Before I Say Good-Bye (11 page)

It was too bad about the other people who got killed, of course, but then they couldn’t have been worth much, because they worked with Cauliff, he told himself. They were probably in on his trick of finding senile widows who they could talk into selling off the property they owned for only a fraction of its value. Well, at least there won’t be a
Cornelia III,
he exulted.

“Excuse me, sir.”

Startled out of his reverie, Jed sprang up, on the defensive, ready to tell whoever was bothering him to get lost. But instead of the homeless beggar he had expected to confront, he found himself staring into the knowing eyes of a grave-faced man.

“Detective George Brennan,” the man said as he held up his badge.

Too late, Jed acknowledged to himself that hanging around the marina may well have been the stupidest mistake of his whole life.

twenty-one

D
AN
M
INOR’S SEARCH
for his mother finally promised to yield some results. The woman at the shelter who recognized the picture of her, and even called her “Quinny,” had provided him with the first ray of hope he’d had in a long, long time. He had been searching for his mother for so long—without
any
success—that even a glimmer of hope was enough to energize him.

Today, in fact, he was so energized that once he was finished at the hospital for the afternoon, he had quickly changed and raced off to Central Park to continue his search there.

It seemed as though he had been searching for his mother all his life. His mother had disappeared when he was six years old, right after the accident that almost took his life.

He had a clear memory of waking to find her kneeling by his hospital bed, sobbing. Later, he learned that as a result of the accident—she had been drunk when it happened—she was indicted for criminal negligence, and rather than face a terrible public trial, and almost certainly losing custody of her son, she had fled.

Occasionally, on his birthday, he would get an unsigned card that he knew was from her. But for much of his life, it was the only confirmation that he had that she was still alive. Then, one day seven years ago he had been sitting in the family room at home with his grandmother when he had turned on the television and started surfing through the channels, stopping with
casual interest when he saw a documentary on homeless people in Manhattan.

Some of the interviews had been filmed in shelters, others on the street. One of the women interviewed was standing on a street corner on upper Broadway. Dan’s grandmother was in the room at the time, reading, but when that woman spoke, his grandmother had jumped up, her eyes suddenly riveted to the screen.

When the interviewer asked the homeless woman her name, she had replied, “People call me Quinny.”

“Oh, God, it’s Kathryn!” his grandmother shrieked. “Dan, look, look!
It’s your mother!”

Did he actually remember that face, or was it because of all the pictures of her he had devoured over the years that he was sure this woman was indeed his mother? The face on the television screen was careworn, the eyes dulled; still, there were traces of the pretty girl she once had been. The dark hair was generously sprinkled now with gray, and it was worn too loose and full on her shoulders to look anything but unkempt. Still, to his eyes, she was beautiful. She was wearing a shabby wraparound coat that was too big for her. Her hand rested protectively on a shopping cart filled with plastic bags.

She was fifty years old when I saw that program, Dan often thought. She had looked much older.

“Where are you from, Quinny?” the interviewer had asked.

“From here, now.”

“Do you have a family?”

She had looked straight into the camera. “I had a wonderful little boy, once. I didn’t deserve him. He was better off without me, so I left.”

The next day Dan’s grandparents had hired a private investigator to try to track her down, but Quinny had vanished. Dan did manage to learn something about the way she had lived, and about her frame of mind—facts that saddened him and broke his grandparents’ hearts.

Now, several days after finding someone who could identify his mother’s photograph, he was more determined than ever to locate her. She’s in New York, Dan thought. I will find her.
I will!
But when I
do
find her, what will I say? What will I do?

Of course, he didn’t have to worry—he had been rehearsing this reunion for so long. Maybe he would limit his comments to only those words that might mean something to her: “Stop punishing yourself. It was an accident. If I can forgive you, why can’t you forgive yourself?”

He had given his card to Lilly Brown, the woman he had met in the shelter. “If you see her, just phone me,” he told her. “Please don’t tell her I’m looking for her. She might disappear again.”

