Blood Innocents

by Thomas H. Cook

  “Well, I guess you got some questions to ask,” O’Rourke said, “so go ahead. I got to be at the warehouse in an hour.”

  Looking at O’Rourke, Reardon sensed something that he believed was important, sensed that O’Rourke might understand the troubles of Andros Petrakis and offer across the great distance that divided them some element of concern. He decided to take a chance.

  “I’m going to lay it on the line for you,” he said. “They’ve got a guy in the Tombs, and they’re going to try to pin the double murder on him.” Reardon looked intently into O’Rourke’s face. “I don’t think he’s the one.”

  O’Rourke raised himself up slightly from his slumped position on the sofa.

  “They arrested him for something else,” Reardon said, “for another crime. But I think they’ll try to get him for killing Patty and her roommate too. I don’t think he committed any of these crimes, Mr. O’Rourke.”

  O’Rourke’s face hardened. “What’s this guy do?”

  “He worked in the Parks Department, cleaning up the animal cages, things like that.”

  “That’s a shit job,” O’Rourke said. “And they’re trying to lay a murder rap on him?”

  “Yes.”

  “That stinks,” O’Rourke said. “That really stinks.”

  “Yes, it does, Mr. O’Rourke,” Reardon said quietly.

  “What makes them think he did it?”

  “They have some evidence,” Reardon said. “But I don’t believe any of it. I’ve met the man. I don’t think he could have done it. He’s too worn out. It takes a lot of energy to kill.”

  O’Rourke pulled himself erect on the sofa and planted his feet on the floor. “How can I help?”

  “I’m not sure you can,” Reardon told him, “but I think the only way I can get him off is to find out who killed Patty and her roommate. You see, whoever did that did the other thing too. The one the guy is charged with.”

  “I know what you mean,” O’Rourke said. “I’ll do whatever I can. Ask me anything. If it takes a long time, tough shit. There ain’t nothing in that warehouse anybody wants anyway.”

  Reardon looked closely at O’Rourke. “How long were you married to Patty?”

  “Four years. That’s how long we lived together. We’re still married. Never did get no divorce.”

  “Four years,” Reardon repeated.

  “That’s right,” O’Rourke said, “and not a good year among them, to tell you the truth. She was sixteen years old when I married her. Just a little girl really. Beautiful too.”

  “That’s young to marry,” Reardon coaxed.

  “Yeah, it’s young. But if you lived with Sam McDonald you’d of married young too. That’s her father.” O’Rourke’s eyes narrowed spitefully. “He’s a brutal bastard. Used to beat the shit out of his wife, the fucking pig. Used to beat the shit out of Patty too.”

  Reardon nodded.

  “Patty was an only child,” O’Rourke continued. “You know why?”

  Reardon shook his head.

  “ ’Cause his wife couldn’t have no more children, ’cause she was carrying another baby, would have been Patty’s brother or sister, and he beat his wife up and she had a miscarriage, and she couldn’t have no more children after that.” O’Rourke sneered. “He’s a good Catholic, ain’t he? Just about lives in the confessional over at Saint Jude’s. Well, he’s got a lot to confess, but if I had any say in it, Sam McDonald would roast in hell.”

  “Was there an investigation of that beating?”

  “Who would testify against him? A little five-year-old girl like Patty was when it happened? His wife? Mary McDonald wouldn’t testify against her husband if he roasted her on a skewer.”

  Reardon recognized that none of this had much to do with the case. But sometimes people had to be allowed to talk, to ramble, to work up to the relevant issue. By the time they got there, Reardon knew, they would be ready, and nothing could hold them back.

  “Naw, hell,” O’Rourke said with disgust, “old Sam probably gave her a little peck on the cheek and whispered a mea culpa or two and that was the end of it.” His face saddened and his voice became abruptly softer. “Well, I learned something from Sam McDonald,” he said. “I learned what beating up on people leads to. And I’ll tell you something, I never hurt Patty. I never laid a hand on her. We had our troubles, who don’t? And she left me. Happens to a lot of people. But I never hurt her, never hit her or anything like that. Fact is, I loved that little girl. Problem was, she didn’t stay little. She was smart as a whip. Read all the time. I’m not that way at all. Just a dumb Brooklyn mick, that’s me. A working stiff. But I loved her, and I never hurt her. I don’t have to crawl over to Saint Jude’s every fifteen minutes confessing about all the people I’ve destroyed. Not like Sam.”

