by R.J. Ellory
Radick called the Precinct. He spoke to Valderas, told him that he knew nothing but the simple fact that Parrish had been injured and had been rushed to Holy Family. Valderas said he was on his way and hung up.
Radick hurried up the stairs after Caitlin and had his badge out by the time he reached the desk.
Caitlin had already found her father in triage, was there to share the briefest of words with him before he was rushed into surgery. He was delirious, drifting in and out of consciousness,but when he saw her he smiled, told her she looked good, asked her if she had enough walking-out money. He told her that he'd finally managed to get her into a local hospital. Then he fell unconscious again and the nurses took him away.
EIGHTY-FIVE
Valderas called Marie Griffin, picked her up enroute. By the time they arrived at Holy Family Hospital Valderas had secured at least a few details of what had happened on Sackett Street from the attending officers. He knew that both Carole Paretski and Frank Parrish had been in Richard McKee's house. From what he understood, Carole Paretski had every right to be there, but Parrish - predictably - did not. Whether they had gone there together or separately he did not know. He guessed the latter. Carole Paretski was under arrest; she was being held at the 11th, and as soon as the lead detective there had some further and better particulars he was going to call Valderas. When it came to the wounding or murder of a fellow officer, the territorial lines seemed to disappear and everyone co-operated one with another.
Aside from Jimmy Radick, Valderas didn't know the people that had gathered in the waiting room.
'This is Caitlin, Frank's daughter,' Radick told him.
Both Marie Griffin and Squad Sergeant Valderas expressed their concern for Frank, their willingness to do anything to help.
'And this is Mrs Clare Baxter,' Radick added, and Valderas shook hands with a stone-faced woman who looked like she resented their presence.
'Frank's ex-wife,' Radick added, and Valderas remembered a conversation he'd had one time with Frank about this woman. He allowed nothing in his expression, but smiled as sympathetically as he could, and once again iterated his desire to do anything he could to help .
'So what have you been told?' Valderas asked Radick.
'Very little. Stabbed once, but deep, and somewhere in the upper abdomen. They took him right into surgery.'
'I spoke to him before he went in,' Caitlin interjected. 'He was delirious. He didn't really say anything about what happened.' She paused, looked at Jimmy, then at Valderas. Her expression said everything that needed to be said: she was fighting with her emotions; she looked ready to burst; she looked terrified.
'Do you know what happened, Sergeant?' she asked.
Valderas shook his head. What he did know did not belong in a conversation with the man's daughter. If Parrish had gone over there alone then he was going to get busted out of the PD, no question. Already on pay-hold, already without a driver's license . . . and that prompted another thought - the fact that Parrish might have been the one who took a car from the pool. One was missing, and in that moment Valderas would have put his paycheck on it being Frank Parrish. So it would be theft of PD property, driving without a license, BE, illegal search, harassment of a witness . . .
Valderas turned at the sound of the door suddenly crashing open.
'Robert!' Caitlin said, and rushed towards a young dark-haired man. The likeness to Frank was unmistakable. This was the son.
Following him was an elegant brunette, mid-thirties perhaps. Great looking, very self-assured, but again that telltale strain in her face of dealing with something she didn't understand.
Caitlin and Robert hugged, and then he asked her what was happening, how Dad was, if he was okay, if he was going to make it.
'I don't know enough, I don't really know anything,' she said.
Clare Baxter was with them then, and though she said nothing she was obviously sincerely concerned for what was occurring, perhaps more for the mental state of her children than the physical state of her ex-husband.
Caitlin introduced Robert to Valderas, to Jimmy Radick, to Marie Griffin, and then Robert turned and nodded at Eve. She came forward, perhaps a little tentatively. She was evidently out of place, felt as much, but didn't want to be anywhere else in the moment.
'This is Eve Challoner,' Robert said. 'Dad's friend.'
Eve smiled, shook hands with everyone. She said nothing.
There were seven of them there - the ex-wife, the kids, the daughter's lover, the psychotherapy counsellor, the squad sergeant and the hooker - all of them waiting for word back from Surgery. Frank Parrish had been stabbed, seriously wounded by all accounts, and there was nothing they could do but wait.
