Blood Ties (28 page)

“It doesn't explain Gary. Unless,” I said quickly, before she could, “it was him. But it doesn't explain what happened to Stacie Phillips.”

“And you think it's connected.”

“‘What do you have?'” I quoted Stacie. “‘What did Tory Wesley have?'”

The waiter came with my steak and Lydia's chef's salad. The steak was on a pewter platter the size of Texas, maybe to make it feel at home; Lydia's salad came in a bowl you could toboggan home in if you were caught in a sudden snowstorm.

“So,” Lydia said, “what
does
Stacie Phillips have? Tory Wesley's drugs, do you think?”

“That thought crossed my mind.” I cut into the steak; it was tender and rare. “But why beat her up? Why not just buy from her, if she's dealing now?”

“Maybe she wouldn't sell. Maybe she's not telling us the whole story.”

“Maybe. But then why call me?”

Lydia nodded as she folded a lettuce leaf onto her fork. “If it's not the drugs, what does she have?”

“Me.”

She looked up from her bumper crop of romaine. “You?”

“She talked to me at the diner. It wasn't a secret. We've been on the phone half a dozen times since. She faxed me that stuff from the
Gazette
.”

“Fascinating as you are to those of us who know you,” Lydia asked, reaching onto my plate for an onion ring, “in this case, what would it be about you?”

“I don't know. If you ask me, all I'm doing is looking for Gary.”

“So maybe someone wants to find him as much as you do.”

“Maybe. But I'm also getting the feeling someone thinks I know something about something else. And they're afraid Stacie knows it. And that Tory Wesley knew it, too.”

“If that's true, why hasn't anyone asked you?”

“Someone has.”

I ate steak, told Lydia about my visit to Macpherson Peters Ennis and Arkin. “He was doing more than telling me I was in trouble,” I said. “For one thing, he's not the type who'd have bothered to get me up to his office for that. He was fishing.”

“For what?”

“I'm not sure. He wanted to know where Gary was, what he was up to. I thought, well, he's looking for someone to blame Tory Wesley's death on, take the pressure off his son and the other kids. But then he started asking what Gary and Tory were up to. He wanted to know how I knew Tory and he didn't believe me when I said I didn't.”

“Why does he think you did?”

“He said he didn't buy the whole coincidence, me being Scott's brother-in-law, Gary running away, me being there when her body was found. The more interesting question is, Why does he care if I did?”

“Because he knows his son killed her, and he's trying to find out what you know?” She frowned. “No, that wouldn't explain anything, would it?”

“No, because if I knew her, and she and Gary were up to something, it would be before that happened.”

“Which goes back to what he thinks you know.”

“Try this on.” I finished the last of the Jack. “According to Macpherson, as much of a loser as I am, my biggest sin was digging up the old rape, his arrest, that whole story.”

“I can see why that wouldn't make him happy.”

“Uh-huh. But how did he know I was doing it?”

“Hmm.” She came back for another onion ring. “Someone at the
Gazette
told him Stacie had faxed that stuff to you?”

“Possible. Or Scott told him he'd seen the faxes at my place.”

“Oh,” she said. “You think so?”

I looked at her, took out my cell phone. “Keep your paws off my onion rings.” I dialed the number at Greenmeadow Hospital.

Lydia said, “You won't finish them.”

“Especially if you eat them all first. Hi, Stacie? It's Bill. Did I wake you up?”

“No. I don't think so,” Stacie said. “This Demerol, you just sort of lie there. It's very cool.” Her voice was a relaxed drawl.

“I'm going to ask you something. Don't be insulted.”

“If you insult me, I will be.” To someone else she said, “It's okay, it's a friend of mine. Yes, okay, Daddy.” Back to me: “My dad says I can't talk long. You want to talk to him when we're done, about the old days at Corny U.?”

“Some other time, thanks. Now listen: Tory Wesley was dealing drugs. Did you know that?”

