The Ashes of an Oak (17 page)

Chapter 21

Eddie Palka, a man of indeterminate years (if one had to guess, the guess would be fifty-five plus), a happy demeanour and a black-dyed, combed back, tidal wave of hair, sat in the office with Emmet Diehl and cast his eyes across the paperwork piled on his lap.

Occasionally he would frown or purse his lips or nod enthusiastically. Once in a while, he would tut and run the stem of his unlit pipe along his lower lip, as if the motion soothed him.

The deep smile lines around his brown eyes, which were inquisitive and friendly, creased and uncreased like the bellows of an accordion as he reacted to what he read. Once in a while he would mutter ‘Mmm’, much to Emmet’s consternation, and invariably follow this up with an ‘Aaah’, as if he had resolved some deep question within himself.

When he had finished a page, he would remove it from the pile on his lap and wave it elaborately through the air between forefinger and thumb, as if to ensure that nothing was stuck to it, then place it tidily, face down, at a perfect angle, upon the corner of Emmet’s desk. Once or twice he stared at the paper that he had just put down and raised his eyebrows, stuck out his lower lip and snorted approvingly down his nose at what he had just read.

If he caught Emmet staring at him, he would smile broadly. This would cause Emmet to want to apologise to Eddie for all the wrongs in the world and take him for a beer. Eddie was a large, bearish man. Emmet pictured himself with an arm reached high around his shoulder as they left the bar after one too many drinks.

Eddie Palka was the kind of man that could cause an outbreak of goodwill and affection.

After an hour, he put the final sheet down upon the immaculate pile. His attention turned to his pipe. He took out a tin of tobacco and deftly filled the bowl with one practised finger. He patted the tobacco down and hooked the pipe into the corner of his mouth. He took a couple of drags, eyes closed, to make sure the flow was right, then struck a match and, with kiss lips, encouraged the current of oxygen through the pipe. He disappeared in a billow of smoke as the tobacco ignited and the room was filled, in Emmet’s opinion, by the smell of a brush fire.

He took the pipe from his mouth and scratched the side of his head with the stem. ‘Interesting set of instructions you have there, Emmet,’ he said.

Emmet was always surprised by the Southernness of his accent. The man had been in New York for twenty-two years and still sounded as if he had just stolen out of a Georgian dawn, but it was a wonderfully deep, smooth voice, like smoky whisky.

‘What do you make of it, Eddie?’

Eddie shook his head and replaced the pipe. It was clearly as essential to his whole process as a pair of reading glasses to a long-sighted professor. ‘Shit, I don’t know.’ He took the pipe out of his mouth again and waved it at Emmet. ‘Seems to me that you have some kind of crazy on the loose.’

Emmet narrowed his eyes. ‘That would be all those years of experience and learning talking would it?’ asked Emmet.

‘Hell, yes.’ Eddie chuckled. ‘It’s always sort of amazed me, Emmet, how I get paid so much money and given so much respect for pointing out what a reasonably intelligent monkey could say.’

‘Well, bearing in mind that this precinct is not inundated with monkeys, intelligent or otherwise, perhaps you’d be kind enough to shine your light of wisdom a little deeper.’

Emmet lit a cigarette. When he heard that Eddie Palka had picked up the case he was at once thrilled and frustrated. He was a wonderful psychologist and a first class human being, but he tended to speak before he thought and take his time getting to that thought. It was difficult sometimes to get to the heart of it with Eddie.

On the other hand, if anyone was going to get to the root of this maniac, he would lay odds on Eddie Palka anytime.

‘Get me a typewriter and a bit of privacy,’ said Eddie. ‘Somewhere I can smoke my pipe and lay my pearls of wisdom down on paper.’

‘I can arrange that,’ said Emmet. ‘No problem.’

Eddie gazed thoughtfully at the pile of papers. A mask of solemnity turned his face to granite.

‘You have one fucked up bunny hopping round these streets; you know that, don’t you?’

‘I know, Eddie,’ said Emmet. ‘I’ll get my secretary to set you up downstairs. ‘He got up and opened the door. ‘Anything you can come up will be gratefully received.’

