The Sins of the Fathers (Matthew Scudder #1)

The Sins of the Fathers (Matthew Scudder #1) Page 2

"But you still didn't know where she was, or how she was living."

"No." He lowered his eyes. "That's part of it, of course. Why I'm busy now, locking up the empty stable." His eyes returned to mine, and there was something in them that I wanted to turn from, and couldn't. "I have to know how much to blame myself."

Did he really think he would ever have the answer to that one? Oh, he might find himself an answer, but it would not be the right answer. There is never a right answer to that inescapable question.

He finished writing the check and passed it to me. He had left space blank where my name belonged. He told me he thought I might like it made out to Cash. I said payable to me was fine, and he uncapped his pen again and wrote Matthew Scudder on the right line. I folded it and put it in my wallet.

I said, "Mr. Hanniford, there's something you left out. You don't think it's important, but it might be, and you think it might be."

"How do you know that?"

"Instinct, I suppose. I spent a lot of years watching people decide how close they cared to come to the truth. There's nothing you have to tell me, but-"

"Oh, it's extraneous, Scudder. I left it out because I didn't think it fit in, but-Oh, the hell with it. Wendy's not my biological daughter."

"She was adopted?"

"I adopted her. My wife is Wendy's mother. Wendy's father was killed before Wendy was born, he was a Marine, he died in the landing at Inchon." He looked away again. "I married Wendy's mother three years after that. From the beginning I loved her as much as any real father could have. When I found out that I was… unable to father children myself, I was even more grateful for her existence. Well? Is it important?"

"I don't know," I said. "Probably not." But of course it was important to me. It told me something more about Hanniford's load of guilt.

"Scudder? You're not married, are you?"

"Divorced."

"Any children?"

I nodded. He started to say something, and didn't. I began wanting him to leave.

He said, "You must have been a very good policeman."

"I wasn't bad. I had cop instincts, and I learned the moves. That's at least ninety percent of it."

"How long were you on the force?"

"Fifteen years. Almost sixteen."

"Isn't there a pension or something if you stay twenty?"

"That's right."

He didn't ask the question, and that was strangely more annoying than if he had.

I said, "I lost the faith."

"Like a priest?"

"Something like that. Not exactly, because it's not rare for a cop to lose the faith and go on being a cop. He may never have had it in the first place. What it amounted to was that I found out I didn't want to be a cop anymore." Or a husband, or a father. Or a productive member of society.

"All the corruption in the department? That sort of thing?"

"No, no." The corruption had never bothered me. I would have found it hard to support a family without it. "No, it was something else."

"I see."

"You do? Hell, it's not a secret. I was off duty one night in the summer. I was in a bar in Washington Heights where cops didn't have to pay for their drinks. Two kids held up the place. On their way out they shot the bartender in the heart. I chased them into the street. I shot one of them dead and caught the other in the thigh. He's never going to walk right again."

"I see."

"No, I don't think you do. That wasn't the first time I ever killed anyone. I was glad the one died and sorry the other recovered."

"Then-"

"One shot went wide and ricocheted. It hit a seven-year-old girl in the eye. The ricochet took most of the steam off the bullet. An inch higher and it probably would have glanced off her forehead. Would have left a nasty scar but nothing much worse than that. This way, though, nothing but soft tissue, and it went right on into her brain. They tell me she died instantly." I looked at my hands. The tremor was barely visible. I picked up my cup and drained it. I said, "There was no question of culpability. As a matter of fact, I got a departmental commendation. Then I resigned. I just didn't want to be a cop anymore."

I sat there for a few minutes after he left. Then I caught Trina's eye and she brought over another cup of laced coffee. "Your friend's not much of a drinker," she said.

I agreed that he wasn't. Something in my tone must have alerted her because she sat down in Hanniford's chair and put her hand on top of mine for a moment.

"Troubles, Matt?"

"Not really. Things to do, and I'd rather not do them."

"You'd rather just sit here and get drunk."

I grinned at her. "When did you ever see me drunk?"

"Never. And I never saw you when you weren't drinking."

"It's a nice middle ground."

"Can't be good for you, can it?"

I wished she would touch my hand again. Her fingers were long and slender, her touch very cool. "Nothing's much good for anybody," I said.

"Coffee and booze. It's a very weird combination."

"Is it?"

"Booze to get you drunk, and coffee to keep you sober."

I shook my head. "Coffee never sobered anybody. It just keeps you awake. Give a drunk plenty of coffee and you've got a wide-awake drunk on your hands."

"That what you are, baby? A wide-awake drunk?"

"I'm neither," I told her. "That's what keeps me drinking."

