I looked over the two pieces of code that had caught my eye the last time I went through the files:
RCC — DA + MYR =o=. LDY? $ VS $ BLP AM W/C.
>>>MYR PD FR DA RCC $? CK W/AM @ BLP
Ann Marchenko and the Bank of Las Piernas. Now that I had talked to Guy about her job in the safe-deposit area of the bank, maybe I could see a new way of reading the messages on the screen.
In the first line of code, a question had come up in O’Connor’s mind about fund-raising moneys that concerned the district attorney and the mayor. After the rat nose, “LDY?” might stand for “laundry” or “laundering.” “$ VS $” might mean that the moneys accounted for in the campaign funding report didn’t match what one or both of the candidates had received. Somewhere, something didn’t balance out.
The second line of code was easier to figure out. “Mayor paid from district attorney’s fund-raiser money? Check with Ann Marchenko at the Bank of Las Piernas.”
Together, the two lines suggested that the district attorney might be laundering funds he raised and feeding them to the mayor through some kind of system that used the Bank of Las Piernas’s safe-deposit boxes.
I looked at a section of the screen just below the second line of code and saw a group of initials I hadn’t paid much attention to before:
A H
R M
E N
R L
I had originally thought them to be names of people O’Connor planned to call or interview. They weren’t phrases or anything I could make sense of. He would often put a person’s initials here or there. But it was uncommon for him to put four sets in a row without some kind of intervening commentary.
AH might be Andrew Hollingsworth, and RL, Richard Longren. But who the heck were RM and EN? I stared at this list of initials until I had a headache that was pulsing in time with the cursor on the screen.
“Patience,” I could hear O’Connor say. I snapped a pencil in half with my patience and shut the terminal down.
I walked over to Lydia. “I’ve got to get some air,” I said testily.
“I’m off in an hour,” she said. “Should I meet you somewhere for lunch?”
“Okay, how about the Tandoori?”
“Great. I haven’t had Indian food in a long time.”
By the time I stepped outside I was in a better mood. I decided that I would go by Kenny’s room and see how he was doing; maybe say hello to Barbara if she was there.
It was getting to be a little easier to walk into St. Anne’s. I strolled down the hall, but when I got to Kenny’s room, it was empty. I felt my knees buckle. Had Kenny died? I shook myself as if I were trying to throw off a chill. Nonsense, I told myself. His condition was improving. Barbara would have called if he had taken a turn for the worse.
One of the nurses who had seen me come by before told me that Kenny had been moved out of ICU and into another room. She told me how to find it. I thanked her, and she looked at me curiously. “Are you all right?” she asked. “You look a little pale.”
I told her I was fine, thanked her again and made my way to Kenny’s new room.
When I got there, he was alone. “Barbara?” he called out.
“No, Kenny, it’s Irene.”
He didn’t hide the disappointment. “Oh,” he said.
“How are you feeling?”
No answer.
“Look, Kenny, I know you and I haven’t always been bosom buddies, but maybe for Barbara’s sake we could try to be civil to each other.”
He looked over at me. “I feel lousy. What would you expect?”
“That you’d feel lousy, I guess.”
“Well, I do.”
I thought for a moment. Should I just leave? I decided I would at least give it one more try.
“Kenny, I know it’s a really hard time for you. You’ve been through a lot. I’m very sorry about your dad.”
“I’m not.”
“What!” I felt myself go into a cold shock.
“I said, ‘I’m not,’ as in, ‘I’m not sorry my father is dead.’”
The cold shock began to turn into a slow burn. I wanted to break a couple more of his lousy bones.
“You heartless, selfish little son of a bitch!”
“I’m just telling you the truth. You never could accept the truth about Dad. You idolized him. You worshiped him like some kind of god. You made him into something he wasn’t.”
“Oh, really.” I was trying very hard to get back into control of my temper.
“Really. The truth is, my father was an alcoholic who never gave a tinker’s damn about me because I couldn’t and wouldn’t be a newspaperman.”
