Slipping Into Darkness (12 page)

 

Stick him.
Hoolian’s mind turned red.
Just take those scissors and jam them right in there, before he knows what hit him.
He pictured the doorman falling to his knees with his hand clapped to the side of his neck and blood gushing out between his fingers. But then the yowl of a passing police siren brought him back to his senses.

 

“Let me at least say good-bye to the lady,” he said, struggling for control.

 

“Just wave.” The doorman, blocked him. “She’ll get the idea.”

 

Hoolian raised his hand to wave. But Miss Powell already had her eyes closed and her face turned back up to the sun, retreating into Sweet Sixteen dreams of swan ice sculptures, bands playing “Rhapsody in Blue” in the living room, and young men with white dinner jackets and pomaded hair who appreciated a well-executed arabesque.

 

 

10

 

 

 

I
T’S TEN O’CLOCK.
Do you know where your children are?”

 

Just as the local news was starting, the former Miss Patti D’Angelo of Brooklyn walked into the living room of her Carroll Gardens row house and found her husband, Francis X., sprawled in the BarcaLounger with an ice pack on his knee.

 

“What happened to you?”

 

“Goddamn coffee table,” he grumbled. “Banged myself on it, going for the phone before.”

 

“Who was calling?”

 

“Nobody. I picked it up and there was just dead air.”

 

“Hmm. Maybe one of your old girlfriends stalking you.”

 

She eyed the ice pack and perched on the arm of his chair. Probably thinking he’d fallen off the wagon, the way he kept knocking into things lately. He knew he’d have to set her straight eventually, but every time he tried to imagine The Conversation his mind stalled out.

 

She’d be compassionate. She’d be concerned. She’d go to the library and do research on the Internet. She’d get on all the listservs. She’d start making phone calls about getting him into the appropriate programs and clinics for people with his condition. She’d find out what the best kind of cane was and where support groups met. And he’d hate it. Because it would be the beginning of pity.

 

“So how was your day?” she asked, massaging the knotted muscles in the back of his neck.

 

“Complicated.”

 

“Oh?”

 

He felt guilty, naturally. They’d been trying to talk more lately. Neither of them wanted to have one of those traditional “don’t ask, don’t tell” cop marriages anymore, where they never got into what he did all day. She’d been in the game a little herself, five years as a prosecutor, so she didn’t necessarily freak out if he happened to mention something about blood spatter, stippling, or septicemia. Twenty-two years they’d been together, two kids, over the river and through the woods, down into the Valley of Shadows and out into the sun again, sometimes even for vacations in Cancún. And here he was, sitting too close to the TV screen, a lump the size of a Ping-Pong ball throbbing on his knee, not telling her about the most important thing that had happened to them since the kids were born.

 

“Fuckin’ old case, coming up again,” he said. “They let Julian Vega out early.”

 

“Seriously?”

 

“Here. What’m I, lying?”

 

He used the remote to turn up the volume. Roseanna Scotto throwing it over live with a swooshing noise to Lisa Evers standing across the street from 1347 Lexington.

 

“Roseanna, they say everything old is new again, and here on the Upper East Side, memories of a notorious murder case are being revived. . . .”

 

“It’s ridiculous,” Francis said, talking over her. “They overturned the conviction because his lawyer didn’t tell him he had the right to testify. Like that’s anybody else’s problem.”

 

“So you’re upset.”

 

“Damn straight. I put a lot of work into that case.”

 

There was a quick cut and Debbie Aaron’s face filled the screen, drawn and severe against a background of tilting law books on a sagging shelf.

 

“This is a classic example of the police abusing their authority,” she was saying. “The detectives in charge of this investigation settled on my client as a suspect before they investigated any other leads. . . .”

 

“See? That’s what pisses me off.” Francis waved his hand, glad to have somewhere else to direct all this agita. “She knows she doesn’t have a real case, so she’s just running her mouth. . . .”

 

“She looks good, Deb.” Patti straightened her back. “I don’t think she’s had any work done.”

 

“You look better.”

 

“Hmmp.” She ran her fingers through her highlights and gave him a four-beat stare.

 

“They made the facts fit the case against him,” Deb was telling the camera.

