“He’s an Islanders fan. Bragged he had his boss’s seats. He’s a gamer. I am, too, so once in a while he drops by; we play World of Warcraft. I never heard him mention a book, music, politics, church or state, you know? That’s all superficial. You want me to go deeper?”
“Ronald’s missing. Go deep,” I say.
“Okay. At first, I thought the guy had no qualities. He was a cliché. White male Long Island kid, finished high school, had a little community college, didn’t like school and school didn’t like him, lucky to have a pretty good job, loves his car, his work buddies, his Islanders, and his wife in that order. You know? At a certain point, I assumed one of two things would happen: his wife would get pregnant and he would grow up or she would leave him. But now I think it’s more complicated. You know?”
I wouldn’t want this guy to be my adjunct professor of anything. I decide to go crude. “Tell me, Brian, were you fucking Susan?”
It works. Brian blushes around the edges of his beard. He’s smart enough to take his time to plan his next steps. It may not be the truth, whatever it is. “Look, we got into a friendly thing. If I had to fix something in the apartment, she’d make me a cup of coffee, we’d talk. She told fascinating stories. Did I tell you she was from Alaska? For me, it was exotic, you know? Windswept villages, dark days, long nights, people freezing to death on their way home from the supermarket, polar bears eating your garbage. Then one night when Ronald was at a hockey game she came down to my place and we smoked some weed. Oops.”
Brian looks at me to see if I am going to arrest him for confessing to using marijuana. I ignore the misdemeanor. He continues, “Ronald had seats behind the Rangers goal, so we could see him on TV. It was safe; we knew where he would be for the next three hours. She felt guilty afterward, swore it would never happen again. But it did. I had the feeling she was so insecure that she thought sex was the only thing that would keep me interested in her, you know?”
“Was it?”
“No, there were other things. Like I said, she was exotic.”
I didn’t hear Brian mention love or affection, so I guess he’s happy to go along with her insecurity as part of the deal. Prick.
“Did they fight?”
“She told me they did. You mean did I hear them? I couldn’t if they did. I’m too far away, you know?”
“What else did she tell you about the marriage?”
Brian strokes his beard. He thinks I believe he is thinking.
“That was about it.”
I ask him to make a copy of their rental agreement and give me a list of the names of their neighbors who live in units next to them. What did I know so far, you know? Ronald and Susan had a lousy marriage. No, Ronald had a good marriage; Susan had a lousy one. Do I care? Ronald’s Mustang is in his parking spot in the garage. Actually, this is a bad sign. He’s missing, his car isn’t. I peek in the windows—spotless inside—inspect the tires—October in Queens means fallen leaves everywhere: his are clean; Ronald hasn’t driven recently.
The Bermans’ apartment on the right and Dixons’ on the left aren’t answering, so I knock on the floor directly below. An Indian woman in a sari cracks the door open to the chain’s length. She tells me I’d have to wait for her husband to come home from work. I can hear children behind her. I say I will return. I explore the ravine. There are no dead bodies.
On the way to my car, I think about Brian and his basket of lies.
Chapter 4
Lieutenant Lily Hagen stops at my desk. I give her an update on my two active cases: the missing Ronald Steevers and the forgetful potential murderer, Mr. McDermott. I tell her I am looking for his photograph. She is interested in Mr. and Mrs. Steevers and their missing son. McDermott is not worth the effort, and it’s not an appropriate time to mention Artie the TV weatherman and the case of his son’s missing cat.
Lily Hagen rose to lieutenant and chief of detectives the hard way, before enlightened promotion, diversity programs, or hiring quotas. She didn’t get the benefits of Title 1, or Gloria Allred filing sexual discrimination lawsuits on her behalf. She endured the jokes, slurs, misogyny, and occasional “good-natured” groping from her fellow male officers as a beat cop, or as a partner in a patrol car. A couple of times, it almost cost her her life when backup didn’t arrive. She’s a gym rat. I once worked out next to her and marveled at her strength, but we both knew her body was where it was and would stay that way. She has a husband who works in Weights and Measures for the city, a married daughter in Virginia. The only other thing I know about her is she’s sixty-one years old. She will retire in four years at her present rank and won’t go any higher. She is aware that every woman who joined the force after she did has had it easier. Sometimes with women police officers, this knowledge results in solidarity, sometimes resentment. In her case, it was the latter.
