Death of the Black-Haired Girl (22 page)

Salmone thanked her for the call.

“Lieutenant? Did you find out anything about the man I mentioned? The man who calls himself Father Walter?”

“Your guy is dead ten years, Dr. Carr.”

“Is that certain?”

“Seems really certain. He was well known where he lived. Somewhere in Louisiana, as I remember. He died of cancer. Had it a long time.”

“A man came to see me one evening. Livid about Maud’s article. I would have sworn it was Walter. I knew him well. If someone asked me in court if I’d seen him, I would have sworn on the Bible this was the same man.”

“Couldn’t be, Dr. Carr. He was a well-known figure. Death’s been established.”

“You made a special inquiry?”

“Hey, we pushed those people so hard they think we’re nuts. Your Father Walter is dead. No question.”

When he had identified Brookman’s house, Stack found a bench with a dedicatory plaque under a massive catalpa tree almost directly across the street from it. He was out of breath after his walk from the counseling office; the place to sit and the warm sun were welcome. The day was bright, the street fairly quiet since the students were away now and many of the buildings were closed. Around the Common, two blocks away, the hour was told in Christmas hymns by each church in turn.

As Stack settled against one end of the bench, the holstered Glock thudded against its armrest. He laid his cane down the length of the seat and read the plaque. The dedication was to a professor and his wife whose favorite tree it had been, subscribed to by former students after their deaths, sometime in the 1930s. Nice world they lived in, he thought, but of course it would not have seemed that way to them. Stack stretched his embittered, whiskey-poisoned bones on the slats. So quiet was it that he might listen to the twittering of riverside swallows that had established themselves in the park shed’s ornamental eaves. Sitting here he could almost hear the impact that had crushed the last living breath out of his only child along with the skittering of the swallows and the earliest doves of afternoon, reporting into the quiet spaces.

At first Stack had cried over the violence of his daughter’s death. But the more he thought about it, the more it seemed connected to his own fate and nature, and he cried no longer. It took a certain kind of individual to wipe out a beauty like Maud’s. But she was only Stack’s Maud and Stack was a thief and Maud was another and they had thrived on loot. Was that putting it too harshly?

It was all easy to understand. Stack the monster and the monster’s lovely daughter—it was a rendering of justice against both of them. Because she was Maud, the sometime thief, the spoiled and selfish. Because she was his beautiful brilliant only child. Because he loved her so much more than life. Because he and her mother loved her so much.

As for himself, he thought, for all the gifts he might have started with, he was a burnout and a drunk, not even a mediocre policeman, a lousy one in fact, and not a particularly honest one. A coward, morally and sometimes physically. A spiteful, vengeful nurser of old wounds, a bigot at heart, a rejoicer in the defeats of others, a betrayer of his adoring wife as womanizer and cuckold. An accessory to sometimes vicious things and to crimes he lacked the stones to perpetrate or prevent.

It seemed to him he had been poisoned by anger long before he had any right to it. It must be in his blood, he thought, the anger. He had known honor and pretended to despise it, and come in the end to really despise it, to dread hope, fear light, laugh off all the dreams of justice, laugh it all off. Those were the reasons she was dead.

Looking across the street from his bench, he saw a tall woman in a tan raincoat coming up the street with her eyes on the sidewalk. She wore glasses, and a scarf was tied loosely around her neck. With her was a girl of ten or so. The child drew Stack’s attention. She had darker hair than her mother and was at an awkward age of her growth. Her wrists showed beyond the sleeves of her ski jacket. She was tall and long-legged but her face, with its high forehead, was dour, downright sad, the face of a noticeably intelligent little girl. As they stopped in front of the Brookman house her mother pulled her sleeve at the elbow, reminding her that they were home. For a moment the woman stood looking down at her daughter with concern, touching her hair lightly, her face drawn with worry and unhappiness. They would be Brookman’s people, Stack decided, engaged in the pleasures of parenting. In that moment Stack realized how different his life would be as the father of dead Maud.

The thought was fascinating. All gone. The wife, the daughter who had seemed magical and more as a child but had proved only surpassing in beauty and intellect, otherwise an ordinary mortal like himself. A man, Stack thought, who has a child like her believes it’s himself transcended. But the Stacks of the world did not transcend. Still, she had surprised. Maud had been touched by something strong. She had surprised but the power of the
Sidhe,
the fairies who owned her, had brought her down. Head to head with religion, the kid had gone. How he had loved her!

