Saints Of New York (57 page)

A
t
first Parrish was disoriented, uncertain where the sound was coming from, what
it meant.

He
snatched his phone from the edge of the seat and held it close to his face. The
alarm. He switched it off, but it took a good fifteen or twenty seconds for him
to remember where he was and what he was doing. He sat bolt upright. McKee's
house was right there to his left. There was now too much daylight to determine
whether any internal lights were on, but the upstairs drapes were still closed.
The house looked still and silent and unchanged.

Parrish
took several deep breaths. He felt dizzy and nauseous. He wanted a drink, knew
that it would have been the worst idea of all, and resorted to the tepid dregs
of his coffee. He was hungry too, but there was no food left.

Something
shifted at the edge of his field of vision.

The
left half of the drape had moved - just a few inches, but it had moved. McKee
was still in there, and now he was awake. Parrish suddenly felt a resurgence of
purpose. He looked at his watch. Six minutes past seven. Would he leave to
collect Sarah and Alex . . . Sarah and Alex what? McKee or Paretski? Had Carole
Paretski initiated the final act of ignominy and humiliation against her
ex-husband by changing the kids' names to hers? And if he was going to collect
them, when would he leave? Parrish simply had to wait. That was all he could
do.

An
hour passed. He pissed in the plastic bottle, managed to spatter his hands and
the knees of his pants. He felt like a bum. He could only begin to imagine what
the inside of the car smelled like. Lucky it wasn't his. Lucky if he returned
it with no-one the wiser. In truth, he knew he was fucked. He knew that
whichever way this came out he would be up before Valderas, Haversaw, Internal
Affairs perhaps. There would be an inquiry - the polite and politically correct
name for a ball-buster of an investigation. Would he walk away unscathed? Not a
prayer. Would he lose his job once and for all? Most likely. And in considering
such a scenario, the only thing that galled him was the possibility that he
would be officially castrated before he had a chance to nail McKee. This was
the case that he needed. This was the one that would save his self-respect.

If
he could break this thing then perhaps he would no longer carry the burden of
guilt about his father, the fact that he said nothing, the fact that he could
have done something about what was happening and didn't. And now this bullshit
from Briley . . . He didn't understand that. He couldn't grasp why a priest
would want to defend his father. But then, if what Briley had said was true . .
.

Parrish
shook his head. He could not allow himself the luxury of such a thought. He
needed to hold onto his own certainty. John Parrish had been a fuck-up. People
were dead because of John Parrish. People were alive because of Frank.

Was
that what it was all about?

He
turned the rear-view and looked at himself. Unshaven, tousle-haired, exhausted.
He looked like crap and felt no better.

Eight-thirty
a car pulled up outside McKee's house. Parrish's heart quickened.
Yes!
he thought as he saw Carole Paretski
exit the vehicle. She stood on the sidewalk as Alex and Sarah climbed out of
the car and walked to the stoop.
Carole
Paretski, I fucking love you!

He
looked at Sarah. How old did Carole say she was? Fourteen, fifteen? Not much
younger than the girls that had been killed. And Carole had been right in her
physical description - Sarah was tall and slim, blonde-haired, an attractive
girl. Parrish thought of the hole in the corner of her bedroom, of her father
lying in the dust up there, wiring that thing up, recording his own kid, her
friends . . .

Parrish
waited just as they did. Sarah knocked on the door, stepped back, glanced at
her mother, seemed for a moment to glance back at Parrish but her gaze didn't
linger or hesitate.

She
raised her hand to knock again, and this time the door opened. Carole Paretski
stood with her arms folded for a moment, and then she hugged and kissed each of
the kids and waited as they went inside. She shared a few stone-faced words
with her ex- husband. He nodded, turned to close the door, but she said
something that caused him to turn back and frown. A moment of recognition
perhaps, a businesslike smile from McKee, and he stepped back inside the house
and left the door open. Moments later he returned with a sheet of paper. She
searched her purse, handed him a pen, he signed the paper at the bottom, folded
it and gave it to her. What was it? Permission for the kids to do some activity
at school? An approval for music lessons, a medical appointment, an
orthodontist's bill? It didn't matter. Business was done. Carole turned back to
her car, Richard went inside, closed the door, and Parrish sat there for a
minute with his heart doing double-time. Carole Paretski took one more look at
the house, and then she got in the car and pulled away. Parrish wished that
Michael Vale was with him. His partner would have understood. His partner would
have done this with him. Had his partner been alive he wouldn't be playing
uncle to Jimmy Radick.

The
house was still and silent again. Parrish took a deep breath and set himself to
waiting once more.

