“Yes.”
“All right, even supposing that I had said that, you think that’s proof of guilt of capital murder?”
Impassably, Monroe went on. “I’m just telling you what I have in your file, Detective O’Malley. Gabe McGill, however, who has also been drinking with you and who has known you for five years, swears to your unimpeachability, drunk or sober. So does your captain.”
“That’s nice,” said Spencer dismissively, “but getting back to my drunken rantings. I’m asking you again, how does Harkman’s statement constitute my confession?”
“It doesn’t per se.”
“Oh, per se.”
“But it’s just one more thread of circumstantial evidence against you.”
“Very thin circumstantial evidence, Ms. Monroe, if you don’t mind me saying so. I don’t think it’s going to hold up in court, that I had something to drink and said some guy in Greenwich got what was coming to him.”
“Detective O’Malley, moving on for a moment, do you consider yourself the kind of man who would set up an earlier daytime and public visit to his future victim, knowing that clothing fibers belonging to you—or hairs, or fingerprints—might be found at the scene, and you would need plausible deniability complete with witnesses, which is how the Suffolk County Police Department began investigating this matter to begin with?”
“No.”
“No? Well, do you consider yourself the kind of man who would buy dark clothes and boots that were too big for him on purpose, and a dark bag he could throw the clothes into and then throw away, or bring a gun untraceable and easily dismantled, or park in a public place, or provoke Nathan Sinclair into firing first?”
“No.”
Liz Monroe sat across the long conference table, staring at Spencer. “Detective,” she said, “let me ask you something. Do you consider yourself the kind of man who would kill another man for some vigilante sense of justice, if you thought that justice had not been done? Would you be tortured, made crazy by the thought that someone got away with a murder of an innocent? Would you risk your job, your professional credentials, your standing in your police community, your very freedom and livelihood, to take the law into your own hands?”
Spencer’s palms were calmly on the table. “Ms. Monroe, I spend every day of my life watching people get away with all kinds of things. People who sell drugs to little kids, parents who sell their children into prostitution to score some H, fathers who abuse their children so badly that the children would rather run away and be exposed to unimaginable predators than face their own parents. Mothers who drown their toddlers in lakes and then report them missing. Men who drop girls’ dead bodies into oceans from chartered planes. Tell me, are all those people behind bars? Certainly not. I’m only one man, I can only do so much.” He stood up. “I do what I can. But what you’re accusing me of does not reflect my record, my history, my three years on the force, or the recommendations of my superiors and my co-workers.” Spencer paused—for emphasis. “So the answer to your question based on everything you know about me or can infer from observing my work for nearly a quarter century is no.”
He remained standing, she remained sitting. Her eyes were on him, his eyes were on her. Her gaze was so steady, so penetrating.
“Detective, I have spoken to your commanding officer, Chief Whittaker. I have spoke to his commanding officer about you. I have spoken to the president of your PBA union. I have spoken to your co-workers. You are right—you are highly regarded. Your direct supervisor cannot say enough about you. In over two decades there has not been a word against you—except this one. You have not been involved in any other sustainable complaint, not in the suspicion of excessive force, nor bribery, nor extortion. But these claims just won’t die down. Not at Suffolk County. Not here. I know that you transferred out of SCPD because of these rumors. Nathan Sinclair, for one reason or another, seems to be the albatross around your neck.”
“The fact that Nathan Sinclair came to a bad end, I will admit, does not leave me with much regret. I do not cry at the death of the wicked. I am barely able to cry at the death of the virtuous.” Spencer’s throat caught a little on those words. “Now, is there anything else I can help you with?”
Monroe closed his file. “No. I will evaluate all the information and then make my recommendations accordingly. You will remain on duty until and unless you are notified otherwise.”
“I look forward to seeing your report when it crosses my desk, Ms. Monroe.”
She gave him her hand. Without taking it away, she said, “Harkman mentioned in his affidavit that he thought you drink too much. Be careful.”
