By my second glass of scotch, it dawned on me that I’d only felt the kind of connection and chemistry I had with Mary Lambert twice in my life. Now both those women were gone. That’s why I cursed Mary Lambert or whatever the hell her name was for walking away from it. You don’t just walk away from such a rare gift. That’s why people want to live forever, you know. Not to go through the daily grind and pain and bullshit, but for the hope of those few things that make your heart race. What’s the rest of it worth, really? And somehow, even with my Scrooge-ian take on holidays, I just knew Mary would have been the perfect woman to spend New Year’s Eve with. She would have made it fun. I saw in her someone to make the other stuff worth it.
I suppose I was in an especially grumpy mood because I’d hoped Sarah might go to dinner with me, but she said she’d already made plans. Then she rubbed salt in the wound by telling me she couldn’t come to Sashi’s memorial with me either. I didn’t press her for details. We were still making a comeback. We weren’t quite there yet. Even my newfound friend and scotch supplier, Paul Stern, turned me down. After I hung up the phone with him, I started grumbling to myself about him being just like Rico, and that was before I had anything to drink. Aaron invited me to spend the night with him and Cindy, but regardless of my love for them, I politely said no. For the last thirty years they’d gotten together with the same group of friends and played board games and watched the ball drop. It was tradition. Theirs, not mine. I would rather have gone to the dentist.
I actually did call Jimmy Palumbo and offered to meet him in the City or somewhere out on the Island and buy him a New Year’s steak dinner. He turned me down flat, but in the nicest possible way and it had nothing to do with his latest financial gains. Well, maybe it did, sort of.
“Sorry, man, I just can’t. I’d really like too, but I gotta say no.” In the background, I heard a young dog yapping for attention. “Excuse me for a second, Moe.” Then to the dog, “Okay, you, calm down. Atta girl, calm down. Good girl.”
“New puppy?”
“Had her a couple a weeks.”
“What about tonight?” I asked. “A family party or something?”
“Nah, I’m packing up and gettin’ outta here. There’s nothing for me here anymore except bad memories. I gave my notice to the museum yesterday and the house goes on the market later this week. I need a new start.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m puttin’ some stuff in storage, gettin’ on the boat with the pup, and going. I guess I’ll head south first with the shitty weather here and all. Then, who knows.”
“When you leaving?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“New year, new start,” I said. “Nice symmetry.”
“Maybe, but probably I’ll leave the day after tomorrow. Loose ends and shit. You know?”
“I know. Well, good luck, brother. I hope things work out for you.”
“Me too, but I got a good feeling about it. Things are different now. Thanks for everything, man.”
I’d thought about offering up some tired platitudes about there being no escape from yourself and that wherever a man goes, he takes his woes with him. No need to inflict my rotten mood on him, I thought, and just said goodbye.
Another scotch later, I actually found myself wondering what Dr. Ogologlu was doing, if his family was still in Amsterdam. My stubborn refusal to buy into the facts about Tierney’s role in Sashi Blunt-stone’s death had finally begun to fade. I think it was when Declan Carney implied that my desperately clinging to belief in Tierney’s innocence had made me yet another victim that I began to wake up as if from a fitful sleep. On my ride back from Long Island City, I’d gone over all the possible scenarios and the only one that made any sense involved John Tierney and Sashi. I could manage to implicate Randy Junction, Sonia Barrows-Willingham, Max, and even Candy in some of those scenarios, but I couldn’t see it ending up the way it had. I was tempted to call both McKenna and the doctor and swear that I’d finally seen the light. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! But what would they have cared? Besides, I was going to see McKenna soon enough.
When I woke up on the couch, the ball had dropped, the new year had come in without my notice, and the world had moved on. It always does.
THIRTY-SIX
There was a rather bizarre carnival-like atmosphere to the whole thing. Mrs. Sonia Barrows-Willingham had hired a valet parking service to handle the cars of the memorial attendees. And by the look of the makeshift parking lot, there were going to be more people here than at an April Mets game at Shea during the mid-’70s. I arrived at about the same time as Detective McKenna and he was in a fairly pissy mood to begin with. Maybe a little drunk too.
“Can you believe this shit?” he asked, pointing at all the cars already parked in neat rows on the east lawn. “So much for that intimate little memorial service, huh?”
“Let’s hang out here and maybe the MetLife blimp will show up for overhead coverage.”
“Too cloudy for that. Snow’s in the air.”
I looked up. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“Here are your claim checks, gentlemen,” a very polite, dark-skinned East Asian kid said, handing us our receipts.
The claim tags were playing card-size renderings of Sashi Bluntstone paintings. Just amazing. Inside, they probably had life-size Jell-O molds of Sashi’s paintings.
“You see these guys parking the cars, Prager? All freakin’ Indians and Chinks. What’d she do, hire the high school chess and math teams? Un-fuckin’-believable.”
I didn’t bother saying anything to him about his not so subtle racism. Some guys bring their racism to the job. Sometimes the job brings the racism to them. And no matter which way you were infected, alcohol made things worse.
“You think this thing’s catered?” he asked.
“Given that there’s valet parking, I’d say the chances are pretty good.”
“I hope they have those little hot dogs. It’s not a party without the little hot dogs.”
“It’s not a party,” I reminded him.
“You think?”
“Come on, let’s get inside before it starts snowing.”
I put my hand on McKenna’s shoulder and urged him forward. Closer to him now, I could smell the alcohol strong on his breath. He wasn’t staggering, but he was tight. Apparently I hadn’t been the only one struggling with his part in this whole ordeal.
A very large, head-shaven, well-dressed black man stood guard at the door. He kept his hands at his side and wore a practiced expression that walked the line between dispassion and threat. His suit jacket was cut loosely enough to hide the sidearm he was no doubt carrying beneath it, but given the circus atmosphere, I wasn’t sure whether he was here to keep the press in or out. McKenna took one look at the guy, blew air loudly through his lips, and shook his head in disdain. He did it specifically so the security man would notice. If he had noticed, he didn’t show it.
“What the fuck, Prager? They think a fight’s gonna break out here or what?”
“I think it’s just a precaution. Rich people can get pretty weird about security, especially if paparazzi are involved.”
“Who even gives a shit anymore?” he said. “The kid’s old news. You have any idea how many other little girls have been murdered over the last few weeks?”
It was a question that required no answer, but I answered anyway to try and move him off the subject: “Too many.”