Chapter 2
"Jeanine – please, please tell me. I need to know the truth. Was or wasn't Robert my son?"
"Think of it – he could not be. But I loved him, and I loved you, that's why I christened him Robert."
Deep inside he knew that she was telling the truth.
She had been engaged to Duvalier back in the fifties. After that she had fallen in love with him, and only then had she noticed that she was pregnant.
If Robert had been Robert Ironside's son, then she would have married Ironside, who was without any doubt her great love at that time. It would have been much easier and less risky to break her engagement to Duvalier than to place a cuckoo's egg into Duvalier's nest.
On the other hand if Robert was Duvalier's son, she could either confess to Robert Ironside that she was pregnant with another man's child – which she chose not to do because she was too proud – or she could go back to her fiancé, which she finally did. It was only too logical.
"You told a lie out of pride and I accepted it without question," resumed Ironside. It was exactly what he had said to her as a farewell in Canada. He was still sad about it.
But now she was here. She needed him. He had to be there for her.
Knowing that she was telling the truth was actually more important to him than knowing whose son Robert was. Now he knew both.
The team worked long hours on the drug case. Ironside's sharp intellect was in no way slowed down by his visitor, but he let Ed and Eve take more and more responsibilities. They knew the ropes. They had worked with him long enough to carry them.
There were the Romans and the Monigattis, two mob families who together ran a big part of the organized crime in San Francisco. Their files got thicker with every day going by. They had the international network necessary to perform such a crime. Jack Dubin on the other hand was a cold gangster who ran his business with an iron fist. Then there was a newcomer, Joey Martinique. Where else would anambitious crook try to get his money but in the drug trade? Slowly but surely Ironside managed to create a net of information which would sooner or later catch the real culprits.
Ironside's friends carried more than their fair share of Ironside's work now, and in the beginning they all did it willingly. Yet as time went by their overworked nerves started to wear thin.
One morning, when Ed entered the office, Mark seemed to be almost as grouchy as the Chief in his worst times. "She's a dragon!"
Ed knew that Mark had sacrificed a lot over the last couple of weeks. Not only his bed, but also his privacy, his possibility to retire and learn and most of his rare spare time. There was no doubt about whom he was calling a dragon.
Nevertheless Ed appealed to his compassion. "Jeanine has just lost her son. I can't speak from experience, but I'm told that this is the worst that can happen to someone: losing a child. We have to be patient."
He knew that losing a fiancée was bad enough. He'd almost despaired about it. But it also made him sympathetic toward Jeanine.
"That was three weeks ago. Hey, you went to college! I thought you took some psychology classes there as well. The acute phase of a traumatic experience is long over after three weeks," Mark lectured. "She's a nasty little thing, that's all."
The Sergeant shook his head gently, not in denial, but to try and think of a suitable answer. Mark was probably too tired – and maybe also too young - to understand how deep mourning felt. "I understand that you are beat with law school and everything you have to do here. Probably you don't sleep much on this sofa either. Why don't you get a good night's rest in my bed? I can sleep on my couch for once."
"You don't expect Mrs. Duvalier to help the Chief get undressed, do you?"
Ironside was perfectly capable of undressing himself, but there was more to do of course. Mark didn't want to leave his boss alone.
"You have a point there. Ok, I'll stay here for you."
Mark patted him on the back with considerable verve. "Thanks, brother. And then see for yourself."
Eve was a fast reader. She found an important link. "Chief, look at that! Jack Dubin has paid a tremendous amount of income taxes for legal businesses."
Ironside almost praised her, although not quite. "Obviously he doesn't want to end up like Al Capone. You are right not to trust him."
"So you agree that he might be laundering money?"
"As far as I would expect he's no keener on paying taxes than anyone else. He's not exactly known as being a benefactor of mankind."
"So it could be drug money from this wave of crimes, I guess."
"We don't guess, Eve. We prove!"
Mark stepped out of the elevator. He was about to open the door to Ironside's office/apartment, which he considered also his home, even though he had lived at Ed's apartment for the past three days now.
Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that someone was sitting on the steps leading downstairs.
"Ed?! What in blazes are you doing here?"
"Nothing."
"That's what it looks like."
He took a closer look at his friend. The usually fit and collected detective was pale and his skin looked too tight, letting his cheekbones stand out.
"Hey, what's the matter, man?" he asked bluntly and sat down at his side.
Somberly Ed answered, "You were right. She's a dragon. She... she is robbing him of his heart."
Same as Ed a few days earlier Mark knew exactly whom his friend was talking about. "Of course she's a dragon. I told you she was. But the other thing is called 'losing one's heart' – and that's what happened to the Chief. But being the Chief he will retrieve it soon, I suppose."
"Maybe." He didn't sound convinced. "Right now she's talking a bad conscience into him. He's too much of a gentleman to fight back."
"Look who's talking!" teased Mark, hoping to pull his friend out of his lethargy.
Ed wasn't aware of the fact that he would probably have reacted the same way – actually he had reacted the same way at first: far too patiently – because he was basically the same kind of man as the Chief.
"Plus she was rude towards Eve." Ed could easily ignore any injustice towards himself, like her reproaches that he didn't do enough housework, while he was trying to do police work eighteen hours a day. This drug case got far too much attention in the media for his liking, and Ironside spent much of his time with Jeanine. Ed gladly helped out, and he didn't feel offended by Jeanine's reproaches – or only a little - even though he could not see where to find the time to comply with her wishes. But Eve was a different matter. She had to be protected! Jeanine had insinuated, in a roundabout way, but still unmistakably, that Eve was jealous of her; that Eve wanted to be the only woman in Ironside's life.
Mark shrugged his shoulders. "Don't you worry about Eve. She can take care of herself!"
Ed would always worry about Eve, but he could not tell that to Mark of course.
"Look, you can't rob Chief Ironside of anything that easily, least of all his heart," Mark went on, punching Ed's shoulder amicably. "Give him some time. He will see through her sooner or later – maybe he already has – and he will put her in her place in his own time."
Ed took a deep breath. "Maybe you are right."
Sometimes Mark was wiser than himself, he thought. Maybe.
