Nightbird (18 page)

Anthony Ryan remembered how his father loved to tell that story, always embarrassing his serious, liberal son. But he taught
Anthony about a world he came to love: the rich ethnic and racial heritage of the city. Anthony became a regular in the Hollow,
a tight community inhabited by proud carpet millworkers, immigrants from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. Good people,
Kieran assured his wife, who’d look out for a small child no matter what neighborhood he’d come from.

The Sunday bells of Holy Trinity echoed throughout the cemetery. He was sure the bells came from Holy Trinity because three
churches in the neighborhood, all within blocks of each other, carried that name. The Catholic church, the Episcopalian, and
the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic with its endless name and impressive minarets. As kids they’d called it the “onion” church.
Three churches with the same name in the tight neighborhood he once roamed, where nobody had money but everyone had food to
share and muscle to loan.

Anthony was always struck by the cleanliness of the Hollow, every front stoop scrubbed daily by the woman of the house, on
her hands and knees. He remembered the unintelligible calls of produce vendors pulling their own carts, and the iceman, the
rag man, the scissors grinder. Yonkers was a city of neighborhoods, each a world unto itself. He could have passed this on
to his own son. It would have been so easy. The stories were in his heart and on the tombstones around him.

In 1954 the sprawling carpet shop abandoned Yonkers for cheap labor in Mississippi, as if they owed nothing to this city of
hills. It signaled a death knell. With the loss of the city’s largest employer, the Hollow and other neighborhoods began to
self-destruct. Now only a few stubborn old women scrubbed the stoops every day. The Hollow A.C. and all the other clubs were
gone. The old women stayed indoors at night.

Ryan wondered whether the neighborhoods would have held on if the carpet shop had stayed. Would the children of the millworkers
not have fled? He wondered, if he had passed down the old Yonkers stories to his own son, would he have learned to love this
funky town between Manhattan and the real suburbs? If Rip Ryan had known that the mile-long factory across the street once
wove carpet for the coronation of a Russian czar, maybe he wouldn’t have gone west to find his own life and death on the floor
of a bleak Utah canyon. But, as the Great Joe Gregory said, reasoning like that was thinking through your ass.

After all these years, Anthony Ryan was again a regular in the Hollow. Around him were other regulars, mostly women carrying
watering cans from the spigot, clipping tall grass around a tombstone, lining the stone with flags and small plastic statues
of saints and angels. He returned a wave from a woman tending the grave of her husband, Stan, dug twenty years earlier. Ryan
considered his wave to be progress.

The grief experts said it took eighteen months to two years. Six months ago he couldn’t have lifted his head without tears.
Six months ago he was still angry with God. Now he was closer to God than ever and prayed to him to take care of his son.
This was progress. He knew that in twenty years he wouldn’t be here every day clipping and watering.

The world has become too mobile, Ryan thought. It’s too easy to move away to a place where the sun is warm but the history
belongs to others. Away from home it becomes too easy to sit by the pool and forget we’re responsible for each other. Responsible
not only to connect the dots of each other’s lives by passing down stories, but to protect the old, the sick, our children,
and the children of others who move away to find their own history. Despite our parochial stupidity, we have a contract here.

Ryan’s mind was filled with questions about his son’s death. The events of that day were still not clear to him, but maybe
that was best. He knew if he allowed his natural suspicion to overwhelm him, he’d be on a plane to Utah. He had to trust in
his brother officers in Utah, all cops and fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers. They were good and decent people, and he trusted
them to act as his surrogate.

Leigh Ryan worried that the circumstances of the Gillian Stone case were too similar to their own nightmare. But this was
not about similarities to Anthony; all deaths were different. To him it was about responsibility. It was about looking out
for your neighbor’s child, no matter how far he or she has come. Trey Winters should have looked out for Gillian Stone. He
hadn’t. When that happened, cops had to step in and become surrogate fathers.

Although he hadn’t held Gillian Stone in his arms at birth, he’d held her at her death. God had delivered this young woman
into his arms for a purpose, and that made her his child. Gillian Stone’s departing spirit had understood that when she’d
made him hear the words “I love you.”

