He was in trouble. How could it have gotten this complicated so fast? Just two weeks ago he’d had a simple problem with money, and a simple solution, and now he had nothing going on less.
Naked, he walked downstairs again, his glass empty. He had to hold the banister, and even then the steps seemed to fall unevenly.
Well, so what. He was alone and could do as he damned pleased, and if he was tired and drunk because his little girl had been killed, then he was, and fuck anybody who didn’t like it.
But then another thing intruded. God, there was so much it didn’t seem possible it all fit together. But this was important. This was more important, even, than Linda—no, he didn’t think that.
But it was crucial. He’d told the police there wasn’t any money. But what if they found Alphonse and he had the money? That meant it wasn’t his—Sam’s—money. And of course Alphonse would have the money.
But, on the other hand, once he said it was his money . . .
Shit, there ain’t no one on earth forgets a hundred and twenty thousand dollars, even if his daughter just died. At least it would be there in the back of your mind.
So what could he tell the cops? They’d seen it, all of it, the excuses and the bullshit, and they would smell this one all the way to Sacramento.
If he’d told them right away about the money, then it might’ve been all right, because, goddamn, seeing Linda lying there had gotten to him, and they would have asked him some questions and anything would have worked.
. . . a lopsided smile and admitting that he played stakes poker.
. . . a slush fund for the good workers, tax-free, until the troubles with Cruz had been resolved.
Goddamn. Something.
But now he had trouble seeing it. They wouldn’t buy it, and Sam couldn’t blame them. He wouldn’t buy it himself.
“You mean, Mr. Polk, that you had one hundred twenty thousand dollars in that safe this morning and you forgot it for how long . . . six hours? Mr. Polk, how old you think I am?”
The bottle of Jack Daniel’s was empty. Empty. Like the safe, like himself. He went to the cabinet and grabbed another bottle, this time some French brandy that Nika liked.
Okay, so he was in trouble but the thing was not to lose the money. Once he had that back he could think of something. It didn’t matter what the police might think of him. He hadn’t done anything illegal yet, and if he could just remember that he’d be okay.
He walked outside. Up in the city it had been cool, but the weather still held here only a dozen miles south. He smelled the first gardenias, maybe a touch of jasmine. He breathed in again. Small white lights led out through the manicured garden to the hot tub. He looked at them in a kind of awe. He owned this. This was where he’d arrived at. It wasn’t just a crummy kitchen drinking alone, it was a goddamn Hillsborough estate with grounds and landscaping and a hot tub, thank you.
He tripped on the first flagstone step, but didn’t go down. Out at the hot tub he lifted the thermometer and saw it was 104 degrees.
If he just got loose and thought, he’d come up with something.
The water stung, but only for a second. He sat on the first step, looking down at his balls, and thought it was still a little too cold, and he could also use the jets.
There, now, that was better. A bottle of some French shit at my elbow, a glass in my hand, and some jets blasting away all the tension and worries. People had worked hard their whole lives and gotten to worse places.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the bricks lining the tub. And had another sip of brandy.
Maybe I don’t think enough, she said to herself. Maybe I’ve been on automatic too long.
There was only the one light on in the trophy room, as they called it, down the hall from Steven’s. The one with all the pictures. She’d been gravitating to it a lot lately.
Big Ed’s snoring was audible from time to time in the next room, but it didn’t bother her. Really—it was funny—not much of what Ed did bothered her. Cigars, maybe, once in a while, but she had her vices that he tolerated, too—not being home enough, for example, running around helping everybody who asked, being unable to say no.
She looked at the wall with its pictures. She and Ed had talked about taking down the ones of Eddie, but then she realized that there would be no reason for it. It wouldn’t lessen the pain. It was just another of the idiotic ideas she’d entertained in the last week.
Now she ran a finger across the bottom of the frame of the one where he was down at the merry-go-round at the old Playland at the Beach. He’d been seven or so when the picture was taken.
The little boy—mounted on the horse, mane splayed out in the wind—smiled out at her like his face would break. Erin remembered the day too perfectly. She saw the smear of mustard still on his cheek from what had been his first corn dog. Somebody’s hand was just visible at the bottom of the picture. That had been Mick, reaching up to ride double.
She let her eyes go around the other pictures. It was true, there weren’t many of Steven, and none in the past two years. There was Mick, playing ball, graduating, diving from the pier at the place they’d rented the past few summers at Bass Lake. Jodie was accepting her debating award last year, biting her tongue in the front of her mouth in concentration over her cooking at the Girl Scout camp, in her first formal dress for the frosh hop at Mercy.
Stepping back, she tried to find the most recent picture of Steven. There was one of him with Eddie at the wedding two years ago, before he’d done that ridiculous thing with his hair that Big Ed had wanted to scalp him for. Another one, the year before that, was really just a snapshot of him and his dad and Eddie when they had come home with their limits of salmon.
That was it for the latest ones of Steven. The most recent after those was Steven at about eight, with Jim, Steven forcing a smile from the front seat of that Corvette Jim had loved so much. Before that was his First Communion, with the white pants and jacket.
