Melancholy Baby

by Robert B. Parker

  “God,” Lolly said, “just what I need after three shows.”

  “It’s a great pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Corsetti said.

  “Yeah, sure,” Lolly said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  She went to her big semicircular desk and sat behind it.

  “I’ll give you ten minutes,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m sure that’ll be plenty, Miss Drake,” Corsetti said.

  “How about your partner,” Lolly said. “Does she talk?”

  “When I have something to say,” I said.

  “Is that a remark?” Lolly said.

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “Just the honest expression of my circumstance.”

  Lolly frowned. “Don’t get chippy with me, girlie.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Your ten minutes are ticking,” Lolly said to Corsetti.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Corsetti said. “Of course you knew Peter Franklin.”

  “Of course.”

  “And George Markham.”

  “Who?”

  “George Markham, ma’am,” Corsetti said.

  “I never heard of him.”

  “You and he worked together at a radio station in Moline in the early 1980s,” Corsetti said.

  Lolly glanced at her manager. Her manager glanced at the lawyer. The lawyer frowned at Corsetti.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Lolly said after a time.

  Corsetti looked at me.

  “Sunny?” he said.

  “You had a call-in radio show at WMOL Moline called Lolly’s Law. During that same time period, George Markham was an announcer at the station.”

  “And I’m supposed to remember every loser I worked with at some five-thousand-watt station in East Bumfuck?” Lolly said.

  “Never forgot where she came from,” Corsetti said to me.

  I smiled. Lolly looked a little startled. What happened to her drooling fan?

  “Anything else?” Lolly said.

  “You have any idea why somebody would want to kill Markham?”

  “Kill him? I told you, I don’t even remember him.”

  “Peter Franklin was your lawyer,” Corsetti said.

  “I already said he was.”

  Corsetti nodded happily.

  “Do you know why he hired some people to beat up George Markham’s daughter?”

  Lolly stared at Corsetti. She opened her mouth and closed it without speaking. She looked at her manager and at her lawyer. Then she seemed to rally.

  “You dreadful little man,” she said.

  “I’m not little,” Corsetti said. “Just short.”

  “I don’t care what you are,” Lolly said. “I am through wasting my time with you.”

  “This interview is terminated,” the lawyer said, “as of now.”

  “Interview?” Corsetti said. “You think this is a fucking interview? I’m questioning a suspect in a double homicide, and the questioning stops when I say it stops.”

  “Perhaps you should tell us what this is all about,” the lawyer said.

  He was an entertainment lawyer. A good criminal lawyer would have terminated the discussion right there. Corsetti didn’t have enough to arrest her. But Corsetti got some credit for that. He had concealed the limits of what he knew, and implied that it was more than it was. So the lawyer still didn’t know what we had.

  “George Markham’s daughter, Sarah, hired Sunny Randall to establish her paternity. Peter Franklin hired some guys to make Sarah stop. And then to try to make Sunny Randall stop. Then George Markham got shot, and a couple days later, Peter Franklin got shot, in the same manner that Markham did, a shot in the chest that knocked him down. A bullet in the forehead, point-blank, to be sure they were dead. Miss Drake knew Markham, and she knew Franklin.”

  “Hired this woman?” Lolly said.

  Corsetti nodded.

  “You told us she was a police officer.”

  “No,” Corsetti said, “I told you I was a police officer. I told you she was Sunny Randall. Which she is.”

  “You implied.”

  Corsetti grinned and shook his head. “You inferred,” he said.

  “I’ll have your badge,” Lolly said.

  The lawyer made a placating gesture with his hand.

  “Lolly,” he said.

  “Don’t you Lolly me, you fucking wimp,” she said. “I want his badge.”

  “Can’t have it,” Corsetti said. “Captain says I’m supposed to have one.”

  “Get out,” Lolly said.

  “Do you have anything you’d like to share with me about these murders, Miss Drake?” Corsetti said.

  “Miss Drake,” the lawyer said.

  “Shut up,” she said.

  She stood and walked around her desk and leaned toward Corsetti.

  “You came in here and pretended this floozy was a police detective. You imply that I am guilty of some preposterous crime. I will see to it, with every power I have at my command, that you are sorry. Do you actually think you can stand up to me? Do you have any idea who and what I am?”

  “A highfalutin asshole,” Corsetti said. “Am I right or wrong?”

  Lolly jerked back as if he’d struck her. Her face reddened as if she might cry. Then she turned and ran out of the office. Corsetti stood as she left and jerked his head at me.

  “Have a nice day,” he said to the two men, and we went out.

  Riding down in the elevator, Corsetti looked at me and grinned.

  “Floozy?” he said.

