“Quick bio of Cooper?”
“He was a junkie. Heroin. Rap sheet the length of a football field. Mostly small-time shit—petty burglary, solicitation, but a couple of home invasions, too, bought him two years at the old Dedham House of Corrections. Still, Cooper wasn’t nothing but a nickel-and-dimer. If he hadn’t been crucified, nobody would have noticed he died. Even then, cops didn’t seem to be busting their asses on the case at first.”
“Who was the investigating officer?”
“Two guys. An Inspector Brett Hardiman and, lemme see, yeah, a Detective Sergeant Gerald Glynn.”
That stopped me. “They make an arrest?”
“Well, here’s where it gets interesting. I had to dig a bit, but there was a local stir in the papers for a day when they brought a guy named Alec Hardiman in for questioning.”
“Wait a minute, didn’t you just—?”
“Yup. Alec Hardiman was the son of the chief investigating officer, Brett Hardiman.”
“What happened?”
“The younger Hardiman was cleared.”
“Coverup?”
“It doesn’t look that way. There really wasn’t much evidence against him. He’d known Jamal Cooper casually, I guess, and that was that. But…”
“What?”
Several phones rang at once on Richie’s end and he said, “Hold on.”
“No, Rich. No, I—”
He put me on hold, the bastard. I waited.
When he came back on the line, his voice had changed back to its City Desk rush. “Patrick, Igottago.”
“No.”
“Yes. Look, this Alec Hardiman was convicted for another murder in seventy-five. He’s doing life in Walpole. That’s all I got. Gottarun.”
He hung up and I looked down at the names on my notepad: Jamal Cooper. Brett Hardiman. Alec Hardiman. Gerald Glynn.
I thought about calling Angie but it was late and she’d been beat from watching Jason do nothing all week.
I stared at the phone for a bit, then took my jacket and left the apartment.
I didn’t need the jacket. Past one in the morning, and the humidity lathered my skin until the pores felt sticky and fetid and sickly soft.
October. Right.
Gerry Glynn was washing glasses at the bar sink when
I entered The Black Emerald. The place was empty, the three TV screens on, but the volume muted, the Pogues’ version of “Dirty Old Town” coming out of the jukebox at whisper volume, stools up on the bar, floor swept, amber ashtrays clean as boiled bones.
Gerry was looking into the sink. “Sorry,” he said without looking up. “Closed.”
On top of the pool table near the back, Patton raised his head and looked at me. I couldn’t see his face very distinctly through the cigarette smoke that still hovered there like a cloud, but I knew what he’d say if he could speak: “Didn’t you hear the man? We’re closed.”
“Hi, Gerry.”
“Patrick,” he said, confused but with enthusiasm. “What brings you by?”
He wiped his palms and offered me his hand.
I shook it and he pumped mine hard, looking me dead in the eyes, a habit of the older generation that reminded me of my father.
“I needed to ask you a question or two, Ger, if you got the time.”
He cocked his head and his usually kind eyes lost their softness. Then they cleared and he hoisted his bulk onto the cooler behind him and spread his hands, palms up. “Sure. You need a beer or something?”
“Don’t want to put you out, Ger.” I settled into the bar stool across from him.
He opened the door of the cooler next to him. His thick arm dug down inside and ice rattled. “No problem. Can’t promise what I’ll come up with.”
I smiled. “Long as it isn’t a Busch.”
He laughed. “Nope. It’s a…” His arm came out washed in ice water, dimples of cold jellied white against the flesh under his forearm. “…Lite.”
I smiled as he handed it to me. “Like sex in a sailboat,” I said.
He laughed loudly and sputtered the punchline. “It’s fucking too close to water. I love that one.” He reached behind himself and, without looking, pulled a bottle of Stolichnaya from the shelf. He poured some into a tall shot
glass, put the bottle back, then raised the glass.
“Cheers.”
“Cheers,” I said and drank some Lite. Tasted like water, but it was still better than Busch. Of course, a cup of diesel is usually better than Busch.
“So what’s your question?” Gerry said. He patted his ample gut. “Jealous of my physique?”
I smiled. “A bit.” I drank some more Lite. “Gerry, what can you tell me about someone named Alec Hardiman?”
He held his shot glass up to the fluorescent light and the clear liquid disappeared in a shimmer of white. He stared at it and rotated the glass in his fingers.
“Now,” he said quietly, eyes still on the glass, “where would you come up with that name, Patrick?”
“It was mentioned to me.”
“You’ve been looking for matches to the MO of Kara Rider’s killer.” He brought the glass down and looked across at me. He didn’t seem angry or irritated and his voice was flat and monotonous, but there was a stillness to his squat body that hadn’t been there a minute before.
“Per your suggestion, Ger.”
On the jukebox behind me, the Pogues had at some point given way to The Waterboys’ “Don’t Bang the Drum.” The TV screens above Gerry’s head were tuned to three different channels. One broadcast Australian Rules Football, one what looked like an old Kojak episode, and the third showed Old Glory wavering in the breeze as it signed off for the night.
Gerry hadn’t moved, hadn’t so much as blinked, since he’d brought the shot glass back down by his side, and I could just make out the sound of his breathing, shallow and thin, as he exhaled through his nostrils. He didn’t study me so much as stare through me, as if what he was seeing was on the other side of my head.
He reached back for the bottle of Stoli, poured himself another shot. “So, Alec comes back to haunt us all again.” He chuckled. “Ah, well, I should have known.”
Patton jumped down from the pool table and padded into the main bar area, gave me a look like I was sitting in his seat, then hopped up on the bar top in front of me and lay down, his paws over his eyes.
“He wants you to pet him,” Gerry said.