‘But he retired in March 2003,’ Miller said.
‘I know when he retired. I had to sign his final release docket. But he wasn’t around for a while before that. I’d say a week, maybe ten days at the most after the King shooting, and then he was gone. Raised a few questions about him, where the fuck did he go, but I just got a polite word that suggested I stop asking after him, you know what I mean?’
‘From who? Who told you to stop asking?’
‘Chief of Police. Figure that’s where it came from ultimately, but it came through the lines. Sometimes you just get the message without someone being that fucking direct, you know?’
Miller didn’t know what to make of what he was hearing. Assumption right from the start had been that McCullough stayed with the Seventh until he retired. This suggested an entirely different agenda.
‘You say he came on loan from somewhere?’ Roth said.
‘Yes, he was replacement for someone we transferred. Back then we had a more understanding policy. Compassionate relocation, you ever heard of that?’
Roth and Miller shook their heads.
‘Meant that if your folks got sick or something, if you got married and your sweetheart wanted to be closer to her family, then you could apply for transfer to another precinct, even another county. Now they’re not so sympathetic. Now they tell you to deal with it or fuck off. Anyway, we had a guy we transferred out to Port Orchard as far as I can recall, and the guy we got in his place was McCullough. But even then, McCullough was not the guy we were supposed to get. Can’t remember the original guy’s name, Polish-sounding maybe, all Zs and Ks, but something happened with him and we got McCullough. Can’t remember where he came from. Think it might have been Vice, or Narco maybe. Good record, nothing too outstanding, straightforward kind of guy. Fitted right in, didn’t make any waves. Kept his arrest sheet up, made some half-way decent busts, and then he started bringing in some interesting traffic through this CI he’d cultivated.’ Young grimaced cheerfully. ‘You know the beat on this shit, right? Well, McCullough had a way with this Darryl King feller. Got us the largest coke snatch of the decade in September of that year. I remember it because it came about a week after 9/11, right before the precinct evaluation. Scored us some brownie points with the chief, you know? Everyone’s happy. Everyone’s dancing around making whoopee about this bust . . . better part of three kilos. Quite something.
‘Well, then the shit goes missing out of evidence lock-up. Just takes a walk right out of there, and the thing that surprised everybody was how un-pissed off McCullough was. He seemed to take the whole thing in his stride, said that we shouldn’t worry too much about it, that there’d be other busts, you know? IAD got in there, turned the place upside down, and then it just all went quiet again. Second strangest fucking thing I ever saw. Anyway we dropped the thing, didn’t ask any more questions, and then McCullough starts to be late. Starts to show up three hours off the schedule. All this kind of shit kicks off, and I’m having to pull him in and tell him what the fuck, you know? Make his life a misery to the degree that he’s making everyone else’s life a misery. Finally it comes down to business. I’m telling him he’s gonna have to shape up or ship out, and that’s when he tells me about this warehouse thing, about this crack-house gig he’s got set up with his CI. This thing sounds like the biggest thing since the French Connection. I get all excited like I’m gonna lose my cherry, and McCullough has everyone wound up like a clock spring for this bust. Of course, it all went to shit in the end . . .’
Young paused, breathed deeply for a moment. Roth started away from the bed toward him but Young raised his hand and backed him off. He reached down the side of his chair and pulled an oxygen mask up from nowhere. He clamped it over his face and sucked like crazy. He closed his eyes and seemed to settle down somewhat. A few more inhalations, and then he lowered the mask, hawked a mess of spit into the back of his throat and spat it into a pressed-cardboard kidney dish.
‘Excuse the melodrama,’ he said. His voice was raspy. It caught in the back of his throat. ‘Gonna die sooner or later, you know? Figure there’s some scenery left so I’m taking the long way round. Never fucking smoked, had a drink maybe five, ten times a year. Did my job, stayed faithful to my wife, raised my kids good, ’cept one of them turned out to be a faggot, for God’s sake . . . do everything right ninety percent of the time and this is what I get.’ He raised the mask and breathed deeply once more, and then he looked back at Miller and Roth.
