I'm closing up inside. I'm actually dying.
“Come on, kids.” Mary Katherine finally spoke up from her purposely low-key spot at the kitchen table. “Be a little fair, huh. Doesn't your father get to have some friends, too?”
Silence.
No, he doesn't.
Not women friends.
Lizzie finally started to cry. She tried to muffle her sobs, choking back the breathless gasps with both little hands.
Then they were all crying, except Mickey Kevin, who kept staring murderously at his father.
It was Carroll's worst moment with them since the night Nora had died on some high-and-mighty, antiseptic white floor in New York Hospital. His chest was beginning to heave now, too; he felt as if he were being cruelly, brutally, ripped in half.
They weren't ready for someone else-maybe he wasn't ready, either.
For the next several minutes, nothing he could say could make it any better. Nothing could make any of the kids laugh. Nothing could make them loosen up at all.
They all hated Caitlin. They weren't going to give her a chance. Period. End of nondiscussion.
They were fiercely determined to hate anyone who tried to take the place of their dead mother.
24
Manhattan
Two hours later, on duty, Carroll's head was throbbing with dull pain. He felt he needed a stiff shot of Murphy's Irish whiskey. He also felt like going back to the role of Crusader Rabbit, running away into the convenient, strangely comfortable fantasy of the bag man. For the first time, maybe, he thought he was beginning to understand the past three years of his life.
Later, at around nine o'clock, he would vaguely remember weaving a mostly aimless path inside number 13 Wall Street. The fluorescent lights were too bright; the glaring overhead lamps were harsh, tearing at his eyes.
It was all wrong, the place felt wrong. There was too much gloom and doom, palpable frustration evident everywhere. The police investigators and Wall Street researchers bent over mountainous documents or hunched in paralysis in front of computer screens were like people who had been trapped indoors too long, men and women who hadn't seen the light of day for weeks. Even his own people, the usually unflappable Caruso included, had the quirky, tense mannerisms of heavy smokers suddenly deprived.
Around nine-thirty Arch Carroll set to work again inside his monastic office.
The broken windowpane hadn't been replaced, and the sheet of brown paper he'd stuck in the space hung limply now, like a beat-up old blind in an abandoned tenement. He kept the ceiling lights purposely bright, glaringly unpleasant. The door was shut tight so the radiator heat would build up.
An illusion of warmth, he thought.
Carroll was dressed appropriately for the overheated room: a Boston Celtics T-shirt that had the look of something left over from a banquet of moths, Levi's jeans, Crusader Rabbit's very own work boots. He was going to be comfortable, at least.
He also had a bottle of Murphy's Irish whiskey on the desk. What would Walter Trentkamp say? Oh, to hell with Walter and his imposing virtues, his old-world cop mores.
For a few minutes, slowly sipping the Irish, Arch Carroll thought about his job, jobs in general, the overwhelming job of life.
This particular job had been an important part of
It was weird, completely unfathomable, the ways of life. Society chose to overplay Wall Street salesmen, various marketing experts, obfuscating corporation lawyers, investment bankers. At the same time, society grossly underpaid the teachers of its children, its police, even its political leaders. Some kind of crazy society.
Well, they seriously underpaid him to work at protecting them from harm's way. But he was going to protect them, anyway-as well as he possibly could.
The nagging question was whether his best was going to be good enough. He'd had six good men, plus himself, on the streets since the night of December 4. So far they'd come up with almost nothing. How the hell could that be possible?
He wandered around the cramped room for a while, like a man without any particular sense of direction. Then he went to his desk and sat down, waiting for the day's first suspects to appear.
Green Band-why did he have the feeling just then that there was something important at the top of his mind, an obvious insight that had evaded him until now? It was infuriating and elusive.
Did it have something to do with Green Band's inside information? A spy at 13 Wall?
CARROLL: Hello, Mr. Ferrano, I'm Mr. Carroll, Antiterrorist Division, State Department. This is my associate, Mr. Caruso. Mr. Ferrano, to get right to the point, not to waste any of your time, or mine, I need some information…
FERRANO: Figured that out already.
CARROLL: Uh-huh. Well, I read your earlier transcript. I just read over the conversation you had with Sergeant Caruso. I'm a little surprised you haven't heard
FERRANO: Why's that? Why should I have?
CARROLL: Well, for one thing, you being a heavy gun and explosives dealer, Mr. Ferrano. Doesn't it strike you as odd, uh, peculiar, you wouldn't have heard something? There must be rumors floating around on the street. I'm sorry, would you like a sip of whiskey?
FERRANO: I want whiskey, I got money in my pocket. Listen, I told you, I told somebody, him, I don't deal guns. I don't know what you're talking that shit for, I own Playland Arcade Games, Inc., on Tenth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street. You got that straight now?
CARROLL: Okay, that's
FERRANO: Hey, all right, fuck you. I want my lawyer in here now!… Hey, you understand English, pal? Lawyer! Now!… Hey! Hey!… Ohhh… oh,
(Loud scuffling, fighting sounds. Furniture crashing; man groaning.)
CARROLL (breathing heavily): Mr. Ferrano, I think… feel it's important you understand something. Listen carefully to what I'm saying. Watch my lips… Ferrano, you've just entered the Twilight Zone. You
FERRANO: Shit, man. My tooth's broken. Gimme a break for… Awhh, shit, man.
CARROLL: I'm trying to give you every break in the world. Don't you understand anything yet? What this is here? What's happening?… Somebody stole money from the man. Some very important people are severely pissed off. Big, big people. Why don't you imagine that this is Vietnam and you're the Vietcong? Would that help you?
FERRANO: Wait a minute! I didn't do anything!
CARROLL: No? You sell pump-action shotguns, revolvers, to fourteen- and fifteen-year-old kids. Black, P.R., Chinese kids in gangs. I'm not gonna say any more than that… Your lawyer is a Mr. Joseph Rao of 24 Park Avenue. Mr. Rao doesn't want any part of this… I think you better tell me everything you've heard on the street.
FERRANO: Look. I'll tell you what I know. I can't tell you what I don't know.
CARROLL: That I can buy.
FERRANO: All right, I
CARROLL: How heavy are we talking about?
FERRANO: Like M-60s. Like M-79 rocket launchers. Soviet RPD light machine guns. SKS automatics. That kinda stuff.
CARROLL: Tell me what you know about Francois Monserrat…
FERRANO: He ain't Italian.
CARROLL: Mr. Ferrano, thank you so much for your help. Now get out of my office, please. Mr. Caruso will show you to the nearest rathole.
CARROLL: Hello there, Mr. Saalam. Haven't seen you since you had Percy Ellis killed on 103rd Street. Very nice djellaba. Sip of Irish whiskey?
SAALAM: Liquor is against my religious belief.
CARROLL: This is Irish whiskey. It's blessed. Well, we'll get right down to official police business, then. Tell me, uh, are you a hunter, Mr. Saalam?
SAALAM (laughs): No, not really. A hunter?… Actually, if you stop to think about it, I'm a
