“But what if others won’t act, can’t act?” asked Mickey. “Is it better to let evil go unchecked than to sacrifice a little of the good to resist it?”

“And who decides that?” asked Tyrrell. He was swaying slightly as he pulled on his coat, struggling to find the armholes. “You? Parker? Who decides what is an acceptable level of good to sacrifice? How much evil has to be committed in the name of good before it becomes an evil in itself?”

He patted his pockets, and heard the satisfying jangle of his keys. Mickey hoped that they weren’t car keys.

“Go write your book, Mr. Wallace. I won’t be reading it. I don’t think you’ll have anything to tell me that I don’t already know. I’ll give you one piece of advice for free, though. No matter how bad his friends are, Parker is worse. I’d step lightly when I’m asking about them, and maybe I’d be inclined to leave them out of your story altogether, but Parker is lethal because he believes that he’s on a crusade. I hope that you expose him for the wretch he is, but I’d watch my back all the way.”

Tyrrell made a gun with his hand, pointed it at Mickey, and let his thumb fall like a hammer on a chamber. Then he walked, a little unsteadily, from the bar, shaking hands with Hector one more time before he left. Mickey put away his notebook and pen, and went to pay the tab.

“You a friend of the Captain’s?” asked Hector as Mickey calculated the tip and added it to the bill by hand for tax purposes.

“No,” said Mickey. “I don’t think I am.”

“The Captain doesn’t have many friends,” said Hector, and there was something in his tone. It might almost have been pity. Mickey looked at him with interest.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we get cops in here all the time, but he’s the only one who drinks alone.”

“He was IAD,” said Mickey. “Internal Affairs.”

Hector shook his head. “I know that, but that’s not it. He’s just-”

Hector searched for the right word.

“He’s just a prick,” he concluded, then went back to reading his bodybuilding magazine.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

MICKEY WROTE UP HIS notes on the Tyrrell interview in his room while the details were still fresh in his mind. The pimp stuff was interesting. He Googled the name Johnny Friday, along with the details that Tyrrell had shared with him, and up came some contemporary news reports, as well as a longer article that had been written for one of the free papers entitled “Pimp: The Brutal Life and Bad End of Johnny Friday.” There were two pictures of Friday accompanying the article. The K arÄ[1] asfirst showed Friday as he was in life, a spare, rangy black man with hollow cheeks and eyes that were too large for his face. He had his arms around a pair of young women in lacy underwear, both of whom had their eyes blacked out to preserve their anonymity. Mickey wondered where they were now. According to the main article, young women who became professionally acquainted with Johnny Friday were not destined to lead happy existences.

The second picture had been taken on the mortuary slab, and showed the extent of the injuries that Friday had received in the course of the beating that took his life. Mickey figured that Friday’s family must have asked for the photograph to be released; that, or the cops had wanted it done in order to send out a message. Friday wasn’t even recognizable as the same man. His face was swollen and bloodied; his jaw, nose, and one of his cheekbones broken; and some of his teeth were sheared off at the gums. He had suffered extensive internal injuries too; one of his lungs had been punctured by a broken rib, and his spleen had ruptured.

Parker’s name wasn’t mentioned, which was no surprise, but a “police source” had indicated to the writer that there was a suspect in the killings, although there was not enough evidence as yet to press charges. Mickey calculated the odds in favor of Tyrrell being that source, and decided they were about even. If he was, then it meant that, even a decade ago, he’d had doubts about Parker, and he might have had some justification for them. Mickey hadn’t cared much for Tyrrell, but there was no denying that the man who had killed Johnny Friday was dangerous, someone capable of inflicting grave violence on another human being, an individual filled with anger and hatred. Mickey tried to balance that with the man he had encountered in Maine, and what he had heard about him from others. He rubbed his still tender belly at the memory of the punch that he had received on Parker’s front porch, and the light that had flared briefly in the man’s eyes as he had struck the blow. Yet no other blows had followed, and the anger in his eyes was gone almost as quickly as it had first appeared, to be replaced by what Mickey thought was shame and regret. It hadn’t mattered to Mickey then-he had been too busy trying not to cough his guts up-but it was clear upon reflection that, if Parker’s anger was still not yet fully under his control, then he had learned to rein it in to some degree, although not quickly enough to save Mickey from a bruised belly. But if Tyrrell was right, this man had Johnny Friday’s blood on his hands. He was not just a killer, but a murderer, and Mickey wondered how much he had truly changed in the years since Johnny Friday’s death.

When he was finished with the Tyrrell material, he opened a paper file on his desk. Inside were more notes: twenty-five or thirty sheets of paper, each covered from top to bottom in Mickey’s tiny handwriting, illegible to anyone else thanks to a combination of his personal shorthand and the size of the script. One sheet was headed with the words “Father/Mother.” He intended to head out to Pearl River at some point to talk to neighbors, store owners, anyone who might have had contact with Parker’s family before the killings, but he had some more homework to do on that first.

He checked his watch. It was after eight. He knew that Jimmy Gallagher, who had partnered Parker’s father down in the Ninth Precinct, lived out in Brooklyn. Tyrrell had given him that, along with the name of the investigator from the Rockland County District Attorney’s Office who had been present at the interviews with Parker’s father following the killings. Tyrrell thought that the latter, ex-NYPD, name of Kozelek, mig J QKozelek, ht talk to Wallace, and had initially offered to smooth the way, but that was before their conversation had come to a bad-tempered end. Wallace figured that call wasn’t going to be made now, although he wasn’t afraid to tap Tyrrell again, once he’d sobered up, if the investigator proved reluctant to speak.

The partner, Gallagher, was another matter. Wallace could tell that Tyrrell hadn’t liked Gallagher any more than he’d liked Charlie Parker. He went back to his notes from that afternoon and found the exchange in question.

W: Who were his friends?

T: Parker’s?

W: No, his father’s.

T: He was a popular guy, well liked down in the Ninth. He probably had a lot of friends.

W: Any in particular?

T: He was partnered with-uh, what was his name now?-Gallagher, that’s it. Jimmy Gallagher was his partner down there for years. (Laughs) I always-ah, it doesn’t matter.

W: Maybe it does. T: I always thought he was queer myself. W: There were rumors?

T: Just that: rumors.

W: Was he interviewed in the course of the investigation into the Pearl River killings?

T: Oh yeah, he was interviewed all right. I saw the transcripts. It was like talking to one of those monkeys. You know the ones: see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil? Said he knew nothing. Hadn’t even seen his old buddy that day.

W: Except?

T: Except that it was Gallagher’s birthday when the killings occurred, and he was down in the Ninth, even though he’d requested, and been given, a day off. Hard to believe that he would have gone to the Ninth on his day off, and his birthday, what’s more, and not hooked up with his partner and best friend.