‘I was a precinct captain . . . I had the politics and protocol, I had funerals of Killed In Actions, I had overtime budgets and IAD all over the place, all the shit that goes with that neighborhood. I sent a guy out to Port Orchard, I get this McCullough in exchange. He makes some noise, some black CI gets killed, the bust goes to hell, it’s all over within a handful of days. Things moved so fast down there, you know? Even when the shit hit the fan there was very little of it that stuck to the blades, know what I mean?’
Miller nodded.
‘So what you got?’ Young asked.
‘We have a lot of questions about a lot of people,’ Roth replied. ‘Seems every victim was screened as a government employee.’
Young smiled. ‘You don’t say?’
‘We don’t have an explanation for that,’ Roth said. ‘And McCullough doesn’t appear on that system, and there’s no record of where he went after he resigned, and even his pension goes to a bank account that never received the money.’
‘A ghost you have then,’ Young replied. ‘You think he was federal?’
‘We don’t know. Line we’re looking at is whether or not the victims were witness protection, and whoever is killing them—’
‘That was my thought,’ Young cut in. ‘Witness protection people are screened through that same system as far as I know. Whatever the fuck anyone tells you about that program, their names and addresses, their pictures, their aliases, all that shit is kept on files which you can access in most police precincts. Witness protection isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’
Roth leaned forward. ‘And then there’s John Robey,’ he said quietly, and he glanced at Miller, and the mere fact that Miller didn’t look back at him disapprovingly, the fact that Miller kept looking right at Young to gauge his reaction to the name, told Roth that Miller was interested in anything that Young might be able to help them with.
‘Who?’ Young asked.
‘John Robey,’ Miller repeated. ‘He’s a guy we’ve got floating around the edges of this thing.’
‘Tell me,’ Young said. ‘Tell me who this guy is.’
Miller leaned back in his chair. He started talking - went right back to Natasha Joyce, the fact that someone went to the projects with Catherine Sheridan to see Darryl King, that Robey had been identified from the photographs beneath Sheridan’s bed, all the way to the last discussion about Nicaragua in Robey’s apartment, the connection to the newspaper clipping beneath the mattress . . .
Young was silent for some time. The only sound in the room was the strain of his breathing. After a few minutes he reached for his oxygen mask again and inhaled deeply. He closed his eyes and leaned back. For a moment Miller thought he might have drifted off.
‘Special Forces,’ Young said eventually. ‘Special Forces or Delta maybe. Ex-military. These guys are all for hire for the best price. Some of them lose it, you know? They become mercenaries, hired guns. Some of the worst messes we ever got into as a country have been started by people like this. The thing with Bush Senior and Noriega. He put that asshole in power back whenever, and as soon as Noriega started unloading too much coke Bush sends in the gunships. They had a crew of ex-Delta and Special Forces in Old Town, hooked them up with the anti-Noriega rebels, and what the fuck happens? The gunships bomb the wrong target, blow the hell out of everyone down there so there’s no-one on the ground to back up the incoming troops. Those kind of people do this kind of work.’ Young breathed deeply; his eyes rolled backward as if he was truly exhausted.
Eventually he looked up, anemically pale, his eyes clouded over, spittle covering his chin. ‘Seems to me you have a bigger mess than I imagined, detectives. Looks like you have someone out there disconnecting people from something. Has to be a link between the victims. Maybe not the black woman, I don’t know. Maybe she got herself killed because someone thought it made sense to tidy up the playing field. But these others? All of them have questions about their respective identities. Too many coincidences, but hell, I’m telling you something you already know.’
Miller nodded in affirmation.
‘Dangerous fucking ground you’re walking on,’ Young said. ‘Chasing ghosts over thin ice, right?’
‘I don’t understand what we have—’ Miller started.
‘Want my advice?’ Young asked. ‘Hell, for what it’s worth, my advice is stick with what you have, not what you don’t have. You like this guy Robey for this thing?’
‘For something, yes. I don’t know that he’s the one.’