  “How did she know?” I said.

  47

  I met my father for lunch at a coffee shop on Summer Street on my side of the Fort Point Channel. He always looked the same to me. He probably wasn’t. He was more than thirty years older than he was when he took me to nursery school for the first time. He had always been a hands-on father; he’d had to be, given my mother’s limitations. It always made me smile when I thought of it. On my first day at school, I hadn’t cried. And he had.

  “You know this business well enough,” my father said, “to know that coincidences exist.”

  “But assuming that they are coincidences doesn’t get you anywhere,” I said.

  “And assuming they aren’t gets you where you don’t want to be,” my father said.

  “So what do I do with Lolly Drake?” I said.

  “You could leave it to the New York cops,” my father said.

  “You think they can get to her?”

  “Not with what they’ve got so far.”

  “No,” I said. “She’s got layers of protection.”

  “And not everybody in the chain of command will have the same attitude as your friend Corsetti,” my father said.

  “She was so arrogant,” I said. “I’d love to level her out a little.”

  My father’s thick hands rested on the tabletop. He turned his coffee cup slowly.

  “Not a good idea to make it personal,” he said.

  “I’m not a cop, Daddy. I work for me.”

  He grinned at me.

  “So it’s all personal,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “You don’t care about a case,” my father said, “you don’t do it.”

  “It’s why I left the police,” I said.

  “Alternative would be to care about them all.”

  “Did you?” I said.

  “I tried to.”

  “But?”

  “But some I didn’t give a rat’s ass about,” my father said.

  “But you did the cases.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t quit.”

  “I had a wife and two daughters,” my father said.

  “So you couldn’t quit.”


  “Have to take care of your family,” my father said.

  He smiled at me. “And generally, I liked the work.”

  “And you were good at it,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I was.”

  The waitress brought a fried-egg sandwich for my father, tuna salad for me.

  “I don’t know where to go with this,” I said.

  “You think Markham thought the DNA would prove his paternity?” my father said.

  “Why would he take it if it wouldn’t?”

  “So why would he think it would?” my father said.

  “Because he thought he really was her father.”

  “And why would a man think someone was his child?”

  “Because the child’s mother told him,” I said.

  The waitress came and refilled our coffee cups, and moved on to fill other cups at other tables.

  “So why didn’t he take it the moment the question came up?” my father said.

  “My best guess,” I said, “is that Mrs. Markham was opposed.”

  “And she still won’t do it,” my father said.

  “DNA? No.”

  “So who’s the kid’s mother?”

  “You think she refuses because she knows she’s not the mother,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “So why conceal it?” I said. “Lots of people adopt children.”

  “But Markham thought the kid—what’s her name?”

  “Sarah,” I said.

  “Markham thought Sarah was his.”

  “And Mrs. Markham knew she was not hers,” I said.

  “So who was Sarah’s mother, and why did Markham think he was her father?”

  “And why did she . . . hell, does she . . . pretend that Sarah is theirs?” I said.

  My father dabbed a trace of egg yolk off the corner of his mouth with a paper napkin.

  “Tell me about the trust fund,” my father said.

  “Money comes from a bank in New York,” I said. “First of every month. Brian Kelly is on it.”

  “Might be interesting to see if any other money comes to that family,” he said.

  “Lolly Drake is in on this thing,” I said.

  “Maybe she’s the momma.”

  “Oh, Phil, you said it. I was hoping you would.”

  He smiled at me.

  “Phil?” he said.

  “We’re pals, too,” I said.

  “Good.”

  “You really think she could be the mother?”

  “She knew Markham at the right time.”

  “I would dearly love to get a DNA sample from her.”

  “Not likely,” my father said.

  “I can try to establish sexual contact between them, at the appropriate time.”

  “Twentysomething years later.”

  “Hard, but not impossible.”

  “She would have the money to pay somebody off,” my father said.

  “And a reason to want to conceal her pregnancy,” I said. “She bills herself as the voice of the moral majority.”

  My father smiled again.

  “A phrase from my youth,” he said. “Or she may just be a coincidence.”

  “The hell she is,” I said.

  “Either way,” my father said, “there’s two other things I’d be doing. I’d follow the money.”

  “I’ve heard that works,” I said.

  My father nodded.

  “You can always trust money,” he said.

  “What else,” I said.

  “Well,” my father said. “If there’s hard evidence, forensic stuff, cops will get it. Or they won’t. Either way, you don’t do that kind of detecting.”

  “I’m not equipped,” I said.

  “No, you’re not. What you’re equipped to do is talk to suspects and witnesses. Which, by the way, you do very well.”

  I felt a small thrill of pleasure. My father had complimented me.

