Inside the house, Jimmy sat at his kitchen table. There was an empt J Q was an ey glass beside him, and half a bottle of Syrah, along with the remains of his evening meal. Jimmy liked cooking for himself even more than he liked cooking for other people. When he cooked for himself, he didn’t have to fret about the results, about what other people might think of what he’d prepared. He was able to cook entirely to his own satisfaction, and he knew what he enjoyed. He’d been looking forward to a quiet evening with a good bottle of wine and an old noir movie on TCM. Now his sense of calm, which had already been fragile, was shattered. It had been fragile ever since Charlie Parker came to his door. At that moment, Jimmy had felt as though the ground were slowly being eroded from beneath his feet. He had hoped that the past had been laid to rest, however uneasily. Now the earth was shifting, exposing tattered flesh and old bones.
He had always been troubled by the possibility that, in lying to the investigators, in keeping silent over the decades that followed, he had done the wrong thing. Like a splinter buried deep in the flesh, the knowledge of how he had conspired with others to bury the truth, even the little of it that he knew, had festered inside him. Now he knew that the time was fast approaching when the infection would either be purged from his body, or it would destroy him.
He filled his glass and walked to the hallway. Taking a sip of his wine, he dialed the number for the second time since Parker had visited him. It was answered after five rings. In the background, he heard noises—plates being washed, the laughter of women—as the old man said hello.
“It’s Jimmy Gallagher,” he said. “There’s another problem.”
“Go on,” said the voice.
“I’ve just had a reporter here, name of Wallace, Mickey Wallace. He was asking about…that day.”
There was a brief silence. “We know about him. What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I stuck to the story, like you told me to, like I’ve always done. But—”
“Go on.”
“It’s coming apart. First Charlie Parker, now this guy.”
“It was always going to come apart. I am only surprised that it has taken so long.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“About the reporter? Nothing. His book will never be published.”
“You seem very certain about that.”
“We have friends. Wallace’s contract is about to be canceled. Without the promise of money for his efforts, he’ll lose heart.”
Jimmy wasn’t so sure about that. He’d seen the look on Wallace’s face. Money might have been part of the impulse behind his investigation, but it wasn’t the sole motivation. He was almost like a good cop, Jimmy thought. You didn’t pay him to do his job, you paid him not to do something else. Wallace wanted the story. He wanted to find out the truth. Like all those who achieve success against the odds, there was a touch of the fanatic in him.
“Have you spoken to Charlie Parker?”
“Not yet.”
“If you wait for him to come to you, you may find that his anger is commensurately greater. Call him. Tell him to come down and talk.”
“And do I also tell him about you?”
“Tell him everything, Mr. Gallagher. You’ve been faithful to your friend’s memory for a quarter of a century. You’ve protected his son, and us, for a long time. We’re grateful to you, but it’s time now to expose these hidden truths to the light.”
“Thank you,” said Jimmy.
“No, thank you. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”
The phone was hung up. Jimmy knew that it might be the last time he heard that voice.
And, in truth, he wasn’t sorry.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE DAY AFTER MY confrontation with Mickey Wallace, I decided to tell Dave Evans that I wanted to take a week off from the Bear. I was determined to put pressure on Jimmy Gallagher, and maybe hit Eddie Grace again. I couldn’t do that while commuting back and forth between Portland and New York and relying on having Sundays off.
And something else had emerged. Walter Cole had been unable to turn up anything new about the investigation into the Pearl River killings, except for one curious detail.
“The reports are too clean,” he told me over the phone. “The whole thing was a whitewash. I spoke to a guy in records. He said the file is so thin, if you turn it sideways it’s invisible.”
“That’s no surprise. They buried it. There was no percentage in doing anything else.”
“Yeah, well, I still think there was more to it than that. The record was purged. You ever hear of something called Unit Five?”
“Doesn’t ring any bells.”
“Ten years ago, all records relating to the Pearl River killings were ring-fenced. Any request for information beyond what was in the files had to go through this Unit Five clearance, which meant contacting the commissioner’s office. My guy didn’t feel comfortable even talking about it, but anyone who wants to know more than the bare details about what happened at Pearl River has to put in a request to Unit Five.”
But Walter wasn’t finished.
“You know what else is covered by the Unit Five order? The deaths of Susan and Jennifer Parker.”
“So what’s Unit Five?” I asked.
“I think you are.”