Songs of Innocence

“After twenty years? After all the things I’m sure Eva must have told her about me? I couldn’t face her. Not like that.”

“You should have.”

“Maybe,” he said.

His glass was empty again and the bartender filled it without being asked. On the TV, some talking heads were going on about urban violence. Hell of a topic.

“You want to hear something terrible?” he said. “I was at Cornerstone all weekend. Drying out. Too much of this stuff.” He raised his glass. “Then I walk out on Monday morning, head across Sixth Avenue to Universal News, pick up the paper, and what’s the first thing I see?” He rotated the glass slowly between his fingers, like a jeweler examining a stone for a flaw. He didn’t seem to find one.

“My daughter’s dead. There’s two days of sobriety out the window.”

I was learning more about him than I really wanted to know. So he was a drunk, and a coward, and yes, a lousy father. Dorrie had deserved better. Didn’t we all.

I took another swallow of my beer, pushed the bottle away, got to my feet. “Sorry I can’t stay, Doug. I have to get back to the city.”

He didn’t answer, and I realized that he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking past me at the TV screen. I followed his gaze.

The banner on the screen said “MANHUNT.” Above it there were two faces, the newsreader’s and, in a little box over the newsreader’s shoulder, mine. With hair. But it didn’t matter.

“The search continues,” came the low voice from the TV, “for suspected murderer John Blake, in whose Manhattan apartment police found the body of 27-year-old Jorge Garcia Ramos. The police report that Blake is now wanted in connection with a second killing as well, that of Ramos’ girlfriend, 25-year-old Candace Webb, who was found strangled to death early this morning on West 32nd Street.”

I looked over. Doug Harper glanced nervously at me and then back at the screen.

Over the newsreader’s shoulder, the photo of me had been replaced by a photo labeled “WEBB.”

It was a photo of Di.

I felt my throat constrict, my heart start to pound. Di. Strangled—and on West 32nd Street. I remembered her repeating like a mantra, the last time I’d seen her, I’m going to kill them, I’m going to kill them both. Why the hell had she actually tried to do it? I pictured her facing Miklos, his enormous hands reaching out toward her throat. She’d told me if I went up against him I’d better have a gun. Well, if she’d had one, it hadn’t been enough.

Another dead woman, I thought. Another funeral. And for what? For what?

I groped in my pocket, dropped some small bills on the bar. “That’s awful,” I said, my voice sounding weak and strange in my ears. “Someone like that on the loose.”

Doug just looked at me. I didn’t see fear in his face, or anger. Just a troubled expression, as though he didn’t know what to think.

“What?” I said, and when he didn’t answer, “What? You want to ask me something, Doug?”

He shook his head.

There was a payphone on the wall and I figured he’d be dialing the police the instant the door closed behind me. My own damn fault. I should never have talked to him, should never have come out for a drink.

“Listen,” I said, leaning close and lowering my voice. “I didn’t kill either of them.”

“I don’t need to—”

“Listen.” He shut up. “I didn’t kill them. You need to know, this is all about Dorrie. The police don’t understand that. I’ve been looking into her death, I made some people angry at me, and things have gone horribly wrong, but I didn’t kill anyone. If you call the police—listen to me.”

“I’m listening,” he said.

“If you call the police, they’ll put me in jail and I’ll never find out what happened to Dorrie. You’ll never find out. Do you understand?”

“What do you mean you’ve been ‘looking into’ her death?”

“I’m a private investigator,” I said.

“I thought you went to school with her.”

“I did.”

“And you’re trying to find out...what? How she died? I thought they knew how she died.”

“I’m trying to find out why she died,” I said. “There was something bad going on in her life, and I’m going to find out what it was. But only if you don’t turn me in.”

It was pointless. His face had paled and he was having trouble meeting my eyes. I knew he was going to do it.

“Fine,” I said. “Do what you want. But for once in your goddamn life, maybe you could think of your daughter first.”

I walked out.

Through the filthy window, I saw him head straight for the payphone.

Chapter 24

I felt like the last pawn on a chessboard, rooks and knights and bishops closing in on every side. I was inching toward the far side of the board and I wasn’t going to make it.

The return ticket in my pocket was useless now—they’d be watching the train station. You could fly from Philadelphia to New York in theory, but I couldn’t in practice. They’d be looking for me there, too, now that Dorrie’s father had tipped them off.

What was left? As I raced through an intersection on the way back toward the cemetery I thought: I could steal a car. But I couldn’t. I’d lived in Manhattan all my life. I barely knew how to drive a car.

Did I know anyone in Philadelphia who could help me?

I didn’t know anyone in Philadelphia, period.

Except for Doug Harper and his former wife, and they were no friends of mine.

As I passed Greenmount’s front gate I saw the hearse that had brought Dorrie’s coffin at the curb, a Lincoln Town Car with scuffed bumpers and New York plates. The Volvo was behind it. The hearse’s driver, a beefy linebacker type with buzz-cut hair and a chip of beard under his lower lip, was pacing up and down between the two, smoking.

I ran up to the guy. “You heading back to the city?”

“When the lady lets me go.” He had a Russian accent.

“She’s still inside?”

“Paperwork,” he said, and shrugged at the ways of a world that wouldn’t even bury you without getting forms signed in triplicate.

“I need to head back that way myself,” I said, trying to make my voice sound casual. It sounded fake as hell to me. “You mind driving me in?”

“Where’s your car?”

“I came on the train,” I said.

He drew firmly on the butt end of his cigarette, then threw the remnant to the ground, stepped on it. He was trying to figure out why this guy who’d come in on the train wasn’t going back the same way. Or else he was trying to remember where he’d seen my face before.

“I’ll ride in the back. You won’t even know I’m there.”

He scratched at his soul patch.

“Hundred dollar,” he said, and eyed me warily to see whether he’d aimed too high.

I fingered the dwindling supply of bills in my pocket. I needed to save some for later. “I can’t pay you that much,” I said, and he started to shrug again, to turn away, but I put a hand on his shoulder. “I can’t pay a hundred—but I’ll give you sixty and this ticket, which you can turn in for another sixty. That’s one-twenty.” I pulled my return ticket out of my pocket, slightly crumpled, along with three twenties. “You’re driving back anyway,” I said. I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice, while listening with half an ear for police sirens.