“Fuck what the community thinks. You should be exalted as a hero, but instead they’re accusing you of racial discrimination. For God’s sake, you were shot.”
“Yeah, but the guy I shot in return wasn’t the one holding a gun. It was Wayne Railman who pulled the trigger—so the white guy shoots me, and what do I do? I shoot the black guy because I could have sworn he had the gun. Perhaps, in a snap judgment, I fired at the man I assumed was threatening my life. Y’know, implicit bias.”
“Don’t you dare blame this on some split-second thought process.” Sally crinkled her face. “Man, I would just like to see all these armchair cops walk in our shoes one day. If they knew you like I do, they would know this is so bullshit.”
“So I should tell them I voted for Obama, twice, and attend Black Lives Matter meetings?”
“If it helps change minds, hell yeah.” Sally took a swig from her fresh pint of Guinness and a little foam mustache formed on her upper lip. “Get Rhonda to vouch for you. Having the lead organizer of the local BLM chapter on your side has to count for something.”
“I’m not so sure Rhonda is on my side. I haven’t heard from her since this thing happened.” I pressed my slightly sweaty fingers against the icy beer mug. “Can we change the subject?”
“Sure . . . has the Jane Doe skeleton been ID’d yet?”
“Nope. Not sure how involved our department will be with that . . . the remains were found in Ulster County. Not our jurisdiction.”
“So, when are you going to talk to Eldridge about Trudy Solomon?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Let’s make a toast.” Sally raised her pint. “To Trudy Solomon. Here's hoping she’s had a good life.”
4
Thursday, October 25, 2018
MY SIT-DOWN with Eldridge went better than I thought it would. I got the feeling he too was curious about what happened to Trudy Solomon. Eldridge’s mother worked at the Cuttman as a waitress in the main dining room back then, and although she had not been friends with Trudy, I’m sure her disappearance was a topic of conversation and speculation in the Eldridge household. When Eldridge joined the force in 1981, the Trudy Solomon case had been active but back-burnered. My father was still assigned to the case and he was given some leeway to investigate new leads as long as he kept closing his other cases. Eldridge dabbled in it, as did all the rookies who thought they had the chops to break the case. It never hurts to get a fresh pair of eyes on a case like this, but eventually resources dwindled, new cases took priority, and Trudy’s husband wasn’t applying much pressure. By 1982, Ben Solomon had remarried. The Trudy Solomon case officially closed in 1983.
Eldridge said he would let me know his answer after he had a chance to discuss my request with his superiors. He would prefer to keep it official, as opposed to me playing private detective with Dad.
“Well? How’d it go?” Sally asked as I passed her desk on the way to mine.
“Hard to say. He’ll let me know in a few days.”
When Sally walked into the precinct ten years ago, I was the only female officer in the place. Today there were four of us. Four women, twenty-one guys. A handful of them testosterone-infused, dick-measuring jerks. So we put a lot of thought into determining who wins our Biggest Jackass of the Precinct contest every year. Jerry Houseman was the reigning champ, holding the title for three years. Last year was a close call, but the red MAGA baseball cap pushed him over the finish line.
Those guys may have given me a hard time when I started (and I was the daughter of a well-respected detective), but Sally had two tours in Iraq under her belt when she walked through that door, which meant respect from the ranks on day one. She enlisted in the army the week after 9/11. Her dad, Dennis McIver, was a bit of a local legend himself. Cop turned bar owner. Every Boxing Day he invited law enforcement from surrounding counties to enjoy a free meal at McIver’s Pub. The tradition started in 2002, when Dennis returned home from Ireland with his new bride, Fiona McDougal from Doolin. Best beef stew this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Getting on Sally’s bad side got you banned from McIver’s Pub. Nobody crossed Sally.
