Pete Parson’s kid has flourished on the job and has already traded in his sergeant stripes-the NYPD equivalent to the rank of captain in corrections-for lieutenant bars. Pete made a killing on the sale of his share in Pooty’s. Though he hasn’t yet moved south, he and his wife have taken several exploratory trips to the Outer Banks, Hilton Head Island, and Myrtle Beach. I think he enjoys thinking about and planning the move more than he will the moving. When he finally gets around to leaving he’ll do what all good New Yorkers do when they relocate. He’ll pine away for good pizza, kosher deli, and the type of energy that doesn’t exist anywhere else on earth.
Wit never wrote that follow-up piece on Brightman. He said that working with me on the case changed him forever, though I think it has precious little to do with me. While he hasn’t stopped drinking altogether, he has cut back severely. Whether it’s enough to save his liver, it’s too soon to say. But the biggest change has come in his writing. He has given up doing those celebrity exposes and now devotes his time to writing about people the world usually ignores or has forgotten.
His first book after the dust settled was entitled A Lonely Death: The Times of Susan Leigh Posner. It was Susan’s remains in the marsh across from Lake Ronkonkoma that the Suffolk County cops had thought might be those of Moira Heaton. Wit hired me to help do the background investigation into what had driven Susan to suicide. My name’s first on the acknowledgments page. I’m very proud of that. I would have been equally as proud had the book not won the Pulitzer. It’s dedicated to Carl, Moira, and Little Man. Little Man is what Wit used to call his grandson.
Wit took Katy and me to the Yale Club for dinner as promised. It was very cute how impressed Katy was by the place and by a sober Wit’s charm. I remembered my first time there and Wit’s slide into nastiness greased by three double bourbons. We both had come a long way in a very very short time. Homicide changes everything for the killer and the victim, but like an earthquake its effects can be felt by everyone for miles around.
After Brightman had faded into obscurity, Wit and I took a drive into Hallworth. We parked across the street from the big Tudor on Reservoir Road. We watched Carl Stipe’s mother raking late-autumn leaves into plastic bags. Though she was only in her late fifties, she seemed much much older. She moved with a robotic deliberateness that was painful to watch. There were tears in my eyes and Wit’s, too.
I started to get out.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.
“No.”
I got out of the car. The noise of the closing door got Mrs. Stipe’s attention. She stopped raking and turned to face me.
“Can I help?”
I froze for a second, looking for a sign in her face that would tell me she wanted to hear what I had to say. When I didn’t answer her immediately, she just sort of shook her head.
“Sorry, ma’am, wrong house.”
She didn’t say a word and went back to the task at hand. In that second of hesitation, I thought of Katerina Brightman and how my not thinking things all the way through had made an unintended victim of her. What would the truth, I wondered, really do for Mrs. Stipe? I certainly wasn’t smart enough to do the permutations.
Judith Resnick sent a lovely thank-you card to me, though she said she was having trouble coming to terms with her dad’s death. We have spoken on the phone a few times since. She hasn’t asked me about HNJ1956. I don’t know what I’d tell her if she did.
Aaron has started searching for a location for our next store. He says I’m to blame for our rapid expansion.
“With all your meshugas, we made new managers and hired new people. We have to have someplace to put them all.”
Of course, the fact that we were doing amazingly well didn’t have a thing to do with it.
In early November I received the most unexpected call at the Brooklyn store I think I’ve ever gotten. It was my father-in-law, Francis Maloney Sr., the old political hack, inviting me to lunch. He knew that in spite of my antipathy against him I would never turn him down. On the ride over I realized I was more frightened than I’d been in the Black Flamingo. The worst Ralph Barto could have done was kill me. My father-in-law had the ammunition to do much worse. He could ruin my marriage with a few words whispered in Katy’s ear. It was just like him to do it this way, to tell me first so he could enjoy watching me squirm.
Thin Tim McGuinn’s was an old cop hangout in the shadows of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges that served a lunch buffet of boiled meats and bleached vegetables. I forgot sometimes that Francis had been a cop. I didn’t like to think of him that way. What he had done on the job tarnished the badge I carried in my pocket.
Though my father-in-law was short and thick, he was easy to spot in a crowded room. And there he was, seated in the third booth from the door with a glass of Bushmills on the rocks on the table before him. He actually stood up and smiled when he spotted me. I was nauseated with fear and he must have seen it in my expression.
“You’ll get yours someday, but not today. Relax, son-in-law.” He said it like a curse. “Sit down and have a drink. You look as if you need one.”
“Dewar’s rocks.”
“Jimmy,” Francis called to the bar, “Dewar’s rocks for the lad.”
He waited to bring my drink over from the bar before talking. When I lifted the glass, he warned me not to.
“I’d offer you food, but you don’t look as if you could keep it down, boyo. Haven’t you figured out why you’re here?”
“No, Francis, I haven’t. If it’s not to tell me you’re going to ruin my life, then-”
“So the tough Jew hasn’t gotten it all figured out. I’ll be damned.”
“That’s beside the point.”
He didn’t like that. “There’s no call for that, especially as I’m here to toast you for a job well done. To you, Moses Prager, and a job well done.”
“A job well-” Then it hit me. “You son of a bitch. You’re the one. You’re the one who recommended me to Geary and Brightman.”
He smiled. “Ah, the joy of it. It was Joe Donohue and Thomas Geary who five years ago pushed to have me squeezed out of the party. Geary didn’t think I knew, but I did. That bastard Donohue died before I could pay him back. I couldn’t believe my luck when Geary and Brightman came sniffing around about you. I knew they wanted a patsy. I may hate that I have to breathe in the air you breathe out, but I know you’re no patsy. Fucking Jews are all troublemakers to begin with, never happy to leave well enough alone. And with what you did to me and my family, I had every confidence you would ruin their plans. I don’t know what you did to force Brightman to resign and I don’t care, but here’s to you! There is justice in this world.”
I didn’t explain why I was laughing when I walked out of Thin Tim McGuinn’s.
Two weeks later, Israel Roth showed up in Sheepshead Bay. We had spoken several times after my return to New York, but I had been purposely vague about what had transpired during my time in Florida. He hadn’t gotten in any trouble with the Boca cops. They had scolded him like a child and suggested he take a gun-safety course offered by the local NRA. I apologized for what I’d put him through.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Moses, you’ll see. For being an ass when you’re young, the punishment is getting old.”
One night, when Katy and Sarah had gone to bed, we sat up drinking scotch and vodka. I explained to him about how his offering me his automatic had saved my life. He looked very perturbed at me when I suggested that our meeting in the Catskills and our reconnecting in Florida must have been a part of some great plan.
“I’ve seen too close the results of some of God’s great plans. It’s better you think of things as luck or misfortune,” he advised.