My Brother's Keeper (30 page)

‘You sound like Eleanor Haggerty now.'

‘Don't say that. It's not true. You can't blame him for what he is. Kids like that are created, Lou. They're not born that way.'

‘He's not a kid anymore. He's a grown man.'

‘You don't know him like I do. He's still a kid. That same little kid on the inside. He could have been my little brother.'

‘A kid that put a gun to the head of his mother and grandfather.'

‘Someone put that gun in his hand, Lou. Someone poisoned his mind. Whatever he is, whatever he did, it was because of Eleanor Haggerty. God only knows what she told him. You don't know what he saw in that house.'

‘What about Valerie Price? She had a role to play.'

‘I don't blame Valerie.'

‘You were trying to help him, weren't you? Undo the damage Eleanor had done. You were the only one.'

‘I think he knew that. That's why I never felt threatened by him. I don't think he wanted to hurt me.'

‘You might have been that boy's only hope, Franny. You did all you could. But you couldn't fix him no matter what you did.'

Franny pushed the button on the side of the bed and slowly reclined until she was staring up at the ceiling, at a glossy coat of fresh paint and rows of fluorescent lights. Her eyes closed for a moment.

‘You're wrong, Lou. I could have done more. I could have prevented Jimmy from being killed. It was my fault and Tony's right to blame me.'

‘You need to rest, Franny. We can talk more tomorrow.'

‘No, Lou. I want you to hear it. I want you to know the truth.'

She ran the point of her tongue over her dry, chapped lips. The doctor had told her that she needed to keep drinking, even with the bag of saline dripping continuously into the plastic tubing that carried it, clear and cool, to the bruised and bulging veins of her motionless left arm. She held out the plastic pitcher and asked Lou to refill it with water and ice. He returned with the pitcher and poured her a fresh cup and she seemed to recover her voice, wetting her lips with slow, lingering sips.

‘I let Billy stay in the shed behind our house. He didn't have anywhere else to go. I never told Jimmy. I wanted to but I never did. I knew what he'd say, or so I thought. He'd been back there for a couple of months.'

‘Jimmy and I spent a few nights in that shed ourselves. Kept our beer back there. As I recall I might have tried to get you back there a few times.'

‘Don't joke, Lou. I don't want anybody to be nice to me, especially you. I don't deserve it.' She put down the cup and covered her eyes. ‘I should have seen it coming. Billy seemed angrier every time I saw him. He was out of control. He overheard a conversation between me and Jimmy. We were standing on the driveway. I told him to forget about the ring. I told him to forget about Valerie Price, that once it touched her finger it was cursed. Brian got his hands on it after Valerie was killed and it ended up on my finger. I didn't want it but Jimmy liked the idea. It was kind of like the ring had come back to him. Billy must have heard everything we said.'

‘About his mother? And the ring?'

‘About everything.' Franny's eyes came up to meet Lou's. ‘I didn't see him for a few days after that. I took some food out to him. He never touched it. I thought he was gone for good. He'd disappeared before, sometimes for months on end. Then I came home late the other night, the same day I spoke to you, and he came at me in the dark. Jimmy must have heard me scream and came out of the house with his gun. I heard a few shots before I passed out.'

‘Then why do you say it wasn't Sapphire that shot Jimmy?'

‘I was conscious long enough to see someone else there. It was Brian. It was his face I saw looking down at me.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘I'm pretty sure, Lou. I wasn't dreaming.'

‘Well then, Mitch got his man. Brian was arrested earlier this morning at the Arramingo Club. After Billy Sapphire burned it down.'

The room had suddenly become much warmer with the sun climbing slowly higher in the sky and coming through the window in waves of yellow light. The flowers that had been accumulating along the window sill were beginning to droop in their fanciful bouquets as if they'd grown parched with no one to water them.

Lou filled a cup of water from the pitcher and poured it into one of the flower pots. He repeated the procedure until he'd watered them all.

Through the thick glass he could hear the birds outside, singing and diving toward the window and turning away at the last minute. They must see their own reflection, Lou thought, and their acrobatics are just showing off, a dangerous mating dance they performed only for themselves.

