he killed the kid. As I slipped into the space, Feeney’s resigned expression reshaped itself into a knowing smile. When I unlocked the doors, he didn’t move.
He said, “Where’re you goin’? We can do this in here in the air conditioning, you know?”
“Do what?”
“Weren’t you gonna ask me to explain why Martello would park his SUV on the west side of Ocean Parkway while he committed the homicide on the east side? That’s six busy lanes of traffic he had to cross at night to make his escape, right? Why would he do that? Then you were gonna point out to me that most of the witnesses, includin’ the drivers that hit him, swear Ray Martello was runnin’ not away from the crime scene but towards it when he got smacked. Am I right?”
“You know you are,” I said.
“See, Prager, it’s all those why questions, they’re gonna make you miserable. I don’t know why he parked his Yukon here. Maybe he couldn’t get a spot on the other side of Ocean Parkway or maybe he didn’t want anyone to notice his car. Why was he running the wrong way? Maybe he thought he forgot something at the crime scene. Maybe he got disoriented because he didn’t know Brooklyn so good. Maybe because really killing someone ain’t as easy as people think and it fucks ’em up a little. Maybe because he had twice the legal limit of alcohol in his bloodstream mixed with Xanax. You see, I don’t have to know why he did those things. I only have to know that he did them.”
“What about the alcohol and Xanax?”
“What about them?” Feeney asked. “You ever kill anybody?”
“No.”
“You think if you were gonna have to kill someone you knew in cold blood, and a kid at that, that you might have to fortify yourself a little? I know I would.”
“But he had enough alcohol and drugs in him to make an elephant loopy.”
“He was a cop, not a pharmacist, Prager. Besides, maybe that’s why he was disoriented and ran in the wrong direction.”
What he said was making sense and it made me realize how silly and desperate I must have sounded, but I guess I’d already passed the point of caring just how silly.
“Did he have a prescription for the Xanax?” I asked.
“You’re shittin’ me, right? We can drive into your old precinct and within twenty minutes I could buy enough Xanax, Valium, methadone, and Oxycontin to put out a herd of fuckin’ elephants. Trust me, Prager, as a brother cop and as a guy who’s seen a lot of good men torture themselves over stupid details, leave it be. The answers you’re lookin’ for, you ain’t gonna find here, not on these streets, not in that file. Ray Martello was a sick bastard who was willin’ to go a long way to get his revenge. He killed the kid, panicked, and ran into traffic. End of story. You’re never gonna know why the kid lied to you about his name. He just did.”
I was almost ready to give in, but not yet. “What about this mysterious guy who drove the kid around, Martello’s friend with the eye patch? You haven’t been able to find him.”
“Frankly, we haven’t been lookin’ real hard. Maybe he exists, maybe he doesn’t. Bottom line, the people who matter in this case are dead,” Feeney said, running out of patience.
“And the bloody shoe print… Why was there only one? Martello had to cross almost the entire length of the room to get out the back window, but he only left one print.”
“’Cause Martello was part kangaroo and hopped to the window. Remember, I don’t have to know why. There was only one print because there was only one print. Drive me back to the Six-One now, okay? You can keep a set of the autopsy photos as a memento of our date, but playtime is officially over.”
When I dropped him back at the precinct, he thanked me again for lunch and warned me not to call him about the case. I promised I wouldn’t, but I had my fingers crossed.
During my ride into Brooklyn Heights, I went over everything Detective Feeney had said. The thing of it was, he was right. With Ray Martello and the kid dead, I could research the hell out of their histories, interview everyone who ever knew them, put their lives under the world’s most powerful microscope, and I would still be asking why. It dawned on me, that the real question of why didn’t have to do with the kid lying to me about his name, but about why I cared. I thought about what the late Israel Roth would have said vis-a-vis my state of mind.
“Mr. Moe,” he’d say, “you are hanging onto the case because you don’t want to let Katy go. Patrick bound the two of you together as powerfully, more powerfully maybe than wedding vows or gold rings. When in the hospital you told her about the fake Patrick and she got so angry, it was the same. It’s like this number on my forearm, even if you could scrub it away, I would still be bound, for good or bad, to my past. If you said to me, come Izzy, I could get that thing removed, I’m not sure I would go.”
It’s funny, even when I imagined the words Mr. Roth might say, I heard his voice in my head. I put my hand to my mouth. I was smiling. By the time I got into the office, the weight of the whys had lifted. I walked directly into Devo’s command center and released him from wasting any more time on my preoccupation.
“Devo, forget working on any of that stuff related to Katy’s brother and tackle the backlog. We have to make some money around here with paying customers.”
“Are you quite sure, Moe? I have sharpened some of the-”
“Forget it, I’m moving on. Just bag the stuff up and I’ll return it.”
“Okay.”
Carmella was in her office and was standing by a file cabinet when she told me to come in. I couldn’t help but stare. She followed my eyes.
“You’re showing a little,” I said.
“You’re grinning like an idiot, Moe.”
I didn’t say anything, but walked up to her and reached out my hand to feel her little belly. I stopped myself. People often don’t realize what an incredibly intimate and loaded gesture it is to place your hand on a pregnant woman’s abdomen. It’s reaffirming, connective, even sexual. I remembered complete strangers touching Katy without a thought of asking permission when she was pregnant with Sarah. It’s almost instinctive, tribal, at least.
“It’s okay for you to touch me.”
And I did. She placed her hand on top of mine. “You’re keeping it,” I said.
“I am. It’s a pretty amazing thing to have someone growing inside you.”
“Now you’re grinning like an idiot.”
“Am I?” She blushed.
“We are going to have to rearrange things around here, if this little girl’s go-”
“-boy. Little boy. I know it.”
“If this little boy’s going to get a healthy start.”
She removed her hand from mine. “We’ll talk about it when the time comes.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
Her grin faded as suddenly as it had appeared and her mood darkened. “Moe, I guess I should tell you that the baby is-”
“-Dukelsky’s. I know. I knew the minute he showed up at the Six-One. It was a guilty favor he was doing. It all fit together. I think he tried to talk to me about you two, but I stopped him.”
“Some of the things I said about him, they were… not fair. He just doesn’t want a baby now or to get married. He’s been married and divorced and has two kids. I don’t want to marry him anyway. This was my fault. I chased him, Moe. I have for years.”
“Why?” There was that question again. “You could have any man you want.”
She brushed the back of her hand against my cheek. “No, I can’t.”
“Come on, Carmella, let’s not do this again.”
“That’s right.” Her eyes burned. “We can’t be together because it makes too much sense. We can’t be together because of your rules. Because some man raped me as a little girl, because it was you who saved my life, because my parents changed my name, because I lied to you about who I was, because I got my shield and you didn’t, because your wife tossed you to the curb, be-”
“Stop it!”
“Get out of my office!” she hissed. “Get out of here. At least Paul was honest with himself and me. Get
