The Habit of Fear (The Julie Hayes Mysteries, 4)

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “I don’t know. It depends on what we’re going to talk about.”

  He took a deep drag and sent the smoke upward when he exhaled. “Your patron.”

  “He is not my patron.” She could feel herself flush.

  “But you know who and what I want to talk about. I trust you. I think you’ve been unwise, to say the least, in your association with him, but I do trust you.”

  “I guess I should say thank you, but I’m not going to. Lieutenant Marks, my husband claims that if he couldn’t talk—if he couldn’t pledge confidentiality if necessary—to anyone, even the devil himself, he couldn’t be a newspaperman. You don’t have any right to censor me.”

  Marks studied the next blast of cigarette smoke as it shot upward. “I suppose there’s a touch of the bully in every cop. I apologize if that’s the way I’ve come across to you. I said I trust you. See those file cabinets? That’s a homicide case in preparation for the Grand Jury. I’m on loan to the DA to work on it. You know how long I’ve wanted to.”

  Julie nodded.

  “But you see what I mean when I say I trust you: I don’t want to go deep-sea diving in cement shoes.”

  “I do see that,” Julie said quietly, her own anxiety easing off. His had to be even greater.

  “So I’m asking for your help. Am I to have it?”

  She nodded. “If you ask me questions, I’ll answer them as truthfully and as fully as I can.”

  “Fair enough. I’m not going to ask you to speculate. First question: has Romano moved in to play God again in this case?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then speculate, damn it!”

  They both laughed, and she knew why she liked Marks in spite of her fear of him.

  “Has he been in touch with you, Julie?”

  “No. And I haven’t been in touch with him. I don’t expect to be ever again.”

  Marks grunted, not entirely believing her. “Did you know he matched your newspaper’s five-thousand-dollar-reward money?”

  “What?”

  He nodded.

  “I didn’t know,” she said, feeling trapped again.

  “‘A concerned citizen.’ I’ve traced the bank account from which it was drawn—an old affiliate of his going straight these days, but like half the West Side, in his debt one way or another. As you know, he does nothing in his own name.”

  Julie was reminded: “When I was in the hospital, there were flowers I felt might have come from him.”

  Marks drew a legal pad near and made a note. “No card, of course. Do you remember the florist?”

  “No.”

  “The name of the nurse or whoever brought them to you?”

  Julie shook her head. Then: “Miss Gow. How about that? I didn’t know I knew.”

  Marks put down the pencil after writing the name, drew deeply on his cigarette, and then put it out. “Let’s see if we can figure out where he picked up on Kincaid and Donahue, shall we?”

  “Are you sure he did?”

  “We can say if he picked up on them if that rides easier on your conscience. At the point where he upped the reward, I don’t think he could have had any lead to your assailants.”

  “Nobody had at that time. The first break came when the street woman described one of them as red-haired and lame. He’s not lame. He rolls when he walks.” Julie then told the detective about May Weems. “She came to me the day of the Grand Jury hearing to tell me she’d had to tell her pimp what I’d done for her and why. Could the pimp be Romano’s connection?”

  “Oh, yes. Information’s a commodity you can trade up from street to penthouse. It makes for parity in Romano’s marketplace.”

  Julie smiled a little: not exactly cop language.

  “Assume that to be the connection. Now he has a description of the redhead, but no names. Next step?”

  “I went to Detective Russo with the street woman’s description, and after he went off duty that day, we walked over to McGowen’s Bar and had a beer. Russo did a quick sketch of the two men, including some stuff I’d been able to provide and asked Billy McGowen if he knew a couple of guys around who might fit the description. That was a mistake. McGowen turned hostile.”

  “Why McGowen’s?”

  “Detective Russo had a hunch all along that the men were locals. Before this happened, I was pretty well liked at McGowen’s, a sort of Saint Patrick’s Day Irish. Now it’s different. The whole neighborhood’s turned against me. They think Kincaid and Donahue have been framed. It’s crazy.”

