Atkinson visibly relaxed. "Keith Converse seems to have been getting around today. How did he get to your office?"
"He didn't. I met him in the subway." As briefly as she could, Eve told them what had happened. When she was finished, neither Arch Cranston or Carey Atkinson said anything, and as the silence lengthened, Eve went on: "I also heard that the man he talked to-whose name was Al Kelly- is dead. Stabbed in an alley, apparently so he could be relieved of the five dollars Mr. Converse gave him for telling him about the wreck."
"So Al Kelly was the drunk?" Arch Cranston said.
"Al Kelly had a drinking problem, yes," Eve replied. "Many of the homeless do." Her eyes fixed on Carey Atkinson. "I'm assuming your department won't be able to find out who killed Al Kelly?"
Atkinson shrugged, spreading his hands helplessly. "You know as well as I do that we don't have the manpower to investigate every derelict who gets himself killed in this city."
"You'd find the manpower if you cared as much about the problems of the homeless as I do." Eve shifted her gaze to Arch Cranston. "Which brings us around to the other reason we're here tonight, doesn't it? I didn't see you at the benefit for Montrose House last night." Her eyes flicked back to the police chief. "I didn't expect to see you."
Cranston reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a thick envelope, which Eve eyed warily. "It's for Monsignor McGuire."
"Then send it to him," Eve said, making no move at all to pick up the envelope. "What I'm more concerned about is the way the department is hassling our people." Her eyes went back to the police chief. "How is it that you don't have the manpower to find out who kills homeless people, but you always have the manpower to run them off the streets?"
Atkinson shook his head impatiently. "There aren't that many of them-" he began, but Eve didn't let him finish.
"There are probably fifty thousand people living either on or under the streets of this city, and you know it."
Atkinson shook his head doggedly. "There aren't more than a tenth that number."
Eve didn't bother to respond. Both of them were aware of the fact that he knew better. The waiter arrived to take their order, and when he left, she returned to the subject of Jeff Converse. "I told the father I'd look into it," she said. "Obviously, I'm not going to be able to talk to Al Kelly to ask him what he saw myself, so I'm asking you two-is it possible that what Al Kelly told Mr. Converse could have happened? If I tell him you're positive his son is dead, is he going to be able to prove me wrong?"
Atkinson shook his head. "Converse made enough of a stink at the M.E.‘s office that I heard about it, and I also heard from Wilkerson, the captain over at the Fifth Precinct. Mr. Converse was in there this morning, too, wanting to see the report on the accident."
"And he saw it?" Eve asked.
Atkinson shook his head. "In the end, he decided he didn't have to. He talked to the officers who caught the call."
"Then that's it?" Eve asked.
"That's it," Arch Cranston assured her. "If Converse actually comes back to you, you can tell him there was no mistake-his son died in the fire." He shook his head with the exaggerated sadness that comes so naturally to politicians. "A terrible thing-no matter what the boy did, I wouldn't wish that kind of death on him."
Eve Harris raised her brow but said nothing about Arch Cranston's transparent insincerity. Instead, she returned to the subject, and the name Keith Converse had mentioned.
"There was also a man called Scratch. According to Keith Converse, this Scratch led his son into the subway." She pinned Atkinson to his chair with her dark eyes. "It would seem to me that if he exists, someone at least ought to talk to him. Do I need to talk to Wilkerson about that myself?"
Atkinson sighed heavily. "No, Eve. I'll have someone call the Fifth in the morning-hell, maybe I'll even do it tonight. But if this guy lives in the tunnels, don't count on my men finding him."
This time Eve made no attempt to keep the mocking gleam from showing in her eyes. "Oh, heavens no, Carey. I certainly wouldn't expect New York's Finest to risk their lives down in those terrible tunnels. After all, they might get beaten up by a gang of rampaging homeless single mothers, wielding their fatherless babies! Wouldn't want New York's Finest to have to risk their lives against that, would we?"
Carey Atkinson chose to ignore her words, but Arch Cranston, his eyes flicking around the room in order to gauge the number of people who might have heard Eve's outburst, did not.
"Come on, Eve," he said, loudly enough for the woman listening from the next table to hear it as clearly as she'd heard Eve Harris. "Give Carey a break. You know what kind of people live in the tunnels. Hell, you probably know better than any of us. And you know what it's like down there."
Eve's lips smiled, but her eyes did not. "We all know what it's like down there," she said. "And we all know what goes on. But sometimes I think I'm the only one in this whole city who actually wants to do something about it. The rest of you just want to-" She cut herself short, knowing she was starting to sound like a broken record. Besides, each person at the table knew perfectly well what the others wanted.
They also knew that people in their positions never discussed their true desires in public.
The truth, always, was reserved for intimate conversations in the most private of settings.
And that was a rule that even Eve Harris believed in keeping.
CHAPTER 17
Heather Randall stood at the window of Jeff's apartment, where Keith had been standing when she arrived half an hour ago. On the corner below, kitty-corner from the drugstore, she saw Jeff's favorite Chinese restaurant, where she had often found him sitting in the front booth, shoulders hunched in concentration as he pored over a textbook. Now she forced that memory away and turned from the window.
The room was exactly as it had been the night of Jeff's arrest. The last project he'd been working on-a design for a small office-cum-guest house for one of her father's neighbors in the Hamptons-was still pinned to the drafting board that covered the small room's only table. Her finger absently traced one of the graceful lines of the unfinished drawing-a line that managed to echo the architecture of the main house without imitating it.
The drawing, like the room itself, felt suspended in time, waiting for Jeff to come back.
But that was absurd-Jeff wasn't coming back, despite the strange story his father had just told her. Yet even as she tried once more to reject Keith Converse's fantasy, she imagined Jeff saying, We'll know when we get there.
Her eyes wandered over the room. Every object in it, from the posters on the walls that depicted Jeff's favorite buildings to the shelves of books ranging from architecture through poetry to zoology, were as familiar to her as the things in her own bedroom on Fifth Avenue. More familiar, in a way, for despite the cramped dimensions and worn-out furnishings of the tiny room, she had always felt more at home here than in the cavernous apartment in which she'd grown up. "I love this place," she said, almost as much to herself as to Keith. He was straddling a battered wooden chair she and Jeff had found at a flea market on one of their Sunday walks. At five dollars, it had been too good a bargain to pass up. Jeff had just begun re-finishing it when he was arrested. Now his father's arms rested on its sanded oak back, and he watched her in a way that reminded her of Jeff. "How long are you going to keep it?" she asked, her eyes sweeping the room once more.
"It's not mine to keep or give up," Keith replied. "It's Jeff's. All I'm doing is paying the rent till he comes back."
Heather moved back to the window, hugging herself in unconscious defense against the chill that suddenly wrapped itself around her. "You're so sure he's coming back?"
"If he was dead, I'd know it. He's my son. If something happened to him, I'd feel it. And I don't feel it." Though she still had her back to him, she could feel his eyes boring into her. "You don't feel it, either," he went on. "That's why you came here tonight."