Finding David Chandler

by Charles Ayer

  “We played football together for a long time, didn’t we?” I said.

  “Since Pop Warner football when we were nine.”

  “And even before that. I think David’s dad got him his first football when he was seven.”

  “Yeah, and he could always throw, couldn’t he,” said Kenny.

  “He sure could.”

  “And he always threw them to you, even from the beginning.”

  “Yeah, he did,” I said. “How many of David’s passes do you think I’ve caught in my life, Kenny?”

  “I don’t know, probably thousands.”

  “Probably more. Nobody knew him as a passer better than I did. He had a terrific arm for a high school quarterback, the best within a hundred-mile radius of this town, that’s for sure. But it would have been only a good arm at the Division I college level, and the pro scouts never would have even looked at him. And you know what else?”

  “What?”

  “I was a great high school receiver, but I’m not sure that I ever could have been a starter on a Division I college team, even a second-tier one, and pro cornerbacks would have chewed me up and spit me out, once they stopped laughing at me.”

  “At least I tried,” said Kenny, his swollen jowls beginning to sag.

  “Yeah, you did, Kenny, and we were all proud of you, you know that.”

  Kenny had gone to SUNY New Paltz for a degree in Phys. Ed., and he’d been a spot starter on the football team during his junior and senior years. He’d been a walk-on at the Jets training camp the summer after he graduated, but he hadn’t lasted a week. I could still see the picture on the wall behind his desk of him in his Jets uniform. At least he had that. That fall he’d been hired as Devon’s assistant football coach and he’d never left.

  “And by the way,” I said, looking around the office, “you’ve wound up doing pretty well for yourself.”

  “Thanks,” said Kenny. “I was never brainy like you and David, but I did okay, huh?”

  “More than okay,” I said, thinking to myself, who was I to judge?

  “So what are you doing back here in sleepy old Devon-on-Hudson? I figured you’d still be in Fun City. Aren’t you Police Commissioner yet?”

  “No, Kenny, I decided to leave that all behind and become a private investigator,” I said, deciding to sugar coat it for the time being. My ego couldn’t stand the truth right now, especially not with Kenny.

  “Wow, that’s a big change for you.” Even Kenny sounded a little doubtful. I was either going to have to work on my delivery or just learn how to be more honest about the mess I’d made of my life.

  “Anyway, believe it or not, Doreen is my first client.”

  “What? She told me that she’d bumped into you, but she didn’t say anything about hiring you. Is this about David?”

  “Yeah, it is. Has she told you how he hasn’t been around for a few days?”

  “Yeah, she has.”

  “You probably know him as well as anyone, Kenny. Are you worried? I guess it doesn’t seem like the David I knew.”

  “It’s hard for me to say, Matt,” said Kenny. “It’s not like the David I know either, but, you know...” He sounded hesitant, but I knew that words had never been Kenny’s best friend.

  “What, Kenny?”

  “You know, David and me are still great friends and stuff, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t see him as much as I used to, you know?”

  “Did something go wrong between you guys?”

  “Nah, nah, nothing like that,” said Kenny, perhaps a little too quickly.

  “I know I haven’t seen you guys in a long time, but I remember you and Allie and David and Doreen practically lived at each other’s houses.”

  Allison Sawyer had been a cheerleader for Cornwall. I’ll never forget the game during our junior year when Kenny, David, and I had jogged out to midfield for the coin toss. I remember looking at Kenny and realizing that he wasn’t paying any attention to the ref. Instead, his eyes were locked on a raven-haired knockout on the other side of the field, and her eyes were locked on him. They’d had to keep it quiet until after our final game against each other, but they’d been inseparable from that day forward. There had been an ugly rumor that Allie had had an abortion during our senior year, but Kenny had stoutly denied that it had been possible, and I’d never really believed it. What I didn’t doubt, though, was that Allie Sawyer was a woman who knew what she wanted, and heaven help whoever got in her way.

