by Tom Bradby
‘I have to work.’
Whenever he and Martha took the kid out it was always to Coney Island, where she would accept a cool drink and disappear into the crowd. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she was looking for. Quinn had watched her trail soldiers the length of the boardwalk. He’d searched military records across the United States for anyone who shared Sarah’s surname, and had even written to a sergeant in Iowa.
The girl sat down, pulled her legs tight to her chest and stared at her shoes. Her faraway expression reminded him of the days soon after they’d found her. Quinn bent down and touched her shoulder. He knew from bitter experience that further argument was pointless. Sarah curled up in the corner of her den like a dog.
Quinn sank down against the wall and lit a cigarette. ‘You know, Sarah, life is easier if you play by the rules.’
‘Do you play by the rules, Joe? Do you?’
Quinn blew a thick plume of smoke into the night sky. He felt a few spots of rain on his cheeks.
‘You love her, don’t you?’ Sarah said.
Quinn didn’t answer.
‘Do you think she loves you, too?’ Sarah threw a stone over the lip of the roof. ‘I figure she does.’
‘It’s not as simple as that.’
‘Why don’t you—’
‘Do you still trail her around town?’
‘No.’
‘You follow her to work?’
‘No.’
‘It could be important.’
‘That’s when I’m supposed to be in school. There’d be big trouble if she caught me.’
‘There’s going to be big trouble anyway.’ He looked at her. ‘You can’t stay here.’
Sarah curled up tighter. ‘She didn’t come to see me.’
‘She won’t always be able to see you, Sarah.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She’ll go away, maybe. Have you thought of that? Aidan wants to take her to Kansas.’
Sarah thought about this. ‘She wouldn’t go,’ she said finally. ‘She’d never go with him.’
‘They’re engaged.’
‘I know, but still … She’d never leave the refuge. And she thinks La Guardia will be mayor one day.’
‘She stopped working for him months ago.’
‘No, she didn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She had a cup of coffee with him last week. I saw her.’
‘Where?’
‘Just by the Cocoa Exchange.’
‘I thought you said you didn’t follow her to work?’
‘I don’t … It was just that time.’
‘Did you ever see her with anyone else from her office?’
‘No. I only followed her that day.’
‘Sarah …’
‘I swear it!’
‘Do you have any idea what she and Major La Guardia talked about?’
‘No.’
‘Did you ever see her go to a hotel? Did you ever see her go to the Plaza?’
‘The Plaza?’
‘Yes.’
‘No … no.’
‘Sarah, tell me the truth.’
‘I swear!’
‘It’s important.’
‘I followed her that one time when she met Major La Guardia. She didn’t go to a hotel.’
‘What about other times?’
‘I only followed her once.’
‘But you’ve seen her at the Plaza?’
‘No. Never. I swear.’
‘She might have gone there with Mr Matsell.’
‘I never saw it.’
‘If she’s in trouble, Sarah, you can help her.’
‘I didn’t see nothing.’
Quinn sat back. Sarah’s relationship with the truth was so inconsistent that it was hard to be sure when she was hiding something. ‘Did you ever see her go to a photographer’s studio?’
‘No. Why?’
‘She didn’t go there after the Plaza?’
‘I’ve never been to the Plaza. I didn’t see her there. But why?’
‘It doesn’t matter. And don’t tell her I asked.’
‘Why?’
‘And don’t ask so many questions.’
‘Why?’ She gave him a grin.
He clipped her gently around the ear.
Quinn smoked his cigarette to the stub and flicked it across the brick divide. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘I took some food.’
‘I know.’ Quinn stood. ‘If I tell her you’re here, she’ll be mad at you.’
‘Please don’t tell her.’
‘You can’t live your life up on this roof.’
‘Maybe I’ll be a detective, like you.’
Quinn ruffled her hair. ‘Yeah, maybe you will.’
He awoke to the sound of a heavy footfall upon the stair, then muffled voices. A few moments later, Aidan stumbled in. ‘Joe,’ he said, ‘are you awake?’
