by Ed McBain
‘Late twenties? I never asked.’
‘Ah. But you asked me.’
‘Only because you’re so beautiful.’
‘Nice save.’
‘How old was your guy?’
‘Mid-fifties.’
‘More appropriate, right?’
‘I guess. But somehow you don’t seem inappropriate.’
‘Neither do you.’
‘So what shall we do here, Cotton?’
‘Let’s eat,’ Hawes said. ‘I’m starved, aren’t you?’
* * * *
So she ordered the roasted peppers with anchovies and mozzarella to start, and then the veal piccata as her main dish, and he ordered the bruschetta to start, and then the linguine puttanesca. He asked if she would like a white wine with her veal, but she said she really preferred red with everything, and so he ordered a bottle of their best Merlot. As the waiter uncorked it, and poured it, Paula said, ‘There’s a genuine benefit to drinking red wine, you know. Other alcoholic products weaken the immune system and leave the body vulnerable. But they say red wine fights heart disease and cancer.’
The waiter nodded in agreement, and padded off.
Hawes raised his glass.
‘What shall we drink to, Paula?’ he asked.
‘I dunno,’ she said, and looked into her glass. ‘Depends on how old the wine is, don’t you think?’
He caught her little quip, smiled, looked into his own glass, pondered a moment, and then nodded and looked across the table at her.
‘Age cannot wither her,’ he said, ‘nor custom stale her infinite variety,’ and clinked his glass against hers.
‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘But let’s make a deal, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Let’s never talk about the difference in our ages again.’
‘Never is a long, long time.’
‘I hope so,’ she said.
They clinked glasses again, drank.
‘Mmm,’ she said.
‘Delicious,’ he said.
‘How come you’re quoting Shakespeare at me?’ she asked.
‘We just had a case where the perp was fond of doing that.’
‘The perp,’ she said, and nodded. ‘I guess I’ll have to get used to cop talk, too.’
‘I guess,’ he said.
Over dessert, she told him that she’d been married for six years when her husband was called up from the National Guard to serve in the first Gulf War. He was killed in action a month after he arrived in Saudi Arabia. She’d been working at the time as an interior decorator, had since held a job at a house-and-garden-type magazine, and then in a department store’s design section, and was now working for a small art gallery in downtown Isola. Hawes told her he’d never been married. He told her he’d been in the Navy during his particular war. He told her he liked police work most of the time. He promised he would not bore her with tales of the cases he was working, though at the moment…
And they both laughed when he started telling her about the four unrelated murder victims they were now investigating.
When their laughter ebbed, she said, ‘Cotton?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m old enough to have been at Woodstock,’ she said.
‘I thought we promised
‘I’m making a different point. Back then, I ran around in beads and feathers, no bra. Back then, I went to bed with a lot of different guys. This was the sixties. That’s what we did. Said hello and jumped right into bed.’
He was listening.
‘I’m not that impetuous nowadays,’ she said.
‘Okay.’
‘What I’m saying is, we’re not going to bed with each other tonight.’
‘Okay.’
She sipped at her coffee. He sipped at his. ‘Are you angry?’ ‘Disappointed,’ he said. ‘Me, too,’ she said.
8.
FIRST THING MONDAY morning, right after the blues had mustered downstairs and filed out to their cars or their foot posts, Captain John Marshall Frick called Byrnes into his corner office, and read him the riot act.
‘I just got a call from the Commish,’ he said. ‘He is not pleased. He is definitely not pleased.’
Byrnes thought Frick should have retired long ago. He suspected that all the Captain did was sit at his computer all day long, e-mailing Old Fart jokes to other Old Fart captains in precincts all over the city. Not that Frick was truly old. What was he, after all? Sixty, sixty-five, in there? It was just that he was truly an old fart.
‘Not pleased at all,’ he said, putting it yet another way. “He wants some immediate results on these Glock Murders. Immediate. He thinks we’re fiddling around up here. He wants us to quit fiddling around up here.’
‘Fiddling around?’ Byrnes said. ‘I’ve got the whole damn squad working twenty-four/seven, the whole damn squad’s on overtime, he calls that fiddling? We’re dealing with a case where maybe the motives go back centuries, you’re telling me we’re fiddling around?’
‘I’m telling you what the Commish told me. He wants us to quit fiddling around and bring him some results. Immediate results. He’s cut us enough slack, is what he said. He knows he owes us on the terrorist bust, but we can’t ride on past glory forever, is what he said. We’ve got five vics so far, and Christ knows if this lunatic is done yet, and he wants results, immediate results, is all I can tell you! The papers and television are screaming!’
‘You’re the one who’s screaming, John,’ Byrnes said softly.
‘I don’t like getting bawled out by the Commish.’
‘And I don’t like getting bawled out by you,’ Byrnes said.
‘Then stop fiddling around and bring me some results!’
* * * *
At a quarter past nine that Monday morning, Hawes spoke to the young priest who’d arranged for Helen Reilly’s funeral, and her burial yesterday. His name was Father Kevin Ryan.
‘After the terrible tragedy three years ago,’ he said, and crossed himself, ‘there really were no surviving relatives.’