He took a small set of NYPD collar numerals from his pocket. The brass forty-eight identified his rookie precinct. During
the time he wore those numbers on his collar, his life was full of stories. Stories he should have told before now. He pushed
the numbers into the dirt.

T
he ferry rocked gently as Joe Gregory blew a smoke ring that floated in the twilight over the Hudson River. The sounds of
a dance band drifted out from the main room. Through grimy windows Danny could see Anthony and Leigh Ryan clinging to each
other, moving across the floor in slow motion.

“What were you and Aunt Leigh cooking up before?” Danny said. “Looked like a pretty heavy-duty conversation.”

“We’re running away to the islands,” Gregory said. “She’s dying to see me in a Speedo. Now quit changing the subject and finish
telling me about Evan Stone.”

Danny took a big swig of his gin, though Gregory had warned him that the juniper berry made you crazy. Gregory held a cigar
in one hand, a glass in the other. He sipped Irish whiskey and gazed at the city. Sunday quiet, and glittering.

“He was all apologetic,” Danny said. “The guy really felt bad about hitting me.”

“Okay, let’s go over it again: All you said was, ‘I’m Danny Eumont from New York,’ and he hits you. Did he say why?”

“He said he thought I was someone else.”

“Like who, for instance? Who would he punch at a funeral?”

“How should I know? A business associate, some asshole golfing buddy who pissed him off.”

“That don’t sound kosher,” Gregory said. “Not for nothing, but people at funerals are on their best behavior. If everyone
always acted like they were at a funeral, this would be a better world, guaranteed.”

It’s no wonder cops are as paranoid as they are, Danny thought. After a lifetime spent suspecting everyone and everything.
Side by side, elbows on the boat’s rail, they exchanged opinions on the resurrection of the New York waterfront. The big-shouldered
Gregory dwarfed Danny as they passed the new sports piers off Thirty-eighth Street.

“So after all the bullshit,” Gregory said, “Stone didn’t even give you anything useful.”

“All he said was Gillian was doing fine until Faye Boudreau came to New York.”

“Well, he certainly wasn’t going to say anything negative about his little angel. Parents are always shocked when they find
out their kids got bad habits. I hope you didn’t tell him you were banging her. He’ll wanna blame you. He probably thinks
she never had sex in her life.”

Manhattan’s narrow working waterfront disappeared when containerized shipping chased the industry to New Jersey. Manhattan
lacked the space needed to unload the containers and set them onto the backs of eighteen-wheelers. The loss sent the waterfront
into a forty-year funk. Now it was coming back, but in a far different form. Gregory said he liked it better when it fed families,
not entertained yuppies.

“Let me say one final thing in regards to your Arizona fiasco,” Gregory said, getting back to the case. Cops never let the
conversation drift away from “the job” for very long. “I’m sure Evan Stone was upset, but guys in our job spend their entire
careers in the worst minutes of other people’s lives. Day in and day out, we’re knocking around in somebody’s nightmare. None
of those people feel like talking to us. If you don’t push them, you’re wasting your time.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Danny said. “The trip wasn’t a total waste. I put together some good notes on the landscape, things
like that.”

“What landscape, coupla cactus? You can copy that stuff out of
National Geographic
. You want the story, you should have been all over Stone.”

“Compassion is
not
the worst character trait,” Danny said. “Evan Stone was burying his daughter.”

“So you’re a nice guy. Do I have to tell you the rest of that one?”

“Next time I go on an interview remind me to borrow one of your rubber hoses.”

The boat’s rail was packed, and almost everybody faced east, watching the skyscraper light show. The bejeweled skyline of
Manhattan flashed gold and silver in the setting sun. To New Yorkers, nothing in nature was as interesting as its effect on
the city. Gregory said that the few who remained on the opposite side of the boat were conspirators and sleazy opportunists,
whispering deals that only New Jersey should witness.

“You think we’re all corrupt, brutal bastards, don’t you,” Gregory said.

“Not all.”

“Not your sainted uncle, of course, but the rest of us thieving bullies.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I’m actually a sensitive guy at home,” Gregory said. “An accomplished gardener. Bet you didn’t know that. In fact, the only
place I use
my
official NYPD rubber hose these days is in my backyard. Watering grass and flowers for the beautification of our planet.”

