Blood Innocents (17 page)

“No.”

“And you hated him, didn't you? Didn't you want to get even?”

Petrakis did not answer.

“Didn't you?” Reardon repeated.

Petrakis' face seemed to darken. “It is the curse,” he said. “I will die!”

Reardon leaned forward in his chair. For a moment he believed that he had broken the impenetrable surface of Petrakis' consciousness. “Die for what?”

“This is the last,” Petrakis said.

“Last of what?”

“The curse.”

“What curse?”

“She curses me with three deaths.”

“Who?”

“My mother.”

“Why?”

“Because I leave my village in Greece. She says three would die.”

“She cursed you for coming to New York?” Reardon asked. He had heard of such things among the Irish.

Petrakis continued, dazed. “She says that three will die. My daughter last year. Now my wife. Now me.”

“Your daughter died last year?” Reardon asked.

“Born dead,” Petrakis said without emphasis, as if filling in an inconsequential detail, as if all his nerves had been seared down to a final insensibility.

Reardon could feel a pressure behind his eyes, his skin tightening in the old, remembered fury of his pity.

17

Reardon was still questioning Petrakis, searching for contradictions, breaks, discrepancies in his story when Mathesson walked into the precinct house later that afternoon. He seemed to be moved by a dynamo, gaining energy from the pursuit of the killer. Reardon could sense that Mathesson smelled blood, felt he was on the right track and had already fingered Petrakis as the killer in his mind. He looked at Petrakis, then at Reardon. “Can I see you a minute?” he asked Reardon.

Reardon stood up, and he and Mathesson walked into an empty office not far from Reardon's desk. Mathesson was poised, ready. He paced to the back wall of the office, leaned his back flat against it and slapped his hands together jubilantly.

“The Van Allen connection still checks out,” he said. “Julio Robles is just the lousy superintendent of the building. He's not the landlord.”

“Van Allen is the landlord?”

“That's right,” Mathesson said, “and I did a little survey. You know, on my own. Everybody in that building that I could talk to knew that Wallace Van Allen was the landlord.”

Reardon nodded. There was no doubt now, Reardon knew: Mathesson was after Petrakis and already believed he had him.

“It was just like I thought,” Mathesson said, “just like my buddy with the Hollywood star for a landlord.”

“I see,” Reardon said.

“So the connection holds.”

“Yes, I guess it does.”

“You gonna arrest him?” Mathesson asked. “Got a lot on him, you know.”

Reardon looked at Petrakis through the internal office window. He was sitting erect in the chair, his hands folded motionlessly in his lap, his face still holding to its doomed rigidity, the face of a cow waiting for the hammer.

“He says he crossed Fifth Avenue on the way to the subway,” Reardon said.

“Then that's it,” said Mathesson. “Piccolini wants an arrest.”

“I know.”

“Do you think you can get a confession out of Petrakis?”

“Like they got one out of Whitmore,” Reardon said harshly, “by feeding him the details of the case.” He felt his anger flash almost uncontrollably. He gazed at Petrakis, thinking of that impregnable passivity the man gave off like an odor. “They actually got him to tell them the color of a bedspread in a murder room he had never been in,” Reardon said softly, controlling himself. “That's not the kind of confession we want, is it?”

“Of course not,” Mathesson said. “You know better than that. You know I wouldn't go for anything like that.”

“If I build a case against Petrakis,” Reardon said, “I want it to stick. Besides, I'm not sure we have a case yet.”

Mathesson seemed amazed. “Are you kidding?”

“I have an opinion,” Reardon said firmly, turning to face Mathesson, “and that's it. I don't believe we have a case nailed down against him yet.”

“The connection holds, the prints hold, the motive holds, the weapon holds. He was in the area of the crime near the time of its commission.”

Reardon thought Mathesson sounded like a textbook on criminal procedure.

“I'm not convinced.”

Mathesson's initial amazement was obviously now turning into irritation. “Are you going on hunches now?”