  “Not quite, but let’s stay on course: was there anyone in the bar that day who might have overheard what you said to McGowen?”

  “Yes. There was a man I’m sure overheard. We were looking right at each other. I don’t know how to explain it, but I knew at the time he’d picked up on the description.”

  “So now we have a witness who could finger the suspects if they showed up there. Or bargain their names if he knew them.”

  “I don’t see anyone at McGowen’s doing that, Lieutenant Marks. If you mean going to Romano with the information. If anybody was going to inform at all, it would be to the police, with that reward money up there.”

  “Turn it around, Julie. Romano’s goons know every man on the take in that area. They know his price and how to protect him, and what to do with him if he becomes a liability. Can you describe the man?”

  Not wanting to, she couldn’t at the moment. “No, sir. I don’t think I can.” And why didn’t she want to? Sentimental reasons out of a late, late show, a John Ford movie. Instantly she said: “Blond, watery eyes, slack mouth. A wimp.”

  Marks almost smiled, and wrote. Then: “Maybe I can find out if he was the police informant and maybe I can’t. But let’s say he’s Romano’s. The night Kincaid got back in town, the police picked up him and his buddy as they left McGowen’s. Right? Was the Romano informant in McGowen’s at the time? I think so. The suspects were taken to Eighty-second Street, questioned and run through a lineup for you and the street woman. Plenty of time for Romano’s henchmen to get on the scent. When the suspects went free early the next morning, why didn’t the goon squad turn them around then and send them back to make their confessions? No such instructions, not at that point. And those boys don’t strike a match without instructions. Two days later, when the accused were again leaving McGowen’s, the enforcers were waiting for them. I must find your wimp. If he’s still around.”

  “You say ‘the enforcers,’” Julie said, thinking back. “What does that mean?”

  “Do you think their confessions were voluntary? That the lumps and bruises they sustained between McGowen’s closing time and four A.M. were the result of a fistfight between them? An all-out, knock-down fight doesn’t last more than a half hour—it lasts more like five minutes. I know, Julie. I’ve been in them. But, you see, these young men went home to their mothers, who didn’t buy for a minute either that their sons were rapists or that they beat up on one another. I think that’s how it came about that the community turned on you.”

  “I helped it along,” Julie said, “asking my friend Mrs. Ryan about Kincaid.”

  Marks lit another cigarette. He took his time and then said, “I helped it along, too: with the DA’s consent and their own attorney present, I tried to get them to admit they’d been assaulted and to identify their assailants.”

  “No way?” Julie asked.

  “No way.”

  Then, on a sudden thought: “What did you promise them, Lieutenant?”

  “Police protection at such time as they might be subpoenaed as witnesses.” He met her eyes, a steady gaze: “I did not compromise your case, Julie. I swear to it.”

  “You didn’t get a chance to, did you?”

  “That’s quite true.” He smiled ruefully. “Whatever happened to that wide-eyed, trusting, exuberant gal I met a couple of years ago? Beautiful eyes. They still are.”

  “She met with an accident early last summer. Lieutenant Marks, where are the men now?”<
br />
  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “And I don’t understand their hanging in with the confession. If they had reneged—and I know the police thought they might—the Grand Jury might not have indicted them at all.”

  “Their lawyer wanted them to live. He can ask that the case be thrown out when they come to trial—on the same grounds, confession under duress—but he could hope that by that time Romano would be—let’s say, under restraint.”

  “Then he knew you were after Romano, and whether or not his clients knew it, Joseph Quinlan knew that Romano was more their enemy than was the State of New York. And Romano also knew it. He has lawyers just as smart as Mr. Quinlan.”

  “That’s pretty dangerous thinking, Julie. You’re justifying a killer.”

  “No. I’m justifying myself. I have no more answers for you, Lieutenant. To me, I’m the important victim.”

  Marks squashed the cigarette in the ashtray. “I’ve already told you where I stand on that. I agree. But if Kincaid and Donahue don’t show up alive, I will use every instrument available to me to make my case. If I have to, I’ll subpoena you.”

