Where the Dark Streets Go Read Online Free PDF Page B

doesn’t it?” Traynor said. He went on down the hall.
    Brogan led the priest into the interrogation room where an officer was removing the tape from a recorder. They waited until he had left the room.
    “So you had to bring Carlos in anyway,” McMahon said.
    “ Sí ,” Brogan said. He searched a folder for the statements he wanted.
    McMahon was not to be put off. “Why?”
    Brogan shrugged. “The lieutenant didn’t like it, not the way the kid told it to us. The doorknobs were what really put him in a flap.”
    “I don’t get it.”
    “Well, Father, let me put it this way: he questioned the boy on whether Muller had molested him.”
    McMahon’s temper snapped. “Balls.”
    “Exactly.”
    “Christ Jesus help us,” McMahon said, but he already knew he was being unreasonable. The luring of a child to an abandoned building: it could be construed that way. Even the monsignor’s first question was whether the man was a pervert.
    Brogan half-sat on the desk. He indicated the chair to the priest. “What is it that bugs you, Father? You know yourself that a kid like Carlos, there’s nothing he’s going to learn from us he didn’t know from the street already.”
    McMahon sat down and took in hand his own typed statement. What Brogan said was true: trying to shield the innocence of a child in Carlos’ environment was almost as impossible as the restoration of virginity. He read the statement and signed it.
    “But you’re right,” Brogan said. “That wasn’t Muller’s trouble.”
    “What was?”
    Brogan shrugged. “Mrs. Phelan? Or vice versa. I have a notion she was hot for him. There’s gossip in the building. Even we can get to it. She picked him up in a bar, nestled him down in her back room. Like charity begins at home. Where was Phelan through all this? Where is Phelan?”
    And what’s his problem? McMahon kept the thought to himself, but he suspected Brogan was doing the same thing. He asked, “Is Pedrito in the clear?”
    “As far as the homicide, he has to be. He works on a machine assembly line. Twenty witnesses to where he was from six A.M. to three this afternoon. And he wasn’t a chum of the victim. That was Carlos’ idea. To a kid, I guess, everybody over fifteen is the same age, especially if they come to his birthday party. They all drank wine that night and it was then Muller got the idea of building a house of doors for the youngster. Pedrito went with him. If he gets into no worse trouble than swiping doors, I’ll settle.”
    McMahon said, “Why are you a cop, Brogan?”
    The young detective colored. “To stay out of the draft. I’ll take my law and order straight, Father.”
    The priest was not sure why, but he felt a kind of respect for Brogan saying it.
    “Phelan has an assault record, by the way,” Brogan added.
    “Was he at the birthday party too?”
    “No, but Mrs. Phelan was.”
    “It makes you wonder why there was gossip, if she’s so popular with her tenants,” McMahon said, “and they’re not notoriously cooperative with the police, are they?”
    “It’s pretty simple, Father—it’s not the infidelity, if that’s what it is. Homicide is something you can get put away for a long time. They don’t like Phelan.”
    That had to be it, McMahon realized. Priscilla Phelan had not calculated the relative values of her Spanish-speaking friends. “Do you want me to go over Carlos’ story?”
    “It won’t be necessary, unless you want to see it. You can go over to the house if you want to—I’ll fix it up—if you want to see his things. There’s not much there. He was traveling light, wherever he came from. A sign painter by his identification.”
    McMahon shook his head: he did not want to go near the Phelan apartment.
    Brogan tapped his statement with a pencil. “I just thought by this you might be interested.”
    “I am,” McMahon said. “He got to me and I’m not sure why. Was it his courage? He was ready to die, but it was as though that was