Saints Of New York (5 page)

'Why did you
become a cop, Frank?'

 
'Why did you become a shrink?'

'I'm not
comfortable with that term.'

'Like I'm
comfortable with being called a cop?'

'Okay . . . why
did you become a police officer?'

'Why did you
become a headpeeper?'

'Very good,
Frank. You seriously want to spend the next month playing games every day?'

'No, not really.
I want to spend the next month solving murders.'

'Well, be that
as it may, Frank, the fact is that unless you continue to see me on a regular
basis then you're going to be suspended. That means either you can see me and
continue to work, or you can refuse to see me and stay home. Which is it going
to be?'

'The first one.'

'Good. So - I'm
going to put my cards on the table. The particular aspect of therapy that I
focus on relates, in the main, to parental relationships. We all know who your
father was. We know his record and his achievements, and we know that he was a
significant figure in your early life. This is something I want particularly to
address with you.'

'You want me to
talk about my father?'

'I do.'

'What if I want
to talk about my mother?'

'Then
there will be an opportunity to do so but, in the first instance, I will
acknowledge you politely and ask you to talk about your father.' 'Seriously?'

'Seriously.'

'You don't want
to know about my father.'

'Yes I do,
Frank, I want to know everything you remember about him.'

'And you think
this will have some value to me?'

'I do.'

'Well
I
can tell
you
it won't.'

'Naturally, I
can't force you to talk about him, but I must stress that progress along that
line will be my main interest.'

'And I will
acknowledge you politely, and then tell you to go fuck yourself.'

'Okay, let's
start somewhere else. Tell me why you became a police officer?'

'So I could find
out all the things that my father never told me.'

'Go on.'

'Okay, Doctor
Griffin . . . Marie . . . you don't mind if I call you Marie . . . You
really
want to
know about him?'

'Yes.'

'Well, my old
man was a ballbreaker. He was OCCB.'

'OCCB?'

'Organized Crime
Control Bureau. He was there when they got The Cigar in 1979.'

'The Cigar?'

'A nickname.
That's what they called Carmine Galante, 'cause he always had a cigar in his
mouth. Even when he was shot dead he had a fucking cigar in his mouth.'

'Did your father
tell you about this?'

'Sure. He told
me all sorts of things.'

'About the work
he did against organized crime?'

'Yes.'

'You want to
tell me about that? Tell me about The Cigar?'

'What's to
tell?'

'Whatever you
like.'

'I'll tell you
something about the famous John Parrish. How about that? How about we go
straight to the jugular if that's what you really, really want.'

'Yes.'

'My father was a
badass, through and through—' 'To you?'

'To pretty much
everyone.'

'He's dead now,
right? When did he die?'

'Sixteen years
ago. End of September 1992.'

'And your
mother?'

'She died in
January of '93.'

'How was their
marriage?'

'He treated her
like a princess. He worshipped her.'

'You have
brothers and sisters?'

'No.'

'So did he want
you to be a police officer?'

'He wanted me to
stay quiet and keep out of the way.'

'You don't think
he loved you?'

'He loved me the
way all Irish-American fathers love their kids. When I did good he didn't say a
word, when I fucked up he gave me a good thrashing.'

'And if he were
alive now, sitting right here, what would you say to him?'

'I'd tell him to
go fuck himself.'

'Even though he
was a decorated officer?'

'You checked up
on him.'

'Briefly.'

'Then why give
me the impression you don't know who the hell I'm talking about?'

'I need
you
to talk,
Frank, that's what this is all about.'

'Oh yeah? If
you're gonna put your cards face-up, then put them face-up. Don't bullshit me.
Say, "Hey, Frank, your father was some big dick on campus wasn't he? He
got Christ-only- knows how many citations, and by the time he was gunned down
in the fucking street the Mayor of New York was all set to give him the
Congressional Medal of Honor." Tell me that. Tell me what you know, and
then I can fill in the gaps. If we're gonna get up close and personal here,
Doctor Griffin - Marie - then we might as well be playing in the same freakin'
ballpark.'

'Sure.'

'Good. So let's
start over.'

'Your
father was a decorated cop. He was involved in the Organized Crime Control
Bureau and the New York State Organized Crime Task Force. I understand that he
was instrumental in some of the most effective investigations into corruption
in the construction industry, waste haulage, JFK, and the fish and garment
businesses—'

'You sound like
you read an obituary on Google.'

'I did.'

'Well, whatever
you might have read didn't include all the truth. He was a good cop, at least
for the most part, and yes, he did all those things they write about. But he
did a lot of things that they didn't write about, and maybe they never will.
And those things went with him to his grave.'

