The Long Good Boy (24 page)

I rinsed the boa and set it carefully on a towel to dry. Then I got dressed, left Dashiell at home, and took a cab up to the main branch of the library, the one at Forty-second Street with the lions out front. If what I was looking for existed, it would be there. Two hours later I had found the two articles that let me understand what the trucker was talking about. The first one I found was actually the second article to appear in the paper. It was a short piece about the burial of a cop killed in a drug raid, the drug raid Frances told me about, rewriting history so that it became her husband who'd died in the initial shoot-out when in fact it was his partner. There was a picture, the widow weeping, being held up by a young man—a son, a cousin, it didn't say. And there were eight cops carrying the coffin. I'd seen one of the pallbearers before, his gaunt face, the clownish nose, that great broom of a mustache nearly covering his grim mouth, the coffin bearing his partner weighing heavily on his shoulder. It was a lot to carry in every way. Especially since, I could now see, he was rather slight, maybe five-five or five-six and slim, the smallest of the seven colleagues. The trucker had seen this picture, too, and then, to his great surprise, he'd seen Detective Kevin Patrick Mulrooney at Keller's, only there it was Manager Mulrooney. My, my. He didn't need anything more to put two and two together. But I did, just to be sure of the facts. I needed the article that had appeared a week earlier that said that Mulrooney's partner, Dave O'Neill, forty-four, had gone in first, not Mulrooney. And that it was Dave who caught the fatal bullets, three of them. It was Mulrooney who had gotten two of the drug dealers, brothers Julius and Lamarr Wright. The article went on to say that a third dealer had escaped through the window; he'd probably gone up the fire escape instead of down, then across the roofs to safety. The stash would have brought three-point-two million on the street, it said, and the police were looking for the party that got away. And good luck on that one, I thought, wondering what Mulrooney had told his wife about the bust and what I might be able to get her to tell me over turkey and yams the next day, not letting on that I knew it was O'Neill who died in the shoot-out and not her Patrick.

I took a cab home, watching Fifth Avenue out the window, thinking if I got lucky tomorrow, if I could get Frances to talk, I might not have to go back to the market ever again. I was sick to death of the whole thing—the drugged-out hookers, the sleazy johns, the smell of death in the streets.

When I got home, I wanted to call Chi Chi, make sure she was okay, but the way she was moving when I last saw her, I was sure she was home, under the covers, too scared to come out even to answer the phone.

I went to bed as soon as Dash came in from the garden, but I still couldn't sleep. Mulrooney was small, I was thinking. I'd worried about who could have picked him up after they shot him, put him on that damn meat hook, made it look like a mob execution, duct tape and all. Hell, I could have done that in the heat of the moment. Frances could have done it, if she had a reason, put her arms around his slight body, bent back, and lifted him onto that cold, mean hook. Lifting him, that wasn't the issue anymore. Why? That was still the question.

And then it was Jasmine I was seeing, Jasmine looking much like me from behind, the boa hanging down, obscuring the narrow line of her hips. She'd been the brightest of the three, the most articulate, the one, I'd found myself thinking once or twice, who might have a chance in hell to get out of the life. Well, she was out of it now, all her chances at anything taken away, someone trying to stop some annoying little snoop from sticking her nose in their business, an annoying little snoop who'd been seen around Keller's in the dead whore Rosalinda's lucky boa.

I walked downstairs and opened the cabinet where I kept wine, taking three bottles out to take to dinner instead of two, hoping Frances would be feeling relaxed and festive having two friends with her for Thanksgiving, that with a bit of encouragement she'd drink too much, and that after that she'd talk too much. I was desperate now, thinking of the old Hollywood line, Who do I have to fuck to get off this film? Because one way or another, this case was coming to an end. Only this wasn't Hollywood, and it wasn't a movie, and though it might have looked like a movie set, those huge eerie pigs dominating the street, the meat market wasn't. It was as real as death, ten times over.

