“Right. See you.” D’Agosta snapped the phone shut and reseated himself. You mean Chester Dominic was just pulling out, don’t you? He felt a horrible prickly heat crawling over his skin. The Guinness had arrived, in a real imperial pint, with two inches of cream on the top. He raised it and took a long pull, then another, feeling the cool liquid loosening the tightness in his throat. He put the pint down to find Laura Hayward looking at him intently.
“You were thirsty,” she said.
“Yeah.” To hide his face, he took another pull. Who was he kidding? They’d been separated half a year now. He couldn’t really blame her for that—not too much, anyway. And Vinnie Junior, his son, didn’t want to move, either. Lydia wasn’t a bad person at heart, but this was a low blow. A really low blow. He wondered if little Vinnie knew about it.
“Bad news?”
D’Agosta glanced at Hayward. “Sort of.”
“Anything I can do?”
“No, thanks.” He sat up. “I’m sorry. I’m lousy company tonight.”
“Don’t worry. It’s not a date.”
There was a silence, then Hayward said, “I read your two novels.”
D’Agosta felt himself reddening. This was the last conversation he wanted to have.
“They were great. I just wanted to tell you that.”
“Thanks.”
“I loved the deadpan style. Gritty. Those books really captured what it’s like to be on the job. Not like most of the phony police fiction around.”
D’Agosta nodded. “So where’d you find them? On a remainder table?”
“I bought them when they were first published. As it happens, I’ve been sort of following your career.”
“Really?” D’Agosta was surprised. When they’d worked together on the subway murders years ago, he hadn’t thought he’d made much of an impression on her. Not a good impression, anyway. Then again, she’d always played her cards close.
“Really. I—” She hesitated. “I was still finishing up my master’s at NYU when we worked together. That was my first big case. I was ambitious as hell, and to me, just starting, you looked like just the kind of cop I wanted to be. So I was really curious when you went off to Canada to write novels. I wondered why a cop as good as you would give it up.”
“I had a lot I wanted to say—about crime, criminals, the justice system. And about people in general.”
“You said it well.”
“Not well enough.”
Her pint was empty and so was his.
“Another round?” he asked.
“Sure. Vinnie, I’ve got to tell you, I couldn’t believe it when I saw you in sergeant’s stripes with a Southampton P.D. badge. I thought maybe I was dealing with a twin brother.”
D’Agosta tried to muster a laugh. “Life.”
“That was some case we worked on, those subway murders.”
“Sure was. You remember the riot?”
She shook her head. “What a sight. Like something in a movie. I still have nightmares about it sometimes.”
“I missed it. I was about half a mile underground, finishing what Captain Waxie started.”
“Old Waxie. You know, he was sucked down so deep into those tunnels they never did find his body. Probably got eaten by an alligator.”
“Or worse.”
She paused. “The force is different now, really different. Thank God—what a cast of characters we had to deal with back then, when I was just a new jack.”
“You remember McCarroll at the T.A.? They called him McCarrion because of his breath?” He chuckled.
“Do I. I had to work for that bastard for six months. It was tough to be a woman on the T.A. force back then. I had two strikes against me: not only was I female, but I was in graduate school. Make that three strikes: I wouldn’t sleep with McCarrion.”
“He made a pass at you?”
“His idea of a pass was to get real close, breathe all over me, tell me I had a nice body, and pucker his lips.”
D’Agosta made a face. “Oh, my God. You report him?”
“And kiss my career good-bye? He was just a harmless cretin, anyway, not worth reporting. Now the NYPD is like a different planet—totally professional. And anyway, nobody would dare pull a stunt like that on a captain.”
The second round came, and D’Agosta buried his mug in it and listened to her reminisce, telling funny stories about McCarroll and another long-gone captain, Al “Crisco” DuPrisco. It brought back a lot of memories.
He shook his head. “Jesus, there’s no better place to be a cop than in the Big Apple.”
“You said it.”
“I gotta get back on the job, Laura. I’m rotting out there in Southampton.”
She said nothing. D’Agosta looked up, his eyes meeting hers and seeing what—pity? “Sorry.” He looked away. Funny how life had reversed everything. Now here she was, probably the youngest captain on the force. And he . . . Well, if anyone deserved success, she did . . .
“Look,” he said, suddenly professional again. “I really asked you for a drink because I wanted to make sure you were okay with Pendergast. I’ve worked with him on not just one big case, but two. Believe me, his methods may be unorthodox, but they work. You couldn’t ask for a better fed on your side.”
“I appreciate your loyalty. But the fact is, he’s got a cooperation problem. I went out on a limb to have that subpoena and warrant ready to go, and he embarrassed me. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt this time, but please, Vinnie, keep the guy in line. He obviously respects you.”