The James Deans

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  I sat with my mostly untouched food in front of me, watching Detective Gloria’s unmarked Chrysler retreat. Of course, it’s what he didn’t say that intrigued me. His silent accusal of Brightman didn’t shock me, per se. That was the point of this whole exercise. It’s why Brightman needed someone like me. Brightman could jump through hoops of fire and have Jesus himself testify to his innocence, but without concrete evidence that he didn’t do it he was screwed. The public outside his district would treat him with the same silent suspicions as Rob Gloria.

  Klaus was just being flippant before when he mentioned my closet philosophy. As it happened, however, his casual remark was quite prescient. Trouble was, I couldn’t prove a negative in Philosophy 101, and I didn’t think my chances had improved with age.

  CROCUS VALLEY WAS a quaint hamlet to the northeast of Glen Cove on the North Shore of Long Island. It proudly displayed its rustic trappings to strangers passing through, but only in an effort to cloak the smell of money. You weren’t apt to see Jags and BMWs out on the street like you might in Sands Point or Great Neck. That’s not to say residents of this little piece of heaven didn’t drive luxury automobiles. Quite the opposite was true. The people of Crocus Valley had that Waspy humility and false sense of good taste to park them around back.

  Thomas Geary’s digs weren’t hard to find, as his property line was only a chip and a putt away from the twelfth hole of the Lonesome Piper Country Club. If I got the chance I’d have to sneak a peek to see if the out-of-bounds stakes were made of solid gold. The Gearys’ was a white country manor surrounded by corral-type fencing. I could see stables in the distance, and I recalled Constance talking about her love of riding. A semicircular driveway led up to the front portico. The minimum lots in this neck of the woods were five acres. My guess was the Gearys’ property more than doubled that.

  I parked in front. Although the wine business afforded me the luxury of no longer driving a rolling advertisement for AAA membership, there was little danger of the good-taste police citing my host. By the time I made it onto the porch, Geary was standing in the front-door jamb. The sight of him dressed in jeans and riding boots and holding a Manhattan was priceless.

  “Come in,” he said, dispensing with his put-on manners.

  I followed him into a big study. Here there was a grand piano, naturally, a harp in one corner, a wet bar, and expensive but muted furniture. There was a trophy cabinet filled to the max with medals, ribbons, cups, statuettes, etc. All bore Connie’s name and were for excellence in music or riding. There was a rustic fireplace with a maw bigger than my garage door. Since I hadn’t seen another car outside, I figured maybe Brightman had parked in the fireplace.

  “Jesus, Constance won all these,” I said, just to say something.

  Geary frowned. He seemed not in the mood for small talk. “Ah, a man with the flare for the self-evident.”

  “Feel free to fire my ass anytime you want.”

  His expression said he liked that better. He still didn’t offer me a drink or further conversation.

  “I thought you might want to know there’s somebody else poking around about Brightman and Moira Heaton’s disappearance. He’s already been to the cops and he’s paid off Moira’s father not to talk to anyone else. I also kinda get the impression he’s no fan of your boy Brightman.”

  “Wit is being rather a pain in the ass. Will you join me?” he asked, holding up his drink.

  “A beer, if you’ve got any. So you know Wit?”

  “Bass Ale or Michelob?”

  “Mick.”

  “Yes, Moe,” Geary said, handing me a bottle, “everyone of breeding and means knows Wit. He’s a bit of a hanger-on. He has the right pedigree, but the wrong banker. If you understand my meaning. He used to be fun back in the day, a life-of-the-party sort; funny, biting, and bitchy. Amusing to have around, but ever since … Well, he’s become tiresome.”

  “Since his grandson was—”

  “Yes, since then. But try not to alienate him. He could actually be quite useful. When you get to the bottom of Miss Heaton’s unfortunate disappearance, Fenn’s name could add credibility. And speaking of that, how is the investigation going?”

  “It’s too early to tell, but someone left this for me.” I showed him the limerick. “The cops think Brightman’s guilty, you know.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “but guilty of what?”

  “Whatever.”

