John Connolly - Every Dead Thing

“I hear maybe Sonny has taken a sudden interest in my good health,” I said.

The old man smiled. “What kind of interest in your health, Mr. Parker?”

“The kind of interest that could result in my health suddenly ceasing to be good.”

“I don’t know anything about that. Sonny is his own man.”

“That may be, but if anyone pulls anything on me, I’ll see Sonny in Hell.”

“I’ll have Bobby look into it,” he said.

That didn’t make me feel a whole lot better. I stood up to leave.

“A clever man would be looking for the girl,” said the old man, also standing up and moving toward a door in a corner of the room behind the desk. “Alive or dead, the girl is the key.”

Maybe he was right, but the old man must have had his own reasons for pointing me toward her. And as Bobby Sciorra escorted me to the front door, I wondered if I was the only person looking for Catherine Demeter.

There was a cab waiting at the gates of the Ferrera house to take me back to the East Village. As it turned out, I had enough time to shower and make a pot of coffee at my apartment before the FBI came knocking on my door. I had changed into tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt so I felt a little casual next to Special Agents Ross and Hernandez. The Blue Nile was playing in the background, “A Walk Across the Rooftops,” causing Hernandez to wrinkle his nose in distaste. I didn’t feel the need to apologize.

Ross did most of the talking, while Hernandez ostentatiously examined the contents of my bookshelf, looking at covers and reading the dust jackets. He hadn’t asked if he could and I didn’t like it.

“There are some picture ones on the lower shelf,” I said. “No Crayolas, though. I hope you brought your own.”

Hernandez scowled at me. He was in his late twenties and probably still believed everything he had been taught about the agency in Quantico. He reminded me of the tour guides in the Hoover Building, the ones who herd the Minnesota housewives around while dreaming of gunning down drug dealers and international terrorists. Hernandez probably still refused to believe that Hoover had worn a dress.

Ross was a different matter. He had been involved with the feds’ Truck Hijack Squad in New York in the seventies and his name had been linked to a number of high-profile RICO cases since then. I believed he was probably a good agent, but a lousy human being. I had already decided what I was going to tell him: nothing.

“Why were you at the Ferrera house this evening?” he began, after declining an offer of coffee like a monkey refusing a nut.

“I’ve got a paper route.” Ross didn’t even grin. Hernandez’s scowl deepened. If I’d had a nervous disposition, the strain might have proved too much for me.

“Don’t be an asshole,” said Ross. “I could arrest you on suspicion of involvement with organized crime, hold you for a while, let you go, but what good would that do either of us? I’ll ask you again: why were you at the Ferrera house this evening?”

“I’m conducting an investigation. Ferrera might have been connected to it.”

“What are you investigating?”

“That’s confidential.”

“Who hired you?”

“Confidential.” I was tempted to put on a singsong voice, but I didn’t think Ross was in the right frame of mind. Maybe he was right, maybe I was an asshole; but I was no nearer to finding Catherine Demeter than I had been twenty-four hours ago, and her boyfriend’s death had opened up a range of possibilities, none of which was particularly appealing. If Ross was out to nail Sonny Ferrera or his father, then that was his problem. I had enough of my own.

“What did you tell Ferrera about Barton’s death?”

“Nothing he didn’t know already, seeing as how Hansen was at the scene before you were,” I replied. Hansen was a reporter with the Post, a good one. There were flies that envied Hansen’s ability to sniff out a corpse, but if someone had time to tip Hansen off it was pretty certain that someone had informed Ferrera even earlier. Walter was right: parts of the Police Department leaked like a poor man’s shoes.

“Look,” I said, “I don’t know any more than you do. I don’t think Sonny was involved, or the old man. As for anyone else…”

Ross’s eyes flicked upward in frustration. After a pause, he asked if I’d met Bobby Sciorra. I told him I’d had that pleasure. Ross stood and picked at some microscopic speck on his tie. It looked like the sort you picked up in Filene’s Basement after the good stuff has gone.

“Sciorra’s been mouthing off about teaching you a lesson, I hear. He thinks you’re an interfering prick. He’s probably right.”

“I hope you’ll do everything in your power to protect me.”

Ross smiled, a minute hitching of the lips that revealed small, pointed canines. He looked like a rat reacting to a stick poked in its face.

“Rest assured, we’ll do everything in our power to find the culprit when something happens to you.” Hernandez smiled too as they headed for the door. Like father, like son.

I smiled back. “You can let yourselves out. And Hernandez…” He stopped and turned.

“I’m gonna count those books.”

Ross was right to be concentrating his energies on Sonny. He may have been strictly minor league in many ways-a few porn parlors near Port Authority, a social club on Mott with a handwritten notice taped above the phone reminding members that it was bugged, assorted petty drug deals, shylocking, and running whores hardly made him Public Enemy Number One-but Sonny was also the weak link in the Ferrera chain. If he could be broken, then it might lead to Sciorra and to the old man himself.

I watched the two FBI men from my window as they climbed into their car. Ross paused at the passenger side and stared up at the window for a time. It didn’t crack under the pressure. Neither did I, but I had a feeling that Agent Ross wasn’t really trying, not yet.

IT WAS AFTER TEN the next morning when I arrived at the Barton house. An unidentified flunky answered the door and showed me into the same office in which I had met Isobel Barton the day before, with the same desk and the same Ms. Christie wearing what looked like the same gray suit and the same unwelcoming look on her face.

She didn’t offer me a seat so I stood with my hands in my pockets to stop my fingers getting numb in the chilly atmosphere. She busied herself with some papers on the desk, not sparing me a second look. I stood by the fireplace and admired a blue china dog that stood at the far end of the mantelpiece. It was part of what had probably once been a pair, since there was an empty space on the opposite side. He looked lonely without a friend.

“I thought these things usually came in pairs?”

Ms. Christie glanced up, her face crumpled in annoyance like an image on old newspaper.

“The dog,” I repeated. “I thought china dogs like that came in matching pairs.” I wasn’t particularly concerned about the dog but I was tired of Ms. Christie ignoring me and I derived some petty pleasure from irritating her.

“It was once part of a pair,” she replied after a moment. “The other was…damaged some time ago.”

“That must have been upsetting,” I said, trying to look like I meant it while simultaneously failing to do so.

“It was. It had sentimental value.”

“For you, or Mrs. Barton?”

“For both of us.” Ms. Christie realized she had been forced to acknowledge my presence despite her best efforts, so she carefully put the cap on her pen, clasped her hands together, and assumed a businesslike expression.

“How is Mrs. Barton?” I asked. What might have been concern moved swiftly across Ms. Christie’s features and then disappeared, like a gull gliding over a cliff face.