My thigh started to throb. The tightening sensation usually gripped me during moments of anxiety. The meeting with Eldridge wasn’t especially stressful, so I was pretty sure that was not the cause. I had a feeling it was related to what I was planning to do later this morning. I hobbled over to my desk. Sally followed me.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. It’s nothing. The bullet is acting up and my hands feel like Niagara Falls on a rainy day.” I sat down at my desk and rubbed my hands on my pants. Sally pulled open the drawer and pointed to the Secret. I shook my head. Too many people around. I glanced at the mounted clock behind Sally’s head. Nine on the dot. Two whole hours until my visit with Mom. Two hours of a throbbing thigh and uncontrollable sweating. Fuck it. I uncapped the Secret and applied it to my palms.
MY MOM’S house, the house of my teenage years, was frozen in the seventies. I walked through the front door and stepped back in time. Orange shag carpeting in the living room, mustard-colored appliances atop faux-brick linoleum in the kitchen, and throughout the first floor of the house, aging wallpaper blooming with orange and pink flowers. The once-vibrant colors were yellowed from decades of cigarette smoke settling on the petals. I stood in the doorway outside the kitchen, peering in. Usually there would be a stack of dirty dishes in the sink, but this morning the plates were nested neatly in the plastic drying rack. The counters were wiped clean and only a coffee mug and spoon sat in the sink. Probably the cup of decaf Mom drank before bed in an attempt to palliate the likely morning hangover.
I poked my head into the living room, half expecting to see Mother lying on the couch with an empty vodka bottle at arm’s length. Instead, I saw a tidy room with the throw blanket neatly folded on the back of the sofa and the pillows arranged symmetrically in the corners. Felix the Cat (a name my mother bestowed upon her feline companion during one of her lighter moods) was curled up on a tartan swivel chair. She lashed her tail when she spied me but didn’t move from her perch.
An episode of The Twilight Zone flashed through my mind. An alien from Planet Clean had taken over my mother’s body. Either that or she’d hired a maid, which fell more into the fantasy genre. I doubled back to the foyer and noticed other oddities. You wouldn’t call them oddities in most households—vacuumed rugs, dusted banister, a lavender-scented air freshener plugged into a wall socket—but in my mother’s house this was more than a little weird.
The cop in me kicked in and I tiptoed upstairs. The timbre of what sounded like rap music was emanating from my old bedroom. I stood still outside the door trying to make sense of what my eyes and ears picked up. What was going on behind that door? I crept down the hall to my mother’s bedroom. I put my ear against the door. Light snoring. I turned the doorknob, opening the door just enough to stick my head in. The rancid smell of stale cigarettes escaped, causing me to involuntarily shudder and tighten my nostrils. The room was pitch-black, but light from the hallway streamed across the carpet and onto the bed, illuminating the curved outline of my mother’s body under the covers. She stirred for a few seconds but remained asleep. I twisted the knob and carefully closed the door. Okay, now what? Door number one or door number two? I knew what awaited me behind door number two if I disturbed my mother. So I headed back over to door number one. I knocked gently.
“Come in.” A male voice. Wasn’t expecting that.
I opened the door with a fair amount of trepidation, and was a bit thrown by what I saw. A twenty-something black guy sat at my desk. The glow from the laptop computer bounced off the lenses of his wire-framed glasses, giving him an otherworldly vibe. If there was an alien sitting there I would have been less surprised.
“Hello,” he said. “Are you here to see Vera Ford?”
“Yeah. I’m her daughter. And you are?”
“I’m Thomas. Thomas Dillon. Vera—your mother—told me she told you abou
t me . . . that I’m living here and helping out.”
I kept my expression neutral and raised my eyebrows. He lowered the music, then stood up to shake my hand. I instinctively wiped my hand on my shirt before offering it to him.
“Susan, right? I’m an orderly at Horizon Meadows, and I got to talking to your dad one day and told him I didn’t have a place to live. He asked me if I was any good at cleaning and straightening up messes and I told him that my ma was the finest hotel housekeeper in the Catskills and taught me a whole lot. He said I could stay here if I kept it tidy.”
“And my mother went along with this?”
“Well, at first, no. But your dad spoke to her a few times. He convinced her to try this out temporarily, see how it goes. We hardly see each other anyway. If I’m not at Horizon Meadows, I’m at Sullivan County Community College over in Loch Sheldrake or in here studying.”