  He handed the card back to me. “Atrocious writing.”

  “You and Wit agree on something.”

  A car pulled up the bluestone driveway. “That would be Steven,” Geary said. “Let us greet him and get this interview of yours over with. After you.”

  Ooh, the code-enforcement people weren’t going to like this. Brightman had parked his Mercedes right behind me.

  He was about five years my senior, my brother Aaron’s age, slender and four or five inches short of six feet. He wore a yellow golf shirt, loose black slacks, deck shoes, and a rich tan. A real man of the people. He was classically handsome, with an angular jaw, a straight nose, hazel eyes, brownish red hair, and an easy smile. Strangely enough, he did have that kind of young Jack Kennedy mojo.

  He ambled up to me and extended his hand, looking me straight in the eyes. “You must be Moe. I’m Steven Brightman. Tom, could you give us a few minutes?”

  Okay, now I got it. Brightman had the gift. Without doing much of anything, he had made me feel like I was the most important person in the metropolitan area. It was like that inexplicable movie-star thing. Some of the greatest actors in the world came off flat on film. Whereas people on the set could never understand Marilyn Monroe’s magic. The camera, they say, either loves you or it doesn’t. With politicians it was the ability to connect with the crowd itself and individuals in the crowd at the same time.

  “Let’s walk,” he said, and guided me around the back of the house in the direction of the stables. “So, I hear you want to talk to me.”

  “Did you kill Moira Heaton?”

  “No.”

  Right answer. No prevarication. No I’m glad you asked that.

  “Were you having an affair with her?”

  He hesitated. “Technically, no, I wasn’t.”

  I tried rattling his cage a little. “But you had slept with her?”

  “Twice, yes.”

  Right answer. Again, there was no oh, God, forgive me bullshit, no mea culpas about how he wasn’t proud of what he’d done.

  “She wasn’t much to look at,” he went on, “but she was still a very attractive young woman.”

  “I hope I get a chance to find out for myself,” I said, not really believing it. “Where?”

  “Once in the office. Once at a motel under assumed names, obviously. It was good between us, but we both understood that it couldn’t go anywhere. It had ended months before she vanished.”

  “When?”

  “That August.”

  “But you weren’t married then.”

  “Not then, no,” he admitted. “A condition I have happily since rectified.”

  “So why end it?”

  “Actually, it was Moira who put an end to things. Politics were her passion, not politicians. I suspect once she got over the thrill of it, she wanted to get back to the real world. In the end, I think I was more attracted to her than she to me. Have you ever been curious or fantasized about sleeping with a black woman or a Chinese girl or any sort of specific type of woman? When you finally fulfill your fantasy, you get beyond it. It was like that for Moira with me.”

  “Do the cops know?”

  “They don’t. I’m afraid that I did lie about that one aspect of our relationship.”

  I laughed. “Don’t worry about it. They probably didn’t believe you. I wouldn’t've believed you either. We cops can be such distrustful pricks. But just because you slept with her doesn’t mean you killed her.”

  “Is that your opinion or theirs?”

  “It’s not theirs. You’re a po
litician. They’re not fond of you on general principal. And me, I’m still making up my mind.”

  “That’s fair. Do you think she’s—”

  “—dead?” I finished the question. “Yeah, I think she’s dead.”

  “I’ve always thought so as well. Moira was such a responsible person, so dedicated. She wouldn’t just run off. When she didn’t turn up after the first several days, I …”

  “I guess that’s something else you neglected to share with the cops.”

  He smiled that smile at me. “I can see why you came so highly recommended, Moe. No, I kept that to myself. I played out the string by offering a reward and being so public. Did I think it would help? In the end, no. I guess there was some measure of faint hope.”

  “Hey, Senator Brightman, you wanna save me the trouble and just tell me about anything else you might have conveniently forgotten to tell the police? To my mother’s eternal regret, I never wanted to be a dentist. I don’t enjoy pulling teeth.”

  He laughed, but not too loudly or long. That was part of his gift. He knew just how to modulate his responses.

