by Jan Burke
Cookie was the oldest of the three. Bear was next, then Gus. Gus was still brawny, while Cookie appeared to be quite frail.
Bea suggested we adjourn to the living room, but Rachel agreed only on the condition that she and Pete would clear the table and do the dishes. I could see Pete’s rebellion forming, but not in time to save himself — she all but grabbed him by the ear. Cassidy took in all of this with amusement.
Before the trio arrived, Cassidy had taken me aside and asked me not to jump in with any questions of my own until he asked one about the Ryan-Neukirk case. From there, he said, I’d be asking most of them, at least in the beginning. “And don’t go convicting Bradshaw just yet,” he added sternly. “You’ve got to act as calm and natural as you can tonight. I’m depending on it. Don’t let me catch you giving him the evil eye or fidgeting like you’ve got a bumblebee in your drawers. You think of him as the man who brought you and Frank together — that guy you talked about when we had lunch the other day.”
I tried to heed his warnings but still felt nervous as we sat down to dinner. Early attention and talk, fortunately, was focused on Greg Bradshaw’s knee surgery. By the time I had calmed myself enough to look up from the first course, I realized Cassidy had somehow taken control of the conversation. He seemed to set some silent ground rule: no one would discuss Frank’s captivity or, by extension, the Ryan-Neukirk murders. He did not announce this; he merely started several discussions that were obviously not about our great concern. Everyone picked up on this cue, probably certain that he was doing this to keep Frank’s mother or wife calm during a meal he called — despite Pete’s constant corrections — our “Eye-talian supper.” I think he was getting back at Pete for harassing Cecilia, since Rachel seemed to be suppressing a laugh every time he said it.
Once Cassidy got the ball rolling in the direction he wanted it to go, he spent most of his time listening to the three older cops argue with one another over who told the true version of whichever war story was under discussion.
The stories began to have similar themes. If they were about Gus, they were wild-man exploits: Gus diving and tackling an armed suspect in an alley after his own gun had jammed; Gus climbing a water tower (while drunk) because he saw a pretty girl on it, only to discover it was a long-haired young man who was contemplating suicide — managing to talk the young man out of it; Gus hearing other cops call him “What’s-your-twenty-Matthews” — a reference to the dispatchers’ frequent efforts to locate him. These were the stories about Gus: often heroic, more often foolish.
It was clear that Gus thought nothing of bucking authority, had put in some drinking years, had paid a price for both by never managing to hold on to a promotion for long. But he seemed untroubled by that fact, and whenever Bear or Cookie alluded to it, he smiled and said, “What the hell? I enjoyed my work. It was a good ride. I never had your finesse, is all. You two were a couple of sneaks.”
He was right; while tales were told in which Bear and Cookie were heroes, these almost always involved outwitting criminals rather than Gus’s brute force or action. Within the department, both were pranksters. Bear’s pranks were on a relatively small scale. They were similar to those he played on Frank as a rookie — putting a penny in a patrol car hubcap to make a maddening rattle, putting shoe polish on the rim of a motorcycle cop’s goggles.
Cookie’s pranks involved more strategy. One summer the sound of church bells was broadcast over all the department radios. Bells ringing at midnight, twelve long tolls. When it was heard every night for three nights in a row, the infuriated chief put detectives on the task of discovering the culprit. They compared bell sounds to recordings of the midnight broadcasts. The bells had a distinctive sound, and their most likely source was a certain church. The minister gave permission for police to search it. Nothing was found. Undeterred, the chief ordered the building surrounded and watched. As on previous nights, bells marked midnight and were heard over the radios, although clearly not being transmitted by anyone present.
“Because,” Bear said, “Cookie is a dozen miles away, parked up on a hill, with a little cassette deck in his car playing a tape of those bells!”
Cassidy also told a few anecdotes from his own law enforcement career, with the same flair for humorous storytelling he had demonstrated during our drive to Bakersfield. They took to him, accepted him as one of their own. That, I began to see, was the point.