‘I am now.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Aidan took off his suit and lay down on the bed. Quinn sensed the tension in him.
‘Forget what I said earlier, Joe. It’s my problem.’
‘I said I’d take care of it and I will.’
‘I shouldn’t have got you involved.’
‘I’ve got the money.’
Aidan was silent. ‘That’s not possible.’ He sat up again. ‘Joe, I only told you this afternoon. Where did you get it from?’
‘It’s under your bed.’
Aidan swung his feet to the floor and flicked on the light. He pulled out a small wooden box and looked inside. He stared at it for a long time. Then he came over, sat down, wrapped his arms around his brother and hugged him. ‘Joe …’
‘It’s okay, Ade.’
‘No, it’s not. I don’t deserve a brother like you.’
‘Sure you do.’
‘I don’t.’ He paused. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘You don’t need to know that.’
‘Will there be trouble for you?’
‘No.’
‘Are you certain?’
‘I’ll handle it.’
Aidan closed the box and pushed it back beneath the bed. ‘I owe you.’
‘You owe me nothing. You’re my brother.’
‘Do you think Dad knows about this?’
‘No.’
‘Will you tell him?’
‘Of course not.’
‘He’d say I was a fool.’
‘He thinks we’re all fools.’ Quinn turned over. ‘And he’ll be right if we don’t get some sleep.’
A door slammed in the courtyard below.
‘I love her, you know. I just wanted to do something special, something she wouldn’t expect. She’s been through so much, I figured it would—’
‘I know, Ade.’
‘We sure were blessed the day she came into our lives.’
‘Ade, I really have to get to sleep.’
‘Sure, Joe. I’m sorry.’
Quinn stared at the wall briefly, then closed his eyes.
‘Joe, will we ever stop trying to impress the old man?’
Quinn contemplated this in silence. ‘He’s already impressed by you.’
‘But he loves you.’
Quinn opened his eyes and focused on the paintings on the wall above him. He traced the one of Jim and Huck on the raft with his finger. ‘Do you remember Dad making these pictures?’
Aidan didn’t stir.
‘Ade?’
‘They’re still there, aren’t they?’
‘Do you remember the Christmas afterwards, when it was just the four of us? You, me, Mom, Dad …’
‘Of course.’
‘You ever wish we could go back to that?’
‘What are you trying to say, Joe?’
‘It’s just—’
‘I know you had an argument with Martha. But don’t take out on her your frustration with Dad. Nothing has been her fault.’
‘We never talk about what happened. Why
did it go wrong?’
‘Mom got sick, Joe.’
‘You ever ask yourself why?’
‘She drank too much.’
‘But why? She wasn’t sick before that Christmas. You were there … you know what she used to be like. You remember.’
‘She never liked us to talk about the past. You know that. It made her worse.’
‘But she’s dead now.’
Aidan sighed. ‘Come on, Joe.’
‘The year after that Christmas, Mom and Dad started to argue, he left Centre Street, we took in Martha and Mom got sick.’
‘Mom got sick because she drank too much, Joe. Now she’s dead. Who wants to talk about that? There’s no point harking back to a day when it was just the four of us. That was a long time ago. We can’t have it back. Dad is different. We’re all different. Even talking about it … Well, that’s just hard on Martha. Nothing’s her fault. So thanks for helping me out with the dough, Joe, but goodnight.’
Aidan switched off the light. A few minutes later, he was snoring softly.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE FIRST SPLINTERS OF SUNLIGHT PIERCED THE WINDOWS HIGH IN the walls of the Grand Street gym as Quinn danced from side to side, pounding the punch-bag with increasing ferocity.
After a few minutes, he let the pace slacken. Sweat poured from his half-naked body. A movement on the far side of the hall caught his eye. He had thought the gym was empty, but now he saw that his father was sitting on one of the benches, watching him. Quinn fought to catch his breath. Gerry stood up and walked to the podium. ‘I thought I’d find you here,’ he said. He pulled on a battered pair of gloves, climbed up and took a stance.