  She nodded and got to her feet. “Thanks for the advance notice.”

  Before she reached the door, he said, “I need you on my side, Julie.”

  She looked back. “I’m not sure whether I need you on mine or not.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  TIM NOBLE RETURNED FROM his holiday eager to take over “Our Beat.” He had come to cherish her defections, Julie thought. If she was going to Ireland, it was time to go. She checked her passport—the last embarkation stamp was Orly Airport, France—and did her necessary shopping. Kincaid and Donahue had not surfaced—a bleak image considering that they might be lying weighted in waters off Staten Island. Lying in weight. She was finding it hard to laugh. The hate letters had ceased, which she attributed to a changed mood in the neighborhood: people were frightened. Her Romano association was known. Mr. Bourke, owner of a lighting shop on Eighth Avenue, confirmed this when she went to see him. It was Kevin Bourke who had obtained Sweets Romano’s phone number for her years before when she was looking for a missing girl. “I’m sorry I ever gave it to you,” Bourke said. “Me too,” she replied. That she should feel entangled in guilt was madness, but it was also her reality. She called Dr. Callahan.

  The therapist shaded her eyes to rest them while Julie recounted events as she understood them. When she had finished, the doctor looked at her, studied her, it seemed to Julie, and she anticipated the old sarcasm about the patient’s affinity for the low life. But what the doctor said was, “You look peaked. You need a vacation.”

  Julie was so relieved she laughed.

  “Are you sure it’s guilt you’re feeling, or are you frightened?”

  Julie held back too quick an answer and thought about it. “Both. It’s true, I am frightened.”

  “Good. I would rather deal with fear than guilt. Guilt is a cloak of too many colors. Who would not be afraid in your position? It is like having a tiger by the tail, no?”

  “Yes,” Julie said. “But what to do about it?”

  “You hang on until somebody shoots him. I don’t think you’re in a position to do anything until that happens. Then you duck.”

  “Oh, Doctor,” Julie said. Almost a sigh.

  “What about the divorce?”

  “It takes time—a year’s absence on Jeff’s part. He went to work on it right away—with his little French helpmate. She’s a chanteuse. She sang at the Saint Regis. How about that?”

  “Is that good? How did you find out?”

  “It was a gift. I’m in the gossip business.”

  “And the long-lost father?”

  “I’m working on it. I found a poem he wrote. It was published in The New Yorker.”

  The doctor nodded, a kind of appreciation.

  “And I fell in and out of love with an Irish playwright since I was here last.” She hadn’t intended to say that. She did not know if it were so, but it came up and out in the environment. “I’m going to Ireland to continue the search for my father.”

  “And not for the Irish playwright?”

  “He’s probably married, with ten children.”

  The doctor smiled—it showed just long enough for Julie to catch it.

  “That’s like me, huh, to fall for somebody like that?”

  “It’s you who said it. What about the job?”

  “I’ve asked for leave without pay.”

  “That’s like you, too. Without pay. A newspaper that big couldn’t afford to keep you on salary?”

  “I have an assignment from the Sunday magazine to write about myself. And if I do find my father, I ought to be able to sell that story also.”

  “You are using yourself. Good.”

  “It’s what I’ve got.”

  “What more do you need?” the doctor said. “Do you know why you came here today?”

  “To get your approval.”

  A noncommittal grunt from Dr. Callahan.

  Walking out onto a windy Central Park West, where the yellow leaves were swirling at her feet, Julie said the final word to herself: “You’re your own censor. Go.”

  PART TWO

  TWENTY-FOUR

  JULIE ARRIVED IN DUBLIN on a crisp Friday afternoon in late October. Traveling overseas alone for the first time in her life, she heeded the advice of the Irish Tourist Board not to be in a hurry. She settled into a room in the Greer Hotel, a renovated Georgian building not far from Trinity College, and spent her first day in Ireland meandering in one direction and then another, listening and looking and getting to recognize her own reflection in the shop windows. Early Saturday afternoon, street map in hand, she set out to find Michael Desmond’s niece, Sally O’Rourke. She had an address, but no phone number was listed to the name.

