Blood Ties (29 page)

“Go ahead. It's yours for free.”

“I'll take it as a down payment.”

“On?”

“Why you were at Greenmeadow Hospital.”

I told him, “A friend of mine is there.”

“That would be?”

“A high school girl named Stacie Phillips.”

He said, “The reporter? She okay?”

“Not right now, but it looks like she will be.” I made a mental note to be sure to tell Stacie how Sullivan had identified her. “Some guy jumped her and beat her up.”

He drank, looked at me. “Why?” he asked.

I told him what I knew. When I was done, he said, “When'd she get to be a friend of yours?”

“Yesterday. She hunted me down, Sullivan, not the other way.”

He nodded, and I had the feeling he was putting that aside, to come back to if he needed it.

“Let me tell you what else I think,” I said.

“Can't wait.”

He had to, though, because Mrs. JL, picking up empties from the next table, asked, “You boys want another?”

We did, and she brought them, and then I said, “I think this all has to do with what happened in Warrenstown twenty-three years ago.”

Sullivan frowned. “The rape and suicide?”

“Al Macpherson called me this afternoon, ordered me up to his office.”

“Must not've known you don't take orders well.”

“I went. He wanted to know how I knew Tory Wesley, told me I was lying when I said I didn't. He told me to stop digging into the old case or he'd have my head.”

“I know Macpherson, that's not the part he wants. You digging into the old case?”

“Just curious, at first. But it's the connection between me and Stacie: She faxed me old articles from the
Gazette
.My brother-in-law saw them at my place, blew up at me, and the next thing I know, Macpherson knows I have them and someone beats the crap out of Stacie. I think someone, and I think it's Macpherson, thinks that's what I was hired for.”

“Hired by who?”

“The kids. Stacie, Gary, Tory Wesley.”

“Why?”

“Because there's something hidden there, and they wanted what Stacie calls a scoop?”

“Is that what happened?”

“What?”

“Is that what you were hired for?”

The smoky room erupted with shouts as on the TV screen the visitors picked off a pass, ran the ball back nineteen yards. I stared at Sullivan. “You're kidding.”

He tamped his cigarette methodically in the ashtray, didn't speak.

“Okay, you asked,” I said. “The answer's no. All I'm doing is looking for Gary Russell.”

He drank some beer, stared thoughtfully at the TV. “You're telling me your brother-in-law tipped off Al Macpherson to your interest, and Macpherson hired someone to lean on Stacie Phillips, find out what she knows?”

“And what the dead girl knew. And,” I said, “I'm telling you my interest is what your chief is pissed off about.”

He looked at me without speaking for a while. On the TV, because the ball had changed hands, the action was stopped while the teams sent in new squads. “Serious accusation, Smith.”

“Well, I could be wrong.”

He didn't answer.

“Listen,” I said. “You know the details of the old case?”

He waited, finally said, “Just what I remember from being a kid on the other end of the state.”

“Is there any chance,” I asked, “the suicide was something else?”

“You mean,” he said, “is there any chance Macpherson did what they said he did, then framed the other kid and killed him?”

“That's what I mean.”

Again Sullivan was silent for a time, letting his gaze wander the bar, watching JL rack glasses, watching the game.

I said, “There's something else.”

He brought his eyes back to me.

“I hear Tory Wesley was dealing drugs.”

“You do? From who?”

“I hear.”

“I never heard that, in Warrenstown.”

“Just since school started, this year. Psychedelics. To the football team.”

“You're not going to tell me where you got that?”

“No. But you may be able to use it for leverage when you talk to the kids.”

“Yeah. After the Hamlin's game.”

“That's two days away. Your chief can't really keep you off the case until then?”

“I'm not off the case. My orders are, I can do any damn thing I want as long as it doesn't involve subpoenas, warrants, or arrests. Unless I'm so sure I've fingered the killer I'm willing to bet my career on it. But no fishing.”

“That means you can only talk to people willing to talk to you.”

He nodded. “As my chief points out, we don't have the coroner's report yet. Tory Wesley could have died from natural causes. No killer, think of all the trouble I'm making for nothing.”

“Think of it,” I said. “Two days before the Hamlin's game.”

Sullivan didn't answer.

“Well, this drug thing could mean something,” I said. “I still think it goes back to the old case, but this could mean something.”

Through cigarette haze, Sullivan peered at me. “A lot of things going on here, Smith.”

“Meaning?”

“If my nephew'd disappeared the same time a girl was killed,” Sullivan said, “then turned up with a gun dealer in Queens, I might try blowing smoke everywhere I could.”

“If my boss backed me off a homicide when all I was doing was interviewing witnesses, I'd want to know what was going on.”

He nodded, finished his beer. “What do you want?”

“The old police reports, to start with.”

“Can't give you those.”

I'd expected that. “Summaries?”

“Maybe.”

Nothing was free. “What do you want?” I asked him.

“Whoever killed Tory Wesley.”

I knew what that meant. Whoever; not, whoever unless it's Gary Russell.

“Smith?” Sullivan said. “You play high school football?”

“No.”

“I did, for Asbury Park.”

“Offense?”

“D.”

“You don't look like you have the meat for it.”

“I worked my ass off. And I could read the plays. I could see them coming.”

Sullivan drove north from JL's, to the bridge and home to New Jersey. I drove south, through the night streets of New York. I thought of calling Lydia but she was probably home already, where her mother exasperated her, where her four older brothers dropped in unannounced and drove her crazy, but all from caring, from worry, from wanting to protect her. I saw her, sometimes, as a flowering plant—maybe the elegant, spare freesia whose scent I'd learned to recognize because Lydia wore it—reaching for the vast wild sky, angry at the soil for keeping her anchored. Rootless myself, I could only wonder what that must be like.