“You can call it what you like.” Reardon pointed his finger toward the closed door. “Outside that door a man is sitting in a chair. That man is a part of this case. He's a part of this case, just like the ax and the prints and the rest of the physical evidence. He just does not connect with the facts. I don't believe the case is solid against him and I am not going to subject him and his family to an arrest before I have a case I can send to court.”

“Is that what you're going to say to Piccolini?”

“That is just about it.”

“Forget it,” Mathesson said wearily. “Petrakis will be in the slammer tonight no matter what. Piccolini won't buy any of this.”

“Maybe so,” Reardon said.

“For sure,” Mathesson said. “And I'll tell you something, John. I don't buy it either. You've gone a little crazy on this case. Don't ask me why, but you've been a little crazy on it from the beginning, from the first day when you saw those deer. And you're going to fuck yourself up royally. And it's all going to be for nothing. For that little shit out there. Who cares about him? He did it. Everything connects. I believe he did it. And I hope to hell that Piccolini locks him up, because he may have wasted more than those deer. He may have wasted two women in the Village. Remember, the one with the face like a child? I don't want him on the streets because you have a hunch he didn't do it.”

For a moment Mathesson glared furiously at Reardon, then he strode out of the office, slamming the door behind him.

Reardon, exhausted, sat down in the empty office at the empty desk, the light streaming through the window, illuminating cascading clouds of city dust, alone.

When Reardon emerged from the office he walked directly past Petrakis and straight to Piccolini's office. He entered it without knocking and closed the door behind him. Piccolini's head shot up, startled. But when he saw Reardon standing stiffly in front of his desk, he relaxed, placed a hand behind his head and leaned back in his chair. He smiled. “Finished?”

“I don't think so,” Reardon said.

“What's the problem? Have you finished the interrogation?”

“Just about.”

“Did he confess?”

“No.”

Piccolini smiled. “He will,” he said confidently. “Maybe not right away, but he will.”

“No,” Reardon said, “he won't.”

“It doesn't matter anyway, does it?”

“Well …”

“Just go over the basics again,” Piccolini said.

“Well,” Reardon said, “we found the weapon. A Parks Department ax. Only one set of fingerprints; they belong to Petrakis. According to Daniels, Petrakis was near the Children's Zoo just before the deer were killed. He was mad at his landlord, according to Bryant. His landlord was Wallace Van Allen. Petrakis knew the deer were given to the zoo by Van Allen because he worked there when they were donated.”

“Did you confront him with those facts?” Piccolini asked.

“Yes.”

“And he didn't confess?”

“No.”

“Arrest him,” Piccolini said matter-of-factly.

“No,” Reardon said. “I don't think we have a complete case.”

“Why not?”

“I just don't believe we do.”

Piccolini leaned forward in his chair and folded his hands in front of him. “That's it? That's your whole explanation?”

“Yes.”

“Based on nothing.”

“Based on Petrakis. I don't believe he connects with the facts of the case.”

“He connects with the physical evidence,” Piccolini said, “and that's enough of a connection for me. Arrest him.” He turned casually to get a book from the shelf behind his desk.

“No,” Reardon said, his whole body growing taut.

Piccolini wheeled around to face Reardon. “Arrest him!” he said coldly.

“Have him arrested if you want to, but not by me. I won't do it. Get somebody else, not me.”

“Petrakis had a motive for the crime and the occasion to commit it,” Piccolini insisted.

“What motive?”

“What motive?” Piccolini said. “Are you kidding? He was in a rage at his landlord and his landlord was Wallace Van Allen. That's a motive in anybody's book.”

Reardon shrugged. “Petrakis thought his landlord was Julio Robles.”

“Who is Julio Robles?”

“The super in Petrakis' old building.”

Piccolini grinned. “That's just a cover. I've heard stuff like that a thousand times. So have you.”

“I believe he did not know that Wallace Van Allen owned the building he lived in,” Reardon said.

Piccolini leaned back in his chair. “I don't know what's the matter with you, Reardon, but something is.”