“No! Are—? How—?” She stopped.

“You can't ask questions because your dad's there, right?”

“Right! So just tell me!”

“No. Later,” I said, when she started to protest. “Tomorrow. Now here's the insulting part. Do you have her drugs and are you dealing them now?”

“
What?
No, Daddy, it's okay.”

“Don't get excited,” I said, “it's bad for you.”

“What made you
ask
that? Are you crazy?”

“Yes. One more question, before your dad cuts us off. Did anyone at the
Gazette
know you'd faxed me that stuff from the morgue?”

“You ask the weirdest questions. I think you're nuts.”

“Did they?”

“I don't think so. The morgue's in the basement. I Xeroxed the file and faxed it myself.”

“What happened to the Xeroxes?”

“I put them in my background notebook for the story.”

“Anyone see that?”

“No, I always keep those very private so I don't get scooped. What's going on?”

“Okay, hang up before your dad gets mad.”

“You're not going to tell me why?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Sorry.”

“I hate you.”

“You can't hate your sources, or if you do, you can't let them know.”

“I'll work on the not letting you know part.”

“I'll talk to you tomorrow. Get some sleep.”

“How can I sleep—?” she started, but I hung up.

I put the phone away. Lydia had left me half a dozen onion rings. I ate them and finished my steak while I told her what Stacie had told me.

“That leaves Scott,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Scott. Who Macpherson says is an asshole.”

“One among thousands.”

“Still.”

I signaled the waiter, asked for coffee, tea, and the check. “Well,” I said, “if what I'm supposed to know has to do with what happened back then, I think it's time we found out what happened back then.” I took out my phone again, pressed in a number.

“I want you to remember who gave you your first cell phone,” Lydia said.

“I remember everything you've ever done. Every move you ever made. Every time you winked at me or wiggled your hips.”

“I don't wiggle my hips.”

“But go ahead if you want to, I'll remember.”

In my ear I heard, “Sullivan.”

“Smith. I want to talk.”

“Every time we talk, things get worse,” he pointed out.

“Not my fault.”

“So you say. Where are you?”

“At a restaurant,” I fudged. “I'm finishing up. Where are you?”

“As it happens, I'm in Queens.”

“You picked up Sting Ray?”

“Not me, the NYPD.”

“He have anything to say?”

“Why don't I tell you,” he suggested, “when we talk?”

sixteen

Sullivan assumed I was in the city and I didn't correct him. I chose as a meeting place a bar I knew on the Upper West Side, and as a time forty-five minutes from now. I told him that was to make sure he had time to get there, traffic over the bridge from Queens being what it was.

“I hope traffic over the bridge from New Jersey isn't what it is,” Lydia said as we walked through the steakhouse lot. “It would be embarassing if you were late.”

“I'll just tell him I had a hard time ditching this cute little Chinese girl I was out with.”

After some discussion, we'd decided Lydia wasn't coming along. She agreed, with a sigh, that it would be prudent to keep Sullivan ignorant for the time being on the subject of her, and she admitted it was curiosity, not a sense of the requirements of professional practice, that made her impatient with the demands of prudence.

“I'll call you as soon as I get home,” I promised her. “I'll tell all.”

So we got in our cars and headed to New York, Lydia to Chinatown and home, me to JL's, a sidestreet tavern in the west Nineties.

Traffic on my bridge was light. On Sullivan's it must have been heavy, because I got to JL's in time to order a beer and work on it for about five minutes before Sullivan walked through the door.

JL's was the kind of place there used to be a lot of in New York, a bar with captain's chairs, heavy square tables, a pool table in the back. You could get a burger, fries, a BLT, and that was about it in the food department; you could watch the game, or talk about the game, or listen to other guys talk about the game. The guys you listened to would be your blue-collar neighbors, a dwindling species in this rising neighborhood. JL's was too shabby, too scruffy to attract the young, hip crowd, and JL and Mrs. JL, both of whom had spent every day in this bar for the last thirty-six years, worked hard to keep it that way. They sold no microbrewed beer, single-malt Scotch, or any vodka you'd ever heard of; they hadn't painted or, some said, changed a lightbulb in the place in decades, and neither of them had a pleasant word for anyone under the age of the bar, including their own grown sons.

