Saints Of New York (40 page)

Carole
Paretski was a good-looking woman. Diminutive, dark- haired, but fiery-eyed.
She looked like she carried a loaded temper and could knock you down with it if
she wished.

'Just
a legal secretary,' she said, when Parrish asked after her position at Gaines,
Maynard and Barrett. 'I went back to work when the kids hit their teens. I
needed to. I was going stir-crazy.'

They
were in a bar on Lafayette Avenue, a block or so from where she worked.

'And
how old are your kids?' Parrish asked. He knew their ages, of course, but he
wanted to get her relaxed. Talking about kids was always a way in.

'Sarah
is fourteen, Alex is a year older. And both of them are going on thirty-five,'
she added ruefully.

'Mine
are a little older,' Parrish said. 'He's twenty-two, she's twenty.'

'So
you're through the worst of it then?'

'It
doesn't stop. They're a full-time job however old they get. You don't stop
worrying about whether or not they're making the right choices. You want to
interfere, but then you just have to take a moment to look at your own life and
ask yourself if you really made such good decisions that you can pass them on.
Usually the answer is no.'

'You
are too cynical, Detective. You make a very valuable contribution to society,
and very underestimated. I understand a little of what you guys have to deal
with on a day-to-day basis, and I take my hat off to you all.'

'That's
appreciated, Ms Paretski, that really is.'

'Carole,'
she said, and then - glancing at Radick - she added, 'So what is it that you
wanted to talk to me about?'

'To
be completely honest, Carole, we wanted to talk to you about your ex-husband,
Richard.'

The
shift was immediate. Her whole demeanor and body language changed. It was
something neither Parrish nor Radick could have missed.

'What
about him?' she asked.

'You
are divorced now, correct?' 'Yes, we are divorced. Have been for three years.'

'An
amicable divorce, or was it difficult?'

'Amicable?
The divorce itself was quiet enough, I'll say that much, but definitely not
amicable.'

'You
were married for fifteen years.'

'Yes,
we were.'

'I'm
sorry to have to ask you about this, but Richard said that the divorce became
necessary because you were involved with someone else. Was that right?'

Carole
Paretski sneered, is that what he said? Christ, he's a gutless bastard isn't
he?'

'Gutless?
Why d'you say that?'

She
inhaled slowly and shook her head. 'You know something? You're married to
someone all those years and you think you know them, and then you find out that
they've been lying to you the whole time, and that you have chosen to be
completely blind.'

Parrish
looked at Radick. Radick said nothing.

'I
agreed to the divorce on the grounds of
my
adultery because that was the fastest
way to end the marriage. He refused to give me a divorce on any other basis,
and I was more than happy to agree to that to get the thing over and done
with.'

She
paused for a moment, and then looked directly at Parrish. 'Why are you here?'
she asked. 'Why are you asking me about Richard? What has he done? Has he
gotten himself into some sort of trouble again?'

'Again?'
Parrish asked.

'That
bullshit that went down back in 2002. That shit that he got into . . . You
know, right?'

Parrish
frowned.

'The
things he was supposed to have said to that girl?'

'Girl?'
Parrish asked.

Carole
Paretski sighed deeply and closed her eyes for a moment. She slowly shook her
head and looked towards the window.

'Of
course, you wouldn't know,' she said, it was never on record, was it?'

Parrish
didn't say a word.

'June
of 2002. He was accused of making provocative comments to a nine-year-old
girl. No charges were pressed. Her name
was
Marcie Holland. She was in a playground where Richard used to take Alex and
Sarah. This girl told her mother that Richard said something to her. He was
questioned at the 11th Precinct, the girl was questioned by a female police
officer in her home. It was the girl's word against Richard's, and the girl got
scared, and then her mother got scared, and nothing happened. There were no
charges, no arrest. End of story.'

'You
think he did that? You think he said things to this girl?' Parrish asked.

'I
don't know, Detective. According to Richard no, he never said a word to the
girl. He was a difficult man to live with. He was stuck in that job. He was
driven by that job, spent more time and more energy worrying about other
peoples' kids than he did his own. I hardly ever saw him, the kids saw him
less. That is how he is. He's driven by something, and he does it to the
exclusion of all else. And now . . . well, I don't know what's happening here,
but he's in trouble for something else—'

'He's
not in any trouble, Carole, he's just helping us with some enquiries about a
case that is indirectly connected to where he works.'

'Welfare?'

'Right.'

'And
if there ever was a job that one man shouldn't have, it
has
to be that one.'

'I'm
sorry, I feel like I'm missing something here. I'm listening to one half of a
conversation and trying to figure out the rest. Why do you say that?'

'Because
of the sex stuff. You know about the sex stuff, right?'

'The
sex stuff?' Parrish asked.

