He nibbled thoughtfully at his pastry, and we were quiet for a time. Then Jimmy glanced at his watch. It wasn’t a casual gesture. He wanted me to see him do it, and a warning noise went off in my brain. I watched him, and I realized that Jimmy was uneasy. It wasn’t simply that the son of his old friend, a man who had killed two others and then himself, was sitting here in his kitchen clearly seeking to rake over the ashes of long-dead fires. There was more to it than that. Jimmy didn’t want me here at all. He wanted me gone, and the sooner the better.
“I got a thing,” he said, as he saw me take in the movement. “Some old friends getting together. You know how it is.”
“Any names I might recognize?”
“No, none. They’re all after your father’s time.” He leaned back in his seat. “So, this isn’t a casual call, is it, Charlie?”
“I have some questions,” I said. “About my father, and about what happened on the night those kids died.”
“Well, I can’t help you much with the killings. I wasn’t there. I didn’t even see your father that day.”
“No?”
“No, it was my birthday. I wasn’t working. I made a good collar for some grass and got my reward. Your old man was supposed to join me after his tour finished, the way he always did, but he never made it.” He twisted his cup in his hands, watching the patterns that resulted on the surface of the liquid. “I never celebrated my birthday the same way after that. Too many associations, all of them bad.”
I wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily. “But your nephew was the one who came to the house that night.”
“Yeah, Francis. Your father called me at Cal ’s, told me that he was worried. He thought somebody might be trying to hurt you and your mother. He didn’t say why he believed that.”
Cal ’s was the cop bar that used to stand next door to the Ninth’s precinct house. It was gone now, like so much else from my father’s time.
“And you didn’t ask?”
Jimmy puffed out his cheeks. “I might have asked. Yeah, I’m sure I did. It was out of character for Will. He didn’t go jumping at shadows, and he didn’t have any enemies. I mean, there were guys he might have crossed, and he put some bad ones away, but we all did. That was business, not personal. They knew the difference back then. Most of them, anyway.”
“Do you remember what he said?”
“I think he told me just to trust him. He knew that Francis lived in Orangetown. He asked if maybe I could get him to look out for you and your mother, just until he had a chance to get back to the house. Everything happened pretty fast after that.”
“Where did my father call you from?”
“Jeez.” He appeared to be trying to remember. “I don’t know. Not the precinct, that’s for sure. There was noise in the background, so I guess he was using the phone at a bar. It was a long time ago. I don’t recall everything about it.”
I drank some coffee and spoke carefully. “But it wasn’t a typical night, Jimmy. People got killed, and then my father took his own life. Things like that, they’re hard to forget.”
I saw Jimmy tense, and I felt his hostility rise to the surface. He had been good with his fists, I knew; good, and quick to use them. He and my father balanced each other well. My father kept Jimmy in check, and he in turn honed an edge in my father that might otherwise have remained blunted.
“What is this, Charlie? You calling me a liar?”
What is it, Jimmy? What are you hiding?
“No,” I said. “I just don’t want you to keep anything from me because, say, you’re trying to spare my feelings.”
He relaxed a little. “Well, it was hard. I don’t like thinking about that time. He was my friend, the best of them.”
“I know that, Jimmy.”
He nodded. “Your father asked for help, and I made a call in return. Francis stayed with you and your mother. I was in the city, but I thought, you know, I can’t stay here when something bad might be happening. By the time I got to Pearl River, tho B al River, se two kids were dead and your father was already being questioned. They wouldn’t let me talk to him. I tried, but Internal Affairs, they were tight around him. I went to the house and talked to your mother. You were asleep, I think. After that, I only saw him alive one other time. I picked him up after they’d finished the interview. We went for breakfast, but he didn’t talk much. He just wanted to collect himself before he went home.”
“And he didn’t tell you why he’d just killed two people? Come on, Jimmy. You were close. If he was going to talk to anyone, it would have been you.”
“He told me what he told IAD, and whoever else was in the room with him. The kid kept pretending to reach inside his jacket, taunting Will, as if he had a gun there. He’d go so far, then pull back. Will said that, the final time, he went for it. His hand disappeared, and Will fired. The girl screamed and started pulling at the body. Will warned her before he shot her too. He said something snapped inside him when that kid started yanking his chain. Maybe it did. Those were different times, violent times. It never paid to take chances. We’d all known guys who’d taken one on the streets.
“The next time I saw Will, he was under a sheet, and there was a hole in the back of his head that they were going to have to pack before the funeral. Is that what you wanted to know, Charlie? Do you want to hear how I cried over him, about how I felt because I wasn’t there for him, about how I’ve felt all these years? Is that what you’re looking for: someone to blame for what happened that night?”
His voice was raised. I could see the anger in him, but I couldn’t understand its source. It seemed manufactured. No, that wasn’t true. His sadness and rage were genuine, but they were being used to some other end: a smoke screen, a means of hiding something from both me, and himself.
“No, that’s not what I’m looking for, Jimmy.”
There was a weariness, and a kind of desperation, to what he said next.
“Then what do you want?”
“I want to know why.”
“There is no ‘why.’ Can’t you get that into your head? People have been asking ‘why?’ for twenty-five years. I’ve been asking why, and there’s no answer. Whatever the reason was, it died when your father died.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You’ve got to let it go, Charlie. No good can come of this. Let them rest in peace, both of them, your father and your mother. This is all over.”
“You see, that’s the problem. I can’t let them rest.”
“Why not?”
“Because one, or both, of them was not blood to me.”
It was as if someone had taken a pin and punctured Jimmy Gallagher from behind. His back arched, and some of his bulk seemed to dissipate. He slumped back in the chair.
“What?” he whispered. “What kind of talk is that?”
“It’s the blood types: they don’t match. I’m type B. My father was type B aer was tyA, my mother type O. There’s no way that parents with those two blood types could produce a child with type B blood. It’s just not possible.”
“But who told you this?”
“I spoke to our family doctor. He’s retired now, and old, but he’s kept his records. He had them checked, and sent me copies of two blood tests from my father and my mother. That confirmed it for me. It’s possible that I’m my father’s son, but not my mother’s.”
“This is madness,” said Jimmy.
“You were closer to my father than any of his other friends. If he had told anyone about it, he would have told you.”
“Told me what? That there was a cuckoo in the nest?” He stood up. “I can’t listen to this. I won’t listen to it. You’re mistaken. You must be.”
He picked up the coffee cups and emptied their contents into the sink, then left them there. His back was to me, but I could see that his hands were shaking.
“I’m not,” I said. “It’s the truth.”