by Ed McBain
Sitting opposite Father Joseph, grateful that Patricia Gomez was not present to scold him about breaking his diet, Ollie dug into a roast beef cooked a little too well for his taste, string beans steamed to crispy perfection, and small roasted potatoes browned on the outside and flaky white on the inside. It was several moments before he remembered why he was here.
‘So tell me what you and Father Michael talked about that night,’ he said.
‘Mostly about his coming retirement,’ Father Joseph said.
He was eating like a bird, had to watch his girlish figure, Ollie supposed, the old faggoty fart.
‘How’d he feel about that?’ Ollie asked.
‘Not too happy.’
‘Tell you about anything- else that might be troubling him? Quarrels with his parishioners? Disputes within the Church hierarchy? Anything that might have presaged his murder?’
Good word, Ollie thought, presaged. He doubted Father Joseph here had ever heard such a word in his life, presaged. The curse of being a literary man, ah yes.
‘He was very well liked by everyone,’ Father Joseph said.
‘How long have you known him?’
‘We go back to our first ministry together.’
‘At St. Ignatius?’
‘No. Our Lady of Grace. In Riverhead.’
‘When was that?’
‘Fifty-some odd years ago.’
‘Everybody love him to death back then, too?’
Father Joseph looked at him.
‘Do I detect a touch of sarcasm there?’ he asked.
‘None at all. Just repeating what you told me earlier.’
‘I never said he was loved to death.’
‘You said he was very well liked by everyone.’
‘Yes. But I did not say he was loved to death.’
‘Wasn’t he?’
‘There were naturally disagreements. There are disagreements in any ministry.’
‘Like about what? Molly wants an abortion, Father Michael says, “Nay, that’s against Church Law”?’
‘Sometimes. Yes. Abortion can become an issue, even among the faithful.’
‘How about sex before marriage?’
‘That can be another issue, yes.’
‘Or marrying outside the faith?’
‘All issues that could possibly come up between a priest and his congregation, yes. That’s why we’re there, Detective Weeks. To offer guidance and direction.’
‘Think any of these issues might have come up during Father Michael’s time in the priesthood?’
‘I feel certain they would have.’
“He mention any threats he may have received…”
‘None.’
‘… regarding one or another of these issues that may have come up…”
‘No.’
‘… at any time during his long priesthood?’
‘Nothing. He was worried about retiring. He thought he’d have nothing to do once he retired.’
‘No more issues to deal with, right?’
Father Joseph said nothing.
‘What time did you leave Father Michael the other night?’ Ollie asked.
‘It must’ve been around ten o’clock.’
‘To go where?’
‘The bus stop on Powell and Moore. I catch the L-16 bus there. It’s a limited-stop bus, gets me back here in half an hour.’
‘Hear anything while you were waiting for the bus? Any shots? Any loud voices? Anything like that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘So you got back here at around ten thirty, is that right?’
‘I didn’t look at a clock.’
‘You said it was a half-hour ride…”
‘Yes, but…”
‘Or didn’t you come directly here, Father Joseph?’
‘I came directly here.’
‘So you must’ve got here around ten thirty, quarter to eleven, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Closer to eleven.’
‘When did you learn of Father Michael’s death?’
‘Later that night. Sister Margaret called to inform me.’
‘You don’t think she could’ve shot him, do you?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Who do you think might have shot him, Father?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘No one specific parishioner who might have disagreed violently with Father Michael’s guidance or direction… ?’
‘I know of no such…”
‘Either at St. Ignatius
‘No.’
‘Or before that? At Our Lady of Grace?’
‘I can’t think of anyone like that,’ Father Joseph said.
‘Where’s Our Lady of Grace, anyway?’ Ollie asked. ‘Might be worth a visit, see if anybody up there has a longer memory than yours. Are you going to eat your dessert, Father? It’s a sin to let food go to waste, you know.’
* * * *
According to Paula Wellington, her good friend Helen Reilly was a recent widow when she’d moved from Calm’s Point, three years ago. Husband the innocent victim of a drive-by shooting. Biggest part of the city, Calm’s Point. The area map showed two or three dozen precincts there - well, thirty-four, when Hawes actually counted them. By his modest estimate, at least that many drive-bys took place in Calm’s Point every day of the week. Well, that was probably exaggeration. But trying to pinpoint a drive-by that had taken place more than three years ago… when there were thirty-four precincts to check…
Well, he supposed he could just run the name MARTIN REILLY through his computer, go back some five years or so, do a HOMICIDE check, he’d probably get lucky that way. But it would probably be easier and quicker, wouldn’t it, to just talk to Ms. Paula Wellington again? Sure it would. So he called her at four that Friday afternoon, and asked if he might stop by, few questions that had come up, wondered if she could help him. She told him it was probably still tea time, anyway, so why not drop in, did he remember the address? He remembered the address.
* * * *
South Waverly Street downtown was packed with humanity when Hawes got there at a quarter to five. Kids in swimsuits running through the spray from open fire hydrants; this was now four days after the official start of summer. Men in tank-top undershirts playing checkers or chess on upturned orange crates. Dozens of women in cotton housedresses knitting on front stoops like so many Mesdames Defarges. White ice-cream trucks trolling the streets like predators. Tweeny girls flashing long legs in short skirts, precipitate breasts in recklessly low-cut tops. Macho young men strutting their testosterone. And the cotton was high.
