got out in front of her. The brightness left the woman’s face. She shouldn’t have said it.
“No, nothing like that, it was a low-level job, a library clerk. Waitressing paid better.”
“Probably pays better than a librarian, too.”
Johnny’s mother smiled. “I’m a singer. Waitressing pays the bills.”
“Oh, wow. I’ve always wished I could be a singer, but I can’t carry a tune. I’m hopeless.”