by John Misak
She pointed inside. “You know how Laura and Donny get sometimes.”
“No, I don’t. What’s going on?” My brother-in-law could get angry sometimes. He had a lot of stress. Sometimes, I thought he went a bit too far.
“Now, don’t get all riled up. They just had an argument, that’s all. It happens with married people sometimes. Nothing for you to get concerned about.”
“Did he go overboard again?”
Mom grabbed my arm. “What did I just finish telling you?”
“I heard you. I just asked a question.”
“They are both at fault. Trust me. You know how your sister can get.”
I sure did. My sister was the type that loved to argue. She was three years younger than me, and she always tried to pick fights with me, despite the age difference. She knew more than I did, she would always say.
“I do. Still - ”
“It isn’t your place. Don’t you get any ideas about making things worse,” my mother said.
“I won’t.”
“Good. Your father is in the garage, pretending to fix the weed whacker. Why don’t you go down there and talk to him?”
“I will.”
I walked off the porch and down toward the garage. I noticed the door was open a crack, so I lift it up, and found Dad sitting at his work bench, sipping a Michelob. It looked real good right about then.
“John,” he said, swiveling to look at me.
“Dad.”
He got up and gave me a hug. That didn’t happen to often from Dad. He pulled away from me, and looked at my jaw.
“Any pain?”
“No, it’s okay. The jaw was a little sore last night, but other than that, it’s fine.”
“Great. Want a beer?”
Of course I did. “Yes.”
He reached into the small refrigerator underneath his workbench and handed me a Michelob. It had frost on it. One of the true pleasures in life, a cold beer. I popped the cap and took a swig. It was fantastic.
Dad looked me over for a moment. “Wait a minute,” he said, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Long story.”
“What happened?”
I went through the whole thing with Dad, from the trip to Sondra’s house right up to when I was released. He kept nodding, as if he were carefully ingesting everything I said. When I was finished, he looked up at the ceiling, then back at me.
“Geiger.”
“What?”
“It has to be Geiger. You said he was the last one you would suspect would sell you out.”
“Yeah, but Dad…”
“No buts. He is also the one you haven’t heard from yet, right? He was your direct boss. He was the one who sent Calhill home. He is the only one who could have set you up. Trust me on that.”
“I don’t know.”
“Hell, maybe I am wrong. It just seems that whatever makes the least sense usually is the truth. At least in my experience it is.” Dad had a point, for certain. But there was no way I was going to accept that Geiger was the one who sold me down the proverbial river. I just couldn’t do that.
“I knew you were going to dive into a river of shit,” Dad said, reaching down for another beer.
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“And you didn’t cover your ass.”
“True.”
“You trusted other people, and they fucked you.”
“They did.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I can do.”
“You can sue the fuck out of them. That’s a start.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“It’s never more complicated than that. They are playing with your life here. You can’t just sit and let that happen. You have to fight back, let them know you mean business. It’s the only way.” “What about the case?”
“What case? From what I can see, there is no case.”
“Yes, but they are going to try and frame an innocent woman for the murder of her husband.”
“You really think she is innocent?”
“I think so.”
“So who do you think did it?”
“I keep coming back to Harold Chapman.”
“Understandably so. What are you going to do about him?”
“I’d like to strangle him.” I paused. “Well, seriously, I don’t know what I can do. If he is that tight with Agnelli, there really isn’t much I can do. I’d have to get him to admit the whole scheme, and then get it on tape. We see how far recording technology has gotten me.”
“You think about speaking to Uncle Paul?”
Uncle Paul worked for the FBI, and had contacts all over the country. He had helped me one time before, but I generally didn’t think of using him to help me in this situation. He hadn’t even entered my mind.
“I hadn’t even thought of him.”
“Maybe you should.”
“You’re right.”
“Fathers always are.”
We finished our beers, and went inside the house. I could hear a few people talking in the kitchen. I recognized my mother’s and sister’s voices. I didn’t hear the brother-in-law, Donny. He was being uncharacteristically quiet, I figured.
“Mom tells you what’s going on here?” Dad asked.
“She told me a little about it.”
“It’s enough with the arguing.”
“You know how I feel about that.”
“Well, you don’t get to see it firsthand. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Your mother’s always telling me, ‘Don’t say
anything, it’s none of our business.” Well, it is my business. That’s my daughter, and they are living under my roof. I should be able to say something if I want to.”
I agreed with my father, but I also understood the situation. My sister was a grown woman, and the last thing she needed was to have her father come to her aid in an argument. She probably would have blamed my father anyway. On top of that, if my father did say something, it would only add to the tension within the family, and we really didn’t need any more of that.
“It’s a tough situation, Dad. And nothing you say is going to change that.”
He nodded. “I know. It’s just that, being a father, I want to take my daughter’s side. Makes me want to strangle someone.”
