My Brother's Keeper (17 page)

Lou walked back around to the Arramingo Club and was met by the same two overgrown bouncers. They informed him that the bar was closed and that Mr Haggerty had decided to escort Angelica Divine home after her frightening ordeal. Haggerty hadn't mentioned when or if he'd be back. There was no sense in arguing. He'd already seen the alley. He didn't need to see it again.

The entrance to Interstate 95 was only a few blocks away and he was sailing along the highway within minutes. He thought about taking the scenic route, maybe jump on Torresdale Avenue and wind his way up through some of Philly's oldest neighborhoods. It would be like a trip through time, through some ancient ruin, the remnants of a lost city built ten thousand years ago by one of those primitive civilizations now doomed to extinction. But he knew what he'd find; more ghosts. And there was no sense in waking them now.

He decided on the interstate, preferring cold, flat pavement for as far as the eye could see, nothing in his way to slow him down, no stop lights, no speed limits, the world going by so fast it was reduced to a blur.

He waved a faint goodbye to Society Hill as he followed 95 north along the river, gliding past Fishtown and Port Richmond like they weren't even there. And soon Kensington was looming dark over his left shoulder, a lament of late-night sirens and screams rising like the agonizing cries that must have reached God's ears as the cities of men burned under his vengeful eye.

Lou crossed himself as he passed, one hand on the wheel and the other inches from his furrowed brow, saluting all those nights he'd spent there as a cop, standing over some crime scene on Lehigh and Allegheny, on Girard Avenue at 34th Street, streets with proud, historic names, streets with more murders to their name than he could count. And if these streets were somehow responsible for what happened on them, just as responsible as the men who had committed murder upon them, they'd draw the same death sentence. But nobody got put to death in Philadelphia these days. No electric chair, no lethal injection, no gas chamber, just a life sentence which meant they'd live to kill again.

Lou turned his head away and focused on the road, hoping this day's journey would soon be over. He was tired but he kept driving. He passed the Betsy Ross Bridge and thought how great it would be to take the exit into Jersey and roll into Pennsauken, see if Katz's Deli was still in business. He could drive past the old Capitol Theatre where he'd seen Neil Young in concert on a cold Halloween night over twenty years ago. It seemed like yesterday. He'd taken Franny Patterson. She'd only been out of high school a few years and Lou was a rookie patrolman and this would be their first date. They'd taken the train out of 30th Street Station with Franny dressed as the catwoman. She'd succeeded in convincing Lou to dress up as well.

He'd been a cop, of course, worn one of his father's old uniforms with a thick leather belt cinched tight around his waist and a French-blue polyester shirt that scratched his skin and a tarnished badge on his chest and a crumpled hat and a pair of heavy black boots with the trousers tucked inside and a plastic squirt gun wedged into the holster. Franny was in a black catsuit with a tail and gloves to her elbows and heels and a black mask. Coming home she'd sat on Lou's lap and he'd slid his hand along her leg, the thin material like a silken web over her warm skin. They had both gotten drunk and they had sex that night for the first time in Lou's car. He always suspected that Franny had told her brother all about it.

Interstate 95 continued north parallel to the Delaware River past Frankford and Holmesburg, Penny Pack Park directly underneath, the hardcore skateboarders still out dodging the cops as they would be well into the morning. The airport wasn't far away and the jets were circling like vultures, waiting for their turn to land.

Lou exited onto Academy, letting the car glide down the long ramp and through the green light at the bottom, past Reedy's Tavern, still going strong, a few patrons saying their drunken goodbyes on the corner. He drove past the vacant lot where Eden Hill Chapel had once stood before it was leveled by a city bulldozer just last year. Demolished in the name of progress and safety, city inspectors had said. Depended on your definition of progress, Lou thought. Progress in Torresdale was measured by how close it came to returning things to the way they were in the old days, better days. It was the same with so-called improvements in most of the city. But in Torresdale those better days hadn't been so long ago. They were still alive in the collective memory of its residents, most of them hanging around wondering where the hell they were when it got so bad.

