“What was Tony’s last name.”
“Vargas.”
“What?”
Bridget looked up from tying her other shoe.She said again, more curtly, “Vargas.Used to be, he’d force Babs to make business calls for him, so the police wouldn’t have his voice on record.By then, they were bugging everything in the neighborhood just to catch Westies in the act ofsomething: apartments, diners, phone booths, candy shops….”
Larkin raised a hand, interrupting.“Anthony Vargas worked for the Westies.”
“Was I not clear the first two times I said it?”She stood up, grabbed her purse from the dresser, and started checking the contents.“Tony fit right in with those nutjobs—he’d help ’em chop people up, throw ’em in the river.Babs being murdered was only a matter of time.”
Larkin almost stood, but Bridget was a hundred and twenty pounds of tension wound so taut, she was about to snap, and he didn’t want to pose any sort of threat to this delicate line of communication.He placed his hands on his knees and said coolly, “Barbara was not murdered by Anthony Vargas.”
Bridget raised her head.“What do you mean?Isn’t that why you’re here?To ask me what I know?”
“Barbara was murdered by Matilde Wagner.”
“Who the fuck is that?”
“She was a nurse at the New York Infirmary.She and her husband were responsible for the deaths of nearly two dozen sex workers between 1982 and 1989.”
Bridget appeared shell-shocked.She glanced at her purse, looked around the apartment as if she’d lost something, then slowly sat back on the bed.She looked at Larkin again.“Really?”
“Why did you believe it had been Vargas.”
“Because he was capable of it.He killed at least three people when he was with the Westies.Tony cheated on Babs—which, of course, was fine—but her leaving was public humiliation for him.When I left Hell’s Kitchen, he was still saying he’d kill Babs if he ever found her.”
“Did Vargas ever do prison time in the ’80s or ’90s for his Westie-associated crimes.”
The inquiry made Bridget laugh—a nasty sort of mockery that bubbled up from deep inside her chest, like she’d been holding on to it for half a lifetime.“Of course he didn’t.Ever hear of the Mafia Cops, kiddo?NYPD detectives, like you, on the mob payroll.Why you think it took so long to take down a handful of disorganized Irish boys?Because the same guys investigating them wereprotectingthem.”Visibly agitated, Bridget stood and pulled the strap of her purse over one shoulder.
The Westies, a gang of disorderly and deadly criminals operating out of one of the last Irish strongholds in New York, had included a half-Italian member so feared by the population that no one dared intervene when he mistreated and threatened his fiancée—a woman known to the neighborhood as one of their own, who’d become notorious for having run away from an abusive mobster—a mobster protected by local law enforcement.
Law enforcement that’d havesurely knownhe had a girl.
A girl just like the one found dead in the Hotel Cavalier on the night of October 2, 1982.
And yet, the lead detective didn’t know her, didn’t recognize her, wasn’t able to trace her origins as belonging to a neighborhood just a few blocks west of her final resting place—because if Vargas was suspected, that’d make it hard to keep collecting under-the-table payments.So sure, Detective Noonan didn’t know thatpoor Jane Doe, but it was funny how he could identify Bridget Cohen by name.A woman who’d been living as Bridget Doyle, even after the birth of her son a year prior, but—if Phyllis Clark’s timeline was still to be believed—had worked with Barbara a month or two before her murder, and would have learned an old friend from the neighborhood had changed her identity entirely to a one Esther Haycox….
“Ghosting was a form of identity theft.”
Larkin prompted, before Bridget could not-so-kindly suggest he make himself scarce, “The Paper Trip.”
“Excuse me?”
“Barbara came into possession of a pamphlet calledThe Paper Trip,” Larkin continued.“It taught her how to obtain the certified birth certificate of a deceased child, how to use that documentation to get an out-of-state license in that name, how to request name changes, social security cards—how to live successfully under a stolen identity.”
“So what if she did?It kept her alive.Tony never found her, right?And it ain’t like the kid was gonna need it.”
“Barbara shared the pamphlet with you, when the two of you were briefly reunited at the Kitten,” Larkin said as he slowly got to his feet.“That’s when you decided to use it, didn’t you.”
Bridget’s brows rose in a blatant display of fear, an intensity stronger than dread but slightly less than panic.Her lower lids were tensed and lips drawn back as her mouth opened but nothing came out.
“Did you know Detective Ralph Noonan.”
“Get out.”
“Was Detective Noonan the inside man for the Westies.”