How could she and Big Ed have missed what this wall proclaimed so clearly? There wasn’t one shot of Steven all alone, by himself, the star of the show, for at least the past six years.
Last night, after everyone else had gone to sleep, she and Ed had sat in this room, wondering if they could have done things differently. And even then, with all these pictures staring down at them, they hadn’t seen it. It was the same as always, she thought. They just took for granted that Steven was up there on the wall with his brothers and sister, a good well-adjusted kid like the others. They’d raised them all the same—same environment, same values. Of course they’d all turn out okay.
After agonizing over every parental decision with Eddie, then Mick, then of course Jodie because she was the first girl and there were lots of things that hadn’t come up with Eddie or Mick, by the time Steven had come along they’d done it all before, right? So raising Steven would be the same as it had been with Eddie or Mick.
And finally she had been able to start taking the time she’d craved for herself, to somewhat offset the nagging guilt that she wasn’t accomplishing much in her life except raising kids. Not that that wasn’t important, but she had more to offer.
And Big Ed, too. He’d finally found the time for the fishing trips he couldn’t ever take when the kids had been little. And for the poker once a month. And, mostly, just for the solitude—reading in the room out behind the garage, or walking down to the beach.
Neither of them had meant to be neglectful of Steven. Maybe, she reflected again, maybe it had just gotten too hard to think about. Forget what the evidence of their own eyes was telling them—that Steven was getting away from them, that he was nothing like the other kids. No, that didn’t fit in with the leisure they thought they’d earned, so ignore it. It would probably work out.
And now the boy lay broken and bandaged down the hall, and Erin had no inclination to blame anybody but herself.
“Thank you, God. He’s still alive,” she whispered, a real prayer, just
talking to God. She hadn’t done that since she’d gotten the news about Eddie, and she didn’t really think about it now. Just thank God Steven wasn’t gone, too.
She walked down the hallway. The house felt empty. Because Frannie had gone back home today? No, probably just a reflection of how she felt—empty.
Ed snored once again. She heard him turn over in bed. Steven lay on his back, breathing evenly. She leaned over and held her face above his, taking in the sweet-smelling air he exhaled. It was still not adult’s breath, but that wonderful stuff that came out of kids’ mouths. The air in heaven, she thought, must smell like a baby’s breath.
She touched the good side of his face, but so lightly he didn’t move. Moving up a chair next to the bed, she sat and forced herself to keep thinking about the things she was going to change in her life. She really had stopped thinking enough the past few years. You could be endlessly busy and still not be doing enough of the right things. Maybe she and Ed had gotten lazy that way, morally lazy, selfish.
She put her head down on the blanket, up against his hip. She didn’t know how long she’d been dozing when he moved, moaning. She reached up and caressed the side of his face.
“Mom?” he asked.
“I’m here, Steven,” she said. “I’m right here.”
21
“ALPHONSE PAGE?” Hardy said, somewhat surprised to hear a name he had never come across.
Glitsky, out in the avenues on another homicide, stopped by Hardy’s as promised. It made three days in a row that Hardy had been awakened before seven a.m.
“Alphonse Page. Of this there is little doubt.”
They were in Hardy’s kitchen. The fog outside was thin and still, the kind that had a chance to burn off.
“You think he killed Cochran?”
Abe shook his head. “I am fairly certain he killed Linda Polk, that’s all. Different MO than Cochran anyway. Cut her throat.”
“Money? What else.”
“Well, it gets a little funny there.” Hardy waited. “Her father called it in—the same guy you told me about, huh?”
“Short, sad, dumpy?”
“That’s him.”
“What was he doing at work on a Sunday?”
“He said he was feeling guilty he hadn’t been in all week. Wanted to get a fresh start, jump on Monday, like that.”
“Oh, certainly.”
“I know.”
The two men nodded at each other. “So,” Glitsky continued, “there was no money around, although there was a safe in the room, closed up tight, and the victim, Linda, was lying in a pool of blood right by it.”
“So he emptied the safe.”
“In any event, it was empty when Polk opened it up for a look. I guess it was either him or Alphonse, maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe? Why else would she have been aced?”
“Diz. The lab tells me she was filled with sperm. They also found three or four hairs in her crotch. Appear to be from a black man.”
“Jesus, she was raped?”
“I don’t know, but that waters down the money as the only possible motive. She’d certainly had sex just before she died, like, within an hour or two.”
“But why did she go to the office, where the safe was? It had to have something to do with money.”
Glitsky shrugged. “No, it didn’t. It probably in fact did, but it didn’t have to.”
Hardy got up and paced. “Well, shit, Abe, so who’s Alphonse Page?”
Glitsky took out a photograph he’d gotten, reluctantly, from Page’s mother when they’d gone to his house the previous night with a warrant. Hardy’s forehead creased, studying the picture, as Glitsky went on. “Polk identified his knife at the scene. Prints with blood on ’em all over the place—some even in the back at a wrapping machine.”
Hardy threw the picture onto his table. “And there wasn’t any money?”
“Good point,” Glitsky said, and noted something down on his pad. “Anyway, lab’s doing a run on the car, but I’m sure enough I got the warrant, put out the APB. Alphonse came home early last evening, dumped some bloody clothes in the hamper, packed a sports bag and split. So far he hasn’t come back, and I’m not expecting him. He did it.”
