No One Rides For Free - Larry Beinhart (10 page)

"Jimmy Lee," Tillman said, his voice all
patience.

"Shit, I know you can't. I just had to go blow
off steam to someone."

"Jimmy Lee, just try to get it on the record.
Make your request official. On paper."

"You think . . . captain gonna have my ass."

"Only in the short run. In the long run, if you
go by the Book, the Book will stand by you. Just do it right and
thank God for Civil Service."

"You have any media friends?" Tillman asked
me when the patrolman had gone.

"What is going on here?"

"The Captain has got a psychic. All the way from
New Jersey. She's got a whole scrapbook of all the bodies she has
found. And that fellow that was shoving you, he is—I don't know
what he is—but he used to be a cop and now he just follows her
around. You been in New Jersey; is that how they do things there?"

"It's not something I do a lot, go to New
Jersey."

"Do you have any idea of how many man-hours he
is wasting on stuff like Jimmy Lee was talking about? And how much
real work does not get done? I do. I have kept track."

"It seems to me that the mugging of Edgar Wood
is a little different than the others," I said.

"
The difference is that someone died. Way it
works is kids start boosting cars for joyrides. Borrow one, run it
around a little, leave it like there was no harm done. Then they
figure out that they can use the very same skills to do themselves a
little cash good. It's easy. No one does hard time for a first
offense. They get probation. Second time they get popped, if they're
still on probation they really got something to lose. So they get
caught in the act, they grab the first thing handy. It's a piece of
pipe 'stead of blackjack or sock filled with sand, and there is a
dead man lying on the ground. Now that, that fits the facts. I won't
be stubborn or tight-minded, but until there is something, something,
that tells me different, that's the direction I'm running."

His phone rang. "Yes sir . . . no sir . . . as
soon as possible . . . I'll get right on it," he said to the
phone. When he hung up he turned to me. "If the media was to get
a good hard look at this thing, maybe we could get back to police
work. I mean the real media, not the Enquirer, they already gave
Captain Deltchev an interview. 'Police Captain Amazed by Powers of
Famed Psychic,' the headline is gonna say. Idiots."

"You know that Wood was a federal witness,
testifying for the SEC?"

"Yeah, I know that."

"Do you know that the farmhouse he was in was
wired for sound? "

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying, Detective, that I went up to the
farmhouse where they were keeping him, and I found a listening device
which I don't think belonged to the SEC because they would have taken
it with them."

"What were you doing up there?"

"Looking around like I'm supposed to, handing
over anything I find out to the local constabulary like I'm supposed
to, even when they keep me waiting half a day."

"Where is it?"

“
Are you going to do something about it? Is it the
something you needed to reopen the investigation or to push it in
some new directions?"

"Yes, I do believe it would be; of course our
man power, the man-hours we can devote to it, is, at present,
strictly limited. Due to most of our cops being assigned by cosmic
forces."

"Oh," was all I could say.

"However, were some big-city news organization,
print or television, to get ahold of the situation and put it in
perspective, which is a little to the left of far out, then maybe I
could do the work you and I urgently desire me to."

"I might know some people."

"What I'm going to do, I'm going to take it on
good faith that you will try with whatever contacts you have. In the
meantime, I will go on up to that house, have a look at this device
you described, pull prints if I can, run a trace on the thing if I
can . . . all of which I would do anyway, because I'm a cop and here
to do a job . . . but because of your good intentions, I will share
that information with you."

"I have this feeling, if I can speak frankly?"
I said.

"Go on. You may."

"That when, and if, Deltchev goes, Bill Tillman
might become the first black captain of detectives in Culpeper
history. "

"Well, I don't think things would move that
fast, though it wouldn't hurt. But I tell you what, whether it works
that way or not, it would put a stop to something dumb. And I hate
dumb. If I was ever to eradicate crime from this world, which I
won't, I would go after dumb next."

"Ahead of racism?"

"Racism is part of dumb."

"I think I like you, Detective," I told
him.

"Do you know where they're from in New Jersey?
The psychic and her sidekick?" he asked. "They're from
Nutley."
 

10
OWSLEY LIVES

BUREAUCRATS HOLD THEIR
secrets like bankers clutch the float. Secrets are coin of the realm,
they confer status and power. They give the bureaucrat what he wants
most, a sense of self-importance.

I sat in my lonely motel room. How then was I to pry
secrets from this man Brodsky? The problem seemed insurmountable.
Then my eye fell on the Gideon Bible. Could that text answer my
question? Were solutions to the problems of today in that book? A
strange feeling came over me as I  reached out, as if another
power were moving me. The Book came into my hands, then almost by
itself it opened to this passage: "He who taketh a wife giveth
hostages to fortune."

The Bible, in its wisdom, was pointing out not just
the potential for blackmail, but for extortion as well.

