Saints Of New York (13 page)
Read Saints Of New York Online
Authors: R.J. Ellory
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2008
Parrish
awoke before nine. From his bathroom window the sky was five shades of gray and
lent the day an air of disappointment before it had begun.
He
remembered the report he was meant to have completed, the Active Investigation
Summary. Squad Sergeant Valderas would read him the riot act if it wasn't done
by noon, but Parrish could not take his attention from Rebecca and, behind
those thoughts, Karen.
Last
night he had reviewed all these things. The trouble with the clear-headedness
of a drinker was that the brief and brilliant moments of clarity did not
survive. Sometimes because there were just too many thoughts, other times there
seemed to be a single idea that overwhelmed all other considerations. The
explosion that caps an oil fire.
During
his deepest hours Frank Parrish would resolve his marriage, the
disillusionment of his career, the conflict with Caitlin, even his own
raison d'etre.
All these things would appear simple
and straightforward - until morning.
Sometimes
the drink turned ideas into dreams, but more often into nightmares.
He
knew he had changed, become bitter, cynical even. As if
the
person he used to be was trapped
somewhere else, pacing back and forth across the span of some unknown room -
waiting, expectant.
He
seemed possessed by some strange obligation to peer
into
the darkest and most hidden recesses of
the world. Not only
that,
but
to reach his hands inside and bring the darkness out. And
this
had fixed him where he stood, while the
rest of the world
had
moved
on. Clare, Caitlin, Robert: they had all moved forward, yet he continued
flogging himself on the same treadmill.
Frank
Parrish began each case with renewed hope. A hope as big as Christmas. All
homicide investigations were reactive. Nothing happened until someone died, and
then everything happened. Get to twenty-four, forty-eight hours from the event
and already things were growing cold and dry. Potential witnesses had second
thoughts; the human instinct to tell what you saw, even what you
thought
you saw, was transformed into the fundamental instinct for self-preservation.
Better to say nothing. Better not to get involved.
Some
truths had been so well-hidden they became sacrosanct. Some cases would never
be solved.
He
thought often of those who survived, who somehow had navigated the awkwardness
of childhood; of those who suffered falls from high places with nothing to show
for the experience but bruises and vertigo. People endured the pain of broken
love affairs, disastrous marriages and shattered families. Too many years he
had spent breaking up the kind of domestics where violence was always the first
port of call. Fight first, talk later. Or just keep on fighting and never talk
at all. Crimes of passion, of opportunity, of human error. All this they
survived, only to be killed stone-dead by a drunk driver or an opportunist
mugger. One moment they were there, and then they were gone. The scene was
processed, the tapes rolled up and stowed away, the Fire Department hosed down
the sidewalk and the world was back to rights. And more often than not those
deaths were without rhyme or reason. Rare was the killing dictated by malice
aforethought. The psychos and serial killers were in the minority. The motive
and rationale back of most murders was simple: for love, for money, for
nothing. Only a few were murdered for a killer's gratification.
Sometimes
he sat on the subway and looked at people. He would watch them unaware, and
wonder who might not make it to Christmas. Even as they reviewed the
complications of their own lives, considering possibilities, formulating plans,
those complications were pointless and redundant. They would be dead before they
saw another birthday.
Perhaps
his behavior betrayed a pessimistic nature, but it served to remind him of the
fragility of things. And he had yet to find so much darkness that it stopped
him looking. Perhaps the more he found, the more he became inured to it, so
that he stopped perceiving darkness, but simply saw shadows . . .
As
far as homicides were concerned, the first twelve hours were vital. Beyond
twelve hours the dead stopped talking. Evidence was destroyed, conspirators
collaborated on a common and plausible alibi, weapons were dispatched to the
unrelenting depths of the East River or Maspeth Creek. Speed was of the
essence, and yet speed sometimes sabotaged thoroughness and attention to
detail. The secret was in the balance, and so many times the balance was
anything but right. And later, in those moments of quiet reflection, there was
always time to consider what he might have done better. What was it Jackson
Browne used to sing? Something about not confronting him with his failures,
that such things were never forgotten?
When
Frank Parrish was married it was a matter of pushing it all aside. Drinking.
Pain pills. Starting with three or four, then another and yet another until
whatever was keeping him awake was subdued.
Face
the truth, Frank. No-one ever got better from drinking.
The
echo of Clare's voice in his head.
And
then the children came along, Caitlin especially. Caitlin had been his
conscience, his salvation, his redemption, and yet a mirror for his guilt.
Caitlin was the darkest of all his nights, the brightest of all his days. The
most brilliant light always cast the deepest shadows. And
those
shadows . . . ? The shadows of his own
failures as a father? For him there was no darker place than that.
That
morning he did not eat breakfast. He left the apartment shortly before nine and
took the elevator. Once again he coincided with Mrs Langham and Grace, and
once again Grace was reprimanded for staring.
Grace
went on looking at Parrish as if he carried all the secrets of the grown-up
world in the creases of his face.
Mrs Langham, however, looked awkward, as if to say,
I'm sorry for my daughter . . . she isn't embarrassed, and neither are you, but
for some reason I am.
Parrish
just smiled at her, and when he stepped back to allow them exit from the
elevator he said, "Bye, Grace. You have a good day, okay?'