“Could he have done Eddie?”
“I don’t know. We don’t know where he was that night, but we’ll find out. After I talked to you last night I got out the file on Cochran. Read it cover to cover. ’Specially read about the car, Cochran’s. You’ll never guess.”
“Black man’s hairs.”
Glitsky smiled. “In the front seat. You’re a genius, Hardy. Lab’s not done with the comparison, but you want to bet they’re not Alphonse’s?”
Hardy sat down. “You know what I think?”
“What do you think?”
“I think we’ve got a drug deal gone bad here.”
Glitsky rubbed the scar that ran through his lips. “Well, damn, what an incredible idea!”
Glitsky then told him about the trace of cocaine found on Polk’s desk.
“So did you bring him in? Polk?”
“He was pretty incoherent after it hit him. I mean, his daughter had just been killed. He’s coming downtown this afternoon. Wanna be there?”
“I wouldn’t miss it. Cavanaugh seems to think Polk did it, you know. I mean did Eddie.”
“I didn’t think he raped his daughter.”
“Maybe she wasn’t raped.”
“And who’s Cavanaugh?”
Since it was now part of his active investigation, Glitsky wanted to get it firsthand. He and Hardy drove separately over to St. Elizabeth’s and both of them parked in the empty lot behind the rectory. Rose greeted them at the door.
“Father’s rehearsing the graduation over to the church,” she said. “You can wait here or go on over.”
They walked through the lifting fog. Sixty boys and girls in uniforms—gray corduroy pants and white shirts, maroon plaid dresses and white blouses—were lined up at the door of the church. Two nuns fluttered around trying to keep order.
“They still do this? Uniforms, even?” Glitsky seemed genuinely surprised, parochial elementary schools not being his everyday turf.
“Hey, if it works don’t fix it.” Hardy held his hands out. “Look what it did for me.”
Glitsky, his eyes still on the line of kids, started moving again. When the last child had gone inside, Glitsky and Hardy followed and sat in the sixth row in the first empty pew.
“What are they graduating from?” Glitsky whispered, but before Hardy could say anything a bell rang by the side of the altar and Father Cavanaugh, in cassock, surplice and stole, flanked by two acolytes, appeared through a side door. He came up to the altar rail, surveying the crowd, nodding to Hardy. He brought his hands together, palms up, and at his signal the children all stood. Hardy nudged Glitsky, and they got up too. The sergeant appeared puzzled.
“Let us pray,” Cavanaugh intoned with a deep resonance.
“I know that guy,” Glitsky said.
“ ’Course I was younger then, still in uniform, even before Hardy and I were teamed,” the policeman was saying.
Rose was used to policemen not wearing the blue. Except for CHiPs and a few of those older shows, no one on TV wore a uniform anymore. This man, Officer Glitsky, had very nice manners, even if he talked a little loud, but he looked scary with that scar running through his lips—nowhere near as good-looking or friendly as her favorite black policeman, Tibbs.
“No, I think I do remember,” Father replied. Rose was pouring coffee from silver into fine china. The policeman used a lot of sugar. The other man, the one who looked a little like Renko, drank his coffee black. Father, of course, had a lump and half & half. He’d had cream until last year, when the doctor had told him to cut down on his cholesterol. Margarine instead of butter, half & half instead of cream. But he still had his eggs most mornings. “We talked about the riots at Berkeley, the police role there, if I recall.”
Ins
pector Sergeant Glitsky sucked rather loudly on the coffee. Maybe it was too hot to drink yet. “You know, Father, I think we did. How do you remember that?”
Bless the father, he had a memory.
“It made a great impression on me at the time, Sergeant. You were the first officer I had talked to who didn’t just spout the official police line.”
“What was that?” the other man asked. Rose wasn’t exactly eavesdropping. She had been planning on dusting this room today anyway. And she felt she should be around to pour more coffee if any of the men got low.
Father answered. “Once the students threw or broke something, it was open season for the police. They had the right then to use whatever force was necessary to keep things under control.”
“It was just a pissing contest,” the sergeant said. “Stupid. They should’ve just got some guys who didn’t think all those students were revolutionaries, that’s all.”
“So who’d they get?” the other man asked.
“Bunch of rednecks they recruited from Alabama or someplace. Deputized for the riots. You know, bust some heads and see the Berkeley chicks running around without bras on. Weren’t you around for that, Diz?”
Dismas, that was his name. Dismas smiled halfway and said his major concern at the time had been stopping those dominoes from falling, whatever that meant, although Father and the sergeant both seemed to get it.
“Well, your friend here, Dismas, is too modest. He was quite a force for moderation back then. It took some courage for a policeman, and a black one, to take that kind of stand.”
The sergeant seemed a little embarrassed and sipped at his coffee, but not so loudly. “Mostly self-preservation, I’m afraid,” he said. “The trend of importing Southern gentlemen for the police force wasn’t going to do my career any good.”
“So what were you two guys doing together?” Dismas asked.
Father smiled, remembering. “The activist days . . . sometimes I long for them again.”
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