Уильям Макгиверн - Rogue Cop

“Then you had the blowup with the old man,” Eddie went on, ignoring him. “I didn’t understand it, he never talked about it, but it damn near tore me in two. Then I found out about it a little later when I was a rookie in the old Twenty-seventh. The cop whose locker was next to mine was talking about a guy who’d got into trouble for clipping a drunken driver for ten bucks. And he wound up by saying, ‘Your brother’s got the right idea, kid. Take it big, or don’t take it at all.’ ” Eddie turned away and pounded a fist into his palm. “They had to pull me off him. I damn near killed him. Then I did some checking and you know where that led. I had to apologize to that cop, I had to say, ‘You were dead right, my brother’s a thief.’ ”

“You take things too seriously,” Carmody said. “You sound like a recording of the old man.”

“Is that bad?”

“No, hell no,” Carmody said angrily. “It’s great if you want to live in a dump like this and go through life being grateful to the gas company for a fifty-dollar-a-week job.”

“That’s all you saw, eh?” Eddie said in a soft, puzzled voice. “And you’re supposed to be smart. The old man enjoyed his food, he slept a solid eight hours every night and when he died grown men and women cried for him. None of them had memories of him that weren’t pretty good, one way or the other. They still miss him in the neighborhood. Those things are part of the picture, too, Mike, along with this dump as you call it, and the fifty-dollar-a-week job. But you never saw any of that, I suppose.”

“Let’s get off the old man,” Carmody said shortly.

“You brought him up. You always do. You’re still fighting him, if you want my guess.”

“Well, I don’t want your guesses,” Carmody said. He knew he was making no progress, and this baffled and angered him. Why couldn’t he sell this deal? Eddie stood up to facts as if they were knives Carmody was throwing at his father. That was why they came to the boiling point so quickly in any argument; in anything important the old man came between them. He was the symbol of their opposed values and Eddie was always fighting to defend him, fighting to prove the worth of what his brother had rejected. Carmody understood that now and he wondered bitterly how he could save him against those odds.

“Just listen to me calmly for a second,” he said, drawing a deep breath. “Go along with Ackerman and Beaumonte. Tell them you won’t identify Delaney. At the trial you can cross them and put the finger on him. They won’t dare touch you then, the heat will be too big. Is there anything wrong with that?”

“You don’t think so, obviously,” Eddie said. He looked mad and disgusted. “You don’t care about double-crossing them, eh?”

“I’m thinking about you,” Carmody said, angered by Eddie’s contempt. “Maybe I don’t look very noble, but that’s how the world is run.” He had the disturbing thought that their roles had somehow become reversed; Eddie was calm and sure of himself, while he was getting more worried by the minute.

“Let’s drop it,” Eddie said flatly. “You couldn’t change my mind in a million years. Now I’ve got to wash up. I’m meeting Father Ahearn at St. Pat’s in fifteen minutes.”

“More vespers?” Carmody asked sarcastically. He couldn’t quite believe he had failed.

“No, it’s a personal matter,” Eddie said. He hesitated, then said in an even, impersonal voice: “I want to talk to him about Karen. She’s not a Catholic and I’m going to find out where I stand.”

“You’ll marry her?”

“If she says the word.”

“You’re dumber than I thought,” Carmody said, in a hard, clipped voice. He knew he had taken a step that could never be retraced but he was too angry to care. “Look that merchandise over carefully before you buy it, kid.”

Eddie stared at him, swallowing hard. Then he said, “Get out, Mike. While you’re in one piece.”

“Ask her about Danny Nimo,” Carmody said coldly. “See what happens when you do, kid.”

“She told me about Nimo,” Eddie said quietly.

“I’ll bet she made a sweet bedtime story out of it,” Carmody said. But he was jarred; he’d been certain she wouldn’t tell him about Nimo.

“She simply told me about it,” Eddie said. “That’s all. What you make of it depends on how you look at things. Everything in the world is twisted and dirty to you because you’re always looking in a mirror.”

“She’s playing you for a fool,” Carmody snapped. His anger had stripped away all his judgment; nothing mattered to him but blasting Eddie’s ignorant trusting dream. “Ask her about me, about the scene we played last night. Maybe that will wake you up.”

Eddie walked toward him slowly, his big fists swinging at his sides. There were tears in his eyes and his square face had twisted with anguish. “Get out, get out of here!” he cried in a trembling voice. He stopped two feet from Carmody and threw a sweeping roundhouse blow at his head.

He can’t even fight, Carmody thought despairingly, as he stepped back and let the punch sail past him. Pushing Eddie away from him, he saw that he was crying, terribly and silently. Goddamn, he thought, as a savage anger ran through him, why doesn’t he pick up a chair and bust me wide open? Doesn’t he even know that much?

Stepping in quickly, he snapped a right into his brother’s stomach, knowing he had to end this fast. Eddie went down, doubling up with pain and working hard for each mouthful of air. He stared up at Carmody in helpless agony. “Don’t go, let me fight you,” he whispered.

Carmody looked away from him and wet his lips. “I didn’t mean to hit you, kid,” he said. “I was lying about Karen. Remember that.”

“Don’t leave, let me get up,” Eddie said, working himself painfully to his knees.

Carmody couldn’t look at him; but he couldn’t look at anything else in the room either. The piano, the Madonna, his father’s chair, they were all as mercilessly accusing as his brother’s eyes. He strode out the front door and went quickly down the steps to his car. It was tom open now, he thought bitterly. Karen was his last chance. Eddie’s last chance. He pulled up at the first drug store he came to, went in and rang her apartment. When she answered he said, “This is Mike Carmody. I’ve got to see you. Can I come up?”

“I’ll meet you downstairs,” she said after a short pause.

“Okay, ten minutes,” he said. She didn’t want him in her apartment again; he knew that from the tone of her voice. “Don’t keep me waiting,” he said, and hung up.

She was standing at the curb when he got to her hotel, looking slim and cool in a chocolate-colored dress and brown-and-white spectator pumps. Her hair was brushed back cleanly and the sun touched it here and there with tiny lights. She had style, he thought irrelevantly, as she crossed in front of the car. It showed in her well-cared-for shoes and immaculate white gloves, in the way she held her head and shoulders. Phony or not, she looked like good people.

She slid in beside him, moving with the suggestion of tentativeness that was peculiar to her; that was the accident, he thought, glancing instinctively at her legs. What had Anelli said? A dozen breaks?

“We’ll drive around,” he said. “I just talked to Eddie and we wound up in a brawl.”

“How did that happen?”

“It was about you.” He headed for the river, frowning as he hunted for words. “You told him about Nimo, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I told him,” she said.

Carmody glanced angrily at her, then back to the road. “Why didn’t you tell me that last night?”

“Would you have believed me?”

“I guess not,” he said. What was he supposed to conclude from this? That she was playing it straight with Eddie? Or was she shrewd enough to know that he would be disarmed by a clean-breast approach?