"You was, was you?" Kelly said, eyeing him briefly, then glancing at the sheet. He started, then laughed. "Jasmine Cordeau? It's an old one you've got here! I knew that one well! What's the likes of you doing looking up the likes of Jazzy?"
Becker decided a piece of the truth might appeal to this old rummy. "A friend of mine, an orphan, has reason to believe she might be his mother."
"You don't say? Jazzy a mother? It don't seem likely. She was one of the top whores in midtown in her day."
"Whore?" Becker felt the blood start to race through his vessels. Stevens's mother had been a prostitute! What a story! "You're sure?"
" 'Course I'm sure! Had a record a mile long!"
This was too good to be true. And getting better by the minute.
"Did they ever find her killer?"
Kelly shook his head. "Nah! Some John did a hit-and-run on her. Cut her up and took her roll."
Something didn't fit here.
"If she was such a high-priced piece, what was she doing in an alley off Fortieth?"
"She started off high-priced, but she got on the H and began the slide. At the end she was doing b-j's in alleys. Shame. She was a beautiful woman in her prime."
"What happened to her file?"
"You wanna see it?" Kelly said, rising from behind his desk. "C'mon, I'll show you."
It was back down to the musty old cellar, but this time to a secluded corner where Kelly pulled a dust cloth off a relatively new file cabinet.
"My personal files," he said. "Any case I had anything to do with, any victim or perpetrator I knew, I keep the files here."
"Far out!" What a stroke of luck! "How come?"
"For my book. Yeah, I'm gonna write me a book about walking a beat in midtown. Think it'll sell?"
"Depends on how it's written," Becker said, sensing which way the conversation was going and dreading it.
"Say, you're a writer, right? Maybe you could help me."
"Sure. That's cool. Sounds real interesting," Becker said as sincerely as he could. "But do you have that Cordeau file?"
"Sure."
Kelly unlocked his private cabinet, flipped through the top drawer—Becker noticed a half-empty fifth of Scotch at the rear—then pulled out a manila folder. He opened it and started paging through the contents. It was all Becker could do to keep from snatching it away.
"Is it all there?"
"Looks like it. I just wanted to see if I still have that eight-by-ten glossy she had done when she was a dancer, before she found out there was more money in hooking. Yep. Here it is." He handed Becker the photo. "Wasn't she a piece?"
For a moment Becker stared at the picture in mute shock. And then he couldn't help himself—despite the crushing disappointment, he began to laugh.
4
Jim's palms were sweaty and his fingers trembled. It took him three tries at the combination before the tumblers clanked within the safe door.
Why am I making such a big deal of this?
He yanked the lever to the right and pulled the door open. He saw three shelves inside—two of them empty, the third nearly so.
"Looks like a crash dieter's refrigerator," he said.
He emptied the third shelf and brought everything to a nearby table. The entire contents of the safe consisted of four yearly journals, uniform with the others he had found, a small black-bound volume, and an oversize green book. The only other item was an unsealed legal-size manila envelope. Jim picked this up and found a few hundred dollars in tens and twenties within.
"Mad money," he said.
Carol had opened the big green book.
"Look at this."
Jim leaned over her shoulder. Inside the front cover was a faded black-and-white photo of a shirtless Hanley holding an infant, tiny enough to be a newborn, in his arms. It was dated Jan. 6, 1942.
"I'll bet that's me!" Jim said. "I must be that newborn!"
"Look at how hairy he is," Carol said. "Remind you of anyone?"
Jim smiled. "I wonder if he had hairy palms?"
Wonder filled him as he looked into Roderick Hanley's smiling face. A proud father if there ever was one. He turned the page and saw another photo of a brick-fronted garden apartment. He recognized it immediately.
"That's Harbor Terrace Gardens! We lived there till I was seven!"
There followed a few blurry, long-range photos of an unrecognizable child playing in front of the apartment complex, then a shocker. A class photo with an inscription in Hanley's now familiar hand: Kindergarten, 1947.
"That's my class! That's me at the end of the second row!"
Each page had a different class picture, even an occasional portrait shot.
Carol said, "Where did he get these? Do you think Jonah and Emma—?"
"No. I'm sure they didn't know anything about Hanley. It would be easy enough for him to go to the photographer and buy prints, don't you think?"
"Sure. I guess so." Carol sounded uneasy.
Jim looked at her. "What's wrong?"
"Well, don't you feel kind of creepy knowing he was secretly watching you all the time?"
"Not at all. Makes me feel good in a way. I mean, it tells me that although he'd let go of me physically, he hadn't let go emotionally. Don't you see? He lived most of his life in a Manhattan town house through 1942. Then he suddenly sold it and moved to Monroe. Now I know why—to watch me grow up."
Thinking about it gave Jim a warm feeling inside. He didn't raise me, but he never forgot about me, never completely abandoned me. He was always there, watching over me.
"Here we go," Carol said with a little laugh that sounded forced. "The Football Years."
There followed page after page of newspaper clippings. Anyplace his name was mentioned, even if it was simply a list of the players who had seen action in a game, Hanley had cut it out, underlined Jim's name, and pasted it into the scrapbook.
Jim was struck now by the irony of those football games. Jonah and Emma were in the stands for every game. In his mind's eye he saw himself turning on the bench and waving to his parents—all three of them—for right behind them sat Dr. Hanley, enthusiastically cheering Our Lady's Hawks—and one running back in particular—to victory.
Weird. And touching, in a way.
He wondered how Hanley had reacted to the injuries his son inflicted on the field. Did he cringe at the pain he saw, or did he hunger for more?
After football came photos cut from the Stony Brook yearbooks, and later on, even Monroe Express articles with the James Stevens byline.
"He was really some sort of completist, wasn't he?"
"Yeah. From reading his journals I feel I know him. He definitely wasn't the kind of guy to do anything halfway."
The doorbell rang.
Who the hell—?
Jim went to the window and looked down toward the front driveway. He recognized the rusty Beetle.
"Oh, no! It's Becker!"
"He's kind of late, isn't he?"
Then Jim remembered what Becker had been looking into and decided he'd better talk to him.
"Maybe he's learned something about Jazzy Cordeau."
He hurried downstairs with Carol close behind and pulled open the door as the bell rang a third time. Becker stood there on the front porch, grinning.
"What's up, Gerry?" Jim said.
Becker kept grinning as he stepped into the front hall.
"Still think Jazzy Cordeau might be your mother?"
"What did you find out?"
"This and that."
Jim felt his fists clench and his muscles tighten. He had wanted to be the one to uncover her identity before anybody else—especially before Gerry Becker! And now Becker was playing cute.