31

She Took a Gulp of Wine This Time

By the time Frances brought out the pies, cold pumpkin and deep-dish apple, hot from the oven, her face was flushed, her stories were flowing like the wine, and her neighbor Sarah had fallen asleep right there at the table, her chin nearly touching her large bosom, her mouth open, a string of saliva dangling from one corner.

“Don't wake her,” I whispered as Frances set out three dessert plates. “She looks exhausted.”

“Exhausted? I don't think so. It's the wine. She drank it like it was water,” Frances said. She ought to know. She'd done something similar herself, but perhaps she had more practice; happily, she was still very much awake.

We carried our dessert plates to the living room, and when Frances asked if I wanted coffee, I asked if there was any of that nice wine left instead. I said I thought it would go well with the hot apple pie. She said yes, as a matter of fact there was some wine left, that she'd make the coffee anyway, it would only take a minute, and bring both.

What exactly did they say the road to hell was paved with? At the rate I was going, no doubt I'd find out one day. I was shameless. I was dishonest. I didn't care. I just wanted to be done with all this without losing another client.

I walked around the small, cluttered living room looking at framed photographs—a wedding picture, Kevin and Frances when they were young, Frances half a head taller than her husband. And one I guessed was Frances with her mother and father, the father wearing a suit and a hat, the mother, too. Everyone used to dress that way when they went out, when they took pictures. Looking down at my jeans, I thought about my own parents. Had they been invited to a friend's house for Thanksgiving dinner, my mother would have worn a suit with a silk blouse and a pin on her lapel. She would have worn a hat. And gloves. My father would have looked as if he was going to work, in a suit and tie, his shoes polished, his hair slicked down.

I picked up a photo of Kevin Mulrooney in his blue uniform, very young, very serious. And that was it. No pictures of their kid, nothing more recent than twenty years ago, it seemed. Unless the others were in the bedroom. Some people did that, kept most of the private stuff to themselves.

Waiting, I thought about the trucker, what he'd seen and what he said. A murder years before on Gansevoort Street had been solved because of an observant trucker who had pulled over for a much-needed nap only to be awakened by a shot, someone getting executed, the doer not knowing there was anyone in the truck parked at the curb, not knowing there'd be a witness who would ID him later that same day at the Sixth Precinct. It had been a fluke that he was there, too tired to drive; that he'd seen the crime take place; that there'd been a full moon—all the elements working in favor of the law.

I never thought about truckers being good witnesses. All that sitting, watching the road pull under the truck for sixteen, eighteen hours a day, they had to do something to keep awake. Maybe they looked for details, looked to see what had changed in the environment since the last time they went by, looked at the faces of the drivers they passed, the drivers who passed them. Maybe they tried to read the faces, tell themselves a story, pass the time that way. This trucker, the one on Gansevoort Street, he'd had the face down cold, the parroty nose, the eyebrows that nearly met in the middle, lips that looked wet, the pencil mustache, sideburns, the scar at the hairline over his left temple. He saw it all. He remembered.

Frances made three trips, ferrying everything in from the kitchen, bringing the wine bottle from the table. Finally she came in with a cup of coffee for herself, set it down on the coffee table, and picked up the plate with pie. Apple. But when I lifted my wineglass, she put down the pie and lifted hers. We touched them together. “To friendship,” I said. She smiled and drank. I didn't.

If I solved the case, the person who'd killed her husband would be caught and punished. Did that make my toast any more genuine?

“Your child is grown now?” I asked, wanting to open the conversation again, to get it going, to make it personal.

“Oh, yes.” She seemed to forget about the pie, holding the wineglass and sipping. I picked up the bottle and topped off both our glasses.

“Living here?” I asked, wondering why there were no pictures, Mom and Dad and baby. Or baby grown up.

“Oh, no.” Had she had too much wine? Was she about to nod off?

“What does he—”

“Denise. She's at the store. Didn't I tell you?”

“Saks?”