  “Yeah, we did. But you know how it is. The kids are getting older, and we all spend a lot of time following them around to their activities, that stuff.”

  “Yeah, I know the feeling,” I said. “By the way, how’s Kenny Junior doing? Is he mowing ‘em down like his old man used to?”

  “Naw,” said Kenny, suddenly looking down at his shoes. “He quit football two games into last season.”

  “What?” I said. “Did he get hurt?”

  “No. He just came to me one day and said that he didn’t want to play football anymore.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “Nope. He just said that just because I loved football didn’t mean that he had to, and that he had other stuff he liked more.”

  “I’m sorry, Kenny, that must have been a big disappointment to you.”

  “I’m not gonna lie to you, Matt. I was pretty crushed.”

  “What’s he doing instead?”

  “He’s playing the fucking clarinet in the fucking marching band,” said Kenny, making it sound like his son had turned to hard drugs. Both my kids were in the marching band at Mount Kisco High and I was proud as hell of them, but I wasn’t Kenny.

  “Jesus, Kenny,” I said, “I’m sorry. What did Allie think?”

  “Aw, she thought it was great. The last thing she wants is for him to turn out like me.”

  “You can’t mean that, Kenny. That doesn’t sound like Allie.”

  Kenny gave me a look that betrayed a bitterness that I never thought I’d see in him.

  “To tell you the truth, Matt, Allie and me were never like you and Marianne, or David and Doreen.”

  “Kenny, Marianne and I are getting divorced.”

  “That can’t be true,” said Kenny, sounding like a kid who’d just been told that there was no Santa Claus.

  “I guess sometimes things just don’t turn out the way we want them to.”

  Kenny was silent.

  “We can’t all be like David and Doreen, can we?” I said. “They’re still the golden couple, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, you can say that again,” said Kenny, brightening up. “Beautiful house, nice cars, great kids, David with his great job. I’m happy for them. They both deserve it.”

  “So what do you think is going on with David, then?”

  “I don’t know, Matt. But I can’t believe it’s any big deal. I’m thinking that David’s a human being, after all, and he just needed to get away for a couple of days, that’s all.”

  “Nothing more than that?”

  “Jesus, Matt. We’re talking about David Chandler here. What more could it be?”

  Good question, I thought, as I got up to leave.

  “It was great to see you, Matt.”

  “Great to see you, too, Kenny.”

  “Let’s not be strangers, okay?”

  “We won’t Kenny, I promise.”

  He patted me on the back as I left his office, which suddenly seemed a little smaller.

  I got in my car and drove back over to West Point, back to the Valley, and to the Hudson. It was a beautiful day, and I wanted to remember it that way.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  EDDIE SHEPHERD STOOD SIX-TWO, but he’d always been a mean little shit as far as I was concerned. Nothing had changed.

  I’d started off the meeting politely enough, telling him that David still hadn’t come home, and that he’d now been gone almost five days. I wanted to have a professional conversation about APBs and BOLOs.

  “I always thought ther
e was something gay about you guys,” he said as he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. His office was spacious, bright, and well furnished. The nameplate on his desk said, “Edward L. Shepherd, Chief of Police.” It looked new. But it was the same old Eddie. “You know, him pitching, you catching. Is that how it was, Matt?” His smile, more like a leer, revealed crowded front teeth stained with nicotine. The small eyes and large nose completed the image of a distempered razorback.

  “Still working through all those issues, are we, Eddie? I hope you’re not paying that shrink too much. I’d hate to think you weren’t getting your money’s worth.”

  “Fuck you, Hunter,” he said, the smile disappearing.

  I knew this meeting wasn’t going to be any fun, but I also knew I couldn’t run away from it, so I’d gotten up on Monday morning, headed over to my office, the one with the Golden Arches out front, ate my breakfast, and checked my email using Mickey D’s free Wi-Fi. The Sausage McMuffin and the coffee were excellent, and my inbox was empty. No surprises.