“I worked on feeling charitable, Nina, I really did, but it just wasn’t in my bones. I think of all the shit I had to go through and how you women who come in today have it easy.”
“Easier,” I say. “I haven’t seen any copies of Ms. in the duty room.”
She laughs.
Lieutenant Hagen is called unkind. Behind her back, some women officers refer to her as the Clarence Thomas of the Long Island City Police Department. It’s a lousy rap. She fought battles, toughed it out, and made enemies along the way. Over get-to-know-you drinks, she asked me, “Why did you become a cop, Karim?”
“TV shows. Columbo, Charlie’s Angels, Baretta—Police Woman was my favorite. I loved seeing Angie Dickinson kick ass when I was a little kid.”
“Reruns. You weren’t born when it aired.”
“Yes, reruns.”
She downed the last of her Chablis. “Police Woman. I used to get shit for drinking white wine.”
The thing I like most about Lieutenant Hagen is that she keeps a framed embroidery on the wall behind her office chair. In the style of American Dutch Folk Art, a tulip border encircles the words: your job is to arrest, not punish.
Driving to Home Depot on Queens Boulevard, I make a mental list of the items I need for my apartment. Any time I can combine police work with shopping is a bonus. I imagine a new washer/dryer combo, but that isn’t going to happen. Home Depot isn’t like Costco, where I come home with enough pasta, Tylenol, and toothpaste to last the rest of my life. Home Depot is about fixing, improving, adding, growing plants, and buying lawn mowers. I find the paint department, wander around, and try to consider who is likely to be Ronald’s boss.
Owen Kunkle—it says so on his name tag—is at the paint counter. He’s got a big smile, bright blue eyes, blond whitish hair on a big frame. When he says, “Now, how can I help you?” I know he means it. He will be my friend. I open the Behr color sample booklet, where my police ID rests in the outdoor section. Owen nods, comes out from behind the counter, and leads me away to a wall of outdoor paint cans.
“How can I help?”
“I’m looking for Ronald Steevers.”
Owen takes a deep breath. “Well, since he hasn’t come to work for the past week, I assume he’s quit. Of course, he didn’t call in.”
Owen doesn’t seem worried about Ronald.
“Were you friends?”
“I wasn’t a fan of the man, and if he doesn’t ever come back it’s just fine with me, and probably with some other people I could mention.”
“Your fellow workers, or customers?”
“Workers. Before Ronald got here, Al Eidelman was running the paint department with a simply marvelous crew. We were loyal and dedicated, and there wasn’t a color we couldn’t match. Word got out to the design community. You wouldn’t believe it, but we had big-name decorators coming in for paint. Al not only believed in diversity, but he practiced it. Our team was like the UN: Korean, Sikh, Afro-American, Israeli, Syrian, moi: your basic Midwest, apple-cheeked, farm-raised frustrated artist.”
He straightens a stack of eggshell-white gallon cans. “To cut to the chase: Steevers thought w
e were a bunch of freaks. Before we knew it, Al was transferred to ladders, Passionara to aluminum, Danielle to power tools, Yossef and Ahmed to lumber, and yours truly in Mr. Asshole’s face saying, Take this paint and shove it. Not really, but I wanted to. Hey, I mean no disrespect; once a cop, always a cop.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Ronald was a cop before he came to Home Depot. You didn’t know that?”
It is a question whose answer I am supposed to pretend to know. I prefer honest ignorance.
“No, I didn’t. What do you mean, ‘once a cop’?”
“Look, it’s a question of authority, isn’t it? Ronald was the boss. Okay, we all got it, but we’re not the Marine Corps—we’re selling paint; we all work together to make the customer happy. Ronald saw it as we all work together to make him happy. He used to say that about his wife. It was her job to make him happy. He talked about her dedication, how she had her duties, how she went out of her way to please him. She knew her place, and he used the s word.”
