“It’s what makes me a good D.A.,” he’d once told her. “I don’t give a damn whether the bastards are innocent or guilty. My job is to win my cases, and I nearly always do.”
“But what if the person didn’t do anything?” Carolyn had asked.
The contempt in Perry’s eyes when he answered her had made her feel ashamed of even asking the question. “If they didn’t do anything, they wouldn’t have been arrested,” he told her. “The police aren’t fools, you know.” And that had been the end of it. So now, as Perry continued glowering at the answering machine, Carolyn scuttled out of the room, closing the door behind her, anxious to be out of the line of fire.
As soon as she was gone, Perry Randall picked up the phone and dialed a number from memory.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said. “And we need to solve it today.”
Hanging up the phone, he erased the message for his daughter.
The endless night was over, but Keith felt as if he’d hardly slept. After Heather left, he’d alternated between sprawling on Jeff’s Murphy bed and standing at the window, peering out into the not-quite-dark of New York City. The traffic thinned as the hour grew late, but there were always a few taxis still cruising along Broadway, and a scattering of bar-hopping night owls meandering down the sidewalk.
Twice, when the walls of the apartment seemed about to close in on him and suffocate him, he’d almost gone out himself.
Sometime around four-thirty he’d finally fallen into a fitful sleep, and now, as he rose four hours later, he knew he would get no more sleep that night.
And he knew what he was going to do.
First he rummaged around the apartment and found a phone book. He leafed through it until he found the heading for thrift shops and scribbled down the addresses of three of them that looked like they weren’t far from the apartment. Then he picked up the phone and dialed Vic DiMarco.
“It’s me,” he said. “I need a big favor, and I don’t need any questions.”
“You don’t even have to ask,” DiMarco replied.
“I want you to go over to my house. There’s a locked cabinet in my office—the key’s in my desk, in the second drawer on the right, in a little box way in the back.”
“Gotcha,” DiMarco said. “What’s in the cabinet?”
“A gun,” Keith Converse said. “It’s a .38 automatic. I want you to bring it to me.”
CHAPTER 27
Jinx glared up at the closed door, willing it to open. Curtailing her urge to give it an angry kick, she turned away and retreated back to the steps where she’d been sitting off and on for the last two hours. She would have been sitting on them the whole time if Paul Hagen hadn’t kept running her off.
That was pissing her off, too. The first time the cop had come by, she’d tried to explain to him that she was just waiting for the library to open.
“Yeah, right, Jinx,” Hagen had said, rolling his eyes. “So what’s the game now? Gonna start lifting from the old geezers in the reading room? Give me a break!”
Jinx had kept her temper in check. The last thing she needed right now was for Paulie Hagen to start hassling her. If he really got pissed off, he could keep her at the precinct for most of the day, filling out a bunch of forms and making her talk to the welfare people. So she just shrugged his sarcasm off and walked away, heading over toward Madison Avenue. She knew Paulie couldn’t follow her that far, and since she hardly ever went to the East Side, most of the cops over there didn’t know her. She was mad enough at Paulie that she’d picked a mark, bumped into him, and lifted his wallet so smoothly that all the sucker had done was mouth an apology to her while he kept on talking on his cell phone. Probably wouldn’t notice his wallet was gone until he tried to pay for his lunch, and by then he wouldn’t even remember that someone had bumped into him. That was the great thing about cell phones—they distracted people enough so that most of the time they thought they’d bumped into her instead of the other way around.
She kept drifting back to the library at the corner of Fifth and Forty-second, hoping they might open it early this morning, but knowing it wouldn’t happen. She killed some of the time watching tourists taking pictures of each other with the lions that crouched in front of the building. Then she glanced through a Daily News that someone tossed into the trash can on the corner. Twice she had to cut across the street when she saw Hagen coming down the block from Bryant Park. Why couldn’t he stay over in Times Square where he belonged?
At least now she wasn’t the only one waiting—half a dozen people were standing around. A white-haired guy in a suit that looked even more ancient than he did kept checking his watch, and a nerdy guy was pacing back and forth, looking nervously down the street toward Bryant Park.
Flasher, Jinx thought.
When the man bolted like a jackrabbit just as Paulie Hagen reappeared, Jinx was sure she was right.
Just as Hagen spotted her and headed over to run her off the steps again, she heard the lock behind her click and the heavy metal door finally swing open. Giving in to what she knew was a childish impulse, Jinx stuck her tongue out at Hagen, then turned and dashed into the vast lobby of the library. Off to the left two women stood behind an information desk. As Jinx started toward them, one of the women looked up. Her smile faltered as she took in the shabbiness of Jinx’s clothes, and for a second Jinx wondered if she was going to get kicked out of the public library. “Where would I go if I wanted to look something up in an old copy of the New York Times?” she asked.
“How old?” the woman countered. “We have them back to 1897.”
“Just last fall,” Jinx replied. “Maybe October?”
“Room 100,” the woman said. She pointed to Jinx’s right. “Down there, take the first left, and it’s the last room on the right. They’ll be in the microfiche filing cabinets.”
