Saints Of New York

  SAINTS OF NEW YORK

  R.J. ELLORY

  Table of Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SIXTY-FIVE

  SIXTY-SIX

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  SIXTY-NINE

  SEVENTY

  SEVENTY-ONE

  SEVENTY-TWO

  SEVENTY-THREE

  SEVEBTY-FOUR

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  SEVENTY-SIX

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  SEVENTY-NINE

  EIGHTY

  EIGHTY-ONE

  EIGHTY-TWO

  EIGHTY-THREE

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  EIGHTY-SIX

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Since the publication of The Anniversary Man back in 2009, I have been to a great many places - France, America, Dubai, Holland, Canada, the list goes on. I have made a great many friends, amongst them the crews at Sonatine, Overlook and de Fontein, people like Peter and Aaron, Jack and Emer, Veda, George Lucas, Francois, Marie M., Marie L., Leonore (my little-big French sister), Arnaud, Xavier, Sophie, Fabienne, Susan, Catrien and Genevieve. In Dubai I was privileged to work with Isobel and her team, and then there were the extraordinary folks at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, those in Miami and Chicago and at Bouchercon in Indianapolis. Seems I have had the good fortune to meet some truly great people everywhere I've been, and I never cease to marvel at the warmth and generosity extended to me. It is a privilege and an honour to know you all, and to now count you amongst my dearest friends. My sincere thanks go to all of you for making this past year so memorable.

  As always, my thanks to the team at Orion, to Euan, my agent, and to my own family, whose tolerance of my idiosyncrasies seems limitless.

  And to you, dear reader, without whom this would all be kind of pointless.

  Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of Norman 'Bill' Bolwell (1938-2009). Bill was a Coldstream Guard, a Detective in the CID, the Anti-Terrorist Unit and in Special Branch; he was an accomplished musician, a wonderful artist, a true friend, and a great man. For a few too-short years he was the closest we ever got to having a father, and my brother and I will miss him greatly.

  ONE

  MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

  Three Vicodin, half a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, early on a bitterly cold morning. Frank Parrish stands in the narrow bathroom doorway of a derelict apartment, his shirt unbuttoned to the waist, his earpiece switched off, and inside his shoes he has no socks. He cannot recall where his socks are. He knows they are covered in someone else's puke.

  There is a lot of blood in the bath tub ahead of him, and amidst the blood are two people. Thomas Franklin Scott, sitting there, legs outstretched, out of his mind on something harsh, and his crazy bitch of a girlfriend, name of Heather, leaning against him, her back to his chest. Parrish was told her surname, but he can't now recall it. There's a wide gash in her thigh, cut with a straight razor. Her blood has been flicked around the place like this is some kind of performance art thing, and now Tommy Scott has gotten it into his head that they are going to end it all here and now. Is everybody in? he asks. The ceremony is about to begin. Acidheads and fuck-ups. just what's needed at eight o'clock on a Monday morning.

  Tommy, Frank Parrish says. Tommy boy. For fuck's sake. This is bullshit.

  Is it? Tommy says. Bullshit you say? He laughs coarsely. B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T.

  I can spell, Tommy.

  It's all a scam, Frank.

  Tommy laughs again, forced and unnatural. He's scared, he's hotwired.

  I know it's a scam, Tommy, but you're young. How old are you, for Christ's sake?

  Twenty-four last count. He laughs again, and then he starts to gag like there's something stuck in his windpipe.

  Twenty-four? Jesus, man, that's young as anything, you got time, Tommy. Look at me. Forty-something years old and I'm in a fucked-up state most of the time. You don't want to wind up like me—

  I already did, Frank. I already wound up no good. There ain't nothing happening here for people like us. Right, Heather, sweetheart?

  But Heather is bleeding out. Her eyes are half-closed and her head is lolling back and forth like a string puppet. Nuuuggghhh, she slurs, and Frank Parrish knows that she has maybe an hour, probably less. She looks terrible. Pale, real fucked up, thin and weak, her body ravaged by whatever the hell she's been chucking into it. Skag. H. Hardball. Sugarblock. All of it cut with baby laxative, Drano, talcum powder. She isn't gonna last long. No fight in her. Not anymore.

  Tommy! For Christ's sake! How long we known each other?

  You put me in juvy.

  Frank smiles. Hell, you're right, man. I forgot about that. Shee-it, that's gotta count for something hasn't it? I put you in juvy. You lost your cherry with me. Fuck it, Tommy. Get out the fucking tub, get yourself cleaned up and we'll take your girl down the emergency room and go get some breakfast. You had any breakfast?

  Nope.

  So let's go get some. Bacon, some home fries maybe? You want some steak an' eggs? My treat.

  Fuck it, Tommy says. He has the straight razor in his hand.

  Nu-nu-nu-nuuuuggghhh, Heather slurs.

  Tommy, man, come on.

  Fuck it, Tommy says.

  Frank can hear the earpiece crackling at the end of the wire. Don't use negatives, they'll be telling him. Don't tell him what he can't have, what he can't do. Tell him what he can have and do. Positive influence. Make him feel that the world wants him. Use first names. Eye contact. Find his level.