‘Did you ever wish you could go back in time, Lou? Go back and change something, a decision that affected your entire life. Change directions. Did you ever wish you could just go back and change everything?'

‘I'm tired, Franny. If I could sleep for a solid week, I'd feel ten years younger.'

‘There isn't anything you'd like to change?'

‘There's a lot I'd change, Franny. I just don't know, given the chance, that I'd be able to change anything.'

‘You could try.'

‘I could.'

Lou pulled open the door and hung in the doorway, his eyes searching the ground, never very good at saying goodbye.

‘Lou, tomorrow is Jimmy's funeral. I was hoping you'd come with me. I think Jimmy would like that.'

‘Me, too.'

‘Don't be gone too long, Lou. Please.'

TWENTY-SEVEN

L
ou didn't remember much about the ride to Torresdale. He'd lost track of time, the world around him moving in flashes; people and cars, laundromats and nail salons, pizza shops and used car lots, funeral homes, a karate studio, a beauty parlor, a gas station, an insurance office. And bars. Too many bars. They went by in a blur, an urban landscape seared into his exhausted unconscious. He pulled in front of the Haggertys' house, thinking of the many secrets concealed behind those brick walls and curtained windows, the ones he knew and the ones he'd never know.

Eleanor Haggerty had seemed content to keep her secrets hidden. If Billy Sapphire was here he wasn't coming out and Lou wasn't getting in.

He pressed the lighted button on the door and listened to the chimes tolling inside, eight congruent notes, evenly spaced as if they'd originated with some vociferous child at the piano, repeating the first four notes he'd ever learned, performing the same basic passage over and over again on his grandmother's baby grand until she'd finally come down the stairs and ordered him to stop.

Now he waited, his arm throbbing in the sling. The flat thwack of the deadbolt sliding back sounded like a shot.

Eleanor Haggerty opened the door about a foot and peered at him through her thick gold-framed glasses. She was wearing the same light blue quilted housecoat. It was zipped up to her neck where she held it fast. She wore the same padded slippers and was pushing the blue-gray hair back on one side of her head and adjusting her hearing aid, its petulant whine ebbing reluctantly. She removed her hand from her ear, unable to conceal her irritation.

‘Most people call first, Mr Klein. They don't just drop by unannounced.'

‘I'm looking for Billy Sapphire. Is he here?'

‘What happened to your arm? You look injured.'

‘Is he here?'

‘I have no idea what you're talking about. Is this a police matter? You go around acting like a cop, but you're not.'

‘You like to keep reminding me of that. What difference does it make?'

‘Well, someone needs to remind you. You have no right to take the law into your own hands. You can't stick your nose in where it's not wanted. Last time I heard, it takes a warrant for that. As a matter of fact, I think I'll give the chief a call and maybe he'll send a couple of his men over to visit you. See how you like it.'

‘As long as they call first.'

‘You think you're smart, don't you?'

‘Smart enough to see through the lies of a very mean, selfish and greedy old woman.'

‘I am very old. I thought maybe you'd forgotten that.'

‘And smart enough to know when I'm being deceived as well.'

‘You don't know anything. What gives you the right? Because you were a cop? That makes you nothing but a cheap public servant. Name calling is all you know.'

‘No more games, Mrs Haggerty. Where is he?'

‘Is that what you do? Go around looking for missing persons? And what if they don't want to be found? Do you bring them in dead or alive? And don't you have to be hired by someone? I can't believe anyone is actually paying you to be such a nuisance.'

‘Jimmy Patterson hired me.'

‘Jimmy Patterson is dead.' The wind whistled through the open doorway and Eleanor Haggerty pulled her housecoat tighter around her wrinkled neck. ‘For your information, I've been instructed by my attorney not to speak with you. You're familiar with Warren Armstrong; I'm sure you boys have tangled in the past.' She coughed roughly, the wind taking her breath away for a second. ‘Isn't that the way you'd put it?'

‘Warren Armstrong won't be able to protect you.'

‘What makes you think I need protection?'

‘Billy Sapphire will turn on you. Mark my words. You're the meddling nose he'll need to cut off to spite his face. I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.'

