Mickey leaned back. He had filled pages and pages of notes. His hand ached. He watched Tyrrell. The older man was staring into his third glass. They’d been huge measures, as big as any Mickey had ever seen poured in a bar. Had he himself drunk that much alcohol he would be asleep by now. Tyrrell was still upright, but he was on the ropes. Mickey wasn’t going to get anything more of use from him.
“Why do you hate him so much?” he asked.
“Huh?” Tyrrell looked up. Even through a fug of progressive intoxication, he was still surprised by the directness of the question.
“Parker. Why do you hate him?”
“Because he’s a killer.”
“Just that?”
Tyrrell blinked slowly. “No. Because he’s wrong. He’s all wrong. It’s like—It’s like he doesn’t cast a shadow, or there’s no reflection when he looks in a mirror. He seems normal, but then you look closer and he isn’t. He’s an aberration, an abomination.”
Christ, thought Mickey.
“You go to church?” asked Tyrrell.
“No.”
“You should. A man ought to go to church. Helps him to keep himself in perspective.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Tyrrell looked up, his face transformed. Mickey had over-stepped the mark, and badly.
“Don’t get smart with me, boy. Look at you, scrabbling in the dirt, hoping to make a few bucks off another man’s life. You’re a parasite. You don’t believe in anything. I believe. I believe in God, and I believe in the law. I know right from wrong, good from evil. I’ve spent my life living by those beliefs. I cleaned out precinct after precinct in this city, rooting out the ones who thought that being lawmen made them above the law. Well, I showed them the error of their ways. Nobody should be above the law, especially not cops, doesn’t matter if they wear a badge now or wore one ten years ago, twenty years ago. I found the ones who stole, who ripped off dealers and whores, who dispensed their version of street justice in alleyways and empty apartments, and I brought them to book. I called them on it, and I found them wanting.
“Because there is a process in place. There is a system of justice. It’s imperfect, and it doesn’t always work the way it should, but it’s the best we have. And anyone—anyone—who steps outside that system to act as judge, jury, and executioner on others is an enemy of that system. Parker is an enemy of that system. His friends are enemies of that system. By their actions, they render it acceptable for others to act the same way. Their violence begets more violence. You cannot perform acts of evil in the name of a greater good, because the good suffers. It is corrupted and polluted by what has been done in its name. Do you understand, Mr. Wallace? These are gray men. They shift the boundaries of morality to suit themselves, and they use the ends to justify the me J Astify theans. That is unacceptable to me, and if you have a shred of decency, it should be unacceptable to you too.” He pushed the glass away. “We’re finished here.”
“But what if others won’t act, can’t act?” asked Mickey. “Is it better to let evil go unchecked than to sacrifice a little of the good to resist it?”
“And who decides that?” asked Tyrrell. He was swaying slightly as he pulled on his coat, struggling to find the armholes. “You? Parker? Who decides what is an acceptable level of good to sacrifice? How much evil has to be committed in the name of good before it becomes an evil in itself?”
He patted his pockets, and heard the satisfying jangle of his keys. Mickey hoped that they weren’t car keys.
“Go write your book, Mr. Wallace. I won’t be reading it. I don’t think you’ll have anything to tell me that I don’t already know. I’ll give you one piece of advice for free, though. No matter how bad his friends are, Parker is worse. I’d step lightly when I’m asking about them, and maybe I’d be inclined to leave them out of your story altogether, but Parker is lethal because he believes that he’s on a crusade. I hope that you expose him for the wretch he is, but I’d watch my back all the way.”
Tyrrell made a gun with his hand, pointed it at Mickey, and let his thumb fall like a hammer on a chamber. Then he walked, a little unsteadily, from the bar, shaking hands with Hector one more time before he left. Mickey put away his notebook and pen, and went to pay the tab.
“You a friend of the Captain’s?” asked Hector as Mickey calculated the tip and added it to the bill by hand for tax purposes.
“No,” said Mickey. “I don’t think I am.”
“The Captain doesn’t have many friends,” said Hector, and there was something in his tone. It might almost have been pity. Mickey looked at him with interest.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that we get cops in here all the time, but he’s the only one who drinks alone.”
“He was IAD,” said Mickey. “Internal Affairs.”
Hector shook his head. “I know that, but that’s not it. He’s just—”
Hector searched for the right word.
“He’s just a prick,” he concluded, then went back to reading his bodybuilding magazine.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MICKEY WROTE UP HIS notes on the Tyrrell interview in his room while the details were still fresh in his mind. The pimp stuff was interesting. He Googled the name Johnny Friday, along with the details that Tyrrell had shared with him, and up came some contemporary news reports, as well as a longer article that had been written for one of the free papers entitled “Pimp: The Brutal Life and Bad End of Johnny Friday.” There were two pictures of Friday accompanying the article. The K ar? asfirst showed Friday as he was in life, a spare, rangy black man with hollow cheeks and eyes that were too large for his face. He had his arms around a pair of young women in lacy underwear, both of whom had their eyes blacked out to preserve their anonymity. Mickey wondered where they were now. According to the main article, young women who became professionally acquainted with Johnny Friday were not destined to lead happy existences.