And wonder what she would say if I ever, ever let it slip that I thought of her that way.

I put my car in the lot, zipped my jacket as I headed up the street toward my place. I passed the door to Shorty's, but I didn't go in. JL's beer had taken the edge off my night, and Shorty wouldn't have forgotten I'd promised him an explanation I still wasn't ready to give.

As I put my key in the lock I heard a shout, my name. I spun around, ready, saw a car door open on the other side of the street, saw Scott Russell climb out.

I waited on the sidewalk; he said nothing until he was across the street, standing in front of me.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Smith!” he spat. His eyes burned into mine, like the eyes of a wolf in a circling pack, waiting for the leader's command to rip the throat from the prey. The sense of that was so strong I found myself checking the street for the rest of them. No one; Scott was alone. He snarled, “What the hell is your problem?”

“A lot of people asking me that today,” I said. “Your friend Al Macpherson, for one.”

“I ought to fuck you up right here and now, then you'll have a problem.”

“Macpherson tell you he talked to me?”

“He said you were a pain in the ass.”

“He doesn't seem to think very much of you, either.”

“Who the hell asked you?”

“I just wonder why you're going out of your way to protect him.”

“Him? You think this is about Al?”

“What is it about?”

“Helen!”

“Helen?”

“Al said, if I don't want my wife's brother rotting in jail, I better get you off his ass. Me, I don't give a shit what happens to you, but I'm trying once more, Smith. Back the fuck off.”

“I think it's true,” I said, “that you don't give a shit. So why are you here?”

“For Helen. She doesn't like you any better than I do, but you're family and she doesn't like to think of her family in jail.” He hit each of those words,
her family in jail
, like a hammer.

I wanted to step back because I didn't trust myself near him, but I didn't want him to see me move away. I forced myself still, said, “You ask her?” No answer. “I didn't think so. What's this really about, Scott?”

“I told you, leave it alone. I told you, I'll handle it.”

“Who beat up Stacie Phillips?”

“Who the hell is that?”

I looked at him, broad shoulders, balanced stance, hot blue eyes. I said, “You know a friend of Gary's bought some guns illegally yesterday, and Gary was there?”

He missed a beat. “Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck you, I do know. How the hell do
you
know?”

“What happened in Warrenstown when you were Gary's age, Scott?”

He took a step toward me. I didn't move. “You're the fucker who dropped the dime on them, aren't you? Like with that girl who died.” I watched his arms tense, his fingers flex, ready.

I said, “Does Gary know how to shoot?”

“Of course, asshole. My father took me hunting, I take Gary. Fathers and sons, that's what they do.” He stood very close to me now. Briefly, he smiled, sunlight glinting on ice. “But you don't know about that, do you?”

“Your guns—do you know where they are?”

“In a cabinet in the den. All locked up nice and safe.”

“What are the ones they bought in Queens for?”

“Gary didn't buy any fucking guns in Queens. He wouldn't. He's a stand-up kid, Smith. Probably he wasn't even there, only now you've got the cops thinking he was. It was you, right?”

“What happened in Warrenstown, back then?”

“What happened is over. What's happening now is, my kid is wanted in two states and if some asshole cop sees him, he'll shoot him.”

“Not unless Gary shoots first.”

“Bullshit!”

Scott lunged, grabbed my jacket, slammed me against the wall.

Pain jarred my arm from elbow to fingers, I lost my breath, and I thought, Good, good, it's now. Blazing, I swung my arms to break his grip, kicked out and connected. He staggered back cursing, feinted left, threw a right I just barely blocked. He grabbed for me again. Only one hand caught and I could have come up under it, lost him that way, but instead I sliced down from above, on the wrist, heard him howl. He let go, clutched his hurt wrist to his chest. I stepped up, plowed my fist into his face, spun him around. I hooked my leg around his; he fell. I leaned over him, punched, punched again, pulled my fist back to go for his face another time but something stopped me, someone held me. Scott wasn't alone. I twisted, reached, pulled the new guy down. He was small, rolled with my pull, hit the ground and bounced to his feet again in one smooth motion. “Stop it!” he shouted, and my world spun, righted itself again, but looked all different now, because this was Lydia.

“Stop it!” Lydia said again. Everything did stop, sound and motion, breath and heart. Then things began again, and I climbed to my feet as Scott scrambled to his, both of us staring at her.

“What the fuck—” Scott began.

“Shut up.” I closed on him, breathing hard. “Get the hell out of here. Don't come back. I don't care what you think of me or what your buddy Macpherson wants. I didn't ask you to come back into my life and the only one I give a shit about is Gary. The rest of you better just stay the hell out of my way.”

Without waiting to see what he did I walked away, unlocked my door, took my stairs two at a time.

I could tell from the sound behind me that Lydia was taking them that way, too.

seventeen

We reached the top; without looking at Lydia I stood aside, let her in. Silence, and neither of us would break it. Finally, from me: “What the hell were you doing here?”

“Watching your back.”

Now I turned to her. Our eyes locked. I forced my shoulders to uncoil, my breathing to even out. “What?” I said. “What does that mean?”

She breathed, too, spoke in a quiet voice. “I did some shopping on the way home. By the time I got downtown I thought you might be back, so I drove down the block to see if your lights were on. I was going to go home when I saw you weren't here, but I spotted that guy sitting in his car across the street. Just sitting. I drove around a little and came back. He was still sitting. So I stayed. That was Scott?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That was Scott.”

“Tell me about it,” she said.

“Tell you what? You were there.”

“No,” she said. “Tell me what it is between you, why you hate each other so much.”