I was thinking suck.
“Serve.”
“No.” I’m shocked.
“It was clear he expected all of us to do the same, especially the women in the department. He never came out and said those words—hello, HR—but he conveyed it, and we got it. We decided the best policy was to just keep our distance. You learned not to argue with Ronald. You know, once a cop . . .”
Chapter 5
At headquarters, Mr. McDermott is waiting for me outside my cubicle. I show him the photograph of the people at the crime scene in Lefrak City. He adjusts his glasses, studies the picture until he picks himself out of the crowd.
“You probably want to know what I’m doing there.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I live across the street. I was coming home and saw the commotion. I stopped to look.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Do you have travel plans?”
“No.”
I ask Mr. McDermott if he would mind giving us his fingerprints and a swab of DNA, and telling me where he was on the night of the murder. He is so eager to help and find out if he did kill Ms. Hwang that he offers to throw in a sperm sample. A week later, I give him the bad news; all the tests indicate he’s not the killer. His alibi of dining at Orso in Manhattan followed by a performance of The Book of Mormon also checked out.
“Frankly, I’m glad I didn’t kill Ms. Hwang, but it does look like something I could have done.”
“Mr. McDermott, you will need more evidence in hand if you want to confess to murder. Anyway, I’m very busy looking for a missing cat.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Sometimes it is better to sound crazy when talking to the crazy. It puts us on a level playing field. McDermott promises not to bother me unless he has better evidence with which to incriminate himself. He leaves. Something he could have done? The hell with Lieutenant Hagen, I’m staying with McDermott.
Finding out where Ronald worked in law enforcement involved a phone call to Home Depot human resources asking them to send a fax of his employment application. Answer: Farmingdale, New York. It is an interesting question as to why his parents didn’t mention that Ronald did a four-year stint with the Farmingdale police force. Finding out why he wasn’t working there anymore presented problems. Four years in, Ronald had to have been making more than he could at Home Depot. It didn’t make sense as a career move, so it was a good bet that the Farmingdale Police Department asked Ronald to leave. There was nothing in Ronald’s personnel file that explained why he’d left; it was just noted on his work history, along with graduation from Flushing High School, one semester at Queens Community College (you were correct, Brian Robbins of Sunny Gardens Apartments), then four years in the Farmingdale Police, two years at Home Depot in Scarsdale, a town next to New Rochelle, then a transfer to Home Depot in Long Island City, where he was put in charge of the paint department and made Owen Kunkle’s life miserable. I knew the Farmingdale Police Department would be reluctant to release personnel files. Getting dirt on a cop these days is tricky. On the other hand, I might get lucky. Ronald may have made an enemy who hated him enough to tell me. I ask around the station, but no one knows anybody at Farmingdale, so it will be a cold call. On my way back, I can drop in on Ronald’s parents.
Farmingdale’s station house is suburban, freshly painted. Inside, at the desk, I show my badge to a bored clerk who sighs on every third exhale. I tell him I am on a missing persons assignment regarding a former police officer, Ronald Steevers. He doesn’t react to the name, makes a call upstairs, repeats what I told him. He listens, then gestures to a volunteer cadet, a high school boy in an ill-fitting uniform playing Fortnite on his phone. The cadet springs to attention, suppressing the urge to salute. He reminds me of my brother, Sammy.
“Take her up to Sergeant Dickens,” the clerk says.
I follow the cadet up the stairs, into an interrogation room. Metal desk, two chairs facing each other, one bolted to the floor. The cadet tells me someone will be with me in a minute and closes the door behind him. Like waiting for a doctor in an examining room, it’s an excellent time to check emails, send texts, and steal bandages and Q-tips. In this interrogation room, there is nothing to steal or read. I take out my phone and pass the time with Jane Gardam’s Old Filth, my novel of the moment, a memory of a life in Colonial Hong Kong. It is far away and exotic enough to disconnect me from any of my memories. I’ve managed two pages when Sergeant Dickens enters. She’s a big redhead in her forties, taller than me when I stand, which makes her almost six feet. I get a firm handshake, a wide smile.