Valderas and Griffin were the first to sit. Eve followed suit, and then Robert sat beside her as if he felt some obligation to be the link between her, his family, and Frank's professional life. Caitlin sat beside Robert, Jimmy Radick beside her, and Clare Baxter paced the room like she was caught between staying and leaving. After a moment she said, 'I need to smoke,' and left the room. She had been gone no more than four or five minutes before she walked back into the same awkward silence she'd left behind.
'Anything?' she asked Caitlin.
Valderas perceived tension between the mother and the son. Was it because he'd brought Eve, someone he could only imagine was Frank's current girlfriend? Was there still something there between Frank Parrish and Clare Baxter? Or was it purely the son and the mother? Valderas didn't know, couldn't guess. He didn't really care, he was just trying to fill his mind with things that weren't about whether Frank Parrish would die, and beyond that - if he survived - how it would be his job to kick Frank Parrish out of the NYPD.
And then there was the case Frank had been working on. Already he'd heard from the lead at the 11th that something had been found at the McKee house. 'Something heavy,' was all that he'd been told. 'Soon as I get anything else I'll call you,' the detective had said, and Valderas had thanked him. It would be ironic if Parrish had broken the case. Parrish and this Carole Paretski working in consort. Had they found the guy? Was McKee their guy?
'What can we do?' Robert asked suddenly. 'Caitlin?'
She shook her head. 'There's nothing we can do right now, except wait.'
Robert frowned. 'You're a nurse, aren't you? Can't you go through there and ask them what the fuck is going on?'
'No, I can't, Robert. I just have to wait like everyone else.'
Robert stood up. 'This is bullshit,' he said loudly.
Eve reached out and touched his arm. 'Sit down,' she said.
Robert sat down.
'Does anyone know where he was?' Radick asked. 'What he was doing?'
'All I know is that Carole Paretski was involved,' Valderas said, 'and that stays inside this room, okay?'
'Who the hell is that?' Robert asked.
'She is the wife of a man Frank was looking at; a case he's working on. That's all I know, and that's all I can say.'
'And she was with him when he was stabbed?' Caitlin asked.
'I don't know any details,' Valderas replied. 'All I can tell you is that Frank is here and she is being held at a local precinct.'
'Was she the one who stabbed him?' Eve asked.
Valderas shook his head. 'Like I said, I don't have any details—'
'Can't you call someone?' Clare Baxter asked. 'Can't you find out what happened?'
'I have to let the arresting officers and assigned detectives do their jobs, Mrs Baxter, just like your daughter has to let the doctors and surgeons do their work here. I'm waiting for a call to let me know what they've found out. Soon as I hear anything I'll obviously let you know what I can.'
'So we just wait,' she replied, stating the obvious. She walked to the door and stood there looking out through the porthole window.
'He's done something crazy, hasn't he?' Caitlin said. 'This case he's working on ... he got frustrated and he went and did something crazy, right?' She was looking at Va
lderas but her question seemed to be directed at anyone. Her anxiety was evident in her face, her hands, her whole body. She was trying to persuade herself that it was all going to be okay, that her father was going to pull through, that he would come out the other side of whatever he had gotten himself into.
'Caitlin, we just don't know what happened,' Radick said, and in that moment everyone present understood that there was something deeper here than a cop and his partner's daughter.
Clare Baxter turned back to look at Jimmy Radick. Valderas frowned, Marie Griffin, too - almost unnoticeably. Eve glanced at Robert, Robert looked at Caitlin, then at the man beside her, and they all understood that these people weren't strangers. No-one said anything; there was nothing that needed to be said.
'Whatever happened/ Valderas said, 'it happened because he believed he was doing the right thing.'
Clare Baxter made a sound. It was dismissive, perhaps, even condescending. I lived with the man, that sound said. I lived with him, I carried his children ... so don't you come here and tell me what to think about someone that you don't even know.
