Winter and Night (26 page)

"I'll call you as soon as I get home," I promised her. "I'll tell all."

So we got in our cars and headed to New York, Lydia to Chinatown and home, me to JL's, a sidestreet tavern in the west Nineties.

Traffic on my bridge was light. On Sullivan's it must have been heavy, because I got to JL's in time to order a beer and work on it for about five minutes before Sullivan walked through the door.

JL's was the kind of place there used to be a lot of in New York, a bar with captain's chairs, heavy square tables, a pool table in the back. You could get a burger, fries, a BLT, and that was about it in the food department; you could watch the game, or talk about the game, or listen to other guys talk about the game. The guys you listened to would be your blue-collar neighbors, a dwindling species in this rising neighborhood. JL's was too shabby, too scruffy to attract the young, hip crowd, and JL and Mrs. JL, both of whom had spent every day in this bar for the last thirty-six years, worked hard to keep it that way. They sold no microbrewed beer, single-malt Scotch, or any vodka you'd ever heard of; they hadn't painted or, some said, changed a lightbulb in the place in decades, and neither of them had a pleasant word for anyone under the age of the bar, including their own grown sons.

The game tonight was college football, two Division Two teams playing under the lights someplace far away. The home team was setting up for a second and seven deep in enemy territory when Sullivan came in. He stopped right inside the door, let his eyes sweep the room methodically, the same way I do in a new place. He spotted me, threaded his way across the floor, and pulled out a chair. I had a cigarette going; Sullivan lit one, too. He was in uniform, navy jacket, starched white shirt, pressed navy pants, tie held in place with a Warrenstown PD tie clip. He wore no gun. Cop or not, he wouldn't be licensed in New York any more than I was in New Jersey. I wondered if he kept a weapon taped up under his dashboard, too, for times like this, but I decided not to ask.

Mrs. JL wove through the tables to take Sullivan's order. She was a big, wide-faced woman, her hair the same white-blond I'd seen on the three little kids at the New Jersey steakhouse, a color that in real life doesn't last past third grade. She smiled at Sullivan. Sullivan was my age, but even if he'd been a rookie, he'd have qualified for a smile. The one exception to the age-of-the-bar rule was for cops: The JLs liked cops. If any of their sons had become cops, they might have gotten themselves a pleasant word every now and then. "What'll you have?" Mrs. JL inquired of Sullivan.

"Beer."

"Bud?"

"Draft?"

"Bottle."

"What else you have?"

"Rolling Rock, for gourmets."

"Bud."

"You want a glass?"

"No."

Mrs. JL smiled again; that was a trick question and he'd had the right answer. She went to get the beer, and I asked Sullivan, "This mean you're off duty?"

"Hours ago."

"Just hanging around New York because you like it here?"

"Change of pace. You seem to like New Jersey, same reason."

"I hate the place."

"Even Greenmeadow?"

I drank from my Bud, said, "Rotten town. You having me tailed?"

"Just lucky. Deputy whose wife had twins saw your car in the lot, visiting hours. He was out of his jurisdiction, though, and he had better things to do than look for you to run you off. He just reported it and went in to see his wife."

"Twins'll be a handful."

"Yeah," Sullivan said as Mrs. JL brought his bottle, put it down on a Michelob coaster left behind by some hardworking distributor's rep who'd for sure gone away empty-handed. "Mind telling me why you were there?"

"Not at all. It's why I called. But first I want to hear if Sting Ray had anything to say about Premador."

The small smile. "If I had anything to trade, Smith, you better believe I wouldn't give it up first. But," he pulled on his beer, "I've got nothing. Ray was up to his ass in hot water and he would've given us his grandmother. But we had no use for her, and he couldn't tell us anything about Premador— or Gary Russell— that we didn't already know."

"Which is?"

"One of them bought guns from him for cash. The other was seen in the vicinity, but not by Ray."

"You find the woman who saw him?"

"The charity lady." He nodded. "Positive ID on the picture."

"Anybody else?"

"Hot-dog vendor, one dog-walker. Both tentative. Willing to do a lineup when we take him up."

