My Brother's Keeper (23 page)

‘One big happy family.'

‘And you know the rest. They found William and Valerie dead. Called it a murder-suicide. And we all moved on.'

‘What happened to the kid?'

‘They got a new nanny to watch him while Brian and Franny were off honeymooning. A girl from the club. Her name was Mary Grace Flannery. We called her Gracie. The second she agreed to watch that kid she wanted for nothing. The crazy thing was that it was the old lady, Eleanor Haggerty, who arranged everything. Everything went through her – what school the kid went to, what kind of clothes he wore, music lessons, karate lessons. I never understood it. Her husband knocks up an exotic dancer and she shows more interest in the little bastard than she showed in her own son, like she was going to turn him into some kind of gentleman.'

‘Who else knew about all this?'

‘Some of the other girls probably knew: Gracie's friends. I heard her tell people the kid was her nephew. Before the murder we all assumed that Brian would end up divorcing Valerie anyway and he and Franny would raise the kid as their own. She seemed like she was all for it. Seemed like that type: a nice, clean girl from a cop family. I don't think Valerie cared one way or the other as long as she was getting paid.'

Candy reached for the glass of wine and accidentally knocked it off the table. The thin stem cracked cleanly in two and what little was left of the white wine formed a small clear puddle on the floor. The shattered glass seemed to draw its share of sideways glances from other tables in the room. Candy was obviously uncomfortable with the attention. The hostess caught the sound of it and sent a boy over to clean it up and it was gone almost before the echo of breaking glass stopped ringing in Lou's ears. The waitress took the opportunity to clear the table and ask if she could bring a carafe of fresh coffee.

‘So Franny was in?'

‘She was in. Even Brian Haggerty knew a good thing when he saw it.' She dusted a few crumbs off the white tablecloth with the back of her hand. ‘And neither of them told you a thing, not Jimmy or Franny?'

‘Why do you think that is?'

‘We all have our little secrets to keep, don't we?'

The waitress came back with a pot of coffee, three cups, a container of cream and packets of sugar. She began reciting from a list of desserts until they were all shaking their heads in unison like three stiff-necked bobble-head dolls on a bar-room shelf.

‘It was all just a big game, with Valerie Price on one end and Franny Patterson on the other.'

‘That's what the Haggertys do, Lou. They play with people's lives. They make their own rules. They make life fit their mold. A life to them is just something to be used.' Candy poured in the sugar and a little cream and stirred it noisily with a small silver spoon. ‘I used to drink my coffee black. Now I like it sweet. Maybe I'm getting spoiled.' She stirred the coffee absently while she seemed to contemplate the swirling liquid. ‘But you're right, Mr Klein. It was bound to blow up in their face.'

‘I take it you didn't buy the official story?'

‘William Haggerty wasn't the suicidal type and neither was Valerie. Homicidal? I can see that. It wasn't hard to believe they'd end up killing each other. But the stories in the papers and the police reports – all bullshit.'

‘So, you think Brian pulled the trigger and got away with it?'

‘I didn't say that. I don't like any of the Haggertys, Brian included, but I just don't picture him as a killer. He's got a lot of hate in him but there's something else. There's times he looks . . . defeated . . . broken, not like a guy who'd pick up a gun . . . more like someone who'd run away.'

‘Then who do you think killed them?'

‘My opinion?'

‘Unless you were there that's all you can give, right?'

‘That's right. If I had to guess, I'd say it was Eleanor Haggerty. That woman's got no conscience. I'm a good judge of men; maybe not as good a judge of women. But I think she's a ruthless bitch. If someone got in her way she'd find a way to get rid of them. She likes pulling strings from the background. And the only people she couldn't control were her husband and Valerie Price. I think she was pushed too far.'

‘By William's infidelities, you mean, and then the baby?'