Spencer let go of her, and for some reason thought she regretted having said the words she must have meant as a caveat, not a rebuke. “Thank you, I am always careful.”
“You certainly are, Detective O’Malley.”
“Please,” he said. “After all you’ve put me through, do call me Spencer.”
66
A Boat in Key Biscayne
“Lil, I think I’m going to lose my job.”
“What?”
He told her what had happened with IA. She listened intently. “It’s so ridiculous, no?” she said at last.
Spencer remained silent.
Lily studied his face and then looked away.
Later, hours later, with night there and Lily drifting in and out of sleep, she pulled him to herself and whispered, “Spencer Patrick O’Malley, I trust in you completely, I believe in you completely. The angels already know the truth. And I don’t need to know anything.”
“Good. You know too much as it is.”
She said, “Maybe the way Liz Monroe hounds you, you understand how my brother feels, being pursued by you.”
Spencer didn’t say anything for a long time. Lily thought she had fallen asleep, he had fallen asleep. But the breaths he was taking were breaths of a thousand whiskies, breaths of sepulchral suffering.
“What I understand is this,” Spencer said. “The ground swells up. Lies, secrets, deceptions, untruths rise to the surface. The universe rights itself, the demons burst open, truth is uncovered.”
It was deep summer, and the window was open, and July was blowing in. Pollination, nectar, life was blowing in. Lily didn’t want to think about cold things. She wanted warmth. Spencer, naked in her bed, across from him on the wall her Girl in Times Square painting that he had moved into the bedroom, her corkboard full of her young life, the life she had when Amy was still with her, the life she had when she wasn’t dying. And stuck onto the corkboard with thumbtacks was her lottery ticket they gave her back as a souvenir, 49, 45, 39, 24, 18, 1, and near that was a photo booth black-and-white strip of four silly pictures of her and Spencer.
Her voice weakening at the feel of his hands on her lower back, she lay in his arms, but didn’t look at him because it was easier to talk to him without watching his face close up, shut in, tighten, and she said, “If you lost your job we could leave here. We could leave New York and go somewhere warm.”
He didn’t say no. He whispered, you’re the sweetest girl, you’re a beautiful girl. Then he said, “Where are you thinking?”
“Like south of Miami maybe. Somewhere in the Keys? Key Biscayne? I hear it’s nice. We could get a place, build a place right on the water. You could have a boat.”
“I could have a boat,” Spencer said slowly. “And what would you do?”
Be with you, Lily wanted to say. Kiss you. Learn to cook maybe. I’d make you Irish Stew and spaghetti and meatballs and maybe something Polish from my grandmother, though she never did learn how to cook so good in Ravensbruck. I’d paint you and paint for you, and clean your fish if you learned how to fish. We’d swim every day, and the water there is warm year round, and so is the air, we’d be outside all day. We’d make furniture and bicker about wood or wicker. We’d be together. We’d be alive. I’d be alive.
It was a beautiful dream.
She didn’t say any of it. We’re sup
posed to be at peace now, have peaceful choices. We’re not supposed to be at war any more, she wanted to cry. Didn’t Tomas already do that? We can pick up and move to warmth, we can get new jobs, we can make our lives better, with just the boxes in the trunk of our car and our free will, we can make them better. We don’t need to go fight the Germans. Tomas already did that. We don’t need to go to Ravensbruck. Klavdia Venkewicz already did that. We don’t need to deny our children with all our hearts as they run to us. Anya Pevny already did that. They did it so we can have a choice of New York or Miami, of police work or boat work.
To Drink or not to drink?
To have Cancer or not to have cancer?
To Love or not to love?
It was occurring to Lily with startling clarity that perhaps even peace was an illusion. Perhaps they still and constantly had to fight and pay a price for that simple joy of living. And perhaps even the simple was an illusion. The struggle was all.
And this is life eternal so that they might know truth, might bear witness to the only truth.
