“Sometimes,” Petrakis said, and for a moment he closed his eyes wearily, his head swaying very slightly forward and backward. But the face betrayed nothing, and Reardon was beginning to believe there was nothing for it to betray. “Sometimes you cleaned the cage and sometimes Bryant cleaned it and sometimes Noble cleaned it?” Petrakis made no response. Reardon decided to work on the details of what he already knew about Petrakis’ home. Finally draw him out.
“On Monday, about three A.M., you met Harry Bryant in a coffee shop on Second Avenue, is that right?”
“Right,” Petrakis replied.
“What did you talk about?”
“I move to a new place that Thursday.”
“You moved from 109 East 90th Street?”
“Yes.”
Reardon looked down at his notes. “What is your new address?”
“103 East 101st Street. My wife sister apartment. We move in with her. I have no money.”
“You were evicted from your previous apartment?” Petrakis nodded.
“And who is the landlord of the building you had to leave?” Reardon asked, staring down at his notes as if it were just one more routine question.
“Robles,” Petrakis said.
“He’s your landlord?”
“He kick me out,” Petrakis said without emotion.
“Do you know his first name?”
“He kick out a sick woman. He kick out my wife.”
“Do you know his first name?” Reardon repeated.
“Julio,” Petrakis said, “Julio Robles.”
“Excuse me a moment, Mr. Petrakis.” Reardon picked up the phone and called Mathesson. “Jack, I want you to go over to 109 East 90th Street and see if a Julio Robles is around. Mr. Petrakis says Robles is the landlord, so we could have made a mistake on the connection.” Reardon hung up and glanced at Petrakis. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said. But Petrakis seemed to have been unaware of or uninterested in the break-in time since the last question.
Reardon began again: “Did you have any kind of fight with this Julio Robles?”
“No.”
“None at all?”
“No.”
“When did you leave the coffee shop,” Reardon asked. “About what time?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Where did you go?”
“To work. The zoo.”
“What happened when you got there?”
“I start to work.”
“Doing what?”
Petrakis closed his eyes again and appeared to go far away.
“Doing what?” Reardon asked again.
“Cutting brush behind the shed.”
“What shed?”
“The deer shed. The brush look bad.”
“How did you cut the brush?”
“My ax.”
A shiver went down Reardon’s back. Could it be, Reardon wondered, that Petrakis would actually confess to the killing of the fallow deer in this blunt, dead monotone?
“And so you took the ax from the work shed and started to cut the brush?”
Petrakis nodded.
It was inconceivable, Reardon thought, that Petrakis had gone this far into an interrogation without discerning the reason for it. But he only said: “Then what?”
“I cut the brush. I think of my sick wife at home. I feel bad. My wife is sick.”
“Yes,” said Reardon, “go on.”
“I cannot work. I think of my sick wife. Only my children are home.”
“So what did you do?” Reardon asked.
“I cannot work,” Petrakis said, “I go home.”
“You went home? After coming that far?”
“Yes.”
It could have happened, Reardon thought. He, himself, had come to work many times during Millie’s illness and had then gotten sick with the pain of her dying and had gone home to see her and to be with her, to bring her what little comfort he could, while he could. “What did you do with the ax? Did you put it back in the shed?”
“No, put it down,” Petrakis said.
“Where?”
“By the deer cage,” Petrakis said.
“And then you went home?”
“Yes.”
“To East 101st Street?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do when you got home?”
“I go to sleep.”
“Did you go out again during the night?” Reardon asked.
“No.”
This was going nowhere, Reardon knew. He had to get to the point quickly, flush Petrakis out, hit him hard. “You said that you don’t know why the police were looking for you. Well, the reason is: the fallow deer, the ones whose cage you sometimes cleaned, were killed early Monday morning.”
Petrakis received this information without any sign of emotion. He seemed to project only a dull acknowledgment of yet another insignificant fact.
“Were you aware that they had been killed?” Reardon asked.
“No.”
“You would have noticed that they were dead when you came to the park, wouldn’t you?”
“They alive.”
“And you say you placed your ax outside the cage when you left the park. Why didn’t you lock it up?”
“Too tired,” Petrakis said. “I put it down and leave.”
Reardon nodded. Then he said sternly, almost accusingly, “Your ax was the weapon that killed the fallow deer.”
Petrakis was unmoved. He simply nodded, staring dreamingly into Reardon’s face.
“Your fingerprints are the only fingerprints on the ax,” Reardon said in the same commanding voice.
Petrakis did not answer.
“Have you ever heard of Wallace Van Allen?” Reardon asked.
“He gives the deer to the zoo,” Petrakis said.
“And he threw you out of your apartment too,” Reardon said, “didn’t he?”
“No,” Petrakis said. “Robles.”
“Wallace Van Allen owns the building,” Reardon said.
“Oh,” Petrakis said.
“You knew that, didn’t you?”
“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.