The game tonight was college football, two Division Two teams playing under the lights someplace far away. The home team was setting up for a second and seven deep in enemy territory when Sullivan came in. He stopped right inside the door, let his eyes sweep the room methodically, the same way I do in a new place. He spotted me, threaded his way across the floor, and pulled out a chair. I had a cigarette going; Sullivan lit one, too. He was in uniform, navy jacket, starched white shirt, pressed navy pants, tie held in place with a Warrenstown PD tie clip. He wore no gun. Cop or not, he wouldn't be licensed in New York any more than I was in New Jersey. I wondered if he kept a weapon taped up under his dashboard, too, for times like this, but I decided not to ask.

Mrs. JL wove through the tables to take Sullivan's order. She was a big, wide-faced woman, her hair the same white-blond I'd seen on the three little kids at the New Jersey steakhouse, a color that in real life doesn't last past third grade. She smiled at Sullivan. Sullivan was my age, but even if he'd been a rookie, he'd have qualified for a smile. The one exception to the age-of-the-bar rule was for cops: The JLs liked cops. If any of their sons had become cops, they might have gotten themselves a pleasant word every now and then. “What'll you have?” Mrs. JL inquired of Sullivan.

“Beer.”

“Bud?”

“Draft?”

“Bottle.”

“What else you have?”

“Rolling Rock, for gourmets.”

“Bud.”

“You want a glass?”

“No.”

Mrs. JL smiled again; that was a trick question and he'd had the right answer. She went to get the beer, and I asked Sullivan, “This mean you're off duty?”

“Hours ago.”

“Just hanging around New York because you like it here?”

“Change of pace. You seem to like New Jersey, same reason.”

“I hate the place.”

“Even Greenmeadow?”

I drank from my Bud, said, “Rotten town. You having me tailed?”

“Just lucky. Deputy whose wife had twins saw your car in the lot, visiting hours. He was out of his jurisdiction, though, and he had better things to do than look for you to run you off. He just reported it and went in to see his wife.”

“Twins'll be a handful.”

“Yeah,” Sullivan said as Mrs. JL brought his bottle, put it down on a Michelob coaster left behind by some hardworking distributor's rep who'd for sure gone away empty-handed. “Mind telling me why you were there?”

“Not at all. It's why I called. But first I want to hear if Sting Ray had anything to say about Premador.”

The small smile. “If I had anything to trade, Smith, you better believe I wouldn't give it up first. But,” he pulled on his beer, “I've got nothing. Ray was up to his ass in hot water and he would've given us his grandmother. But we had no use for her, and he couldn't tell us anything about Premador—or Gary Russell—that we didn't already know.”

“Which is?”

“One of them bought guns from him for cash. The other was seen in the vicinity, but not by Ray.”

“You find the woman who saw him?”

“The charity lady.” He nodded. “Positive ID on the picture.”

“Anybody else?”

“Hot-dog vendor, one dog-walker. Both tentative. Willing to do a lineup when we take him up.”

“Christ,” I said, blocking out Sullivan's
when
in favor of
if
. “I handed out pictures all day, got nothing.”

“You should have been with an NYPD uniform. Works wonders.”

I ground my cigarette out. “Any description from Ray on Premador?”

“Medium height, brown hair, teenage kid.”

“Nothing else?”

“Well, a lot of assumptions on Ray's part, some about the kid's mother.”

“You show him pictures?”

“Of Gary, yeah. Otherwise, of who?”

I shrugged. “The Warrenstown yearbook?”

“You know,” he said, setting his beer on the table, “that's not a bad idea.”