 

“Bullshit,” said Francis.

 

“You know, she can’t hear you.” Patti squeezed the back of his neck.

 

“And a number of highly irregular things happened in this investigation that need to be looked into,” Deb said just as the screen switched to file footage from twenty years ago. “There’s been a gross miscarriage of justice.”

 

Francis watched the doors of the 19th Precinct swing open and saw himself at twenty-nine again, perp-walking Hoolian past the assembled cameras and microphones.

 

It looked so different from this angle. At the time, it was this unambiguous moment of triumph: Coming out of a grueling marathon in the box with an incriminating statement. Making up for his stint on the Farm by breaking the biggest case of the year. The Old Man himself, years from the grip of Alzheimer’s, trundling along behind him, shooting the Turk an “I told ya so” grin.
So why do I look like I’m the fucking skell?
Francis asked himself.
I did all right. I went over the wall and made it back in one piece. I did my job. I made someone pay.
But there he was on the screen, tie askew, shirttail coming out, dog-faced and disheveled, as if he were the one with something to hide. Hadn’t he watched this exact same footage twenty years ago, on a smaller Sony screen, with Patti four months pregnant and Francis Jr. still sleeping in the crib? And hadn’t she leaned over, kissed him, and told him how proud she was?

 

And then here was Hoolian again, with his hands cuffed behind his back and his St. Crispin’s blazer bunched up around his shoulders. In his mind’s eye, Francis remembered the kid flashing a ferrety little smirk, as if he were sure he was going to beat this case somehow. But watching it now, Francis saw the little wispy mustache jerk up, revealing a pair of oversize front teeth, and he realized the boy had just been scared.

 

“He was so young,” said Patti. “I forgot that.”

 

“Didn’t stop him from staving that poor girl’s face in.”

 

“I’m just saying it’s surprising. He looks so sweet.”

 

He caressed her thigh. Unlike Debbie A. and Paul Raedo, Patti wasn’t a good hater. Never had the talent for it like other prosecutors. Because at heart, she was a
nice
person, a former fat girl who just wanted people to like her. Instead of riding out to grisly triple homicides on East 125th Street at four in the morning, she’d spent most of these past two decades mastering the art of forgiveness, immersing herself in child rearing, nurturing friendships, healthy diets, home improvements, and eventually a happening little career for herself as a personal trainer for corporate CEOs in Manhattan. In short, living what normal people called
a life
.

 

On the screen, there was a cut to Paul Raedo, his bristly scalp flexing in earnest concern, giving the official line from the DA’s office. “Our only comment right now is that the original jury made their decision based on the evidence and we feel confident that will be borne out.”

 

“So are they going to dismiss the indictment?” Patti spoke over him, never having been much of a Raedo aficionado.

 

“Fuck no. He got twenty-five to life. He should do the whole bid.”

 

“What are you, the Ayatollah Khomeini?” She drew back. “You got twenty years out of this kid. Isn’t that enough?”

 

“Hey, I didn’t come up with that sentence. The judge and jury looked at the same facts I did. I’m just making sure no one forgets who the victim was here.”

 

“So, what, you’re going to try the whole case all over again?”

 

“Well . . .”

 

He was distracted, seeing Debbie A. given the last word. “The tragedy is a young man lost his freedom for something he didn’t do.”

 

He lowered the volume with the remote. “What am I supposed to do? Stand there, smiling, while somebody calls me a lying sack of shit?”

 

“What do you care? I thought you were retiring as soon as you got the bump to First Grade in April.”

 

He hesitated, not wanting to bring up the whole ugly threat of liability that Paul raised this morning. “I just want to make sure I don’t leave any loose ends lying around.”

 

“Why? You going off somewhere without telling me?”

 

“Nah, I just . . .” He started to rub his eyes and then stopped himself. “Forget about it, Patti. All right? Just never mind.”

 

She got up. “If you’re working this case again, I hope I’m not going to have to cancel Thanksgiving in Florida. I already put a security deposit on the condo, and Kayleigh is coming down from Smith with a friend.”

 

“I’m sure it’ll be done by then.”

 

She started out of the room. “Frankie called on the satellite phone before you came home.”

 

“Yeah?” He twisted around. “How’s he doing?”