  “So what you got,” my father said, “is you got the daughter, who has probably given you most of what she’s got. You got Lolly Drake, who is nearly bulletproof. And you’ve got Mrs. Markham.”

  “She’s probably not told me all she knows,” I said.

  “Probably not,” my father said.

  “And I can get to her.”

  My father nodded.

  “We are driving toward a logical assumption here,” I said.

  “Was my case,” he said, “I’d squeeze the hell out of Mrs. Markham.”

  48

  My father and I finished our sandwiches. We were quiet for a moment while we drank our coffee. The waitress asked about dessert.

  “I’ll have a piece of that pie,” my father said.

  The waitress looked at the pie on the counter under the glass dome.

  “Oh, let me check what kind,” she said.

  “I don’t care what kind,” my father said. “I’ll have a slice, with some cheese and more coffee.”

  “Certainly.”

  The waitress looked at me. I smiled and shook my head. She went to get my father his pie.

  “No decaf?” I said.

  “I hate decaf,” my father said.

  “Most people say as they get older, real coffee keeps them awake.”

  “It does.”

  “It keeps you awake, but you drink it anyway.”

  “I do.”

  “You could learn to like decaf,” I said.

  “Fuck decaf,” my father said.

  “Oh,” I said, “of course. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  The waitress came with the pie and cheese. The pie was apple. My father ate it the way he did everything: straight ahead. Without flourish.

  “I’m seeing a psychiatrist,” I said.

  My father swallowed a mouthful of pie.

  “How come?” he said.

  “Richie,” I said.

  My father nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s a hard one.”

  “One of the things I’m trying to figure out is why it’s so hard.”

  My father drank some coffee.

  “Who’s the shrink?” he said.

  “Dr. Silverman,” I said. “In Cambridge.”

  My father smiled.

  “Susan Silverman?” he said.

  “Yes, you know her?”

  “I do,” he said.

  “Tell me about her.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I don’t know a ton about shrinkage,” my father said. “But I’m pretty sure it’s not improved by having people talk about your shrink.”

  “But you like her?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “If you didn’t, you’d say so, wouldn’t you.”

  “I like her,” my father said. “So I don’t have to think about what to say if I didn’t.”

  I felt slightly chastised.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “She’s a smart woman,” my father said. “And you’re a smart woman. And she’s tough. And you’re tough. I’m pretty sure you’ll do some good things together.”

  “We are talking about you and Mother,” I said. I felt like I was confessing.

  “I bet most people in therapy, especially early in therapy, are talking about their mother and father,” he said.

  “I’m dying to find out how you know Dr. Silverman,” I said.

  “Ask her,” my father said.

  “God,” I said, “you’re as bad as she is.”

  “Or as good,” he said.

  We looked at each other happily.

  “Will you tell Mother?” I said.

  “I think I won’t.”

  “Bec
ause?”

  “Because it’s not information she can make much use of,” my father said.

  “Gee, I thought you might give me a speech,” I said, “about husbands and wives sharing everything.”

  “When’s the last time I gave you a speech,” my father said.

  “The time in high school when I stayed out all night after a dance.”

  “That showed great restraint,” my father said. “I wanted to kill you.”

  The waitress came by and poured us more coffee, and dropped off the check. My father picked it up automatically. I let him, automatically.

  “Why do you think Mom wouldn’t do well with this?” I said.

  My father’s pie was gone. I could see him thinking about another piece.

  “I love Em,” he said. “I have loved her for more than forty years. But it doesn’t mean I don’t see her clearly. She’s quick to judge, she’s opinionated, and the opinions were formed when she was in her teens.”

  “Often wrong but never uncertain,” I said.

  He smiled.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  He looked around for the waitress, caught her eye, and pointed toward his pie plate. She came over.

  “Another slice of pie, sir.”

  “Yes, please,” my father said.

  “It is good,” the waitress said, “isn’t it.”

  “It is,” my father said. “No cheese this time.”

  She brought him another slice.

  “You know this about her,” I said.

  “I’ve always known her,” he said.

  “But you couldn’t change her.”

  “No,” he said. “I love her as she is. I always tried to protect you and Elizabeth from the worst of it. I had more success with you than with Elizabeth.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re more like me,” he said. “But there was no changing Em, and I knew it.”

  “Love me or leave me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you love her.”

  “I do,” my father said.

  “And you’re happy.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I am.”

  He ate some of his pie and drank some of his coffee. I thought of all the suppers and breakfasts I’d seen him eat. I wanted to get up and sit in his lap. I felt a little frightened.

  “Elizabeth’s kind of a mess, Daddy,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “And I seem to be kind of messy these days, too.”

  “You’ll get better,” he said.