‘Is that why you're here, then? To save me from my grandson.'

‘Is that what he is?'

‘I think you better go, Mr Klein.'

‘Did you know that even the best-trained police dogs have been known to bite their masters? It usually comes after repeated stress. It's their nature. They can't help it.'

‘Well, whatever bit you on the shoulder seems to have sunk his teeth in pretty deep. It looks like you're bleeding.'

Lou looked down and saw that the blood had indeed begun leaking through the bandage, turning the white gauze to a dull rust. He only noticed now that he was shivering again. His cell phone began vibrating in his pocket. He'd almost forgotten it was there and had a little difficulty fishing it out. It was Mitch.

‘Where you at?'

‘Haggerty's, if you must know.'

‘Well, Haggerty got bailed out a little while ago. But he didn't make it very far.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘We're at Fifteenth and Lombard. Not far from City Hall. So there's quite an audience.'

‘We?'

‘Half the fucking Philadelphia Police Department. Got ourselves a little standoff. You know all the players. I figure your presence might come in handy. Looks like this is going to be the final act, Lou.'

‘I'm on my way.'

‘Hey, Lou. Step on it.'

A command post had been set up on Lombard Avenue about a half block from the scene. All police activity would be coordinated from there. They'd run the show from inside a large rectangular van filled with radios, transmitters, riot gear and a fully equipped arsenal. There was a satellite dish on the roof and a row of spotlights that could light the street like it was Veterans Stadium. Lou thought it looked like the bread truck that delivered hoagie rolls to Carlino's every morning on Brookline Boulevard.

Cops had positioned themselves behind parked cars and in the vestibules of buildings and began moving along both sides of the street. Their guns were drawn as they moved past a dark green Ford sedan angled awkwardly in the middle of the road. It appeared to have been in a collision with a blue Corvette. A news chopper hovered overhead. There were two bodies, a male and female, sprawled on the ground. They looked dead.

Lou spotted Mitch following behind the squadron of police. They were headed toward Judy Garland Park.

‘Glad you could make it. Hey, what the hell happened to you?'

‘Rotator cuff.'

‘How'd you get that?'

‘Wiping my ass.'

‘Looks like you'll just have to use your other hand.'

‘What I miss?'

‘That's your friend Brian Haggerty out there bleeding all over my nice clean street. Not sure who the woman next to him is. We're thinking one of the girls from the club. This thing came in as a traffic accident. Then shots fired. Witnesses report seeing a woman in a red dress, a tall blonde running toward the park. Had a gun in her hand. Could be some kind of lover's triangle.'

‘Is that your assumption?'

‘You got a better idea?'

‘How long you going to wait it out?'

‘I ain't callin' the shots on this one, Lou. I'm sure Captain Linker is sitting in that van right now sipping a hot coffee and scratching his balls. He'll pull the plug as soon as he gets tired of paying all these guys overtime.'

‘Witnesses see anything else?'

‘They all say the same thing. This Ford comes out of nowhere and cuts off the Corvette. A blonde jumps out and she's got a gun in her hand. One guy says she looks like a high-priced call girl: short red dress, sequins, high heels, lots of pearls around her neck, a lot of blonde hair all done up, make-up, the works. Pumps about six slugs into Haggerty and does the same to his girlfriend. She gets back in her car and the thing won't start. She just sits there for a while, puts on a fresh coat of lipstick and makes for the park.'

‘You sure it's Haggerty?'

‘Tags on both cars come back to Haggerty, William Haggerty. The media had it as fast as we did and they're already running with it. The Arramingo Club burns and Haggerty gets iced. Not bad, huh?'

It was closing in on lunch time, late morning of a fairly sunny day in Philadelphia that brought a great many suits and skirts out from behind their concrete enclosures and mirrored glass windows and computer screens. They hit the street hoping to blow the dust off and instead found out just how cold it still was even with the sun shining in their faces. From Lou's vantage point, they all looked the same, clad in the same dark sunglasses, talking into cell phones, all of them annoyed that they'd been detoured by another inner-city crime scene. Annoyed at the cops for telling them what side of the street to walk on. It was for their own personal safety, they'd said. Yeah, right.