I didn't know what shocked me more—these living arrangements or that Dad was having conversations with my mother. I glanced over at his computer.
“She doesn’t mind the music?”
“I play it real low or wear my Beats. She hasn’t complained about that.”
“You okay with her . . .” I searched for the right word. “Lifestyle?”
“It’s a small price to pay for a roof over my head. It’s what your dad calls a symbiotic relationship.”
“Uh-huh. So, what are you studying?”
“Criminal justice. Got one more semester to go after this one. Hoping to get a job at Woodbourne Correctional, maybe become a cop. For one of my classes I had to interview a police officer or detective and I’m thinking, when am I going to find the time to interview a police officer? I’m telling this to your dad, and he’s smiling the whole time. Then he tells me he was a cop, then a detective.” He paused to see if he still had my attention (he did), took a breath, and continued. “I was bouncing around, sleeping on friends’ couches, my car, the park if it was warm out, sometimes the staff overnight room at Horizon. I don’t mind cleaning and straightening up in exchange for this room, and your ma, she ain’t no real bother, really. I have an auntie like her. I know what it’s like. Your dad told me—”
“See, Susan, I ain’t no bother.” Our heads turned on cue, like a pair of synchronized swimmers. My bathrobed mother swayed in the doorway. “I mind my business. Thomas here minds his. He has a word for it. What’s that word?”
“Symbiotic, Ms. Ford. But it actually means—”
“So, Susan, what brings you around for a visit?”
I locked eyes with Thomas, and for two people who didn’t know each other, we shared a moment of understanding. I led my mother out of my—now his—room and pulled the door shut. The faint sound of hip-hop resumed.
MY STOMACH growled. The last thing I had eaten was a granola bar four hours earlier at seven o’clock that morning. Mother was in the shower and, from past experience, I calculated she wouldn’t be down for another twenty minutes or so. When I opened the refrigerator, I was confronted by an assortment of condiments and leaky Chinese food containers. I leaned over to examine a container of cottage cheese, but I wasn’t keen on opening it and seeing whatever science experiment was germinating inside. Yesterday’s vestige of coffee was in the carafe, so I washed it out and started a fresh pot. From the pantry I unearthed a box of Ring Dings a few months past their sell-by date. I had bought into the urban legend about Twinkies, and figured if they can survive for decades, so too can its sister Hostess snack cake. Mom liked to say I inherited the skinny gene from Dad’s family, that I could eat anything and not gain a pound. But in the last few years I noticed my belly and thighs taking on a life of their own. The skinny gene was no match for menopause. I put the Ring Dings back where I found them.
The coffee machine beeped—I poured myself a fresh cup of coffee and assessed the kitchen. Hats off to Thomas and his cleaning prowess. Floors were not sticky. The microwave had only a few flecks of food clinging to its innards. The old appliances (the dishwasher was strictly for show) could pass as a deliberate decorating decision by a seventies-inspired interior decorator. Even the oak table had a bit of shine to it. I splayed my fingers on the Formica counter. The cool surface instantly chilled my warm, moist palms.
“Good, you made coffee,” Mom said, limping over to the coffeepot. Recent knee-replacement surgery hadn’t improved her gait. “To what do I owe this visit?”
“I’m here because Dad said you wanted to talk to me.”
She dumped three spoonfuls of sugar in her coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. I joined her. She fiddled with the pack of Marlboros on the table. The bright bulb above us accentuated her telltale signs of being an unrepentant smoker: vertical wrinkles above her upper lip, deep crow’s-feet along the outsides of her eyes, sagging upper arms and breasts, and a yellowish stain on the insides of her middle and pointer fingers. A missed hairdresser’s appointment left her with about an inch of gray hair at the roots. Miss Sullivan County 1961. If the light was right and you squinted, you could still see why she won the crown. The announcement in the local paper (the framed clipping still hung on the living-room wall) showcased her winning attributes: chestnut brown hair, blue eyes, 5'5", 115 pounds, 33-22-34. But now, at seventy-five, she looked older than Dad, at seventy-seven.
