He sat back in his chair, spent.

“So now you know everything.”

“And you kept it hidden all this time?”

“I didn’t even discuss it with your mother and, to tell you the truth, I was kind of glad when she said she was taking you up to Maine. It made me feel like I didn’t have to be responsible for you. It made me feel that I could pretend to forget everything.”

“Would you ever have told me if I hadn’t come asking?”

“No. What good would it have done?” Then he seemed to reconsider. “Look, I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve read about you, and I’ve heard the stories about the people you’ve found, and the men and women you’ve killed. All those cases have been touched by something strange. Maybe, in the last couple of years, I’ve thought that you should be told so that-”

He was struggling to find the right words.

“So that what?”

He settled upon them, although not happily. “So that you’d be ready for them when they came again,” he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE CALL CAME THROUGH to my cell phone shortly before midnight. Jimmy had gone to make up the bed in the spare room, and I was seated at the kitchen table, still trying to come to terms with what he had told me. The ground beneath my feet no longer seemed solid, and I did not trust myself to stand and remain upright. Perhaps I should have doubted Jimmy’s story, or at least remained skeptical of some of the details until I could investigate them further for myself, but I did not. I knew in my heart that all he had told me was true.

I checked the caller ID display before I answered, but I did not recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Parker? Charlie Parker?”

“Yes.”

“This is Detective Doug Santos over at the Six-Eight. Sir, I was wondering where you happen to be right now?”

The Six-Eight covered Bay Ridge, where I had once lived with my family. Cops from that precinct, including Walter Cole, had been the first on the scene on the night that Susan and Jennifer died.

“Why?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

“Please, just answer the question.”

“I’m in Brooklyn. Bensonhurst.”

His tone changed. Where at first he had merely been brusque and efficient, there was now a greater urgency to his words. I didn’t know how it had happened, but in the space of a couple of seconds I sensed that I had become a potential suspect.

“Can you give me an address? I’d like to talk to you.”

“What’s this about, Detective? It’s late, and I’ve had a long day.”

“I’d prefer to speak to you in person. That address?”

“Hold on.”

Jimmy had just come back from the bathroom. He raised an eyebrow in inquiry as I covered the phone with my hand.

“It’s a cop from the Six-Eight. He wants to talk to me. Is it okay with you if I meet him here? I’m getting a vibe from him that tells me I might be in need of an alibi.”

“Sure,” said Jimmy. “You get a name?”

“ Santos.”

Jimmy shook his head. “Don’t know him. It’s late, but, if you want, I can make some calls, find out what’s happening.”

I gave Santos the address. He told me that he’d be there within the hour. Meanwhile, Jimmy had begun to call his own contacts, although Walter Cole remained an option if he came up short. He also disposed of the empty wine bottle while he made the first call, which turned out to be enough for him to find out something. When he hung up the phone, he was shaken.

“There’s been a killing,” he said.

height="0%" width="5%">“Where?”

“You won’t like it-1219 Hobart. There’s a dead man in the kitchen of your old house. You may have mixed feelings when you hear who it is. It’s Mickey Wallace.”

Santos arrived half an hour later. He was tall and dark, and probably not much more than thirty years of age. He had the hungry look of someone who intended to ascend the career ladder as fast as humanly possible, and wouldn’t be troubled by stomping on fingers on the way up. He looked disappointed when it emerged that I had an alibi for the entire evening, and a cop alibi at that. Still, he accepted a cup of coffee and, if he wasn’t exactly friendly, he thawed enough not to hold the fact that I was no longer a viable suspect against me.

“You knew this guy?” he asked.

“He was planning to write a book about me.”

“And how did you feel about that?”

“Not so good. I tried to discourage him.”

“You mind if I ask how?” If Santos had been endowed with antennae, they’d have started twitching. I might not have killed Wallace myself, but I could have found someone else to do it for me.

“I told him that I wouldn’t cooperate. I made sure that nobody else I was close to would cooperate with him either.”

“Looks like he didn’t take the hint.” Santos sipped his coffee. He seemed pleasantly surprised by the taste. “It’s good coffee,” he said to Jimmy.

“ Blue Mountain,” said Jimmy. “Only the best.”

“You say you worked the Ninth?” said Santos.

“That’s right.”

Santos turned his attention back to me. “Your father worked the Ninth too, didn’t he?”

I almost admired Santos ’s ability to come up to speed so quickly. Unless he’d been keeping tabs before now, someone must have read the salient details of my file on the phone to him as he’d driven to Bensonhurst.

“Right again,” I said.

“Catching up on old times?”

“Is that relevant to the case in hand?”

“I don’t know. Is it?”

“Look, Detective,” I said, “I wanted Wallace to stop nosing around in my life, but I didn’t want him dead. And if I was going to have him killed, I wouldn’t have had it done in the room where my wife and daughter died, and I’d have made sure that I was far away when it happened.”

Santos nodded. “Guess you’re right. I know who you are. Whatever else people say about you, you’re not dumb.”

“Nice to hear,” I said.

“Ain’t it, though?” He sighed. “I talked to some people before I came here. They said it wasn’t your style.”

“They tell you what was my style?”

“They told me I didn’t want to know, and I trusted them on it, but they confirmed that it wasn’t what was done to Mickey Wallace.”

I waited.

“He was tortured with a blade,” said Santos. “It wasn’t sophisticated, but it was effective. My guess is that someone wanted him to talk. Once he’d told what he knew, his throat was cut.”

“Nobody heard anything?”

“No.”

“How was he found?”

“Patrol saw that the side gate to the house was open. The uniform went around back, saw a light in the kitchen: a small flashlight, probably Wallace’s, but we’ll have it checked for prints just in case.”

“So what’s next?”

“You free?”

“Right now?”

“No, later this week, for a date. The hell do you think?”

“I’m done here,” I said. I wasn’t, of course. Had there been no other distractions, I would have stayed with Jimmy in the hope of squeezing every last detail out of him early the next morning, once I’d had a chance to absorb all that I had been told. I might have made him go through everything again, just to be certain that there was nothing he had omitted, but Jimmy was tired. He was a man who had spent an evening confessing not only his own sins, but the sins of others. He needed to sleep.

I knew what Santos was about to ask, and I knew that I would have to say yes, no matter how much it pained me.

“I’d like you to take a look at the house,” said Santos. “The body’s gone, but there’s something I want you to see.”

“What?”

“Just take a look, okay?”

I agreed. I told Jimmy that I would probably return to speak to him over the next few days, and he said that he would be there. I should have thanked him, but I did not. He had held too much back for too long. As we left, he stood on the porch and watched us go. He raised a hand in farewell, but I did not respond.