Revolver (23 page)

“This is a courtesy, Sonya,” Jim says. “Nothing more. I just want to let you know we're going after him for this.”

“Hear me out. Five minutes is all I need.”

It's almost closing time at the Palm. Sonya wanted to go somewhere private, but Jim purposefully chose a public place, just to make sure things remained civil. Once they arrived Sonya insisted on ordering drinks, even though alcohol is the last thing Jim wants worming through his bloodstream. He needs to be more clearheaded than he's been in his entire life. Christ, what was he thinking? He shouldn't even be here with Sonya. He should be rousing Aisha from sleep and preparing to take this raping, murdering motherfucker down.

“Two Stoli martinis, very dry, three olives,” she tells the bartender.

“One martini for her,” Jim says. “I want a tonic and lime.”

“Is this Jim Walczak, turning down a free drink from the City of Philadelphia?”

She's trying to keep it light, like it's all no big deal,
hah hah
won't you look silly in the morning. But her eyes tell a different story. They're predator eyes. She wants to sink her teeth into Jim and give it a snap and a jerk.

“The only thing I'm going to suggest,” Jim says, “is that you contact your attorney. For both of you.”

She moves in close. “I need to explain something to you.”

“Just tell me one thing, Sonya. Does the mayor know?”

She ignores the question. “Johnny had nothing to do with this. The only thing I'm guilty of is protecting a young man's future. When that girl turned up dead, Johnny told me everything. That he was talking to her in the club that night. He wanted to turn himself in for questioning!”

“He should have. You should have told him to talk to me.”

“And have his name all over the fucking papers? Nuking his future? No, I don't think so. You know how this works, Jim. It's like chewing gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe. It sticks to you all day long.”

Jim shakes his head. “This is a
murder,
Sonya. You can't go playing around with this like it's some bond issue or whatever the hell it is you people do.”

Sonya's martini arrives and she takes a healthy swallow. Jim watches her carefully. Here is a mother whose son is about to be accused of one of the most horrific crimes in recent memory. Yet she's out here, sipping her Stoli like there's nothing to worry about. He'd love to see one little tremor, one tiny tell. Her cool resolve worries him. This were him, with Sta
ś
or Cary in this kind of hot water? Jim would be jumping out of his own skin.

“You knew all along,” Jim says. “The mayor didn't send you. You asked for the assignment. To protect your kid!”

“
Mea culpa,
Jim. And don't pretend you wouldn't do the same. But that's not all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ever wonder how
you
caught this case? You weren't next on the rotation, were you? Hmmm.”

“Are you saying you got me on this case?”

“Well, no, I don't have that kind of power. But when the horrible news broke, I immediately thought of you—my favorite homicide detective. And I made a simple suggestion to the mayor.”

“After you spent a long night cleaning up after your son.”

Sonya frowns. “You'd better watch what you say, Detective. You're tap-dancing with a slander lawsuit.”

Jim rests his head in his hand, elbow on the bar. “Look, Sonya, it doesn't matter what you say, I'm going after him for this.”

She locks eyes with him. “I'd offer to blow you in exchange for your courtesy, Detective, but that would be a little creepy. Even for me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You still haven't figured it out, have you? I guess that makes sense. You were only twelve when my uncle died. Suppose your mom never told you.”

“Your uncle? Who the fuck is your uncle?”

“His name was Stan Walczak. He was a Philadelphia police officer, killed in the line of duty.”

She's either drunk or insane. Most likely insane. Bringing his father into this, trying to save her own son.

“John is your nephew,” she continues. “You bring him in, you're destroying your own family.”

“Jesus Christ, Sonya, this is a new low, even for you,” Jim snarls. “I know my family.
You're
not my fuckin' family.”

“Jim, for a smart man, there's so much you don't know. I'll bet you never even thought about where your name came from.”

“What?”

Was she honestly suggesting that he was named after “Sonny Jim” Kaminski? That the union boss and his father were siblings? No, sorry, can't be. Though something tugs at his memory. One afternoon, a few months before his father was killed—a man stopped by the house. A guy in a fedora, nice clothes. He and Jim's pop went for a walk. Pop came back angry. When Jim asked about the guy, his pop snarled and said he was nobody.
A gangster.

Sonya leans into Jim now, her lips to his ear. “I don't care what you believe,
cousin,
” she says. “But if you bring in my son,
your nephew,
I will destroy you.”

