Authors: Michael Koryta
"Did
you ever consider," I said, "that you might be responsible for
this—"
"What—"
"Everything
that happened with the Cantrells. Think about it. Do they ever leave that house
if you don't conceive of the brilliant idea of planting Bertoli there— Does
anyone ever get killed— Or are they still living in that place and helping
people, Dunbar—"
He
shook his head. "I'm not going to let you put that at my feet. I didn't
invent the trouble they had as a couple, didn't even come to Joshua with the
idea. He came to me. I don't regret what we tried to do."
I
stayed silent and made a point of looking at my watch.
Anytime you want to
leave, Dunbar…
"Your
idea," he said, "would be that if we just gave up on justice, fewer
people would get hurt— If we just let Sanabria run wild, without persecution or
prosecution, the rest of us are fine— That's a pretty selfish idea,
Perry.
He killed other people before your friend, and he'll kill other people
again."
"How
long have you been chasing him—"
He
couldn't hold my eyes. "A long time."
"How
many years—"
"Twenty.
About twenty."
"And
you've done nothing but add to his body count."
"I
don't have to listen to—"
"If
you want him that bad, why didn't you just kill the son of a bitch, Dunbar—
You'd have had an easier time doing that and getting away with it than you
would have getting anything useful with Bertoli and that half-assed sting
attempt."
He
got to his feet slowly, his jaw tight. "That's not how it's done. I do it
right."
"You
haven't yet."
"I
will," he snapped. "I will. I'm retired, Perry, and still I'm here,
asking for your help. That doesn't mean anything to you— Doesn't tell you
anything about me—"
"It
means something to me," I said, "but not what you want it to."
He stood
there for a moment and stared at me, and I saw contempt in his eyes.
"You
could do something about this," he said. "A real detective
would."
He
left my apartment then. I thought about what he'd said, and thought that a year
ago the words would have been coming out of my lips. A year ago, I wouldn't be
back in my apartment right now or for many hours yet to come, I'd be chasing
every lead, believing that I could do something to set things right. Why didn't
I now—
It
stacked up on you, after a while. The violence. If you kept your distance,
maybe you could avoid that; if every corpse and every crime scene photograph
you looked at represented somebody else's friend, somebody's else's brother,
somebody else's daughter, maybe you could hold that distance. It wasn't working
that way for me anymore, though. I sat in my living room after Dunbar left and
I began to see the ghosts, Ken Merriman and Ed Gradduk and Joe before the
bullets found him that day by the bridge over
Rocky
River. There was Keith Appleton, a sweet kid who'd been one of the first
members my gym had and was murdered before his high school graduation, and Alex
Jefferson, my onetime nemesis, and Julie and Betsy Weston, mother and child,
long gone from this city and still present in my mind every single day.
It
stacked up on you.
That
afternoon I got out the CD Ken had burned for me and played it for the first
time:
Something I need that I just can't find. Is it too late now— Am I too
far behind—
I
heard those lyrics, and I thought of Ken, chasing Alexandra twelve years after
she'd left, and of Dunbar, pursuing Sanabria two decades after he'd missed a
chance to stick him in prison, and I wondered why they no longer felt like
colleagues to me, like comrades.
Now
there's a whole new crowd out here, and they just don't seem to care. Still I
keep searching through this gloom…
I
wouldn't keep searching through the gloom. Because you couldn't catch them all.
Look at Dunbar. A full career behind him, and years after retirement he was
still consumed by Sanabria, still hungered for him every day—and if he got him,
finally— It wouldn't mean much. There'd be another to take his place. Every
detective had his white whale. I wondered how many of them ever lifted their
heads long enough to see that the seas were teeming with white whales.
I
took the CD out and put it back in its case and put it away, and when Amy came
by that night I asked her if she could take a few days off. I wanted to go to Florida,
I said. I wanted to see Joe.
"What
about the funeral—"
"I
don't know anybody he knew, Amy. It'll be a roomful of strangers, maybe
strangers who won't want to see me there. He was working with me when he got
killed."
"Still,
it's a gesture."
"One
he's gonna see—"
She
didn't answer that, and I said, "Amy, I need to talk things out with Joe.
I need you with me."
She
nodded. "I'll call my boss."
I
went to the Hideaway alone that night. I drank a beer and a bourbon and I toasted
to a dead man. Scott Draper, used to dealing with the emotions of the drunk or
the emotion-drunk, left me alone until I waved him over and launched into a
debate about the prospects of the Cleveland Browns. He saw the forced nature of
it, but he asked no questions, and I was glad. I had one last bourbon before
calling it a night, muttered a toast to Sam Spade, and then spun the whiskey
glass back across the bar. It was done for me now. It was absolutely done for
me.
We
left two days later, took a direct flight from Cleveland to Tampa and then
rented a car. Even in the airport parking garage, among the shadows of cold
concrete, you could feel the intensity of the Florida summer heat, opening your
pores and baking into your bones. I put our bags in the trunk of the
convertible Amy had insisted we rent—
if I'm going to sweat, I might as well
get tan
—and then tossed the keys to her. I didn't want to drive. Felt more
like riding.
We
took 1-275 south out of Tampa and drove over the Howard Frankland bridge toward
St. Petersburg. A few miles past the bridge, I pointed at a sign indicating
"gulf beaches," and Amy turned off the interstate. Joe was staying in
a place called Indian Rocks, one of the hotel-and-condo communities that lined
the beach from Clearwater to St. Pete. The last time I'd been on the gulf side
of Florida, I was nineteen and on a spring break trip. We'd been much farther
south then, too, so none of this was familiar to me. I could understand why Joe
had enjoyed it during the winter, but now, with the unrelenting sun and
humidity that you felt deep in your chest, enveloping your lungs, his
motivation for staying seemed a little less clear. This Gena must be one hell
of a woman.
