Habit of Fear (14 page)

Suppose she searched for and found her father? That his friend Michael Desmond was dead did not mean that Thomas Francis Mooney was dead. She felt distrustful of Desmond’s niece. Which wasn’t like Julie. Or, let’s say, the old Julie. She got out Sally O’Rourke’s letter and read it again. And again decided not to answer it. What she wanted to do was to read those letters and notebooks of Michael Desmond’s herself. The least, and possibly the most, she could accomplish by going to Ireland was to perceive a beginning to herself, whether or not she actually found the man who was her source.

Having decided to go, she began at once to pick the decision apart. She was copping out on the job, on the stability it had given her. To ask for a leave of absence would be unfair to Tim: he’d carried her for months. She resolved her dilemma by proposing to do at least a month’s hard work, to set up a series of interviews, putting her quirky humor into them, reassuring the
Daily
powers of the worth of Julie Hayes, gossip columnist.

Then she opened that morning’s mail.

T
WO OF THE
handwritten letters were obscene, the obscenities awkward, as though the writers were unfamiliar with the words they wrote, or maybe the writing itself. A third letter, also on cheap white stationery and written in a slope that seemed vaguely familiar, read:

To Julie Hayes

You are no good for our neighborhood. Those two boys are decent, law abiding people. They wouldn’t do anything like you say they did. They are being railroaded by a rich newspaper and you are its whore. Isn’t that why you live here to be near the whores? God will punish you.

There was no signature and of course no return address. Simply the New York postmark on the envelope. Julie’s hand was trembling. She tried to steady it and to study the handwriting, but she already knew: it reminded her of Mary Ryan’s. It wasn’t hers, she was sure, but it was the way people of a certain age and upbringing wrote. When she was in control of herself, she called Mrs. Ryan and asked her if she’d like to stop by the shop for a cup of tea.

“I don’t think I’d better, Julie,” the old woman said. “I feel like I’m coming down with something, and you never know whether it’s catching.”

“I don’t care,” Julie said. “I’ll take a chance.”

“I hadn’t better,” Mrs. Ryan said.

“Okay … something’s catching around here, isn’t it?” She heard a deep inhalation of breath, but no words followed. “I wish I knew what I’d done that was wrong,” she added.

“You shouldn’t have lied to me,” Mrs. Ryan said. “Saying you wanted information about Frankie for a girlfriend.”

“Mrs. Ryan, do you know what happened to me? Do you really understand? Those guys confessed to rape and sodomy. They admitted it.”

“I don’t want to discuss it, Julie.”

“But you have to! You’re my friend.”

“I’m an old woman and I don’t feel well. I’ve lived here most of my life and I don’t have to be told who my friends are.”

“Okay,” Julie said and swallowed the pain in her throat. “Take care.”

She sat for a few minutes, badly shaken. Then she put the phone on service, took the letters in her carryall and went out. She walked up Eighth Avenue to Saint Malachy’s.

“M
Y DEAR YOUNG FRIEND
,” Father Doyle said with a sad smile, “I’m not excusing these letters, but you’ve got to see it the way our friend does.”

“Why?”

“Try to understand. These boys have no previous record with the police. They were brought up like most of the Irish Catholic youngsters in this neighborhood—a mixture of public and parochial schools. The Donahue boy lives at home and helps support his mother. Neither of them spends much on the sporting life. If there are any doubts at all, the neighborhood’s going to give them the benefit of it.”

“Doesn’t it mean anything, Father Doyle, that they confessed? I thought confession was a big thing with you.”

The priest made a sound of disapproval at her flippancy. “I heard there was coercion,” he said. “Whether it was on the part of the police, I don’t know. I wouldn’t claim they’re young men of the strongest character.”

“Neither would I,” Julie said. “What kind of coercion?”

“It would almost have to be physical, wouldn’t it? Their being the unsophisticated sort.”

“Are you saying they were threatened—or beaten up?”

“You’re not to put words into my mouth, Julie. I’m not saying at all, only what I heard. But I will tell you where I heard it: Mrs. Donahue says Jim was covered from head to foot with bruises, and all he’d say was that he got into a fight with Frankie.”