“I’m sorry we have to talk here. I’ll take the perp chair.”
This is generous of her. She slips into the chair bolted to the floor. “At least we can smoke.”
I know this. An interrogator can get a lot of information from a suspect with the offer of a cigarette, or by withholding one. She offers me one. I accept; it is the polite thing to do.
“I try to quit, but every time I do, I gain ten pounds,” she says as she lights me up.
I pass her my ID. Sergeant Dickens glances at it, shakes her head.
“You said Ronald Steevers. What did that asshole do now?”
This is turning out to be better than I expected.
“He’s missing. As in didn’t show up for his parents’ Sunday dinner or for work. I’m mostly interested because his wife isn’t around, either. Three scenarios: he killed her, she killed him, or they won the lottery and went to Miami.”
Sergeant Dickens takes a long drag on her cigarette.
“I really can’t tell you anything except good riddance. To Ronald, I mean.”
She shrugs.
“One last thing,” I say.
“Sure.”
“How’s your retirement package?”
“Terrific. If Ronald hadn’t been fired for beating up his wife, he might have been around to collect it.”
Chapter 6
A phone call comes out of the blue from Ernie Saldana in Maui, and it brings back memories of blue skies, ocean, and towels from the Kapalua Beach Motel where we spent family Christmas vacations. There is the first memory of my brother and me getting out of the rental car, staring in horror at the one-story wooden 1950s U-shaped building peeking out from tumbling red bougainvillea. We begged our parents to leave this icky resort and take us to a shining white hotel on Kapalua Beach—one with waterslides, shopping malls, movie theaters, and beach towels. As we walked to the front office on an AstroTurf path lined with drooping birds of paradise and blue ginger plants, my father said, “We chose this motel because it’s inexpensive.”
Our mother added, “The money we save, we can spend on fancy restaurants and Hawaiian shirts.”
“A bed is a bed,” my father said. “Do we care about an ocean view from thirty stories up?”
“Or a huge TV we won’t watch?”
Entering the office, I knew we didn’t have a chance. I elbo
wed Sammy.
“Can we buy souvenirs?” Sammy asked my father.
“Of course, my darlings. We’ll fill our suitcases with fake spears, puka-shell necklaces, tiki tumblers, and polished driftwood.”
“Deal,” Sammy said.
“Deal,” I said.
A bulging rack of brochures next to the reception desk advertised scuba lessons, hot-air balloon rides, sunset cruises, helicopter rides, luaus, river raft trips, volcano expeditions, and an adventure through a pineapple plantation on an antique train.
Mom said, “It’s like a menu from Hop Sing’s. Everybody gets to pick a dish.”
I chose a sunset luau with fire dancers; my brother picked scuba lessons and swimming with sea turtles. Mom said she just wanted to sit in a beach chair and read Tolstoy. My father’s choice was dinner at Roy’s restaurant in Kaanapali. We ate dragon rolls, short ribs, and blackened ahi tuna. I still remember the sweet-and-sour honey taste of the ribs but for the life of me can’t remember what a dragon roll is.
Days were spent on the beach, swimming in the warm Pacific, snorkeling, eating poke lunches we bought in Lahaina. In the evening, we went to movies and scoured the souvenir shops in the Kaanapali mall. I still have my wind-up hula dancer. Sammy smashed his shell collection in one of his meltdowns, and I never had a chance to ask my mother if she finished Anna Karenina.
For my father, one of the pleasures of the Kapalua Beach Motel was getting to know Ernie Saldana, the man who called me out of the blue to tell me I was a giant step closer to changing my life. Ernie was a retired police officer from Los Angeles, vague on details of his rank or experience—“Let’s just say I did stuff,” he told me later when I pressed him for details. Later, when I was a cop, I assumed he was in internal affairs, connected to the Rampart corruption scandal of the late 1990s that began when an officer was caught stealing cocaine from a department property room. The following investigation uncovered crimes by LAPD officers, including the framing of suspects and connections to violent street gangs. If Ernie Saldana had a hand in sending any of those cops to prison, he wouldn’t be eager to talk about it.
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