“If you do, call me first. I’d like to see that.”
Dad chuckled. I felt a bond with him. That didn’t happen too often. I didn’t get all sappy or anything. It just felt nice, considering what I had been through.
“Listen, Dad,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t tell Mom what we spoke about, okay? About the case I mean I don’t want her getting all upset.”
He smiled. “What do you take me for, an idiot? Of course I won’t say anything.” He gave me a stem look, and pointed at me. “You just make sure you take care of this, okay?”
“I will.”
We walked into the kitchen to find my mother with her arm around my sister, who looked like she had just finished crying. They sat upright when we came into the room. They were holding their own secrets.
“Hey Johnny,” Laura said.
“Hey.”
I walked over and gave her a hug. It was more obligatory than out of genuine emotion. We just weren’t that way with each other. I would have felt more comfortable giving her a jab on the arm and messing up her hair.
“You okay?” I asked.
My mother glared at me.
“I’m fine, why?”
“Just asking.”
“She’s fine,” my mother said.
“I was just seeing how she was.” I looked around the room. “Where’s Donny?”
“He’s in the bathroom. What are you doing here?”
I looked at my father, slyly. “I took the day off. Being that I don’t get to see you guys all that much, I figured I’d stop by.”
“You in trouble?�
� Laura asked.
“No.”
“You sure? You look like you’ve been in some sort of trouble,” my mother said. She was good, I’ll give her that.
“No. I just haven’t slept very well lately. A lot of stress at work.” That was the understatement of the year.
“Okay.”
From behind me, I heard Donny walk into the room. Despite the fact that I didn’t the situation with him and my sister, we got along okay. I knew how to be diplomatic when I had to be, and we had some things in common. He came over and shook my hand. “Hey, Johnny. What’s going on?”
“Not much. Usual.”
“You got that big case. Heard your name mentioned on TV.” “That’s me.”
“So, what happened? Did that Mullins guy really kill himself?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Yeah, I read about that,” Laura said. “Didn’t he run Microsoft or something?”
“Not Microsoft. Techdata,” Donny said. He liked to correct her and she did the same to him. No wonder they fought all the time.
“Whatever,” Laura said.
“So what’s going on with the whole thing?” Donny asked.
“I can’t talk about it.”
“He-he, you always can’t talk about it, like it’s some CIA stuff or something. I think he was murdered.”
Thank you for your expert analysis, Donny-boy.
“We haven’t found anything yet,” I said, hoping he would just shut up. He really wasn’t capable of that.
“Come on. Something’s going on.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear him,” Laura said. “He’s trying to tell you that he can’t talk about it.”
Donny seemed like he wanted to say something but wisely chose to disengage. He was learning. We all needed to do that. He looked directly at me. “You really can’t talk about it, huh?”
“No.”
“Oh, sorry. It’s just that it seems like such an interesting case, you know?”
“I do.”
“I’ll get lunch ready,” my mother said. She looked at me and smiled, happy that I didn’t blow up. She knew I wanted to. Hell, she wanted to as well. I feared for the day that we all exploded on him at the same time. It wouldn’t be a pretty sight.
“Good, I’m starving,” Donny said.
“I could eat too,” I said.
Mom made us one of her great lunches. She took food seriously, being Italian, and what we ate that day would have qualified as a good dinner for anyone else. She made some pasta, salad, and garlic bread. It was good, but I felt like I was about to explode after I was done. Dad had a few beers at lunch, but I had to limit myself to one because of the stares I was getting from Mom. She didn’t like to see me drink. Made me feel like a kid, but there were worse things in life to worry about.
Donny had kept to his usual tricks with my sister, and they traded barbs across the table. I tried sneering ever so discreetly at Donny, but he didn’t seem to pick it up.
After we were done, we moved into the living room, where Mom had some cookies, Entenmanns’s chocolate chip mind you, and coffee. Man, it was good to be home.
Donny started bothering me about the case again.
“He really killed himself?”
“I said I don’t know.”
“Jesus Christ, leave him alone already,” Laura said.
Donny shot her a look, but decided not to say anything. He got up and walked toward the bathroom. Mom went into the kitchen to finish cleaning up, and Dad started to fall asleep.
“How is everything going, Laura?” I asked.
“Fine.” she said. She seemed uncomfortable.
“What’s the problem?”
“Nothing,” she said sternly.
“Don’t bullshit me. Something’s up. What is it?”
“It’s nothing, Johnny, really. We’re just having problems, that’s all. Donny got laid off of work and, to be honest, I want us to get our own place. It’s been four years already.”
“Is he treating you right?”
“He’s treating me fine. Really.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“It’s fine. Stop trying to make something out of nothing.
“I am worried about it.”
I could see she had enough. The protective older brother thing didn’t always work out so well. And besides, I didn’t see it all and could easily be wrong about the whole thing.
