The Now-And-Then Detective

by William Wells

  Most male cops I knew had a retirement dream of one kind or another. Golf, fishing, hunting, world travel, season tickets to the home team, and beer in the cooler were common elements. Sitting in a rocking chair on a porch, flipping playing cards into a hat, with the bass jumping on the lake, would not be out of the question. Nor would a good cigar. I imagine that female cops had their own version of the dream, but I never asked—maybe because one of them might say, “I want to spend my golden years with a man the exact opposite of you, Jack.” Which, sad to say, wouldn’t have surprised me one iota.

  My retirement dream, concocted during endless stakeouts, involved living in a warm climate, and maybe, if lucky, owning a bar and residing on a boat. Which, as it turned out, was exactly what I did. I found the warm climate in Florida. My bar was The Drunken Parrot. Some might think it odd for a recovering alcoholic to own a bar. I justified it by telling myself that I could still enjoy the conviviality without the liquor, plus, it was a good business in a spring-break town.

  Sometimes I’d walk into a bar, never the one I owned, slide up onto a stool, and tell the barkeep to give me a double shot of Black Jack and a mug of beer, Goose Island if they had it, brewed in my hometown Chicago, and if not, then whichever. I’d drop the shot glass into the beer mug and watch it descend to the bottom, the two liquids of different viscosity not blending. Back in the day, my next move would be to down the drink in one swallow, feeling the anesthetic warmth which, I erroneously believed, was an antidote for the PTSD effect of murder investigations. But that was then and this was now, so I’d signal the barkeep and also order a diet root beer, my current drink of choice. When I was done, I’d slap a twenty onto the bar and leave, still sober after nine years.

  My home was named Phoenix, a houseboat that was more house than boat. It was seaworthy at one time, but that time was in the rearview mirror. So was a certain amount of my own seaworthiness. I named my boat after the bird of Greek mythology which rose from its own ashes. When I moved to Florida, I had the same thing in mind.

  My Chicago PD disability checks were supplemented by my bar’s profits, and by income I got from my friend Bill Stevens, a Chicago Tribune police reporter who wrote a series of best-selling novels based upon my detective career. His fictional detective was named Jack Stoney. Bill gave me a generous percentage of his book royalties, and he paid me to edit his manuscripts to make certain he got the cop stuff right.

  For example, in an early draft of one of his books, Bill wrote that Beretta had the US Army’s contract to provide its M9 9mm service pistol as the sidearm for the troops. In fact, by then, Beretta had lost that contract, which it had had since 1985, to the Sig Sauer M17, a variant of its Model P320. I made the correction. Gun people were very precise in their firearms knowledge. For obvious reasons, you didn’t want to get on their bad side.

  Bill was also my silent partner in The Drunken Parrot. He could easily have retired on the book royalties, but he said that being a police reporter kept his head in the crime game, which informed his writing.

  As icing on my retirement cake, I was in a long-term relationship with a lovely and intelligent Cuban-American woman named Marisa Fernandez de Lopez. My wife, Claire, divorced me when I was a detective with a drinking problem. Or maybe a drinker with a detective problem. In those days, I would have divorced me too. Marisa was my second chance at having a significant romantic relationship. According to Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, as interpreted by the late, great Francis Albert Sinatra, “Love is lovelier the second time around.” I didn’t know about that, but I could say with certainty that it was better than dining alone.

  In summary: Retired in a warm climate, owned a bar, lived on a boat, had an amazing lady friend, was immortalized in crime fiction, and, despite being shot at more than once, still on the right side of the grass. Every morning, I looked at a rich man in my shaving mirror.

  However, there was one caveat. My previous life as a homicide detective had a certain edginess to it. I’d felt a rush of adrenaline in my bloodstream when I found myself in a situation where a positive outcome was not assured. To my surprise, I discovered that life in paradise could sometimes become a bit … boring. Which was why, now and then, I missed my old life, had twice agreed to consult with local police departments on homicide investigations, and why I decided to do it again.

  Now and then.

  That was the key.

  More often would have felt like work.

