Unknown - The Genius

“Do you want to split a cab?”

Behind me stood Annie.

“There’s a reception at the house,” she said.

I told her I had hired a car. “No charge.”

“I hope not,” she said.

On the ride out I pumped her for information about the McGrath family dynamics. Many of the conclusions I’d drawn were correct: the tanned woman was in fact McGrath’s ex-wife, and the man with the walrus face her second husband. There was another wrinkle, though: walrus face was also McGrath’s former partner.

I poked around in my memory for the name on the transcript. “Gordan?”

“I think his name is Jerry,” she said.

“That’s right. J. Gordan. Jerry.”

“If you say so,” she said.

“That must be a little tense.”

“You think?”

“Here I thought I was the odd man out.”

“Not by a long shot.” “What happened?”

“I don’t think it’s very complicated. McGrath’s a workaholic. His wife is lonely. Roll credits. Although she really went for the jugular, didn’t she?”

I thought of Samantha’s sister’s speech. I doubt that anybody here can think ofhim as anything other than a police officer. Originally I’d interpreted that comment as a compliment. Now it sounded like more an indictment. That Samantha had decided to go into law enforcement seemed to me a way of siding with her father. Then why had she not spoken her farewells, made her defense?

I said to Annie, “You’re close.”

“Very.” They met, she told me, at a forensics conference, during a training session for cops and ADAs.

“We hit it off right away,” said Annie. “Like sisters.”

“Her sister—remind me of her name?”

“Juliette. She lives in North Carolina.”

“Uh-huh. Well, thank you for the inside scoop.”

“You’re interested,” said Annie.

“Interested?”

“In her.”

I laughed. “I have a girlfriend.”

“That’s too bad, she could use somebody like you.”

“Like me how.”

“Rich,” she said and started laughing. “What makes you think I’m rich?” “Your shoes.” “My shoes?”

Still laughing, she shrugged.

I said, “Anyway, I thought she had a boyfriend.”

Annie gave me a strange look.

“They broke up?”

She said, “He was a firefighter.” “Oh,” I said.

And like that we ran out of words. Both of us remembered where we had come from and where we were headed. Annie shifted around to stare out the window. I did the same. The ride took longer than I remembered.

TRAYS OF CUT FRUIT and soggy sandwiches had replaced the pill bottles on the dining-room table. Samantha was nowhere to be seen; nor could I find her sister or mother. Most people congregated around the liquor, and after Annie and I drifted off in different directions, I found myself in conversation with a thickset man with a tangle of gray curls. He shook my hand and introduced himself as Richard Soto. “You’re Lee’s guy,” he said when I told him my name.

“I guess so,” I said.

“I owe you a drink,” he said, guiding me to a sidetable stocked with bottles.

“What for.”

“For getting that bastard off my back. He used to call me up every five damn minutes until you came along. Jameson,” he said, and handed me a cup, which I held politely. “You really did him a world of good. You’re a good man. Bottoms up.”

As he threw back his shot, I quickly spilled mine into the carpet. Then I raised the cup and pretended to wince.

“The next one’ll be easier,” he said, taking my cup and unscrewing the bottle.

“What’s going to happen now?” I asked.

“What?”

“With the case. Thank you.” Again he drank and I poured out.

“Good stuff.”

“Are you going to take it over?”

Soto looked at me blankly. “What.”

“The case.”

“What about it.”

“Are you going to take it over? There’s a lot left to do. I told Annie I’d get her a list of people who had been in the apartment, but I’m having trouble getting in touch with the superintendent of the building, who seems to be on vacation. I was planning to go over there myself this week. She and I also have to go over to the storage locker, because once the lab results come back—”

As I talked, I saw Soto’s gaze slide away from me and over my shoulder, toward a group of detectives joking loudly and making toasts. He got a mean look in his eye and said, “Would you excuse me.”

I followed him over and joined the group. Jerry Gordan had the floor. Through his moustache I noticed the impetus for growing a moustache to begin with, a large mole on his upper lip. He was ruddy and sweating and talking about old times with his buddy Lee McGrath. The other cops exchanged smirks.

“Hey Jerry, you and Lee were pretty close, huh?”

“The closest.”

“All for one and one for all, eh Jerry?”

That prompted snickering. Gordan didn’t seem to notice.

“He was a good fuckin man,” he slurred.

“Hey Jerry,” said Soto. “Was he honest?”

“Oh you know it.”

“Let me hear you say it: Lee McGrath was an honest man.”

“The honestest man in Queens county, Lee McGrath.”

“You swear?”

“I sweardagod.”

“Honest enough for the both of you, isn’t that right, Jerry.”

“Sure was.”

“You bet he was. And giving, too, huh? A generous man, huh?”

Gordan laughed insensibly.

“That’s right, Jerry. He gave his all. Share and share alike, right Jerry?”

More snickering.

I didn’t like the tenor of the conversation, so I detached myself and paddled through the crowd. I intended to look at the file, to make sure it was still there and to give myself a reason for being in McGrath’s home.

The door to the back room was locked. I didn’t knock, but my rattling the knob brought a red-eyed Samantha to answer.

“Oh,” she said, wiping her face. “I didn’t know you were here.” Her body blocked the doorway, but over her I saw her sister in the La-Z-Boy, a wet towel across her forehead.

“I came with Annie,” I said. I meant it by way of explanation; she, however, heard a request for her to come out of hiding.

“That’s so sweet. It’s very sweet of you both. I’ll be out in a little bit.”

“You don’t have to come out.”

“I want to. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t leave until I come out.”

“Okay.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“Okay. I’ll be out soon,” she said, and closed the door.

I waited in the corner, gnawing on celery and nodding at strangers. All I intended to do was give Samantha my best and head home, but after forty minutes she still hadn’t emerged, and I wandered past the group of cops, all of them by now pink and talkative. They hadn’t noticed my absence, addressing me as though I had been standing with them all along, pulling me into their circle and handing me shot glasses that I would discreetly dump into a nearby floor plant. When I had all but guaranteed its death from poisoning, I slipped away and went into the kitchen, where I found an army of women in dish gloves trying to cope with the stampede of dirty glasses.

I gave up. I left the house and walked down to the beach.

Samantha was standing barefoot by the 9/11 memorial. Her pumps lay on their sides where the concrete boardwalk met the sand. I kept my distance, watching the wind turn her hair into streamers, resisting the urge to come up behind her and hold her. Slumping to one side, her

hand on her hip, she looked frail, like McGrath had been toward the end, and I had an odd fear that she was dying, too. The wind bit down hard; she shivered.

As I turned to go she noticed me and gave a little wave. I made as though to take off my shoes and she nodded. I stood beside her and together we looked at the memorial.