‘You mean the gang shooting,’ Hawes said.
‘Well, what appeared to be a gang shooting, at any rate. One never knows the truth of such matters, does one? And they never apprehended the shooter, did they? Martin’s sister discounts the gang theory entirely. She and Helen didn’t get along, you know.’
‘Oh?’
‘Or so some of the parishioners told me. In any event, she didn’t come to Helen’s funeral, so I guess there’s some truth to it.’
‘Why didn’t they get along?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Lucy Hamilton.’
‘Where does she live, would you happen to know?’
* * * *
Martin Reilly’s younger sister was seventy-four years old…
Everybody involved in this case already had one foot in the grave…
… and she still believed her late, unlamented sister-in-law had something to do with Martin’s murder.
‘I never for a minute believed this big love affair of theirs,’ she said, clasping her hands to her bosom in a mock swoon. ‘Tristan and Isolde, Eloise and Abelard, baloney. She was in an unhappy marriage she wanted to get out of, and my poor brother became her hapless victim.’
Hawes knew when to shut up.
Lucy Hamilton was just gathering steam. A widow herself, she had no sympathy whatever for her brother’s recent widow. Described her as a barmaid with no education and no manners…
“… deliberately ensnared Martin, abandoned her husband and children the moment she saw greener pastures. I didn’t like her the first time Martin brought her around, and I never did get to like her.’
‘Tell me more about these children,’ Hawes said.
‘What?’
‘You said she abandoned…”
‘Oh. Well, that’s what I deduced. Wouldn’t you?’
‘How do you know there were children?’
‘My b
rother mentioned it one night. Married woman with a pair of kids. When he was telling me, for the thousandth time, how much Helen loved him. Said she’d adored him so much that she’d been willing to leave her husband and two kids for him.’
‘Boys or girls? These kids?’
‘He just said “kids.” I didn’t press him, I didn’t give a damn. When he met Helen, she was twenty-two years old, married, with two kids, and sleeping around with every man in sight. So Martin brings her home. And in the end, he gets shot coming down from a train station.’
‘You see these two events as linked, do you?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘You think Helen somehow had something to do with your brother’s murder?’
‘That’s what I told the detectives.’
‘What did you tell them, Mrs. Hamilton?’
‘Told them she probably started sleeping around again. Told them my brother had become an inconvenience, just like her first husband.’
‘After almost fifty years of marriage, whatever? A seventy-year-old woman? Sleeping around?’
‘A leopard doesn’t change spots, Detective Hawes.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I sensed it.’
‘You sensed that what they called their great love was really…”
‘A sham,’ Lucy said, and nodded.
‘I see,’ Hawes said.
‘Which is why she got her most recent boyfriend to shoot my brother on the way home from the city.’
‘And this “recent” boyfriend. Any idea who he might have been?’
‘You don’t advertise something like that.’
‘But we know she was living alone at the time of her murder.’
‘Appearances are sometimes deceptive.’
‘You think she might have been living with someone, is that it?’
‘The boyfriend,’ Lucy said, and nodded again.
Hawes figured he was wasting his time here.
* * * *
You can change your telephone number as often as you change your underwear. You can change your street address every fifty years or so, even more frequently if you happen to be upwardly or downwardly mobile. Every time you buy a new car, you can change your license plate number. And it’s a simple matter to change your credit card numbers whenever you so desire. But if you live in the United States of America, there is one set of numbers that sticks with you for your entire life.
Nine digits across the face of a simple blue card.
Nine digits divided into three parts.
Area numbers, group numbers, and serial numbers.
The number assigned to you the first time you get a job, and the number that will stay with you forever.
Your Social Security number.
A call to Social Security Admin tracked Helen Reilly back to when she was Helen Purcell and further back to when she was still Helen Rogers and took her first job at the age of seventeen. Hawes knew that her first husband’s name might have been Luke; Paula Wellington had suggested this. On the off chance that someone named Luke Purcell was still alive…
If so, he’d have to be in his late seventies or early eighties…
… Hawes checked all of the city’s five telephone directories. He came up with hundreds of Purcells, but no Lukes.
A call to the Department of Records unearthed a death certificate for a Luke Randolph Purcell, who’d died of lung cancer seven years ago, at the age of seventy-one. Several phone calls later, Hawes recovered a marriage certificate from 1950, for a Luke Randolph Purcell and a Helen Rogers, and a subsequent certificate of divorce for the couple. But if Luke and Helen Purcell had had any children - boys or girls - before they went their separate ways, the kids were still largely anonymous in a city of largely anonymous people. Hawes called the office of Vital Statistics, and asked a man named Paul Endicott to see what he had on any children for a Luke and Helen Purcell.
‘You know how many Purcells there are in the records down here?’ Endicott asked.
Hawes confessed he did not.
‘There are thousands,’ Endicott said. ‘Purcell is a very common name. Would you yourself like to come down here personally, Detective, and go through the thousands of Purcells on file here? Looking for a Helen or a Luke to see what their fucking kids’ names were?’
‘I wish you’d help me,’ Hawes told him. ‘This is a homicide we’re investigating.’