  2.

  God Has Left the Building

  I was scheduled to meet with Naples Police Chief Tom Sullivan in his office at eleven A.M. I had enough of getting up at zero-dark-thirty in the marines, and as a detective, so I always tried to not commit to anything more complicated than coffee and a shower before ten. The memory of my Parris Island drill instructor running into the squad bay at five A.M., banging two garbage can lids together, and shouting, “Okay scumbags, drop your cocks and grab your socks, the work day has begun!” was as fresh as a spring bouquet.

  I was awakened at seven thirty by the drumming of a hard rain on Phoenix’s metal roof. Soon, the rainy season would end, replaced by winter drought and brushfires. It’s always something. I noticed that my roommate, Joe, was also awake. He was a stray cat named after my brother, a Chicago fireman who’d been killed trying to save a little boy’s dog from a burning tenement. The dog survived.

  Joe the cat hopped aboard Phoenix one day four years ago while I was sitting on the deck, drinking a diet root beer and listening to a Tampa Bay Rays baseball game on the radio. He had the chewed ears and other battle scars of a street fighter. He stared at me, meowed, found a bit of shade, curled up, just like he owned the place, and went to sleep. We’ve been together ever since.

  I got out of bed, padded barefoot into the galley, followed by Joe, started the Mr. Coffee machine, put a strawberry Pop-Tart into the toaster, and opened a can of tuna for Joe. Then I picked up a FedEx box lying on the counter, found a red pen in a drawer, took out the manuscript of Bill Stevens’s new novel, Stoney’s Downfall, sat at the galley table, and began to read.

  I was confident that Jack Stoney would, in the end, avoid said downfall, because he needed to be around for Bill’s next book. Bill made his fictional detective taller, tougher, and a better marksman than I am. But I didn’t mind. The vagaries and doldrums of real life don’t sell books.

  Chapter One of Stoney’s Downfall began this way:

  Det. Lt. Jack Stoney sat with his feet up on his battered metal desk in the homicide squad room on a Monday morning, reading the Chicago Tribune, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup, and nibbling a powdered-sugar doughnut, the white residue snowing down onto his black shirt front.

  Sweet Jumpin’ Jesus, Stoney said to himself as he read a page-one story bylined Bill Stevens. More people were shot and wounded or killed in the city over the hot summer weekend than all last month in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. We should get combat pay on top of the chump-change salary the city gives us to risk our lives every friggin’ day, he reflected.

  It was common knowledge that a growing number of patrol officers wouldn’t even venture into certain neighborhoods on the South or West Sides of the city after dark, even in cruisers and wearing Kevlar vests, with shotguns and automatic rifles at the ready. Uparmored Humvees were what was needed, but there was no budget for that, Stoney knew, because the pols stole so much moola from the city coffers.

  He noticed the captain in charge of the Detective Division’s Homicide Section, a guy named Tony Bryce, come out of his office holding a black loose-leaf notebook and head toward his desk. It was never good news when the captain came toward you holding a murder book. Bryce wasn’t that bad of a guy, truth be told, but if he was going to give you a murder book to work it meant someone else had already fucked it up. A new assignment came verbally, with no paperwork started yet.

  “Sorry to interrupt you reading the comics pages, Jack, but I’ve got a matter needs your attention,” Bryce said.

  He d
ropped the loose-leaf notebook onto Stoney’s desk with a plop.

  “Haven’t gotten to the comics yet,” Stoney said. “Main news is funny enough, if you have a perverted sense of humor.”

  “Got that right,” Bryce said. “Anyhow, you’ve heard about that priest from Holy Innocents Parish who was killed last month.”

  “Yeah,” Stoney said. “He was an accused pedophile, found in the church rectory, cock cut off and stuffed into his mouth, premortem, they said, and shot in the heart.”

  “The irony that a pedophile priest headed up a parish named Holy Innocents not being lost on us,” Bryce commented.

  “I thought Kozlowski caught that case,” Stoney said, putting his feet down onto the floor.

  He looked around the squad room. Koz wasn’t there or Bryce would have called Stoney into his office and closed the door.

