“And you never were in the rackets?” I said.
“No,” Richie said, and smiled. “I went to college, and when I graduated, they gave me the saloon as a graduation present, and there hasn’t been an illegal dollar spent there since I owned it.”
I didn’t know what to say. I believed him. Why the hell hadn’t I always believed him? Richie grinned again, thinking back.
“Here’s a nice touch, though. At this same dinner, my father also said to me, ‘Whatever you do, you’re a Burke, and not everybody is going to be your friend. I want you to learn to shoot, and to use your fists.’
“And I said, ‘I already had a few fights in high school.’ And my father smiled at Felix again and said, ‘Yeah, sure. But Felix will teach you how to do it even better. Shooting, too.’ ”
“And did he?” I said.
“Five afternoons a week for a year,” Richie said.
“And he knows a lot,” I said.
“Felix is getting older now, but he could still kill a man with a lollipop,” Richie said.
“And now you know how.”
“I do,” Richie said. “It’s not something you forget. And I practice.”
“But you don’t use the skills.”
“Not yet,” Richie said. “But since we’re talking about this, Sunny, you gotta understand. I come from a family of gangsters and thugs, and I’m neither. On the other hand, I love my family. I will never turn away from them.”
“It’s a fine line,” I said.
“It is,” Richie said. “But it is a line.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me this before?”
“I thought when I said I wasn’t in the business, you should have believed me.”
“You were right,” I said. “I should have. Does your wife know this story?”
“No.”
“Has she met your father and Felix?”
“Just at the wedding,” Richie said. “Neither was carrying a tommy gun.”
“So she doesn’t know what I know,” I said.
“No.”
I was thrilled.
“So,” Richie said. “You need anything?”
“A man named George Markham,” I said, “was shot to death last week in the parking lot in back of the Castle in Park Square.”
Richie nodded.
“Anything I could find out about that, including who did it, would be a great favor.”
Richie nodded again.
“I’ll speak to Uncle Felix,” Richie said. “Felix knows stuff.”
He put his coffee cup on the table and stood up. Rosie jumped down and went to the front door and wagged with her tongue out. I got her leash and gave it to Richie.
“When Rosie’s with me,” Richie said, “it’s like she’s with you.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I love her like you do,” Richie said.
I nodded. Richie opened the door, and Rosie surged through it as far as the leash would let her, and stopped and stood motionless, waiting. Richie looked at me for a minute. Then, with Rosie’s leash looped around his right wrist, he put his arms around me and hugged me. I was rigid for a moment, and then I hugged him back as hard as I could.
“Remember Yogi Berra,” Richie said.
My voice was muffled against his chest.
“It’s never over until it’s over,” I said.
“Something like that,” Richie said.
Then he patted me softly on the back, let go of me, went out the door with Rosie, and closed it behind him. I stood without moving, looking at the door, trying to get enough air.
59
The place felt empty when I woke up the next morning. Rosie was with Richie. I felt a ripple of excitement when I thought of Richie. It’s never over until it’s over. I couldn’t quite remember who Yogi Berra was. Some kind of sports person. But I knew the phrase by heart. I went for a run by myself, and came home and showered, and was drinking coffee in my bathrobe when the phone rang and I picked it up and Sarah’s voice said, “Sunny, you have to come here.”
“To your school?”
“Yes. My room. You remember where it is?”
“Yes. Are you in trouble?”
“No. There was a bunch of mail piled up while I was with you. I just looked at it this morning. There’s a big manila envelope. It’s from my father.”
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t dare open it. I need you to come and open it with me.”
“I’ll be there in an hour,” I said.
And I was. We sat in her single dorm room on either side of her small wooden desk in the small window alcove that gave her a view of the library steps. The envelope was on the desk between us.
“Where’s Rosie?” Sarah said.
“With my ex-husband,” I said. “We share custody.”
Sarah nodded. We were both looking at the envelope.
“Would you like to open it?” I said.
“No,” Sarah said. “You.”
I nodded and picked it up. It was postmarked Andover, the day before he’d been shot. I took a nail file from my purse and used it to slit open the top. It had been through the mail system, and there were very few clues likely to be still clinging to it, but I tried to be careful anyway. In the envelope were four photographs and a letter. I put the photographs on the desk, faceup, so that Sarah could see them. They were full-frontal nude pictures of an attractive young woman looking coquettish. In one picture was a cute, slender young man with a camera who must have been taking the picture of them together in a full-length mirror. They appeared to have been taken in someone’s living room. You could tell by the grain that they had been enlarged from snapshots. Sarah stared at the pictures without comment.
“Do you want me to read the letter to you?” I said.
She nodded, looking at the nude pictures.