Jim takes this moment to suck in some air, clear his thoughts for a moment.
Don't let her taunt you, Inner Jim. You're leading the most important homicide investigation of your life—Outer Jim needs to be in charge here.
But it's hard to keep his composure. The entire world seems to be spinning a little faster now. He feels a strange lightness in his head. Like he's been in an accident and the shock is preventing him from remembering what the hell just happened.

“Go right ahead,” he finally says. “You've got nothing on me.”

“Really? Then tell me what you've been doing visiting a certain halfway house on Erie Avenue for the last three days in a row.”

A cold little ball forms in Jim's stomach.

“Don't make me do this, Jim. For your family's sake.”

“Do what, Sonya?” he says robotically, because he already knows what she's going to say. She's been orchestrating this from the beginning. Probably before the body was even discovered in that stairwell. Arranging the pieces on the board so her son would come out the winner no matter what. Asking for Jim—secret cousin Jim—to be assigned to the case. Dogging it every step of the way. Ears in the department and eyes on the street. Watching Jim's every move, so that if he got close to John DeHaven she'd be ready. Only, the people watching Jim saw something else, didn't they.

“I have photographs,” she says quietly. “Friday morning, Friday night, Saturday morning. Saturday night…Do you want to take the stand and explain why you were visiting a parolee's halfway house all weekend long?”

Jim stares at her.

“Especially considering that parolee is now dead?”

The funeral dinner at Sta
ś
's house comes to its slow, awkward end. Nobody wants to be here, but nobody seems to be in a hurry to separate, either.

Cary is absolutely and embarrassingly shitfaced. Jean makes excuses as she tries to pry him away from the small table serving as the bar, which excuses do nothing to disguise that he's calling her a harpy and a controlling cunt. The Captain sits in the corner, either lost in his own reveries or astral-projecting his body to another place. Will seems all twitchy about being away from his expensive toys in his downtown lair, so Claire says her goodbyes and heads back to Center City.

Which means it's Audrey's turn to go.

She asks Barry if he minds giving her and her grandma Rose a ride back to her place, explaining that she wants to stay with her grandmother for a while, make sure she's okay. Barry's cool with that—which half-stuns Audrey. Usually when a guy puts up with an all-day family event he's looking for a little reward for his labors. Barry, though, just rolls with it. Kind smile on his face, too.

Good on you, Captain Save-a-Ho.

The ride from Jenkintown doesn't take very long. Just down Route 73 to the Boulevard to Harbison, then right on Torresdale and up one block to Bridge. Grandma Rose sits in the back, nervously, peering over Barry's shoulder to make sure he's going the right way. Audrey chokes down a couple of
Driving Miss Daisy
jokes. (Again, not the time, not the place.) Barry pulls to the side while Audrey helps Rose out of the car and across the street. Audrey runs back to kiss Barry on the cheek, tells him she'll call later.

“Wow, a kiss,” Barry says. “You'd better watch out. You're getting personal.”

“Kiss my ass,” she says with a sly smile.

Back inside, Audrey helps Grandma settle on the couch. She's not grief-stricken. She's not trembling anymore. She just seems weary. Audrey can understand. It's been an exhausting day.

“You okay, Grandma?”

“I'm fine, I'm fine.”

Audrey excuses herself to go pee—for real this time. But she's a little spooked when she pauses halfway up the staircase to glance at the framed portraits on the wall. Grandpop Stan. Her father. Sta
ś
. Two down, one to go. If you're a policeman on this wall and your name happens to be some derivative of
Stanisław,
well then, you're shit out of luck.

Only, Sta
ś
wouldn't kill himself. She
knows
this. Bethanne knows it, too. If someone killed him…who? And why? And who were those strangers at the funeral? Once she's back downstairs, Audrey sits down next to the only source she has left. Her grandmother—the only person she knows with useful memories.

“Grandma, do you remember the lady Dad was talking to after the funeral?”

“Who, sweetie?”

“Tall, dark-haired cougar, Christian Louboutin pumps, about my mom's age. Do you know who she is?”

“Oh, you should talk to your father.”

“Well, I tried, Grandma, and he's not exactly gushing with information. So I'm asking you.”

Grandma Rose sighs. She looks at Audrey to see if there's any chance. “She's your father's cousin.”