  “Stan was assigned to the case,” Bryce said. “Word just came down from on high that certain people have a problem with his investigation. Certain people including the mayor and the archbishop and, for all I know, the friggin’ Pope in Rome.”

  Stoney knew that Bryce hated face-to-face confrontations. He probably called Koz at home that morning and gave him the news that he was off the case. Maybe Koz was having breakfast at The Baby Doll Polka Lounge, a favorite cop hangout, his usual breakfast being Black Jack neat with a beer back.

  “Any suspects?” Stoney asked.

  Bruce tapped the murder book. “It’s all in here.”

  “Give me the executive summary.”

  “The leading suspect is a guy whose son was allegedly abused by Father Sean Ferguson.”

  “And the problem with that is?” Stoney asked.

  “Is that the suspect is a prominent businessman and major donor to the Democratic party. So the brass wants someone else to have done it, if at all possible.”

  I wasn’t surprised that Bill’s new story involved the sexual abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church worldwide. His sister’s son in Pittsburgh was one of the abuse victims. Bill told me about that during his last visit to Fort Myers Beach for some tarpon fishing. He said that, once the Pittsburgh priest was publicly identified, he would go there and kill him. Apparently by slicing off his dork, stuffing it into his pie hole, then shooting him in the ticker.

  But, of course, Bill would never actually do that. Instead, he got his revenge by writing a book about it. I didn’t know for certain if the pen was mightier than the pruning shears the killer used on Father Sean Ferguson’s ding-dong, but I hoped the book would help shine the purifying rays of sunlight onto a church that had lost its moral authority by betraying its flock over so many past decades.

  My family had always been steadfast Catholics, but I decided, after the first abuse scandal was uncovered by the Boston Globe, and more and more cases came to light, to never set foot in a church again, and I had not. You didn’t need to enter a building with an altar, rows of wooden pews, stained glass windows, and the aroma of burning incense wafting in the air to find God.

  Maybe, in at least some churches around the world, God, like Elvis, had left the building.

  Marisa attended Saint Leo’s every Sunday. “It’s my church too,” she once told me. “They can’t take it away from me.”

  Without her knowing, I checked out the parish priest, Father Rafael Sandoval. I found out that he was a retired Marine Corps chaplain. I went to the church and introduced myself.

  “Marisa has talked about you,” he said. “I completely understand why you don’t come here with her.”

  “I appreciate that, Father,” I said. “I own a bar called The Drunken Parrot. I invite you to worship there whenever the Spirit moves you.”

  After that conversation, the Spirit moved Father Sandoval every Sunday after his church services and whenever he wanted to watch a soccer game on our big-screen TVs. And sometimes when no game was on. On his first Sunday at the bar, I introduced him all around and Sam poured him a double shot of Jose Cuervo. He raised his glass in a toast: “May you be in Heaven half an hour before the Devil knows you’re dead.”

  A good sentiment indeed.

  3.

  The Case of the Dead Philanthropist

  The rain had stopped, replaced by bright sunlight in an azure sky. You don’t like the weather in the subtropics, just wait a moment. I drove from Fort Myers Beach to Naples. Police headquarters were located in a one-story stone building at 355 Riverside Circle. I’d been there many times during my earlier work with the Naples Police Department, under a previous chief, Wade Hansen, who was now the mayor.

  The grounds were nicely landscaped with trees, bushes, and flowers whose names Marisa knew. I’m not suggesting that real men didn’t know botany, I’m just saying that I did not. But ask me anything about firearms, classic cars, major league baseball, or the precise ingredients of a Chicago-style hot dog, and I’m your guy.

  I pulled into the parking lot and waited for the song playing on my car sound system to end. The song was Nelson Riddle’s “Theme from Route 66,” Route 66 being a classic TV series of the early 1960s, which I watched on a cable channel featuring old programs. For me, the star of the show was not Martin Milner as Tod Stiles or George Maharis as Buz Murdock—why no second “d” on Tod and second “z “on Buz I never knew—it was the car they drove along the fabled highway, a sweet Corvette like mine.