The second picture had been taken on the mortuary slab, and showed the extent of the injuries that Friday had received in the course of the beating that took his life. Mickey figured that Friday’s family must have asked for the photograph to be released; that, or the cops had wanted it done in order to send out a message. Friday wasn’t even recognizable as the same man. His face was swollen and bloodied; his jaw, nose, and one of his cheekbones broken; and some of his teeth were sheared off at the gums. He had suffered extensive internal injuries too; one of his lungs had been punctured by a broken rib, and his spleen had ruptured.
Parker’s name wasn’t mentioned, which was no surprise, but a “police source” had indicated to the writer that there was a suspect in the killings, although there was not enough evidence as yet to press charges. Mickey calculated the odds in favor of Tyrrell being that source, and decided they were about even. If he was, then it meant that, even a decade ago, he’d had doubts about Parker, and he might have had some justification for them. Mickey hadn’t cared much for Tyrrell, but there was no denying that the man who had killed Johnny Friday was dangerous, someone capable of inflicting grave violence on another human being, an individual filled with anger and hatred. Mickey tried to balance that with the man he had encountered in Maine, and what he had heard about him from others. He rubbed his still tender belly at the memory of the punch that he had received on Parker’s front porch, and the light that had flared briefly in the man’s eyes as he had struck the blow. Yet no other blows had followed, and the anger in his eyes was gone almost as quickly as it had first appeared, to be replaced by what Mickey thought was shame and regret. It hadn’t mattered to Mickey then—he had been too busy trying not to cough his guts up—but it was clear upon reflection that, if Parker’s anger was still not yet fully under his control, then he had learned to rein it in to some degree, although not quickly enough to save Mickey from a bruised belly. But if Tyrrell was right, this man had Johnny Friday’s blood on his hands. He was not just a killer, but a murderer, and Mickey wondered how much he had truly changed in the years since Johnny Friday’s death.
When he was finished with the Tyrrell material, he opened a paper file on his desk. Inside were more notes: twenty-five or thirty sheets of paper, each covered from top to bottom in Mickey’s tiny handwriting, illegible to anyone else thanks to a combination of his personal shorthand and the size of the script. One sheet was headed with the words “Father/Mother.” He intended to head out to Pearl River at some point to talk to neighbors, store owners, anyone who might have had contact with Parker’s family before the killings, but he had some more homework to do on that first.
He checked his watch. It was after eight. He knew that Jimmy Gallagher, who had partnered Parker’s father down in the Ninth Precinct, lived out in Brooklyn. Tyrrell had given him that, along with the name of the investigator from the Rockland County District Attorney’s Office who had been present at the interviews with Parker’s father following the killings. Tyrrell thought that the latter, ex-NYPD, name of Kozelek, mig J QKozelek, ht talk to Wallace, and had initially offered to smooth the way, but that was before their conversation had come to a bad-tempered end. Wallace figured that call wasn’t going to be made now, although he wasn’t afraid to tap Tyrrell again, once he’d sobered up, if the investigator proved reluctant to speak.
The partner, Gallagher, was another matter. Wallace could tell that Tyrrell hadn’t liked Gallagher any more than he’d liked Charlie Parker. He went back to his notes from that afternoon and found the exchange in question.
W: Who were his friends?
T: Parker’s?
W: No, his father’s.
T: He was a popular guy, well liked down in the Ninth. He probably had a lot of friends.
W: Any in particular?
T: He was partnered with—uh, what was his name now?—Gallagher, that’s it. Jimmy Gallagher was his partner down there for years. (Laughs) I always—ah, it doesn’t matter.
W: Maybe it does. T: I always thought he was queer myself. W: There were rumors?
T: Just that: rumors.
W: Was he interviewed in the course of the investigation into the Pearl River killings?
T: Oh yeah, he was interviewed all right. I saw the transcripts. It was like talking to one of those monkeys. You know the ones: see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil? Said he knew nothing. Hadn’t even seen his old buddy that day.
W: Except?
T: Except that it was Gallagher’s birthday when the killings occurred, and he was down in the Ninth, even though he’d requested, and been given, a day off. Hard to believe that he would have gone to the Ninth on his day off, and his birthday, what’s more, and not hooked up with his partner and best friend.
W: So you think that Gallagher went down to meet some people for a birthday drink, and if that was the case, Parker would have been among them?
T: Makes sense, doesn’t it? Here’s another thing: Parker was on an eight-to-four tour that day. A cop named Eddie Grace covered for Parker so that he could finish his tour early. Why would Parker have been calling in favors unless it was to meet up with Jimmy Gallagher?
W: Did Grace say that was why he covered for Parker?