We
hit a stoplight just outside of Indian Rocks and watched an obese man with no
shirt and blistered red skin walk in front of the car, shouting obscenities
into a cell phone and carrying a bright blue drink in a plastic cup. Amy turned
to me, her amusement clear despite the sunglasses that shielded her eyes, and
said, "Think Joe's turned into one of those—"
"I'm
sure of it."
Joe
had told me to call when we got to the little town, so now I took out my cell phone
and called, and he provided directions to the condo that had been his home for
the past six months. We drove slowly, searching for the place, a different
collection of oceanfront granite and glass everywhere you looked. When I
finally saw the sign for Joe's building, I laughed. Trust him to find this one.
Squatting
beneath two of the more extravagant hotels on the beach was a two-story
L-shaped building that looked as if it had been built in the late 1950s and
tuned up maybe once since then—perhaps after a hurricane. The old-fashioned
sign out front boasted of shuffleboard and a weekly potluck.
"Oh,
no," Amy said. "It's worse than I thought."
We
pulled into the parking lot and got out and stretched, and then Joe appeared,
walking toward us with an easier stride than I'd seen from him in a long time,
some of his old athlete's grace coming back.
"Trust
LP to wait until it hits ninety-five before he brings you down," he said,
going first to Amy, who hugged him hard. He looked good. Some of his weight was
back, and the pallor he'd had when he left Cleveland in December was gone,
replaced by a tan that made his gray hair seem almost white. He stepped away
from Amy and put out his hand, and I liked the strength I felt in his grip, the
steady look in his eyes. It was a far cry from the way he'd looked when he
left. These months had been good to him.
He
let go of my hand but continued to search my eyes. We'd had a few talks since
Ken had been killed, but nothing at length. I'm not a big fan of phone
conversations.
"Please
tell me you don't play shuffleboard," Amy said.
"No.
The place is better than it looks, really."
"What's
the median age of the occupants—"
"There
are some kids. One guy just retired from Visa, can't be more than sixty."
He
led us out of the parking lot and around the building, past a sparkling pool
with nobody in the water and up the steps to a corner room with a view of the
ocean. Now that we were out of the car, the heat was staggering. Even down here
on the water the humidity settled on you like lead. There were maybe fifteen
steps going up to the second floor, and I felt each one of them the way I'd
feel an entire flight of stairs back home. I've never been so happy to hear the
grinding of an air conditioner as I was when Joe unlocked the door and let us
in.
His
room was larger than I would've expected, and bright, with all that sun
bouncing in off the water, palm trees rustling just outside. Not a bad place to
spend a winter. Also, tucked inside here next to the AC unit, probably not a
terrible place to spend the summer. Just don't open that door.
We
spent the afternoon in or around his hotel, talking and laughing and generally
doing a fine job of pretending this visit was a carefree vacation. He wasn't
fooled, though, but he waited, and so did I. We'd get our chance to talk soon
enough, but we needed to be alone for it.
In
midafternoon I left them in the room and wandered outside and down to the beach
and the blistering heat and called the office to check my messages. Nothing new
from Graham or Harrison or anyone else. I had an old saved message, though. I
couldn't stop myself from playing it again.
Lincoln,
I think we've got something. You got us there, we just needed to see it. Last
night, I finally saw it. I'm telling you, man, I think you got us there. I'm
going to check something out first, though. I don't want to throw this at you
and then have you explain what I'm missing, how crazy it is—but stay tuned.
Stay tuned.
I
played it three times, as if listening to it over and over would reveal
something I had missed.
You
got us there, we just needed to see it.
I'd
gotten us nowhere. In the entire course of our investigation, we had
interviewed a grand total of three people beyond Harrison: John Dunbar, Mark
Ruzity, Mike London. What had he seen— What could he possibly have seen—
It
didn't matter. I told myself that with a silent vigor—it did
not
matter.
I was out of it, and needed to stay out.
That
night we got to meet the much-heralded Gena. Of course, she hadn't been
heralded at all—that wasn't Joe's style—which had only made the anticipation
greater. If I'd expected someone like Ruth, I was surprised. Gena was about a
foot taller, for starters, brunette when Ruth had been blond, blue eyes instead
of green, from Idaho instead of Cleveland. She was younger than Joe, too,
probably by ten years, and Ruth had been significantly older than him. She was,
in almost all ways, the polar opposite of his longtime wife, but that didn't
make her any less likable. She was attractive and witty and intelligent, and
Joe's eyes lingered on her in a way that made me continuously want to hide a
smile.
We
left the beach and drove all the way into St. Pete to go to a restaurant Joe
liked called Pacific Wave. The food was outstanding, and Amy and Gena ran away
with the conversation. Joe hadn't found himself a journalist, but something
close. She was an attorney who'd become an advocate for public records and
government access, and with those credentials it didn't take long for her to
endear herself to Amy. I also began to understand why Joe was still here in the
summer but hadn't made any remarks about a permanent relocation. Gena was in
Florida only temporarily, as a visiting faculty member at the Poynter
Institute, a renowned journalism center in St. Petersburg. She'd come down on a
grant, and that grant would be up in September.