"Christ," I said, blocking out Sullivan's when in favor of if. "I handed out pictures all day, got nothing."

"You should have been with an NYPD uniform. Works wonders."

I ground my cigarette out. "Any description from Ray on Premador?"

"Medium height, brown hair, teenage kid."

"Nothing else?"

"Well, a lot of assumptions on Ray's part, some about the kid's mother."

"You show him pictures?"

"Of Gary, yeah. Otherwise, of who?"

I shrugged. "The Warrenstown yearbook?"

"You know," he said, setting his beer on the table, "that's not a bad idea."

"Go ahead. It's yours for free."

"I'll take it as a down payment."

"On?"

"Why you were at Greenmeadow Hospital."

I told him, "A friend of mine is there."

"That would be?"

"A high school girl named Stacie Phillips."

He said, "The reporter? She okay?"

"Not right now, but it looks like she will be." I made a mental note to be sure to tell Stacie how Sullivan had identified her. "Some guy jumped her and beat her up."

He drank, looked at me. "Why?" he asked.

I told him what I knew. When I was done, he said, "When'd she get to be a friend of yours?"

"Yesterday. She hunted me down, Sullivan, not the other way."

He nodded, and I had the feeling he was putting that aside, to come back to if he needed it.

"Let me tell you what else I think," I said.

"Can't wait."

He had to, though, because Mrs. JL, picking up empties from the next table, asked, "You boys want another?"

We did, and she brought them, and then I said, "I think this all has to do with what happened in Warrenstown twenty-three years ago."

Sullivan frowned. "The rape and suicide?"

"Al Macpherson called me this afternoon, ordered me up to his office."

"Must not've known you don't take orders well."

"I went. He wanted to know how I knew Tory Wesley, told me I was lying when I said I didn't. He told me to stop digging into the old case or he'd have my head."

"I know Macpherson, that's not the part he wants. You digging into the old case?"

"Just curious, at first. But it's the connection between me and Stacie: She faxed me old articles from the Gazette. My brother-in-law saw them at my place, blew up at me, and the next thing I know, Macpherson knows I have them and someone beats the crap out of Stacie. I think someone, and I think it's Macpherson, thinks that's what I was hired for."

"Hired by who?"

"The kids. Stacie, Gary, Tory Wesley."

"Why?"

"Because there's something hidden there, and they wanted what Stacie calls a scoop?"

"Is that what happened?"

"What?"

"Is that what you were hired for?"

The smoky room erupted with shouts as on the TV screen the visitors picked off a pass, ran the ball back nineteen yards. I stared at Sullivan. "You're kidding."

He tamped his cigarette methodically in the ashtray, didn't speak.

"Okay, you asked," I said. "The answer's no. All I'm doing is looking for Gary Russell."

He drank some beer, stared thoughtfully at the TV. "You're telling me your brother-in-law tipped off Al Macpherson to your interest, and Macpherson hired someone to lean on Stacie Phillips, find out what she knows?"

"And what the dead girl knew. And," I said, "I'm telling you my interest is what your chief is pissed off about."

He looked at me without speaking for a while. On the TV, because the ball had changed hands, the action was stopped while the teams sent in new squads. "Serious accusation, Smith."

"Well, I could be wrong."

He didn't answer.

"Listen," I said. "You know the details of the old case?"

He waited, finally said, "Just what I remember from being a kid on the other end of the state."

"Is there any chance," I asked, "the suicide was something else?"

"You mean," he said, "is there any chance Macpherson did what they said he did, then framed the other kid and killed him?"

"That's what I mean."

Again Sullivan was silent for a time, letting his gaze wander the bar, watching JL rack glasses, watching the game.

I said, "There's something else."

He brought his eyes back to me.

"I hear Tory Wesley was dealing drugs."

"You do? From who?"

"I hear."

"I never heard that, in Warrenstown."

"Just since school started, this year. Psychedelics. To the football team."

"You're not going to tell me where you got that?"

"No. But you may be able to use it for leverage when you talk to the kids."

"Yeah. After the Hamlin's game."

"That's two days away. Your chief can't really keep you off the case until then?"