  “You’d make a shitty politician, Moe. You know that?”

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Thanks, Senator. But you haven’t answered the question.”

  “No, there’s nothing else.”

  We were now standing just outside the stables. Thomas Geary was there waiting for our arrival.

  “Satisfied, Moe?” Geary asked.

  “Gentlemen,” Brightman interrupted before I could answer. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got an appointment back in the city, and the rest of this conversation would be best carried on in my absence. Moe,” he said, offering me his hand, “I hope you can find out what happened to Moira. I owe at least that to her family.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt your career either,” I added.

  He smiled. “Not at all. Like I said before, don’t go into politics. Bluntness is not considered an attribute. So long. Thomas, we’ll speak tomorrow. My best to Elizabeth.”

  Both Geary and I waited until Brightman’s slender frame faded against the vibrant orange of the late afternoon sun.

  “He’s a natural,” I said.

  Thomas Geary smiled like a proud father. “He’ll do great things for this state.”

  “Yeah, maybe. You know, Mr. Geary, I’m a little bit confused. I can see what Brightman gets from his relationship with you. Who knows, maybe you two even really like each other. But what do you get out of it? It can’t be more money.”

  “Come with me, Moe.”

  Geary led me to the stable door and slid it back. He gestured for me to enter, and when I did, he followed. I didn’t much like horses. Maybe it was their imposing size, their smell, or the inscrutability of their eyes. I was a city boy. Geary took me by the elbow and we walked.

  “That’s Ajax, there,” my host said, pointing at a beautiful palomino.

  Ajax’s regal head and long neck stuck over the stall door. For reasons beyond my understanding, I felt compelled to rub his snout. My face smiled involuntarily.

  “Here, feed him this.” Geary handed me an apple.

  Ajax chomped it right out of my hand.

  “You don’t like horses.”

  “That obvious, huh?” I asked, now patting the horse’s muscular neck.

  “But look at you, Moe. Look at you and Ajax. He has that effect on people.”

  “It’s a shame he can’t run for office,” I said. “Next time I meet with Brightman, I’ll have to remember to bring an apple along.”

  He looked at me with utter disdain. “You can find your own way back to your car.”

  As I climbed into the driver’s seat, I found I felt better, if not exactly wonderful, about my involvement with Brightman and worse about working for Geary. Geary was a manipulator, a puppeteer. I never much liked puppet shows as a kid, and age hadn’t changed my opinion. Brightman, on the other hand, had been straightforward even when the truth worked against him. He’d given me the right answers, not the best or easiest ones. Still, I’d have to watch out for him. In spite my parting byplay with Geary, neither of us was foolish enough to see Brightman as a show horse.

  THE HOUND’S TOOTH was a cop bar near the Fulton Fish Market in lower Manhattan. Its walls were coated in a sticky resin of dust and old cooking grease. Mounted on the sticky walls were pictures of every crooked New York politician since Boss Tweed. Needless to say, there wasn’t much free wall space. You didn’t see young cops in the Hound’s Tooth. It was the kind of place you tended to gravitate to after several years on the job. They checked you for gray hair and crankiness at the door.

  It had become an even less popular hangout for low men on the totem poll since the nearby construction of One Police Plaza. “Too much brass and not enough ass,” as the late Ferguson May was fond of saying. And these days, Larry McDonald was definitely brass. I wondered why Larry had chosen the Hound’s Tooth for our meeting, whether it was about his ambition or, given the crooked politicians on the wall, he had wanted to make a point about Brightman. But seeing him here in his element, I decided it was the former. He was three quarters of the way up the totem pole and climbing. The altitude agreed with him.

  “Hey, gimpy, get over here,” Larry called to me from a close-by booth. When I approached, he stood and held my face between his palms. “Oy, such a punim!” he exclaimed in perfect Yiddish.

  “I don’t care what the birth certificate says, your milkman musta been a guinea. You’re the least Irish-looking Irishman I’ve ever seen.”

  “Fuck you, Moe. And what were you, switched at birth and raised a Jew?”

