There was a silence. Steve’s nerves were wound up tight as guitar strings, even though he was sure she would not pick him out.
A low female voice said: “He had a hat on.”
She sounded like an educated middle-class woman of about his own age, Steve thought.
The male voice said: “We have hats. Would you like them all to put on a hat?”
“It was more of a cap. A baseball cap.”
Steve heard anxiety and tension in her voice but also determination. There was no hint of falseness. She sounded like the kind of woman who would tell the truth, even when distressed. He felt a little better.
“Dave, see if we have seven baseball caps in that closet.”
There was a pause of several minutes. Steve ground his teeth in impatience. A voice muttered: “Jeez, I didn’t know we had all this stuff … eyeglasses, mustaches—”
“No chitchat, please, Dave,” the first man said. “This is a formal legal proceeding.”
Eventually a detective came onto the stage from the side and handed a baseball cap to each man in the lineup. They all put them on and the detective left.
From the other side of the screen came the sound of a woman crying.
The male voice repeated the form of words used earlier. “Do you recognize any one of them who has done anything to you or in your presence? If so call out their number, and number only.”
“Number four,” she said with a sob in her voice.
Steve turned and looked at the backdrop.
He was number four.
“No!” he shouted. “This can’t be right! It wasn’t me!”
The male voice said: “Number four, did you hear that?”
“Of course I heard it, but I didn’t do this!”
The other men in the lineup were already leaving the stage.
“For Christ’s sake!” Steve stared at the opaque screen, his arms spread wide in a pleading gesture. “How could you pick me out? I don’t even know what you look like!”
The male voice from the other side said: “Don’t say anything, ma’am, please. Thank you very much for your cooperation. This way out.”
“There’s something wrong here, can’t you understand?” Steve yelled.
The turnkey Spike appeared. “It’s all over, son, let’s go,” he said.
Steve stared at him. For a moment he was tempted to knock the little man’s teeth down his throat.
Spike saw the look in his eye and his expression hardened. “Let’s have no trouble, now. You got nowhere to run.” He took Steve’s arm in a grip that felt like a steel clamp. It was useless to protest.
Steve felt as if he had been bludgeoned from behind. This had come from nowhere. His shoulders slumped and he was seized by helpless fury. “How did this happen?” he said. “How did this happen?”
12
BERRINGTON SAID: “DADDY?”
Jeannie wanted to bite off her tongue. It was the dumbest thing she could have said: “When did you get out of jail, Daddy?” Only minutes ago Berrington had described the people in the city jail as the scum of the earth.
She felt mortified. It was bad enough her boss finding out that her father was a professional burglar. Having Berrington meet him was even worse. His face had been bruised by a fall and he had several days’ growth of beard. His clothes were dirty and he had a faint but disgusting smell. She felt so ashamed she could not look at Berrington.
There had been a time, many years ago, when she was not ashamed of him. Quite the reverse: he made other girls’ fathers seem boring and tiresome. He had been handsome and fun loving, and he would come home in a new suit, his pockets full of money. There would be movies and new dresses and icecream sundaes, and Mom would buy a pretty nightgown and go on a diet. But he always went away again, and around about the age of nine she found out why. Tammy Fontaine told her. She would never forget the conversation.
“Your jumper’s horrible,” Tammy had said.
“Your nose is horrible,” Jeannie had replied wittily, and the other girls broke up.
“Your mom buys you clothes that are really, like, gruesome.”
“Your mom’s fat.”
“Your daddy’s in jail.”
“He is not.”
“He is so.”
“He is not!”
“I heard my daddy tell my mommy. He was reading the newspaper. I see old Pete Ferrami’s back in jail again,’ he said.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Jeannie had chanted, but in her heart she had believed Tammy. It explained everything: the sudden wealth, the equally sudden disappearances, the long absences.
Jeannie never had another of those taunting schoolgirl conversations. Anyone could shut her up by mentioning her father. At the age of nine, it was like being crippled for life. Whenever something was lost at school, she felt they all looked accusingly at her. She never shook the guilty feeling. If another woman looked in her purse and said, “Darn, I thought I had a ten-dollar bill,” Jeannie would flush crimson. She became obsessively honest: she would walk a mile to return a cheap ballpoint, terrified that if she kept it the owner would say she was a thief like her father.
Now here he was, standing there in front of her boss, dirty and unshaven and probably broke. “This is Professor Berrington Jones,” she said. “Berry, meet my father, Pete Ferrami.”
Berrington was gracious. He shook Daddy’s hand. “Good to meet you, Mr. Ferrami,” he said. “Your daughter is a very special woman.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Daddy said with a pleased grin.
“Well, Berry, now you know the family secret,” she said resignedly. “Daddy was sent to jail, for the third time, on the day I graduated summa cum laude from Princetoa He’s been incarcerated for the last eight years.”
“It could have been fifteen,” Daddy said. “We had guns on that job.”
“Thank you for sharing that with us, Dad. It’s sure to impress my boss.”
Daddy looked hurt and baffled, and she felt a stab of pity for him, despite her resentment. His weakness hurt him as much as it hurt his family. He was one of nature’s failures. The fabulous system that reproduced the human race—the profoundly complex DNA mechanism Jeannie studied—was programmed to make every individual a little bit different. It was like a photocopier with a built-in error. Sometimes the result was good: an Einstein, a Louis Armstrong, an Andrew Carnegie. And sometimes it was a Pete Ferrami.
Jeannie had to get rid of Berrington fast. “If you want to make that call, Berry, you can use the phone in the bedroom.”
“Uh, it’ll keep,” he said.
Thank God for that. “Well, thank you for a very special evening.” She held out her hand to shake.
“It was a pleasure. Good night.” He shook hands awkwardly and went out.
Jeannie turned to her father. “What happened?”
“I got time off for good behavior. I’m free. And naturally, the first thing I wanted was to see my little girl.”
“Right after you went on a three-day drunk.” He was so transparently insincere, it was offensive. She felt the familiar rage rise inside her. Why couldn’t she have a father like other people’s?
He said: “Come on, be nice.”
Anger turned into sadness. She had never had a real father and she never would. “Give me that bottle,” she said. “I’ll make coffee.”
Reluctantly he handed her the vodka and she put it back in the freezer. She put water in the coffee maker and turned it on.
“You look older,” he said to her. “I see a little gray in your hair.”