Lilly had assured him, “Quinny will be back. Knowing her, it should be about now. She never stays away from New York for too long at a time, and in the summer she likes to sit in Central Park. She says it’s her favorite place in the world. I’ll ask around for you. Maybe someone’s seen her lately.”

For now I’ll have to be content with that, Dan thought as he jogged the paths of Central Park, the sky still light with the setting sun, but the air getting steadily cooler and the wind chilling his damp back and legs. Now that summer is almost here—but please, he thought, don’t let this evening be any indication of
what summer in New York will be, because she’ll freeze—there was always the chance that the woman who called herself “Quinny” might be found sitting on one of the park benches.

twenty-two

C
ORNELIUS
M
AC
D
ERMOTT ARRIVED
at Nell’s apartment promptly at six o’clock. When she opened the door for him, they stood apart for a few moments, silently looking at each other. Then he reached out and put his arms around her.

“Nell,” he said, “remember what the old Irish guys say to the bereaved at wakes? They say, ‘I’m sorry for your trouble.’ You used to think it was the dumbest remark in the world. In your most smart-alecky voice, you’d say, ‘You’re not sorry for someone’s
trouble.
You’re sorry they’re
experiencing
trouble.’ ”

“I remember,” Nell said.

“And what did I tell you?”

“You said that what the expression means is,
‘Your
trouble is
my
trouble. I share your grief.’ ”

“That’s right. So just think of me as one of those old Irishmen. In a very real way, your trouble
is
my trouble. And that’s why you have to know how very, very sorry I am about Adam. I’d do anything to keep you from having to go through the hurt I know you are experiencing right now.”

Be fair to him, Nell told herself. Mac is eighty-two years old. He has loved me and cared for me as long
as I can remember. Maybe he couldn’t help being jealous of Adam. There were plenty of women who would have loved to marry Mac after Gram died. I was probably the reason he didn’t get involved with any of them.

“I know you would,” she told him, “and I’m glad you’re here. I guess I just need some time to let everything sink in.”

“Well, unfortunately, Nell, you don’t have time,” Mac told her abruptly. “Come on. Let’s sit down. We’ve got to talk.”

Not knowing quite what to expect, she obeyed, following him into the living room.

As soon as she was seated, Mac began: “Nell, I realize that this is an awful time for you, but there are some things that we have to talk about. You haven’t even had Adam’s memorial Mass yet, and here I am about to start lobbing some tough questions at you. I’m sorry to move on you like this. Maybe you’ll want to throw me out, and if you do, I’ll understand. But some things simply can’t wait.”

Nell knew now what he was going to say.

“This isn’t just
any
election year. It’s a presidential election year. You know as well as I do that anything can happen, but our guy is ahead big time, and unless he does something really stupid, he’s going to be the next president.”

He probably
is
going to be president, Nell thought, and he’ll make a good one. For the first time since she heard the news of Adam’s death, she felt a stirring within her—a first sign that life was returning. She looked at her grandfather and realized that his eyes seemed brighter than she had seen them in a while. Nothing
like a political campaign to get the old war horse up and running, she thought.

“Nell, I just learned that a couple more guys are about to throw their hats in the ring for my old seat. Tim Cross and Salvatore Bruno.”

“Tim Cross has been nothing but a wimp on the council, and Sal Bruno has missed more Senate votes in Albany than the mother of ten kids has missed periods,” Nell snapped.

“That’s my girl. You could have won that seat.”

“Could have
won? What are you talking about, Mac? I
am going to go for it.
I
have
to.”

“You may not get the chance.”

“I repeat: what are talking about, Mac?”

“There’s no easy way to say it, Nell, but Robert Walters and Len Arsdale came to see me this morning. A dozen building contractors have signed statements saying they paid bribes in the millions of dollars to the Walters and Arsdale firm in order to land the big jobs. Robert and Len are two fine men. I’ve known them all my life. They never pulled that stuff. They never took any bribes.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Mac?”