"I'm not off the case. My orders are, I can do any damn thing I want as long as it doesn't involve subpoenas, warrants, or arrests. Unless I'm so sure I've fingered the killer I'm willing to bet my career on it. But no fishing."

"That means you can only talk to people willing to talk to you."

He nodded. "As my chief points out, we don't have the coroner's report yet. Tory Wesley could have died from natural causes. No killer, think of all the trouble I'm making for nothing."

"Think of it," I said. "Two days before the Hamlin's game."

Sullivan didn't answer.

"Well, this drug thing could mean something," I said. "I still think it goes back to the old case, but this could mean something."

Through cigarette haze, Sullivan peered at me. "A lot of things going on here, Smith."

"Meaning?"

"If my nephew'd disappeared the same time a girl was killed," Sullivan said, "then turned up with a gun dealer in Queens, I might try blowing smoke everywhere I could."

"If my boss backed me off a homicide when all I was doing was interviewing witnesses, I'd want to know what was going on."

He nodded, finished his beer. "What do you want?"

"The old police reports, to start with."

"Can't give you those."

I'd expected that. "Summaries?"

"Maybe."

Nothing was free. "What do you want?" I asked him.

"Whoever killed Tory Wesley."

I knew what that meant. Whoever; not, whoever unless it's Gary Russell.

"Smith?" Sullivan said. "You play high school football?"

"No."

"I did, for Asbury Park."

"Offense?"

"D."

"You don't look like you have the meat for it."

"I worked my ass off. And I could read the plays. I could see them coming."

* * *

Sullivan drove north from JL's, to the bridge and home to New Jersey. I drove south, through the night streets of New York. I thought of calling Lydia but she was probably home already, where her mother exasperated her, where her four older brothers dropped in unannounced and drove her crazy, but all from caring, from worry, from wanting to protect her. I saw her, sometimes, as a flowering plant— maybe the elegant, spare freesia whose scent I'd learned to recognize because Lydia wore it— reaching for the vast wild sky, angry at the soil for keeping her anchored. Rootless myself, I could only wonder what that must be like.

And wonder what she would say if I ever, ever let it slip that I thought of her that way.

I put my car in the lot, zipped my jacket as I headed up the street toward my place. I passed the door to Shorty's, but I didn't go in. JL's beer had taken the edge off my night, and Shorty wouldn't have forgotten I'd promised him an explanation I still wasn't ready to give.

As I put my key in the lock I heard a shout, my name. I spun around, ready, saw a car door open on the other side of the street, saw Scott Russell climb out.

I waited on the sidewalk; he said nothing until he was across the street, standing in front of me.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Smith!" he spat. His eyes burned into mine, like the eyes of a wolf in a circling pack, waiting for the leader's command to rip the throat from the prey. The sense of that was so strong I found myself checking the street for the rest of them. No one; Scott was alone. He snarled, "What the hell is your problem?"

"A lot of people asking me that today," I said. "Your friend Al Macpherson, for one."

"I ought to fuck you up right here and now, then you'll have a problem."

"Macpherson tell you he talked to me?"

"He said you were a pain in the ass."

"He doesn't seem to think very much of you, either."

"Who the hell asked you?"

"I just wonder why you're going out of your way to protect him."

"Him? You think this is about Al?"

"What is it about?"

"Helen!"

"Helen?"

"Al said, if I don't want my wife's brother rotting in jail, I better get you off his ass. Me, I don't give a shit what happens to you, but I'm trying once more, Smith. Back the fuck off."

"I think it's true," I said, "that you don't give a shit. So why are you here?"

"For Helen. She doesn't like you any better than I do, but you're family and she doesn't like to think of her family in jail." He hit each of those words, her family in jail, like a hammer.

I wanted to step back because I didn't trust myself near him, but I didn't want him to see me move away. I forced myself still, said, "You ask her?" No answer. "I didn't think so. What's this really about, Scott?"

"I told you, leave it alone. I told you, I'll handle it."

"Who beat up Stacie Phillips?"

"Who the hell is that?"

I looked at him, broad shoulders, balanced stance, hot blue eyes. I said, "You know a friend of Gary's bought some guns illegally yesterday, and Gary was there?"