‘I’m done, Dad.’
‘C’mon. You won’t kill me.’
Gerry danced forward and tried to land a punch but, instinctively, Quinn ducked away. The older man came again, with a swing to the stomach and a jab to the face, which his son easily blocked. Quinn counter-attacked and broke his father’s defences, but stopped short of a strike.
They floated around the podium in the dappled pools of sunlight. Quinn parried everything his father threw at him. After a few minutes, Gerry’s wide forehead glistened with sweat. He took off his gloves and laughed. ‘You haven’t lost your touch, Joe.’
Quinn lobbed his own gloves onto a bench. They climbed off the podium and he slipped on his shirt and jacket.
‘Aren’t you going to soap yourself down?’ Gerry said.
‘My partner can’t smell.’
‘The guy from the Rat Squad?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘Intense, but thorough.’
‘Good cop?’
Quinn shrugged. ‘The other guys hate him.’
‘Do you think he’s okay?’
‘I don’t know. Yeah, I guess so.’
‘That’s all that matters, then, right?’
Quinn didn’t answer.
‘He married?’
‘Sure.’
‘Kids?’
‘One, I think. A boy. Why?’
They lapsed into silence. Quinn went to his gloves, bashed them together and watched the dust rise. He slipped on his leather boots and put the ones he used for boxing on the rack. ‘Schneider was there in your time, right?’
Gerry swung a leather bag over his shoulder. He watched a couple of kids slip through the far door. ‘Yeah.’
‘Did you get on with him?’
‘Nobody gets on with Schneider.’
‘How about the Bull? You get along with him?’
Gerry put his own gloves back on the shelf and picked up a small holdall. He stopped in the corridor and glanced at the noticeboard. He was one of the directors of the Grand Street gym. ‘We’re getting a new canvas.’
‘Who’s paying for that?’
‘Tammany.’
Big Mick Murphy stopped to buttonhole Gerry about the drains. He was a stooped giant, with cheeks like balloons and long white whiskers. Gerry promised to lean on the committee to make sure they were fixed. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked up at the sky, now heavy with rain. ‘I’m sorry, son. I know I’ve been … difficult sometimes.’
‘We understand, Dad. It’s only been a few months.’
‘I don’t just mean since your mother died.’
Quinn waited. He felt light-headed.
‘You don’t have to prove anything to me, Joe.’
‘I know.’
‘I just wanted to say that.’ The old man took his arm. ‘Give me a ride home. There’s something I’d like to show you.’
They drove the short distance in silence.
The dining-table in Gerry’s apartment was covered with lead soldiers, which had been newly repainted. They had once used them to re-enact the battle of Saratoga, with red-coated British regulars, German mercenaries from Brunswick in blue, Canadians, Loyalists and a wild band of Iroquois Indians on one side, and the patriots who had flocked to Gates’s standard from Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire on the other. Gerry had even mended the model of Neilson Farm, which he had once placed atop an imaginary Bemis Heights.
Quinn was entranced. ‘Where did you find them, Dad?’
‘In the attic. I figured one day you’d have a son and …’ He shifted from one foot to the other. ‘They’re for you anyhow. Take them when you’re ready.’
‘What about Aidan?’
‘I asked Ade. He said you should have them.’
Quinn sat by the table and weighed a soldier in his hand. He wasn’t sure he understood the message. He touched his boot against the door of the cupboard where his mother had hidden her booze and thought of the times he’d seen his father’s hunched shoulders in the half-darkness as he carried her, inert, addled, to the bedroom.
‘I’m sorry if I made Mom sick, Joe. I never meant to.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘I did.’
‘How?’
Gerry didn’t answer. The void opened between them again, and Quinn didn’t know how to fill it. He examined his father’s brushwork on the soldiers; he had always done such things with meticulous care. Gerry took his uniform raincoat down from the peg and made for the door. ‘Good luck, son.’
