I looked and looked. It was interesting to see the faces come into focus. They had expressions now, and they were all so young, but no, I did not see the hard blond I had met in the baby-faced brunette with bangs down to her eyebrows.
“She told me herself she was never even in the neighborhood.”
“Yeah? I knew her face from seeing her make the rounds with her father a few times.” He gave me an impatient look.
“Use your head! With all those wild young kids in the neighborhood? Think she could stay away? Like bees to honey. Or flies to garbage, in this case. Cops were watching some of those houses, very suspicious, but I don’t recall if they ever got the goods on any of them.”
“Did you dislike all of them? Landlords and tenants?”
He looked surprised. “Not my job to dislike them, or like them either. It was my job to question all of them all the time.”
“Like a cop.”
“Nope, like a reporter. The truth is I did not like
this
landlord or
these
tenants. They deserved each other. So I had an opinion. So sue me.”
I didn’t really want to pursue the issue of unbiased reporting. I had other things on my mind. “She was lying to me.” I added, recalling the scene, “Lying to her mother too, I think.”
“Put it like this. One time I saw her, before the father died, and she was hanging out on the street corner, smoking—and not cigarettes—and dressed in crazy looking clothes, like some gypsy. Next time, a few years later, there she was in a press conference, talking up a company project, dressed in a tough business suit and slick as her nail polish.”
A few yards away, a different group of tiny day campers, this time in red t-shirts, had boarded the carousel. It spun in a brilliant blur of color, music, and delighted screams.
I sat for a minute trying to take in Leary’s opinions and wondering if they even added up to anything. Then something else he said kicked in.
“Cops. You said cops watched these houses and you said you worked with them on some of the missing children cases? Do you remember any of them?”
He shook his head. “Street cops? After thirty years? No way. The captain I do remember, he’s long gone.”
“I have a couple of cops in photos. How about we use the glass on them too?”
I flipped pages until I found the party and the officers clowning around.
He looked but finally said, “Young cops all look the same to me. Like babies. And I’m tired.” He went on. “I haven’t been sleeping much. Those calls I get? They come at night, making threats.”
“What do you mean, threats?” I looked at him and he did look exhausted. “That’s not right. What are you doing about this? Have you reported it to the police?”
He shrugged. “Naah. I don’t pay attention to what they say. Idiots. There’s not much to do anyway. Probably some smartass kids in my building. I don’t like them and they don’t like me.”
I tried to argue, to tell him to be careful, but he said, “Not your concern, and don’t even think about trying to baby me. I’m old but I’m not stupid. I’ve been harassed by scarier people than those idiots!”
His words were fierce, but his voice was slurring again, and the shadow under his eyes seemed to be going from bluish to purple. It was time to get him home.
After he was settled back in his place, and had a snack, he seemed a little better, and insisted he didn’t need any help from me. I asked if I could take one last look at the photos with his powerful glass, and he waved a yes. He seemed to be falling asleep.
So I finally saw that the dolls were bigger than Barbies and had long hair, and the teenage boys were wearing shirts that said Bishop Loughran Wrestling. That is, the ones that were not wearing shirts that said “Amazing Mets.” I saw that the Virgin Mary had pink roses. The cops were clowning, and the drinks were Miller’s while they were on duty! Then I almost dropped both the book and the glass.
One of the cops was Rick. There could be no doubt about it. It was the same face I had seen a few days ago in his graduation picture. My mind stopped and then a thought slowly rose to the surface. I could not leave the questions alone after all, no matter what the detectives said. They kept coming back to find me.
My startled exclamation did not wake Leary, and I could not bring myself to shake that ill old man awake and ask him any of the questions that flooded into my mind. I gathered up my things as quietly as possible and fled. Then I collapsed in the privacy of my car, unable to move, trying to make some sense of what I had learned. And I couldn’t.
How could it be that Rick once worked in my neighborhood? That he knew my street, my block, and my house? Well, at least, the house next door. And he never said one word to me about it. When he had tried arguing me out of buying the house, he hadn’t said a word. His arguments were exactly the same as my parents, my in-laws, and my friends. It was too old, needed too much work, the neighborhood was questionable, why didn’t I want a nice suburban ranch. His never said, “I know what I’m talking about.”
Maybe it was merely chance that he was there the day of the party, I told myself. It was a temporary assignment and he had forgotten it over all the years since. Oh, sure. Even I couldn’t believe that, much as I would have liked to. Was it a tough period in his own life, or an unhappy assignment, and he never wanted to talk about it? Or even remember it? That seemed somewhat more possible.
Actually, I wanted to call him and yell at him until he came up with an explanation. He could not give me one now, but I owed it to him and to myself to find it anyway, to figure out what happened.
I needed to remember the real Rick, whoever that was. I felt like I haven’t known my dad for the last few years. Chris was changing by the day. I was never sure who the real Chris was anymore, and that made me feel I didn’t know how to be the real me with her. I could not accept that Rick, too, was a stranger.
I sat there, immobilized both physically and mentally, until an impatient motorist seeking a parking space started honking his horn at me. He saw I was in the driver’s seat and was saying, “Get a move on.”
I couldn’t wait to get home. My own life felt completely off-center, more senseless by the moment, but my block, my place, looked reassuringly, almost bizarrely normal. There was the regular UPS man, ringing my neighbor’s doorbell. Down the block, there was the flower lady, watering her exquisite patch of front garden. There was a plumber’s van, double-parked. A mom walked up the street pushing a stroller and singing with her toddler. Sesame Street.
Between my too-early, too-exciting visit to Wanda in the morning, and my visit to Leary just now, I felt as if I had been running all over creation and learning too much, and it had all begun way too early. All I wanted now was to get out of the car and into my own house, ripped up though it was. All I wanted was to stop thinking and stop moving. How quickly could I lose myself in a nap?