“ ‘Sarah Dear,’ ” I read. “ ‘I have always thought you were my biological child, though I was not married to your biological mother. Recent DNA test results tell me I’m not. But in my heart, in my love, in my every fiber, I am your father and I love you as I always have. I don’t know who your biological father is. Your biological mother is Lolly Drake. I’ve enclosed pictures, which I took of her, and one of her with me when we were intimate, to authenticate my case. I thought I had made her pregnant with you, and when she offered, I took you to raise as my own. I’m ashamed to say she paid us to do that. I don’t know more than this yet, but I’m determined to find out. If things work out, you and I can talk about this letter and these pictures. The pictures are embarrassing; I was married. But it is all the evidence I have, and if anything happens, I want you to know the truth as far as I can tell it.
“ ‘I love you, honey, Dad.
“ ‘PS: I’ll always be your Dad, whatever the DNA says.’ ”
I put the letter down in front of her. She didn’t look at it. She was staring at the photographs.
“That’s him,” she said. “That’s Daddy.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And that’s my mother?”
“Yes.”
“Who did he say she was?”
“Her name is Lolly Drake.”
“Not the same one?”
“Yes. The queen of the airwaves,” I said.
“Lolly Drake is my mother?”
“It appears so.”
“Did you know?”
“There was a lot of reason to think so,” I said. “Now we have proof.”
“What should we do.”
“First thing,” I said. “I think you ought to meet her.”
“You’ll be there?”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” I said.
60
Corsetti, with his Yankees cap on backwards, swagg
ered into the Viand Coffee Shop uptown on Madison Avenue, and squeezed into the small booth opposite us. It was a fairly upscale area, but several customers must have thought cop as soon as they saw him. Corsetti knew who Sarah was, but I maintained the formalities and introduced them.
“How ya doin’, kid,” Corsetti said. “Whaddya got for me?”
Sarah looked at me. I nodded. She slid the manila envelope across the table to Corsetti. He waited while the waiter brought him coffee. Then he opened the envelope carefully and took out the contents and spread them out carefully. He looked at the pictures without expression. Then he read the letter without expression. Then he looked at the pictures again and read the letter again. When he was through, he put the pictures carefully back in the envelope and refolded the letter, and put it back. Then he sat back and drank some coffee. He put the mug back on the tabletop and looked at me and Sarah and smiled.
“Va . . . da . . . voom,” he said.
“It is Lolly Drake,” I said. “The man in the picture is George Markham, who raised Sarah, thinking he was her father.”
“Yeah, you told me on the phone.”
“I want Sarah to meet her.”
“Won’t get her convicted of anything yet, but sure, she can meet her,” Corsetti said.
“She’s hard to get to,” I said.
“Remember, you are talking to a New York City police detective, and that police detective ain’t just anyone. The detective is me. Eugene Corsetti. We want to see Lolly Drake, we see Lolly Drake.”
“Will we really?” Sarah said.
“Probably,” I said. “Has there been any give in Harvey Delk’s position.”
“You think you can get him to roll on Lolly?”
“Delk?” Corsetti said. “Sure. Sooner or later, guys like Delk don’t hold up. He’ll rat somebody for us. Anything in Boston?”
“I have a, ah, friend, looking into the matter of George Markham’s death.”
“A resourceful friend?” Corsetti said.
“Oh, my, yes,” I said.
Corsetti looked at Sarah.
“You know what I’m bettin’, kid?” Corsetti said. “I’m bettin’ the resourceful friend is not actually a member of an officially designated police organization.”
He grinned at me. “Am I right or wrong?” he said.
“You have good instincts, Eugene.”
He pointed a finger at Sarah with the thumb cocked, and winked at her and let the thumb drop as if to shoot.
“Good instincts,” he said.
At five o’clock, Sarah and I and Corsetti and his good instincts were all on the West Side, in the waiting room outside Lolly Drake’s office, waiting for her to finish taping. Our arrival caused a flurry of lawyers, managers, flaks, and security people. The security guys in blue blazers and light gray slacks stood stolidly against the walls of the waiting room and looked fearsome. Corsetti, his badge clipped to his lapel, apparently didn’t notice. Sarah was still carrying the manila envelope. She sat between me and Corsetti. I could hear her breathing. I could hear Corsetti, too. He was humming softly to himself, something that sounded like “I’ll Remember April.” At 5:20, a white-haired man with big horn-rims and a great tan opened the office door and stepped out between the security guards on either side of the door.
“Wow,” Corsetti said. “Lewis Bender.”
The white-haired man stared at Corsetti.
“And you are?”
“Detective Second-Grade Eugene Corsetti.”
“Have we met?”
“Here and there,” Corsetti said, “both of us being, so to speak, in the criminal-law business.”
“I represent Miss Drake,” Bender said.
Corsetti was having the time of his life. He was bouncing on his toes. I could tell he was hoping one of the security people would give him some grief.
“This is Sunny Randall,” he said to Bender. “And this is Miss Drake’s daughter, Sarah.”
Bender nodded his head gravely. It was almost a bow. The nod acknowledged that he’d heard Corsetti, but he had no opinion.
“Sarah’s got a letter and some pictures she wants to show her mother.”