“Is that so.”

“I’ve even managed to grow grass in my backyard, a lovely shade of blue. Bluer than Kentucky. Want to know how I managed that?”

“Not really,” Danny said.

“By accident, my young friend. Like all great discoveries. The blue rises up from all the Maxwell House coffee cans underneath
my lawn. That’s where I keep my bribe and shakedown money. Buried in my backyard in hundreds of Maxwell House coffee cans.
Over the years the blue paint has peeled off the cans and dyed the grass follicles. Royal blue. Quite a sight.”

“I’m sure it is,” Danny said. “I’ve got to see it sometime.”

Gregory shook his head and flicked his cigar out into the water. “As far as the angel Gillian goes,” he said, “a slightly
less than perfect picture is starting to emerge. We spent part of yesterday and most of today interviewing chorus girls.”

“I don’t think they call themselves chorus girls.”

“Whatever,” Gregory said. “Apparently Winters wasn’t the only person who noticed her dark side.”

“Who else?”

“I don’t do names.”

“How about doing a little bit about the Scorza interview?” Danny said.

“I’m not doing anything about
that
at all. But I will tell you something about human behavior. See John Miller over there?”

Gregory gestured over at his date, Cookie Martucci Counihan. Cookie was sitting on the life preserver box, discussing her
previous lives with John Miller, the ABC-TV News reporter.

“One time a bunch of us are bullshitting at the bar in Elaine’s, and John Miller asks everybody what’s the first thing we
look for in a woman. Your uncle says, ‘Gray hair.’ Everybody goes, ‘C’mon, stop the bullshit.’ They all thought it was a nonanswer,
like he was being politically correct. But I knew it was
his
answer.”

“The woman would be more his age. I’ve heard him say that before. He means it.”

“Exactly,” Gregory said. “I said big tits, and I meant that, too. Although every now and then I go through a great ass phase.
But what’s important is, John Miller asked a simple question and he wound up getting an answer that spoke volumes about your
uncle. It’s his character, people act in character. Now apply that to your situation. Evan Stone didn’t let all those reporters
at JFK rattle him last Wednesday, did he? But yesterday, you walked up to him all alone, and suddenly he gets rattled and
knocks you on your ass. It’s inconsistent.”

“You’re telling me there’s something suspicious in Evan Stone’s reaction.”

“You were there. You tell
me
.”

The boat was filled with New York writers, athletes, politicians, and show biz celebrities the cops had pulled out of places
like Elaine’s, Neary’s, and Rao’s. Nobody understood the value of contacts and connections better than cops. Someone always
knew someone, but even if they didn’t, they’d find a way to reach into the most sheltered levels of metropolitan society.
Danny was only beginning to understand the immense behind-the-scenes power the NYPD wielded. But they kept it all sotto voce,
and that was the main reason the power existed.

Gregory tried to sing the theme from
Gilligan’s Island
, but he couldn’t get past “a three-hour tour.” Anthony Ryan came up behind them.

“You and the skipper keeping out of trouble, Gilligan?” Ryan said, moving into a spot on the rail next to Danny.

“The skipper has taken a vow of silence,” Danny said.

“Nothing to say,” Gregory said. “We rattled Scorza’s cage. The guy held his ground.”

As they sailed past Greenwich Village Danny was surprised by the number of water tanks that still remained on the roofs of
the older buildings. Cylinders of all colors and sizes. They looked like the homemade rockets of a disorganized militia.

“I’m meeting Wacky tomorrow,” Danny said. “I’ll ask him about Scorza.”

“That string is played out,” Gregory said. “So Trey Winters knows a Mob guy. Big freakin’ deal. Everybody on this boat can
pick up a phone and call a made man.”

At the tip of Manhattan the ferry swung gently west to avoid the path of the Staten Island Ferry. Then it turned toward the
East River. The wind changed and carried a brackish odor.

“I’m also having dinner with Abigail Klass tomorrow night,” Danny said. “The food editor for our magazine set it up.”

“She’ll be looking to protect Winters,” Ryan said. “But try to get an idea of his mental state that night.”