Reardon said nothing. He was not sure he disagreed with Piccolini about that. He was not sure but that something terrible was in fact wrong with him, but he could not name it.

“Do you have any real reason to hold off on the arrest of Petrakis?” Piccolini asked.

“No,” Reardon said immediately.

“Then arrest him.”

“No.”

“You're off the case,” Piccolini said abruptly. “Send Mathesson in here. And tell Petrakis to wait right where he is.”

Reardon nodded. He felt like Petrakis. He felt as though there was nothing left of him.

That night Reardon could not sleep. He sat by his window watching the life of the street coil and strike beneath him. His mind was filled with the grotesque opera of his life: the hideous dismemberments, the familiar molestations. He remembered Whitmore, a confused and lonely boy from whom the detectives had gently nudged a false confession the way a kindly grandparent might coax candy from a grandchild. That's what Mathesson and the others will do to Petrakis, he thought. Piccolini was right: Petrakis would confess to everything. He would embrace a confession as the fulfillment of his mother's curse.

Reardon shook his head. He was off the case. He had been reassigned. It was his duty to take the reassignment, to forget about Petrakis, to let Mathesson and Piccolini handle it. Tomorrow morning there would be another homicide. The city offered up unexplained corpses with every dawn.

World without end, amen.

18

TUESDAY

Toward dawn the walls of Reardon's apartment seemed to be closing in on him. He had smoked three packs of cigarettes since eight o'clock, and the room floated before him in a haze of smoke. He crushed out the last cigarette of the third pack and walked down to the street.

Outside the early-morning delivery trucks lined the streets and avenues. The veins of the city were receiving their daily injections of food and drink and produce. The delivery men hustled from their trucks to the stores and back to the trucks again. It seemed to Reardon that they purposely made as much noise as possible, banging their carts on the curb or letting their packages drop from shoulder height to the sidewalk.

At 86th Street he took the Lexington Avenue express uptown toward the Bronx, something he often did when he felt the need for escape. Soon the train came out of the subway tunnel's grimy darkness, and he was in open air again. From the tracks he could see the streets below him, but the sounds of the city were distant, less threatening, muffled by the whirr of the train. From the el the world seemed small and salvageable. The complexities of the city, its sprawling, unmanageable life, were reduced to a miniature version of itself. All its problems, and all of his, appeared less colossal from the vantage point of the train.

For years it had been Reardon's final escape. It took him above everything, above the bickerings of family life, the rigors of work, the austerities of religion. It was the place where he regained himself, calmed himself, somehow took on the armor of endurance.

Between the Burnside Avenue and 183rd Street stations the train suddenly stopped. After a few moments the conductor announced over the public address system that there was a train out of service up ahead and that there would be a short delay. Reardon took the delay as a gift, a moment simply to rest, suspended between the city and the sky.

His eyes patrolled the windows that faced him on the other side of the tracks, probably only fifty feet away. The building was old and weather-beaten, but the apartment windows were large and full. Curtains or Venetian blinds covered most of them, so Reardon's eyes fastened onto the one window open to his view. He could see a man pacing in a circle around a small boy. The man was dressed in work clothes and was very animated, throwing his arms in the air as he circled the child. Then he hit him, hard, with his open hand, and the child fell back into a chair.

Reardon stood up, astonished, and bolted across the center aisle to the subway window.

The man was shouting, but Reardon could not hear what he was saying. The man picked up a large vase and threw it across the room. The child darted behind the chair and squatted, and Reardon could see that he was covering his head with his tiny arms. Instantly the man wrenched the child from behind the chair and lifted him into the air above his head.

Reardon frantically tried to get the subway window open, but the latches were corroded shut.

The man threw the boy into the back of the chair, toppling it so that it spilled the child onto the floor.

Reardon began hitting the window with his fists again and again. “Stop it! Stop it!” he shouted. The other passengers in the train turned to look at him, and then at the scene in the apartment. But their attention returned to him, as if he were the greater threat.