Sarah shuddered. “My God, Dad. I don’t want to think about it.”
“Neither do I, honey, but you asked. I guess what’s always plagued me is that I thought I knew the answer. The phone would’ve just kept on ringing.”
“Whatever happened to Susan Kasten?” Sarah changed the subject.
“She went underground, but not in the Mideast or Latin America. She was arrested in 1992 or ’93 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, the most Republican county in the state. She was a housewife with three kids, a dog, two cats, a minivan, and a husband who was an executive for a firm that made missile guidance systems. I think she’s out of prison now and back home. Weird, huh?”
Sarah laughed. “A long way from Manhattan Beach and bombing the 61st Precinct.”
“A long way, yeah.”
“What happened to you and Mindy?”
“We got married and lived happily ever after.”
“Don’t be a jerk, Dad.”
“She pretty much made a full recovery, but I stopped visiting her once I knew it was her who’d tried to kill Bobby. I couldn’t live with that. Any feelings I had for her ran right out of me. Besides, by the time she got out of rehab, I was in the academy. I was the enemy.”
Sarah said, “I guess I understand that.” She sipped at her coffee again, her face belying her previous assessment of my French press technique. “Did Casey put two and two together?”
“I don’t know. What I do know is that about six months later, they found Fitzhugh beaten to death at Bear Mountain. Every bone in his body was broken. A few weeks after that, about ten guys from the Luchese family were arrested on drug and corruption charges. Who knows? A month or two after that, it came out that Sam had been a cop. She was reburied with full police honors. I shipped her suitcase and documents to her folks, but I couldn’t bring myself to go up there for the reburial. I’d already said my goodbyes. And poor Marty Lavitz just moldered in his grave because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Did you ever figure out why Samantha put the moves on you that night?”
“I’d like to think it was for all the reasons she said, but I think the truth is much colder than that. My guess is she was trying to turn me into a spy for her. If I had slept with her, she could threaten to tell Bobby unless I kept tabs on him. We’ll never know.”
“Dad, you still haven’t answered my original question: how did you become a cop?”
“Okay, okay, already. Like I said, I left Casey on the sidewalk with Sam’s badge in his hand. He came back into the pub a few minutes later and some more guys came over and bought rounds of drinks. Around three in the morning, we were both blind drunk and — ”
Before I could finish the sentence, Sarah got up and ran to the bathroom. She ran so quickly, I didn’t even have time to ask her if she was all right. Ten minutes later, she was back. She looked much better and color had returned to her cheeks. Before I could ask, she told me that she was fine.
“You were blind drunk and …”
“And I turned to Casey and asked him to tell me why the place was called the Onion Street Pub. He said he wasn’t supposed to tell, but he said he would tell me under one condition. If I agreed to take the entrance exam for the police academy, he would explain the name to me. I told him I wouldn’t. So he goaded me, saying I was afraid I wasn’t smart enough to pass the test. That did the trick. You know how I hate that. I said I’d show him I could pass, but that he had to tell me why they’d given the bar the name Onion Street. He held out his hand, we shook on it, and the rest is history.”
“You became a cop on a drunken dare?”
“I did, and it was the best drunken thing I ever agreed to. Being a cop was the only job I ever loved.”
“So …”
“What?”
“Why was the bar named the Onion Street Pub?”
“Weren’t you listening?” I asked. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Dad!”
“Maybe if you tell me what’s going on. Why you volunteered to come down here so fast, why all the questions. Then maybe I’ll think about it.”
Sarah bowed her head. When she looked up at me, mascara-stained tears were pouring down her cheeks. I opened my mouth to speak, but she held her hands up to stop me and collected herself. “You’ve been so sick, Dad, and I had questions I needed answered.”
I went to her and wrapped my arms around her like I had when she was a little girl. It had been a very long time since we had been like this together. Although she had forgiven me for the events leading up to Katy’s murder, it wasn’t ever the same between us. I guess she couldn’t quite trust me, the way I could never quite trust Bobby again. Doubt, even a tiny shard of it, is a powerful thing.
“But why this question, kiddo? Why now?”
“Because I needed to know what to tell your grandson if your cancer comes back and you can’t tell him yourself.”
I was lightheaded, but for all the right reasons. God had finally answered with a yes. I looked up at the ceiling, and thought of Mr. Roth. “You’re preg — ”
“Almost five months, now.”
Later that day, after Sarah had headed back to Vermont, I went to the liquor store and bought a bottle of Cutty Sark. I had moved up to Dewar’s decades ago, but remembering all those long-past events had made me sentimental for the taste of Cutty Sark. My oncologist wouldn’t have approved, so I toasted him, and I toasted Bobby Friedman, and I wondered about where Lids and Mindy had gotten to. I toasted the coming birth of my grandson. I toasted fulfilling my promise to my daughter. When the baby was born, I had vowed, I’d tell her why it was called the Onion Street Pub. We shook on it.