Part 16 (1/2)
”He kick me out,” Petrakis said without emotion.
”Do you know his first name?”
”He kick out a sick woman. He kick out my wife.”
”Do you know his first name?” Reardon repeated.
”Julio,” Petrakis said, ”Julio Robles.”
”Excuse me a moment, Mr. Petrakis.” Reardon picked up the phone and called Mathesson. ”Jack, I want you to go over to 109 East 90th Street and see if a Julio Robles is around. Mr. Petrakis says Robles is the landlord, so we could have made a mistake on the connection.” Reardon hung up and glanced at Petrakis. ”Sorry to interrupt,” he said. But Petrakis seemed to have been unaware of or uninterested in the break-in time since the last question.
Reardon began again: ”Did you have any kind of fight with this Julio Robles?”
”No.”
”None at all?”
”No.”
”When did you leave the coffee shop,” Reardon asked. ”About what time?”
”Ten minutes.”
”Where did you go?”
”To work. The zoo.”
”What happened when you got there?”
”I start to work.”
”Doing what?”
Petrakis closed his eyes again and appeared to go far away.
”Doing what?” Reardon asked again.
”Cutting brush behind the shed.”
”What shed?”
”The deer shed. The brush look bad.”
”How did you cut the brush?”
”My ax.”
A s.h.i.+ver went down Reardon's back. Could it be, Reardon wondered, that Petrakis would actually confess to the killing of the fallow deer in this blunt, dead monotone?
”And so you took the ax from the work shed and started to cut the brush?”
Petrakis nodded.
It was inconceivable, Reardon thought, that Petrakis had gone this far into an interrogation without discerning the reason for it. But he only said: ”Then what?”
”I cut the brush. I think of my sick wife at home. I feel bad. My wife is sick.”
”Yes,” said Reardon, ”go on.”
”I cannot work. I think of my sick wife. Only my children are home.”
”So what did you do?” Reardon asked.
”I cannot work,” Petrakis said, ”I go home.”
”You went home? After coming that far?”
”Yes.”
It could have happened, Reardon thought. He, himself, had come to work many times during Millie's illness and had then gotten sick with the pain of her dying and had gone home to see her and to be with her, to bring her what little comfort he could, while he could. ”What did you do with the ax? Did you put it back in the shed?”
”No, put it down,” Petrakis said.
”Where?”
”By the deer cage,” Petrakis said.
”And then you went home?”
”Yes.”
”To East 101st Street?”
”Yes.”
”What did you do when you got home?”
”I go to sleep.”
”Did you go out again during the night?” Reardon asked.
”No.”
This was going nowhere, Reardon knew. He had to get to the point quickly, flush Petrakis out, hit him hard. ”You said that you don't know why the police were looking for you. Well, the reason is: the fallow deer, the ones whose cage you sometimes cleaned, were killed early Monday morning.”
Petrakis received this information without any sign of emotion. He seemed to project only a dull acknowledgment of yet another insignificant fact.