We stepped out in the warm, dark silence of Hudson Avenue.
Kyle called out, “So I can still see her.”
“I just said that, son.”
“I mean socially.”
“Go do some calculations, Kyle.”
CHAPTER 33
We got back in the car, sat shadowed by the mansion’s haughty face. I watched as a second-story light went off. Miserly moon; the rest of the block had receded into mist. An easterly breeze ruffled stately trees. Hudson Avenue smelled of oranges and wet cat and ozone.
Milo said, “Young love. So much for Tanya being discreet. Did I screw up by allowing Kyle to be Mr. Protective?”
“Could you have stopped him?”
He rubbed his face. “You trust him?”
“My gut says he’s okay.”
“And if he’s telling it right, she could use a friend. Lying about having a social group. You wondered about that.”
“Would’ve been nice to be wrong,” I said.
“I can’t even imagine going it alone at that age.”
From the little he’d told me of his childhood, he’d felt alienated by age six, a big, fat Irish kid who looked and acted like his brothers but knew he was different. The few times he’d talked about his family, he could’ve been an anthropologist describing an exotic tribe.
I said, “Yeah, it’s tough.”
“But you think she’s doing okay?”
“As well as can be expected.”
He laughed. “Dr. Discreet. Anyway, be nice if we could clear all this up and watch the two of them waltz into the sunset…not that kids waltz, nowadays.” Flash of teeth. “Not that
“Kyle’s diagnosis seems right-on.”
“Animal guts on his weenie goes beyond basic sociopath, Alex.”
“Plus-four sociopath,” I said. “He was giving out some serious danger signals early on and no one bothered to care.”
“Glommin’ Mommy’s photos.”
“His entire childhood was eroticized. Sex and violence could’ve gotten blended. That makes me wonder if Patty’s ‘terrible thing’ was related to a lust crime. What if she really did kill someone-a bad guy she considered a threat to Tanya?”
“Some scuzzy pal of Pete’s?”
I nodded.
He said, “Scary pedophile crosses Tanya’s path and Mommy uses her little.22. Why tell Tanya now?”
“Maybe she was frightened because she hadn’t finished the job.”
“Sparing De Paine,” he said. “Years later she runs into him at the E.R. and he makes a threatening comment. But if he’d collaborated with another lowlife on something unspeakable, why would Patty off his buddy and give him a pass?”
“Because he was young,” I said. “Eighteen years old when Patty and Tanya lived on Fourth Street. He was also the son of a man she’d cared for. And possibly cared about.”
“Everyone else despises Jordan but she had a soft spot for him?”
“She watched over him as if she did. It’s also possible killing once traumatized her and she didn’t have the stomach to repeat it. It can be like that for good folk.”
The breeze blew harder.
“Okay,” he said, “for whatever reason she doesn’t shoot little Petey. Why not report him to the cops?”
“Because she’d eliminated his accomplice and didn’t want any contact with the cops.”
“Theoretical accomplice,” he said. “Given your logic, someone older. Now all we have to do is conjure this phantom out of the ether. And unearth some unspeakable sex crime no one’s ever heard about. Also, if Patty was worried about De Paine hurting Tanya, why not come out and warn her explicitly?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible the disease
“I guess.”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
He put his hands behind his head. “Imaginative, I’ll grant you that.”
I said, “When Tanya told me she felt Patty was trying to protect her, I put it down to romanticizing her mother. But maybe she had it right.”
He closed his eyes. The dash clock said one forty-six.
“It also fits Lester Jordan’s murder, Milo. What if Jordan knew Patty had spared his son? We come by asking about her, he gets jumpy, wonders if Junior’s finally going to pay. Or if Junior’s into something new. He calls Junior, maybe warns him to stay away from Tanya. Or sends the warning through Mary. Either way, De Paine wonders if Jordan can be trusted to keep his mouth shut. That tops off the rage he’s felt toward his father his entire life. He pays a social call on Dad in the guise of bringing over product. Jordan fixes up, nods out, De Paine lets in Robert Fisk.”
“Oedipus wrecks,” he said.
“You don’t need to be Freud to see it in this family. One of De Paine’s earliest sexual charges was looking at his mother’s movie stills. Feeding his father’s habit put him in the power chair.”
“Do sociopaths dig irony?”
“They process it differently than the rest of us.”
“Meaning?”
“Shark-eats-minnow is good!”
“How does Moses Grant fit in?”
“Nothing we’ve heard about him so far indicates criminality, so maybe he was an oversized minnow. He gave up his day job and his apartment to run with De Paine because he believed De Paine would help his deejay career. Along the way, he saw too much, reacted with fear or revulsion. That kind of weakness would be a danger sign to De Paine and Fisk.”
“Cleaning house,” he said. “You’re figuring Grant was also there when they did Jordan.”
“Fortuno called him a lackey and whatever else he is, Fortuno’s perceptive. We know Grant drove the Hummer so maybe that night he was the wheelman, waiting somewhere up the block.”
Another long silence.
“You do have a flair for the dark side,” he said, looking past me at the mansion. “Start the car, Jeeves. This zip code’s raising my blood sugar.”
Two twenty-three a.m., lights off at my house. When I stepped in, sounds from a corner of the living room made me jump.
Robin said, “Hi, honey.”
As my eyes habituated, I made out her form. Curled on a sofa, concealed by a blanket but for curls raining on a silk pillow. Blanche nestled in the triangle defined between Robin’s belly and arm. The TV remote sat on the floor.
She switched on a low-voltage lamp, squinted, sat up knuckling her eyes and pushing hair out of her face. Blanche curled a tongue and smiled.