  And so far, there had been no surprises from Eddie Shepherd.

  Eddie had played linebacker on the football team, and he’d been pretty decent. He made some good plays, but nobody ever noticed him because David and I had been the other two linebackers when we were on defense. He’d also been the backup running back on offense, but Kenny had been a horse and he’d never come out of a game. Eddie had hated all of us ever since. It was all that petty.

  “You just have to embrace your failures and learn from them, Eddie, that’s all,” I said, not exactly striving to rise above pettiness myself.

  “Yeah, well from what I heard, you’re the failure around here, Hunter,” he said, the leer returning. “You think I don’t know all about you? How you couldn’t cut it with the NYPD, how you sucked as a lawyer, and how you’re parading yourself around here as some kind of private investigator? By the way, I confiscated those business cards you left at the post office. I need to see your state license to make sure you’re not engaging in fraudulent misrepresentation.” He said the last two words like he’d just memorized them.

  I pulled out my wallet, extracted my PI’s license, and tossed it on Eddie’s desk. While I was at it a pulled out my carry permit and tossed that over, too. He picked them both up and stared at them for a second.

  “Big fucking deal,” he said, throwing them back.

  “So?”

  “’So’ what?” he said.

  “The cards.”

  “What about them?”

  “I want them back. Now.”

  He opened a drawer, pulled them out and tossed them on his desk. I’d only had fifty printed up and they were wrapped in a rubber band. I picked them up and slowly pulled one out. I took a pen out of my pocket, wrote my phone number and email on it and placed it carefully on his desk.

  “You never know,” I said.

  “Yeah, right,” he said. “So what do you want? I’m a busy man.”

  “I already told you. I want to know if you have any information that might help me locate David Chandler. His wife has hired me to look into his disappearance.”

  “What makes you think I know anything?” said Eddie. “It’s not like Mr. and Mrs. Perfect ever had anything to do with the likes of me.”

  “I was thinking that since you’re, you know, the Chief of Police,” I said, pointing to the nameplate, “that you might be of some assistance.”

  “Well, I can’t. Mrs. Perfect already came to me and I told her to come back in a week. Otherwise, I’d say he’s off doing what a lot of men like him do: paying for what he can’t get at home. Or maybe he’s a closet fairy after all.”

  “Look, Eddie,” I said, leaning forward, “I think we’ve pretty much established that we still hate each other’s guts, okay? And I’m willing to assume that the feeling extends to David and Kenny, and to our wives. Fine. But we both have a job to do. You know David well enough to know that this just isn’t like him, and I don’t care if it’s only been a few days. His disappearance should be regarded as suspicious, and you know it.”

  Eddie Shepherd looked at me with unalloyed loathing, the same way he’d been looking at me since high school. I knew he didn’t want to let it go. I knew he’d crawl across the desk and try to kill me with his bare hands if he thought he could get away with it. If he had another second to think about it he just might try. On one level I understood, but on another level I just didn’t give a shit. But now was the time to go with the first level.

  “Eddie,” I said as softly as I could, “we have to let this go, at least for now. We’re both professionals. I didn’t come here looking for a fight, and I don’t think you want that either. You’ve come a long way, Eddie. You’ve got a lot to be proud of. Please.”

  “Unlike you,” he said.

  “Okay, fine. Unlike me.”

  He seemed to sag, just a little. His face seemed to relax, just a little.

  “Have it your way,” he said with a sigh, “but I still can’t help you. David wasn’t a guy who was out a lot. He didn’t have any hangouts, he didn’t belong to any clubs, nothing like that. It’s not like anyone would miss him if he disappeared for a few days. Frankly, if Doreen hadn’t come to see me I never would have known he was missing, and neither would anybody else. He was a stay at home kind of guy.”

  “Has he ever had any kind of legal troubles?”

  “Who, Mr. Clean? Gimme a break.”

  “Do you know anybody in town who might have had an axe to grind with him?”