“How come I've never seen her before?”

“No, no. On his father's side.”

Now, Audrey is no genealogy expert, but for her father to have a cousin, Grandpop Stan would have needed a sibling. And that would be impossible, because Grandpop Stan was an orphan. No siblings, an immigrant mom who died giving birth to him, and an alcoholic father who died eight years later.

Grandma Rose catches Audrey staring off into space, trying to do the ancestral math.

She laughs. “Don't believe everything you read in the papers, kid.”

Then she rises, touches her thighs as if steadying herself, then walks to the stairs. “I've got something to show you. Wait here.”

After the first five minutes, Audrey thinks maybe Grandma went upstairs to use the bathroom. You know, with a book. After five minutes more, Audrey begins to suspect that Grandma forgot whatever it was she went upstairs to fetch, then lay down and fell asleep. And by the quarter-hour mark, Audrey begins to fear the worst. That the strain of burying her firstborn grandson was too much for her big Italian heart.

But no, here she comes back down the stairs, carrying a scrapbook Audrey's never seen before.

“Your grandfather would have a fit if he knew I kept this,” Grandma says. “It's the only picture I have of the two of them.”

Audrey leans over her grandma's shoulder as she flips through the pages. The old cellophane crackles with each turn. At first, Audrey can't parse what the hell she's looking at. Yellowed newspaper advertisements, black-and-white burlesque photos. Then she stops on a raven-haired dancer with a bosom like twin torpedoes.

“Can you believe that?”

Those eyes. That smile.

Holy crap.

“That's not…that's not you, is it?”

“Time's a bitch, isn't it?”

“And you give me shit about my tattoos?” Audrey asks.

“Tattoos are hideous. Men don't want to see tattoos. They want to see your skin.”

“So wait wait. You were a stripper?”

Grandma recoils as if she's been slapped. “Audrey! I was what they call an
exotic dancer
. No one saw anything else except your grandfather.”

“Where the hell is this? Looks pretty swank, Grandma.”

“Midtown. That's where all the hot clubs were after the war.”

Audrey reaches over and flips back a page or two to look at the addresses on the clippings. Yeah, sure enough—Twelfth Street, Thirteenth Street, Spruce, Pine, Camac, the heart of what is now called the Gayborhood. Pretty much right where Will and Claire chose to shack up. She wishes Sta
ś
were alive right now for many reasons, but mostly so she could tell him that just a few short blocks away from McGillin's, Grandma Rose used to shake her moneymaker.

“Jesus.”

“And here's what I wanted to show you.”

A five-by-seven black-and-white, showing a bar. Classy joint, from the looks of it. Loads of liquor along the mirrored bar. Brass foot rail. Girls in fancy-ass vintage dresses (though, duh, Audrey thinks, they weren't vintage back then) and swells in suits.

“What year was this?”

“Nineteen fifty-one,” Grandma says as she taps one of the guys in the suits. “There's your grandfather.”

Hello, Stan Walczak, you suave son of a gun you.

She taps another swell.

“And that's James. His brother. You should ask
him
what happened to your grandfather.”

On the first of May Stan Walczak and George Wildey find themselves back where they started—the scene of a riot waiting to happen.

“Yeah, let's go to the top brass, let's report it,” Stan mocks. “Wonderful idea.”

“Hey,” George says, “at least they let us keep the leather jackets.”

Crazy thing is, their meeting with the chief inspector two weeks ago seemed like an unqualified success. The CI listened to their stories, with George taking the lead and Stan chiming in with corroborating observations. There seemed to be a team of white heroin pushers selling huge amounts all over North Philadelphia. Worse still, this team seemed to have access to police files. They knew where to make the deals without worry about police involvement. If they weren't rogue cops themselves, then they appeared to have help from someone within the department.

The CI was by turns horrified and intrigued. Stan and George were especially pleased when he assured the officers that he'd look into this personally.

A week later they were bumped from the special post-riot squad and rotated back into street patrol, no explanation given. “Orders from on high.” Either there was a conspiracy, or they'd breached some kind of departmental etiquette and needed to be taught a lesson.

The last day of April they receive new orders: report to Girard College at 4 a.m. the very next morning—a Saturday. Police informants claim that Cecil B. Moore plans to lead a gang of protestors over the ten-foot wall that rings the college, so Commissioner Leary dispatches one thousand cops to guard every inch of that wall. Undeterred, Moore changes his mind and leads a roving band of picketers to march nonstop along the wall, singing “We Shall Overcome.”

