Blood Ties (25 page)

“That asshole Sullivan,” he said to me. “Fifty thousand dollars to send those kids to Hamlin's. Randy didn't kill that girl and neither did anyone else on the football team.”

“They were at that party.”

“Says who?”

“Some kid'll break down. Some kid'll start saying who was there, and then it'll all come out.”

“Bullshit. All that'll happen is Sullivan'll fuck with their heads and there goes the Hamlin's game, maybe even next season. Warrenstown's a great place, but Warrenstown cops have always been assholes.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I heard about that. Been true for over twenty years, I guess?”

Macpherson appeared motionless, gazed steadily at me; but I sensed all his muscles tightening under his skin, the way you know, sometimes, which way the guy with the ball is going to move, just by looking in his eyes.

“That,” Macpherson pointed a finger at me, “is your biggest fucking mistake. Big. Warrenstown doesn't need that shit dug up again. And I—” He stood, planted his fists on his desk. “—I sure as hell don't need it dug up, either. You know that arrest ruined my college career?”

I looked at the laminated diploma hanging by the bookcase. “You went to Harvard.”

“Harvard fucking Law. Rutgers undergrad, where I worked my fucking ass off to get into fucking Harvard. Because I was going to goddamn be somebody, Smith. Because I couldn't play football.”

“Why not?”

He blew out a breath. “It's a big fucking deal in Warrenstown to get recruited, you know that? Suburban schools, Eastern schools, colleges write you off. They like big colored boys from Texas, or dumb-ass bohunks from steel towns. I was recruited, Smith. By a Division One school. Notre Dame. But they were the only ones. And tight-assed Catholic pricks, after I was arrested they kissed me off.”

“I don't get it. You were released, never even charged. Another kid killed himself, for Christ's sake. Or am I wrong?”

“Jared Beltran. Stinking little shit. But the party, it was all over the newspapers. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Remember those days?”

“I remember.”

“I was a middle linebacker. I never fooled myself, I knew where I stood: I would've started second string at Notre Dame. But that would've been enough for me, just to get the chance, just to show them what I could do.”

A brief pause, and I almost thought I saw, behind this looming, arrogant bully of a man, the faint outline of a boy who wanted nothing so much as a chance to play.

“Not good enough, in other words, for them to keep the offer up after the bad publicity.” The man's sneering words swept the boy's ghost away. “They had other candidates, they didn't need me. They thought I'd be a liability for the fucking alumni. These days, trust me, they wouldn't give a shit. They'd call it ‘youthful indiscretion,' say I was a better human being and a better football player for it because I'd no doubt learned from my mistakes. No doubt. No fucking doubt. But that was then, and they didn't say that then.”

“Couldn't you have played somewhere else?”

“Division Two? You're kidding me, right? I'm going to take that kind of punishment for a bunch of second-raters, no one comes to the games, team never makes the papers?”

“My mistake.”

He leaned forward. “Randy plays his position as well as I played mine. Better. He's All-State, two years. I am not,
not
, going to let his career get fucked up the way mine did. And especially not over some Warrenstown High bitch.”

“Did you know her?”

He took a breath, straightened up. “Tory Wesley? No, of course I didn't know her. She was a sophomore. Randy's a senior. His older brother graduated two years ago.”

“Sons,” I said. “No daughters.”

“What I want to know is how you knew her.”

“I didn't.”

“I have to listen to this shit? That asshole Scott Russell shows up in Warrenstown after twenty years, his son disappears and his fucking brother-in-law who
happens
to be a private eye
happens
to find a girl's body a couple of days later and you tell me you didn't know the girl?”

There seemed to be a lot of assholes in Macpherson's life. “I didn't know the girl,” I said.

“What were she and the Russell kid up to?”

“Were they up to something?”

“Smith,” he said, “what exactly are you trying to do?”

“Find Gary Russell.”

“I don't think so. Scott says if he catches you near his family he'll kick your teeth in.”

“That's his problem.”

“What's your interest in Tory Wesley?”

“None at all, if people would stop saying Gary killed her.”

“Someone did.”

“Someone at the party. Looks like Gary wasn't even there.”

“Sure he was.”

“Randy tell you that?”

“Scott says he didn't hire you. He says for all he cares you can rot in hell. Who hired you?”

“Gary.”

That stopped him dead. For a moment, nothing. Then he walked around the desk and stood, feet planted, weight balanced, facing me. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Gary asked me to help him. I'm trying.”

“Help him do what?”

“I don't know.”

“You stupid son of a bitch.” Macpherson's face filled slowly with color. Oxblood, I thought, but it would have been a bad time to laugh, so I didn't. Macpherson drilled me with a piercing stare, probably very effective in the courtroom. “This wise-ass shit is a bad idea, Smith.” His voice took on a deadly quiet tone. “You're a stupid son of a bitch, and talking to me this way is a bad idea. It may work with the kind of people you usually run into, but I'm losing patience. I want to know what the hell you're up to.”

I shrugged. “So do I.”

A very long silence filled Macpherson's office. Through the window behind where Macpherson stood I couldn't see the avenue; we were up too high for that. All I saw were the two ranks of buildings facing each other across it, tall, sharp-edged, and, to the eye, completely still. There was no sign, on their hard and solid exteriors, of the unceasing movement inside them.

Macpherson finally spoke, still in the quiet, cold voice. I could imagine Randy dreading that voice, when he was small.

“Sullivan told you to stay out of Warrenstown,” Macpherson said. “I'm telling you to stay out of Warrenstown's business. I filed assault charges against you in Plaindale last night. If you go back to Hamlin's, you'll get picked up. If you go back to Warrenstown, you'll get picked up.”

“I heard about that.”