  When the song ended, I killed the engine, got out, walked through the front entrance doors of the HQ building, and into a large, circular lobby. I approached a female civilian receptionist seated behind a glass partition. She said, through an amplified round metal porthole, “Good morning, sir, how may I help you?”

  At my old precinct house in Chicago, you were greeted by a grizzled, cigar-chomping desk sergeant named Howard Steinhouse who was protected, not by bulletproof glass, but by the .45-caliber Smith & Wesson on his hip, and who would just as soon shoot you as help you if he didn’t like your looks. I’m certain he kept our caseload down.

  “I’m Jack Starkey,” I told the young woman, who looked to be not long out of high school. “I have an appointment with Chief Sullivan.”

  She said, “His office is through those doors. You’ll see a sign. And you have a nice day, sir.”

  I smiled and said, “You have a nice day too.” I didn’t tell her that I was there to help solve a murder because I didn’t want to rain upon her nice day. In my experience, civilians don’t think that a murder investigation is as exciting as I do.

  I went through the doors as instructed and followed the sign down the hallway to the left, and came to a door labeled “Office of Police Chief Thomas Sullivan.” I walked into the reception area where another young woman, this one wearing a police uniform, was seated behind a desk. There was a red leather sofa, matching side chairs, a glass coffee table, and oil paintings of tropical scenes on the walls. The coffee table held copies of old magazines like Sports Illustrated, Field & Stream, and Guns & Ammo. That reminded me of the old-time barbershop I went to in Fort Myers Beach where haircuts were fifteen bucks and you could smoke a cigar if you had a mind to.

  I’d dressed for the occasion in a blue blazer over a white oxford-cloth shirt with a button-down collar, open at the neck, khaki slacks, and black loafers. My usual workday attire being a tee shirt, jeans, and running shoes. Someone’s going to cut you a paycheck, you dress up.

  During my first visit to Naples, to dine at one of the city’s fancy-schmantzy restaurants with Marisa, I felt a bit self-conscious, a fish out of water, a kid from Wrigleyville among the swells. Maybe the maître d’ would look me over and say, with a sneer, “Deliveries to the rear.” But he didn’t. Maybe he thought I was the lovely and elegant Marisa’s bodyguard. She certainly had a body worth guarding.

  “Chief Sullivan is expecting you, Mr. Starkey,” the receptionist said, before I could tell her my name. Either she was a psychic, or the woman downstairs had alerted her. I hoped it was the latter, because, if she could read my thoughts, she would know I was thinking th
at no other cop I’d come across filled out a uniform like she did. Inappropriate, perhaps, but, as Brother Timothy, one of my Loyola University professors, used to tell us, a man can’t control his thoughts, only his deeds. Marisa and I had an exclusive relationship, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t cast an appreciative eye upon those shirtless spring break college boys with six-pack abs frolicking on the sand. Or that I didn’t notice the girls in string bikinis playing beach volleyball. No harm, no foul.

  “I’ll show you to Chief Sullivan’s office,” Officer Knockout told me, and I followed her down a hallway and into a large corner office with an open door.

  “Chief, this is Mr. Starkey,” she said to a man seated behind a desk.

  “Thank you, Cathy,” Tom Sullivan said as he stood and walked around the desk toward me.

  He was about forty-five, tall, with short brown hair, a neatly trimmed mustache, and the lean build of an athlete who’d stayed in shape. He was wearing a uniform consisting of a crisp white shirt with a gold badge, dark blue pants, and black shoes polished to a high shine. I knew from Googling him that he’d graduated from West Point, served as an army infantry officer, and then did twenty years with the Philadelphia Police Department before taking the Naples job. A man, clearly, of discipline and competence. I assumed that he’d Googled me, too, and knew that I’d played baseball at Loyola, served six years as a Marine Corps officer, and then fourteen years with the Chicago PD.

  Two old soldiers with a murder to solve. As one of my Chicago colleagues used to say, “That’s about as much fun as you can have with your clothes on.”