Hardscrabble Road(43)
“And we’ve got all these guys surrounding him, guns drawn, and what does he do?” Giametti said. “First he starts screaming that they can’t shoot him, because don’t they know who he is?”
“By then we all did,” Marbury said. “A couple of the guys with the guns even said so out loud: ‘Oh, my God. We’ve arrested Drew Harrigan.’ ”
“But just when I thought we were going to have to put him in a strait jacket,” Giametti said, “he started singing again. And that was it. That was all he did for the rest of the night. Sing. He sang every oldies song I’ve ever heard of and a few I haven’t. ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy.’ ‘Peggy Sue.’ ‘Great Balls of Fire.’ ”
“And we get him in the station,” Marbury said, “and we book him, and we fingerprint him, and we photograph him, and he’s still singing. He won’t shut up. He won’t answer questions. Forget it. He’s still singing. So we slam him in a room and tell him he either starts behaving himself or we’ll lock him up for the night, and he demands to see his lawyer. And that was that.”
“That was that?” Gregor asked. “You just let him go?”
Giametti laughed. “He got Neil Savage down here. You know Neil Savage? From Barden, Savage & Deal?”
“I know Barden, Savage & Deal,” Gregor said. “But they’re not a criminal firm, are they? They don’t handle this kind of thing.”
“They handle whatever their clients want them to handle,” Giametti said, “and they’ve got the advantage of being the firm that represents the Republican Party in Pennsylvania. Plus, of course, a whole truckload of Republican bigwigs and semi-Republican bigwigs.”
“What do you mean semi?”
“Well,” Marbury said, “you can’t really blame Drew Harrigan on the entire Republican Party, can you? I mean, they didn’t hire him. They don’t pay him. He’s on his own.”
“He’s just on his own and he only likes Republican politicians,” Giametti said, “but, yeah, Dane has a point. It’s just that Barden, Savage & Deal represent a lot of the big noises in conservative politics in this state. All the pro-life groups, for one thing.”
“I’m pro-life,” Marbury said.
“That has nothing to do with anything,” Giametti said. “Anyway, Neil Savage himself came down to the precinct station, told Harrigan to shut up—which he didn’t really do, since he went on singing—got on the phone, and within half an hour we had a hearing before a judge and the judge had set bail. Fastest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. You wouldn’t have believed it. Then Savage got Harrigan out the door, and that was the last we saw of him. The next morning, we got word that Harrigan had entered a total immersion rehab program and would be incommunicado for the next sixty days, the whole thing had already been cleared with the judge. And then there was a statement, which Savage read at a press conference. It was the statement that accused Sherman Markey of being the go-between for all the drugs.”
“This was Bruce Williamson who was the judge?”
“That’s the one.” Marbury sniggered.
“Marvelous,” Gregor said.
“This is going to be it,” Marbury said, leaning closer to the windshield to get a better look at the small sign by the side of the road. “God, it’s deserted around here. You’ve got to wonder how they stand it. Sherman Markey didn’t get him the drugs. Did we tell you that?”
“Everybody keeps telling me that,” Gregor said.
“It’s the truth,” Marbury said. “You should have seen Sherman when he was alive. He couldn’t think straight enough to remember he was on his way to the men’s room when he needed to take a piss. And neither one of us believes that crap about Sherman doing work around Drew Harrigan’s apartment for spare change. Sherman couldn’t do any work beyond whatever it took to get the cork out of the wine bottle, and he saved himself the trouble of that most of the time by buying the kind of wine that has a screw top. Assuming he bought any at all and didn’t just finish open bottles people left on the street.”
“That’s a driveway,” Giametti said. “Look at it.”
“That’s not a driveway, that’s an alley,” Marbury said.
He pulled the squad car up to the curb. There were almost no cars parked anywhere on this street. There were still no people. Gregor started buttoning his coat again, in anticipation of the wind. It was only anticipation, because he couldn’t let himself out. There was no way to open the doors back here from the inside.