‘Well, he’s a name. He’s a face. He’s someone right there in front of you. The victims . . . well, they’re victims, right? They’re not gonna tell you anything they haven’t already. And McCullough? He’s somewhere, God only knows where, but you don’t have him right now. You have John Robey. At least he’s talking to you. He might not be saying a helluva lot, but at least he’s saying something. Work that line, that’s my advice to you. Work on Robey and see what he gives you.’
Miller looked away. He wanted to tell Young about the hairbrush, could feel it right there in his jacket pocket, wondered what he’d have done had he been alone with the man. But he could not. He would not have known what to say. The position he had created for himself was untenable, almost unbearable, and he hoped like hell that Robey would let him back into his apartment, if only to give him a chance to return the thing.
Roth glanced at his watch. ‘He’ll be out of school in a little while,’ he said.
Miller rose from his chair. At once he saw something in Young’s expression - perhaps some relief that they were leaving, a chance to rest, to recover something of the strength he had expended - but also a feeling of loss.
Miller did not embarrass Young by trying to shake hands, but merely stepped forward and gripped the man’s shoulder firmly. ‘You have helped us a great deal,’ he said. ‘I’ll come let you know what happens.’
‘Before I read it in the funny papers, right?’ Young said. He tried a smile, but he was too fatigued.
Before they left the facility they thanked Carol Inchman for her help, told her that Young had been of great assistance.
‘Don’t think he’ll be around for much longer,’ she said. ‘Hell of a thing, a man like that. He lost his wife a few years ago, and—’ She shook her head. ‘You don’t want to hear this, and I shouldn’t really be telling you.’
Miller extended his hand. ‘We have to go,’ he said, his voice sympathetic. ‘We have to catch up with someone before they disappear.’
Carol Inchman shook hands with Miller, with Roth also, and then returned to her office.
Neither detective spoke until they reached the car. Then Miller said, ‘Back to the college. See if we can’t get there before he leaves for the day.’
I
nevitability
.
I’ll tell you about inevitability.
Death and taxes, right? They’re inevitable.
Tell you what else is inevitable. Love, that’s what. Inevitable like gravity.
Taxes you can avoid. People cheat death, or at least postpone it. You read that in newspaper headlines. Man Cheats Death kind of thing, you know?
But show me someone who’s never loved anyone.
I’m not talking about lust. Not talking about wanting to be with someone so bad it hurts. Not talking about fraternal, maternal, paternal, avuncular. Not about adoring someone, or worshipping, or caring for someone more than anyone you’ve ever cared for before . . .
I’m talking about love.
Love so strong you can’t see it, feel it, touch it, taste it; can’t hear it, can’t speak it, can’t define or describe or detail or delineate; cannot explain or rationalize or justify or reason it all out over a glass of bourbon and a pack of Luckies . . .
Love so strong you don’t really know how hard it’s holding you until you try to move . . . And you find you can’t.
You’re stuck tight, and you realize that what you’re experiencing is something that’s as much a part of you as anything you ever believed was your own.
It is you. You are it.
And you’re done for.
It’s something you feel for so long, and you feel it is so much a part of you, that whatever happens, whatever the person you love might do, you’d consider it inhuman not to go on loving them for ever.
That’s love . . . what I felt for Catherine Sheridan.
And something else that’s inevitable? That Robert Miller will
find me. He’ll find me because I want him to. Because we finally concluded that this thing had to end.
I recall Don Carvalho, the question I wanted to ask so many years before. I can see him sitting there in front of me, see the expression on his face, the quizzical light in his eyes.
‘You have a question? You want to ask me if there was someone within the United States Intelligence community who organized, orchestrated, paid for, or in some way contributed directly or indirectly to the attempt to kill President Reagan?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re not going to tell me that that sort of thing really happens, are you?’
Carvalho smiled. ‘Kennedy?’ he said. ‘Both Kennedys, Martin Luther King - even Nixon was assassinated in his own special way.’
I said nothing. I knew, but I did not want to know.