By eleven o’clock that Monday morning, Hawes had gone through four of the city’s five telephone directories and was working on the fifth, slogging through the book, dialing, and then identifying himself, and then doggedly asking the very same question of every Purcell who answered the phone: ‘Are you related to a Luke or a Helen Purcell?’
At times he felt like a telemarketer; people just hung up on him, even after he told them he was a detective. Other times, he felt hopelessly old-fashioned. In this day and age of instant messaging, there had to be a quicker, simpler way of zeroing in on the progeny of Helen and Luke - if, in fact, they even existed; so far, he had only the word of Helen’s sister-in-law for that.
He looked up at the wall clock. Sighed. Ran his finger down the page to the next Purcell in the Riverhead directory. Jennifer Purcell. Began dialing again. Listened to the phone ringing on the other end.
‘Hello?’
A woman’s voice.
‘Hello, this is Detective Hawes of the Eighty-seventh Squad. I’m trying to reach Jennifer Purcell…”
‘Yes, this is Jennifer?’ the woman said. Youngish voice, late twenties, early thirties, clearly puzzled. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Ma’am, I’m trying to locate the children of Luke and Helen Purcell. I wonder…”
‘They’re my grandparents,’ she said at once. ‘Are you investigating her murder? I heard about it on television
‘Yes, I am,’ Hawes said at once, relieved, leaning closer into the phone. ‘Miss Purcell, I’d like to come there to talk to you, if I may. Would there be any time this morning… ?’
‘I’m sorry, I was just about to leave for work. Can we make it sometime tonight? I get home around five.’
‘Well… can you spare me a few minutes on the phone?’
‘No, I’m sorry, I really have to go, I’m late as it is.’
‘Then can I come to your workplace? This is really…”
‘No, it’s a restaurant, I’m sorry. Can’t you come here later today?’
‘Yes, certainly,’ he said.
‘Can you be here around five, five thirty? I should be home by then.’
‘Your grandparents had two children, is that right? Can you tell me… ?’
‘I’m sorry, but I really have to go. We’ll talk this evening.’
‘Wait!’ he shouted.
‘What?’
‘Where are you?’ he asked.
‘1247 Forbes Road, Apartment 6B.’
‘I’ll see you at five,’ he said.
‘Five thirty,’ she said. ‘I have to run. I’m sorry,’ she said, and hung up.
‘Damn it!’ Hawes said out loud.
Jennifer’s own name was Purcell, so he figured her for either single or else divorced and using her maiden name. Either way, this meant her father and not her mother was one of the abandoned kids. He’d wanted to ask her whether the other Purcell kid was a boy or a girl. He’d wanted to ask whether she’d ever even known the grandmother who’d abandoned Luke and the two kids to run off with her lover. Lots of questions to ask. He couldn’t wait to ask them.
He looked up at the wall clock.
Five thirty tonight seemed so very far away.
* * * *
These holy, solemn, religious places gave Ollie the heebie-jeebies. Before the priest got himself killed, the last time Ollie’d been inside a church was when his sister Isabel got stranded at the altar by a no-good Jewboy grifter he’d warned her against from the very beginning, but who listens to their big brothers nowadays? He wondered, in fact, if Patricia’s kid brother, Alonso
, was warning her against Ollie himself right this very minute. As well he might be. Which was another thing that made Ollie uncomfortable about being here in Our Lady of Grace, the fact that he was actively planning, in the darkest recesses of his primeval mind, the seduction of Alonso’s older sister, Patricia Gomez, a fellow police officer, no less. This coming Saturday night, no less.
All these goddamn candles.
The smell of incense.
Sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows.
And all he could think of was taking off Patricia’s panties.
Three or four religious fanatics were sitting in the pews, praying. A guy in his fifties was polishing the big brass candlesticks behind the altar railing. Ollie walked down the center aisle like a bishop, approached the man.
‘Who’s in charge here?’ he asked, same as he would at a crime scene.
The guy looked up, polishing rag in his right hand.
Ollie showed his detective’s shield.
‘Is there a head priest or something?’ he asked.
The man seemed bewildered. Sparrow of a man with narrow shoulders and thin arms, blue eyes darting from the shield in Ollie’s hand, to Ollie’s face, and then back to the shield again. Ollie figured he wasn’t playing with a full deck.
‘Are you looking for Father Nealy?’ the man asked.
‘Sure,’ Ollie said. ‘Where do I find him?’
* * * *
Father James Nealy was preparing next Sunday morning’s sermon when Ollie walked into his rectory at eleven thirty that Monday morning. Ollie knew right off the man would be of no earthly help to him; he was in his early thirties, and couldn’t possibly have been here at Our Lady of Grace when Father Michael was. He asked his questions, anyway.
‘Did you know Father Michael personally?’
‘Never met the man,’ Father Nealy said. ‘But I’ve heard only good things about him.’
‘Never heard anyone say he wished the old man was dead, right?’
Father Nealy smiled. He was wearing black trousers and a black shirt, looked like some kind of tunic. White collar. Black, highly polished shoes. Ollie figured he had to be some kind of fag.
‘No, I’ve never heard anyone say he wished Father Michael was dead.’
‘Everybody loved him, right?’