The
wait was not long. Forty minutes at most. McKee left the house alone, walked
down towards the end of the street, and minutes later he pulled up outside in
the SUV. He went to the front door, opened it, called the kids, and then locked
the front door once they were in the car.

They
drove away, all three of them. They just drove away and left Frank Parrish
sitting across from the empty house.

 
'W
hat's her name?'

'I
think her name is Eve, maybe Evelyn, I'm not sure.'

Radick
frowned. 'I tell you something, he's never given me any indication that he has
something going on with someone,' he said.

Caitlin
Parrish reached up and touched her forefinger to Jimmy Radick's lips. 'That's
because you don't have the female's intuition. We see things that men don't
see.'

Radick
smiled. 'Is that so?' He shifted sideways a fraction.

Caitlin
put her right leg over his thigh and her hand on his chest.

'It
is so. I can tell. A couple of times I've just picked something up.'

'And
who is she?'

'I
have no idea.'

'So
how do you know her name?'

'Well,
I don't. Not as such. There was a Post-It next to the phone at his place one
time. This was like a year ago maybe. It just said Eve and then a date, that
was all.'

'And
your extraordinary powers of female intuition led you to believe that this was
the girl your father was seeing?'

'No,
it was how he reacted when I asked him who Eve was. He looked directly at me
and said it was just a work thing, but there was this flicker in his
expression, like he didn't want me to ask.'

'You
think he'd be embarrassed if he thought you knew he was going out with
someone?'

'No,
not embarrassed. Dad doesn't get embarrassed. But he's old-fashioned, and he
still thinks of me as his little girl. You saw how he was when you guys came
over the first time, all that worrying about what I'm doing, what my friends
are like, when

I'm
going out, how long I'm staying out for, where I'm going to work. I mean, to be
completely honest, it gets a bit claustrophobic sometimes. He does get a bit
obsessive.'

'I
know about that.'

'What?'

'Well,
this case we're on. I mean, I really don't see it, but he has a guy for these
killings. He has really zeroed in on this guy, and I can see why Frank might
consider him a suspect, but I really don't see how he can be so sure. It is a
bit obsessive, like you say.'

'That's
just his nature. Mom used to say that sometimes he was so certain, even when he
was wrong, and there was no way you could convince him otherwise. Some people
are just like that, and Frank Parrish is one of them.'

Radick
looked thoughtful, was quiet a moment, then asked, 'What's the deal with his
drinking?'

'He's
always been that way. I don't think he's gonna kill himself from it, but it's
certainly an issue for him. I always put it down to the stress of his job, but
recently I've started to have other ideas.'

'Like
what?'

'Well,
I know he's my dad an' everything, but we've done this whole thing in work,
like basic psychology stuff, and one of the classes we took was about drug and
alcohol dependency. It talked about how people can start drinking out of some
imagined inadequacy, you know? I thought about Dad, and then I thought about
his dad, my grandfather—'

'John
Parrish.'

'You
know about John Parrish?'

'The
guy's a fucking legend. OCCB, Brooklyn Organized Crime Task Force, more
commendations than any other officer in the precinct's history.' Radick smiled.

'Yeah,
and he and my grandma had a marriage that lasted forever. He had one son, and
that son followed in his footsteps, right into the police department. As far as
cops are concerned, the best validation of your parenting skills is if your son
goes into the department alongside you, and that's what Frank did.'

'So
you think he feels inadequate because he's always having to live up to the John
Parrish reputation?'

Caitlin
turned her mouth down at the corners. 'I don't know, but it sounds plausible. I
. . .
well ...
it hasn't exactly been straightforward with his career, has it? And his
marriage was a fuck-up, and his kids are doing whatever they're doing. I don't
know when he last saw Robert, but Robert is about as far from what Granddad
would have approved of as you could get. John Parrish was your regular
all-American tough guy, a real John Wayne type that thought you were a fag if
you didn't drink a quart of sourmash and go out picking fights with someone
three times your size.'

'I
know guys like that. A dying breed, but they still make 'em every once in a
while.'

'Well,
my brother is like your artistic type. He's studying engineering, but I think
he'll wind up a graphic designer or an interior decorator or something. I mean,
he's not a fag or anything - not that I would have anything on it if he was -
but he doesn't go around biting trees and wrestling pickup trucks.'

Radick
shifted again. He moved his leg upwards until he felt the warmth between
Caitlin's thighs. He reached up his hand and stroked away a lock of hair from
the side of her face.

'It's
hard for me to consider that your father feels inadequate,' he said.

'Why?'

'Because
he's so sure of everything he does. This job is not what I thought it would be
. . . not exactly . . .'