'Yeah,
the porn he was into. That's what I couldn't deal with. That was what tipped me
over the edge finally, why I divorced him. He said he had control over it. He
said he could handle it. He said he wasn't thinking about fucking other women .
. . other girls. I mean, they weren't kids or anything, but they were teenagers,
seventeen, eighteen, God only knows how old, but sure
as
shit
too young to be in fucking porno magazines. And all I could think about was
Sarah, but he gave me his word that he had never had thoughts like that about
his own daughter. Her friends, yes . . . Jesus, you could see his tongue on the
floor when
she
brought
her friends over. It was disgusting. It was fucking degrading.' She shuddered.
'And then that business with the nine- year-old, Marcie, my God! It went away,
but it was
so
fucking
embarrassing.'

'Did
he do anything else that got him in trouble with the law?'

'No,
nothing else. And I don't know what to say. Maybe he didn't say anything to
that little girl, and maybe it's completely normal for guys of his age to think
about sex with cheerleaders, but it's not the kind of person I am, and it's not
something that I could condone. He could come across as the most honest and
genuine guy you could imagine, and he took his job so seriously, and he brought
work home at the weekend, and he appeared to be the most caring and dedicated
guy in the world, but he could also be the most convincing liar in the world.
Little things, nothing particularly significant, but a couple of times he
looked me dead-square in the eye and told me he'd done something he'd promised
to do when I knew he hadn't. And after however many years of putting up with
him not being there I finally had enough.' She seemed flustered for a moment.
'God almighty, isn't it enough that I have the worry of him with the kids every
weekend without having to deal with this? And I don't even know what I'm
dealing with here. Why
are
you talking to me?'

Parrish
hesitated. He sensed Radick's unease. He could clearly see how agitated Carole
Paretski was, and he wondered just what lines he dared safely cross.

'Richard
knew someone who was managing a teenage girl's case a couple of years ago,' he
told Carole. 'The guy is dead now, but Richard knew him. The girl in question
was murdered back in January of last year, and we are working on unresolved and
open cases. This just happens to be one of them.'

'But
why talk to me?' she asked. 'What am I going to be able to tell you? You think
that Richard had something to do with this girl's death?'

'We
follow everything,' Parrish said. 'Doesn't matter how thin, doesn't matter how
long ago, we follow everything. We have to. You understand that from your work.
Sometimes these things look like some kind of wild chase into nowhere, but when
you wind up in court,
if
you ever wind up in court with a thing like this, then defense can pull a case
apart because there was one person you overlooked, one person you couldn't be
bothered to speak to. You know how it goes.'

For
a moment Carole Paretski seemed convinced that this was nothing more than a routine
follow-up, but then she turned towards Radick and said, 'That still doesn't
make sense. That still doesn't tell me why I would have any connection to a
welfare case that was being managed by someone who my ex-husband knew.'

'In
case Richard said anything to you about it at the time. He was working with the
guy, one of this guy's charges was murdered, and we wanted to know whether
Richard had ever spoken of it at home. It's not every day that you are
indirectly connected to an incident like this, and we have found that people
generally go home and talk about it.'

'That
doesn't make sense, Detective. The girl in question was murdered when? January
of last year? I divorced Richard three years ago.'

'Yes,
I know that,' Parrish replied, 'but you see him every weekend—'

'So
the guy that originally managed the case. When did he die?'

'December
last year.'

'And
so you're looking at him for the murder?'

'We're
looking at every possibility, Ms Paret—'

'Don't
bullshit me, Detective,' she interjected. The fiery eyes were alight. 'Don't
piss on me and tell me it's raining, okay? You're straight with me, I'll be
straight with you. What do you want to know, and why do you want to know it?'

Parrish
was silent a moment or two. He looked right at her and she returned his gaze
unflinchingly. She looked ready to put him through the mill and kick whatever
was left over down a storm drain.

'There
was a rumor at his workplace that he might have been involved in possession of
potentially underage pornography—'

'A
rumor? Would've been more than a rumor. I said what I said.'

'How
bad?'

Carole
Paretski frowned and shook her head. 'How bad does it have to be to be
considered bad in your eyes? All of it's bad as far as I'm concerned.
Disgusting. The amount of money that's involved in that industry could most
likely rescue every third world country out of starvation and disease. It's
fucking shameful if you ask me.'

'The
things you see in the store. The retail magazines, even the stuff they have on
display in sex shops . . . I'm not talking about that kind of thing. I'm
talking about juveniles, girls under sixteen—'

'I
couldn't tell you. Girls of twelve can look sixteen . . . depends on cosmetics,
hairstyles, all sorts of things.'

Parrish
thought of Rebecca and Kelly - the painted nails, the cut hair.

'How
did he react when you told him you wanted a divorce because he neglected the
family?'

'He
said he'd try harder. He said he'd be a better husband, a better father, but
we'd had fights before, and he'd said the same things before.'

'And
how long before you divorced him had you been aware of his interest in
pornography?'

'Months,
a year maybe. I found some of it in the attic, but I guess that's what really
did it. You get the feeling that even if you repaired it, even if you tried to
make it work, then you're going to be working on your own. The porno thing? At
first he said he couldn't help the porno thing, and then he said he had it
under control. He tried to make me think that people who were into that kind of
thing had some kind of mental difficulty, and it wasn't something that they
could just stop and start as and when they liked.'