Chapter 62
"HEY, DID A TOY COME with this Happy Meal?" I asked as I stole a French fry from the Mickey Dee's bag on the dash of Emily's Fed car.
"I wouldn't know. That bag was there when I signed the car out," Emily teased as she flipped through my notes.
We were now parked down at the West 79th Street Boat Basin. On the dark mirror of the water we could see bobbing sailboats, the black mass of an anchored tanker, and the romantic chandelier-like lights of the George Washington Bridge off to the right. It was a nice secluded parking lot right smack on the Hudson. A notorious lovers' lane, and I knew we'd have it all to ourselves, since we had yet to catch the still-on-the-loose Son of Sam copycat.
As usual, Emily looked amazing, buttoned up in her business-hottie-with-a-nine-millimeter style. She looked fresh as a daisy, even though she'd been busting her tail all day. I could think of worse people to hang out with in a prime make-out spot.
I spat the cold fry into a napkin and looked over at my attractive FBI colleague with feigned hurt.
"Back to business now. Question one: You spoke to the Bronx stabbing victim, right?" Emily said.
"If I don't answer, will you waterboard me?" I said.
"I'd watch my step if I were you."
"Fine, Aida Morales. Yep, spoke to her. She had a complication with one of her stabbing wounds, so she was actually still at Jacobi Hospital."
"Did you show her the sketch and Photo Pak of the suspect?"
I nodded.
"She actually spent a lot of time with him, so even though he was wearing a curly Son of Sam wig when he attacked her, she was pretty sure it was the same guy."
Emily wrinkled her brow at the pages.
"What, if anything, about the victims' families jumps out at you as a possible link?"
"Not much," I said, looking out at the water. "Especially on the surface. I mean, we have eight victims, right? Aida Morales, the four people killed in the Grand Central bombing, the double murder of the professor and his lover in Queens, and poor little Angela Cavuto. Four females, four men, five of them blue-collar types, three a little more upscale. You couldn't get a more disparate bunch."
"But like we agreed," Emily said, "only two of the people who died at the newsstand-the owner and the girl who worked there-can be considered targets. The officer who was killed wasn't on his regular post, and the homeless man wasn't known to frequent the area."
"Okay, fine," I said. "Six victims, then, but there's still no obvious connection. Maybe we're digging a dry hole."
"Family dynamics are one thing we haven't fully looked into, Mike. We have to keep looking."
Emily stared at me and then started flipping through my notes again. To make myself useful, I started looking through hers. The interview parameters were extensive: socioeconomic status, brothers, sisters, parents, birth order, status of parents, employment history, education.
When the words started to blur, I slapped the folder closed.
"I'm not feeling it. I can't think here. Start the car. I know just the place."
Chapter 63
I DIRECTED EMILY and told her to stop under the beacon of a green neon harp. It was the Dublin House bar on 79th Street, where I'd celebrated my twenty-first birthday.
"You can think better here?" she said.
"What do you mean?" I said, leading her inside. "The library's closed. Besides, haven't you heard? People leave bombs there."
The no-frills Irish pub hadn't changed a bit. I went to the jukebox and put on "The Black Velvet Band," which was the theme song of my childhood.
My NYPD detective father, Tom Bennett, used to bring me here on Saturdays sometimes when my mom went to visit her sisters back in Brooklyn. He'd ply me with Cokes and quarters for the pinball machine as he drank with his fellow Irish cop cronies. They used to call my dad Tony Bennett sometimes for his occasional habit of breaking into song when he was three sheets to the wind.
My mom and dad died in a car accident on the way down to their Florida condo the week after I graduated from college. They were buried together out in Calvary Cemetery in Queens, but it was here that I came when I wanted to visit.
Something, maybe the dustup with the Flahertys, was reviving a lot of my melancholy Irish childhood. My current professional woes certainly weren't cheering me up. I could handle having the press coming after me-that was their job. But getting the back of the commish's hand was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Or, hey, maybe I was having a midlife crisis. One night all alone in the big city, and I was sinking quickly into dad-olescence. I decided to roll with it. I continued to the bar and ordered us two shots of Jameson and two pints of Guinness.
"Let me guess. This is St. Patrick's Day in July," Emily said.
I winked at her and dropped the shot glass into the pint glass and tipped it back until the only thing left was the foam on my lips.
"Just trying to wake up," I said, wiping the back of my hand over my thirsty mouth. "What are you waiting for?"
She rolled her eyes before she dropped her depth charge as well and sucked it back with impressive speed.
"Hey, you got a little something on your lip," I said right before I kissed her.
I don't know which of us was more shocked at my forwardness. To top things off, she started kissing me back, but I suddenly broke it off.
"Okay, then," she said, looking at me funny. "You feeling all right, Mike?"
I shrugged. It was a good question. Unfortunately, I didn't have a good answer. Like the rest of the city, I was having one weird summer.
"Maybe we should call it a day," I said, dropping a couple of twenties on the bar and heading for the door.
Emily followed me back out, and we drove back to my building in silence. When I reached for the car door, it was Emily's turn to lean in and kiss me. There was a pregnant, hot, wavering moment when I thought some clothing was going to get torn, and then she ripped her tongue out of my mouth and shoved me toward the door.
Wiping lipstick off my face, I looked over at my building, where Bert, the doorman, stood avidly watching the proceedings. Of course now the son of a bitch was at the door.
"Hot and cold, cold and hot," she said. "I don't know, but I guess this just doesn't feel right for me right now, Mike. I don't know what it is, but I feel like we're not doing ourselves or each other justice. You should probably get out of here before I do something we'll both regret," she said.
I nodded. I knew what she meant. We were friends, not to mention intuitive work partners. If we went much further, we'd be putting that in jeopardy. Or something. Right?
I wasn't sure how to reply, so I just said okay and opened the car door.
It was right then and there, standing in the street with Emily's brake lights flashing off, that it occurred to me. Justice. Some synapse in my brain finally fired, and the connection we were looking for materialized in my mind like a constellation from a group of random stars.
"Emily, wait!" I yelled as she pulled away.
She didn't stop. I actually had to run after her. If it hadn't been for a red light, she would have gotten away.
"Are you crazy?" she said when I opened her door.
"Listen. I got it. You were right. It is the family dynamic," I said as the light turned green.
"What?" she said as a cab honked behind us.
"What?" she said again after she'd pulled the FBI sedan to the curb.
"It's the mothers," I said, leaning across her and grabbing the interview sheets we'd been working on. I pulled out two of them, my finger racing down the rows.
"Look here. The mothers. Mrs. Morales and Angela Cavuto's mother, Alicia, both went to the same school. They both went to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice."
"Holy shit," Emily said. "Wait."