Santos arrived half an hour later. He was tall and dark, and probably not much more than thirty years of age. He had the hungry look of someone who intended to ascend the career ladder as fast as humanly possible, and wouldn’t be troubled by stomping on fingers on the way up. He looked disappointed when it emerged that I had an alibi for the entire evening, and a cop alibi at that. Still, he accepted a cup of coffee and, if he wasn’t exactly friendly, he thawed enough not to hold the fact that I was no longer a viable suspect against me.
“You knew this guy?” he asked.
“He was planning to write a book about me.”
“And how did you feel about that?”
“Not so good. I tried to discourage him.”
“You mind if I ask how?” If Santos had been endowed with antennae, they’d have started twitching. I might not have killed Wallace myself, but I could have found someone else to do it for me.
“I told him that I wouldn’t cooperate. I made sure that nobody else I was close to would cooperate with him either.”
“Looks like he didn’t take the hint.” Santos sipped his coffee. He seemed pleasantly surprised by the taste. “It’s good coffee,” he said to Jimmy.
“ Blue Mountain,” said Jimmy. “Only the best.”
“You say you worked the Ninth?” said Santos.
“That’s right.”
Santos turned his attention back to me. “Your father worked the Ninth too, didn’t he?”
I almost admired Santos ’s ability to come up to speed so quickly. Unless he’d been keeping tabs before now, someone must have read the salient details of my file on the phone to him as he’d driven to Bensonhurst.
“Right again,” I said.
“Catching up on old times?”
“Is that relevant to the case in hand?”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
“Look, Detective,” I said, “I wanted Wallace to stop nosing around in my life, but I didn’t want him dead. And if I was going to have him killed, I wouldn’t have had it done in the room where my wife and daughter died, and I’d have made sure that I was far away when it happened.”
Santos nodded. “Guess you’re right. I know who you are. Whatever else people say about you, you’re not dumb.”
“Nice to hear,” I said.
“Ain’t it, though?” He sighed. “I talked to some people before I came here. They said it wasn’t your style.”
“They tell you what was my style?”
“They told me I didn’t want to know, and I trusted them on it, but they confirmed that it wasn’t what was done to Mickey Wallace.”
I waited.
“He was tortured with a blade,” said Santos. “It wasn’t sophisticated, but it was effective. My guess is that someone wanted him to talk. Once he’d told what he knew, his throat was cut.”
“Nobody heard anything?”
“No.”
“How was he found?”
“Patrol saw that the side gate to the house was open. The uniform went around back, saw a light in the kitchen: a small flashlight, probably Wallace’s, but we’ll have it checked for prints just in case.”
“So what’s next?”
“You free?”
“Right now?”
“No, later this week, for a date. The hell do you think?”
“I’m done here,” I said. I wasn’t, of course. Had there been no other distractions, I would have stayed with Jimmy in the hope of squeezing every last detail out of him early the next morning, once I’d had a chance to absorb all that I had been told. I might have made him go through everything again, just to be certain that there was nothing he had omitted, but Jimmy was tired. He was a man who had spent an evening confessing not only his own sins, but the sins of others. He needed to sleep.
I knew what Santos was about to ask, and I knew that I would have to say yes, no matter how much it pained me.
“I’d like you to take a look at the house,” said Santos. “The body’s gone, but there’s something I want you to see.”
“What?”
“Just take a look, okay?”
I agreed. I told Jimmy that I would probably return to speak to him over the next few days, and he said that he would be there. I should have thanked him, but I did not. He had held too much back for too long. As we left, he stood on the porch and watched us go. He raised a hand in farewell, but I did not respond.
I had not been back at Hobart Street for years, not since I had removed the last of my family’s possessions from the house, sorting them into those that I would keep, and those I would discard. I think that it was one of the hardest tasks I have ever performed, that service for the dead. With each item that I put aside-a dress, a hat, a doll, a toy-it seemed that I was betraying their memory. I should have kept it all, for these were things that they had touched and held, and something of them resided in these familiar objects, now rendered strange by loss. It took me three days. Even now, I can recall sitting for an hour on the edge of our bed with Susan’s hairbrush in my hand, stroking the hairs that had tangled on its bristles. Was this too to be discarded, or should I keep it along with the lipstick that had molded itself to the shape of her, the blusher that retained the imprint of her finger upon it, the unwashed wineglas R Ahed winegs marked by her hands and her mouth? What was to be kept, and what was to be forgotten? In the end, perhaps I kept too much; that, or not enough. Too much to truly let go, and too little to lose myself entirely in their memory.
“You okay?” asked Santos as we stood at the gate.
“No,” I said. I saw TV cameras, and flashes exploded in my eyes, leaving red spots in their wake. I saw patrol cars, and men in uniform. And I was back in another time, my knee bruised and my trousers torn, my head in my hands and the image of the dead frozen on my retina.
“You want a minute?”
More flashbulbs, closer now. I heard my name being called, but I did not react.
“No,” I said again, and I followed Santos to the back of the house.
It was the blood that did it. Blood on the kitchen floor, and blood on the walls. I could not enter the kitchen. Instead, I gazed upon it from outside until I felt my stomach begin to churn and sweat broke out on my face. I leaned against the cool woodwork of the house and closed my eyes until the nausea passed.
“Did you see it?” asked Santos.
“Yes,” I said.
The symbol had been drawn in Wallace’s blood. His body had already been removed, but the position in which he was found had been marked. The symbol had been created just above where Wallace’s head had rested. Nearby, the contents of a plastic folder had been scattered across the floor. I saw the photographs, and knew why Wallace had been here. He wanted to relive the killings, and their discovery.