  “Did Patty have any friends in Brooklyn? People she stayed in contact with after she moved to Manhattan?”

  O’Rourke shook his head. “She said good riddance to everything and everybody in Brooklyn. Myself included.”

  “No one at all?” Reardon asked again. “This could be important.”

  “I’d like to help, but she left Brooklyn for good. She didn’t have nobody but me here anyway. She didn’t have no friends. She used to just sit in this front room and stare out the window. I’d come home. I had a day job then. I’d come home, drive up out there, and there she’d be. Curled up in that little chair you’re sitting in, staring out the window, just like a cat. No expression on her face. Just staring like she was watching a boring movie or something.”

  “How often did you see her after she left?”

  “Not much. It’s like she built a wall around herself. I’d see her once in a while. I’d try to be friendly. I’d say, ‘What’s new?’ or ‘What you been up to?’ — things like that. And she’d just say, ‘I’m okay, I guess,’ and that’d be the end of it.”

  “She never mentioned anyone she knew there?”

  “No, not that I can recall.”

  “Never?”

  “I don’t think so,” O’Rourke said. “I know it’s strange. I thought so at the time. But I figured she just didn’t want me to know anything about her, wanted me to keep my nose out of her life. Well, I figured if that’s what she wants that’s what I’ll do. So after a while we just talked about nothing whenever we saw each other: movies, TV, shit like that. Nothing personal.”

  “Did you ever visit her in her apartment in Manhattan?”

  O’Rourke’s eyes widened. “Oh, no,” he said, “that was impossible. She was very strict about that. I never saw where she lived. The whole four years she was in Manhattan I was never up to her place.” O’Rourke looked embarrassed. “I know I must sound like a jerk to you, seeing somebody that long that wouldn’t even let me in the front door, but I couldn’t help it.” O’Rourke’s voice tightened. “Fact is, I couldn’t leave it alone. I kept loving her. Ain’t that goofy?”

  “No,” Reardon said quietly.

  “I look around this place sometimes,” O’Rourke said gently, “and I remember what it was like when she was here. The worst of it was better than this shit.”

  Reardon nodded.

  “You married?” O’Rourke asked.

  “I was,” Reardon said. “My wife died.”

  “Sorry to hear it.”

  Reardon nodded. “Do you think Mr. McDonald could have done anything to Patty?”

  O’Rourke looked at Reardon with surprise. “You mean kill her? No, he’s a rotten bastard, a real pig, but he couldn’t do that.”

  “You have any idea at all who might have done such a thing?”

  “No. I wish to hell I did. I’d break his fucking back if I caught him. Maybe she had some enemies in Manhattan. I wouldn’t know about that. Or maybe they came after the other one, the roommate, or maybe it was just some crazy man.”

  “Why did you stop seeing Patty?”

  “That’s the way she wanted it,” O’Rourke said. “She said she was starting a new life.”


  “What did she mean?”

  O’Rourke smiled. “I’ve heard lots of people say that and I never saw it mean anything at all.”

  “She didn’t tell you anything about what she meant?”

  “Yeah,” O’Rourke said. “She told me, or tried to. I couldn’t make much sense out of it.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said a friend of hers and her was going to get out of the States,” O’Rourke said. “She said she couldn’t take it here anymore. Maybe Sam was bothering her again, maybe some boyfriend dumped on her, I don’t know. Anyway, she had some shit left in the house here and she wanted to come and get it. She wanted to sell it. She was trying to get the money together to go to Europe and live. Her and her friend were going together.”

  “Was that Karen Ortovsky?” Reardon asked.

  “She never mentioned a name.”