Not exactly certain what the woman meant, Jinx made her way down the corridor, found the room, and went in. Several large blocks of filing cabinets occupied most of the space just inside the door, and beyond them Jinx could see a lot of tables supporting machines with large screens. The white-haired man in the moldy suit was sitting down in front of one of the machines, and Jinx watched carefully as he took a roll of film out of a box, put the reel on a spindle, then fed the film under some kind of roller.
If he could do it, so could she.
She headed for the filing drawers and saw they were labeled with dates. She found the ones for the previous fall in Cabinet 41, pulled it open, and stared at the row of film boxes, each one marked with a precise span of dates. Picking up three of the boxes, she closed the drawer and headed for one of the machines.
Taking the first reel out of its box, she put it on the spindle, fumbled with the leader for a few seconds, then managed to poke it under the roller and glass. When the end came out on the right side, she threaded it into what looked like some kind of take-up reel, then started fiddling with the controls. There was a knob on the right side, and when Jinx twisted it, the reel instantly rewound, leaving the leader flapping. She swore under her breath, rethreaded the leader, then carefully twisted the knob the other way. The film spun forward and stopped, and Jinx began fiddling with a focus wheel until the print cleared enough for her to read easily. But the print was displayed on the screen sideways, so she had to twist her neck painfully to read it. Just as her neck was starting to ache really badly, a hand appeared over her left shoulder, twisted a wheel she hadn’t seen, and the page on the screen flipped ninety degrees.
“Thanks!” Jinx said, turning to see the old man in the worn suit smiling at her. “I figured there had to be an easier way, but . . .” Her voice trailed off as she glanced toward a man behind the counter who was making no effort to hide his resentment that someone like her would even dare to come into his precious microfiche room.
“Don’t worry about him,” the old man said. “He doesn’t like anybody.” His eyes shifted to the screen in front of Jinx. “What are you looking for? Maybe I c
an help you find it.”
Half an hour later, after the old man had shuffled back to his own reader, Jinx reread the report of the attack on Cynthia Allen and the arrest of Jeff Converse one last time. She’d recognized the photograph of the victim at first glance—it was the woman she’d seen in the subway station the night Bobby Gomez had almost killed her, and then again at Columbia.
And there was no question that the Jeff Converse who’d been arrested was the man she’d met in the co-op.
Which meant that every word she’d just read—and then reread three times—was wrong.
Jeff Converse hadn’t attacked Cynthia Allen.
And he wasn’t dead.
At least not yet.
Leaving the last of the articles still glowing on the screen, Jinx got up and quickly left the library.
CHAPTER 28
It wasn’t Jeff, Mary Converse told herself again as she emerged from Grand Central Station into an incongruously bright morning.
It couldn’t have been Jeff.
Jeff is dead!
The words had become a mantra, her lips now forming them as unconsciously as they formed the words of the prayers she’d been reciting every day for as long as she could remember. Yet this was not the mantra of a prayer, for in prayer she had always found hope and solace.
Even though the words she’d heard on the telephone only a few hours ago should have made her heart swell and her spirit soar, the reality of two days ago was still fresh in her mind. Every time she recalled the words—the broken phrases uttered by a voice that tore at her heart—the pain only grew worse.
“. . . Mo—are you . . . it’s me, Mo—“
“Mom, it . . . me . . . I . . . dead . . .”
But she’d seen his body, seen her son lying in a drawer in the morgue.
She’d also heard her husband deny that the body was Jeff’s. She hadn’t believed Keith, of course—hadn’t been willing even to accept the possibility that a mistake could have been made. He’d been in a guarded van on the way to Rikers Island—how could there have been any kind of mistake?
But as she strode across Forty-sixth Street toward Fifth Avenue, and the broken voice kept echoing in her head, she suddenly stopped.
What if Keith was right and it had all been a mistake?
What if Jeff’s arrest had been a mistake?
What if his trial had been a mistake?
What if his conviction had been a mistake?
But that wasn’t possible—God wouldn’t have allowed such injustice to occur.
“. . . it’s me, Mo—“
As she turned onto Fifth Avenue, the cacophony in her head—a jumble of echoing words and conflicting emotions—threatened to overwhelm her. By the time she passed through the massive doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, every nerve in her body was on edge. She paused at the font, dipped her fingers in the water and genuflected, and the vast, quiet space of the cathedral began to calm her. Though there were people all around—tourists taking pictures, a scattering of penitents on their knees in the pews and in front of the shrines—the immense structure reduced their voices to a soothing murmur. The peace she had always found in church began to calm her nerves and still the chaos in her head.
The Lady Chapel.
That was where Father Benjamin had told her the mass would be held. “It’s at the far end of the cathedral—intimate, very beautiful.” As she walked down the long aisle on the left, past the display cases documenting the history of the cathedral, past the niches holding icons of the saints, her fragile sense of peace grew stronger and more certain, until finally the voice she’d heard on the telephone—the voice that couldn’t possibly have been Jeff’s—was silenced. As she passed the altar, the thunderous opening chords of Bach’s D Minor Toccata and Fugue suddenly resounded through the cathedral, the tones so deep that she could feel them as much as hear them.
At last she came to the end of the aisle, turned left, and found the Lady Chapel opening before her like a tiny jewel box.