Eddie picked up the papers he had been reading from the desk and squeezed past Emmet through the door. ‘I’ll do my best, Em, but you have one full-nut, over-raisined fruitcake out there. He scares the hell out of me, never mind the poor bastards he’s killed.’

Chapter 22

Frank Matto woke up at ten-thirty. He had slept deeply and well. He had been afraid of his dreams, but none had materialised.

He put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. He dared not look to his right, at the cold, empty space. His head hurt, but he guessed it was the depth of sleep and the whisky consumed with Emmet before he went to bed.

He put his hand to his neck and felt a muscular lump between his neck and shoulder. It had been there for days, the muscles all knotted up, sending a pain shooting behind his eye. All part of the service, he supposed. You can’t have someone picking at your brain and not come away with a little tension. He would pop some aspirin and take himself for a walk. He’d been a prisoner for too long.

He skipped breakfast and settled instead for strong black coffee and a couple of Camels. The Camels didn’t taste good any more. They stank like manure and tasted like dirt. Another side-effect of the surgery, he supposed. He would buy some Marlboros on his walk.

Twenty minutes later, he was walking in the heat of the day. He had expected his legs to be like jelly, but they were holding up pretty well.

A fleeting glimpse of Mary scurried through his head. He stopped and waited while the skip of breath and the impulse to cry dissipated. He would push it down every time it reared its ugly head. For every moment of weakness, he was resolved to double his strength, to allow those glands on top of his kidneys to flood his body with a determination fed by adrenalin, to feed his hate and his lust for revenge. There would be plenty of time to mourn later.

He got on a bus to Brooklyn. If there was one thing that pissed him off about the surgery, it was that he couldn’t drive yet. He would be forced to rely on the buses and overpriced taxis.

He got off on Atlantic Avenue and walked slowly down towards Court Steer and Hanley’s. He would have some lunch there; he felt the need for a burger and a coffee.

The real reason he was going was he hoped to meet James Cowdell.

James was one of those people that made their living by playing one side against the other and picking at the leftovers. He’d been a good source of information for quite a few years and, although about as trustworthy as a vampire in a blood bank, his information was reliable when he was paid well enough. He was one of the few dead-enders that Frank knew who would keep his word once he had given it.

James had what was called Attention Deficit Disorder. To Frank and Steve, this just made him an annoying son of a bitch who couldn’t concentrate for more than fifteen seconds at a time and had to be dragged back into any conversation with some sort of bribe. A drink of some sort usually sufficed or, better still, a sit down burger, so that they could talk while his mouth was full.

James was not a bad person. He had been given a bad deal by his genes and spent most of his time trying to make up for that. His parents were no help. Once they realised that there was something wrong with the boy, they had parented him politely, fearfully and begrudgingly, had given him food, drink and a roof over his head until he was sixteen and then shown him the door.

He had done all the usual things; stealing cars, robbery, spent time in homes, spent time on the streets, had a bellyful of drugs pumped into him and eventually found the middle road that he now trod.

People liked him, but they couldn’t abide him for long.

He was half Hispanic and had short blue-black hair combed forward, had an uneven mouthful of teeth and wore thick, black, plastic framed glasses. He dressed well and kept himself clean because he knew that, if he did so, it would make him more tolerable. He was perfectly aware of his ability to repulse.

He had tried his hand at various jobs but had been fired for his propensity to wander. His last job had been in 1976 as a waiter in a restaurant. He had, to his credit, lasted six days before he was caught on the back step eating what should have been delivered to table twenty-three fifteen minutes previously. He took it philosophically and caused no trouble. One thing James never did was cause harm to others. Despite his difficulties, he was a canny operator and knew how to keep people on his side.

That wasn’t to say he couldn’t look after himself. He had once been cornered by three of his ‘clients’ who had decided that they didn’t like his methods. He had apologised and tried, as usual, to talk his way out of it, but they had charged him as one and each ended up with a part of their body broken.

Frank had always described him as a ‘wiry little fucker’. Frank was right. And, despite the fact that James really was an annoying son of a bitch, Frank liked him very much.

The year before, Frank had pulled some heavy-duty strings and managed to find James some sheltered housing. He had supplied the reference and been his guarantor. James had not let him down. Sure, he had his way of going about things, but he paid his rent, pretty much kept his nose clean and survived on his wits and his kooky charm.