  “I take it you mean present company excluded, right?”

  “Yes, Eddie.”

  “Then no. Our hero was beloved by all. The fucking guy hasn’t thrown a pass in twenty years, but he’s still the Hometown Hero.”

  “Any theories?”

  “None. Even if I gave a shit if the guy lived or died, which I don’t, I wouldn’t have a clue. Like I said, maybe he ran off with a woman, or even another man. You were a cop. I don’t have to tell you that people can surprise you.”

  “You’re right about that, Eddie.”

  “See that?” he said, the wiseguy smile returning to his face. “We can agree on something after all.”

  “Okay, thanks,” I said. I was wasting my time here and we both knew it. I rose to leave. Eddie didn’t get up from his chair.

  “Hey,” he said as I reached the door, “don’t forget your business cards.” I turned just in time to see them flying past my head. They hit the wall and fell to the floor.

  “You still can’t catch anything worth a shit, can you,” he said, baring his yellow teeth.

  I picked up the cards and left without saying another word.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I’M REALLY SORRY YOU HAD TO GO THROUGH ALL THAT,” said Doreen as she placed a tray of sandwiches and a pitcher of iced tea on the wrought iron table that sat by their pool, just out of splashing range.

  I’d come over ostensibly to tell Doreen about my meeting, if you could call it that, with Eddie Shepherd, but I also had another motive. One of the things I’d learned from my years as a cop, and during my failed attempt at practicing law, was that situations like this were almost always personal in one way or another; family and friends were inevitably involved. I’d known these people all my life, but I’d been away for a long time, and my conversation with Kenny had served as a reminder that I had a lot of catching up to do.

  David was apparently a pretty good banker, judging from his and Doreen’s home. The house itself was probably 5,000 square feet and sat on a lot that looked to be about two acres. The grounds were beautifully landscaped, and the pool area comprised not only a thirty-by-sixty foot pool, but a cabana with changing rooms, a small outdoor kitchen, a hot tub, and a sauna.

  And Doreen, of course. She had mercifully donned a pair of white linen shorts when I’d arrived, but not before I’d been treated to a generous view of her derrière only technically covered by the back of her black, one-piece bathing suit. I was
working very hard at keeping my eyes off her cleavage and enjoying only limited success. Doreen was doing a superlative job of pretending not to notice.

  “It wasn’t anything I wasn’t expecting,” I said, as I took a large bite out of an egg salad sandwich. I was starving. “Except, I guess I was expecting to get at least a little information out of him.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Doreen, taking a sip of her iced tea. She hadn’t taken a sandwich for herself. “In addition to being an asshole, Eddie’s a lousy cop.”

  “If he’s such a lousy cop, how did he ever get the Chief’s job?”

  “I guess by kissing a lot of influential behinds,” said Doreen. “And besides, this town may have grown a lot and become affluent, but the town budget hasn’t grown along with it. People around here earn a lot of money, but they live expensive lifestyles, and they’re not about to vote for a tax increase. The police department is understaffed, and the Chief’s job only pays about half what it’s worth, especially considering what it costs to live around here these days, so I don’t think he had a lot of competition.”

  “Well, whatever, but here I am, two days into my first big private investigating job, and I’ve gotten nowhere so far.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Matt. I’m married to the guy, and I don’t have a clue either.”

  “I talked to Kenny yesterday, too,” I said.

  “Oh? How was he?”

  “He seemed good. I wish he’d lose some weight. All that belly fat can’t be good for him.”

  “I’m after him all the time about that, too,” said Doreen, “and so is Allie, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.”

  “Well, Kenny was never very good at impulse control. I guess people don’t really change all that much.”

  “No, they don’t,” said Doreen, with a surprising amount of feeling.

  “He told me that Kenny Junior had quit the football team. What was that all about?”

  “That’s kind of a sensitive topic, Matt.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Take two guesses who the Devon Central starting quarterback has been for the past two years.”