T: Like everyone else involved, Grace knew nothing and said nothing. The precinct clerk, DeMartini, saw Parker skip out, but didn’t say anything about it. He knew when to turn a blind eye. A waitress in Cal’s said Gallagher was with someone on the night of the killings, but she didn’t get a good look at the guy, and he didn’t stay long. She said it might have been Will Parker, but then the bartender contradicted her, said it was someone else in the bar with Gallagher, a stranger, and the waitress subsequently decided that she’d been mi J Quo;d beenstaken.
W: You think someone put pressure on her to change her story?
T: They closed ranks. It’s what cops do. They protect their own, even if it’s the wrong thing to do.
Mickey paused at that point in his notes. Tyrrell’s face had changed when he spoke about ranks closing, of men being protected. Perhaps it was the IAD investigator in him, a deep-seated hatred of corrupt men and the code of omerta that protected them, but Mickey didn’t think that was all. He suspected that Tyrrell had always been outside the loop even before he joined IAD. He wasn’t a likable man, as Hector had pointed out, and it might have been the case that the “Rat Squad” had given him the opportunity to punish those whom he despised in the guise of a crusade against corruption. Mickey filed that observation away, and returned to his reading.
T: What I couldn’t figure out was, what did it matter if Gallagher was with Parker that night, unless Gallagher knew something about what was going to happen?
W: You’re talking about a premeditated killing.
Mickey recalled that Tyrrell had reconsidered at that point.
T: Maybe, or Gallagher knew the reason Parker ended up killing those two kids and wanted to keep that knowledge to himself. Whatever the reason, I know Jimmy Gallagher lied about what happened that night. I’ve read the IAD reports. As far as we were concerned, after that, Jimmy Gallagher was a marked man for the rest of his career.
Mickey found Gallagher’s name in the phone book. He considered making a call to him before heading out to Bensonhurst, then decided that he might be better off surprising him. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to gain from speaking to Gallagher, but if Tyrrell was right, then there was at least one crack in the story constructed around the events of the day on which the Pearl River killings had taken place. As a reporter, Mickey had learned to become the water in the crack, widening it, weakening the structure itself, until it finally collapsed to reveal the truth. The killings and their aftermath would play an important part in Mickey’s book. They’d offer him scope to consult a couple of rent-a-psychologists who’d give him chapter and verse on the impact on a son of his father’s involvement in a murder-suicide. Readers ate that stuff up.
He took the subway out to Bensonhurst to save a few bucks and found Gallagher’s street. He knocked on the door of the neat little house. After a couple of minutes, a tall man answered the door.
“Mr. Gallagher?”
“That’s right.”
Gallagher’s lips and teeth were stained red. He’d been drinking wine when Mickey called. That was good, unless he had company. It could mean that his defenses might be down some. Mickey had his wallet in his hand. He removed a card from it and handed it over.
“ J Q"5%"ldqMy name’s Michael Wallace. I’m a reporter. I was hoping to talk to you for a few minutes.”
“About what?”
And now it was time for Mickey to massage the truth a little: a lie in the service of a greater good. He doubted if Tyrrell would have approved.
“I’m putting together a piece about changes in the Ninth Precinct over the years. I know you served down there. I’d like to speak to you about your memories of that time.”
“A lot of cops passed through the Ninth. Why me?”
“Well, when I was looking for people to talk to, I saw that you’d been involved in a lot of community activities over here in Bensonhurst. I thought that social conscience might give you a better insight into the nature of the Ninth.”
Gallagher looked at the card. “Wallace, huh?”
“That’s right.”
He leaned forward and tucked the card carefully into the pocket of Mickey’s shirt. It was a curiously intimate gesture.
“You’re full of shit,” said Gallagher. “I know who you are, and I know what you’re trying to write. Cops talk. I knew about you from the moment you started sniffing around in things that don’t concern you. Take my advice: let this one go. You don’t want to go nosing around in these corners. Nobody worth talking to is going to help you, and you may just bring a heap of trouble down on your head in the process.”
Mickey’s eyes glittered. They had turned to hard little jewels set into his head. He was getting tired of being warned off.
“I’m a reporter,” he said, even though this was no longer the case. Then again, there was no such thing as a former reporter, just as there was no such thing as an ex-alcoholic. The old hunger never went away. “The more people tell me not to look into something, the more I want to do it.”
“That doesn’t make you a reporter,” said Gallagher. “It makes you a fool. You’re also a liar. I don’t much care for that in a man.”
“Really?” said Wallace. “You’ve never lied?”
“I didn’t say that. I like it as little in myself as I do in you.”
“Good, because I believe that you lied about what happened on the day that Will Parker killed those two teenagers out in Pearl River. I’m going to do my best to find out why. Then I’ll be back here, and we’ll talk again.”
Gallagher looked weary. Mickey wondered how long he’d been waiting for all of this to come back on him. Probably since the day his partner had turned into a murderer.
“Get off my step, Mr. Wallace. You’re spoiling my evening.”
He closed the door in Mickey’s face. Mickey stared at it for a moment, then took the business card from his pocket and tucked it into the door frame before heading back to Manhattan.