CHAPTER 62
HIS ATLANTA ROAD TRIP LASTED NEARLY A WEEK.
TWO DAYS AFTER his return, Gus bellied up to the bar at Jim Brady’s, a favorite Irish pub in Tribeca.
Paul, the proprietor, was an old friend.
They caught up over a pint of Guinness, calling each other Mick and Guinea more times than anyone around them cared to hear.
They toasted to Gus kicking cancer’s ass.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come back for another round,” Gus said with a frosted lip. “I’ve only got one leg left to kick with.”
“Well, my friend,” Paul said. “I hope you’re finally able to enjoy your retirement.”
“Nah,” Gus said. “This whole fiasco over the last year has shown me that I’m not the retiring type.”
“You’re not going back to the force, are you?”
Gus laughed. “I’m sixty-nine, with one leg. No police force is taking me back. And I’m not interested.”
Gus reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, opened it up to show Paul the license inside. It wasn’t quite as powerful as pulling out his badge, but it still felt good.
Paul leaned over the bar. “Private investigator?”
“Passed the state examination last month,” Gus said.
“What the hell is an over-the-hill, retired detective going to investigate?”
“A few cases from back in the day. They’re calling me out of retirement.”
Paul lifted his pint. “Maybe you’ll stop in more often, like the old days.”
Gus toasted his friend again. “Maybe.”
Paul left to tend to other customers. Gus sipped his beer and ate a burger as he read the paper.
He turned down the young bartender’s offer to refill his pint, and waited for the lunch crowd to thin before he pulled the file folder from his bag.
It felt just like the old days, sipping a pint and digging for clues.
He was no longer a cop, and his retired detective’s badge combined with his new P.I.
license would only get him so many perks compared to the real thing.
But he was also no longer on the clock, and he could choose what he spent his time on.
He’d fulfill his promise to Sidney to look into her father’s conviction.
And he had plans to revisit the storage facility in the Bronx and dig through those old files that still haunted him.
He was sixty-nine, he still had time. But before he dusted off cases from the past, there was another that was much more pressing.
He spent an hour at the bar reading through the file.
When he finished, he looked up at the television.
Airing was a replay of the final episode of The Girl of Sugar Beach.
A year after taking America by storm, the documentary was being rerun in prime time, and replayed constantly during the day on the network’s cable affiliate, to correspond with Ellie Reiser’s trial, which had just wrapped.
In the wake of Sidney’s death the previous year, the final three episodes were watched by tens of millions of viewers.
The final installment, which showed Sidney welcoming Grace Sebold as she walked through the gates of the Bordelais Correctional Facility in St. Lucia, and concluded with a shot of Grace Sebold standing on the Montauk Point Lighthouse as a free woman, arms outstretched, sweater like a cape in the breeze, had generated an audience of more than 60 million.
The monstrous ratings were topped only by the recent trial that was connected to the documentary.
Ellie Reiser’s verdict, aired live on every network late on a Thursday evening, had been watched by more than 150 million people, matching the numbers produced when O.J.
Simpson was found not guilty more than twenty years before.
Gus kept his eyes on the television until the shot of Grace Sebold atop the lighthouse faded and the words appeared on the screen: In Loving Memory of Sidney Ryan.
Gus motioned to the bartender.
“Give me two shots of whiskey, then close my tab.”
“Jameson?”
“Johnnie Walker,” Gus said.
The bartender returned a minute later.
“Need another beer with these?” the kid asked as he set the brimming shots in front of Gus.
“No thanks. Just some privacy.”
The kid nodded and headed to the other end of the bar.
Gus packed up his file and folded his newspaper.
He stared at the mirror behind the bar, locked eyes with himself.
Before cancer had found him, it was whiskey that had taken hold of his life.
It hadn’t been easy to admit, but the truth has a funny way of catching up to you when you spend six weeks in a hospital bed.
He had decided his new life would come without the brown stuff, and he had done well over the last year to stay away from it.
But a bet was a bet, and today there was no way around it.
He’d been close on his theory all those months ago.
Close, but not quite right. And the circus trial that had taken place over the past few weeks had done little to convince him that the world was any closer to the truth about what had happened to the two boys who had loved Grace Sebold.
But with so many unanswered questions, he knew one thing for sure.
He was wrong about what he’d written to Sidney months ago.
Grace Sebold didn’t kill Henry Anderson.
He was quite certain she didn’t kill Julian Crist, either.
He took his eyes from the mirror and looked down at the two shots of whiskey. He picked one up, brought it close to his lips.
“Cheers, kid,” he whispered before he tipped it back and swallowed it down.
He stood from the stool and took a moment to right himself on his prosthesis; then he placed his empty shot glass next to the other.
He stared down at the bar, afternoon sun spilled through the front entrance and slanted across the mahogany.
He looked at the two shot glasses—one full, one empty—tapped his fist twice against the railing and limped out.
As he pushed through the front door and into the afternoon sun, his cell phone rang. Gus pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the display: Dr. Livia Cutty. He’d been expecting her call.
Gus placed the phone to his ear as he hobbled down the street.
“Hey, Doc,” he said. “You got those results for me?”