Burn (Michael Bennett 7)

“What do you think?” I said. “I said I don’t know you from Adam and get the hell out of my house. I mean, these people are off base here, right? I went through Chrissy’s file. All the t’s are crossed and the i’s are dotted on the adoption contract. We’re good, right?”

“Let me ask you something,” Gunny said after another thoughtful pause. “Do you think the guy could have been her biological father?”

“Well, actually, yeah,” I said. “He’s blond and he does look like her. Does it matter? This guy doesn’t have a claim for custody here, does he? I mean, coming here after all this time, for heaven’s sake?”

“Well,” Gunny said. “Probably not, probably not.”

“Probably? What do you mean, Gunny? Help me here. Please, I’m going nuts.”

“Adoption disputes by birth parents after the fact are usually thrown out, Mike,” he said. “But there have been a few very special instances in which the birth parents have won custody. Do you remember the Baby Jessica and Baby Richard cases from the nineties?”

“No,” I said. “Refresh my memory.”

“Well, in both cases, custody motions were filed by biological fathers who claimed they had never been made aware of the adoption. That’s why back when you and Maeve adopted Chrissy, I wasn’t pleased that we never received information about Chrissy’s birth father. Getting the birth father to sign away his rights is the first thing that needs to get done—so that a situation just like this can never come up.”

I closed my eyes.

“So you’re saying, worst-case scenario, this guy might have a claim?”

“Unlikely, but I won’t lie, Mike. It’s possible.”

“How did the Baby Jessica and Baby Richard cases turn out?”

“In each case, the birth father won, Mike,” he said quietly. “The children were taken away from the adoptive families.”

CHAPTER 46

AMONG A CLATTER OF plates and some amped-up Irish music, Alberto Witherspoon sat in the restaurant part of O’Lunney’s among the Times Square tourists, watching the cops at the bar.

When he’d heard the joint’s name from their contact, he’d thought it would be some Hell’s Kitchen old man bar, but it was actually very nice, clean lines and bright, shining wood and jazzy sconces and chandeliers. And the food was terrific. Even though it was well past noon, he’d ordered the all-day Traditional Irish Breakfast of bangers, rashers, baked beans, eggs, grilled tomato, and black and white puddings. He poured some HP Sauce, this bottled brown Irish ketchup stuff that was on the table, all over his black pudding and took a bite.

Amazing. Just what the doctor ordered. He must have been Irish in another life.

It was too bad he wasn’t there to give a Yelp review.

Overall, it looked good for them, he thought. He’d already been to the cop’s burial. It had been a pitiful turnout, really. No family to speak of and only a few cops. Definitely not the tear-jerking lines of cops you’d see if they thought the female cop had been shot in the line of duty. He’d thought maybe more NYPD would show up at the after-gathering, but again, pathetic. Naomi Chast had been one big fat zero as a human being.

Which was ironic, considering the struggle the little bitch had put up when he jumped her with the chloroform in the Lenox Avenue house. She’d bitten him in the hand and kneed him pretty good in the family jewels. When she’d finally gone out, he had taken her gun and waited for her partner, cursing himself for not locking the gate from the inside while he cleaned up. But after another couple

of minutes, he’d realized there was no partner, no backup.

The suicide idea had been the boss’s call after Alberto had read him the personnel file they had gotten from their guy in the mayor’s office. The copette was half a wing nut, apparently, already unstable. All it took when he finally got her back to her apartment at 3 a.m. that morning was to forcibly sit her tight little ass down at her desk, hand in hand with her service weapon, and give her a little push.

He was going over that memory again and again, sipping the last of his Irish coffee, when his Galaxy smart-phone jingled.

And? was the text from the boss.

Alberto looked back over at the bar, at five measly cops gathered together to mourn the loss of Naomi Chast. Two of them were watching last night’s Yankees game while another one looked like he was playing Angry Birds on his phone. They looked bored.

Long live the memory of Naomi Chast. Or maybe not.

We’re good to go, Alberto leisurely texted back.

A guy bumped into him in the joint’s front vestibule as he was leaving, brown-haired white guy, tall, decent shoulders, forty or so.

“Jeez, sorry, buddy. Didn’t see you there,” the guy said affably, patting him on the shoulder.

It was one of Naomi’s cop buddies from the burial, Alberto realized. He reminded Alberto of an armored-car guard he had smoked in San Francisco in the early ’90s. The same deep, almost royal-blue eyes and Dudley Do-Right look on his pale, chiseled face. Alberto hated cops. It would be a pleasure to send this one to the great beyond, too.