John Connolly - The Lovers

M ICKEY WROTE UP HISnotes on the Tyrrell interview in his room while the details were still fresh in his mind. The pimp stuff was interesting. He Googled the name Johnny Friday, along with the details that Tyrrell had shared with him, and up came some contemporary news reports, as well as a longer article that had been written for one of the free papers entitled “Pimp: The Brutal Life and Bad End of Johnny Friday.” There were two pictures of Friday accompanying the article. The K arÄ[1] asfirst showed Friday as he was in life, a spare, rangy black man with hollow cheeks and eyes that were too large for his face. He had his arms around a pair of young women in lacy underwear, both of whom had their eyes blacked out to preserve their anonymity. Mickey wondered where they were now. According to the main article, young women who became professionally acquainted with Johnny Friday were not destined to lead happy existences.

The second picture had been taken on the mortuary slab, and showed the extent of the injuries that Friday had received in the course of the beating that took his life. Mickey figured that Friday’s family must have asked for the photograph to be released; that, or the cops had wanted it done in order to send out a message. Friday wasn’t even recognizable as the same man. His face was swollen and bloodied; his jaw, nose, and one of his cheekbones broken; and some of his teeth were sheared off at the gums. He had suffered extensive internal injuries too; one of his lungs had been punctured by a broken rib, and his spleen had ruptured.

Parker’s name wasn’t mentioned, which was no surprise, but a “police source” had indicated to the writer that there was a suspect in the killings, although there was not enough evidence as yet to press charges. Mickey calculated the odds in favor of Tyrrell being that source, and decided they were about even. If he was, then it meant that, even a decade ago, he’d had doubts about Parker, and he might have had some justification for them. Mickey hadn’t cared much for Tyrrell, but there was no denying that the man who had killed Johnny Friday was dangerous, someone capable of inflicting grave violence on another human being, an individual filled with anger and hatred. Mickey tried to balance that with the man he had encountered in Maine, and what he had heard about him from others. He rubbed his still tender belly at the memory of the punch that he had received on Parker’s front porch, and the light that had flared briefly in the man’s eyes as he had struck the blow. Yet no other blows had followed, and the anger in his eyes was gone almost as quickly as it had first appeared, to be replaced by what Mickey thought was shame and regret. It hadn’t mattered to Mickey then-he had been too busy trying not to cough his guts up-but it was clear upon reflection that, if Parker’s anger was still not yet fully under his control, then he had learned to rein it in to some degree, although not quickly enough to save Mickey from a bruised belly. But if Tyrrell was right, this man had Johnny Friday’s blood on his hands. He was not just a killer, but a murderer, and Mickey wondered how much he had truly changed in the years since Johnny Friday’s death.

When he was finished with the Tyrrell material, he opened a paper file on his desk. Inside were more notes: twenty-five or thirty sheets of paper, each covered from top to bottom in Mickey’s tiny handwriting, illegible to anyone else thanks to a combination of his personal shorthand and the size of the script. One sheet was headed with the words “Father/Mother.” He intended to head out to Pearl River at some point to talk to neighbors, store owners, anyone who might have had contact with Parker’s family before the killings, but he had some more homework to do on that first.

He checked his watch. It was after eight. He knew that Jimmy Gallagher, who had partnered Parker’s father down in the Ninth Precinct, lived out in Brooklyn. Tyrrell had given him that, along with the name of the investigator from the Rockland County District Attorney’s Office who had been present at the interviews with Parker’s father following the killings. Tyrrell thought that the latter, ex-NYPD, name of Kozelek, mig J QKozelek, ht talk to Wallace, and had initially offered to smooth the way, but that was before their conversation had come to a bad-tempered end. Wallace figured that call wasn’t going to be made now, although he wasn’t afraid to tap Tyrrell again, once he’d sobered up, if the investigator proved reluctant to speak.

The partner, Gallagher, was another matter. Wallace could tell that Tyrrell hadn’t liked Gallagher any more than he’d liked Charlie Parker. He went back to his notes from that afternoon and found the exchange in question.

W:Who were his friends?

T:Parker’s?

W:No, his father’s.

T:He was a popular guy, well liked down in the Ninth. He probably had a lot of friends.

W:Any in particular?

T:He was partnered with-uh, what was his name now?-Gallagher, that’s it. Jimmy Gallagher was his partner down there for years. (Laughs) I always-ah, it doesn’t matter.

W:Maybe it does. T:I always thought he was queer myself. W:There were rumors?

T:Just that: rumors.

W:Was he interviewed in the course of the investigation into the Pearl River killings?

T:Oh yeah, he was interviewed all right. I saw the transcripts. It was like talking to one of those monkeys. You know the ones: see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil? Said he knew nothing. Hadn’t even seen his old buddy that day.

W:Except?

T:Except that it was Gallagher’s birthday when the killings occurred, and he was down in the Ninth, even though he’d requested, and been given, a day off. Hard to believe that he would have gone to the Ninth on his day off, and his birthday, what’s more, and not hooked up with his partner and best friend.

W:So you think that Gallagher went down to meet some people for a birthday drink, and if that was the case, Parker would have been among them?

T:Makes sense, doesn’t it? Here’s another thing: Parker was on an eight-to-four tour that day. A cop named Eddie Grace covered for Parker so that he could finish his tour early. Why would Parker have been calling in favors unless it was to meet up with Jimmy Gallagher?

W:Did Grace say that was why he covered for Parker?

T:Like everyone else involved, Grace knew nothing and said nothing. The precinct clerk, DeMartini, saw Parker skip out, but didn’t say anything about it. He knew when to turn a blind eye. A waitress in Cal ’s said Gallagher was with someone on the night of the killings, but she didn’t get a good look at the guy, and he didn’t stay long. She said it might have been Will Parker, but then the bartender contradicted her, said it was someone else in the bar with Gallagher, a stranger, and the waitress subsequently decided that she’d been mi J Quo;d beenstaken.

W:You think someone put pressure on her to change her story?

T:They closed ranks. It’s what cops do. They protect their own, even if it’s the wrong thing to do.

Mickey paused at that point in his notes. Tyrrell’s face had changed when he spoke about ranks closing, of men being protected. Perhaps it was the IAD investigator in him, a deep-seated hatred of corrupt men and the code of omerta that protected them, but Mickey didn’t think that was all. He suspected that Tyrrell had always been outside the loop even before he joined IAD. He wasn’t a likable man, as Hector had pointed out, and it might have been the case that the “Rat Squad” had given him the opportunity to punish those whom he despised in the guise of a crusade against corruption. Mickey filed that observation away, and returned to his reading.