“Yes. That's how I got the job. She's a buyer. Cosmetics. Oh, she does very well for herself. She has an apartment in Manhattan. In the Chelsea section, on Nineteenth Street. Four rooms and a little garden.”

“How wonderful.” But something began nagging at me even as I spoke. “So you see her often?”

“Well, not as often as I'd like. But what parent does?” She took a gulp of wine this time.

Like a terrier after a rat, I pursued.

“She's busy?”

“Busy? Yes. Very. She travels for them. To Paris mostly, on buying trips. I asked her once to bring me some Chanel, and she scolded me. She said it's cheaper at the store, with my employee's discount, than she could get it in Paris. Mom, she said, you just want some attention. Mom, I give you more attention than most girls give their mothers.”

Frances laughed and drank, and I refilled her glass and took a little sip of my own wine.

“She's right. We're close. I can't complain.”

“But today …?”

Frances looked stumped, as if I'd asked her for the formula for Chanel instead of why her daughter, to whom she was so close, hadn't come home for Thanksgiving dinner, especially this one, the first since her father had died, since her mother had been widowed.

“Paris,” she said. “She didn't get back in time to come. Couldn't get back in time, I meant.”

And then I knew I wasn't the only liar in Frances Mulrooney's living room. She hadn't only lied to me to protect an ongoing police investigation. She was lying now, too. What was she protecting this time? Or whom?

“Are your friends after you again about that blind date, Rachel? You should go. Do you a world of good to get out. Didn't it cheer you up to come here this afternoon, 'stead of sitting home in front of the TV?”

I waved a hand, brushing away the question. “I can't even think about that, about dating. Can you? Have you?”

Again, Frances looked as if I'd asked her something too difficult to answer. But she was game. She was going to try. I could see the struggle in her eyes.

“It's much too soon for me to …”

I took a sip of wine, as a sign of good faith, and waited.

“I suppose it would be nice someday to have dinner with a gentleman, to get dressed up and all that.”

She looked dreamy for a moment.

“But?”

“Where would I find a gentleman?”

“I guess that's the question.” Something niggling away at the back of my mind. Something was off. Way off. But what?

“Sarah,” she whispered, “surfs the Net.” Frances nodded, sipped, sat back against the couch pillows in a
There, I've said it
pose.

What was I supposed to say?

“You mean chat rooms?”

She nodded.

“My sister's done that,” I lied.

“But how would you know who you were going to meet?”

“She's only actually met anyone twice. Both times in public places, just for a drink.”

“And?” Leaning closer. I topped off her glass again, adding three drops to mine. But Frances didn't seem to notice that she was drinking by herself.

“The first guy was short-waisted, overweight, and really ugly. Didn't seem to matter to him that he was homely as a toad, she said. He was so full of himself, he never stopped bragging. She left after two drinks. And that was it.”

“But she tried again?”

“Yes. The second man was very good-looking.”

“But?”

“Married. He told her he loved his wife and kids. He said he thought, working as hard as he did, keeping his family in Scarsdale, for God's sake, his kids in private school, well, didn't he deserve a little recreation, a little something for himself?”

“On the side, you mean?”

I nodded. “How'd you know there'd be a but?”

“Patrick, you know, the police, they always look for the underbelly, the negative in life. I guess I got the habit from him. And I know anyway that men can be like that,” she said. “Even in the department, men sworn to uphold the law, there was a lot of cheating and a lot of divorce.”

“But not Patrick?”

“Patrick? Oh, no. That wasn't the problem with Patrick.”

“What was?”

Frances looked puzzled for a moment. Then she nodded. “Well, the work, of course. You worry all the time. And then it happened.”

“At least they got them,” I said, “the dealers who—”

“Oh, no. They didn't.”

For a moment, I didn't know if we were talking about the same case.

“Two were killed. He shot two when he went in. But there was a third who got away. Patrick's partner stayed with him. He was bleeding so heavily.”

“There were no other officers on the scene?”

“There were. But the third drug dealer found a way out, first through the window and then up to the roof, they think. Two officers did go that way. But no one was there.”