‘This was a long time in the making, Mr Klein. We're not talking about six months here. We're talking about years. I was out of it by then but I stayed in touch with Gracie and she'd tell me about Valerie, about her behavior and her drinking. It was Valerie doing the pushing. She was living in the Haggerty house like a goddamn concubine, and if that wasn't bad enough she'd grab her son if the mood took her and parade him around the house, telling him stories about who he really was and how someday it would all be his. She'd even named the kid William. She was spitting in the face of all the Haggertys. She was playing with fire and she didn't care.'

Candy paused for a moment with the coffee cup still in her hand, looking over at the bar, at the line of men sitting there with their backs turned and their broad shoulders and expensive wool suits, gray and dark in the dim light, their conversation nothing but a low din like the engine of the taxis idling outside waiting for them to finish up their last drink and fall into the back seat for the slow ride home.

‘Gracie seemed to think she was working some kind of blackmail scheme. Always had a lot of cash on her; spending money like crazy. Spoiling the kid, sure. But spoiling herself worse.'

They were all silent for a minute. Lou looked up at the ceiling, at the dark wood of the exposed beams, at the bronze chandeliers hanging from six feet of twisted chain and at the black glass of the Palladian windows and the checkerboard shadow they cast across the floor as the occasional headlights passed in front of the Taurus Club, veering off at what seemed like the last minute.

‘Whatever happened to him? Where is he? He'd be almost twenty now.'

‘If he's still alive. I married Paul Vannero and got the hell out of Philly. Moved to the suburbs, changed my name and lived happily ever after. I wanted to forget that part of my life. I wouldn't be talking about it now if Joey hadn't called. I don't know what happened to Billy. Probably ran away if he knew what was good for him.'

Joey smiled and Lou winked at him and they all polished off a final sip of coffee.

‘Do you have children, Candace?'

Even in the darkness of that dining room her face seemed to droop a little at the question and then quickly stiffen. If she'd been taken off guard, it was only there to see for a fleeting second.

‘I'm nothing like those other women, Mr Klein. Not like Valerie Price or Eleanor Haggerty or the girls at the Arramingo Club. Half of them ended up dead because of an overdose. The other half spent the rest of their lives taking punches from some drunken cop, present company excluded. I saw the world for what it was and I wasn't going to bring a child into it if I couldn't raise it right. And I learned enough about myself to know I wouldn't have made a very good mother back then.'

‘How about now?'

‘Not a day goes by that I don't think about it. But it's too late now, isn't it? Much too late.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Don't be. I don't like pity, Lou. I've never been pitied by anyone in my life. I had my years in the spotlight. I was young and beautiful and had my pick of men from all over the city. My stage name was Arabesque. And believe me, I was a jaw-dropper.'

‘You're still gorgeous, Candy.'

‘Thanks, Joey.'

Candy got up and excused herself to the ladies' room. Lou called the waitress over and paid the bill. Candy came back but she didn't sit down and it was obvious that the dinner and the conversation were over. Both Lou and Joey began to stand but she waved them back into their seats, letting them know she'd prefer to leave alone and for them to wait a few minutes until she was gone.

‘Just one more question, Candy.'

‘What's that?'

‘Any idea where we can find Mary Grace Flannery?'

‘I haven't seen or heard from her in a long time. Last thing I knew she was living on Catherine Street in Grays Ferry. She's old-school Irish. That's where Haggerty found her and if I had to bet, I'd say she's still there.'

‘Thanks.'

Candy tucked her purse under her arm and walked away, her heels clicking lightly over the floor. Her calves were sleek and smooth with the black line of her stockings running down her leg from the back of her thigh to the top strap of her shoes.

‘Oh, Candy. You mentioned that you went by the name of Arabesque. What name did Valerie Price go under?'

Candy turned and smiled for the first time that night.

‘Sapphire. It was her birthstone.'

TWENTY-ONE

T
he front of the Taurus Club was quiet except for the occasional passing car. Lou stared at the mural of the tormented bull whose burning eyes seemed to follow his. Wilmington had become the kind of city that rolled up their streets soon after business hours, all those corporate types making a mass exodus to their suburban retreats. It seemed like the few left inside the Taurus Club needed some additional self-medication before going home to their wives and their children and the paradise that awaited them there.

