“Sit down anywhere,” O’Rourke said. He looked around the room as if disgusted with it himself. “My old man told me I didn’t give a shit for nothing. That was the only truth that old man ever told me.”
Reardon grabbed a handful of newspapers from a chair and deposited them on a nearby table. “I’ll just sit here,” he said.
“Suit yourself,” O’Rourke said. He plopped down on the tattered sofa across from Reardon and stared at him silently, waiting.
Reardon pulled out his notebook and removed a ballpoint from his shirt pocket.
“You Irish?” O’Rourke asked suddenly.
Reardon nodded.
“From Brooklyn?”
Reardon shook his head. “Bronx. University Avenue around Fordham Road.”
O’Rourke grinned. “Jesus Christ, you might as well have been born in the Vatican.”
Reardon smiled. “Father Zeiser Place, actually.”
O’Rourke smiled widely. “Good God, how come you ain’t a priest?”
“Everybody else was,” Reardon said.
“I’d offer you something to eat,” O’Rourke said, “but I don’t keep no food in the house. Brings rats.” He glanced about the room again. “I know what you must think of this place, but just remember, if you think I like it, you’re wrong.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
“You’ve probably seen blood all over the walls,” O’Rourke said darkly.
“Sometimes.”
O’Rourke took a handkerchief from his back pocket and blew his nose. “I have a cold all winter,” he explained as he returned the handkerchief to his pocket. “I work as a night watchman in this old warehouse on Flatbush Avenue. They got this one little heater for the whole place. So I’m sick all the time.”
Beneath the worn, lined face Reardon could see that O’Rourke remained a young man, prematurely aging, strained and slowly breaking under the load.
“Well, I guess you got some questions to ask,” O’Rourke said, “so go ahead. I got to be at the warehouse in an hour.”
Looking at O’Rourke, Reardon sensed something that he believed was important, sensed that O’Rourke might understand the troubles of Andros Petrakis and offer across the great distance that divided them some element of concern. He decided to take a chance.
“I’m going to lay it on the line for you,” he said. “They’ve got a guy in the Tombs, and they’re going to try to pin the double murder on him.” Reardon looked intently into O’Rourke’s face. “I don’t think he’s the one.”
O’Rourke raised himself up slightly from his slumped position on the sofa.
“They arrested him for something else,” Reardon said, “for another crime. But I think they’ll try to get him for killing Patty and her roommate too. I don’t think he committed any of these crimes, Mr. O’Rourke.”
O’Rourke’s face hardened. “What’s this guy do?”
“He worked in the Parks Department, cleaning up the animal cages, things like that.”
“That’s a shit job,” O’Rourke said. “And they’re trying to lay a murder rap on him?”
“Yes.”
“That stinks,” O’Rourke said. “That really stinks.”
“Yes, it does, Mr. O’Rourke,” Reardon said quietly.
“What makes them think he did it?”
“They have some evidence,” Reardon said. “But I don’t believe any of it. I’ve met the man. I don’t think he could have done it. He’s too worn out. It takes a lot of energy to kill.”
O’Rourke pulled himself erect on the sofa and planted his feet on the floor. “How can I help?”
“I’m not sure you can,” Reardon told him, “but I think the only way I can get him off is to find out who killed Patty and her roommate. You see, whoever did that did the other thing too. The one the guy is charged with.”
“I know what you mean,” O’Rourke said. “I’ll do whatever I can. Ask me anything. If it takes a long time, tough shit. There ain’t nothing in that warehouse anybody wants anyway.”
Reardon looked closely at O’Rourke. “How long were you married to Patty?”
“Four years. That’s how long we lived together. We’re still married. Never did get no divorce.”
“Four years,” Reardon repeated.
“That’s right,” O’Rourke said, “and not a good year among them, to tell you the truth. She was sixteen years old when I married her. Just a little girl really. Beautiful too.”
“That’s young to marry,” Reardon coaxed.
“Yeah, it’s young. But if you lived with Sam McDonald you’d of married young too. That’s her father.” O’Rourke’s eyes narrowed spitefully. “He’s a brutal bastard. Used to beat the shit out of his wife, the fucking pig. Used to beat the shit out of Patty too.”
Reardon nodded.
“Patty was an only child,” O’Rourke continued. “You know why?”
Reardon shook his head.
“ ’Cause his wife couldn’t have no more children, ’cause she was carrying another baby, would have been Patty’s brother or sister, and he beat his wife up and she had a miscarriage, and she couldn’t have no more children after that.” O’Rourke sneered. “He’s a good Catholic, ain’t he? Just about lives in the confessional over at Saint Jude’s. Well, he’s got a lot to confess, but if I had any say in it, Sam McDonald would roast in hell.”
“Was there an investigation of that beating?”
“Who would testify against him? A little five-year-old girl like Patty was when it happened? His wife? Mary McDonald wouldn’t testify against her husband if he roasted her on a skewer.”
Reardon recognized that none of this had much to do with the case. But sometimes people had to be allowed to talk, to ramble, to work up to the relevant issue. By the time they got there, Reardon knew, they would be ready, and nothing could hold them back.
“Naw, hell,” O’Rourke said with disgust, “old Sam probably gave her a little peck on the cheek and whispered a mea culpa or two and that was the end of it.” His face saddened and his voice became abruptly softer. “Well, I learned something from Sam McDonald,” he said. “I learned what beating up on people leads to. And I’ll tell you something, I never hurt Patty. I never laid a hand on her. We had our troubles, who don’t? And she left me. Happens to a lot of people. But I never hurt her, never hit her or anything like that. Fact is, I loved that little girl. Problem was, she didn’t stay little. She was smart as a whip. Read all the time. I’m not that way at all. Just a dumb Brooklyn mick, that’s me. A working stiff. But I loved her, and I never hurt her. I don’t have to crawl over to Saint Jude’s every fifteen minutes confessing about all the people I’ve destroyed. Not like Sam.”
“Did Patty have any friends in Brooklyn? People she stayed in contact with after she moved to Manhattan?”
O’Rourke shook his head. “She said good riddance to everything and everybody in Brooklyn. Myself included.”
“No one at all?” Reardon asked again. “This could be important.”
“I’d like to help, but she left Brooklyn for good. She didn’t have nobody but me here anyway. She didn’t have no friends. She used to just sit in this front room and stare out the window. I’d come home. I had a day job then. I’d come home, drive up out there, and there she’d be. Curled up in that little chair you’re sitting in, staring out the window, just like a cat. No expression on her face. Just staring like she was watching a boring movie or something.”
“How often did you see her after she left?”
“Not much. It’s like she built a wall around herself. I’d see her once in a while. I’d try to be friendly. I’d say, ‘What’s new?’ or ‘What you been up to?’ – things like that. And she’d just say, ‘I’m okay, I guess,’ and that’d be the end of it.”