Read Impulse for Free Online Page B

again.
    He looked worse today, his shoulders slumped forward like a hunchback’s. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin pasty.
    “Good morning, Mr. Pithoe. I hope you’re feeling better today?”
    He nodded and slipped into the chair opposite her, behind the wire mesh.
    “Listen to me, Mr. Pithoe—Freddy. You remember you said it was okay for me to call you Freddy. Well, I spoke to Mrs. Roselli. She’s the old lady who lives behind you. Do you know her?”
    He looked suddenly very afraid. He wrenched out of his chair.
    “Sit down, Freddy,” she said, her best nun’s voice, kind but implacable. “It’s going to come out, you know, all of it. Sit down.”
    He sat. “She’s a lying old bitch.”
    “Perhaps, but not about this. Where’s Joey?”
    Silence.
    “You do know where he’s hiding, don’t you, Freddy?”
    “Go away, ma’am. I don’t wanna see you again. You’re just like the rest of them.”
    “No, I won’t leave. And I’m not like the others. You don’t belong in here. Mrs. Roselli told me how you always protected your little brother, taking blows for him from both your uncle and your father, but mainly from your father. She told me how she heard your father shout and yell at your mother that he’d found out that Joey wasn’t his kid, that he was a damned little bastard, and he was going to kill both of them. He was going to cut them into little pieces.”
    “No, ma’am, that ain’t true. It ain’t!”
    “Yes, it is. Was your father right? Was Joey his kid or not?”
    His face turned even more pasty.
    “Please, Freddy, you can’t go on like this. You can’t go on lying.”
    “Joey didn’t mean to do it!”
    Rafaella held herself perfectly still and waited.
    It was as if the dam had finally burst. Freddy lowered his face into his hands and wailed with pain and release.
    Rafaella waited.
    Finally she said, “Your father had you buy the ax so he could kill your mother, didn’t he?”
    “Yeah, and Uncle Kipper too.”
    “And he did, didn’t he?”
    Freddy nodded. He looked incredibly weary.
    “And Joey saw him do it. He tried to stop your father—tried to protect your mother?”
    “Yeah, the little guy tried. Pa smacked Joey aside the head, then kilt them. He turned to Joey—he was gonna chop him too—but Joey got away from him. He threw a lamp at Pa, and when Pa fell, Joey grabbed the ax and swung it at him. He didn’t mean to kill him, ma’am, he didn’t, he just wanted to stop him ’cause he’d gone crazy.”
    “No, I’m sure he didn’t do anything on purpose. It’s over now, Freddy, all over. Tell me where I can find Joey. He needs some kind people to take care of him, you know. He must be very frightened. He must miss you a whole lot.”
    “My Uncle Kipper were his father, and that’s why Pa decided to kill Ma and his brother.”
    “And you came home and found them. And you decided to take the blame—and you sent Joey where?”
    “Down to that big warehouse on Pier Forty-one.”
    “Thank you, Freddy. It’s over now. I promise you no one will hurt Joey.”
    Lieutenant Masterson allowed her to come along with him to get Joey. The kid was a wreck. His clothes were covered with dried blood, he was thin as a scarecrow,his eyes were dead, his mind too dull to make him afraid anymore. Lieutenant Masterson said to her as she was leaving to return to the paper, “I don’t know how you did that, kid, but I don’t like it. Freddy should have spit it out to us.”
    You wouldn’t listen. All you did was call him a fucking liar.
It was difficult, but Rafaella kept her mouth shut.
    “Just lucky, I guess,” she said finally, and got out of the lieutenant’s sight as quickly as possible.
    The story broke in the
Tribune
’s evening edition, and Rafaella got the byline, lots of congratulations, and Gene Mallory looked as if he’d swallowed a prune. The headline editor had outdone herself. Two-inch letters plastered across the entire width of the paper: BOY AXES FATHER IN