W: So you think that Gallagher went down to meet some people for a birthday drink, and if that was the case, Parker would have been among them?

T: Makes sense, doesn’t it? Here’s another thing: Parker was on an eight-to-four tour that day. A cop named Eddie Grace covered for Parker so that he could finish his tour early. Why would Parker have been calling in favors unless it was to meet up with Jimmy Gallagher?

W: Did Grace say that was why he covered for Parker?

T: Like everyone else involved, Grace knew nothing and said nothing. The precinct clerk, DeMartini, saw Parker skip out, but didn’t say anything about it. He knew when to turn a blind eye. A waitress in Cal ’s said Gallagher was with someone on the night of the killings, but she didn’t get a good look at the guy, and he didn’t stay long. She said it might have been Will Parker, but then the bartender contradicted her, said it was someone else in the bar with Gallagher, a stranger, and the waitress subsequently decided that she’d been mi J Quo;d beenstaken.

W: You think someone put pressure on her to change her story?

T: They closed ranks. It’s what cops do. They protect their own, even if it’s the wrong thing to do.

Mickey paused at that point in his notes. Tyrrell’s face had changed when he spoke about ranks closing, of men being protected. Perhaps it was the IAD investigator in him, a deep-seated hatred of corrupt men and the code of omerta that protected them, but Mickey didn’t think that was all. He suspected that Tyrrell had always been outside the loop even before he joined IAD. He wasn’t a likable man, as Hector had pointed out, and it might have been the case that the “Rat Squad” had given him the opportunity to punish those whom he despised in the guise of a crusade against corruption. Mickey filed that observation away, and returned to his reading.

T: What I couldn’t figure out was, what did it matter if Gallagher was with Parker that night, unless Gallagher knew something about what was going to happen?

W: You’re talking about a premeditated killing.

Mickey recalled that Tyrrell had reconsidered at that point.

T: Maybe, or Gallagher knew the reason Parker ended up killing those two kids and wanted to keep that knowledge to himself. Whatever the reason, I know Jimmy Gallagher lied about what happened that night. I’ve read the IAD reports. As far as we were concerned, after that, Jimmy Gallagher was a marked man for the rest of his career.

Mickey found Gallagher’s name in the phone book. He considered making a call to him before heading out to Bensonhurst, then decided that he might be better off surprising him. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to gain from speaking to Gallagher, but if Tyrrell was right, then there was at least one crack in the story constructed around the events of the day on which the Pearl River killings had taken place. As a reporter, Mickey had learned to become the water in the crack, widening it, weakening the structure itself, until it finally collapsed to reveal the truth. The killings and their aftermath would play an important part in Mickey’s book. They’d offer him scope to consult a couple of rent-a-psychologists who’d give him chapter and verse on the impact on a son of his father’s involvement in a murder-suicide. Readers ate that stuff up.

He took the subway out to Bensonhurst to save a few bucks and found Gallagher’s street. He knocked on the door of the neat little house. After a couple of minutes, a tall man answered the door.

“Mr. Gallagher?”

“That’s right.”

Gallagher’s lips and teeth were stained red. He’d been drinking wine when Mickey called. That was good, unless he had company. It could mean that his defenses might be down some. Mickey had his wallet in his hand. He removed a card from it and handed it over.

“ J Q"5%"> &ldqMy name’s Michael Wallace. I’m a reporter. I was hoping to talk to you for a few minutes.”

“About what?”

And now it was time for Mickey to massage the truth a little: a lie in the service of a greater good. He doubted if Tyrrell would have approved.

“I’m putting together a piece about changes in the Ninth Precinct over the years. I know you served down there. I’d like to speak to you about your memories of that time.”

“A lot of cops passed through the Ninth. Why me?”

“Well, when I was looking for people to talk to, I saw that you’d been involved in a lot of community activities over here in Bensonhurst. I thought that social conscience might give you a better insight into the nature of the Ninth.”

Gallagher looked at the card. “Wallace, huh?”

“That’s right.”

He leaned forward and tucked the card carefully into the pocket of Mickey’s shirt. It was a curiously intimate gesture.

“You’re full of shit,” said Gallagher. “I know who you are, and I know what you’re trying to write. Cops talk. I knew about you from the moment you started sniffing around in things that don’t concern you. Take my advice: let this one go. You don’t want to go nosing around in these corners. Nobody worth talking to is going to help you, and you may just bring a heap of trouble down on your head in the process.”

Mickey’s eyes glittered. They had turned to hard little jewels set into his head. He was getting tired of being warned off.

“I’m a reporter,” he said, even though this was no longer the case. Then again, there was no such thing as a former reporter, just as there was no such thing as an ex-alcoholic. The old hunger never went away. “The more people tell me not to look into something, the more I want to do it.”

“That doesn’t make you a reporter,” said Gallagher. “It makes you a fool. You’re also a liar. I don’t much care for that in a man.”

“Really?” said Wallace. “You’ve never lied?”

“I didn’t say that. I like it as little in myself as I do in you.”

“Good, because I believe that you lied about what happened on the day that Will Parker killed those two teenagers out in Pearl River. I’m going to do my best to find out why. Then I’ll be back here, and we’ll talk again.”

Gallagher looked weary. Mickey wondered how long he’d been waiting for all of this to come back on him. Probably since the day his partner had turned into a murderer.

“Get off my step, Mr. Wallace. You’re spoiling my evening.”

He closed the door in Mickey’s face. Mickey stared at it for a moment, then took the business card from his pocket and tucked it into the door frame before heading back to Manhattan.

Inside the house, Jimmy sat at his kitchen table. There was an empt J Q was an ey glass beside him, and half a bottle of Syrah, along with the remains of his evening meal. Jimmy liked cooking for himself even more than he liked cooking for other people. When he cooked for himself, he didn’t have to fret about the results, about what other people might think of what he’d prepared. He was able to cook entirely to his own satisfaction, and he knew what he enjoyed. He’d been looking forward to a quiet evening with a good bottle of wine and an old noir movie on TCM. Now his sense of calm, which had already been fragile, was shattered. It had been fragile ever since Charlie Parker came to his door. At that moment, Jimmy had felt as though the ground were slowly being eroded from beneath his feet. He had hoped that the past had been laid to rest, however uneasily. Now the earth was shifting, exposing tattered flesh and old bones.

He had always been troubled by the possibility that, in lying to the investigators, in keeping silent over the decades that followed, he had done the wrong thing. Like a splinter buried deep in the flesh, the knowledge of how he had conspired with others to bury the truth, even the little of it that he knew, had festered inside him. Now he knew that the time was fast approaching when the infection would either be purged from his body, or it would destroy him.