“Oh right.” She pulled out a cigarette and lit it. She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, relishing the rush of nicotine to her system. “He told me about Trudy Solomon. I think it’s a bad idea for you to drag your father into this. He’s not well.”
I stood and retreated to a corner of the kitchen to avoid the smoke. A shitload of questions had hit me all at once. Why was Dad talking to her about this? What concern was it of hers if we did a little snooping? Why, all of a sudden, did she care about my father’s well-being? What angle was she playing?
“Is this any of your business?” I waved my hand in an attempt to dissipate the smoke, but it was already penetrating my hair and clothes like a blood stain on carpet. “This is what you want to talk to me about? And here I was thinking it might be something important, like maybe apologizing to your granddaughter for almost killing the twins.”
“Don’t go on exaggerating, Susan. I merely left the oven on for a few hours. It got a bit hot; nobody was in danger of dying.”
“You don’t know that. Natalie and Frank can’t even rely on you for a few hours to watch the kids. How difficult is it to stay sober while babysitting?”
“I wasn’t drunk, but whatever. I’ll apologize,” she mumbled. “Now, as to why I wanted to talk to you . . .”
I leaned against the counter as my mother rambled on about how selfish I was by playing into Dad’s fantasies. That I was riling him up. I got the feeling Dad made it sound like this was my idea, not his. Or maybe she was confused.
“Why do you even care what Dad is up to?”
“I just think this is a bad idea, especially with the trouble you’re in and Will’s heart issues.”
My Dad’s heart issues. The reason I came back home. I had tried my own little disappearing act after graduating college. Well, not so much a disappearing act—more of an attempt to leave the past behind. I had married Phil Morley at the start of freshman year at SUNY Albany. He took a job as a second-shift security guard, so he could watch Natalie during the day while I took classes. It was difficult, but we managed. That is, until the end of senior year, when I caught him with the stay-at-home mom in the neighboring apartment. Truth be told, I wasn’t insanely angry. Quite the opposite, really. I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have gotten married in the first place if it wasn’t for Natalie.
A new life was calling. Away from Phil. Away from Albany. Away from the Catskills. That’s when Trudy Solomon popped back into my consciousness. I so wanted to believe she ran away, reinvented herself, became a stronger person. A different person. Could I do that?
With Natalie in tow, I headed south to the city, hopeful my art history degree would land me a decent job. Mom thought I was crazy. (“Good
luck raising a kid in New York City on an entry-level salary and no husband,” she slurred during a typical unpleasant phone call.) Dad, as usual, was absorbed in a case. (“I’ll try and get down to see you and Natalie next week,” he said, week after week.) I shed my married name and reverted back to Ford. Managed to get a job pretty quickly—unit production assistant for a movie company. Between child support and my small paycheck, I was able to afford a cramped two-bedroom in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill neighborhood. Second floor of a three-story brownstone. No elevator. One of the bedrooms the size of a walk-in closet.
Then came Evan Smith. An on-again, off-again relationship, heavily reliant on sex. Too much sex, if that’s even possible. Didn’t matter if we were in a state of bliss or a time of war—the physicality of this relationship kept us in each other’s orbit. That was until he was caught embezzling funds from his company. I should have done the dumping, but he dumped me when the trial was over.
Twice burned, I threw myself into my work. I quit the production assistant job when a friend offered me a job as a location scout for a production company—which offered better pay and more independence. I ran around the five boroughs, New Jersey, and Connecticut cajoling homeowners, businesses, parks and recreation departments for use of their properties. My colleagues were in awe of my public-record sleuthing. I was dubbed Queen of ACRIS—the Automated City Register Information System—which listed owners of lots, blocks, and individual buildings. I once managed to convince a gas station owner to give our crew half a day to shoot a commercial near the pumps for a cologne called Antifreeze. I became a masterful liar, telling home owners we would leave their homes as pristine as we found them. In reality, their homes looked like crime scenes after we packed up and left. I guess the appeal of having one’s home in a movie overrides their obligation to read the fine print of the contract. But I also became masterful at smoothing things over.
The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon Page 3