Bender smiled slightly. “Wait here, please,” he said. “I’ll speak with Miss Drake.”
We all stood silently, Corsetti looking at the security guards, Sarah holding the manila envelope against her chest, her shoulder touching mine. She was very pale. Bender was gone probably five minutes. It was a long silence.
“Miss Drake will see Sarah alone,” Bender said.
Everything about Bender was pleasant and knowing and firm.
“No,” Sarah said. “I won’t go in without Sunny.”
“Are you a police officer, Miss Randall?”
“I am a private detective,” I said. “Employed by Sarah.”
Bender nodded pleasantly. “Excuse me,” he said, and went back into the royal chambers.
Another silence. Corsetti was tapping his fingers on his thighs in some sort of rhythm that only he could hear. He looked at Sarah and winked. More silence. Bender emerged.
“All right,” he said. “Sarah and Miss Randall.”
“How do I feel?” Corsetti said.
“I don’t believe it’s personal, Detective,” Bender said.
He stood aside and we went in. He came in behind us and closed the door. Lolly Drake was sitting behind a large conference table. She didn’t look at us when we came in.
“Lewis,” she said. “I’d like you to step out as well.”
“I wouldn’t advise that, Lolly.”
“Well, I don’t work for you. You work for me. Step outside, please.”
Bender did his big neutral nod and went out.
Lolly said, without exactly looking at us, “What have you to show me?”
Sarah looked at me. I nodded. Sarah took the letter and the four pictures out of the manila envelope, and placed the letter and the four pictures in front of Lolly. First, Lolly looked at the pictures. She looked carefully at each one for a moment, as if checking to see how she looked. She studied the one of her and George a little longer, and then, good heavens, she blushed. She put on a pair of silver half-rimmed reading glasses and read the letter. She kept looking at the letter for a while, long after she must have finished it.
Still looking at it, she said, “What do you want?”
I waited. Sarah seemed to be having trouble getting her breath. Lolly looked up at me suddenly. She was getting it back together, the full-bore Lolly Drake charisma.
“What do you want?” she said to me.
“It’s what Sarah wants,” I said.
Lolly kept her eyes on me.
“Well, what is it?”
“Perhaps if you looked at her,” I said.
Lolly hesitated and then, for the first time, looked at Sarah.
“Are you my mother?” Sarah said.
“Just because of this letter?” Lolly said.
“Pictures are suggestive. The guy in the second picture wrote the letter,” I said.
“All these pictures show is that I was young and stupid.” She looked at me again. “About your age, I’d say.”
“Older,” I said, “judging from the pictures.”
Lolly ignored it.
“So, what will it take to make this all go away,” she said. “I have great resources.”
“We’d like you to provide a DNA sample.”
“Don’t be silly. How much money do you want?”
“I want to know if you’re my mother,” Sarah said.
“So you can walk around saying your name is Sarah Drake?” Lolly said.
“My name is Sarah Markham. My father was George Markham.”
“For Christ sake,” Lolly said. “You don’t know who your father is. I don’t e
ven know who your father is.”
The room was stone-silent. She had just admitted it, and I wasn’t sure she even realized it yet.
“Mommie dearest,” I said.
61
We were all gathered now in Lolly’s office: Lolly, Sarah, Lewis Bender, Corsetti, and me. The pictures of Lolly were discreetly back in their manila envelope.
“You realize,” Bender said, “and I’m sure an ADA will so inform you, if it gets that far, that you have no real evidence of anything very much here.”
“The letter,” I said, “and the photos would get us a court-ordered DNA test, I’ll bet.”
Bender shrugged.
“Surely all of this would be very embarrassing to Miss Drake,” he said. “And possibly harmful to her career. But there is no evidence of criminal behavior.”
Corsetti bent forward with his forearms resting on the table and his chin resting on his forearms. He looked like a happy bulldog.
“We can let you fight that out with the prosecutor’s office when the time comes,” he said. “But here’s what it looks like to me. Lolly starts out twentysomething years ago as some sort of weather girl in East”—Corsetti glanced at Sarah—“ah, Overshoe.”
“I was a talk-show host in Moline,” Lolly said. Her voice was chilly.
“Sure thing,” Corsetti said. “And if you’d stayed there, getting knocked up wouldn’t have mattered. But you didn’t stay there, and all of a sudden, getting knocked up became a pretty big deal, because you were selling some kind of true love and total feeling within the frame of marriage ragtime, and here you were, pregnant and single, and you didn’t even know who the kid’s father was.”
Bender looked bored. “Are you through, Detective?”
“What I can’t figure out is why you didn’t abort her.” Corsetti said to Lolly.
I saw Sarah flinch a little. I put my hand on her shoulder. Bender raised his hand toward Lolly, but he was too late.
“I do not believe in abortion,” she said.
Bender’s face showed nothing. “Lolly,” he said. “Silence is golden.”
She looked startled. It was probably a long time since anyone had admonished her.
Melancholy Baby Page 18