Standing around in the hot sun in his leather jacket, Stan sees that the police outnumber the protestors pretty much twenty to one. “This is a load of shit,” he tells Wildey, who has to agree with him. Nothing but cops, spread out around the campus perimeter wall. Moore, a former marine with a fondness for cigars and silk suits, keeps the protestors in lockstep like a military unit. Nobody on either side is gonna step out of line, not in front of the TV cameras or newspaper guys, anyway. Wildey, meanwhile, keeps an eye out for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who's in Philadelphia for the next few days. Maybe he'll stop by the wall. “Would be pretty cool to see him.”

Day two, Sunday, is more of the same. Endless marching, singing, chanting. Wildey hears that at night, when the reporters go home, cops will chant back in response to “We Shall Overcome”—“oh no you fucking won't”—and smack their batons on the metal barricades in front of the main campus gates. There's no sign of Dr. King, much to Wildey's disappointment.

Day three, Monday, still no Dr. King. Stan's feet are killing him, an ache that seems to shoot up his legs and spine. What makes the pain worse is that all this standing around seems to be for nothing. And just when Stan thought he was finally adjusting to the last-out shift, here he is working days. When he comes home at night, he's too tired to play with Jimmy or talk to Rose for long. He forces down supper, tries to sleep, can't, has a few beers, tries again to sleep, can't, and before long it's time to report back to work.

Day four is more of the same. Stan begs for a day off—but request denied. Moore's marchers continue their endless loops around the campus. Stan begins to think he's going to spend the rest of his career guarding this stupid wall. The cops and the protestors are locked into an angry stalemate. Nobody can leave until the protestors go home, and the protestors won't go home until Girard College opens its gates to black kids.

Day six, though, Wildey surprises him. “I've been doing some digging this week and I think I've hit the mother lode.”

“What are you talking about? Digging what?”

“I've been doing some investigating on my own and I think I've got another source who'll talk to us.”

Stan's about to ask him
source for what
when he realizes that Jesus Christ, Wildey's still after the Jungle Wolves.

“We're gonna meet him tomorrow—he's over at Eastern State.”

“Your source is a con? And we're supposed to just trust him?”

“We can at least hear him out?”

“When are we supposed to do this?”

“Noon. Our badges will get us access. I've already called the prison.”

“We'll be here tomorrow.”

“No we won't,” Wildey says with a grin. “Because we'll be playing hooky.”

That night Rosie makes
goł
ą
bki,
stuffed cabbage rolls in red sauce, one of Stan's favorite meals and one that Jimmy loathes. The name refers to a Polish word for pigeon, which to Jimmy's mind makes it all the more disgusting. He sticks to the side dish of mashed potatoes and only pretends to eat the
goł
ą
bki
by cutting open the cabbage and chopping into the ground beef and rice mixture a little. He asks to be excused, which is fine with Stan because he wants to talk to Rosie alone.

“I'm taking off work tomorrow,” Stan says. “But I'm still going to work. George and I have to check on something.”

He's told her nothing about chasing white drug dealers and murderers through the Jungle. He's never brought his work home before, and he's not going to start now. She's made it clear that all she wants is for him to come home safe from his shift; the details don't matter. But he's got to tell her something, since he'll be leaving the house in his civilian clothes.

“Check on what?” Rosie asks.

Stan doesn't want to lie to her, either. The one time he did almost ended them ten years ago, and he doesn't want to be in that position ever again.

“We've got a snitch who might be able to tell us about a bunch of crimes we're trying to solve.”

Rosie nods, cuts some cabbage with the flat of her fork. “Why do you have to take off work to talk to this man?”

“He's over at Eastern State Penitentiary. We want to look like we're just old friends visiting so the other prisoners don't assume he's a rat. You understand?”

She does, and they finish their meal without another word. Stan drains the rest of his beer, pitches the empty can into the garbage, then plucks another one from the fridge and takes it to his recliner, where his
Evening Bulletin
is waiting. Upstairs, Jimmy picks at his guitar strings, the same riff over and over again. Ordinarily Stan would yell up and tell him to close his goddamned door, but he's too tired to get into it right now. He sips his beer, leans back and tells himself he's just going to close his eyes for a minute.