“She never mentioned anyone she knew there?”
“No, not that I can recall.”
“Never?”
“I don’t think so,” O’Rourke said. “I know it’s strange. I thought so at the time. But I figured she just didn’t want me to know anything about her, wanted me to keep my nose out of her life. Well, I figured if that’s what she wants that’s what I’ll do. So after a while we just talked about nothing whenever we saw each other: movies, TV, shit like that. Nothing personal.”
“Did you ever visit her in her apartment in Manhattan?”
O’Rourke’s eyes widened. “Oh, no,” he said, “that was impossible. She was very strict about that. I never saw where she lived. The whole four years she was in Manhattan I was never up to her place.” O’Rourke looked embarrassed. “I know I must sound like a jerk to you, seeing somebody that long that wouldn’t even let me in the front door, but I couldn’t help it.” O’Rourke’s voice tightened. “Fact is, I couldn’t leave it alone. I kept loving her. Ain’t that goofy?”
“No,” Reardon said quietly.
“I look around this place sometimes,” O’Rourke said gently, “and I remember what it was like when she was here. The worst of it was better than this shit.”
Reardon nodded.
“You married?” O’Rourke asked.
“I was,” Reardon said. “My wife died.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
Reardon nodded. “Do you think Mr. McDonald could have done anything to Patty?”
O’Rourke looked at Reardon with surprise. “You mean kill her? No, he’s a rotten bastard, a real pig, but he couldn’t do that.”
“You have any idea at all who might have done such a thing?”
“No. I wish to hell I did. I’d break his fucking back if I caught him. Maybe she had some enemies in Manhattan. I wouldn’t know about that. Or maybe they came after the other one, the roommate, or maybe it was just some crazy man.”
“Why did you stop seeing Patty?”
“That’s the way she wanted it,” O’Rourke said. “She said she was starting a new life.”
“What did she mean?”
O’Rourke smiled. “I’ve heard lots of people say that and I never saw it mean anything at all.”
“She didn’t tell you anything about what she meant?”
“Yeah,” O’Rourke said. “She told me, or tried to. I couldn’t make much sense out of it.”
“What did she say?”
“She said a friend of hers and her was going to get out of the States,” O’Rourke said. “She said she couldn’t take it here anymore. Maybe Sam was bothering her again, maybe some boyfriend dumped on her, I don’t know. Anyway, she had some shit left in the house here and she wanted to come and get it. She wanted to sell it. She was trying to get the money together to go to Europe and live. Her and her friend were going together.”
“Was that Karen Ortovsky?” Reardon asked.
“She never mentioned a name.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“Yeah,” O’Rourke said weakly. “Yeah, she hit me with the divorce stuff. But I just couldn’t do it. I must of been crazy to say no to her about that. I ain’t religious. I didn’t give a shit what the Church said. But somehow I just couldn’t get it into my damn head that she was never going to come back to me.” O’Rourke waved one arm across the room. “Never going to come back to this,” he said with a painful laugh.
“So you refused to give her a divorce?” Reardon said.
O’Rourke stared at Reardon. “She got real mad about that,” he said softly. “She abused me a little, to tell you the truth. When I heard her I knew it was the last time we’d ever have a friendly word with each other. We were in a coffee shop. She just seemed to blow up, and I just sat there listening to heir. She was calling me all kinds of names. I’d never heard that kind of stuff come out of her mouth. I must of been in shock. I couldn’t say nothing back. If a guy on the job called me those names I’d break his goddamn neck. But I just sat there like a stupid ass. Then she just stopped. She just looked at me for a long time without saying nothing. Then she got up and walked out. And I came home. And you know what I did?”
Reardon shook his head. He wondered how long O’Rourke had held this hurt mutely within him. He felt like the whiskey priest who waits and listens, but who knows that in the end he will have no balm to offer.
“I guess you noticed I’m a big guy?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I came home and for the next two hours I tore this fucking house apart. That’s why it looks like this. I turned over everything. I ripped off the wallpaper. I pulled down the shelves that were on the wall. And I ain’t fixed nothing yet.” He paused, breathing heavily. His face was flushed. Slowly he regained control of himself. “When I was finished, when there was nothing else to rip up or tear down, I curled up on this sofa and I cried like a baby until morning. If I hadn’t had a job to go to the next day I think I would have killed myself.”
“And you never saw her or heard from her again?” Reardon asked.
O’Rourke shook his head. “No, I never did,” he said. “Heard from a guy said he was her lawyer, but never from her.”
“A lawyer?” Reardon asked.
“Yeah,” O’Rourke said contemptuously. “Some bastard called me the next day. Said he was representing Lee McDonald. He said I had to give her a divorce, and if I didn’t he’d drag me into court and smear my name all over New York – sue me for everything I had, get me fired from my job, all that shit. He was a real nasty bastard.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
“Hell, no,” O’Rourke said angrily. “I told him he could go fuck himself. I told him if he ever came anywhere near me I’d tear his head off. I never heard from him again.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember it?”
“I never forgot anything that had to do with Patty.”
Reardon took out his notebook. “What was his name?”
“Phillip Cardan,” O’Rourke said.
20
Names, Reardon knew, led to other names. Father Perry had led to Jamie O’Rourke. Now Jamie O’Rourke had led to someone called Phillip Cardan. Cardan had represented himself as a lawyer, but Reardon could not be sure that was true. It would be easy enough to find out; the Yellow Pages under attorneys might be enough. But Reardon decided to try something else first.
Back at his desk in the precinct he picked up the phone and dialed the number of the law firm where Lee McDonald had worked for the last five years before her death.
“Bailey, Merritt and White,” a female voice answered.
“May I speak to Mr. Phillip Cardan, please,” Reardon said.
“Just a moment, please.”
Reardon waited, feeling the pressures of passing time, knowing that Petrakis was not safe in prison, that no one was safe in the Tombs, least of all an unstable middle-aged family man who had never been forcibly detained in his life.
Finally the voice returned to the line. “Mr. Cardan is out of the office at the moment. We expect him to return at approximately four-thirty. May I take a message?”
Reardon looked at his watch. It was four fifteen.
“Any message?” the voice repeated.
“Yes, thank you,” Reardon said. “Would you tell him that John Reardon called? I’m with the New York City Police Department.” Reardon gave the woman his number. “Have him call me as soon as possible,” he said, and hung up.
It was the first break, Reardon recognized. Lee McDonald had confided something to someone. That was a beginning. He could not guess where it might lead.
He stood up and walked to the front of the precinct house. Outside a gray bleakness was tightening in on the city like a constricting serpent. The last mildness of fall would soon be lost, and after that the relentless cold and frigid careering winds would drive the people from the streets and parks.
It would be his first Christmas without Millie. Tim and Abbey would try futilely to make up for her absence. They would bring expensive gifts that he did not want and could not use. They would bring him a case of Irish whiskey when a fifth would do. They would try to be jolly, as the season required.