Hawes climbed past three women on Paula’s front stoop. They gave him the once-over, figured him for a cop, and went back to their gossip. On the third floor, he knocked on the door to apartment 31. Paula called, ‘Just a sec,’ and then came to open it.
He wondered what the hell he was doing here.
She was wearing lime-colored bell-bottomed cotton pants and a white cotton tank top, no shoes. White hair pulled back into a ponytail fastened with a ribbon the color of the pants. Lipstick, no other makeup.
‘You’re early,’ she said. ‘Come on in.’
‘Sorry to break in on you this way.’
‘Hey, you gave warning,’ she said, and led him into the living room. It was decorated in what he guessed was Danish modern, all blond woods and nubby fabrics. A big mirror on the wall behind the couch made the room appear to be twice its size. ‘Did you really want tea?’ she asked. ‘Or would you prefer a drink?’
‘I’m still on duty,’ he said.
‘So tea it is,’ she said, and went to where a kettle was already steaming on the stove. He watched as she prepared two cups. Outside, he could hear the street sounds of summer. She brought the tea and a tray of cookies to where he was sitting on the couch. In late afternoon sunlight, they sipped their tea and nibbled at their cookies.
‘What I wanted to know,’ he said, putting down his cup, ‘when I was here earlier, you mentioned
a drive-by shooting
‘Yes.’
‘Said Helen Reilly’s husband was killed coming down the steps from a train station…”
‘Yes, the elevated station on Cooper and Duane.’
‘Cooper and Duane. That would make it the Nine-Seven Precinct.’
‘If you say so,’ Paula said, and smiled. ‘Is the tea all right?’
‘Delicious,’ he said, and picked up his cup again.
‘You said some questions had come up…”
‘Yes. Well. Actually, that was the question. I wanted to know in which precinct the incident had occurred. The shooting. The murder, actually.’
‘Ah.’
‘Yes.’
‘So I guess it was easier to find out by coming here to ask me,’ Paula said. ‘Instead of going to the computer or whatever.’
‘Well, then I wouldn’t have got the tea and cookies.’
‘I suppose not. Is that why you came here, Detective Hawes? For the tea and cookies?’
‘No, I came here to ask if you’d like to have dinner with me tonight.’
‘I see.’
‘Would you?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
* * * *
Dutch Schneider was the Nine-Seven detective who’d caught the drive-by shooting three years ago. His precinct, and his squadroom, were in the shadow of the elevated structure that carried emerging subway trains from the city proper out here to Calm’s Point. Every few minutes, a train would rumble past the open squadroom windows, reminding both detectives of the city’s constant rattle and roar, causing Schneider to pause in his recitation and roll his eyes heavenward.
‘At first, we thought Reilly himself was the target,’ he told Hawes. ‘Guy coming down the steps from the train platform, all at once a car zooms by, and bango, he’s dead on the sidewalk? We figured the perp was somebody familiar with his habits, knew he was taking the train to the city that day, knew when he’d be coming back, was waiting to ambush him. Matter of fact, for a while we considered the wife herself a suspect. Thought maybe she’d hired somebody to ace the husband when he got off the train…’
‘How’d that turn out?’ Hawes asked.
‘Loved him to death. Second marriage for her, the first was a lemon. Couldn’t have been happier than she was with this guy, no reason at all to want him dead. We got off that kick right away.’
‘When did you figure it for a gang drive-by?’
‘Not for a while, actually. I mean, this wasn’t a bunch of street hoods sitting on a front stoop, flaunting their colors, rival gang drives by, opens fire. The shooting wasn’t directed at anything but the steps coming down from the platform. And Reilly was the only vie. So we concentrated on the usual suspects for a long time.’
‘Who would they be?’
‘Guys he used to work with… this was an old fart, you understand, seventy-eight years old, retired. Other guys he played poker with. Nobody had any reason to kill him. Then, out of the blue-’
Then, out of the blue, a train rattled by on the tracks outside the squadroom windows. Schneider rolled his eyes, tapped his fingers impatiently on the desktop. Hawes was suddenly grateful for the relative peace and quiet of his own turf.
‘Where was I?’ Schneider asked.
‘Out of the blue,’ Hawes prompted.
‘Out of the blue, this little Spanish girl comes up the squadroom, tells us somebody’s gonna kill her boyfriend. Turns out this is right out of West Side Story, only it’s two Puerto Rican gangs, not one white, one Spanish. But the same Romeo-Juliet plot, you understand? The girl’s boyfriend is a member of the Royals and her brother is a member of the Hearts. Her brother warned her to break it off with him, she refused, so now they’re gonna kill him. Well, who gives a shit? Why bother us with this gang shit? Figure it out for yourselves, okay? One less Royal on earth, gee what a pity. But, oh ho,’ Schneider said, and glanced toward the windows, as if expecting another interruption from the rapid-transit system.