“Does Mrs. Donahue think they’re innocent?”

“She’s his mother, after all. And they
are
innocent until proven guilty. Isn’t that the way the law goes?”

Julie nodded. Then, angry with herself as much as with him: “I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t they give that information to the Grand Jury if they were being forced into confessing a crime they didn’t commit? You’ve got to admit, Father Doyle, it’s strange.”

“Strange things have happened in this city. I’ve been told there are people with more power outside the law than inside it. People with a moral code of their own, and some of them think they can dispense justice more surely than the courts or even the Lord God Almighty himself.”

Julie was stunned. The priest could be speaking of only one person, Sweets Romano. Romano also was a product of the West Side, and he owned a large piece of it today under a variety of covers. There was no operation, legitimate or otherwise, of which he was not informed. If the police could not enforce, he could and often did: something known, but not proven. And in his own curious way, Julie knew, Romano adored her. And equally curious, he was a puritan. The priest’s eyes were soft with compassion. She had to moisten her lips before she could speak. “They have good lawyers, don’t they? Kincaid and Donahue, I mean.”

“The best there is. We have to take care of our own, Julie.”

She nodded. “I don’t suppose it’s relevant, Father Doyle, but I remember hearing that Mr. Romano made the donation that saved Saint Jude’s Hospital from closing.” A neighborhood hospital that had gone deeply into debt.

“You may have heard that, but I’m sure the gift was anonymous.”

“I
TOLD YOU
my wife didn’t want me to come back that morning,” Russo said. “She thinks she has what her and Mary Ryan call the second sight, and sometimes I think she does. I took one look at a welt on the back of Kincaid’s neck and got a police physician in to examine them before we’d even take their statements. Just to protect ourselves against a brutality charge. The doctor, in the end, couldn’t say positively that they had or hadn’t administered the blows to one another, and they stuck to their story. Even with Quinlan’s men calling the shots, they’re sticking to it.”

“What do
you
think, Detective Russo?”

His heavy, dark eyes grew even more solemn. “I’m paid to ask questions, not to answer them. But I’ll say this: until the time we went before the Grand Jury, we worked our asses off to make a case out of the evidence we had. Just in case they’d change their plea.”

“What would they have changed it to?”

“Innocent. What else?”

Julie smiled at her own stupidity.

“But I’ll be surprised if Quinlan doesn’t get them off when they come to trial, no matter what evidence we have. I’ll be surprised if that confession isn’t thrown out at some point.”

“Then why arrest them at all?”

Russo sighed deeply.

“For their own protection,” Julie said, bearing down with the sarcasm.

“That’s what it could amount to.”

“Oh, Christ,” she said.

A
T LEAST ONE HATE
letter came through the mail slot every day. Hand-delivered now. Probably by a child, she thought grimly. She stayed away from the shop until late most days, hustling her sources, doing her own leg work and using her desk in the huge
New York Daily
editorial room. The company she kept in that environment was a solace. Tim took a few days in Bermuda, and she carried the column very nicely on her own.

She went to see Ray Duggan, editor of the Sunday magazine, and tried to sell him the story of the search for her father she proposed to carry over to Ireland. He watched her out of small, shrewd eyes. Duggan had a face like a walnut, a hand that shook, and a profound reverence for the journalist’s craft.

“I’m not going to say yes or no,” he told her. “We’ll have to see where it goes. You don’t have a story yet.”

“I’m sure it’s there,” she said. “But I have to go and get it.”

“We can’t finance your trip, if that’s what you have in mind.”

“I didn’t expect that.” It was not so much the money she wanted, although God knows she could have used it, as that she needed the feeling of continuity, a linkage between here and there, then and now. She needed her newspaper affiliation for confidence.

“I’ll give you an assignment, if that’s what you want, and if you’re set on going to Ireland, that might be just the place to work on it: it’s a great place for crying. …” He paused to light a cigarette. Julie knew what was coming. “Do your own story. Bring it right up to date and then finish it after the trial. I’ll give you a two-parter on it. And I’ll give you some money to go on.”

“Let me think about it.” Something in her had changed: she had not rejected the proposal out of hand. Then: “What if they’re acquitted?”