Lou often wondered if Sister Paulette Mercedes would have considered it progress if she'd lived to see the demolition of her beloved chapel, if she hadn't been struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver on Cottman Avenue and dragged thirty feet and left to die in the middle of the street on her way to morning mass at St Matthews.

The whole city of Philadelphia mourned that day. And it had seemed like it wasn't just Sister Paulette they were mourning.

It was Captain Mike Mercy who'd picked up the case, Lou remembered. Mercy was a good cop but even he couldn't bring back the dead. The reward was 10G's for information on the maroon pick-up truck last seen rolling to a stop on Hawthorne, stopping just long enough to look in the rear-view mirror and see what was left of Sister Mercedes before it sped off. But the money wasn't enough. An off-duty fireman thought he'd seen the truck jumping onto Roosevelt Boulevard and that was the last anyone had ever heard. It was never seen again and no one was ever caught.

By the time Mercy had his press conference on the front steps of the Frankford-Torresdale Hospital, the vigil had already begun and the spot where she was killed was already laden with wooden crosses and candles and flowers and plastic dolls and Bibles and cards. And someone had claimed to see a vision of the Virgin Mary visiting that spot and that brought more people out, the pious and the orthodox, the grieved and the curious. The cops put up barricades at both ends of the street and posted an officer to stand there all night and the vigil continued through the day and the next night and wouldn't end until Sister Paulette Mercedes was laid to rest a week later at St Catherine's Cemetery.

East Torresdale amounted to a couple square miles of big brick homes clustered at the inner edge of Northeast Philadelphia and it seemed constantly under siege from the expanding wilderness to the south. These were houses occupied by the descendants of the same families that had built them a few generations before and had never left. They'd stayed out of stubbornness and they'd stayed out of pride. The signs of change were springing up all around them and they weren't easy to miss but they chose to ignore them. They were being told to get out while the getting was good, before their property became completely worthless. You didn't want to be the last one left standing in Torresdale.

But they had stayed and they'd compelled their children to take up the fight after them. What they couldn't admit to themselves was that their children didn't have the stomach for it; the children that sold to the highest bidder, the children that divided their parents' homes into apartment houses and showed up once a month to collect the rents.

Eleanor Haggerty was one of those that stayed. And though it was late, if Lou didn't find Brian Haggerty at home, he had every intention of speaking with his mother, even if he had to wake her up to do it.

He parked on the street and found the address. It was the kind of street where the porch lights stayed on all night as if the residents were afraid of the dark. There was a narrow driveway and a four-door, gold Mercury sitting in front of a detached garage. The garage door was closed and looked like it hadn't been opened in quite some time, used only for storage now, junk from the big house finding its way out the back door and into the garage where it was piled to the rafters.

Lou moved slowly up the front walkway. A couple of the slate tiles were loose and shifted under his feet. He rang the doorbell and listened for the echo of chimes behind the dark double door. He heard dogs barking inside. They sounded like small dogs, more than one, ankle-biters from the sound of them. He waited for what seemed like a very long time before he pushed the lighted button again. The wind had picked up, blowing the brown dead leaves down the driveway and into the street in a swirling torrent. A cold drizzle had started as well, a light misting rain that didn't seem to be falling but was suspended in the air. A first-floor light came on and there was movement through the sheer curtains and the bolt turned and he was standing face-to-face with a very old woman in a blue housecoat and thinning white hair.

Lou's first impression was that Mrs Eleanor Haggerty was not the kind of woman that carried her age like an infirmity. She was in possession of years in the same way she owned her house and she was just as solid and rooted and unyielding. Other than stern annoyance, it was a countenance that gave away nothing. Square and stiff and pale like marble and, though it was closing in on midnight, she did not appear to have lost any of her energy. Her housecoat was royal blue and dripping with sequins that caught the light and seemed to flow over her like a waterfall. She seemed the kind of woman who valued precious stones, who preferred to keep her jewels always within reach as some women preferred to keep their children. She stopped the dogs barking with one quick look.