“All right, no boat,” she said, shifting from despondent to mock cheerful in a pained breath. “But we can open our own gumshoe agency in Florida, the Spencer and Lily Private Investigations, no case no matter how trivial will go unsolved. We could chew tobacco and have snakes in a tank, and punctuate every sentence with a spit into the urn. I could wear those cute cowboy boots, and a little skirt, and walk around on high heels, saying, will that be all Detective O’Malley, will that be all?”
“Now, that,” said Spencer, kissing her, “is a beautiful dream.”
67
Cabo San Lucas
DiAngelo stopped chemotherapy for Lily. He gave her Vicodin for pain, antibiotics for infections, and sent her home. “If the pain gets too bad, come back, we’ll give you morphine.”
“What about the results for the marrow samples?”
“Need a little more time on them.”
“Really?”
“Really. We’re also looking into the International Donor Registry, just in case. And your Detective O’Malley, we’ll take a sample from him.”
Lily watched DiAngelo. “Is everything all right?”
“It’s as good as it can be.” He smiled pastily. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you a donor. We just need to wait a little bit longer for the results.”
Without chemo, Lily wasn’t as nauseated, and her mouth stopped bleeding. But she was getting bruises all over her legs again. They looked like her mother’s legs. She was tired. She was fading, a day at a time.
She knew she was fading because she stopped painting.
Still she went with Spencer to the Benevolent Patrolmen’s annual picnic, thrown and funded by Bill Bryant.
It was on a warm New York summer Sunday, on the Great Lawn in Central Park. Spencer gave Lily his glasses to hold and his shirt and his weapon, and played a game of soccer with the patrolmen from Brooklyn, and a game of baseball against the robbery detectives from Queens. The officers were all there with their families, and there was popcorn and cotton candy, and a trampoline pit and Frisbee, and beer and nuts. And the music was Loud.
The mayor of New York made an appearance. The Police Commissioner stopped by. Bill Bryant, the New York City councilman and a friend of the NYPD—the one who provided Spencer with his Kevlar vest—was not feeling well and couldn’t make it, but he sent his gracious wife Cameron in his place.
Lily sat in the shade under an oak, a glass of orange juice in her hands, and Spencer’s glasses. Even though it was warm, she was wearing white capris to cover her legs and a white, longsleeved blouse to cover her shrinking arms. On her hairless head was a straw-brim hat. She was avoiding the crowds, feeling a little light-headed, but watching Spencer in the field with the ball at his feet. She was thinking about him, about how he had once been this man, this boy, and played like this all the time. She had asked when the last time was he had come to one of these things and he said never. Yet he was running around the field, kicking the ball, laughing, as if he were still twenty. Twenty with his whole life in front of him.
A woman walked over with a mimosa and sat down on the bench next to Lily. “I’m Cameron Bryant,” she said. “My husband pays for this little shindig. Everyone is having a good time, right? It’ll please him. He’s not feeling well. Like you.” She took a sip of her drink.
“I’m having a great time,” said Lily.
“You’re sick?”
“I’m sick.”
“Is this the beginning?”
Lily breathed in slowly before she spoke. “No.”
Cameron was in her seventies, a well-groomed, well-presented, soft-spoken woman. Cameron told Lily all about her own bout with cancer. Lily commiserated. People liked to talk about themselves, and Lily liked to sit and listen. Cameron told her she herself had had breast cancer twenty years ago. Had a radical mastectomy, one course of chemo, another, another, fought it on and off for the first ten years, and here she still was, clean for the last ten years.
“I’m happy you’re well,” said Lily.
“You’ll be well, too. You’ll see. So whose wife are you?”
“I’m not anybody’s wife. I’m only twenty-five.”
“When I was your age, I was already married and had three of my four children,” said Cameron.
Lily smiled, drank her juice. “Well, you know how we girls are in New York these days. We don’t get married young anymore. Or have children. We are too busy finding ourselves.”
“So did you find yourself, darling?”