Now, as the dinner guests were seated around Bea’s living room, Cassidy gave me a smile that was undoubtedly seen as a gesture of reassurance by the others, but that I knew to be a warning.
Get ready.
He stayed on his feet, leaned against the mantel. “Irene, were these old farts this decrepit when you were working here?”
They smiled good-naturedly. “Come here, Tex,” Gus joked, “and I’ll show you what decrepit can do.”
This was met with cheers by Bea and the other two.
“Well, Cassidy,” I said, “not decrepit, but they were a little gray headed.” I looked pointedly at his hair. “You know how that can be.”
He smiled at their laughter and ran a hand over his hair. “Well, some men just look more handsome in gray hair, right, fellas?”
“That’s right, that’s right,” Bear said. “Looks distinguished. Remember, Cookie, when old Brian went Grecian Formula on us?”
This brought on more laughter, while Bea turned red with embarrassment. “Greg Bradshaw,” she muttered. “Honestly! The things you are liable to say.”
I sat stunned, quickly reminding myself that Brian Harriman’s hair color was only one reason to believe in him. Cecilia caught my eye, smiled at me. It was enough to calm me down again.
Cassidy, meanwhile, reached over and picked up the photo of Frank and his dad. “By golly, I just might try some of that hair-coloring stuff. Looks damned natural to me.”
“He wasn’t using it then,” Cookie said.
“Yep, Cookie’s right,” Gus said. “Having Frank on the force is what turned poor ol’ Brian gray.”
“It is not!” Bea protested. “He was very proud of Frank.”
“Oh, of course! Of course he was,” Bear soothed, shooting Gus a dirty look. “Hell, everyone knows that. We’re all proud of him. Frank is a damned fine cop. He’s never given anyone any reason not to be proud of him.”
The room fell silent.
“As far as I’m concerned,” I said, trying to steer the conversation back on course, “Frank isn’t going to be any less handsome when he turns gray. How old was Brian when his hair changed?”
“It wasn’t long after Frank joined the department,” Bea said, then added pointedly, “But it wasn’t because he was worried about Frank.” Gus didn’t see her glance or seem to notice her tone of voice. He was bent forward, elbows on widespread knees, hands clasped, looking down at the floor. His facial expressions were hidden.
“Aw, Bea,” Bear said, suddenly caught between loyalties, “nobody is knocking Brian. It was just something funny, that’s all. Brian laughed about it himself. He only used it for a little while, until we gave him so much grief over it, he figured it was easier to be gray. Truth is, he looked fine either way. Right, Cookie?”
“Right. We scared everybody else off of trying to color his gray, though.”
“I vaguely remember a couple of other guys who were going gray,” I said. “A Wilson and… Beech, maybe?”
“Beecham,” Cookie said. “Manny Beecham. And if the Wilson you’re thinking of was gray haired, it was Quinn. Wilson and Beecham were motorcycle cops. Boy, I tell you — that was tough duty. Cold in winter. I knew men who would stuff newspapers in their jackets, trying to stay warm.”
“We weren’t much better off in the cars,” Bear said, watching Gus. “Right, Gus?”
Gus looked up. His eyes looked a little red. “Yeah, Bear, the cars were cold, too.”
“Irene, we didn’t get heaters in our cars until 1958,” Bear said, more animated now that Gus had joined in again. “Brian a
nd I used to turn the spotlight on and aim it into the car just to heat ourselves up.”
“Everybody did that,” Cookie said. “We were supposed to ride with our windows down in the winter, so we could hear what was going on outside the car.”
“I reckon that would make things a little chilly,” Cassidy said.
Gus suddenly got to his feet. “I can’t stand this! We’re sitting in here talking about the fucking weather!”
Cookie stood up, too, and said, “Have a seat, Gus.”
Gus didn’t move. “It ain’t even today’s weather, for God’s sake!”
“Have a seat, Gus,” Bear said quietly. “For Bea’s sake.”
Gus sat.