  Fuckers. What do they know? Come live here for a week and tell me about positive influence, tell me how the world wants you so bad it's got a hard-on.

  Tommy. Seriously now. Heather don't look so good, man. We gotta get her down to ER. They gotta put some stitches in her leg.

  As if in response to Parrish's words Heather turns towards the wall and the scarlet mouth of a wound that gapes in her thigh oozes another quart of blood into the tub. Must have hit the femoral artery.

&n
bsp; And Tommy is having a hard time sitting upright now. He's skidding, can't get purchase. He's got the straight razor in his hand and it's all going to hell in a hand basket.

  He starts crying. Like a little kid. Like he bust a window with a football and he's been grounded and he's sorry, and there's no allowance for a month. He didn't mean to do it. Isn't there such a thing as an accident? It was an accident for God's sake, and now all this shit is coming down on him, hot and heavy, all this b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t. . .

  Hey there, Frank says, his voice calm, soothing, comforting, paternal almost. Frank has kids. He says kids, but they're all grown up now. Caitlin and Robert. He's twenty-two, she's two years younger. They made it into college, they're doing good. At least when he last heard. Their mother is a nightmare in high heels and lip gloss. No, he shouldn't say that. He should be more tolerant. He should be more forgiving. Ah fuck it, she's a bitch.

  So he says hey there, Tommy, his voice gentle and certain. Hey there, son. We can make it out the other side. It's gonna be okay, I promise.

  You can't promise squat, Tommy says, and Frank notices how the razor catches the dull light through the window. The day is dull. A gray faceless nothing of a day. Not a good day to die.

  You can't promise me anything, Frank. Whatever you say here means nothing. You're just gonna say whatever they've told you to say so I don't stick her, right?

  Frank wishes he had his gun. Left it back there at the door. There were terms and conditions for getting this far. Leave the gun behind. Undo your shirt to the waist. Take that piece-of-shit listening thing out of your goddam ear. I don't want you having conversations with anyone but me. You get that, Frank? You get me on this one?

  I get you, Frank had said, and he left his gun at the door, unhooked his earpiece, removed his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt. . . and out in the hallway there are maybe eight or ten other guys, negotiators, bullshit-artists of all descriptions, and they're all a hell of a lot more qualified to deal with this, and all of them are straight-up sober, whereas Frank is slugging his way through the shadow of three days of drinking. Enough Bushmills and he's sick like a baby. He doesn't have enough Irish blood in him to stand up against the onslaught.

  But Tommy Scott has been arrested half a dozen times by Frank Parrish. Tommy knows Frank's name. So when there's a call about some asshole with a straight razor cutting up his girlfriend in a bathtub, when a uniform gets down here and calls it in, it's Tommy who lays Get me Parrish. Get me Frank fucking Parrish or I'll stick her in the fucking throat right fucking now!

  So here he is. Shoes without socks. Puke stains down the front of his pants. No gun. No earpiece. Early Monday morning after three days of Bushmills, and he feels like the Devil raked him a new asshole and turned his guts inside out.

  Okay, so we're done playing games now, he says. He's beginning to fray at the edges. He wants out. He wants to go home. He wants to take a shower, find some clean socks, get a cup of coffee and a smoke. He's had enough of Tommy Scott and his dumb cooze of a girlfriend, and he wishes they'd get the fucking thing over with one way or the other.

  And that's what Tommy does.

  Fuck it baby one more time, he sings, and he pulls that straight razor right up against the side of her face, and then he jerks it round like he's pulling the whipcord on a chainsaw.

  Blood - what little of it she has left - jettisons up the wall to Tommy's left, and sprays back against the shower curtain.

  NO-O-O! Frank hears himself holler, but there's something so magnetic about what he's seeing, something so horrifyingly compelling, that he's rooted to the spot, right there in his puke-spattered brogues, and it's all he can do to lunge forward when Tommy Scott takes that straight razor and cuts his own throat.

  Takes some fucking balls to do that, Frank will say later. Takes some stainless steel fucking balls to cut your own throat, and cut it deep like he did.

  Tommy didn't bleed out earlier. Tommy ain't no sapling. He's gotta be five eleven, maybe one hundred and seventy-five pounds, and when he opens up his jugular it comes rushing out of there like a street-corner fire hydrant in the height of summer.

  Frank gets a mouthful. It's in his eyes, his hair, all over his tee-shirt. Even as he's struggling to get a grip of the kid, even as he's trying to pull him up out of the bathtub and lay him on the floor so he can push some fingers into the wound and stop the blood . . . Even as he's doing this he's wondering whether Tommy Scott is HIV Positive, or if he's got AIDS or hepatitis or something.

  Two minutes, maybe three tops, and Heather something-or-other will be as dead as it gets.