“Cops in New York, on Long Island, in two fucking states are looking for fucking Gary Russell. They'll consider any involvement on your part to be interference and—”

“—I'll get picked up. If the questions are over and you're moving on to telling me what trouble I'm in, I think we're done.”

“The question,” he said, “is whether you're smart enough to quit before your ass gets caught in a meat grinder.”

“If that's it,” I said, “the answer is no, I don't think I am.” I turned, crossed his office to the silent door, let myself out.

fourteen

Back on Park Avenue I stood on the corner, breathing in the cold air, watching the pedestrians weave freely around me, the traffic flow along its straitened path. The day had ended; the night was beginning. Lights in the Midtown buildings had been on all day, but now they were visible in the purple twilight. People hurried past me to the subways, the buses, to go home. I wondered if the cops had gotten to Queens; I wondered if Lydia had gotten to Warrenstown.

I stopped into a deli closing up for the day and bought a cup of coffee, headed downtown at a slow walk. No one was calling me and I had no reason to call anyone: I didn't know anything now I hadn't known before my visit to the wood-paneled offices of Macpherson Peters Ennis and Arkin. But I had some things to think about. A few questions, probably meaningless, probably just something to persuade myself I was doing something, hadn't been stopped after all today's work with no ground gained, a little lost.

Forty minutes later twilight was gone, night was complete, and I was almost home, when my phone rang. I took it out, answered it, and heard, “This is Stacie.”

“Hey,” I said. “How are you?”

“Terrible. Can you come here?”

Her voice was weak, her words unclear. “What's wrong?” I said. “Where are you?”

“Greenmeadow. It's the next town over from Warrenstown.”

“What's going on?”

“I'm in the hospital.”

Cars and people around me disappeared; there was nothing but the phone, and Stacie Phillips's voice. “What happened?”

“I'll tell you when you get here. Can you please come?”

She sounded like a little girl, and she sounded close to tears. “As fast as I can. But it'll be almost an hour.”

“That's okay,” she said, and though her voice was shaky she sounded like the Stacie Phillips I'd gotten used to hearing when she told me, “I think I'll be here.”

I made the lot where I keep my car inside of five minutes. I sliced through the streets until I was back uptown, at the approach to the George Washington Bridge. By the time I reached the bridge, rush hour was almost over, but I hit the tail end of it and had to slow down. I didn't lose any time, not really, but I still had to work to keep myself from sitting on the horn, from cursing out the other drivers, from driving in a way that would either have gotten me where I wanted to go or gotten me killed. When I was finally off the bridge and moving I pulled out the phone and called Lydia. I got the voice mail, left a message, and heard from her about five minutes after that.

“Smith.”

“It's me. What's wrong?”

“Stacie Phillips. She's in the hospital.”

“What happened?”

“I don't know. I'm on the way. Can you meet me there?” I told her where.

“Yes.”

After that I just drove, concentrating on the road, the other cars, their lights and their maneuvers. The miles of commercial strip, ugly in the bright sun of yesterday morning, seemed even uglier now, lit by their own sodium and neon and fluorescent glows. I turned off the strip road again as the hills came closer, black bulks tonight, the fall colors hidden in the darkness. Then I made a left onto a road I hadn't been on yesterday morning, the road to Greenmeadow, where the hospital was.

I thought I might be too late for visiting hours, and was ready to swear I was a doctor, a priest, or Stacie Phillips's long-lost uncle, but when I shoved through the revolving door I found visiting hours lasted until nine o'clock and Lydia was already there with a pass to room 577, Stacie's room.

“She called me,” I said as Lydia and I rode the elevator, which was large and, it seemed to me, slow. “She asked me to come. I don't know what happened.”

The doors opened on the fifth floor, we turned down the hall, and though when we found Stacie's room I still didn't know what had happened, I saw the result.

She was in the bed near the door; the other bed in the room was empty. As we entered she turned to us, her face so purple, so raw and swollen I almost didn't recognize her. Her eyes were black-ringed; one was shut completely. Her lip was split, a bandage on her head probably covered stitches on her scalp, and her right ear was taped and padded. All those earrings, I remembered.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey. Did I ever tell you how beautiful you are?”

“You know,” she said, “my dad just left. You should go find him and talk about your old school days.” Her voice was stronger than on the phone, and I felt my shoulders loosen.

“What happened?” I asked.

Stacie looked at Lydia, back at me.

“This is my partner,” I said. “Lydia Chin.”

“For real?” Stacie lifted her left hand to the hand Lydia extended. On her right a steel splint bound two fingers together.

“For real,” Lydia said.

“You're a private eye, too?”

“Yes.”

“Is it fun?”

“Right now I get the feeling it's better than being a reporter.”

Stacie grinned weakly, the grin I felt I knew well, though I'd only seen it for the first time yesterday. A tooth was missing from it, but the grin was the same. “Being a reporter can suck,” she said.

“Is that what this is about?” I asked. “Being a reporter?”

“I don't know,” Stacie said.

“What happened?”

“I was mugged.”

“Lots of people get mugged,” I said. “Some of them aren't reporters.”

From her one open eye Stacie shot me a look. “This was a guy in a goalie mask, like he was Jason or something.”

“Jason?”

“Jason,” Lydia filled me in. “From
Friday the Thirteenth
.”

Stacie moved her one-eyed gaze to Lydia. “Maybe I should talk to you.”

“No, go ahead and talk to Bill,” Lydia said. “I'll do the simultaneous translation.”

Lydia sat in the chair that, according to Stacie, Stacie's father had just vacated. I pulled one over for myself.

“Comfy?” Stacie asked when we were seated.

“Better than you, I bet,” I said.

“They just gave me a shot of Demerol. It's really nice.”

“You'll be asleep in a minute.”

“So be quiet and listen to what happened, then.”