City Dark(13)

“Why did she dump you?” Robbie asked, nodding in the direction she had gone.

“Why did she . . . what?”

“It’s obvious. No kiss goodbye. That little talk you had. And now your face, ready to slide off your skull. She hit a nerve, didn’t she?”

“I’m going in,” Joe said. “Follow if you want. If not, goodbye.”

“She looks too young anyway. This house is impressive, though. That might have kept her around.”

“It didn’t. Goodbye, Robbie.” He turned away.

“Come on, man. I didn’t come here to bust your balls.”

“Funny way of showing it.”

“I want to help with the burial.”

“She’ll be cremated,” Joe said, turning back toward him. “It’s cheaper.”

“How much?”

“Probably two grand.”

“Here,” Robbie said. He walked over and fished out a wad of bills, counting out ten of them. “That’s a grand. My half.”

Joe looked at the bills but didn’t take them.

“What is this? Why?”

“Jesus Christ, that’s all you can manage? I have mon-ey. I want to help with the burial of our mother. Which part of that is harder for you to believe?”

“You being here at all is hard to believe. You want me to take that, really?”

“Take it and burn it with her. I don’t care. I want to do my part.”

Joe took the bills and stuffed them into a pocket of his slacks.

“Why go cheap, anyway? I’m working now. I could kick in more than that. I’m pretty damn sure you could, unless you’re drinking it faster than you can make it.”

“Everything I have is tied up in this house,” Joe said. He could feel himself getting angry and also itching for a drink. He needed to get out of his brother’s presence soon. “I’m working for the government. I don’t have money to throw away. And if I did, it wouldn’t go toward her.”

“You know, I thought about calling before I came all the way out here,” Robbie said. “I had to wait awhile till you came back, but I’m glad I caught you like this. It’s always better when I just catch you. I get to see you off your throne. Fucked up, just like the rest of us.”

Joe’s fists balled up. He looked at his brother and forced calm into his voice. “Thanks for the money. Now get the hell off my driveway.”

Joe was almost to his doorstep when he remembered where the missing loafers were. It was a typical place to deposit shoes, particularly after a hard night of drinking. Joe’s driveway had a carport with an A-shaped vinyl covering supported by rusted ’50s-era stilts.

Sure enough, between the left rear tire of his Buick and the side of the house, he found them. They were next to a pair of nice dress shoes that he had deposited after work on Tuesday. He stared at both pairs, feeling lucky that it hadn’t rained since earlier in the week. The loafers he didn’t care about, but the dress shoes would have been destroyed. They were yet another thing he was just letting slip, exposed to ruin if he wasn’t more careful. He reached for the loafers and then felt his whole body go cold. There was sand in them and scattered grains on the concrete underneath.





CHAPTER 12


Seventeen Months Earlier


Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Office of the Attorney General

Lower Manhattan

9:19 a.m.

In his New York Department of Corrections photo, Aaron Hathorne looked innocuous enough: an older white man, clean shaven with longer-than-usual hair. His skin was pale, but the lighting used by the DOC was not to the standard of a fashion magazine. His face was a narrow, inverted triangle running from a high forehead down to a small mouth and pointed chin. The nose was a little crooked, as if perhaps it had been broken in the fifteen years he’d been in custody. Then again, Hathorne’s corrections file didn’t reflect much violence at all throughout his entire stretch in the DOC. For a notorious pedophile, he had done surprisingly easy time.

Maybe it’s the eyes, Joe thought, studying the photo. Cold, dark, and alert, the eyes seemed to stare from the photo into the eyes of the viewer. Most men in DOC photos looked dully into the camera. Resigned, mostly. Oblivious, sometimes. A few seemed ashamed. Hathorne, though, a man who had been a respected, well-to-do pediatrician before his public disgrace and conviction, seemed as proud as an award recipient on a podium. And there were a few times over the years he was exactly that, Joe thought. A chill cut through him. Hathorne looked like he could rule a prison from the inside on cunning alone. Joe had seen a few guys like him, especially after coming to the Sex Offender Management Bureau, where psychopaths like Hathorne were targeted for the kind of litigation that the bureau handled.

Hathorne looked more menacing than most Joe had seen, though. There was iron will in his gaze, which also had a strange, woken glee behind it. Joe wanted to put the photo down, but the eyes seemed to hold him in place.

“Watch out for that one,” Aideen Bradigan said from the doorway of Joe’s office. He looked up, the spell broken. Aideen was also an assistant attorney general in Joe’s bureau. “I hear he likes to sue people.”

“I’ve heard that too,” Joe said, setting the photo down and smiling. “It wouldn’t be the first time I was dragged into court.”