He thought it the easiest thing in the world now, to understand. Some force overcome with rage like his own had demanded that miracle child of form and grace be crushed on the sidewalk like a roach. The life he was living since the day he made himself understand that his daughter was dead was different from the one he had lived before. It was compounded still of rage and grief—they were still present, still a scourge—only less confusing. He felt as if he suddenly commanded a clear view into what had been his life, and it seemed to be one where he had outlived identity. The papers he carried, for the weapon, the driver’s license, all the credentials that defined him—even his own name—had no significance at all. Not that this brought any particular freedom. Freedom had always been a thing alien to him, as a concept or as an experienced condition. No one and nothing was free, everything rigorously bound and priced, locked down and chained, from your last drink to your last orgasm to what you thought were the highest flights of your soul. Stack was out of breath. He took his hat off and leaned on the cheap cane. It was late afternoon but the day was still bright. He was waiting for the courage to telephone Brookman in the house across the street.

He had been sitting a long time and the mild day concealed a chill at its core that worked its way into Stack’s bones. He had taken to feeling the outline of his Glock as though time or reason had somehow stripped him of it. Finally, after the winter shadows had edged from one side of Felicity Street to the other, he saw a man he knew must be Brookman headed up the street. Brookman was a large man, a few inches over six feet tall, and the unbuttoned charcoal-gray overcoat he wore spoke for the breadth of his shoulders. He would have to be approached, as the term went, “with caution.” He would have to be killed quickly and beyond a dying effort. Stack’s hand went to the weapon under the cloth of his coat.

He watched as the man he knew was Brookman turned briskly into his elegant residence on Felicity Street. At the point of taking out his cell phone, Stack was at once aware of an unmarked car, a few years old, blocking traffic in the near lane. His friend Salmone was at the wheel and rolled down the passenger-side window.

“Hey, Eddie!”

Stack stood up. His instinct was to walk away.

“Eddie!” Salmone pushed open the passenger-side door. “Eddie. Step into my office, brother.”

His capacity for escape was a thing of the past. Stack walked into the street and climbed into Salmone’s Camry. They drove down the street that led to the center of the Common and parked in a row of spaces marked off for utility vehicles.

“Dr. Carr call you?” Stack asked.

“What are you doing in front of their house, Eddie?”

“I was meditating.”

“Look, man. Somebody ran Maudie down and left her to die in the street. It wasn’t Brookman, for Christ’s sake. And everything we know is telling us now he didn’t do anything like push her. His wife was there.”

“His wife was there? Of course she’s gonna fucking defend him.”

“I’m thinking this woman is a lousy liar. Even in extreme situations. I’m thinking I’m gonna know when this babe is lying to me. What he says, what she says—it’s corroborated. The early stuff was not reliable. Accusing witnesses didn’t stand up at interviews, or they weren’t really witnesses—they didn’t see it.”

“He seduced my daughter, Sal. He mocked us. He made her a whore.”

Salmone shook his head.

“Don’t talk like a meathead. I’m sorry, Eddie. Don’t destroy your life. Her memory. Her mother’s memory. Your own legacy.”

“My legacy? What the fuck is my legacy? Legacy! Some bullshit term of media correctness to perfume the shit people do? My old man could talk legacy, the Irish legacy on the docks, on the tugs. You want to talk Sicilian legacy, Sal? My legacy, my dick.”

Salmone, offended and angry, sat silently for a moment and looked around to see if anyone outside was near enough to have heard.

“This got you where you got no pride, Eddie. I feel sorry for you. I got pride if you don’t.”

“I’m talkin’ about myself, Sal. Not about anybody else.”

“All right. Get a hold of yourself, for Christ’s sake.”

“I was a mooch, a jelly,” Stack said. “You know what Kinsella said in front of me?”

Salmone folded his arms and raised his eyes.

“Don’t, Eddie, for God’s sake.”

“He’s talking, Charlie, about cops on the bag. He says some cops can take it and some can’t. If you don’t know how to take it, you shouldn’t. He said, ‘Some cops would love to take it but they don’t know how.’ He says this in front of Barbara. He was talking about me. And then, after the thing—”

“Shut up, Eddie!” Salmone shouted. “Shut the fuck up! You were honest as the day was fucking long. You were incorruptible and you were smart and everybody loved you and especially Barbara—she’s a saint in heaven—she loved you. Kinsella’s a piece of shit.”