“Yes,” Lily said. “I found myself with him.” She pointed to the field, and motioned Spencer to come over. “He would love to meet you. He’d like to thank you personally for the vest. But I don’t think he can see me without his glasses. He’s near sighted. Spencer,” Lily tried to yell, but she had found recently none of her words ended with exclamation marks anymore.
But Spencer saw her and heard her and came over, all perspired, panting, and happy. He put on his shirt, and Lily introduced him to Cameron, who said, “You know the doctors told me when I wasn’t feeling well like her, that to go away is the best thing. Sometimes you just need to get away for a few days.”
Spencer nodded. “Well, that is a good idea. I told Lily, as soon as she’s a little better, I’ll take her to Maui.” He grinned. And Lily laughed.
Cameron, not in on the joke, said seriously, “Oh, no, why there? I mean, Maui is nice, we’ve been there many times, but if you really want paradise on earth, you have to go to Cabo San Lucas. Now that’s a place for the gods.”
Spencer had never heard of it. Cameron told them about it, how it was at the very southern tip of the Baja peninsula, surrounded by water on all sides, and she and Bill had a little cabin right on the ocean. “Yes, Bill and I have traveled all over the world, but on our anniversary, we go only there, it’s just magical.” She smiled. “We just celebrated our fifty-first, in May. Can you imagine, being married for fifty-one years?”
And Lily said, “To the same man?”
And Spencer laughed, and then carefully took his glasses from Lily, and put them on. “Did you say your anniversary is in May?” His eyes focused on Cameron.
“Yes, May 15. The Ides of May.”
“Ah,” said Spencer. “So you go just for that one day? A long way to fly, all the way to Mexico, no?”
“Oh, no, we go for the whole week. We get there two or three days before, and stay two or three days after.”
“It does sound great,” said Spencer, not looking at Lily, who put her hands on his forearm and said in a tiny voice, spencer, please. “Every year, you go? Last year, too? Around May 14?” He stared blinklessly at Lily.
“Of course.” Cameron frowned. “Last year was our fiftieth! We went for ten days. From the tenth to the twentieth, I think. Had a bit of a family reunion there, too.” She smiled. “We have seven great-grandchildren; they had a blast.”
Lily wasn’t letting go of Spencer, digging her fingertips
into his arm. “Well, thank you, Mrs. Bryant,” she said quickly, her mouth tight. “We have to be going now. It was a pleasure to meet you.”
Spencer said, “Oh, yes. I learned so much about Cabo San Lucas that I didn’t know.”
“The pleasure was all mine. You’re a good listener, Detective O’Malley. You both are. And I always believed,” said Cameron, “that if you aren’t listening, you aren’t learning.”
“You are so right,” said Spencer. “Especially in my line of work.”
After she left he stood blankly, and Lily turned to him, holding on to his forearms. Her hands were squeezing him, grasping him, nearly all her weight was on him. Spencer, please, she kept repeating. He gently peeled her off him, sat her back down, sat down beside her. For a few minutes they both just sat there, collapsed on the bench. They didn’t speak. Slowly they walked to say goodbye to the guys, to Gabe, and took a cab home.
At home, they laid their keys and weapons and wallets carefully upon the dresser, they made tea, they got Cokes, they sat on the couch. He asked what she wanted to watch, and she said what is there that’s mindless. They watched Ace Ventura, and even laughed. They got ready for bed, they got in, and he turned away and she turned away, but only for a moment.
“Spencer…”
“I knew you’d break first.”
“Come on, turn around.”
“No. I know you.”
But he turned to her.
“Spencer…” Her voice was supplicating. “I’m not saying don’t go talk to my brother. I’m not saying that. All I’m asking is that you look for Milo first. That’s all. Go see Lindsey Kiplinger’s parents, they must be back from vacation. Maybe they’ll tell you something that’s helpful. Find Milo. Please, Spencer, just…a couple of days, to look for Milo. It must have slipped Bill Bryant’s mind, that’s all, when he penciled Andrew into his personal diary on a day he was not in his office in New York City.”
Spencer was silent.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Lily said.