She was shaking now, from rage or grief or both.“You think this is closure for me?That I want to relive all of that?You don’t get it, Detective.Youdon’t.”
Half the diner had stopped pretending not to listen.The waitress froze mid-pour, the radio behind the counter crackling through a verse of old country heartbreak.
Topju waited until her breathing steadied, then reached into his coat again.This time he drew out a small, battered notebook, its leather cover darkened by years of handling.
“He wrote this in his last cell,” Topju said.“Found it hidden behind a loose brick after they transferred him.They sent him straight from prison to the psych facility, no time to collect his things.”He put the book between them on the table, tapped its cover.“Maybe you’ll see something I missed.You’ve got the mind for it.”
Kate looked at the notebook as if it were radioactive.“And maybe I don’t want to.”
He pushed it across the table anyway.“Take it.Please.”
Her hand hovered above it, trembling slightly, then drew back.“Keep it.”
Topju’s voice was barely audible.“You’ll change your mind.”
“I won’t.”She stood abruptly, the legs of her chair screeching against the tiles.“Enjoy your coffee, Detective.”
Heads turned as she stood up, turned toward the door.
Then she twisted back, picked up the book and strode out, coat over her arm, pulse hammering in her ears.
Outside, the rain had thickened into a downpour.She stopped under the awning, chest rising and falling, her reflection fractured in the window beside the neon sign.
Behind the glass, Topju was still sitting there, staring at the bullet, his coffee untouched.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sunday February 16th
Walsh turned down the radio, which was broadcasting a talk show arguing, with great passion, about the Knicks.The city could find a way to be righteous about basketball long after it had run out of righteousness for anything else.He smiled, because the voice had the old-barbershop quality he loved—male, mid-Atlantic, two octaves lower than necessary.
He had three pages of Criminal Procedure left and a promise made to himself that he would finish them before midnight.The textbook—Understanding Criminal Procedure, Seventh Edition—was open at a chapter that seemed to have been written by a committee of ants.Asterisks.Footnotes within footnotes.Words that belonged in chilly rooms:attenuation, taint, fruit, poisonous tree.He had highlighted whole paragraphs in good faith and then realised he was basically just coloring every page, wheat and chaff alike.
He rubbed the heel of his hand over his eyes until he saw purple stars and leaned back.His chair creaked.The cameras that watched the lobby—four at angles that made the place look like an art project in symmetry—sat quiet and stared back.It was his favorite kind of quiet in the city, the kind that wasn’t really quiet at all if you listened.Steam rose through the grates outside and made a sound like soda.Somewhere above, the HVAC let out a long contented cat-sigh.In the alley, a bottle rolled and something—a girl or a set of brakes—shrieked.
Two more pages, he told himself.Two more and then you can walk the building.Thirty minutes up, thirty down, five to wash the red mug for Ms.Kellerman—he could never call her Patricia even though she had given him permission—and maybe, ten minutes to talk with her upstairs while she rewrote some awful letter some opposing counsel had composed in tones of measured spite.
He felt her presence in the building the way you can feel weather before you’re out of bed.Sunday night had become her sanctuary in the years since they put her name above the door.The floors went dark but for the top one and the one below, which glowed as if a ship was up there making signals: I am awake; I am working; I am always working.
Walsh stared down at the page again and read aloud the sentence he’d been stuck on, because reading aloud sometimes tricked the words into making sense.“The scope of a Terry stop must be strictly tied to and justified by the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible.” He paused, and, in the margin, wrote:i.e., don’t go fishing if you got the boat for ducks.He liked to translate the law back into the language he had learned first.It made the words feel earned, rather than borrowed.
He took out the notebook that Ms.Kellerman had made him keep.The first page had the list she had insisted on the night he had blurted, with terrible pride, that he had got into CUNY Law for the part-time program.
“Now write the reasons,” she said, leaning her elbows on the security desk.“Before someone who doesn’t know you as well as I do tells you a story about yourself you must not believe.”
He had written them while she stood there, a little embarrassed to make her wait, more embarrassed not to.ForJames and Toby.For his boys, who were not boys any more.Because I can.He had put that last, because she had said it like it was a road he could walk back on in the dark.
He read them now and, as he always did, felt the little lift in his chest like a curtain rising.For James and Toby—James, who had a fastball that whistled; Toby, who played chess the way some men did bar fights.Because the law is a language and you can learn it.He had added that only a month ago, because he had actually started to believe it.Because I can.Those three words remained the crowbar.
The clock on the wall said eleven-thirty-six.He slipped the book into the drawer, took his keyring and radio, and stood.
“Back in half an hour,” Walsh said to the empty lobby.He didn’t know why he did that, much less when he’d started to.Just a ritual, done for its own sake.
He took the service elevator, because after eleven the passenger cars sulked like old dogs.
He had four rituals for the rounds.He felt as if he had not invented them; they had invented themselves and then announced themselves by becoming impossible to skip.
The second ritual was that he always took the service stair between twelve and fourteen.The service stair had its own weather.It was a degree colder and smelled faintly of lemon oil.The landing at thirteen had a window that faced east and framed the Chrysler Building in a way that seemed respectful, as though the old beauty might be shy if you looked at her full-on.
