The freaky thing about the daisies on my uncle’s grave was this: Harlan Scott had made it a point every year on the anniversary of Patrick Malone’s declared death to join my mother at her brother’s gravesite and leave off a clutch of daisies. In the fifteen years since his disappearance, every year without fail, the daisies had continued to appear. I knew it wasn’t my father. The lead weight in my stomach told me that he was every bit as dead as the uncle I’d never met. But my mother has another way of viewing matters. It’s not stretching the truth to say that she looks forward to the annual anguish of discovering the mysterious daisies on her brother’s tombstone. Even though she married (and, later, divorced), no other man on earth was going to take my father’s place in her emotions. The inexplicable daisies gave my mother the kind of false hope that fuels constant low-level heartache, a pain with which the small tough woman was, unfortunately, all too comfortable.
After several silent minutes, we left the gravesite. As she always did, my mother paused just outside the cemetery. She slowly scanned the buildings running both ways in front of us. One year she’d brought binoculars. But generally, the tactic was to remain visible for a minute or two, in case someone was watching. The windows of the buildings stared back blankly. Hundreds of opaque empty eyes.
Shirley wanted a drink. I’m not my mother’s keeper, so we ducked into a place called the Lounge. Dark. Stale. I could swear the same elbows were on the bar as the year before, and the year before that. We took a table next to a silent pinball machine, and I fetched an old-fashioned for the lady and for myself an Irish coffee, heavy on the Irish.
Several months after Commissioner Harlan Scott disappeared, I’d gotten a referral to Charlie Burke, private investigator out of Queens, and procured his services to snoop around and see what he could find. I’d never trusted the official investigation. It’s easy to make enemies when you’re a cop on the rise, especially once you’ve reached the top. Easy target. Fair game. Charlie managed to shine his light on any number of characters who might have been happy to assist in the obliteration of Harlan Scott, but ultimately nothing rock-solid. Along the way, I picked up my PI license and put myself under Charlie’s tutelage. It was a better fit for me. Attempting to follow in the old man’s footsteps had been downright quaint of me, or just plain stupid. I’m better suited for contract work or just being nosy on my own. Charlie declared that I had the raw material already in place, it was just a matter of fine-tuning, picking up some of the tricks and the bumps and bruises of experience. He also did a smart thing. Or, if not smart, extremely shrewd; the equivalent of attaching an endless belt of ammunition to a weapon. He sat me down one evening at his local, a bar not that far from the Lounge. I remember his every word.
“Your old man. What do we know? I’ll tell you. We know one of two things. He either disappeared because he wanted to, and he’s got no intention of being found except on his own terms, or he was taken out. Forget the first one, it’s the less likely. That second one? Listen. Somebody bad killed your father. Someone with the poison in their blood. My advice to you is that when you take on a case, it doesn’t matter what kind it is, you keep in mind that what you’re looking to do is nail someone with the poison in their blood. Doesn’t matter if it’s only a little poison. Embezzler, guy cheating on his wife, insurance scammers, doesn’t matter. It comes from the same source as the creep who took your old man away from you. They’re cousins, all these schmucks. That’s what you go after. Every time. It’s their blood you’re sniffing for, Fritz. Poison blood. Get it off the street. Every time. You want to do right by your old man? There’s your ticket.”
When I reminded Shirley that she wasn’t allowed to smoke in the bar, she quietly cursed the mayor. She dropped the celery-green pack back into her purse.
“I noticed where the girl lived who got her throat slashed the other night,” Shirley said. “That’s little missy’s front yard, isn’t it?”
“She goes by the name of Margo.”
“I figured you knew who I was talking about.”
“The murder happened right across the street.”
“Did she know her?”
“Did Margo know her?”
“I know it’s not fashionable to know your neighbors in this city, but stranger things have happened.”
“She didn’t know her,” I said.
“If I were an associate of this Marshall Fox character, I’d be leaving on the next train. You know who did this, don’t you?”
“You do?”
“Of course I do. Not the specifics, but it was a fan. A demented fan. An obsessed fan. Someone’s trying to make it look like the original killer is still out there, like Marshall Fox is completely innocent of those two murders last year. He wants to sow the seeds of doubt in the jury’s mind so that they don’t come in with a guilty verdict. Everyone knows this is the world’s stupidest jury and they can’t make up their minds even when it’s as clear as a bell. You wait, you’ll see. Some nutcase with pictures of Marshall Fox plastered all over his walls. That’s your killer.”
“And the reason for these particular victims?”
“Friends of Fox. Like those first two. They’re just trying to go with the pattern.”
“The pattern was women with whom Fox had been involved,” I pointed out. “Zachary Riddick is a square peg.”
“Did I say the killer was brilliant? The lawyer probably just got under his skin and he decided to do Riddick in while he was at it. I’m not the police. I don’t have all the answers.”
Her drink was finished, and she wanted another one. I’d cut her off after two and then hope we’d have to wait in the cold air awhile for the elevated subway. I replenished my mug while I was at it. Cold gray Sunday would have been perfect in front of a toasty fire with little missy. My day was feeling like the booby prize.