Cop Job (29 page)

I ignored Jackie’s withering stare all the way out of the building, across the parking lot, and into the Volvo. When the doors were shut, she said, “What did she want?” with most of the emphasis on the word “what.”

“Not what you think,” I said.

“Then what?”

“A date.”

Jackie held the steering wheel with both hands as if to steady herself.

“You are shitting me.”

“I’m not. She thinks I’m attractive. And vibrant.”

Jackie put her head on the steering wheel between her two clenched hands.

“Unfuckingbelievable.”

“You don’t think I’m vibrant and attractive?”

“No. But Amanda does.”

“I’m not going to do it,” I said.

“What?”

“Go out with her. Though I did ask her to throw out a time and place.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Might help us with Edith.”

“So you are going out with her.”

“Maybe technically. Let’s see what she comes back with.”

Jackie and Amanda had always understood you didn’t need to be good friends to play on the same team, though there were times in the past when it was hard to tell if they were playing the same game. So even if I offended Jackie’s feminist predilections, I knew she’d keep it to herself, loyalty in this case trumping principle.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
HREE

T
he first thing I did when Amanda came home from her construction site was to tell her about Oksana making a pass at me.

“Really. Did you pass it back?”

“Not exactly,” I said.

“You could be more specific.”

“I can only love one woman at a time.”

“How many so far?”

“Abby and you. In that order. I’m working my way down the alphabet.”

“Oksana doesn’t even start with an A.”

I told her about our meeting with Oksana and Edith, with all the resulting consequences and implications. Then I backed up and told her about my run-in with Bennie Gardella and subsequent chat with Chief Ross Semple.

“You’ve been busy,” she said. “All I did was irritate my finish carpenters with a change in the kitchen design.”

“Tell ’em they can be changed out just as fast.”

“So you really did work in corporate America.”

“I didn’t turn Oksana down outright because there’re too many things in flux,” I said. “I can’t afford to alienate Edith any more than I already have, and as time goes by, Oksana is looking more and more like Edith’s interface with the world.”

“Very well. Just don’t sleep with her. I’d feel foolish.”

I
STAYED
with Amanda that night to illustrate the depths of my devotion and she seemed pleased with the results. So that’s where Jackie found me when she barged into our sanctuary at three o’clock in the morning.

Sullivan was all apologies when I opened the door, but I absolved him of responsibility.

“You know how she is,” I said, nodding toward Jackie.

“I do,” he said.

“Jesus Christ, Jackie,” I told her as Sullivan went back to his post. “You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you.”

“I’d shoot him back.”

“What’s going on?”

“We need to talk.”

“Okay. Let me stick my face in a bucket of water and meet me out on the patio.”

Eddie was there when I came out, fussing over Jackie in a way that always irritated me. No treats, no toss of the ball, just a little scrunch on the top of the head and sweet nothings in his ear.

Jackie was in flip-flops and a silky summer dress that was working overtime to contain all her feminine parts. I was glad to have Amanda blessedly passed out upstairs.

“I’ve been doing some digging,” she said.

“There’s a surprise.”

“I was struck by Allison’s description of Oksana at RISD.”

“How so?”

“No good reason,” she said. “I’m just nosy. And I don’t like Oksana.”

“Fair enough.”

“So I pretended to be a potential employer and asked for her transcript.”

“You can do that?”

“Not without the student’s permission. So I had Randall Dodge pretend he was her.”

“Online of course,” I said. “Not many ten-foot-tall Indians look like the Snow Queen.”

“She didn’t graduate from RISD, just like Allison said. She transferred to Brown for her senior year.”

“So what did Brown say?”

“They didn’t,” she said. “Or rather, wouldn’t, without convincing ID. I think I ran into a registrar with scruples.”

“Inconvenient.”

“I have a plan.”

“You often do,” I said.

“It means a trip to Providence, Rhode Island.”

“It’s a small state. Easy to miss.”

“I’ll drive, of course. You have three hours to sleep before we leave. I’ll stay on your sunporch with Eddie.”