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “Yeah,” O’Rourke said weakly. “Yeah, she hit me with the divorce stuff. But I just couldn’t do it. I must of been crazy to say no to her about that. I ain’t religious. I didn’t give a shit what the Church said. But somehow I just couldn’t get it into my damn head that she was never going to come back to me.” O’Rourke waved one arm across the room. “Never going to come back to this,” he said with a painful laugh.

  “So you refused to give her a divorce?” Reardon said.

  O’Rourke stared at Reardon. “She got real mad about that,” he said softly. “She abused me a little, to tell you the truth. When I heard her I knew it was the last time we’d ever have a friendly word with each other. We were in a coffee shop. She just seemed to blow up, and I just sat there listening to heir. She was calling me all kinds of names. I’d never heard that kind of stuff come out of her mouth. I must of been in shock. I couldn’t say nothing back. If a guy on the job called me those names I’d break his goddamn neck. But I just sat there like a stupid ass. Then she just stopped. She just looked at me for a long time without saying nothing. Then she got up and walked out. And I came home. And you know what I did?”

  Reardon shook his head. He wondered how long O’Rourke had held this hurt mutely within him. He felt like the whiskey priest who waits and listens, but who knows that in the end he will have no balm to offer.

  “I guess you noticed I’m a big guy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I came home and for the next two hours I tore this fucking house apart. That’s why it looks like this. I turned over everything. I ripped off the wallpaper. I pulled down the shelves that were on the wall. And I ain’t fixed nothing yet.” He paused, breathing heavily. His face was flushed. Slowly he regained control of himself. “When I was finished, when there was nothing else to rip up or tear down, I curled up on this sofa and I cried like a baby until morning. If I hadn’t had a job to go to the next day I think I would have killed myself.”

  “And you never saw her or heard from her again?” Reardon asked.

  O’Rourke shook his head. “No, I never did,” he said. “Heard from a guy said he was her lawyer, but never from her.”

  “A lawyer?” Reardon asked.

  “Yeah,” O’Rourke said contemptuously. “Some bastard called me the next day. Said he was representing Lee McDonald. He said I had to give her a divorce, and if I didn’t he’d drag me into court and smear my name all over New York — sue me for everything I had, get me fired from my job, all that shit. He was a real nasty bastard.”

  “Did you ever meet him?”

  “Hell, no,” O’Rourke said angrily. “I told him he could go fuck himself. I told him if he ever came anywhere near me I’d tear his head off. I never heard from him again.”

  “Did he tell you his name?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you remember it?”

  “I never forgot anything that had to do with Patty.”

  Reardon took out his notebook. “What was his name?”

  “Phillip Cardan,” O’Rourke said.

  20

  Names, Reardon knew, led to other names. Father Perry had led to Jamie O’Rourke. Now Jamie O’Rourke had led to someone called Phillip Cardan. Cardan had represented himself as a lawyer, but Reardon could not be sure that was true. It would be easy enough to find out; the Yellow Pages under attorneys might be enough. But Reardon decided to try something else first.

  Back at his desk in the precinct he picked up the phone and dialed the number of the law firm where Lee McDonald had worked for the last five years before her death.

  “Bailey, Merritt and White,” a female voice answered.

  “May I speak to Mr. Phillip Cardan, please,” Reardon said.

  “Just a moment, please.”

  Reardon waited, feeling the pressures of passing time, knowing that Petrakis was not safe in prison, that no one was safe in the Tombs, least of all an unstable middle-aged family man who had never been forcibly detained in his life.

  Finally the voice returned to the line. “Mr. Cardan is out of the office at the moment. We expect him to return at approximately four-thirty. May I take a message?”

  Reardon looked at his watch. It was four fifteen.

  “Any message?” the voice repeated.

  “Yes, thank you,” Reardon said. “Would you tell him that John Reardon called? I’m with the New York City Police Department.” Reardon gave the woman his number. “Have him call me as soon as possible,” he said, and hung up.

  It was the first break, Reardon recognized. Lee McDonald had confided something to someone. That was a beginning. He could not guess where it might lead.

