Melancholy Baby

47

I met my father for lunch at a coffee shop on Summer Street on my side of the Fort Point Channel. He always looked the same to me. He probably wasn’t. He was more than thirty years older than he was when he took me to nursery school for the first time. He had always been a hands-on father; he’d had to be, given my mother’s limitations. It always made me smile when I thought of it. On my first day at school, I hadn’t cried. And he had.

“You know this business well enough,” my father said, “to know that coincidences exist.”

“But assuming that they are coincidences doesn’t get you anywhere,” I said.

“And assuming they aren’t gets you where you don’t want to be,” my father said.

“So what do I do with Lolly Drake?” I said.

“You could leave it to the New York cops,” my father said.

“You think they can get to her?”

“Not with what they’ve got so far.”

“No,” I said. “She’s got layers of protection.”

“And not everybody in the chain of command will have the same attitude as your friend Corsetti,” my father said.

“She was so arrogant,” I said. “I’d love to level her out a little.”

My father’s thick hands rested on the tabletop. He turned his coffee cup slowly.

“Not a good idea to make it personal,” he said.

“I’m not a cop, Daddy. I work for me.”

He grinned at me.

“So it’s all personal,” he said.

I nodded.

“You don’t care about a case,” my father said, “you don’t do it.”

“It’s why I left the police,” I said.

“Alternative would be to care about them all.”

“Did you?” I said.

“I tried to.”

“But?”

“But some I didn’t give a rat’s ass about,” my father said.

“But you did the cases.”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t quit.”

“I had a wife and two daughters,” my father said.

“So you couldn’t quit.”

“Have to take care of your family,” my father said.

He smiled at me. “And generally, I liked the work.”

“And you were good at it,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I was.”

The waitress brought a fried-egg sandwich for my father, tuna salad for me.

“I don’t know where to go with this,” I said.

“You think Markham thought the DNA would prove his paternity?” my father said.

“Why would he take it if it wouldn’t?”

“So why would he think it would?” my father said.

“Because he thought he really was her father.”

“And why would a man think someone was his child?”

“Because the child’s mother told him,” I said.

The waitress came and refilled our coffee cups, and moved on to fill other cups at other tables.

“So why didn’t he take it the moment the question came up?” my father said.

“My best guess,” I said, “is that Mrs. Markham was opposed.”

“And she still won’t do it,” my father said.

“DNA? No.”

“So who’s the kid’s mother?”

“You think she refuses because she knows she’s not the mother,” I said.

“Yes.”

“So why conceal it?” I said. “Lots of people adopt children.”

“But Markham thought the kid — what’s her name?”

“Sarah,” I said.

“Markham thought Sarah was his.”

“And Mrs. Markham knew she was not hers,” I said.

“So who was Sarah’s mother, and why did Markham think he was her father?”

“And why did she... hell, does she... pretend that Sarah is theirs?” I said.

My father dabbed a trace of egg yolk off the corner of his mouth with a paper napkin.

“Tell me about the trust fund,” my father said.

“Money comes from a bank in New York,” I said. “First of every month. Brian Kelly is on it.”

“Might be interesting to see if any other money comes to that family,” he said.

“Lolly Drake is in on this thing,” I said.

“Maybe she’s the momma.”

“Oh, Phil, you said it. I was hoping you would.”

He smiled at me.

“Phil?” he said.

“We’re pals, too,” I said.

“Good.”

“You really think she could be the mother?”

“She knew Markham at the right time.”

“I would dearly love to get a DNA sample from her.”

“Not likely,” my father said.

“I can try to establish sexual contact between them, at the appropriate time.”

“Twentysomething years later.”

“Hard, but not impossible.”

“She would have the money to pay somebody off,” my father said.

“And a reason to want to conceal her pregnancy,” I said. “She bills herself as the voice of the moral majority.”

My father smiled again.

“A phrase from my youth,” he said. “Or she may just be a coincidence.”

“The hell she is,” I said.

“Either way,” my father said, “there’s two other things I’d be doing. I’d follow the money.”

“I’ve heard that works,” I said.

My father nodded.

“You can always trust money,” he said.

“What else,” I said.

“Well,” my father said. “If there’s hard evidence, forensic stuff, cops will get it. Or they won’t. Either way, you don’t do that kind of detecting.”

“I’m not equipped,” I said.

“No, you’re not. What you’re equipped to do is talk to suspects and witnesses. Which, by the way, you do very well.”

I felt a small thrill of pleasure. My father had complimented me.

“So what you got,” my father said, “is you got the daughter, who has probably given you most of what she’s got. You got Lolly Drake, who is nearly bulletproof. And you’ve got Mrs. Markham.”

“She’s probably not told me all she knows,” I said.

“Probably not,” my father said.

“And I can get to her.”

My father nodded.

“We are driving toward a logical assumption here,” I said.

“Was my case,” he said, “I’d squeeze the hell out of Mrs. Markham.”