“Okay, not a problem. But why the urgency?” I said, looking around at the moonless night to reinforce the point.

She leaned into her words, which nearly caused the balance of her unrevealed breasts to spill out of the top of her dress. I wasn’t all that interested, but in these things reflexes rule. She gathered up the wayward fabric before answering.

“The woman at RISD sent Randall everything she had. Included was an impressive stack of recommendation letters. All glowing, of course. Though one stood out.”

She took her time telling me, the usual game we played. I was probably too sleepy to pry it out of her, so she just gave it up.

“It was written by Brown University Assistant Dean of Students Herschel Bergeron, future captain in the Long Island Forty-Third. Jimmy Watruss and Alfie Aldergreen’s commanding officer. The guy who gave his life saving theirs.”

I looked at an imaginary watch on my wrist.

“If we catch the seven
A.M
. ferry we can be in Providence by ten,” I said.

T
HE TRIP
was one of my favorites. Up through the North Fork of the East End of Long Island to Orient Point, where you took a big ferry over to Connecticut. Whenever I went this way, I was nearly cudgeled with gratitude for being born and raised in such a place. I didn’t know if all the anxious drivers around me felt the same way, but I forgave them.

On the way to the ferry dock, I opened the window to let some North Fork air into the car. Jackie was unsure about this, though she didn’t complain. She just held back her wad of curly hair with one hand and drove the Volvo with the other.

I kept the radio on a scratchy jazz station, turned up to barely tolerable levels, another thing for Jackie to endure. I sat back with my head on the car seat, seemingly passed out, which likely only added insult to injury. Still I made it all the way to Orient Point without getting heaved out of the car.

We were early enough to walk around the staging area before boarding the first ferry out in the morning—time I spent skipping stones across the choppy bay water and petting the dogs of ferry-goers inclined to let their dogs breach my personal space. A few suggested that I had a dog of my own, and I copped to it.

Jackie busied herself tapping on her smartphone, a sorry way to treat the glorious day.

The ferry ride itself lived up to its promise. The air was clean and the wind a steady blow out of the north. I stood on the upper deck and spotted sailboats, getting a sense of their progress by the tilt of the sails and the wave heights passing by the ferry’s towering hull. Jackie eventually joined me up there, probably worried I’d gone overboard, which likely explained why she held me around the waist with both hands and stuck her face into my shoulder. I put my arm around her as well, to let her know all was safe, and thus secured, as we made our way into New London, Connecticut.

F
ROM
N
EW
L
ONDON
, you take Interstate 95 north to Providence. It was a better trip for me than Jackie, who had to avoid getting us mowed down by tractor trailers. I got to look out the window at New England woodlands, occasionally interrupted by ugly industrial buildings and retail glitz that could be wreaking the same aesthetic carnage anywhere in the country.

Rush hour was all wrapped up by the time we saw the modest skyline of Providence, so we quickly made it over the river and into the area of the city that contained Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University. It had been several years since I’d been there, on one of my rare visits to Allison’s tiny jumble of a student apartment. She never seemed all that crazy to have me there, and I used that as an excuse to pay less attention to her than I should have. It’s lamentable that parents often don’t realize their children’s behavior signals the opposite desire until it’s too late to do anything about it.

Though I liked the feel of the place. Hilly and cramped, with ancient buildings sharing space with modern architectural experiments, the rolling sidewalks filled with kids both prematurely wise and hopelessly puerile.

As we homed in on the registrar’s office at Brown, Jackie revealed her plan by handing me her driver’s license. Or a version thereof. It was her face, but the name on the license said Oksana Quan.

“How did you get this?” I asked.

“Randall Dodge. The guy’s amazing. I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

“You’ll learn when he’s wearing an orange jumpsuit.”

“Never happen. He’s got a great lawyer.”

The registrar’s office was down a story from street level. Campus security was through the same door, which added to the experience. Jackie told me Randall’s alteration would never get by official scrutiny, but it was plenty good enough to fool an admin at a university registrar’s office.

