“Of what specifically?”
“I guess you could say extreme malnutrition, but take your pick. A respiratory infection had developed that would have progressed into pneumonia. But when Verna learned her baby was dead, she knew the cause of death.”
“What?”
“Not what. Who. Verna Rounds. God had given her a life to care for, and she’d murdered it.”
“That’s her mammy talking.”
“God love that fat old woman. Verna talked about her a lot during withdrawal.”
Heslip was stunned. “You mean she’s kicked the habit?”
“The coldest turkey you ever saw. From the moment I told her that her child was dead, she was off the stuff. And never at the worst moments during withdrawal was there any talk of suicide. That would be a second murder before God. And God! did that girl want to live. To atone, to make up for that murder. It had to start with getting clean.”
The first week of withdrawal had been at the hospital, the next two weeks at Rosalind Parton’s apartment. She took her vacation so she could be with Verna around the clock. Take someone through a heroin withdrawal, and one got scared to take an aspirin or administer any drugs to patients who needed them.
“I almost lost my job over the whole thing — the vacation, Verna at my place...” She smiled thinly. “It was lucky I was black. I just yelled discrimination! everytime anyone tried to open his mouth about anything, anything at all.”
“She’s still clean?”
“Fabulously clean. Oh God, Bart, you wouldn’t believe how clean she is. What a... person she’s become.”
She fell silent and yawned and rubbed her eyes. Heslip said softly, “End of story?”
“I know where she is,” said Rosalind Parton. “You want her. You tell me, Bart — should I give you her address?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He told her. Everything, every single thing that had gone down since Kathy Onoda had died of a blood clot two weeks before.
“Okay, now I’ll tell you where she is.” Her dark eyes were clear and untroubled. “There isn’t anything in this world that is going to flatten Verna Rounds after what she’s been through. And I don’t think there are very many thugs in this world would be able to get through you to get at her.” Heslip was speechless. She added, without pause, “Have you ever heard of Harris House?”
He hadn’t so she told him about it. It was in Harlem, as far as she knew the only place like it in the world. It took care of about fifty children at a time who had been born to heroin-addicted mothers, keeping them there until the mothers were off drugs, rehabilitated, and had a job with which to support the kid and a home to take it to.
“You got Verna a job there,” said Heslip.
“Didn’t get her a job. Just sent her up there to talk with Mommy — her name is Clare Harris, but everyone just calls her Mommy. She and Loretta, her daughter — who’s got a Ph.D. from New York University and who handles the business end of things — took one look at Verna and hired her on the spot...”
The bleeper in the pocket of her white smock started to beep. Rosalind Parton got to her feet and stuck out her hand. “I’ve got to call in, Bart.” She gave him the address of Harris House. “I’ll call Mommy in the morning, and tell her you’re coming and why. After that, it’s up to her and Verna.”
Heslip agreed. He would let Verna call the shots, and he would play it her way. And his own, and to hell with what Dan Kearny might think. Playing it his own way was the way he did it best, anyway.
Which included, many hours later in New York, after five troubled hours of sleep on the express bus, finding a florist who was open on a Sunday morning and telegraphing fifty dollars-worth of red roses to Rosalind Parton, M.D., at Boston Lying-In Hospital, from a friend. It was the least he could do.
Twenty-Nine
Benny Nicoletti’s Sunday brunch was held in the Chief’s deserted conference room at the Hall of Justice on Bryant Street because the Chief didn’t work on Sundays but his secretary did, and he owed Nicoletti a couple of favors. No record was kept of the meeting, and there was no way anyone could have bugged it beforehand. Kearny came in the front entrance of the Hall fluttering a traffic citation, then left the elevator at the wrong floor. Nicoletti came in from Harriet Alley through the police garage. Tranquillini used the rear entrance off Harrison Street by the Coroner’s office.
Last to arrive was Johnny Delaney, who knew only that he and his wife had returned from a movie the night before to find a uniformed patrolman waiting on the front stoop. Delaney was merely asked to meet with the head of the Police Intelligence Unit at the Chiefs office the next morning. Being no fool and a bit ambitious, Delaney had expressed total delight at this opportunity to blow his Sunday. “Inspector Nicoletti? Johnny Delaney of the Attorney General’s Office. Pleased to meet you.”
As they shook hands, Nicoletti said, “I have a favor to ask. I think you know Dan and Hec.”
Delaney, seeing them for the first time around Nicoletti’s formidable bulk, stopped dead. “What the hell is this?” he said angrily.
“First you listen, then you talk.”
“First I walk,” snapped Delaney, turning back toward the door.
“Your ass is on the line,” said Nicoletti to his back.
Johnny Delaney swiveled slowly, his lips drawn back into a truculent sneer. “According to who, Nicoletti?”
“Information received, as the feller says.”
“You exceeded your brief, Johnny-me-bhoy,” said Tranquillini in his irritating way, “when you conned Dan into paying Pivarski so you could try to use it against him at the hearing.”
“There was nothing illegal about that,” said Delaney defensively. Without realizing it, he had turned back and was pulling back a chair from the conference table.
“How about ethical?”
Delaney colored slightly.
“The point is, Johnny,” said Kearny, “that I know DKA ain’t guilty of anything. So I’ve had my men out, checking around.”
The easy anger of his Irish heritage thickened Delaney’s voice. “On me?”
“On Greenly. Who’s on the take.” Delaney said nothing, so Kearny continued, “Unless you’ve got another way of explaining how he could be behind in his house payments from gambling up to five months ago, then suddenly turning into A-l pay — without quitting gambling. That he keeps a safe-deposit box under a phony name and a mistress on the side. That he’s dropping markers with bookies all over Sacramento.”
Delaney finally sighed, like a man who had just laid down a heavy load. He hadn’t been sleeping too well because of going along with Greenly; he was almost glad to hear the man was dirty. “Dan, I want you to know that I made that offer in good faith. And urged Greenly to drop the charges if you paid. But he said...”
“If Dan didn’t believe that,” said Tranquillini coldly, “you wouldn’t be here.”
“How about you, Hec?”
Tranquillini shrugged, his face devoid of emotion. “I always felt it was Greenly’s idea. But I told you at the hearing what I felt about it. I’m going to bust your ass for it, John. Not today or tomorrow, maybe. But sometime... in some courtroom...”
“Meanwhile,” said Nicoletti, “let me tell you about this favor I want to ask.”
But first he laid everything out for Delaney. The hit on Fazzino, the fact that Pivarski had been I.D.’d from a driver’s license photo as the hit man, the fact that he couldn’t be because he’d been in Kearny’s Oakland office at the time of the murder.