“Then you’ll need a place to let go your outrage. I’m counting on something like that to draw your fire, if you want to know. I know it’s in you, girl, but what good is it to either of us if you can’t get it into your copy?”

“Okay, Ray. I’ll do it.”

When he grinned, his eyes disappeared into the wrinkles. A walnut: very hard to crack, but the meat was worth it.

She was on her way back to her desk when the city editor shouted to her. She wheeled around. The whole room fell silent. The man behind the big desk was not in the habit of shouting.

“Kincaid and Donahue have disappeared,” he told her, his hand on the phone. “The team’s on the way to the DA’s office. I’ll catch them downstairs if you want to go along.”

A
LOT OF REPORTERS
were on hand by the time the district attorney’s public relations officer read a statement to inform them that Mrs. Annie Donahue of 607 West Fifty-eighth Street had reported to Midtown North that morning that her son James was missing. He had not been home for three days. Nor had he shown up at his uncle’s place of business, where he was employed as an assistant mortician. Detectives from the district attorney’s office had then checked on Kincaid and learned that he had not been seen during that period either. A check of the Maritime Union hiring records showed he had not attempted to ship out, something his mother had convinced herself was the case. His attorney had applied for permission for Kincaid to ship between U.S. ports while free on bail. Kincaid and Donahue were last seen when they left McGowen’s Bar at closing time early Sunday morning.

The case was reviewed, but the press officer would take no questions concerning impending police action. Getting such small pickings, the
Daily
team proposed to interview the families of the two men. It was not a trip Julie was going to take.

She was on her way out of the room when she heard her name. The voice was familiar, but she could not place it until she turned to see Lieutenant David Marks of Homicide. The sight of him at that moment made her feel queasy.

They shook hands while Julie murmured that she wouldn’t have expected to see him in the DA’s office. He was a tall man; there was more gray in his hair than when they had last met; his eyes seemed even more broody. A romantic figure really—a cop who thought a lot about why men did evil and whether an ounce of prevention was possible, never mind a cure. She had met him during the investigation of the murder of her then boss, Tony Alexander: the chief suspect in that case had vanished, only to surface—just identifiable—in the waters off Staten Island. It was a killing attributed to Sweets Romano. But without evidence. Julie said she wouldn’t have expected to see Marks, but that wasn’t true. Nor was his presence accidental.

“It’s a little early,” Marks said, “but could I take you to lunch?”

Julie shook her head. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant.”

“How about a few minutes’ talk in my office, then?”

“Oh?”

He led the way to a large room with high windows giving a view of the sky and one tall building. The walls were lined with legal tomes, and several unattached file cabinets stood out of place but usable. Julie and Marks sat at a conference table. “I should have said my office-to-be.”

Julie didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry for what happened to you.”

“Thanks,” she murmured.

“Odd, the disappearance of the suspects, isn’t it?”

She nodded. Silent.

“There’s something I want to say to you, right off, Julie. Not for anything in the world, not even to nail public enemy number one, would I jeopardize a rape conviction. You must believe that.”

Again she nodded. She knew what she was in for. Not that she hadn’t known it was bound to come, but it seemed pretty rotten luck that she’d come downtown and saved him a trip.

Marks lit a cigarette and laid the package where she could take one if she wanted it. “Can we talk frankly?”

“I don’t know. It depends on what we’re going to talk about.”

He took a deep drag and sent the smoke upward when he exhaled. “Your patron.”

“He is not my patron.” She could feel herself flush.

“But you know who and what I want to talk about. I trust you. I think you’ve been unwise, to say the least, in your association with him, but I do trust you.”

“I guess I should say thank you, but I’m not going to. Lieutenant Marks, my husband claims that if he couldn’t talk—if he couldn’t pledge confidentiality if necessary—to anyone, even the devil himself, he couldn’t be a newspaperman. You don’t have any right to censor me.”

Marks studied the next blast of cigarette smoke as it shot upward. “I suppose there’s a touch of the bully in every cop. I apologize if that’s the way I’ve come across to you. I said I trust you. See those file cabinets? That’s a homicide case in preparation for the Grand Jury. I’m on loan to the DA to work on it. You know how long I’ve wanted to.”