Melancholy Baby

“Do you know why he hired some people to beat up George Markham’s daughter?”

Lolly stared at Corsetti. She opened her mouth and closed it without speaking. She looked at her manager and at her lawyer. Then she seemed to rally.

“You dreadful little man,” she said.

“I’m not little,” Corsetti said. “Just short.”

“I don’t care what you are,” Lolly said. “I am through wasting my time with you.”

“This interview is terminated,” the lawyer said, “as of now.”

“Interview?” Corsetti said. “You think this is a fucking interview? I’m questioning a suspect in a double homicide, and the questioning stops when I say it stops.”

“Perhaps you should tell us what this is all about,” the lawyer said.

He was an entertainment lawyer. A good criminal lawyer would have terminated the discussion right there. Corsetti didn’t have enough to arrest her. But Corsetti got some credit for that. He had concealed the limits of what he knew, and implied that it was more than it was. So the lawyer still didn’t know what we had.

“George Markham’s daughter, Sarah, hired Sunny Randall to establish her paternity. Peter Franklin hired some guys to make Sarah stop. And then to try to make Sunny Randall stop. Then George Markham got shot, and a couple days later, Peter Franklin got shot, in the same manner that Markham did, a shot in the chest that knocked him down. A bullet in the forehead, point-blank, to be sure they were dead. Miss Drake knew Markham, and she knew Franklin.”

“Hired this woman?” Lolly said.

Corsetti nodded.

“You told us she was a police officer.”

“No,” Corsetti said, “I told you I was a police officer. I told you she was Sunny Randall. Which she is.”

“You implied.”

Corsetti grinned and shook his head. “You inferred,” he said.

“I’ll have your badge,” Lolly said.

The lawyer made a placating gesture with his hand.

“Lolly,” he said.

“Don’t you Lolly me, you fucking wimp,” she said. “I want his badge.”

“Can’t have it,” Corsetti said. “Captain says I’m supposed to have one.”

“Get out,” Lolly said.

“Do you have anything you’d like to share with me about these murders, Miss Drake?” Corsetti said.

“Miss Drake,” the lawyer said.

“Shut up,” she said.

She stood and walked around her desk and leaned toward Corsetti.

“You came in here and pretended this floozy was a police detective. You imply that I am guilty of some preposterous crime. I will see to it, with every power I have at my command, that you are sorry. Do you actually think you can stand up to me? Do you have any idea who and what I am?”

“A highfalutin asshole,” Corsetti said. “Am I right or wrong?”

Lolly jerked back as if he’d struck her. Her face reddened as if she might cry. Then she turned and ran out of the office. Corsetti stood as she left and jerked his head at me.

“Have a nice day,” he said to the two men, and we went out.

Riding down in the elevator, Corsetti looked at me and grinned.

“Floozy?” he said.

“How did she know?” I said.

47

I met my father for lunch at a coffee shop on Summer Street on my side of the Fort Point Channel. He always looked the same to me. He probably wasn’t. He was more than thirty years older than he was when he took me to nursery school for the first time. He had always been a hands-on father; he’d had to be, given my mother’s limitations. It always made me smile when I thought of it. On my first day at school, I hadn’t cried. And he had.

“You know this business well enough,” my father said, “to know that coincidences exist.”

“But assuming that they are coincidences doesn’t get you anywhere,” I said.

“And assuming they aren’t gets you where you don’t want to be,” my father said.

“So what do I do with Lolly Drake?” I said.

“You could leave it to the New York cops,” my father said.

“You think they can get to her?”

“Not with what they’ve got so far.”

“No,” I said. “She’s got layers of protection.”

“And not everybody in the chain of command will have the same attitude as your friend Corsetti,” my father said.

“She was so arrogant,” I said. “I’d love to level her out a little.”

My father’s thick hands rested on the tabletop. He turned his coffee cup slowly.

“Not a good idea to make it personal,” he said.

“I’m not a cop, Daddy. I work for me.”

He grinned at me.

“So it’s all personal,” he said.

I nodded.

“You don’t care about a case,” my father said, “you don’t do it.”

“It’s why I left the police,” I said.

“Alternative would be to care about them all.”

“Did you?” I said.

“I tried to.”

“But?”

“But some I didn’t give a rat’s ass about,” my father said.

“But you did the cases.”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t quit.”

“I had a wife and two daughters,” my father said.

“So you couldn’t quit.”

“Have to take care of your family,” my father said.

He smiled at me. “And generally, I liked the work.”

“And you were good at it,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I was.”

The waitress brought a fried-egg sandwich for my father, tuna salad for me.

“I don’t know where to go with this,” I said.

“You think Markham thought the DNA would prove his paternity?” my father said.

“Why would he take it if it wouldn’t?”

“So why would he think it would?” my father said.