So we hoped, as a large man in a navy blue police uniform with a radio transceiver clipped to his shoulder passed us on the way through the double doors.

The woman who approached the counter to meet us looked young enough to be Allison’s daughter. Her eyes seemed to fill half her head and they spoke of her sheer pleasure in satisfying our request.

Jackie gave her Oksana’s name and graduation date and slid the phony license across the counter. The girl looked at it for a second before handing it back. Then she disappeared for about ten minutes, which seemed longer than necessary. I stole looks through the glass door behind me at the entrance to the security office.

“I’m sorry for the wait,” she said, returning with a manila folder. “I had to cross reference with admissions to find the file.”

“How so?” Jackie asked.

The girl looked pained at what she had to say.

“You gave the graduation year. I’m sure you meant the year you planned to graduate,” she said, in a voice just loud enough to hear.

“Can I see?” Jackie asked.

The girl let go of the file as if it were about to spontaneously combust. Jackie opened it up and read. I smiled what I thought was a kind and avuncular smile at the young admin, and it seemed to take. She smiled back.

“Yes, of course,” said Jackie, handing back the folder. “I should have been more specific. Can you copy everything in there?”

The girl looked relieved. The copier was in plain sight so we could watch her perform the task. A few minutes after that we were back on the street. Jackie stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the sky through a pair of cat-eye sunglasses.

“She didn’t graduate,” said Jackie.

“Never?”

“Not from RISD and not from Brown. Would have been hard after flunking two requirement courses in what should have been her last semester.” She looked struck by a thought. “Wait here.”

I didn’t wait long. When she came back out she headed off down the sidewalk with her usual authority. I followed.

“Where’re we going?” I asked.

“Dean of students.”

It wasn’t a short walk, but the day was still young enough to be cool and breezy. I took in the slightly denser atmosphere than we get on the East End and the slightly deeper green of the trees. I wanted to see what was in Oksana’s records, but it’s hard to walk and read, and anyway, it was easier to surf behind Jackie’s wake.

At the dean of students’ office she dropped the false identity and set a different course, handing a woman at the first desk her business card and stating that she was on official business as a representative of the New York State judicial system. The woman, this one thoroughly middle-aged, took that seriously enough to move briskly down the hall to retrieve her boss.

The guy who came out was about my age, with a fringe of grey hair clinging below a balding crown, thick plastic-rimmed glasses, narrow shoulders, and ballooning midriff. His tie was loosened and his light blue dress shirt showed sweat around the armpits.

He introduced himself as Dean Chaplin. Not to be confused with Chaplain Dean, he noted with a vague smile, as he probably had a few thousand times before.

“We’re collecting background information on the victim of a homicide on Long Island,” said Jackie. “We just need to ask a few questions.”

“Should I get university counsel?” he asked.

“Why don’t you hear the questions first, then you decide,” she said.

He agreed with that and took us into an office that resembled the middle-management caves I was used to back in my corporate job—signed football jerseys mounted like paintings, executive games on the desk, Hirschfeld-style caricatures, signed photos of Chaplin shaking hands with a second-tier golf pro, out-of-date photos of the family.

“You’ve been dean for how long?” Jackie asked, getting right to it.

“Close to twenty years, believe it or not.”

“So you knew Assistant Dean Bergeron.”

His face took on a sterner set.

“I hired him. And gave him his good-bye party. You know he passed away.”

“We do,” said Jackie. “Was the party before he joined the service?”

“Before he took another position. At NYU. In admissions.”

“You don’t mind these questions?” Jackie asked.

“No. It’s all public knowledge. He’d just mustered out of the army before I brought him in as a clerical assistant. Served in Korea. He worked his way up to assistant dean, but wanted to go back to Long Island where he had a lot of family. I’d heard he’d joined the National Guard to get into the Iraq War. I wouldn’t say exactly gung-ho, but he was patriotic. Sort of the classic All-American, square-jawed type who believed in serving his country. Sounds like a stereotype, but thank God they’re out there.”