Saints Of New York (31 page)

'And
the basic difference between the cops and the people out there? We run towards
the trouble. That's what we do. Gotta be something wrong with us for doing
that, but there it is. That's gotta say something about the kind of people we
are, wouldn't you say?'

'Frank,
I understand your frustration . . .'

'The
hell you do! I'm one of those people who doesn't have new days. I just have old
ones, okay? And the longer I live the older they get. Every day it's the
questions for us. The cases we're working on are nothing but questions. Mostly
it's who. Sometimes it's how or why. Every once in a while it's all three. It
gets into your mind, and then it's in your blood, and you find yourself
thinking about it even when you're talking to someone about some completely
unrelated thing. You start to think that other people know, others besides the
perp. Someone in a coffee shop, maybe, or sitting on the subway train. Random
people. You think they know more than you do. You believe that if you could
just find the right person, and just ask them one question, they would open up
right there and tell you everything you need to know to close the case down.'

'Frank—'

'You
start thinking that the dead can talk to you. You start imagining that the face
of their killer is printed right there on their retina, and if you could just
get close enough you'd see it. You start talking to yourself ... in your head
at
first. . .
and then one day you look up from where you're sitting in a diner someplace,
and you realize that people are watching you because you've been talking to
yourself for the last half hour. You tell me I lack persistence, and I tell you
that doing what we do takes more persistence than pretty much anything you can
imagine.'

'I'm
not talking about your job, Frank, I'm talking about everything else.'

'What else is
there? What the fuck else is there? I
am
the job The job is me. If we're gonna talk about anything at all then it h to
be about the job, because frankly, in all fucking honesty, the isn't anything
else left right now.'

'Okay,
let's talk about the job then.'

'I'm
leaving.'

'Sit
down, Frank. Sit down and let's talk.'

'No,
I don't feel like it. I've said all I want to say. It's Friday. Let' just take
a weekend without each other, okay?'

'You
think that'll help?'

'Help
me? Probably not. I'm thinking that it might help you.

 
By the time Parrish reached his desk, the
copied file for Karen Pulaski had arrived from Franco at Williamsburg. Radick
was nowhere to be seen.

Parrish
left the office and took the subway on up to see Raymond Foley, the Supervisor
at South Two on Adams.

Lavelle
was there, sat in on the brief discussion. Foley listened patiently while
Parrish explained the scenario.

'So
you're going to want to interview every one of the forty-six male employees of
this office?'

'I
am, yes,' Parrish replied. 'And I'll need to ask you and Mr Lavelle some
questions of course, simply because you're here too.'

'Well,
go ahead,' Foley said. 'No time like the present.'

'There's
a couple of things we need to verify before we can ensure that we have all the
questions we need,' Parrish said. 'But that won't take long. I was wondering if
we could start on Monday. I wish we weren't up against the weekend right now,
but—'

'There's
a good half of them here tomorrow,' Foley interjected.

'On
a Saturday?'

'Sure,
we have a covering staff on a Saturday. There'll be a good twenty or
twenty-five of them here tomorrow.'

'Well
okay, we'll start tomorrow.'

'I
won't be here,' Foley said, 'but Marcus will, and he can take care of things
for you.'

'That
would be very much appreciated,' Parrish said.

'And
you really think it's best to do it here?'

'Yes,
if that can be arranged. They're certainly not under arrest,
and
I don't even want them to feel as though they're under suspicion. It's just a
request for help from the police department,
and
their assistance with anything they know is going to be very much appreciated.'
'Sure, but the fact remains
that you have a number of dead girls, and one of my people could be involved.'

'Yes,
that is so,' Parrish replied. 'How many girls we don't know, or to what extent
someone here could be involved. But this is what we're trying to establish.'

'Shit
fuck God almighty,' Foley said. He rose from his desk and walked to the window,
his back to Parrish and Lavelle. He was quiet for a good thirty seconds, and
then he turned slowly.

'I
don't know what to say—'

'You
don't have to say anything, Mr Foley.'

'I
mean, well . . . about the fact that it could be someone I know.'

'Though
it might not,' Parrish interjected. 'It is not altogether impossible that
someone has a line into your database, and they're taking the information they
want from it.'