'And are they
things that you think people need to know?'

'God no! Let 'em
believe what they want to believe. People have got to have faith in something.
You can't take it all away otherwise we'd all be neck-high in shit.'

'Do you want to
tell me about some of these things?'

'Why? You wanna
hear old war stories from the day? You wanna hear how my father and his buddies
kicked the Mafia out of New York in the Eighties? Or do you wanna hear the
truth?'

'The truth?'

'Sure, the
truth. What you read isn't so much as the tip of the Iceberg as a handful of
snowflakes.'

'He wasn't what
they said he was?'

'My father?
Jesus, no. He was anything but.'

'Do you want to
talk about it?'

'Not today.'

'Why is that?'

"Cause I
got to go see the Coroner and get an ID on a dead girl I found, and then I
gotta figure out what the fuck Danny Lange was doing in an alleyway with a
bullet in his throat.'

'Well, I'm glad
you kept the appointment, Frank.'

'Hell, Doctor
Marie, if I gave up on every girl after the first date I'd never get laid.

'Rebecca
Lange is the name we've got,' Deputy Coroner Stanley Duggan said. 'Crime Scene
found her purse in another room, with a video rental store card in it. We traced
her on the Child Services system. Picture they had confirmed ID. As best as I
can determine, she was killed somewhere between eight and twelve hours before
you found her. No secondary laking, so I think she died in that apartment,
right there on the bed.'

They stood on
either side of the steel table. Frank Parrish breathed slowly and silently,
conscious of such a sense of sadness engendered by this dead girl. By the
futility of a wasted life. There was something utterly desperate about her.
About the red nails. Her hair. The fact that she seemed perfect and
unblemished, except for the neck bruising. Unblemished except for that.

'Sixteen years
old,' Duggan went on. 'Date of birth, March sixth, 1992, COD strangulation.
Good possibility he was right- handed, like I said, and he had big hands. There
was nothing under her nails, no foreign hairs in her pubic region.'

'Rape kit?' Parrish asked.

'She wasn't
raped, but she'd had sexual intercourse recently. Found lubricant, spermicide,
no semen. Hard to tell precisely when, but there's minimal bruising and no
internal abrasions.'

'Drugs?'

'Some alcohol.
Not a great deal.' Duggan reached in back of the shelves behind him and
withdrew a half-gallon glass jar. Three or four inches of brownish, viscous
liquid swirled
in
the
bottom. 'This, and a bunch of fries, some hamburger and pickles.'

Parrish looked back at the girl.
He could imagine her alive,
her
eyes bright,
her cheeks flushed with color, the wind through that hair.

Hey,
Frank.

Hey,
Rebecca.

Frank
. . . didn't want to mention it, but you don't look so good.

I'm
okay, sweetheart. Now you - you're one to talk.

I
don't have to look good, Frank. I'm dead.

You
wanna tell me about that?

Shit,
you're starting to sound like Doctor Marie.

You're
a funny girl.

I
was, Frank, I was.

So
we're not gonna talk about what happened to you?

Can't
help you, Frank. It's the rules. The dead don't talk to the living. At least
not to divulge the secrets.

'Detective
Parrish?'

Parrish
snapped to.

'Anything
else you need me for? I got a half dozen bodies backed up.'

Parrish
smiled. He reached out and touched Rebecca's hand.
Red
nails. Redder than blood.

'No,'
he said. 'We're all done.'

'Good
enough. I'll zip her up and put her on ice. You got
maybe
a week, and if there's nothing going on we'll turn her
over
to State
Mortuary. Far as I can see there's no parents, no
next
of kin.'

'Aside
from the brother, and he's dead too,' Parrish said, and
then
recalled the
woman in the picture. Probably the mother.
Where
was she while her daughter was lying dead? 'The brother
got
done yesterday
as well. GSW up through the throat into the
brain?'

Duggan
nodded in recognition. 'Yeah, yeah, I know the one. Their deaths are
connected?'

'Hard
to avoid the
coincidence, but right now there's nothing
that
puts the scenes or the killings together. He died about three O
'clock
in the
afternoon, she died somewhere between eight a.m. a
nd
noon
on the same day.'

'You
know what they
say,' Duggan interjected. 'Sometimes the Obvious—'

'—occludes the
truth, and sometimes things are exactly as they appear.'

'Well, we'll do
tox next, but any other tests you need, you have about a week.'

'Appreciated,'
Parrish said.

He looked back
one last time through the porthole in the door. Such a beautiful girl. Such a
painful and tragic waste.