There were only twelve rows of pews, divided by a single aisle. The chapel was dominated by a large statue of the Holy Virgin, her face tilted slightly downward so her eyes seemed to focus on the pews themselves. The statue had been carved from white stone, and the altar beneath it was white as well.
The pews were empty, and for a moment Mary had a terrible feeling that something had gone wrong—that she’d told people the wrong time, or that perhaps she was in the wrong place. But then she glanced at her watch and understood.
She was nearly two hours early.
Should she leave? But if she did, where would she go?
She genuflected once more, then slipped into a pew and dropped to her knees, ignoring their painful protest.
She was dimly aware of the voices of a boys’ choir somewhere behind her, resonating through the vast chamber of the cathedral. Clasping her hands before her, she gazed up into the eyes of the Virgin Mother.
Is this how you felt? she silently asked. Is this the pain you felt when you watched your child die on the cross?
Her eyes filled with tears, and the statue before her blurred. But as she continued to gaze into the face of the Mother of God, the image seemed to smile at her. It was a soft, gentle smile that finally dispelled the last of the torment that had gripped Mary ever since the phone rang early that morning, and now, as the voices of the singing boys soared in the background, another voice whispered in her head.
Believe . . .
Mary stiffened, her fingers tightening on her own hands until her skin was as pale as the stone of the statue upon which she gazed. Her vision cleared, and the face of the Virgin once more came into focus. Now her eyes seemed to be fastened directly on Mary Converse’s own, and her smile held a cast of mystery.
Believe, the voice whispered inside her head. Believe . . .
As the voice once again fell silent, the last notes of the choir died away, and a calm such as Mary had never before experienced washed over her.
Then, as if it were coming from somewhere far, far away, she heard another voice.
“It’s me, Mom,” the voice whispered.
Jeff’s voice, unmistakable now.
“I’m not dead, Mom.
“I’m alive. I’m alive. . . .”
As Jeff’s voice faded into silence, Mary rose from her knees and sank onto the pew. She gazed up into the placid face of the Virgin, studied the perfectly carved stone. The eyes no longer seemed to be staring directly into hers and the smile had lost its mystery, but the words she’d heard still rang in her head. Finally she answered them with words of her own.
“It’s the sign I’ve been waiting for,” she whispered to herself. “I do believe. . . .”
Rising to her feet, the pain in her knees and the exhaustion in her body forgotten, Mary Converse hurried back the way she’d come and burst through the doors of the cathedral. She raced down the steps and yanked open the door of the first cab she saw. “Broadway,” she said. “The corner of 109th.”
Tillie was starting to wonder if something had gone wrong. She’d been sitting in the park for almost an hour and a half—she’d asked half a dozen people what time it was, and even though three of them hadn’t even acknowledged that she was there, let alone given her the time of day, the other three had all agreed that it was almost eleven. She was sure it was Saturday, too, and not only because there were more people than usual in the park, but because she’d checked the date on a paper a man on the next bench had been reading.
So if it was the right day, and the right time, then where was Miss Harris?
Tillie was sure she hadn’t made a mistake—she wasn’t half crazy, like Liz Hodges. Besides, it had only been yesterday that she’d seen Miss Harris, and she’d said to meet her right here—on the same bench—at nine-thirty. Tillie had made sure not to be late, too. Not because Miss Harris would have been mad at her—she never seemed to get mad at anyone—and not because of the money, either. Tillie made sure she wasn’t late simply
because she knew Miss Harris was a busy woman—even busier than most of the surface people seemed to be—and she just plain liked her. Being on time was the least she could do.
Until this morning, Miss Harris had never been late.
Still, Tillie was prepared to wait all day if she had to. It wasn’t as if she had anything else that needed doing. Besides, it was a nice day, and there hadn’t been many nice days since last fall, when it got too cold to be outside at all, and she’d have to retreat into the tunnels for the winter.
Like a bear going into hibernation, she thought to herself. Maybe that’s what she’d turned into—an old bear that curls up for the winter. The thought left her chuckling out loud, but a young couple pushing a baby carriage gave her a look that made the laughter die on her lips. That was the one thing Tillie hated about living the way she did—she could always tell that most people thought she was crazy. She was wondering if maybe she ought to have some fun with the couple by acting really crazy, but then she saw Jinx walking briskly down the path, a combative look on her face.
“You said the hunters only went after criminals,” Jinx said, her voice tight, her eyes glittering with anger.
Tillie frowned. What was the girl talking about? “Well, of course they do.”
“Not this time,” Jinx said, her voice rising.
“You want to tell me what you’re talkin’ about, or you just want to stand there yellin’?”
“Jeff Converse,” Jinx said. Her voice was still rising, and as Tillie recognized the name, she glanced around. Nobody seemed to have heard Jinx, at least not yet, but you didn’t talk about the hunters on the surface—in fact, most people didn’t talk about them at all. Tillie grabbed Jinx’s arm. “Now you just calm down,” she said, scanning the area in one final search for Eve Harris. With no sign of her, Tillie decided not to wait any longer and started walking toward the river, her hand still clamped on Jinx’s arm, steering her along the path.