  Grafton Street, which by then she had already come to know, was closed at the time to vehicular traffic and swarmed with children. Poppy-cheeked and noisy, they skittered among the shoppers and the street entertainers, who were hard put to hold a tune. Julie dropped a coin that was sure to be either too much or too little into the rumpled cap of a fiddler where it lay at his feet. A tough little urchin blocked her way and demanded tenpence. “You guv him twice it,” he said of her contribution to the fiddler. Or at least that was what she thought he said. “He’s more musical,” Julie said, and pushed by him. She inquired of two very tall policemen the best way to Kevin Street. They stooped low and made her repeat where she wanted to go on Kevin Street and between them decided that the easiest way for her to get there was to walk it.

  After the bustle and fashion of Grafton Street, Kevin was a forlorn mix of nineteenth-century red brick tenements and bleak modern housing of yellow bricks and glass, row on row alike.

  Sally O’Rourke lived in one of the newer buildings. The entry was crowded with buggies and strollers. A shopping cart loaded with a folded wash stood near the inside door. Julie found that cheering. She pressed the O’Rourke bell and studied Irish graffiti while she waited: “Punk not ded.” She had seen a party of punks the night before, so she didn’t find that any great news—chains, leather jackets, scalps shaved save for a shock of green or purple hair down the middle of the skull. No one had prepared her for such a scene in Ireland. She was about to try the bell again, when a boy of twelve or so opened the vestibule door.

  “It quot work,” he said, apparently of the release buzzer. “What do you want, ma’am?”

  She hadn’t finished explaining herself to the youngster when a woman called from the landing above, “Who is it, Michael?”

  Julie climbed the stairs and answered for herself on the way.

  “You couldn’t ring up,” Mrs. O’Rourke explained for her, before she had time to do it, “us not being on the line.” She was a little woman, perpetually bent forward, possibly because she was always on the run, having to be somewhere before she could get there. “It’s the children,” she explained. “The girls are
getting to the age of exorbitance.” She ran across the living room to close a door to the rest of the flat and then ran back to recommend a large upholstered chair. She snatched off the plastic cover and stuffed it into a magazine rack behind The Illustrated News. “You can’t keep a thing in the house decent for them. And they don’t care. It’s not like when you and I were kids.”

  It shocked Julie to realize that this bent woman with her tinted hair and pale, eager eyes thought of her as a contemporary. Mrs. O’Rourke would be wiser by far in the ways of human nature than she was. Or more cunning. She could almost feel herself being played upon. The woman perched on the edge of the sofa and plucked at the apron she wore over heavy slacks and sweater. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have prettied myself up.”

  “You know, even when I see your uncle’s papers—if you let me see them—I won’t be able to say whether or not they are valuable.” She wanted no assumption of false promises.

  The woman gave a quick little tilt to her head and flashed a smile. “Well, they’ll be valuable to you, dear, won’t they?” Oh, yes: wiser by far.

  “As soon as Michael comes up, he’ll put on the kettle for tea, and then we’ll have a nice talk.” She slipped off the couch and pattered, swift as a mouse, to the hall door and opened it. Michael was bringing up, step by step, the shopping cart with the laundry in it. “Leave it on the landing, Michael, and come meet the lady from New York who’s here about your great-uncle’s notebooks.” And while she led the boy, who was taller than she, into the room by the hand, she explained, “Michael’s named after his famous antecedent. Shake hands with Mrs. Hayes, Michael. Is it Mrs. or Miss? Or do you prefer Mzzz?”

  “Mrs.”

  The busy eyes darted to and from the hand without a wedding band. The quick smile seemed to put a price on the contradictory information. “Michael, put on the kettle like a good boy. Do you think you could make us a cup of tea without scalding yourself?”

  The hand he gave Julie was as soft as snow. He gave it and took it back silently, and as silently crossed the room and left them.