“And watch your mouth,” Cookie added. “This is Bea’s home. You think if Brian were alive, he’d let you talk like that in front of his wife?”
“He didn’t mean anything by it,” Cecilia said, drawing all eyes. “Gus is just upset, worried about Frank, right?”
Gus said nothing, looking down between his feet again.
“Yes,” Bea said, “that’s all it is. Nathan?”
Cookie said, “Of course. I’m sorry, Gus. I guess my nerves are on edge, too.” He sat down.
Cassidy glanced at me, then moved to sit in a chair near Cecilia, across from Gus and Cookie.
“Gus,” he said quietly, “I don’t blame you. We’ve avoided the topic that’s been on everybody’s mind all evening. You’ve always been close to Frank, right?”
He nodded.
“And you know who has him?”
“Those boys,” he said to the floor.
Cassidy glanced at me again, leaned back.
“Do you remember that day?” I asked Gus.
“You mean when the boys were found?” he said, looking up at me now.
“Yes.”
“Sure. Never forget it. I got there last. Cookie and Bear were there. Not Brian, though.”
“Brian had gone fishing that day,” Cecilia said. “He was off that weekend.”
“That’s right!” Bea said. “I had forgotten. That’s why he got back so late. He used to go fishing with some friends of ours in Bodfish.”
“Bodfish?” Cassidy asked. “I never heard of a fish called a bodfish.”
“It isn’t named after a fish, it’s named after a person,” she said. “His name was George Homer Bodfish.”
“I guess he didn’t want to have to live alone with it,” Cassidy said.
“Brian was in Bodfish that weekend?” Cookie asked.
“Just Saturday,” Cecilia answered. “He was back here by Sunday night.”
“How do you know?” Pete asked, coming in from the kitchen.
“It was the first time I’d been to a Father’s Day dinner. The Harrimans invited me. When Frank got the call that day, Brian hadn’t come back from fishing. Our plans got changed a little.”
I gave Pete a look that said “Lay off.” I guess he got the message, because he took a seat and didn’t say anything more. Rachel came in and sat next to him.
“I’m sure anyone who was a friend of the family would remember that Father’s Day,” I said. “All three of you went to the scene?”
“Yeah,” Gus said. “I don’t think anybody who was there could forget those two kids. Or Frank, the way he was that day. Oh, man. I felt so bad for him, you know, because he caught that call.”
“How did you hear about it?”
“I was working…. I had just come on for my shift, soit must have been… let’s see… around six-thirty. That’s right — I was on days for those last few years before I retired. Brian had also been on days, but he had been on them for a long time.” He glanced at Bea and then up at the photos on the mantel. He shook his head sadly.
“Six-thirty?” I said. “You must have been there pretty early on, then.”
“Naw, the call had been in for at least half an hour. I didn’t hear about it until I reported for work. We had started working tens then — ten-hour shifts. Seven A.M. to four P.M., five P.M. to two A.M., eleven P.M. to eight A.M. You’d come in about thirty minutes before and stay about thirty minutes later for the shift changes, but those were the shifts. Frank and Cookie worked graveyard shift. What’d you have then, Bear?”
Bear was frowning. “I must have been mixed up about something yesterday….”
“When I met you, I think you were working afternoon shift,” I said. “Bars would be closed, we’d go to one of the all-night coffee shops — you and Frank and I. We’d talk until everyone wound down, until about four in the morning.”
“That’s right,” he said, but he still looked puzzled.
“Afternoons… I must have been on afternoons.”
“Frank switched to graveyards after you left, Irene,” Bea said. “Cecilia worked days. He’d sleep while she worked, and they’d go out in the evenings.”
Cecilia seemed uneasy with this talk. “It cut every evening short,” she said quickly.
“Well, Frank was lucky to have y’all there for him,” Cassidy said, pulling the conversation back to that day. “I understand he took it pretty hard.”
“Yeah,” Gus said. “Those kids — they just wouldn’t let go of him. Even after their mothers got there. We wanted to talk to Frank, but any man came near ’em, they freaked out.”