  Frank Parrish manages to haul them out of the tub. Later he won't even remember how he did it. Where the strength came from. It's all a mess of twisted arms and legs. Blood everywhere. More blood than he's ever seen. He's kneeling over Tommy Scott, who's now on the bathroom rug twitching and gibbering like he's got his fingers in a socket, and the blood won't stop coming. Frank is holding the guy's neck hard enough to choke the poor bastard, but there's some horsepower back of this thing, and it keeps on coming, keeps on coming, keeps on coming . . .

  Heather is gone. She's deadweight. Not a prayer.

  Fuck it, Frank, is the last thing that Tommy Scott says. The words are choked through a throatful of blood, but Frank hears him good and clear.

  He dies with a smile on his face, like he believes whatever is waiting for him is one hell of a lot better than whatever he's leaving behind.

  Frank sits back against the side of the tub. He has blood all over him and it's starting to dry. The negotiator comes back to the bathroom, wastes no time telling him how he fucked it up, how he could have saved their lives.

  Saved their lives? Frank asks him. For what, exactly?

  And the negotiator looks right back at him with that expression they all do. Heard about you, that expression says. Heard all about you, Frank Parrish.

  And Frank says Fuck you.

  Once upon a time - he can't remember when - someone asked Frank Parrish why he chose the job.

  Frank remembers how he smiled. How he said, You ever get the feeling that maybe the job chose me?

  He pulls himself to his feet and goes in search of a smoke.

  TWO

  Frank Parrish makes a call from the corner of Nevins Street near Wyckoff Gardens.

  'You in?' he asks.

  Sure, sweetheart, I'm home.

  'I'm coming over. Need a bath, a change of clothes.'

  Where are you?

  'On Nevins, maybe half a dozen blocks or so.'

  I'll see you soon.

  He pockets his cell, heads for the Bergen Street subway station and Flatbush Avenue.

  'Jesus, what the hell happened to you?' she asks when she opens the door. As he passes her she wrinkles her nose.

  He stops, turns, stands there with his hands down by his sides, his palms outward as if there is nothing she does not know about him, nothing he could ever hide from her.

  'Kid killed his girl, then himself. Cut his own throat.' He feels the tension of dried blood in his hair, in his nostrils, his ears, between his fingers.

  'I ran the bath,' she says.

  He steps towards her, and smiles. 'Eve, my sweet. . . were it not for you, my life would be as nothing.'

  She shakes her head. 'You are so full of shit, Frank. Now go take a bath for God's sake.'

  He turns and walks down the hallway. There is music playing somewhere - 'The Only Living Boy In New York'.

  He lies in the pink water, his hair wet, his eyes smarting with some jojoba extract shampoo that she buys for him. Shadows are just shadows, he thinks. They can't hurt you until you start believing that they are something more than that. Once your mind goes that way . . . well, you'll give them teeth and claws, and then they'll get you—

  'Frank . . .'

  'Come on in.'

  Eve opens the door a fraction and steps sideways into the bathroom. She sits on the edge of the tub. She has on only her underwear and her robe. She reaches dow
n and swirls her fingers through the water.

  'Tell me what happened with this boy and his girlfriend.'

  Frank shakes his head. 'Not now. Another story for another day.'

  'You wanna drink?'

  He shakes his head again.

  'You wanna get high?'

  Frank smiles. 'I grew out of that in my twenties. Besides, you shouldn't smoke that shit. Ain't good for the soul.'

  Eve disregards the comment.

  Frank draws himself up until his back is against the side of the tub. Now he's sitting just like Thomas Franklin Scott.

  Eve passes him a towel. He rubs it through his hair, and then hands it back to her so he can get out of the tub.

  He stands before her, naked and wet.

  She takes hold of his dick, starts to massage it, even dips her head and puts her mouth around it.

  Nothing's happening.

  'You want something?' she asks.

  'What? Like one o' them pills? Jesus, Eve, no. Day I start taking that shit to get it up I'll know my time is over.'

  'You still love me, right?'

  Frank smiles. He reaches out his hands, she takes them, and he pulls her to her feet. He holds her close, feels the warmth of her body against his damp skin. He shudders.

  'You okay?'

  He nods his head but doesn't speak.

  He wants to say, No, Eve, I'm not okay. Not exactly. Sometimes I have conversations with the ones that didn't make it. The ones I didn't find in time. The ones that slipped through my hands and wound up dead. That wouldn't be so bad if they didn't talk back, but they do.

  They tell me how pissed at me they are. How I fucked up. How I didn't figure out whatever the hell it was that happened to them, and now they're in limbo . . .

  'Frank?'

  He leans back, looks right at her, and he smiles like its Christmas. 'I'm fine,' he says. 'Better than fine.'

  'You gonna stay and have some breakfast?'

  'No, I gotta go,' he replies. 'I have an appointment.'

  'What?'

  'Just a work thing.'

  'Coffee?'

  'Sure,' he says. 'Strong. Half and half.'

  She leaves the bathroom.

  Frank leans towards the mirror, tilts his head back and looks up his nostrils. He presses the ball of his thumb against the right, blows blood out the left at sixty miles an hour.