 

“Tells me everything except what I need to know. Just like his father. Far as I can tell, though, no one’s talking about sending him over yet.”

 

“Fucking kid’ll be the death of me. I hope he’s satisfied.”

 

“I’m going to bed,” she sighed, not up for the argument. “Maybe I’ll see you there. I’ll be the one in the flimsy nightgown.”

 

“Yeah, I’ll be up in a little while.”

 

He watched her go and changed the position of the ice pack on his knee.

 

So here we are.
He picked up the remote and switched to the Yankees game. Mariano Rivera mopping up against the Red Sox, another old rivalry coming around again. The Curse of the Bambino. He watched for half an inning and found he couldn’t concentrate from one pitch to the next. He changed the channel and found himself watching Iraq coverage on
Fox News Live
. “America at War” and the flag, in the lower right-hand corner. Tanks in the streets of Baghdad, another convoy attacked in the desert, and still no weapons of mass destruction.
And this is where they want to send my son.

 

Not much to put a troubled mind at ease there. He switched to
Star Trek
for a while. Captain Kirk strutting around with his stomach hanging out on that same Styrofoam planet, romancing green-skinned women in the days before he started playing a cop on
T. J. Hooker.
“The Cage.” Wasn’t that the show he’d talked about with Hoolian, way back when? Except the kid said it was Jeffrey Hunter playing the captain of the
Enterprise.
Wasn’t that the same guy from
The Searchers
helping John Wayne track down the girl who’d been kidnapped by the Indians?

 

All right, now you’ve strayed a little too far off the reservation yourself, Loughlin.
He turned off the set and sat there, contemplating the silence.

 

His eyes roamed toward the bookshelves he’d built a couple of years ago, scanning the unbroken spines of volumes he’d been collecting for all that leisure reading he was going to do after he retired. Now it dawned on him that one day in the not-too-distant future he’d have to decide which of them would be the last book he’d ever read. He looked for a likely candidate. Shelby Foote on Gettysburg. Stephen Ambrose on D-Day. Or his new main man, Ernest Shackleton on the
Endurance.
Stubborn bastard after his own heart. Tried to lead a crew to Antarctica and wound up with a ship crushed to matchsticks in the ice. That was some ballsy call he made, jumping in a lifeboat with five other guys, to try and get help over eight hundred miles of glaciers and hurricane-swept waters. To Francis, the miracle wasn’t just that he managed to save every man but that he somehow made it across all that blank space without losing his mind.

 

Jesus, he could use a drink here.

 

He listened to the ticking of the kitchen clock. His thoughts breaking apart and rearranging themselves. He should turn in his papers tomorrow. He should keep acting like nothing was wrong. He should see another doctor and get a second opinion. The ticking became the tapping of a cane on pavement. Some day crossing Union Street would be as hard as crossing Antarctica. Except instead of dying trying to reach the South Pole, he’d probably just get hit by a car like his mother on the Grand Concourse.

 

Now there’s a happy thought!

 

Where did he see that half-empty vodka bottle the other day anyway? Wasn’t it gathering dust somewhere near the boiler in the basement, waiting to be thrown out? He didn’t need to get a buzz on. Just a couple of fingers in the old Grateful Dead mug, to take the edge off a little.

 

Nah, don’t be such a fucking morose self-pitying bastard, Francis. The old man went that way and look where it got him. He’d done better than that, hadn’t he? At least for most of the past twenty years he had. Laying off the drink, devoting himself to the family, above reproach on the Job, the kind of cop you’d want handling the case if your best friend got killed. So why were his eyes turning into a couple of useless orbs? Was this payback for something specific or just the general taint of Original Sin?

 

He’d always had a kind of rough give-and-take with the Higher Authority, more or less getting walloped every time he lapsed. After his mother died, he figured it must have been his fault somehow, maybe because he hadn’t prayed enough when she’d asked him to, so he’d tried to do penance. Five years as an altar boy kept the rest of the family in good health, he figured. But then he’d backslid in tenth grade, deciding it was all a bunch of shit, so he might as well become a dope-smoking moron. Until a car accident on the Major Deegan left his sister in a neck brace and put the fear of God back into him.