The lights were out in all the office buildings on the block. Storefronts had gone dark. Across the street, the bank had locked its doors but on the concrete steps in front there was a strange assortment of homeless men setting up camp, wheeling their grocery carts from the darkness of the alley, using the long handicap ramp to the sidewalk. One of them stopped and unzipped his pants and began urinating in the fountain, red spotlights shining up on him from under the water, steam rising along with it. Lou watched him from across the street. There wasn't a cop in sight.

‘Where to?'

‘Grays Ferry.'

‘Back to the Seventeenth District?'

‘We cover a lot of territory, Joey. A lot of miles.'

‘Yeah, but it seems like we keep going over the same ground.'

‘It does work that way sometimes, doesn't it?'

Joey drove and Lou sat quietly in the passenger seat, the Wilmington skyline receding behind them and a lot of open road ahead. Philadelphia loomed in the distance, waiting for them just the way they left it with a light fog rolling in off the river, mixing with the industrial smoke and making it seem as if the sky itself was dropping down on top of them.

Lou looked at his watch. It was eight thirty. Neither of them said another word until they were crossing the South Street Bridge, looking out over the swollen river running black beneath them and then to Naval Square, where a condominium complex had replaced the old Navy Hospital. From the bridge, the attached units looked like cardboard cut-outs, like little green houses sitting side by side on a Monopoly board. They came off the ramp, Lou leaning into the long, sweeping turn, and stopped at the light in front of Callahan's.

‘Brings back memories.'

‘Yeah.'

Lou knew what memories Joey was talking about – memories of two rookie cops riding like young cowboys into hostile territory for the first time, memories of the chases and the fights and the murders and the dead bodies and the abandoned children and the house fires and the hold-ups. Memories of friends too, the friends they'd made in the most unlikely of places, friends that might even help them now if they were still around.

Larry Staples had been one of those friends.

He had an upholstery shop on 27th Street near Willow in Point Breeze. It had been Lou's first stop when he started walking the beat. Larry's door had always been open to him. Not that Larry ever locked his door, but his was an open door for two white cops when all the other doors in that neighborhood had been closed to them. They'd have their coffee in there when they were working the day watch and maybe a couple of shots of Hennessey when they were working nights. They could use Larry's phone to call their wives. They could eat lunch in there. They could read the paper and do crossword puzzles and get out of the rain.

Larry was also a wealth of information. He'd been around a long time and he knew things and he would hear things and he wasn't afraid to speak his mind. Not everybody in that neighborhood appreciated his candor. And then he was killed and suddenly everyone was his friend again. Lou wondered now, the way things were, whether Larry Staples was better off dead than alive.

The upholstery shop had been far enough down on 27th to put it in that border area where Grays Ferry and Point Breeze met. Dodging bullets had become an occupational hazard back then. It was like a war zone. And soon after Larry's death the shop had been boarded up like many of the storefronts in that neighborhood.

Lou remembered the last night he'd spent there with Larry. They'd been celebrating his eightieth birthday. Larry's son had called and wished him a belated happy birthday. He was still trying to convince Larry to move into a condominium complex out in Montgomery County, a little efficiency overlooking one of those mega-malls, with the Turnpike running behind it and round-the-clock security and an elevator in the building to take him up and down and a laundry room in the basement where he could slip and fall and not be found for days. For the first time in his life, Larry had been considering it.

Larry had a speckled, caramel-colored head and every time Lou had come through the door of the shop, the first thing he would see was Larry's bare dome, gleaming under a dotted coat of sweat. He'd be sitting behind the counter next to an old chair, turned over on its side with the stuffing all torn out. His eyes had a greenish tint to them that seemed to brighten with his quick smile. He'd inspect the marred wood and use a staple gun to secure the new material. Lou would watch him work from the other side of the counter. Then Larry would take out a bottle of Hennessey and set out a couple of glasses.