When I entered my house, I heard a faint hum coming from my kitchen. I had a working refrigerator. I opened its door and a delightful blast of cool air hit me. Someone had kindly added a few beers and iced tea. I suspected Joe, with gratitude. I fell asleep on the sofa, not waking until the phone rang.
“How come I only hear about your life from Chris?”
“Dad?”
“Yeah, it’s your old man. You doing all right?”
“Sure I am.” Not really. “Taking care of Rick’s business.” Also not really.
“Dad. I want to know more about Rick. Did he ever work where I live now? Way back when?”
“I’ve got no idea. Ideas. Idee.” His words were slurred. “He worked lots of places. I probly only ‘member the long time ones.”
“Oh, dad, would you please try?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll try. Give me a little time, OK?”
“And Rick and you? What’s the history there?”
“Yah, Rick and me. Lifelong friends.”
“Dad!”
“Oh, all right. So we moved in other directions later in our lives. You could say we didn’t like each other’s friends so mush. Much! That’s all I’ve got for you. It didn’t mean we stopped being friends. You let me know when the funeral will be and I’ll be home, if they let me out of here. Ah, cancel that. I’ll come, no matter what. Sign myself out if need be.”
That caught my half-awake mind. “Dad, how are you doing?”
“So-so. Ya know, I don’t get much rest here. They’ve got me up going to physical therapy and tests and what not all day long.”
“Bet you can’t smoke, either.”
“Can’t smoke.” He almost shouted it. “Can’t drink.” He sounded mentally off, he was mumbling. And he wasn’t bossing me around.
“Dad, are you on painkillers?”
“You betcha. Got a nice legal buzz on. Let’s see. I had a thought about Rick. He had a kind of girlfriend name of Wanda. Maybe you should give her a call.”
“I did. I even met her.”
“You know her too? What a small world, isn’t it?” Oh, yes, he was definitely on painkillers.
“But now I’ve got someone young here. She’s pretty cute too. She says I have to go do something. Oh yeah, there’s another little procedure today, toots, got to run. Yeah, talk to Wanda. She’s smarter than she looks. Gotta go.”
Why had he called? Even considering the fact that he was high as a kite, he didn’t have anything to say. I had the uncomfortable idea that maybe it was for the same reason I had tried to call Chris yesterday. He needed me. He needed to hear my voice and know I was all right. Even if I wasn’t.
It didn’t sound like my tough-guy father.
He got me thinking again about Wanda. He knew Wanda? That needed some discussion, when he was able to really talk to me. Maybe I should follow his advice. I still had her cell phone number. Could she be in Montreal already, or was she still traveling and out of reach? Of course if she was thinking clearly she would not be answering, or would even have discarded the phone but she was pretty distracted when I met her. It was worth a try.
She answered on the second ring and then swore. She let loose with so many curses the air around the phone seemed to turn blue.
“I was supposed to get rid of this damn thing. I know better and Peter told me to but I was so flustered I forgot.”
She could still do it and then I would lose her. Could I keep her too distracted to do it right now?
“How was your trip?” I said in the friendliest of tones. “Is the weather pleasanter there than here in the city?”
“Trip wasn’t bad, all things considered. It’s Canada, nice and cool now. Freeze your ass in a few months.” She stopped. “Ah, shoot, now that you have me—I mean, now that I’m here —where I can breathe—nope, not saying where—you know, I’m thinking about Rick.” There was a long silence, when I thought she was gone, and then she said softly, “It hurts. Ya know?”
“I know. I can’t get my mind around it. I feel like maybe I never even knew him.”
“Sucks, don’t it?” she said. “Tell you what. Maybe last thing I ever do for that old bastard. There were some guys whose names I know. His cop friends, not his high rolling friends. Maybe you wanna to talk to them?”
“Maybe? Maybe???”
“Meaning yes, you do? I just know names so you’ll have to find them yourself. And honey? When we’re done, I’m doing what I was supposed to do this morning. This phone goes into the river. All my tracks will be gone so this is it.”
I wrote down the names, and she clicked off. I imagined her on a bridge somewhere, saying good-bye to Brooklyn with a toss into the dark water.
I opened the NYPD website, crossing my fingers, that maybe, just maybe, one of Wanda’s names was still on active duty and was doing something that would get him mentioned there.
The first two names drew a blank, but I hit lucky with the third. There he was, Danny Monahan, a sergeant in another Brooklyn precinct. No time like right now. If he wasn’t there, I would leave a message. And if he didn’t call back, I swore I would keep calling.
He was there. A little flustered, I introduced myself, told him how close Rick was to my family. He said, “What took you so long?”
I was so surprised, I couldn’t say a word for a moment, and when I could, all that came out was “What?”
“I said,” he repeated, patiently, “what took you so long? I’ve been wondering if you would get around to me.” He took pity on me. “I heard about Rick. Terrible thing, that is, and I found out who was listed in his papers. Talked to your father couple of days ago.”
“My father? He didn’t tell me anything about it.”
“Yeah, we know each other a little, through Rick, back when. I got the feeling he wasn’t well. Could that be why he didn’t tell you? Like, it slipped his mind? I told him you could call.”
“Does this mean you would talk to me?” I couldn’t believe he meant that.
“Sure. If you wanted to talk enough to come looking for me, I’m not going to turn my back.”
I took a deep breath. First things first.
“Tell me how you knew him.”
“Academy. Over the years we crossed paths a bunch of times, stayed in touch. You could say we were buddies but only in a way. We were living different lives, after awhile, but there was always some kind of—uh, guess you could say a connection.”