Page 120 of Hard to Kill
“Glad to help,” I say. “Now I’ve got one last question before I go: Who really killed your father and that girl that day?”
I don’t know what he was expecting from me in the moment. But clearly not that. He rapidly blinks his eyes as if trying to clear them of smoke, something he often does when he’s about to lie to my face.
“What brought that up?”
“Humor me again.”
“First tell me why we’re talking about that again?”
“Because I have the growing sense that everything that’s still happening around you and around me started happening that day.”
“Problem is, my story has never changed. My father killed her, then killed himself. Took the coward’s way out.”
“What I keep wondering is if that’s the real story.”
He stops blinking and his eyes are locked on mine. “I thought I already explained that to you. It’s the story that’s kept me alive all these years.”
“Maybe you’re finally ready to elaborate?”
He smiles and slowly shakes his head from side to side, so slowly it’s like he’s underwater.
“Not if I want tostayalive,” he says.
Then he tells me to go ahead and show myself out.
NINETY-FIVE
Jimmy
JIMMY CALLS AHEAD TO retired lieutenant Paul Harrington, not wanting to show up unannounced.
“You’re in luck,” Harrington says over the phone. “I just made up a batch of homemade iced tea flavored with mint I grew myself.”
“Lieu,” Jimmy says, still using the shorthand for lieutenant. “You’re sure you’re not too busy for me?”
“I am, just not the way you think. It’s the thing about being retired, Jimmy. You can never take a day off.”
Now they’re sitting on his back patio again, looking out at his gardens. One of the best cops of his time, Jimmy thinks. One of the best of anybody’s time in New York City. A cop’s cop. Nowadays he tends to his flowers and makes his own iced tea.
That’s it,Jimmy thinks.I’m working till I die.
“I assume you heard about Salvatore and Licata,” Jimmy says.
The iced tea is very good, even though Jimmy has never been one for mint anything.
Jimmy sees the surprise in the old chief’s eyes.
“Licata was on that boat? They just said an unidentified passenger. I didn’t even think to ask who the passenger might be.”
“Pretty sure it was Licata,” Jimmy continues. “They haven’t found any bodies yet. But sonofabitch if they didn’t find one of those Rangers caps Champi and Licata both liked to wear.”
Harrington smiles and raises his glass, as if in a toast, and Jimmy does the same. They clink glasses, enthusiastically.
“Mob guy and a dirty cop, both gone,” Harrington says. “And another angel gets its wings.”
“I feel like I just made your day.”
“Gonna be all downhill from here,” Paul Harrington says.