“Now I know!” Bear said. “The scanner!”
The rest of us looked puzzled, but Gus started laughing. “Oh, goddamn — excuse me, Bea. Oh, oh — I’d forgotten about that, you were such a—!” He looked at Bea again, couldn’t seem to come up with a clean word, and contented himself with laughing.
Bear was turning red. “Gus, it’s not that funny!”
“Cassidy,” Gus said, “you have never met anybody whose blood is so blue. Blue, blue, blue. The guy works ten-hour shifts, spends all his time off with other cops, and when they can’t stand him anymore and send him home, what does he do? Listens to his scanner. Remember how much sh — uh, what a hard time we used to give him about that, Cookie?”
Cookie, who had been silent for some time, merely said, “I remember.”
“You were there that day, too?” I asked him.
“Yes. I was there. As Gus said, I worked nights. But I wasn’t working that Sunday, the one when Frank found the boys. I had come in on Friday night, and worked until eight on Saturday morning. I was off on Saturday night and Sunday morning.”
“How did you find out about it, then?”
“Bea called me, said Brian was out of town, asked if I could go over to the warehouse.”
It seemed a little odd to me that Bea, who must have heard about the incident from Bear or Gus, would call in additional reinforcements. But this may have been the way their “extended family” operated — all for one, one for all.
“So you were there fairly soon?” I asked Bear.
“Yes. I tried to go down to the basement, to talk to Frank, but by the time I arrived the crime lab was there and not letting anyone near him. Once they came up out of that basement — as Gus said, the boys became very upset around any other man. I thought it was just me, at first. But they reacted that way to any other male.”
“Do you have any idea where they’re holding Frank?” Gus asked.
“Not at present, no,” Cassidy said. “But we believe it’s somewhere in Las Piernas. Folks down there are working hard to locate him.”
“What are you doing out here, then, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Ryan and Neukirk — the boys — contact us here. They tell us they have some task for us to complete before they’ll release Frank. Something to do with the murder of their fathers, I’m sure. Any of you have any idea what it could be? If you did, it could sure help us — help Frank most of all.”
No arms crossed, no nervousness, no eyes averted. Yes — Cassidy was a cool liar.
“Something to do with the old case?” Gus was asking. He grew thoughtful. All three men were silent, seemed to be considering the question.
“I don’t kn
ow what it could be,” Bear said. “The boys know the killer is dead, right?”
“Yes,” Cassidy said.
“Cecilia,” Cookie said, “you discovered the body of the killer, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Were there any signs that he might have had a partner, an accomplice?”
“No,” she answered. “Not a thing. Of course, I didn’t get involved in the forensics — just made the call.”
“Wait,” Gus said. “Cookie — man, they never should have kept you out of detectives. You were born to be a suit, I tell you.”
Nathan Cook colored red from his neck to the top of his head. “Really, Gus—”
But Gus was continuing, in a tone that seemed — at least to me — to be slightly sarcastic. “You see how he is, Cassidy? He can think ahead like that—”
“Gus—” Cookie tried again.
“No, I mean it. We used to say it that way, ‘one smart Cookie.’ Remember, Bear?”
“Yeah, he’s right,” Bear said, looking nervously at Cookie. “But I don’t—”
“Gus, Bear. Please,” Cookie said.
“You’re brilliant,” Gus went on. “The rest of us always assumed it was just the one guy doing the killing down in that basement, but Cookie here thinks differently from the average cop. I mean, that’s a hell of a suggestion. Maybe there was more than one person involved—”
“Sorry, Gus,” Cassidy interrupted. “You’re right, ol’ Cookie here is smart. But I’ve read the reports from that case, including the labwork. Other than the victims, there was only one man in that basement. There were several indications that it was only one man, but one piece of evidence was almost undeniable proof.”
He turned to Cookie. “You see, there was quite a bit of blood on the floor, and anybody who went all the way down those stairs couldn’t miss stepping in it. Until Frank went out to his car to make the call, no one had walked in and out of that basement except the killer.”