“Normally I wouldn’t believe that. I sort of see it, though. You look better. It makes no sense, I guess, but . . .”
“I’m wiser, a little. This place . . .” He looked around as if seeing it for the first time. “It’s miserable, but it’s been—I don’t know how to put it. ‘Educational’ sounds stupid. ‘Enlightening’？ Maybe that’s it. I feel a little more whole, even if it’s too late to do me any good.”
“Don’t give up yet.”
“I’m not,” he said, and meant it. But he also meant it when he said he was doing better, the tranquilizing bottle behind him. It was hard to explain, and it needed to sink in further, but he was clearer than he had ever been—about Lois, about Robbie, about what was behind him, and even about what lay ahead. He was strangely centered and calm. He only wished Aideen wasn’t going too far, wading too deep into his and his family’s fucked-up pathologies. Aideen was all in, though, and not even he could pull her back out. He stood and met the gaze of the guard who was supervising them, then brought his eyes back to her. “Thank you for this. Now please get out of this awful place.”
“Just until next time. Hang in there until then.” She looked determined, almost pouty. He wasn’t sure, but he had an odd feeling that she would fight this like the devil, even if she believed he was guilty. He smiled and turned away.
CHAPTER 50
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
Lexington Avenue and Sixty-First Street Manhattan
3:45 p.m.
The place was called Jamie’s Juice, and Aideen went there whenever she was in the neighborhood. It was a hole in the wall that served up wonderful green juices and healthy drinks. She was walking out and sticking the straw through the top of the plastic cup when she heard her name.
“Aideen Bradigan?” The voice was thick with all the things she had married, built a life with, and then buried. NYPD, through and through. She turned toward it and saw an older man, maybe fifty-five or sixty, in a pair of gray slacks and a simple white golf shirt. He had a generous gut and a short silver crew cut.
“Who wants to know?” she asked, lifting an eyebrow.
He walked over. “So I wasn’t gonna return your phone call.”
“Well, you didn’t return it. You found me.” She recognized him now. It was one of Aaron Hathorne’s former investigators. Sean something.
“I did, yeah. I mean, it’s what I do.”
“Okay.”
“You were married to Ben Bradigan.” It wasn’t a question.
“I was, yes.”
“I’m Sean Hogan. I knew Ben; he was a good cop. I was really sorry when he passed.”
“Thank you, Sean.”
“I was down there too—9/11. Fuckin’ still coughing.”
“I get that,” she said. He nodded and dropped his eyes.
“Anyway, that’s why I looked for you. Because of Ben.”
“Can you help me?”
“This guy, DeSantos, did he do it?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. His eyes met hers, and she held his gaze. “Even if I thought he did, though, I’m stuck with him. I’m his lawyer. You need to know that.”
“I can understand that,” he said. “I can respect that.”
“You asked, though, like it might make a difference.”
“It’s an old habit, okay?” Finally, a smile broke, toothless and slight, over his ragged face.
“I get it. So you were a PI hired by the Hawthorne family? I know that Hathorne himself spells it without the ‘w.’”
“Yeah, but I reported to him. I gathered info on stuff he wanted. He wanted a lot of stuff on your client.”
“Can you give me the time frame in which you worked for him?”
“About eighteen months, up until about two months ago.”
“What’d you think of him? Hathorne, I mean?”
“Gave me the creeps.”
“He has that effect.”
“That wasn’t the thing, though,” he said.
“No?”
“No. He’s a prick. I’ve dealt with plenty of psychos. This guy? Just a prick.”
“Gotcha. You must know a lot about my client.”
“Yes and no. I know stuff that happened to him. Probably stuff he doesn’t even know, or at least doesn’t remember. I don’t know anything about him as a man. Not really.”
“His brother too?”
“Some stuff on him, yeah.”