‘Dad, hold on a minute. I’ll give you a lift to the precinct.’
But he was met only by the sound of receding footsteps on the stairs.
Quinn kicked his heels and watched the dark clouds chase each other across a brooding sky. He bought a couple of apples from a stall, then a cup of coffee and a morning newspaper from the Italian hole-in-the-wall grocery store.
By the time he reached the Gardner, a bunch of kids had surrounded him. ‘Give us a ride, mister!’ He let them stand on his tailgate halfway down Seventh Street, then put his foot on the gas and tipped them off.
As Quinn arrived Caprisi checked his watch. ‘McCredie brought the meeting forward half an hour because of this business in Murray Street.’
Quinn took off his overcoat, hung it on the stand and followed his partner down the corridor to a packed briefing room. Mae Miller and Kitty Barry, the only female detective at Headquarters, leant against the back wall. Kitty nodded to him but, like the others, avoided Caprisi’s eye. Quinn went and stood beside them.
Mae leant over. ‘I got an answer from Delaware, Joe. They gave us the name of their agent in New Jersey. He supplies all the stores in Manhattan.’
‘Thanks. Stick the number on my desk and I’ll call him.’
‘You’ve enough on your plate. I’ll get onto him as soon as he’s in.’
The commissioner and Schneider strode through the doorway, Johnny Brandon and O’Reilly hot on their heels. As the newspapers never tired of pointing out, New York’s foremost detective was movie-star handsome: Brandon’s square jaw, straight nose and penetrating eyes showed to particular advantage alongside O’Reilly’s slack, pockmarked features. The two men shot hostile glances at Caprisi.
‘Okay, girls.’ McCredie stepped i
n front of the blackboard and scanned the room. ‘Where’s Byrnes?’
‘He went up to Syracuse last night,’ O’Reilly said. ‘I’m doing the brief for him.’
‘Okay, listen up. We’ve got a big slate this morning. For those of you who don’t read the newspapers, or are too idle to ask your colleagues what’s happened in your absence, we broke the siege in Murray Street last night. Two of the guys are laid out and two more have taken a trip to the Tombs. I want all of you to make sure you get down to line-up this morning. Take a good look at the guys we brought in. We’ve got nothing on file and Yan doesn’t recognize them, but we figure they must have a record somewhere. Those of you with recent experience in the precincts need to pay particular attention. Maybe they’re small-time local hoods. We have one still on the run.’ McCredie held up a crude drawing. ‘This is all we’ve got until we can persuade the others to assist us. Take a good look. Finding this jerk is today’s priority and I want him nailed by sundown. Any of you have anything to say, bring it straight to me. The men hired a black Cadillac sedan from K and B Auto Rentals at one twenty-three Suffolk Street. The plate number is on here. It’s not been returned, so maybe our man has it. O’Reilly?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘On your feet.’
‘Yes, sir.’ O’Reilly shuffled a piece of paper in front of him. ‘Okay. For anyone who wasn’t around at the end of last week, this kid Amy Mecklenburg went missing Wednesday morning on the way into town. Her uncle is a garage mechanic in the Bronx and he failed to show for work the same day. The girl’s mother said she believed he was due to go to Syracuse for the weekend and the local boys up there have someone matching his description getting off the train on Thursday with a girl. But we’ve found no sign of them. We’ve checked the hotels. Danny went up there last night with some of our uniform boys to oversee a door-to-door.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yeah. I’ll mark the plate number of the guy’s old Ford on the board, just in case the train story is wrong. We’ve put out an all-stations alert.’
‘What happens if it’s not the uncle?’ Kitty asked.
The room was silent.
‘Time’s running out, right?’ she went on. ‘If it’s somebody else and we don’t get to her soon, she’s dead meat.’
O’Reilly looked about him for support, but most people in the room were stony-faced. ‘We’re pretty sure it is the uncle,’ he said.
‘But what if it isn’t?’