'You
understand that the people here are quite strenuously screened before they're
employed.'

'Yes,
I do.'

'Though
no system is foolproof, right?' Foley said. 'I bet you've had some awkward
moments with police officers, right?'

'You
better believe it,' Parrish replied. He thought of his own father. He thought
of the way in which bad apples were overlooked, ignored, hidden from public
view.

'Jesus
. . . son of a bitch,' Foley said forcefully. 'Fuck.' He shook his head, walked
back to his desk and sat down heavily. 'And you'll be doing the interviews?'

'Yes.
Me and my partner.'

'So
what can I do to prepare?'

'You
can have a look at the names for me first and foremost,' Parrish said. Take a look
at these cases and see if there's one employee who is connected to all of
them.'

'Fire
away, Foley said. He leaned forward, turned his monitor to an angle, reached
for the keyboard on his desk.

Parrish
gave him the names. Foley typed them in one after the other, and then let the
system do whatever it had to do.

'Three of them
are from the original South unit, one was interviewed as a possible material
witness to an abuse case we were investigating, and then the last two were from
District Two,
right
here.
You know that?'

'Yes, I was aware of that. I was
also given the name Lester Young.'

'He's
not here anymore. As far as I know he went over to Probation—'

'We're
following that up separately,' Parrish said.

Foley
read things, clicked, scrolled, read more things, and then he leaned back and
looked directly at Parrish. 'No,' he said. 'There doesn't appear to be any
common link between these cases. All of them have been dealt with by numerous
counsellors, other people from CAA, from Child Services itself. We act as the
coordination point for all records, and that's all we do. There doesn't appear
to be any individual name that occurs more than once in any of these cases.'

'Was
a long shot,' Parrish said.

Foley
smiled wryly. 'When is it ever a short shot?'

Parrish
got up and extended his hand. Foley rose also and took
it.

'Appreciate
your saying nothing until we show tomorrow,' Parrish said.

'Is
there paperwork for this? Do you have to have a warrant?'

'To
look at your records, yes,' Parrish said. 'That one we have already. To talk to
your people, no. We're just making inquiries, nothing official as yet. We get
some leads then maybe we'll need more warrants, but we'll jump off that bridge
when we get there.'

Foley
saw Parrish out. A couple of the desk jockeys seemed curious as to what was
going on. Anyone with an average IQ would have known Parrish for a cop, and now
he'd been here two days consecutive. There would be questions around the water
cooler. Such rumors as would be circulating would serve Parrish well. If the
perp was here, even the guy who gave up info on these girls for the perp -
well, they would be on edge, already sweating by the time they got into an
interview.

Parrish
headed back to the subway, and took the train to Hoyt.

 
Jimmy
Radick appeared just before noon. In his hand he
clutched a sheaf of papers.

He
sat down facing Parrish. At first Parrish said nothing, and then when he opened
his mouth Radick cut him short.

'Yesterday
was bullshit, Frank,' he said matter-of-factly. 'If I was a more aggressive man
I would take you into the car park and beat the crap out of you. But actually,
it's nothing to do with me. Whatever issues you have with your daughter are
your own business, and the only mistake I made - the
only
mistake I made - was agreeing to speak
with her about her concern for you. First time I met her she gave me her number
on a piece of paper, and you know what she said to me?'

'What
did she say, Jimmy?'

'She
told me that you drink and you get morose. She said there was a lot of bullshit
going on between you and her mom and you didn't deal with it very well. She
told me to call her if you got too fucked up.'

'And
you called her?'

'No,
I sure as hell did not. She called me again. Yesterday. She asked me how you
were getting on, how I was handling working with you, and I told her that it
really wasn't any of her business and that I really didn't think it was
appropriate for us to be having this conversation.'

'So
what the fuck were you doing over there?'

'She
asked me to go over there, Frank. She asked me to go over there because there
was something she wanted to talk to me about and she didn't want to discuss it
on the telephone.'

'And
what was that? What was it she wanted to talk about?'

'I
haven't a fucking clue, Frank, and you know why? Because you turned up and did
what you did.'