  We went through some version of this routine whenever we saw each other, which, since my retirement, wasn’t very often. Friendship is frequently a product of proximity and shared experience. Well, we no longer shared physical proximity, and our most recent shared experiences dated back over five years.

  “Gimme a Johnny Red and one Cutty Sark rocks,” Larry Mac shouted at the barman as if to prove my point. I’d stopped drinking Cutty Sark a few years back. I let the order stand. When the bartender put them up, Larry threw some money at him and brought the drinks to the table.

  I thanked my old friend, we clinked glasses and made small talk. He loved his new house in Massapequa Park out on the South Shore of the island. It was a different life out there. The schools were great. The air was fresh. There was no crime to speak of. He made it sound wonderful. What I purposefully neglected to mention was his choice of adjectives. He said it was a different life, not a better one. It had been my experience that cops who made the move out to the Burger King landscape of the suburbs never stopped pining for the city. The suburbs were everything Larry described and more, but they were also less, often much less.

  “So, you ever hear from Rico?” Larry asked the inevitable.

  “It’s been a few years.”

  “He made detective. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah, and Robert Johnson mastered the blues. I wonder if it was worth the price.”

  Larry looked perplexed, but didn’t ask for an explanation. Good thing, because he wouldn’t have gotten one. At one time Larry, Rico, and I were so close we were called the Three Stooges by our precinct mates. For a long time I considered Rico a second brother. Then, during the hunt for Patrick, Rico crossed a line that could never be uncrossed, erased, or forgotten. He’d tried to play me, to use me to further his own career.

  “Whatever that means,” Larry said, waving his hand dismissively. “He’s making a name for himself in Narcotics.”

  “Next subject, Larry.”

  “Whatever you say, Moe.”

  “Were you able to get your hands on the—”

  “They’re in my car. We’ll head out in a few minutes.” He took a sip of his scotch, waved at a few of the faces as they came in, and headed out of the place. “I took a look at ‘em, Moe. There’s a lot of paper and not much in it.”

  “You don’t m
ind if I take a—”

  “Hey, hey, don’t get touchy with me. I was just making conversation.”

  “Sorry. It’s been a long, weird day. So, you looked at the files. You got any ideas?”

  “None that the files would back up,” he said. “According to everything in there, your politician’s as pure as the driven fucking snow. The Blessed Virgin’s got nothing on him.”

  “In other words, you think Brightman did the girl?”

  “Yop.”

  “Why?”

  He touched his nose. “Because this says so.”

  One myth every cop, myself included, buys into is that he can smell a rat. What civilians get wrong is that crap about reasonable doubt. Reasonable doubt is for juries, not cops. Cops don’t doubt. Cops make up their minds early. Whenever you hear that nonsense about the cops having no suspects, it’s pure bullshit. Cops always have suspects. It’s getting the evidence to fit that’s the hard part.

  “It is a lovely nose, Larry, to be sure,” I complimented. “I didn’t notice Brightman’s picture on the wall. Is it up?”

  “Give him some time. Come on, finish your drink and let’s go.”

  So many people shook Larry’s hand or slapped his back or grabbed his forearm on the way out, you’d think he was a walking rabbit’s foot. He was definitely working his way up the food chain, and his fellow brass knew it.

  We walked around the corner to his car in silence, neither one of us willing to put the jinx on his rising star by talking about it. He popped the trunk and handed me a cardboard box of photocopied documents.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me. I owe you, Moe, and we both know it. Just mark this against my account, okay? And listen,” he said gravely, taking hold of my arm, “don’t come back to me on this case. What you got in your arms is all the help you’re gonna get from me this time around.”

  “Not an issue,” I said. “Thanks again.”

  I didn’t wait for him to drive away. I just turned and headed back to my car. On the way, I looked over my shoulder in the direction of the World Trade Center, but rows of Wall Street office buildings obscured the view. It was strange how on a clear day like today had been, you could see those two ugly shoe boxes from all five boroughs and Jersey, but not from just a few blocks away. Although they’d been up for only a little more than ten years, I couldn’t remember the skyline without them.