Melancholy Baby

45

Detective Corsetti and I sat in a couple of wine-and-gold armchairs in the lobby of the St. Regis, to the right of the front desk, and talked about the murder of Peter Franklin. Corsetti wasn’t very tall, only about my height. But laterally, he filled the armchair entirely, and very little of his width appeared to be fat.

“You’re right,” Corsetti said. “You are snazzy.”

“You’re kind of cute yourself,” I said.

“I know,” Corsetti said. “Talk to me about Franklin.”

“I was hired,” I said, “by a young woman who doubts that her parents are really hers. One day, two thugs beat her up and told her to lay off. I tracked them back to Franklin. They say he hired them.”

“You talk to him?” Corsetti said.

He was more casually dressed than some of the St. Regis patrons. He had on a leather bomber jacket, and an adjustable Yankee’s cap worn backwards.

“Yes.”

“Lemme guess,” Corsetti said. “He denied everything.”

“Almost. One link in the connection was a disbarred lawyer named Ike Rosen.”

Corsetti made a note of the name.

“In New York, or Boston?” Corsetti said.

“New York, West Ninety-second Street.”

Corsetti wrote that down.

“What was the connection?”

“Rosen worked for the same firm as Franklin, until they fired him.”

Corsetti scribbled again.

“You coulda told me this on the phone,” he said. “What else you got?”

“The young woman that hired me is named Sarah. Her father’s name was George...”

“ ‘Was’?”

“I’m getting to that,” I said. “George used to be a radio announcer. About 1981 or ’2, he was working at a radio station in Moline, Illinois. Lolly Drake worked there at the same time, when she was just starting out.”

“Franklin represents her, or did,” Corsetti said.

“You’ve been busy,” I said.

“Hard to believe I’m still second-grade, isn’t it?”

“My guess would be that you might annoy your superiors,” I said.

“Naw, I say it’s a height issue,” Corsetti said. “You said something about George.”

“He finally agreed to a DNA test,” I said. “And two days later he was shot to death.”

“What about the test?” Corsetti said.

“He is not the girl’s biological father,” I said.

Corsetti wrote that in his notebook and then sat back in the tight armchair and tapped his lower teeth with the butt end of his Bic pen.

“How was he shot?” Corsetti said after a time.

“In the chest,” I said. “Which put him down, and in the forehead, very close.”

“Like Franklin,” Corsetti said.

“Yes.”

“Where?” Corsetti said.

“In a parking lot, back of a building in Boston.”

“Any sign he knew the killer?”

“No.”

“Who’s running the case in Boston?”

“Detective sergeant named Frank Belson,” I said.

Corsetti wrote that down in his notebook and looked at his notes for a moment and closed the notebook.

“Franklin lived uptown, on Fifth, opposite the park.”

“Corner of Seventy-sixth,” I said.

Corsetti nodded.

“Doorman said he always ran in the park at night, after work,” Corsetti told me. “Which was sometimes pretty late, because a lot of times he worked pretty late.”

“That where you found him?”

“Dog walker found him about seven in the morning by the pond, near Seventy-second Street.”

“Shot in the chest,” I said, “and then in the forehead.”

“Yep.”

“Head shot was from very close.”

“Yep.”

“Any hint he knew the shooter?” I said.

“Nope.”

We were quiet. The lobby was high-ceiling and Gilded Age. Everything gleamed. Some of the people coming and going looked like business travelers. Some looked like tourists. None of them was wearing a baseball cap backward.

“What do you think?” I said.

“You got any ballistics on the gun in Boston?” Corsetti said.

“No.”

“I’ll call Belson,” Corsetti said. “We got a nine-millimeter down here.”

“At the scene, Belson said it could have been a nine.”

“Well,” Corsetti said. “I don’t know what the hell is going on. But we can’t assume it’s a bunch of coincidences and forget it.”

“No.”

“Where’s Lolly Drake fit in,” Corsetti said.

“She knew both victims,” I said.

“So do you,” Corsetti said.

“I got an alibi,” I said.

“I know,” Corsetti said, “I called that restaurant.”

I smiled. “I wonder if Lolly’s got one.”

“We could ask her,” Corsetti said.

“Ask her?”

“Yeah, she tapes over here on the West Side every afternoon.”

“You want to ask Lolly Drake if she has an alibi for two murders?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t you want to clear that with somebody at work?”

Corsetti shook his head.

“I’ve been a cop,” I said. “Somebody with a profile like Lolly Drake... you cover yourself.”

Corsetti grinned at me.

“Perhaps you have mistaken me,” he said, “for someone who gives a shit.”