“Can’t say I blame him, up and leaving like that. You seen Mrs. Malone? The way she dresses? Ain’t no chance she was faithful to Frank.”
“Frank Malone? Oh, he’s a sweetheart. One morning last winter I came out of my building and the car wouldn’t start. I was standing there wondering what to do, who to call—and he came by and asked if he could help. He’d fixed it for me in fifteen minutes. And he wouldn’t accept a dime. A real gentleman.”
“I think she’s a little crazy, the way she acts. Drinking and all. Even though she had those children to take care of. She comes home awful late four or five nights a week—and the way she curses sometimes is just terrible. There’s no smoke without fire, isn’t that what they say? A woman like that—well, who really knows what she might do?”
The strength of feeling against Mrs. Malone was feeding his curiosity about her. About what had happened to her kids. About why she didn’t look the way a grieving mother should. It was time he saw for himself what lay at the root of it. He wanted to hear what she had to say. To form his own judgment about her.
So he straightened up, threw away his cigarette, and approached her building. It was one in a line of redbrick three-story apartment buildings: shabby, with paint peeling on a couple of the windowsills. He could hear music from an open window on the second floor.
He pressed the buzzer to the Malones’ apartment. No response. Waited, and tried again. Still nothing.
He scribbled a note for her and put it in her mailbox with his business card. He told her he wanted to hear her side of the story, that he wanted to know what she thought had happened to her children.
He stood by his car for a while, smoked a cigarette, wondering if she’d appear. Nothing.
On Monday morning Pete arrived even earlier than usual. Picked up the latest set of proofs, popped open a Coke, started reading. When he saw Friedmann making his way across the floor, he darted over to meet him.
“You got a minute, Mr. Friedmann?”
Friedmann checked his watch. “Literally one minute.”
Pete followed him into his office. Friedmann sank into his chair, waited.
“Thank you, sir. So, Con . . . O’Connor isn’t back. I told Janine . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard. The accident. The brother. Blah, blah, blah. What about it?”
“I want to stay on the story.”
Friedmann sat back, raised an eyebrow.
“I know the case. Even if Con comes back . . . well, we don’t know when he’ll be back. I know the neighborhood. I got a feel for it. I want to take a real look at this. Dig around a little and see what I can find.”
He thought of Ruth Malone: the makeup, the teased hair, the lack of grief. “I think there’s more to this than we’re seeing right now.”
Friedmann got to his feet, picked up the jar of fish food.
“You been here how long? A year?”
“Two.”
“Two. Well.” He scattered flakes of food on the water, watched the fish swimming up to the surface, their rhythmic gulping.
He turned back to Pete. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“It’s yours. Your byline. You lead.”
“Shit. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Friedmann. Really.”
“You fuck it up, I take it away. No argument.”
“You won’t regret it, Mr. Friedmann.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I will. But if the good Lord sees fit to put my senior crime reporter in the hospital and send me you instead, who am I to argue? He giveth, He taketh away. Now get out of here. Go write me something I can print.”
Three days later. Twenty-two in total since the kids were reported missing. Three weeks since Quinn had told him Devlin thought Ruth Malone was worth looking at. And yet, despite the details Quinn had given him, despite the apparent determination of the cops to dig down and find evidence against her, they hadn’t made an arrest. Pete wondered about that. What they’d found—and what they hadn’t.
He stood at the cemetery gates, waiting for the cars. He’d left a bottle of Coke in the car, feeling it would look disrespectful to drink it—and he thought now of the taste of it, sweating through the glass, the sweet jolt of caffeine.
Then he heard the slow approach of a car and turned to see the hearse creeping through the hot afternoon toward him. As it passed, he caught a glimpse of an old woman, rod-straight, lips pursed, looking dead ahead. A priest, with the set expression of someone on his way to a tough day’s work.
And that was it. Both parents were still being questioned at the station house. Maybe there was just a little relief that they wouldn’t have to watch another small coffin being lowered into the same ground.
Then a cab pulled up and one of the Malones’ neighbors got out—the woman who’d told him on the first day that someone had taken the kids. Greta something. No—Gina. Gina Eissen. She was pink-cheeked, perspiring, clutching a handkerchief and a drooping bunch of white daisies. She looked at him and moved to walk past him, but her heel slid on the gravel and she stumbled. Pete caught her elbow to steady her.
“Shit. Shit and damn and fuck these stupid shoes. And fuck . . .”