'Shut up, Mom,' Robert said. 'Just shut the fuck up.'
Caitlin's eyes were wide. 'Robert!'
'And you can shut the fuck up too,' he snapped. 'You don't know him. Jesus, none of you do.'
Clare Baxter, her face like a deflated balloon, walked slowly to the chairs on the other side of the room and sat down.
The silence was oppressive, uncomfortable, electric.
'I know him,' Eve said, and with those three words she not only broke that silence but everyone in the room turned and looked at her with a quizzical expression. 'I know him, as well as anyone else I know, that's for sure.' She paused, then she smiled, and then seemed to laugh to herself as if remembering some half-forgotten moment. 'Last time I saw him he spent three hours trying to talk some kid out of killing his girlfriend. He gave it his best but the kid killed the girl anyway . . . killed the girl and then killed himself.' Eve looked up. She looked at each of them in turn. She returned her gaze to some indefinite space in the middle of the room, and she smiled pensively. 'They were in a bathtub. The boy had already cut the girl's leg, in her thigh, you know? She was bleeding very badly. Then he cut her throat and then he cut his own throat, and Frank spent however long trying to wrestle the kids out of a bathtub full of blood to save their lives. But he didn't do it. He tried his best but he didn't do it.'
'Frank is a good cop,' Valderas interjected. 'He has his issues, he has his difficulties, but he's one of the best.'
'Like his father,' Radick said.
Valderas smiled knowingly.
'What?' Caitlin asked.
'Nothing,' Valderas replied.
'No, tell me,' she said. 'Tell me what made you smile.'
'It was just the old crew that Frank's father used to belong to. They were called the Saints of New York. They were the ones who helped get organized crime out of New York. No question about it, Frank came from good stock.'
Marie Griffin opened her mouth to say something, and then she closed it. She wanted to say something, wanted to tell them about Lufthansa, about the unsolved deaths of Joe Manri and Robert McMahon, about what Frank Parrish really felt about his father, but she could not.
'He's a good detective,' Jimmy Radick said. 'I mean, we've only worked together for - what? - nearly three weeks, but I've learned a hell of a lot—'
'Does Frank know you're sleeping with his daughter?'
Radick looked up at Clare Baxter.
'Mom! Jesus Christ, what the fuck is your problem?'
Clare Baxter was angry. Her eyes flashed as she looked at Valderas. is that even allowed in the New York Police Department?'
'Mrs Baxter, it's none of our business. We don't regulate the personal lives of officers, except where the law is being broken—'
Radick was speechless. What was it with this woman? Did she just hate Frank? Did she hate her kids? Was she jealous, perhaps afraid of something? He made a mental note that if Frank came through this he would congratulate him for divorcing the crazy bitch.
'Yes, Mom, it's none of your business,' Caitlin said. 'We're talking about Dad here, not you. Be content just for one second not to be the center of attention, okay?'
Valderas glanced at Marie Griffin. She didn't even raise an eyebrow, she didn't need to. Everything that needed to be said was there in her eyes. The whole fucking family was nuts. No wonder Frank Parrish had a hard time at work.
'And who the hell are you?' Clare Baxter said, turning on Eve.
Eve smiled. 'I'm Eve,' she said. 'Eve Challoner. I'm a very, very expensive escort, but Frank comes over to see me every once in a while and gets it for free.'
Clare Baxter sat open-mouthed and incredulous. Robert laughed. Valderas smiled. No-one spoke for at least a minute.
Clare Baxter made a performance of hunting through her purse for cigarettes. She found them, and then flounced out of the room like a petulant child.
'Jesus,' Robert said. He turned to Eve. 'I'm sorry about that,' he said. He looked at Valderas, at Griffin, at Radick. 'She's stressed, man, seriously stressed. I don't know what the fuck is going on with her, but she is worse than usual.'
They all nodded. No-one spoke. It was understood.
'Is there anything else you can tell us about what happened?' Caitlin asked. Her question was directed at Valderas.
Valderas shook his head. 'Like I said, I know very little about what actually happened. I'm waiting for more info, and as soon as I get it I'll tell you.'