Salmone paused and considered his old partner. “Hey,” he said, “are you carrying? Do you have a weapon?”

“No,” Stack said.

“Look,” Salmone said, “I blame myself. I didn’t like Brookman. I was pissed. I swear I was pissed at his behavior. And because I knew who Maudie was. But he didn’t push her in front of no car. I didn’t say he did, did I? I was suspicious.”

Stack watched the Christmas lights on Prospect Street switch on.

“I can tell you this too, Eddie. The Staties got a list of people reported their car stolen right after Maud died. Had work done on it. There’s gonna be an arrest soon. So there’s that.” He turned to Stack. “Eh, I think you went crazy and I think you got a weapon. I want it.”

Stack ignored him.

“You want to end up in the fuckin’ zoo at the end of your life? You want to dishonor yourself so much?”

Stack shook his head.

“Or,” Salmone said, “you want the garbage guys and the coroner sweeping up your fucking brains and the rest of your family thinking about that? And the sin.”

“Oh, fuck the sin, Sal.”

Salmone put his hand out. “I want the weapon. I’ll get it to you. You want a receipt? I’ll personally return it to you. Now I want it.”

So in the end Stack handed over the Glock. Salmone looked at his watch.

“There’s a train now every half hour. You’re gonna make the four-twenty. I’ll give you a ride.”

“I don’t want a ride,” Stack said. But he took it.

At the station, on the platform, Stack watched the four-twenty pull away. He was not going to miss his appointment with Brookman, he thought, even if it was just an announcement of things future. He leaned on his cheap walking cane. He was having more and more trouble getting over the distances his routines required. Also, he thought, he might find a variety of uses for it. He took out his phone and called Professor Brookman’s home.

“P
ROFESSOR BROOKMAN
?”

He had never seen or heard Edward Stack, the bereaved, the famous cop, but he knew who it was.

“Yes?”

“Could I have a word with you? My name is Stack. I was Maud’s father.”

“I’m very sorry,” Brookman said after a moment. He supposed there was no way around saying that. “You know we saw her just before she died.”

Brookman did not understand what had impelled him to say it. His expensive new lawyer had been eloquent and specific on the sorts of things persons even potentially of interest in such a situation ought not to allow themselves to say. Say to anyone, let alone policemen who were members of the victim’s immediate family.

“I know that, Professor,” Stack said. “I thought it was time I reached out to you.”

“I see.”

“I think we should meet now,” Stack said.

It was strange. Just as he had heard the outer-borough inflections in Maud’s imitation of her father, so he heard Maud’s shaped schoolgirl tones in her father’s voice. It caused him a thrill of grief.

“If you would like to meet, Mr. Stack, I’ll be pleased to meet you.”

“That’s good, man.”

“You must have been,” Brookman allowed himself to say, “very proud of her.”

He listened to what sounded almost like deliberate heavy breathing on the phone. And Stack asked him:

“Why’s that?”

Brookman felt an anger rise in himself that he could hardly keep out of his voice. It had been threatening to overwhelm him since the night of her death, along with the fear, regret, disgust.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stack. Did you ask me why I think you must have been proud of Maud?”

“Yes,” Stack said. “That is what I asked you.”

“Because she was a wonderful young person. You must have known that better than anyone. Where shall we get together? When?”

“I’m in town, Professor. I’m in your town.”

“Good,” said Brookman. “Sorry I can’t ask you to the house. How about meeting in my office? I can tell you where it is.”

“I know where it is,” Stack said. “Don’t you want a public place?”

“I don’t need a public place. Let’s get together. Cortland 3A. The building’s probably locked now but I’ll open it.”

He hung up and looked out his bedroom window at the early evening. Along the parkway that ran from the Common to the football stadium the commuter traffic was light and the three streetlights that marked the first two blocks were on. He turned on the bedside lamps and went out into the upstairs hallway. Ellie was down in the living room. Sophia was in the kitchen doing homework with Brahms on her CD player. It was the kind of music she did homework to. One of the many things that made her, among faculty brats, the arch-weirdo.