I got to my savings bank a little after four. I stuck five hundred in my account and took the rest of Hanniford's money in cash. It was my first visit since the first of the year, so they entered some interest in my passbook. A machine figured it all out in the wink of an eye. The sum involved was hardly large enough to warrant wasting the machine's time on it.

I walked back on Fifty-seventh Street to Ninth, then headed uptown past Armstrong's and the hospital to St. Paul 's. Mass was just winding up, and I waited outside while a couple dozen people straggled out of the church. They were mostly middle-aged women. Then I went inside and slipped four fifty-dollar bills into the poor box.

I tithe. I don't know why. It's become a habit, as indeed it has become my habit to visit churches. I began doing this shortly after I moved into my hotel room.

I like churches. I like to sit in them when I have things to think about. I sat around the middle of this one on the aisle. I suppose I was there for twenty minutes, maybe a little longer.

Two thousand dollars from Cale Hanniford to me, two hundred dollars from me to St. Paul 's poor box. I don't know what they do with the money. Maybe it buys food and clothing for poor families. Maybe it buys Lincolns for the clergy. I don't really care what they do with it.

The Catholics get more of my money than anybody else. Not because I'm partial to them, but because they put in longer hours. Most of the Protestants close up shop during the week.

One big plus for the Catholics, though. You get to light candles. I lit three on the way out. For Wendy Hanniford, who would never get to be twenty-five, and for Richard Vanderpoel, who would never get to be twenty-one. And, of course, for Estrellita Rivera, who would never get to be eight.

Chapter 2

The Sixth Precinct is on West Tenth Street. Eddie Koehler was in his office reading reports when I got there. He didn't look surprised to see me. He pushed some papers to one side, nodded at the chair alongside his desk. I settled into it and reached over to shake hands with him. Two tens and a five passed smoothly from my hand to his.

"You look like you need a new hat," I told him.

"I do indeed. One thing I can always use is another hat. How'd you like Hanniford?"

"Poor bastard."

"Yeah, that's about it. It all happened so quick he's left standing there with his jaw hanging. That's what did it for him, you know. The time element. If it takes us a week or a month to make a collar, say. Or if there's a trial, and it drags on for a year or so. That way things keep going on for him, it gives him a chance to get used to what happened while it's all still in process. But this way, bam, one thing after another, we got the killer in a cell before he even hears his daughter's dead, and by the time he gets his ass in gear the kid hangs himself, and Hanniford can't get used to it because he's had no time." He eyed me speculatively. "So I figured an old buddy could make a couple of bills out of it."

"Why not?"

He took a cold cigar out of the ashtray and relit it. He could have afforded a fresh one. The Sixth is a hot precinct, and his desk was a good one. He could also have afforded to send Hanniford home instead of referring him to me so that I could knock back twenty-five to him. Old habits die hard.

"Get yourself a clipboard, bounce around the neighborhood, ask some questions. Run yourself a week's work out of it without wasting more'n a couple of hours. Hit him up for a hundred a day plus expenses. That's close to a K for you, for Christ's sake."

I said, "I'd like a look at your file on the thing."

"Why go through the motions? You're not gonna find anything there, Matt. It was closed before it was opened. We had cuffs on the fucking kid before we even knew what he did."

"Just for form."

His eyes narrowed just a little. We were about the same age, but I had joined the force earlier and was just getting into plainclothes when he was going through the Academy. Koehler looked a lot older now, droopy in the jowls, and his desk job was spreading him in the seat. There was something about his eyes I didn't care for.

"Waste of time, Matt. Why take the trouble?"

"Let's say it's the way I work."

"Files aren't open to unauthorized personnel. You know that."

I said, "Let's say another hat for a look at what you've got. And I'll want to talk to the arresting officer."

"I could set that up, arrange an introduction. Whether he wants to talk to you is up to him."

"Sure."

TWENTY minutes later I was alone in the office. I had twenty-five dollars less in my wallet and a manila folder on the desk in front of me. It didn't look like good value for the money, didn't tell me much I didn't already know.

Patrolman Lewis Pankow, the arresting officer, led off with his report. I hadn't read one of those in a while, and it took me back, from "While proceeding in a westerly direction on routine foot patrol duty" all the way through to "at which time the alleged perpetrator was delivered for incarceration to the Men's House of Detention." The Coptic jargon is a special one.

I read Pankow's report a couple of times through and took some notes. What it amounted to, in English, was a clear enough statement of facts. At eighteen minutes after four he'd been walking west on Bank Street. He heard sounds of a commotion and shortly encountered some people who told him there was a lunatic on Bethune Street, dancing around with blood all over him. Pankow ran around the block to Bethune Street where he found "the alleged miscreant, subsequently identified as Richard Vanderpoel of 194 Bethune Street, his clothes in disarray and covered with what appeared to be blood, uttering obscene language at high volume and exposing his private parts to passersby."