Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [78]
Clancy, in an oversized robe that made him look like ET in the fantasy movie’s beer-drinking scene, was silent and more stoic. His small body was rigid with control.
They were angry, and hurt—all at the same time. They knew exactly what was happening here.
“Hey, come on, lighten up, okay?” Carroll tried to make it seem a little funny. Bill Murray on “Saturday Night Live,” which he did pretty well, despite the lack of any facial resemblance.
“I talked to a woman who I happen to work with. Just talked. Hello, blah, blah, blah, goodbye.”
They wouldn’t say a word to him. They stared at Carroll as if he had just said he was going to leave them. They made him feel so bad—so hollow and hopeless about everything, literally everything in his or their life.
Come on, it’s been three years.
I’m closing up inside. I’m dying.
“Come on, kids.” Mary Katherine finally spoke up from her low-key spot at the kitchen table. “Be a little fair, huh. Doesn’t your father get to have some friends, too?”
Silence.
No, he doesn’t.
Not women friends.
Lizzie finally started to cry. She tried to muffle her sobs, choking back the breathless gasps with both little hands.
Then they were all crying, except Mickey Kevin, who kept staring murderously at his father.
It was Carroll’s worst moment with them since the night Nora had actually died on some high and mighty, antiseptic white floor in New York Hospital. His chest was beginning to heave now, too; his heart felt as if it was being cruelly, brutally ripped in half.
They weren’t ready for someone else—maybe he wasn‘t ready, either.
For the next several minutes, nothing he could say could make it any better. Nothing could make any of the kids laugh. Nothing could make them loosen up at all.
They all hated Caitlin. They weren’t going to give her a chance. Period. End of nondiscussion.
They were fiercely determined to hate anyone who wasn’t their dead mother.
Chapter 57
TWO HOURS LATE R in Manhattan, Carroll felt that he needed a stiff shot of Irish whiskey. He also felt like going back to the role of Crusader Rabbit, running away into the strangely comfortable fantasy of the bagman. For the first time, maybe, he thought he was beginning to understand the past three years of his life.
Later that day, he would vaguely remember weaving a mostly aimless path inside No. 13 Wall Street at around nine o’clock. The fluorescent lights were too bright; the glaring overhead lamps were harsh, tearing at his eyes.
It was all wrong, the place felt wrong. There was too much gloom and doom, frustration was evident everywhere Carroll walked. The police investigators, the Wall Street researchers bent over mountainous documents or hunched in paralysis in front of computer screens—they were like people who have been trapped indoors too long, men and women who haven’t seen the light of day for weeks.
Around 9:30, Arch Carroll set to work again inside his monastic office.
Green Band— why did he have the feeling that there was something important on the top of his mind, an obvious insight that had evaded him until now? It was infuriating and elusive, like soap that gets away from your hand in the tub. Like a forgotten name.
Was it something to do with Green Band’s inside information? A spy at No. 13?
But the half-formed thought, whatever it was, had already vanished.
From a transcript taken in Room 312; No. 13 Wall Street; Monday, December 13.
Present: Arch Carroll; Anthony Ferrano; Michael Caruso.
CARROLL: Hello, Mr. Ferrano, I’m Mr. Carroll, antiterhorist division, State Department. This is my associate, Mr. Caruso. Mr. Ferrano’, to get right to the point, not to waste any of your time, or mine, I need some information…
FERRANO: Figured that out already.
CARROLL: Uh huh. Well, I read your earlier transcript. I just read over the conversation you had with Sergeant Caruso. I’m a little surprised you haven’t heard anything about the bombings on Wall Street.
FERRANO: Why’s that? Why should I have?