“Nell, I’m telling you that Adam was probably on the take.”

She looked at her grandfather for a moment, then shook her head. “No, Mac, I don’t believe that. He wouldn’t do it. It’s also much too easy to lay blame on a dead man, not to mention convenient. Did anyone say they actually handed Adam the money?”

“Winifred was the go-between.”

“Winifred!
For heaven’s sake, Mac, that woman didn’t have the gumption of a sunflower. What makes
you think she’d be capable of putting together a bribery scheme?”

“That’s exactly it. While Robert and Len agree that Winifred knew the business inside out and would have known how to do a scam, they also agree that she’d never try to do something like that on her own.”

“Mac,” Nell protested, “listen to what you’re saying. You’re taking the word of your old buddies that they’re pure as the driven snow and that my husband was a thief. Isn’t it entirely possible that by dying, he has provided them the perfect scapegoat for their own misdeeds?”

“Well, let me ask you this: where did Adam get the money to buy that property on Twenty-eighth Street?”

“He got it from me.”

Cornelius MacDermott stared at her. “Don’t tell me you invaded your trust fund.”

“It was mine to invade, wasn’t it? I lent Adam the money to buy that loft property and to open his own firm. If he’d actually been taking money as you imply, would he have needed to borrow from me?”

“He would if he didn’t want to leave a paper trail. Nell, get this straight—If it comes out that your husband was involved in a bribery scandal, you can kiss your chance of being a congresswoman good-bye.”

“Mac, at the moment I’m much more interested in protecting Adam’s memory than I am in worrying about my own political future.” This isn’t real, Nell thought, putting her hands over her face for a moment. In a few minutes I’ll wake up from a bad dream and Adam will be here and none of this will have happened.

Nell stood suddenly and crossed to the window. Winifred, she thought. Quiet, timid Winifred. I saw her
step off that elevator and immediately I knew she was going to die. Could I have prevented it? she wondered. Could I have warned her?

From what Mac says, Walters and Arsdale are sure she was cheating. I can’t believe Adam would have taken her with him into his company if he had thought she was dishonest.

It’s obvious, she decided. If there was bribery going on, Adam didn’t know anything about it.

“Nell, you realize that this throws a whole new light on the explosion,” Mac said, intruding upon her thoughts. “It couldn’t have been accidental, and almost certainly it was intended to make sure that someone on that boat wouldn’t talk to the district attorney’s office.”

It’s like the riptide, Nell thought, turning back to her grandfather. Wave after wave keeps crashing into me, and I can’t stay afloat. I’m getting drawn farther and farther out to sea.

They talked a few minutes more about the explosion, and about the bribery scheme described by Walters and Arsdale. Sensing that Nell was drawing further and further away, Mac tried to persuade her to go out with him for dinner, but she turned him down.

“Mac, I couldn’t swallow anything right now. But soon, I promise. Soon I’ll be able to talk about all this,” she said.

When he left, Nell went into the bedroom and opened the door of Adam’s closet. The navy-blue jacket he had worn home from Philadelphia was on the hanger where she had hung it the next morning. When Winifred came by on Friday afternoon, I must have given her his other one, she thought, just like this one
except it had silver buttons. Then this was the one he wore the day before he died.

Nell took it off the hanger and slipped her arms through the sleeves. She had expected to feel comforted, almost as though Adam’s arms were around her, but instead she had a chilling sense of alienation, following a sudden, startling remembrance of the angry outburst between them that last morning that had caused him to rush away without it.

Still wearing the jacket, she walked restlessly around the room. A premise, unbidden and unwelcome, was insinuating itself into her mind. Adam had been on edge for months. Besides the normal pressure of opening a new firm, had there been something else upsetting him? Was it possible that there really was something going on that she had not caught wind of? Did he have anything at all to fear from an investigation?

She stopped for a moment and stood still, weighing what Mac had told her. Then she shook her head. No. No, I’ll never believe that, she thought.