Frank saw him as soon as he walked into Hanley’s. James was sitting at the bar drinking Coca-Cola through a straw and talking continuously.

The bartender was wiping the bar down and nodding his head. He was used to it. James had become as much a part of the background noise as the radio and the car horns.

‘Can I buy you a burger?’ asked Frank.

‘Oh, my God, Detective Matto!’ His accent leaned more towards the Hispanic than Brooklyn. ‘I haven’t seen you for a long time. How you doing?’

Frank took the proffered hand and shook it, then led James off to a table away from everyone.

‘Two burgers, a coffee and another cola, please,’ he said to the barman.

The barman, grateful for the break, was pleased to take his order.

‘James,’ said Frank as they sat down. ‘I need your help.’

‘You only have to ask, Detective.’

‘Well, that’s just it. I’m not coming to you as a detective.’

‘You been fired?’

‘No, I haven’t been fired!’ Frank took off his hat and flashed his scarred, shaven head.

‘Holy mother of Mary! What happened? Was it a car accident? A cousin of mine got into a car accident. He has a scar just like that one, only he dribbles when he talks and chokes on his food a lot. You don’t choke on your food do you, Detective? Truthfully, I find it a little off-putting when I’m eating. He coughs all this half-chewed shit over the table then, if someone doesn’t stop him, he eats it all again, a bit at a time...’

‘I’m not going to choke on my food, James. And I haven’t been fired. I’ve been off sick. I had a brain thing...’

‘No way! A cousin of mine had a...’

Frank put up a hand to stop him talking. ‘Would you shut up, James? Just for one minute? I already got a headache.’

‘Sorry, Detective. Sorry. Go ahead.’

James put the straw in his mouth and sucked at his cola.

Frank lit a cigarette. ‘Have you heard about these murders? The ones in the paper?’ James nodded.

Frank was suddenly filled with the urge to walk away and keep walking. Here he was, in the middle of Brooklyn, talking to a person he hadn’t seen for three months and about to confide in him the one thing he wanted to confide in nobody.

Then he did what he did best and stepped outside of himself. For a split second he told himself to pretend that he was talking about someone else, that he was someone else, that none of this - the city, the job, the home, the wife – had anything to do with him.

That was how he avoided throwing up, that was how he handled things – they weren’t bodies, they were meat, they weren’t crimes bad enough to make your blood boil, they were events happening a long way away to people you didn’t know, in a town you’d never heard of.

‘The last one,’ he said. ‘It was my wife,’

‘Christ almighty,’ said James at the top of his voice. ‘Your wife?’

‘Keep your voice down would you?’

‘I’m sorry, Detective.’ He twirled the straw animatedly around and around in his cola. It boiled in the glass until a filthy brown head appeared on it. ‘That was only two days ago. You shouldn’t be out here. You should be at home.’

‘I’ve been at home, James. I’ve been at home and I can’t just sit there and do nothing. I can’t go to work either, not until I’m cleared by the doc.’

James pointed at his head. ‘I’m not stupid, Detective. That’s a new scar. What, four five days? I’m surprised you can walk. That cousin of mine...’

Frank cut him off. ‘Have you heard anything, James? About the murders? I really need to find this guy, James. I can’t think about anything else.’

‘Man, you’re gonna blow a gasket in that brain of yours if you don’t take it easy.’

The burgers and drinks arrived. James grabbed his and started to tuck into it like a starved dog.

‘Have you heard anything?’ repeated Frank.

James shook his head. ‘No,’ he said through a mouthful of food. ‘But I can ask around.’

‘I can’t pay you anything at the moment...’

‘Hey, forget it, man. First, we catch this bastard, then you can go see your boss and tell him what I did. Thanks to you I have a roof over my head. Say no more.’

Frank took a scrap of paper out of his pocket and pushed it over to James. ‘My home phone. I have an answering machine if I’m not in.’

‘Okay,’ said James. He looked at the plate in front of Frank. ‘You going to eat that burger, Detective?’

Frank pushed the plate across to James. ‘No. And call me Frank.’