‘Mrs Haggerty . . . I'm very sorry to disturb you this late. I was hoping to talk to you . . . about your daughter-in-law. It is important. And it affects your son as well. I don't know if you heard what happened tonight.'

‘And you are?'

‘Louis Klein. I'm a friend of the family.'

‘A friend of the family? If you were a friend of the family, I think I would know it.'

‘I'm sorry. I meant the Patterson family.'

‘Well, then I'm sure you know that Frances hasn't lived in this house for some time now. A friend of the family would know that as well, Mr – what did you say your name was? I'm getting so bad with names.'

Lou looked at Eleanor Haggerty and wondered if he hadn't made a mistake, wondering where she got off speaking to him as if she were scolding a small child and if she spoke to everyone like that. It was the privilege of age, he suspected, her belief that she knew that much more about life than he did. What could she have possibly learned about life behind these brick walls, Lou asked himself? He'd learned his lessons the hard way, not having locked himself away as Eleanor Haggerty seemed to have done, guarding herself jealously as if she was a national treasure.

‘My name is Klein, Mrs Haggerty. I'm also a private detective. I knew Franny's brother, Jimmy. We worked together a long time ago at the Philadelphia Police Department. Jimmy Patterson is dead, Mrs Haggerty. He was shot and killed just a few hours ago. He died on my front porch and I'd like to find out why.'

‘I can't imagine how I can help you, Mr Klein. I barely knew the man.'

‘A few minutes of your time, that's all I ask.'

‘Well, if you'd like to come in, I suppose I could spare a few moments. My husband was always a great supporter of the police in this city. But of course, maybe that was somewhat before your time.' She stepped aside and ushered him in with a wave of her hand. ‘On second thought, I think maybe you're somewhat older than you look. Am I right?'

She smiled a very full, very perfect smile, her false teeth like pearls in her mouth. The two Scottish terriers hovered behind her and then jumped up onto a love seat, curling up and watching her like a captive audience.

‘About my age, Mrs Haggerty? Or about what I know about your husband?'

She laughed heartily. It was a man's laugh, with her mouth open wide like a man who'd already had too much to drink and planned on having a few more before the night was over, a few more drinks and a few more laughs.

Lou had followed her into a dimly lit parlor where he sat at her direction in a wide-set, round-backed chair. The furniture appeared to be antique, the upholstery a pattern of pink roses clinging to a faded green vine and swirling in an off-white sky of marshmallow clouds. It still smelled brand new. She took her time parading around the room, switching on a few oversized table lamps of frosted glass and gold stitched shades. She sat adjacent to him on a long, low couch with her arm slung across the back and her legs crossed, making a show of it, posing in the manner of a much younger woman.

SIXTEEN

‘
W
hat do you know about my husband, Mr Klein?'

‘Mostly what I've heard.'

‘What you've heard. The things people say, I assure you, are based largely on rumor. You make assumptions about a man from the things you've heard, what you've read in the papers. Believe me, it's false. Exaggerations, fairy tales to whet the public's appetite. Nothing more.'

‘I didn't come here to pass judgment on your husband. As you say, I'd prefer to hear the truth from you. I don't believe everything I hear, Mrs Haggerty, any more than you do.'

‘I seem to find myself defending my husband's reputation out of habit, even when it's not called for. Perhaps I'm just a self-indulgent old woman.' She paused for a second, her eyes fixed on a portrait of William Haggerty hanging over the fireplace in a heavy gold frame. He seemed to be staring back at her with a pair of cold gray eyes. ‘Maybe a bit defensive, too. But I have the right to be.'

‘It sounds like you loved your husband very much, regardless of the rumors. Sounds to me like you still love him.'

‘Controversy comes with the territory.' She rose and took a long time walking across the room to a service table where bottles of liquor in a collection of crystal decanters lined up in a neat row. She set out a couple of glasses and a couple of linen napkins and started to pour. ‘Brandy?'