I nodded my thanks, but I knew things would never heal. Joe was blaming himself, and me, for not being there when she needed us. I didn’t blame him. I should have been the one there. I should have told her sooner how much she meant to me. Maybe if I had just gone to the house earlier she would still be alive. The night of the killing, I’d stood in front of the mirror, trying to psych myself up to go over there and tell her. If I’d been a braver man none of this would’ve happened.
Paige put a hand on my shoulder, said, ‘I asked NYPD if I could take a look at the file. I’m working a profile of Harper’s killer. If I hear anything … I mean … if they catch somebody, you’ll be the first to know.’
‘Thanks, I appreciate it.’
With that, she turned and left, joining her fellow agents. Paige was in her fifties, single and married to the job. Her silver hair blew around her black suit jacket, and I felt another thump in my chest. Harper would never get to that stage of life. My marriage had ended partly because I pushed my family away for their own safety. My line of work brings me into contact with bad people, but that’s not it. Somehow, my life has brought nothing but pain and loss to those around me. To those who I loved most dearly.
Not only had Harper lost her life, I felt like a part of mine had been taken. A chance to be happy with someone that I loved.
Harper’s death turned something over in me. Something dark that had always been there. I had suppressed it, fought it down with friends, with Amy, with Harper. Now I could control it no longer.
I peered over the headstone. Sun was almost up on the first day of the Avellino trial.
My lips touched the marble, and I got to my feet.
‘I’ll find whoever did this,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
The base of the headstone was still covered in flowers. Tributes from friends. Cards, washed into pulp with snow and rain. One card looked fresher than the others. It was sitting behind plastic that wrapped a dozen roses together. It was from Sofia.
It read – ‘I’m sorry.’
Tears masked my way back to the car. I drove into Manhattan with my knuckles white stars on the steering wheel, my teeth clenched.
I parked outside my office and went upstairs. Harry and Clarence were already inside. Harry sat behind my desk. Clarence lay in his bed; he spent enough time here that I at least wanted him to feel comfortable. Clarence and Harry came as a pair now. Harry was looking over the defense exhibits, which we’d shared with the prosecution and Kate Brooks only last week.
‘Don’t you think it’s been long enough?’ said Harry. ‘You can’t keep doing this.’
‘Can’t keep doing what?’
‘Going to her grave every day. The funeral was almost three months ago now. It’s time to start thinking about letting go. A wound won’t heal if you keep picking the scab.’
‘I don’t want to heal. I want to get Sofia acquitted and then find out who did this to Harper.’
My office phone rang. I picked up.
‘Eddie Fly, I’m downstairs. Come on outside. We need to talk.’
The voice was New York Italian. Jimmy the Hat Fellini. No one else called me Eddie Fly these days. It was a name that once echoed off the walls of bars, bookies and pool halls. I’d grown up with Jimmy, learned how to box in the same gym. Once you make a friend of Jimmy the Hat you need to have a surgical procedure to get him removed. He was always there when you needed him. Most of the players in New York, in every sphere, had a friend in Jimmy. The head of the New York crime family was a good man to have in your corner.
‘Hi, Jimmy. I’ll be right down,’ I said.
‘Eddie—’ said Harry, but I cut him off.
‘I won’t be long,’ I told him.
Harry frowned on this side of my personality. Before I was a lawyer, I had a life on the other side of the law. Sometimes I had to step back over that line.
I went downstairs and out onto the street.
A limo sat in the middle of West 46th, its motor running. A garbage truck pulled up behind the limo and the driver stood on the horn. The garbage truck couldn’t get past. The limo didn’t move. I opened the rear door of the limo. The crew from the garbage truck got out of the cab, and some came around from the rear and began shouting at the limo to move. They were big men. Five of them. With a job to do. And they didn’t appreciate being delayed by a limo.
‘Move your ass, pretty boy!’ they cried.
Jimmy got out of the car, turned to the men and asked, ‘Do we have a problem here?’
Everyone knew Jimmy the Hat. If not in person, they knew him by reputation.
The men threw up their arms, instantly, and backed away, apologizing profusely.
‘I’m real sorry, sir. We’ll reverse back up the street, don’t worry about it. We didn’t mean no offense.’
Jimmy was a hand grenade. I got into the limo and sat opposite him. He wore black pants, polished handmade Italian shoes, a white button-down shirt open at the neck, and his grandfather’s cap, of course. I hadn’t seen him without that cap since he took over the Fellini crime family. Nowadays, Jimmy’s business was ninety-nine percent legit. He owned a lot of property, had a big slice of legitimate and profitable private businesses, and he had a direct line to the New York planning office. Any developer in Manhattan who wanted a permit could spend two years buried up to their ass in paperwork, or they could call Jimmy. For a fee, they could start building within the month.
He reached over and we embraced. He slapped my back as he released me, in the way of hard men who express their affection with slaps and kisses on both cheeks that kind of hurt but meant well. I didn’t know a kiss could cause me physical pain until I befriended Jimmy.
‘You look terrible. Are you eating?’ he asked.
‘I don’t have much of an appetite these days.’
‘I’m sorry to hear about your girlfriend. I’ve asked the mayor’s office to keep me informed.’
‘She wasn’t my … we were close.’
Silence filled the leather interior of the limo. Jimmy nodded, wet his lips.
‘Like I said, the mayor’s office will let me know if the cops find a suspect,’ he said. Jimmy was practical – if someone hurt a friend, or God forbid a member of his family, Jimmy would ensure that justice was served. He had been a longtime associate of Frank Avellino, and Jimmy still had friends in the mayor’s office it seemed. If Jimmy wanted information on any murder case in the city, he could get it in a heartbeat.
‘Was she working any dangerous cases? Anyone have a grudge against her?’
I shook my head.
‘Far as I know the only case she was working was mine – the Avellino trial. She put some bad people away when she was a fed. I think the cops did a full check on her previous cases – making sure no one with a reason to kill Harper had recently been released from federal prison. They got zip.’
‘It looked like a professional job,’ said Jimmy. ‘You don’t take somebody out like that in their own house and disappear. At least it was quick, Eddie.’
‘She died instantly. That’s what the cops told me. I don’t know. Did you get what I asked for?’
Jimmy glanced to his left and the brown envelope that sat beside him.