John Connolly - The Lovers

“How are you doing, Eddie?” I asked.

“So-so,” he said. “Still here, though. I feel the cold. I miss Florida. Stayed as long as I could, but I wasn’t able to look after myself, once I started getting sick. Andrea, my wife, she died a few years back. I couldn’t afford a private nurse. ’Manda brought me up here, said she’d look after me if the hospital agreed. And I still got friends, you know, from the old days. It’s not so bad. It’s just the damn cold that gets me.”

He poured himself some water, the jug shaking only slightly in his hand, then took a sip.

“Why’d you come back here, Charlie? What are you doing, talking to a dying man?”

“It’s about my father.”

“Huh,” he said. Some of the water dribbled from his mouth and ran down his chin. He wiped at it with the sleeve of his gown.

“I’m sorry,” he said, clearly embarrassed. “It’s only when someone new comes along that I forget how little dignity I have left. You know what I’ve learned from life? Don’t get old. Avoid it for as long as you can. Getting sick don’t help none either.”

He seemed to drift for a moment, and his eyes grew heavy.

“Eddie,” I said gently. “I wanted to talk to you about Will.”

He grunted and turned his attention back to me. “Yeah, Will. One of the good ones.”

“You were his friend. I hoped that you might be able to tell me something about what happened, about why it happened.”

“After all this time?”

“After all this time.”

He tapped his fingers on the table.

“He did things the quiet way, your old man. He could talk people down, you know? That was his thing. Never got real angry. Never had a temper. Even the move for a time from the Ninth to Uptown, that was his decision. Probably didn’t do much for his record, requesting a transfer that early in his career, but he did it for a quiet life. Of all the men who might have done what he did he wasn’t the one I’d have picked, not in a million years.”

“Do you remember why he requested the transfer?”

“Ah, he wasn’t getting on with some of the brass in the Ninth, he and Jimmy both. They were some team, those two. Where one led, the other followed. Between them, I think they managed to spit in the eye of everyone who mattered. That was the flip side of your father. He had a devil in him, but he kept it chained up most of the time. Anyway, there was a sergeant in the Ninth name of Bennett. You ever hear of him?”

“No, never.”

“Didn’t last long. He and your father, they locked horns, and Jimmy backed Will, same as always.”

“You remember why they didn’t get on?”

“Nah. Clash of personalities, I think. Happens. And Bennett was dirty, and your father didn’t care much for dirty cops, didn’t matter how many stripes they carried. Anyway, Bennett found a way to unlock the devil in your father. Punches were thrown one night, and you didn’t do that while in uniform. It looked bad for Will, but they couldn’t afford to lose a good cop. I guess some calls were made on his behalf.”

“By whom?”

Eddie shrugged. “If you do right by others, you build up favors you can call in. Your old man had friends. A deal was cut.”

“And the deal was that my father would request a transfer.”

“That was it. He spent a year in the wilderness, until Bennett took a beating from the Knapp Commission for being a meat eater.”

The Knapp Commission, which investigated police corruption in the early seventies, came up with two definitions of corrupt cops: the “grass eaters,” who were guilty of petty corruption for tens and twenties, and the “meat eaters,” who shook down dealers and pimps for larger amounts.

“And when Bennett was gone, my father returned?”

“Something like that.” Eddie made a movement with his fingers, as of someone dialing a rotary phone.

“I didn’t know my father had those kinds of friends.”

“Maybe he didn’t either, until he needed them.”

I let it go.

“Do you remember the shooting?” I asked.

“I remember hearing about it. I was four-twelve that week. Me and my partner, we met up with two other guys, Kloske and Burke, for coffee. They’d been over at the precinct house when the call came in. Next time I saw your father, he was lying in a box. They did a good job on him. He looked like he’d always done, I suppose, like himself. Sometimes, these embalmers, they make you look like a wax dummy.” He tried to smile. “I got these things on my mind, as you can imagine.”

“They’ll see you right,” I said. “Amanda wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“I’ll look better dead than I ever did alive, she has her way. Better dressed too.”

I brought us back to my father. “You have no idea why my father might have killed those kids?”

“None, but like I said, it took a lot to make Will see red. They must have turned it on real bad.”

He sipped some more water, keeping his left hand beneath his chin to stop it from spilling. When he lowered the glass he was breathing heavily, and I knew that my time with him was growing short.

“What was he like, in the days before it happened? I mean, did he seem unhappy, distracted?”

“No, he was the way he always was. There was nothing. But then, I didn’t see him much that week. He was eight-four, I was four-twelve. We said hello when we passed each other, but that was about it. No, he was with Jimmy Gallagher that week. You should talk to him. He was with your old man on the day of the shooting.”

“What?”

“Jimmy and your old man, they always hooked up for Jimmy’s birthday. Never missed it.”

“He told me that they didn’t see each other that day. Jimmy was off. He’d made a good collar, he said, some drug thing.”

A day off was a reward for a solid arrest. You filled out a “28,” then submitted it to the precinct’s clerical guy, the captain’s man. Most cops would slip him a couple of dollars, or maybe a bottle of Chivas earned from escorting a liquor store owner to the bank, in order to ensure a prime day. It was one of the benefits of handling paperwork for the precinct.

“Maybe,” said Eddie, “but they were together on the day that your father shot those two kids. I remember. Jimmy came in to meet Will when he came off duty.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. He came down to the precinct to hook up with your old man. I even covered for Will so that he could leave early. They were going to start drinking in Cal’s, I think, then finish up at the Anglers’ Club.”

“The what?”

“The Greenwich Village Anglers’ Club. It was kind of a private members’ place on Horatio Street. A quarter for a can.”

I sat back. Jimm Biv>agey had assured me that he wasn’t with my father on the day of the shooting. Now Eddie Grace was directly contradicting him.

“You saw Jimmy at the precinct house?”

“You deaf? That’s what I said. I saw him meet your old man, saw the two of them leave together. He tell you something different?”

“Yes.”

“Huh,” said Grace again. “Maybe he’s misremembering.”

A thought struck me. “Eddie, do you and Jimmy stay in touch?”

“No, not so much.” His mouth twitched, an expression of distaste. It gave me pause. There was something here, something between Jimmy and Eddie.

“So does he know that you’re back in Pearl River?”

“If someone told him, maybe. He hasn’t been to visit, if that’s what you mean.”

I realized that I was tensed, sitting forward in my chair. Eddie saw it too.

“I’m old and I’m dying,” he said. “I got nothing to hide. I loved your father. He was a good cop. Jimmy was a good cop too. I don’t know what reason he’d have to lie to you about your old man, but you can tell him that you talked to me. Tell him that I said he should tell the truth, if that’s what you want.”