He
walked from the apartment block and took the subway to Hoyt Street.
In
the Homicide Division squad room, he found the weekend- shift detectives - Paul
Hayes, Bob Wheland, Mike Rhodes and Steve Pagliaro. Mumbled greetings, the odd
jibe, and Parrish was then in back surveying the case board. Date initiated,
detectives assigned, a series of boxes that were checked as the administrative
requirements were fulfilled - Crime Scene, DC's Report, autopsy, rape kit, tox,
a box headed Suspect/s which was only checked if someone was brought in on a
realistic possibility of charge and arraignment - and over on the far side, a
box that was filled with a number that increased each day the case remained active.
If the case was closed that box was filled with a black "X". Black Xs
were the thing that Lieutenant Myerson and Captain Haversaw required in a daily
report from Squad Sergeant Valderas. The Active Investigations Summary Report
was completed by each lead detective after a complete shift, whether it be
three days, five days, or two and a half hours in the case of overtime. It was
a laborious process, the redefining of each homicide, a paragraph or two
detailing what had been done thus far - the people interviewed, whether or not
the investigating officer had reason to consider them a suspect, the in-office
interrogations that had been undertaken, the results of those interrogations,
and on and on. Parrish still had active cases, but for him it was simple.
Rebecca
was not a hooker or a dealer or a thief. She was never meant to survive the
same occupational hazards as the others. You got yourself involved in the
sex-for-sale industry and you were a magnet for flakes and psychos. And if you
came up from the projects with your pockets full of crack, if you fronted for
someone, if you gypped someone, then it was all too understandable if you
wound up with a five-inch paring knife in your throat. Such eventualities went
with the territory. Danny Lange was a junkie. With junkies it was not
if,
but
when.
Not
whether,
but
how.
An overdose, an accident while stoned, a hallucination that put you wandering
in the Colorado mountains when really you were jaywalking into six lanes of
traffic on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Once again, occupational hazards.
But
Rebecca was different. Rebecca was the only one that really
mattered.
And it wasn't simply that she
reminded him of Caitlin. It wasn't that she was orphaned or had a piece-of-shit
junkie brother. It wasn't that her St. Francis of Assisi friends considered her
quiet and funny and sweet and pretty. It was something else. A reminder that if
there was no-one there to look after you, no- one to keep an eye on things,
then the world and all its wonders would devour you in a heartbeat.
You
were there, and then you were gone.
Why
had she run to her brother? Why had she left Williamsburg for Brooklyn? Why
did she have her hair cut and paint her nails? Who did she have sex with? Was
it consensual?
He
wondered whether the tox test had ever been done. He picked up the phone and
called the Coroner's Office. He gave the case number, Rebecca's name, waited
while the attending receptionist looked her up.
'No
tox,' she came back. 'Don't have one scheduled. You need one done?'
'Please,
yes,' Parrish replied. 'I was told we would get one but I never heard back.'
'Well,
someone screwed up then, didn't they? I'll book it, but it won't be until
Monday now. I don't have the people here to handle backlogged tox tests.'
'What's
your name?'
She
gave it.
'I'll
call you Monday afternoon and see what the deal is.'
'You
do that, Detective, and have a good weekend.'
Parrish
hung up, made a note in his diary to call on Monday.
He
completed his report, dropped it in the basket by the door, and then retrieved
the rest of the cigar-box money from the lower drawer of his desk.
'You
outta here?' one of the uniforms asked as Parrish came down the corridor.
'Not
a prayer,' Parrish replied. 'Here all day.'
'You
still off the road?'
'Yeah,
until January. I get my license back after the New Year.'
The
uniform made some comment, but Parrish didn't hear it
as
he
went down the stairs to Marie Griffin's office.
'You've heard of the Valachi papers?'
'It
sounds familiar.'
'Joseph
Valachi. First guy to ever really break ranks in the mob. His testimony opened
up the whole thing, gave people a look inside something that had only ever been
a myth. It all went back to a guy called Joseph Masseria back in the early
Thirties. Masseria said that any underworld figure from a place called
Castellammarese de Golfo in Sicily was to be killed. What followed was called
the Castellammarese War. One faction was led by Masseria, the other by a guy
called Salvatore Maranzano. Other gangs allied themselves to either one or the
other. Vito Genovese, Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz and Al Capone supported
Masseria, but in 1931 Masseria was assassinated by order of Luciano, and that
was the end of the war. Maranzano called together about four hundred people
from all the different families in order to establish some kind of structure
for their activities and territories. Maranzano himself was also assassinated a
few months later, but the structure he put in place still holds to this day.
They started infiltrating legitimate businesses right from the get-go. You've
heard of Arthur Miller, right?'
'Playwright
Arthur Miller, who married Marilyn Monroe?'
'That's
the guy. Well, as early as '51 the
New York Daily
Compass
commissioned him to report on Senator
Estes Kefauver's hearings on organized crime, and it was already coming to
light that the Mob controlled the unions on the city's waterfront. Columbia,
Union Street, the Red Hook district. . . that's where Capone and Frankie Yale
and others from Murder Incorporated came from. Even then they had already
instituted something called the "shape-up".'