“Just leave it alone, okay?”
I really didn’t have a choice.
“You just let me know if you have any problems,” I said.
Mom came back into the room, saw us sitting next to each other, and smiled. I think she really wanted me to say something to my asshole brother-in-law.
She looked at my father who was completely passed out.
“I don’t know why he does this to himself.”
“He’s just tired,” I said. A feeble attempt at his defense.
“He’s drunk. He must have had at least seven beers.”
Nine, actually. And that was all I counted. Lord knows what he’d had before I got there.
“He’ll be alright.”
I stayed there for another hour or so. I would have stayed longer, but I couldn’t get my mind of my situation. I wanted answers. I wanted a solution. My father was probably right about speaking to my uncle at the FBI. I wasn’t sure what he would be able to come up with, but at least it would be something. It would offer me direction.
After we had run the small talk down to nothing, I caught my mother in the kitchen.
“Mom, do you have Uncle Paul’s number?”
She looked at me sideways, the way she did when I said something that didn’t seem to make sense.
“What do you want to speak to him for?”
“It has to do with this case. I think he might be able to get me some information that might help.”
“It’s in my blue phone book, in the drawer underneath the television.”
I went to the drawer and came up with three blue phone books. “Which one?”
“The blue one.”
“They’re all blue.”
“Jesus Christ, you lived her for 22 years. You know which one I called the blue phone book. The one with the gold lettering.”
I found it. It was battered, the spine shot and loose pages falling out. Why my mother didn’t just buy a new one and transfer all the names from all the books was beyond me. Each phone book held some sort of significance, but I never could decipher what that was.
I fumbled through the book, trying to remember what my mother’s system was. Some people were listed by first name, some by last, and some by title. For instance, Uncle Paul could have been listed under “P” for his first name, “S” for his last name, Shortino, or “U” for Uncle. I found him under “S,” surprisingly, and jotted the number down on a business card I had in my wallet. “Thanks Mom,” I said,
“You sure everything’s okay?”
“Yes. But I need one more favor.”
“What do you need?”
“I need to borrow the car for a few hours.”
“The Toyota?”
“I could use your car, that’s fine.”
She went over to her pocketbook and handed me the keys. “When are you going to get a car of your own?”
I didn’t want to tell her that I might have to do that soon. “When I need one.”
“Just don’t leave me on empty, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I said my goodbyes to my mother and sister, shook Donny’s hand when I went through the living room, and walked outside. I really didn’t know what I was going to do. I couldn’t imagine having to face my mother and tell her that I was being kicked off the force, or worse, going to jail, even if I was innocent. She had been so proud of me when I’d graduated from the academy, and even more so when I got the gold badge. Her father had been a cop. Though she was worried about me, she beamed every time she talked about my job
Six
teen
I drove aimlessly for about an hour in my mother’s Cadillac Deville. It was an older model, a 1984, the long squared one. It was a coupe, only because my mother wouldn’t drive anything else, and it was in perfect condition. I felt like an idiot with a huge statue of the Virgin Mary rising up from the dash, but there was no way to take that off. The car was a steel blue, with shiny spoke rims and whitewall tires. I didn’t even know they made those anymore.
I looked at the odometer. The car had just a little over 27,000 miles on it. No wonder she still had the whitewalls. The tires were probably original.
I was headed back toward my apartment when my cell phone rang.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Keegan,” was all the man at the other end replied. It was Geiger.
“Hey, boss.” I was at first happy to hear from him, but then I remembered what my father had said about him. Even though I didn’t believe it, I couldn’t get it out of my head.
“Big mess Keegan. Big mess.”
“Don’t I know it. I’m the one they are going to hang.”
“No, they probably won’t even pursue the charges.”
“How do you know that?”
“They don’t have anything on you. They’ll just carry out the suspension for a short time, and then everything will go back to normal.”
“They planted evidence on me.”
“You really think our guys did that? Come on John, use your
head.”
I couldn’t figure out what Geiger’s angle was.
“Who else, then?”
“How about Mrs. Mullins? Ever think that maybe she did that?”
Was he trying to get the information out of me that the IA guy and Peters couldn’t the day before? I didn’t even want to think that, but I did. Alarms were going off in my head.
“Listen, I can’t talk right now.”
“Come in and talk to me. We’ll work this whole thing out.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.”
It was then that I realized I could trust no one. I was being pinched for someone’s satisfaction, pretty much. The rotted line of corruption ran high, from what I could tell. They had gotten to Rick, and it seemed they had gotten to Geiger. I was on my own, and had to fight my way out. Odds were that I would lose, but I had to try.
I pulled over, got out the business card with my uncles number, and dialed it. I couldn’t speak directly to him at first. When I finally got through, I had to tell him right away that the line wasn’t safe.