‘Oh ho,’ he said again, when he realized the coast was clear, ‘she then tells us that six months earlier, they tried to get her boyfriend when he was coming home from the city…’
‘And this tied in with the Reilly shooting, right?’
‘Same date, as it turned out, February twelfth, blood all over the snow. Her boyfriend was on the same train as Reilly, coming down the same steps as Reilly when he caught it. The boyfriend ran like hell cause he knew it was him they were after.’
‘Case closed.’
‘I wish,’ Schneider said. ‘Thirty-six guys in that gang, all of them with alibis a mile long. We hassled them from here to Sunday, but we couldn’t break any of them. Whoever shot Reilly is still out there someplace.’
‘Bearing a grudge maybe?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘For being hassled?’
‘This was three years ago. They’re all either dead or in jail by now.’
‘You think one of them might have gone after Reilly’s widow? Out of spite?’
‘I’d put nothing past these jack-off gangs. But why would they bother going after an old lady? They’re all into dealing drugs nowadays, these gangs. They got no time for settling petty grievances.’
Drugs again. Two drug busts already in this case.
‘Who’s your gang guy up here?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to talk to some of these kids.’
* * * *
Kids, they weren’t.
Talkative, they weren’t, either.
‘Why should I talk to you?’ Everado Rodriguez told Hawes. ‘I done something wrong in your precinck? I done something wrong in this city? What is it I done wrong, you mine tellin me, you come all the way out here to Calm’s Point seekin me?’
‘I want to know if the name Martin Reilly means anything to you,’ Hawes said.
‘Oh, Jesus, that shit again?’ Everado said. ‘The cops from the Nine-Seven were all over us about that, three years ago. We’re back to that again?’
It was seven o’clock that Saturday night, and they were in the basement room the Hearts euphemistically called their ‘clubhouse.’ Everado was the so-called president of the so-called club. He was perhaps twenty-four years old, wearing blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and a blue bandanna Hawes assumed to be the gang’s colors. There wasn’t too much gang activity in the Eight-Seven these days; he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with this twerp.
‘You’re clean on that one, right?’ he said.
‘Which one ain’t I clean on?’ Everado asked, and grinned, and turned for applause to one of his three henchmen lined around the room with their arms folded across their chests. They all grinned back. Hawes felt like smacking all of them across the mouth.
‘There’s an old lady who got shot twice in the face last night,’ he said. ‘Her name’s Helen Reilly.’
‘So?’ Everado said.
‘Martin Reilly was her husband.’
‘So?’
‘So the Nine-Seven gave you a rough time after Reilly was shot in a drive-by
‘That’s water under the bridge, man. We’re all grownups now.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning my sister’s married now, with two kids already. Why should I care about a crush she had on somebody from the Royals?’
‘Maybe because it was your sister who went to the cops.’
‘She knows better now.’
‘Still pisses you off, though, doesn’t it?’
Nope. For what purpose should I still be angry? Everything’s cool now, man. Why you comin aroun here, stirrin up trouble?’
‘Know anybody named Alicia Hendricks?’
‘No.’
‘Max Sobolov?’
‘No.’
‘Christine Langston?’
“Who are all these people?’
‘They wouldn’t have come up here buying dope, would they?’
‘Oh, we gonna talk dope now? This club is not involved in dope, no way, no how.’
‘I’ll check with Nar
cotics, you know.’
‘So check. They’re our best buddies, Narcotics,’ Everado said, and grinned at his henchmen again. They all grinned back. ‘You’re on the wrong block, mister.’
Hawes figured maybe he was.
* * * *
She was wearing for their Saturday night out a simple black dress, white hair loose around her face, black high-heeled sandals. Her only piece of jewelry was a gold ring with a red stone, on the ring finger of her right hand, echoing the color of her lipstick. Hawes wondered if she’d ever been married. Beautiful woman, fifty-something years old, hadn’t she ever been married? He also wondered fifty what?
‘So where’d you get the white streak?’ she asked.
She was drinking a Bombay martini on the rocks. He was drinking bourbon and soda. She was referring to the white streak in his otherwise red hair, just over the left temple.
‘I was investigating a burglary, talking to the vic,’ he said, making it short; he’d only been asked a hundred times before. ‘The super rushed in with a knife, mistook me for the perp, cut me. The hair grew back white.’
‘Bores you, right?’
‘Sort of. How old are you, Paula?’
‘Wow! Right between the eyes! Fifty-one. Why? How old are you?’
‘Thirty-four.’
‘Makes me old enough to be your mother. Une femme d’un certain age, right?’
‘Well, it’s something we should talk about, I guess.’
‘I debated it, you know. For about thirty seconds.’
‘Me, too.’
‘There’s enough trouble making a relationship work, we don’t need the age thing.’
‘Exactly my reasoning.’
‘I just got out of a relationship that didn’t work…”
‘Me, too.’
‘So there’s that, too.’
‘Catching each other on the rebound.’
‘Right.’
‘So what are we doing here?’
‘I guess we want to be here.’
‘I know I do.’
‘Me, too. How old was this other woman? The one that just ended?’