'So is he really good at his job?' Caitlin asked. 'Is he really a good detective, or are you just saying that because we're here and he might die?'
'Cait—' Robert started.
'No, Robert, I want the truth. I want to hear the truth from someone who knows him professionally. You've known him a long time, right?'
'Sure have,' Valderas said. 'I knew him before he became a detective.'
'So?'
'So what?'
'So is he good?'
'One of the best,' Valderas replied.
'So what the fuck is it with the driver's license and the suspended pay? What the hell did he do?'
Valderas shook his head. 'Frank isn't one for rules and regulations,' he said. 'Never has been. Frank is old-school. He gets frustrated with the system, as we all do, but he gets more frustrated than most. You get cases where you know the truth, but there is nothing you can do about it. Charges get dropped, guilty people make plea bargains with the DA's Office, cases fall apart on technicalities, criminals go free to do the same thing all over again. He struggles with it, and every once in a while he does something out of line and he gets reined in. It is not an easy job, let me tell you, and I feel the frustration and disillusionment these guys experience. Unfortunately, the system is the system, and however much we complain about it it's all we have until something better comes along.'
'Is he going to lose his job now?' Robert asked. 'Did he do something wrong?'
'I don't know, Robert, I really don't.'
'This is a tough thing to come back from,' Caitlin said.
'He's dealt with tougher than this,' Valderas replied.
'Michael Vale,' Eve said. 'He dealt with Michael Vale.'
Antony Valderas turned slowly and looked at the woman. There were tears in her eyes. Her mascara was smudged.
'Yes,' Valderas said. 'He dealt with Michael Vale.'
'He never told me what happened,' Caitlin said.
'He didn't tell me either,' Robert added.
'I know what happened,' Eve said.
Valderas nodded. 'So do I.'
Caitlin and Robert looked at one another. 'So?' they said, almost as one.
'You want to hear what happened when Michael Vale was killed?'
'Sure,' Caitlin said.
'Abso-fucking-lutely,' Robert added.
Valderas looked at Eve Challoner. 'You wanna tell them?' he asked.
'Let's both tell them,' she replied.
<
br /> EIGHTY-SIX
'You are a fucking loser. Jesus, Mike, what the fuck is this?'
I Frank Parrish held up a polystyrene cup of coffee, and from a small hole in the base a continuous stream of liquid dribbled into the bin beside his desk.
'High quality utensils, ably provided by the New York Police Department. You want another one, go get it yourself.'
Parrish did so, returning in a moment with a new cup.
'So what's the news today?' he asked Vale.
'We go back and check on that thing from yesterday, the girl from the Heights, and then we spend the rest of today and tomorrow looking busy. I have a weekend away planned, and I want to get out early. Last thing I need right now is another case starting up.'
'Where you going?'
'Upstate,' Vale replied. 'Last time Nancy and I had a weekend away was like . . . Jesus, it must be three years ago.'
'You had that wedding. Who was that - your nephew or someone?'
'Someone else's wedding doesn't fucking count. You have to go on up there and be on your best fucking behavior. I hate that shit. Anyways, it's been too fucking long, I know that much, and she's stir crazy. I get something that stops me going she's gonna go find a lawyer and take him away for the weekend.'
Parrish laughed, he drank his coffee, and he didn't even hesitate when the phone rang on his desk.
Less than twenty minutes later they were back of a generator unit behind a block of apartments on Baron Street. The place was filthy. Broken-down cars, the seats burst open, the bodywork rusted and pitted with holes. Broken bottles, a burned-out brazier, needles and used diapers and garbage strewn back and forth around the place. It stank, and Parrish and Vale hunkered down behind the car while the first-response uniform told them what was going on.
'Far as I can tell, there's one guy. He's down in the basement with most of the residents. There's about thirty of them. He says he's got a grenade—'
'A what?'
'I know. Like I said, a grenade. He's ex-military himself, says his brother was in Iraq and gave him a working grenade as a memento. Says he's going to use it.'
