John Connolly - The Lovers

Mickey stood up. He was about five ten, and the newcomer towered over him by seven or eight inches.

“Captain Tyrrell.” They shook hands. “I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.”

“Well, after Hector has obliged me, the drinks are on you.”

“It’ll be my pleasure.”

Hector placed a substantial glass of whiskey, untroubled by ice or water, beside Tyrrell’s right hand. Tyrrell gestured to a booth against the back wall. “Let’s take our drinks down there. You eaten yet?”

“No.”

“They do a good hamburger here. You eat hamburger?”

Mickey doubted that this place did a good anything, but he knew better than to refuse.

“Yes. A hamburger sounds fine.”

Tyrrell raised a hand and shouted the order to Hector: two hamburgers, medium, with all the trimmings. Medium, thought Mickey. Jesus. He’d prefer it charred to within an inch of its life in the hope of killing whatever bacteria might have taken up residence in the meat. Hell, this might be the last burger he ever ate.

Hector duly entered the order on a surprisingly modern-looking register, even if he operated it like a monkey.

“Wallace: that’s a good Irish name,” said Tyrrell.

“Irish-Belgian.”

“That’s some mix.”

“ Europe. The war.”

Tyrrell’s face softened unpleasantly with sentimentality, like a marshmallow melting. “My grandfather served in Europe. Royal Irish Fusiliers. Got shot for his troubles.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Ah, he didn’t die. Lost his left leg below the knee, though. They didn’t have prosthetics then, or not like they do now. He used to pin up his trouser leg every morning. Think he was kind of proud of it.”

He raised his glass to Mickey.

“ Sláinte, ” he said.

“Cheers,” said Mickey. He took a mouthful of beer. Mercifully, it was so cold that he could barely taste it. He reached into his satchel and produced a notebook and pen.

“Straight down to business,” said Tyrrell.

“If yo J A“Ifu’d prefer to wait…”

“Nah, it’s good.”

Mickey took a little Olympus digital voice recorder from his jacket pocket, and showed it to Tyrrell.

“Would you object if-?”

“Yes, I would. Put it away. Better still, take the batteries out and leave that thing where I can see it.”

Mickey did as he was told. It would make things a little more difficult, but Mickey had reasonable shorthand and a good memory. In any case, he wouldn’t be quoting Tyrrell directly. This was background, and deep background. Tyrrell had been quite clear about that when he had agreed to meet with Mickey. If his name appeared anywhere near the book, he’d stomp Mickey’s fingers until they looked like corkscrews.

“Tell me some more about this book you’re writing.”

So Mickey did. He left out the more artistic and philosophical elements of his proposal, and tried to tread as neutral a path as possible as he described his interest in Parker. Although he hadn’t yet ascertained Tyrrell’s views on the subject, he suspected that they were largely negative, if only because, so far, anyone who liked or respected Parker had refused point-blank to talk to him.

“And have you met Parker?” asked Tyrrell.

“I have. I approached him about an interview.”

“What happened?”

“He sucker-punched me in the gut.”

“That’s him all right. He’s a sonofabitch, a thug. And that’s not the worst of it.”

He took a sip of his whiskey. It was already half gone.

“You want another one?” asked Mickey.

“Sure.”

Mickey turned to the bar. He didn’t even have to order. Hector just nodded and went for the bottle.

“So, what do you want to know about him?” said Tyrrell.

“I want to know what you know.”

And Tyrrell began to talk. He spoke first of Parker’s father, who had killed two young people in a car and then taken his own life. He could offer no insights into the killings beyond suggesting there was something wrong with the father that had passed itself on to the son: a faulty gene, perhaps; a predilection toward violence.

The hamburgers arrived, along with Tyrrell’s second drink. Tyrrell ate, but Mickey did not. He was too busy taking notes, or that would be his excuse if he were asked.

“We think the first man he killed was named Johnny Friday,” said Tyrrell. “He was a pimp, beaten to death in the washroom of a bus station. He was no loss to the world, but that’s not the point.”

“Why do you suspect Parker?”

“Because he was there. Cameras picked him up entering and leaving the station during the killing window.”

“Were there cameras on the bath J A on the broom door?”

“There were cameras everywhere, but he didn’t appear on them. We just got him entering and leaving the station.”

Mickey was puzzled. “How could that be?”

For the first time, Tyrrell looked uncertain. “I don’t know. The cameras weren’t fixed then, except for the ones on the doors. It was a cost-cutting measure. They moved from side to side. I guess he timed them, then moved in conjunction with them.”

“Difficult to do, though.”

“Difficult. Not impossible. Still, it was odd.”

“Was he interviewed?”

“We had a witness who placed him at the scene: washroom attendant. Guy was Korean. Couldn’t speak more than about three words of English, but he picked out Parker’s image from the door cameras. Well, he picked out Parker’s image as one of five possibles from a series of images. Trouble was, we all looked alike to him. Of those five people, four were as different from one another as I am from you. Anyway, Parker was hauled in, and agreed to be questioned. He didn’t even lawyer up. He admitted to being at the bus station, but nothing more than that. Said it was in connection with some runaway he’d been asked to find. It checked out. He was working a teen case at the time.”

“And that’s as far as it went?”

“There wasn’t enough to charge him on, and no appetite for it anyway. Here was an ex-cop who had lost his wife and child only months before. He may not have been loved by his fellow officers, but cops support their own in times of trouble. It would have been a more unpopular case to prosecute than charging Goldilocks with burglary. And like I said, Johnny Friday was no Eagle Scout. A lot of people out there felt that someone had done humanity a service by taking him off the team permanently.”

“Why wasn’t Parker popular?”

“Dunno. He wasn’t meant to be a cop. He never fit in. There was always something odd about him.”

“So why did he join?”

“Some misplaced loyalty to his old man’s memory, I suppose. Maybe he thought he could make up for those kids’ deaths by being a better cop than his father was. You ask me, it’s about the only admirable thing he ever did.”

Mickey let that slide. Already, he was startled by the depths of Tyrrell’s bitterness toward Parker. He couldn’t figure out what Parker might have done to deserve it, short of burning Tyrrell’s house down and then screwing his wife in the ashes.

“You said that Johnny Friday was the first killing in which Parker was suspected of involvement. There were others?”

“I’d guess so.”

“You’d guess?”

Tyrrell signaled for a third whiskey. He was slowing down some, but he was also getting tetchy.

“Look, most are a matter of record: here, in Louisiana, in Maine, in Virginia, in South Carolina. He’s like the Grim Reaper, or cancer. If those are the ones that we know about, J A know abo don’t you think there are others that we don’t know about? You think he called the cops every time he or one of his buddies punched someone’s clock?”