Her Uncle Matt was a cop, too. She'd loved him to death, loved the stories he told her about leprechauns and faeries, stories he'd heard from his mother who'd heard them from hers and on back through the generations, back to a time when Ireland was everywhere green and covered with a gentle mist, a time when blood was not upon the land. Her uncle's favorite toast was 'Here's to golden days and purple nights,' an expression he'd heard repeated again and again on a radio show. Recently, Eileen had heard Hal Willis's new girlfriend using the same expression. Maybe her uncle had listened to the same radio comic.
Chances were, though, that Marilyn's uncle hadn't been killed in a bar while he was off duty and drinking his favorite drink and making his favorite toast, here's to golden days and purple nights indeed. Not when the color of the day is red, the color of the day is shotgun red, Uncle Matt drawing his service revolver as the holdup man came in, red plaid kerchief over his face, blew him off the barstool and later took fifty-two dollars and thirty-six cents from the cash register. Uncle Matt dead on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Another folded American flag for the family. The shooting took place in the old Hundred and Tenth in Riverhead. They used to call it The Valley of Death, after the Tennyson poem about into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred. How this applied to the Hundred and Tenth, God alone knew; the lexicon of cops was often obscure in origin.
She wondered if she should tell Karin Lefkowitz that the main reason she'd joined the force was so that someday she could catch that son of a bitch with the red plaid kerchief over his face, rip off that kerchief, and look him dead in the eye before she blew him away. Her Uncle Matt was the reason. Not her father who'd been killed when she was still too young to have really known him. Her Uncle Matt.
Who still brought tears to her eyes whenever she thought of him and his leprechauns and faeries.
This city . . .
It ...
It taught you how to do something better than you'd ever done anything else in your life. Taught you how to be the best at it. Which was what she'd been. The best decoy cop in this city. Never mind modesty, she'd been the best, yes. She'd done her job with the sense of pride her father had instilled in her and the sense of humor her uncle had encouraged, never letting it get to her, balancing its risks and its rewards, eagerly approaching each new assignment as if it were an adventure, secure in the knowledge that she was a professional among professionals.
Until, of course, the city took it all away from her.
You either owned this city or you didn't.
Once upon a time, when she was good, she owned it.
And now she owned nothing.
Not even herself.
She took a deep breath and climbed the low flat steps in front of the old Headquarters Building, and went through one of the big bronze doorways, and wondered what she should tell Karin Lefkowitz today.
* * * *
Carella did not get to the Hammond apartment in Calm's Point until almost ten o'clock that night. He had phoned ahead and learned from Melissa Hammond that her husband usually got home from the office at seven, seven-thirty, but since he'd been away from work for almost a week now and since there was a lot of catching up to do, he might not be home until much later. Carella asked if she thought eight would be okay for him to stop by, and she told him they'd be having dinner as soon as her husband got home, so if he could make it a bit later . . .
It was five minutes to ten when he knocked on the door.
He'd been on the job since a quarter to eight that morning.
Before he'd left the office, he'd called a woman named Chastity Kerr, who'd given the party the Hoddings had attended on New Year's Eve. He'd made an appointment to see her at ten tomorrow morning. So if he got out of here by eleven, he'd be home by midnight. Have a snack with Teddy before they went to bed, wake up early in the morning so he could have breakfast with the twins before they caught their seven-thirty school bus, leave for the office at eight, catch up on the reports he hadn't got to yesterday or today, and then go see Mrs Kerr. Just thinking about it made him more tired than he actually was.
The Hammonds were still at the dinner table, lingering over coffee, when he arrived. Melissa Hammond, a very attractive, pregnant blonde with the same green eyes her sister had listed as 'Best Feature' on the Cooper-Anderson background form, asked Carella if he'd care for a cup. 'I grind the beans myself,' she said. He thanked her, and accepted the chair her husband offered. Richard Hammond - his wife called him 'Dick' - was a tall, good-looking man with dark hair and dark eyes. Carella guessed that he was in his late thirties, his wife a few years younger. He had obviously changed from the clothes he'd worn to work this morning, unless his law office was a lot more casual than the ones Carella was accustomed to. Hammond worked for the firm of Lasser, Bending, Merola and Ross. He was wearing jeans, a sweat shirt with a Washington State University seal on it, and loafers without socks. He offered Carella a cigar, which Carella declined.
Melissa poured coffee for him.
Carella said, 'I'm glad you agreed to see me.'
'We're eager to help in any way possible,' Melissa said.
'We were just sitting here talking about it,' Hammond said.
'The coincidence,' Melissa said.
'Of this baby getting killed.'
'Joyce's baby, yes,' Carella said and nodded.
'Well, you don't know that for sure,' Hammond said.
'Yes, we do,' Carella said, surprised.
'Well,' Hammond said, and looked at his wife.
'I'm not sure I understand,' Carella said.
'It's just that this baby' Melissa said, and looked at her husband.
'You see,' he said, 'this is the first we're hearing of it. When you called Melissa earlier today and told her Joyce's murder might be linked to the death of her baby . . .'
'I mean, as far as I knew, Joyce never had a baby.'
'But she did,' Carella said.
'Well, that's your contention,' Hammond said.
Carella looked at them both.
'Uh . . . look,' he said. 'It might be easier for all of us if we simply accept as fact…'
'I assume you have substantiating . . .'
'Yes, Mr Hammond, I do.'
'That my sister-in-law gave birth to . . .'
'A baby girl, yes, sir. Last July. At St Agnes Hospital here in the city. And signed it over for adoption to the Cooper-Anderson Agency, also here in the city.'
'You have papers showing . . . ?'
'Copies of the papers, yes.'
'And you know for a fact that this baby who was murdered on . . . ?'
'Yes, was your sister-in-law's baby. Adopted by Mr and Mrs Peter Hodding, yes.'
Hammond nodded. 'Well,' he said, and sighed.
'This is certainly news to us,' Melissa said.
'You didn't know your sister had this baby?'
'No.'