“This is nothing personal,” she said. “It’s simply that my husband and I can handle it from here. With all due respect, we ask that you just leave things alone. We would appreciate your discretion in this matter. Whatever you’ve discovered should stay between us.”
“You haven’t even asked me for a final report,” I said. “I’ve called you twice the last couple of days, and you didn’t even call me back. All this money and you don’t even want to know what I’ve learned? Or maybe you already know from the two guys you’ve had following me.”
“I’ve never asked anyone to follow you,” she said.
I believed her.
“Did you know that Tinsley was pregnant?” I asked.
Her back stiffened, and her jaws tightened.
“I did not.”
I didn’t believe her.
“Did you know that her boyfriend, who is likely the father of your unborn grandchildren, was found dumped in an alley in Englewood with a single bullet to his head?”
She remained stoic. “I did not.”
Again, I didn’t believe her. What was she hiding and why? Considering this might be the last time we spoke, I needed to press her to see if she would give me anything. Her calm didn’t make sense. Something or someone had turned her from the anxious mother who had called me once a day since she walked into my office almost three weeks ago to a calm, satisfied woman who had moved on to other matters.
“Do you know a Dr. Gunjan Patel?” I asked.
She nodded softly.
“What is she hiding?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.
Violet Gerrigan was a terrible liar. It was then that I realized she knew everything that was going on, and telling her what she already knew wouldn’t change her mind. I picked up the check and ripped it in half, then slid the pieces back across the desk. Her money wouldn’t change my mind either. I’d lost my job with the department because I couldn’t play along quietly with something I knew was wrong. I wasn’t about to start now.
“An innocent boy who had his entire life ahead of him is now in the ground with a single bullet wound in his skull,” I said. “I think your daughter’s disappearance is directly related to his murder. I also think that somewhere in all this mess is some kind of cover-up. Something tells me that finding out what happened to your daughter will help me find out who killed her boyfriend and why. Your daughter is alive, and you know where she is.” I pushed the check back to her. “A quarter of a million is a lot of money, but even if you put ten times that in front of me, you wouldn’t be able to buy my silence. I don’t know what game your family is playing, but that kid’s life wasn’t a game. The least he deserves is the truth, and I won’t stop till I get it.”
“Have it your way,” Violet Gerrigan said. She picked up the torn check, then left. I looked out the window and watched her walking to her car. The chauffeur was the same as the first time she had come, but the car was different. This time he escorted her into the back of a midnight-blue Rolls-Royce SUV. My mind quickly went back to my conversation with Joseph, the doorman at Chopper’s apartment building. He’d described a similar car and color belonging to the man who had argued with Chopper in the back of the building. There was very little chance this was a coincidence. It was Randolph Gerrigan who had gone to Chopper’s apartment building that night. But more importantly, what was the reason for their argument? And why had both of them lied to me when they said they had never met each other?
35
NO SOONER HAD THE Rolls driven away than I was on the phone with Burke.
“Violet Gerrigan just left my office,” I said.
“And she told you that your services were no longer needed,” he said.
“How did you know?”
“Because I got the same message.”
“Was there a reason behind the message?”
“None. Just the order from up top to let it go.”
“And will you do that?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“But I do.”
“I figured you might say something like that.”
“There’s still Chopper’s killer out there somewhere,” I said.
“We’re still looking, but we don’t have anything yet,” he said.
“I won’t stop until I know what happened,” I said.
“You think I didn’t already know that? But I’m warning you to tread lightly and watch your back. Just because Gerrigan has more money than God doesn’t mean he’s soft. He can be a mean and dangerous sonuvabitch when he wants to be.”
I SAT ACROSS FROM my father, both of us sipping an expensive wine whose provenance he had carefully explained and whose details I had already forgotten. After lunching on a delicious coq au vin and finishing with a pear tarte tatin, we had retired to his first-floor study, full of old wood and crowded bookshelves. His diplomas, going all the way back to high school, still hung on the walls next to my mother’s. He had always complained that even though they both went to Stanford, her law school diploma looked fancier than his medical diploma. That was a particular sore spot my mother had liked to prod every so often when she was alive, reminding him that the extravagance of the diploma corresponded to the academic rigor it took to earn it. Florence, his housekeeper and cook all wrapped into one, had made sure nothing had changed in this room. She had the fire going at full roar.
“What do you know about Dr. Gunjan Patel?” I asked.
“Smart,” he said. “She’s either Harvard or Yale, I forget which one. She doesn’t publish a lot, but when she does, it’s usually something that pushes the envelope.”
“How?”
“She’s a big believer in transcranial magnetic stimulation.”
“Oh, TMS,”