  He stood up and walked to the front of the precinct house. Outside a gray bleakness was tightening in on the city like a constricting serpent. The last mildness of fall would soon be lost, and after that the relentless cold and frigid careering winds would drive the people from the streets and parks.

  It would be his first Christmas without Millie. Tim and Abbey would try futilely to make up for her absence. They would bring expensive gifts that he did not want and could not use. They would bring him a case of Irish whiskey when a fifth would do. They would try to be jolly, as the season required.

  He opened the door and stepped out into the street. Toward the end of the block he could see a group of young people slouching against a car. They were giggling and poking each other playfully. For a moment, he felt an intense desire to join them, to stroll over to where they were, buy them all a slice of pizza, and there, in the casual warmth of the pizza parlor, tell them all he had seen and felt and learned, release it all in one sudden, chaotic tumult like bats set free from the darkness of a cave.

  The phone on Reardon’s desk was ringing when he returned. He picked it up with one hand and pulled his chair under him with the other. “John Reardon.”

  “Mr. Reardon, this is Phillip Cardan. I understand you wanted to talk to me. I’m with Bailey, Merritt and White.”

  Reardon tried to picture the man who was speaking. Fortyish, paunchy, beset with nervous mannerisms; a slightly high-pitched voice, lacking the authority of a lawyer with significant courtroom experience; a man, Reardon suspected, who held a low-level position in the firm, advancing only in salary; perhaps, Reardon thought, though he could not be sure of this or anything else about Cardan at this point, a man on the make.

  “That’s right,” Reardon replied cautiously, “I’m investigating the murder of Lee McDonald and her roommate.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?” Cardan asked hurriedly.

  “Well, I understand that —”

  “She wasn’t my secretary,” Cardan interrupted.

  “I didn’t say she was,” Reardon said.

  “Well, I don’t understand … I mean … Miss McDonald … I …”

  “I understand that you had a more intimate relationship with Miss McDonald,” Reardon said.

  “Who told you that?” Cardan gasped. “I mean … I don’t … I … I don’t understand …”

  “This is a murder investigation,” Re
ardon said ominously.

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that,” Cardan said.

  Reardon said nothing, allowing his silence to sink into Cardan’s mind like a heavy stone. He did not know what Cardan had to hide, but something between Cardan and Lee McDonald was whipping Cardan into a self-protecting frenzy. Maybe he had had an affair with her that the wife and kids in New Jersey would not be pleased to hear about. Maybe he was afraid Jamie O’Rourke would hear about it and flatten his head against a cement wall. Maybe he had killed Lee McDonald and Karen Ortovsky. Maybe anything.

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that,” Cardan repeated, almost in a whisper. For another moment he said nothing, then he sighed resignedly. “She was supposed to be discreet,” he said, with a touch of resentment.

  “When did you see Lee McDonald last?” Reardon asked.

  “Not over the phone,” Cardan replied in a low, conspiratorial voice.

  Reardon faked annoyance. “Where then?”

  “The Sheep Meadow in Central Park,” Cardan said.

  “That’s a big place.”

  “Meet me in the middle.”

  “That’s a big place too,” Reardon replied irritably.

  “Carry a handkerchief in your hand.”

  “Forget it,” Reardon snapped. “I’ll see you in your office in fifteen minutes.”

  “No, no please!” Cardan pleaded. “Please don’t. I have a reputation. I don’t want to be seen in my office with the police, being questioned about murders. For God’s sake.”

  Reardon said nothing.

  “Please, do me this favor,” Cardan said. “I’ll take good care of you. Just please don’t come over here. Meet me in the Sheep Meadow. In the middle.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Reardon said.

  “I’ll make it worth your while,” Cardan said.

  “What time?”

  “About a half hour from now.”

  “All right,” Reardon agreed with feigned reluctance.

  “Carry the white handkerchief,” Cardan said. “Please.”

  “This better be worth it,” Reardon said.

  “Yes, yes, all right. One other thing,” Cardan said, “come alone.”