The thing to do was videotape Brodsky in bed with a
broad at the E-Z Sleaze Motel, preferably on a water bed. One thing I
had learned from divorce work was that wives go extra nuts if their
husbands commit their infidelities on water beds.

The other possibility was to kidnap one of his kids
and trade it for the transcripts. There had been no children in my
marriage, though there had been two dogs, and I stayed the 
entire second year for their sake. Then one night we sat down and
talked. They let me know they could carry on without me. Several
years later I met one of them in Central Park and he acted like he
hardly knew me. It was my relationship with Wayne that had taught me
how far someone will go to protect a child, and he wasn't even mine.

lf I simply walked up to Brodsky, the worst he could
do was say no. I could still do something horrid afterward to change
his mind.

On the off chance that he would simply say, "Yes,
read 'em!" I went to the Brodsky domicile at what I assumed was
after dinner. I had nothing to offer but my boyish charm and a bottle
of Johnny Walker Black.

Mel himself came to the door when I buzzed. This was
the first time I had seen him up close. His hair was reddish and
receding. His eyes were blue. Not sky, or steely, or ice or Paul
Newman blue, just blue. His skin was fair and would scar his first
hour on Miami Beach. He was shorter than me and a little overweight,
but he carried it pleasantly. He looked like he could smile a lot, if
provoked.

I introduced myself as myself, showed real ID and
asked for a few minutes of his time.

"What is this?"

"Look, Mr. Brodsky, it's complicated. Why don't
you invite me in? If you like scotch, we can crack open this
twelve-year-old and I'll explain. Then you can throw me out if you
want."

"
Mel. Who's there?" came a voice that had
to be the wife. "A man giving away scotch," he yelled back,
and let me in.

"That's good," came the same voice. She
walked into the foyer in slacks, a loose blouse and bare feet. I
noticed for the first time that Mel was barefoot also. She was taller
than him.

"
A private detective," she replied to my
introduction, "how charming."

The living room that I was led into was furnished in
non designer homey, basic comfortable combined with childproof. Mel
got ice and glasses, I broke the seal.

"What's it about?" he asked.

I stalled. Mrs. Brodsky was quick on the pickup. "Is
this something that would be better if I weren't here?"

"I don't know," Mel shrugged.

"
Yes," I said. When I'm about to ask a man
to violate the confidentiality of his position, I prefer to do it
without the ace number-one symbol of propriety, a wife, around.

"Very well then," she said, not at all put
out, "I'll take my drink and go to bed. When you're done with my
husband, send him to me, please." I liked her.

"Mr. Brodsky, you were taking testimony from a
man named Edgar Wood."

"Call me Mel."

"OK. Call me Tony. There's not a hell of a lot
of point iu beating about the bush. I'm investigating his death."

"You look vaguely familiar," he said. He
looked at me, searching for a time or place to put with my face. I
looked back, joining the search, and saw nothing familiar.

"The family hired me. They think the mugging was
a way to cover up a deliberate murder."

"I can't figure out where I know you from. Are
you from D.C.?"

"No," I said.

"Hey! Did you go to law school?"

"One year, Yale."

"Hmmmm, I went to N.Y.U. How about college?"

"Stony Brook," and slowly came the dawn.

No way I would have recognized him. They called him
"A.K.A." and that sort of reddish receding hair had been
full, curly and huge. Not an Afro, but hardly straight. It had been a
tangled halo of glee around giggling eyes and a mouth that gleamed
with chemical light. "A.K.A" stood for Acid King Also.

"Tony C., last of the Brooklyn greasers,"
he drawled.

"Ohhh, wow!" we both said. It was really
awesome. A blast from the past. It was the first time I had said "0h
wow!" since the Republican ascension of '68.

Re-mem-mem, remember when, oh re-mem-mem, when the
world was cleanly crazy and fresh to be rebaked. It was always
sunrise when, walking a girl back in the afterglow, you ran into
A.K.A. drifting through the trees. Or sunset when we built a bonfire
on a fogbound winter night, below the sand cliff among the rocks of
Long Island's north shore. Firelight and sunlight would catch
highlights of red and gold in his aura and his body would move with
the awkward grace of a teddy bear that had delusions of being a wood
sprite.

"You are wondering," he said with a grin
like the old grin, "how I got from there"—his hand wafted
through the air pointing at some location in the ether—"to
here. Since you are wondering, I will tell you.

"
I had a vision. Now most folks, when they have
a vision, visionize the world of the spirit. See God—with whom Tom
Landry has a personal relationship. See the Cosmos. But I already had
a thing going with the Cosmos, as it happens. It is it, and it am I,
it's really very pleasant. So my vision was a vision of the mundane.
"

I nodded like it all made sense.

"
I had dropped out of school. On the way back to
the east coast from the west coast on my way to Tangiers, I found
myself in Grand Central Station. Either we were to embark from there
or someone had suggested that we go look at trains before they became
extinct. It was rush hour, on a Thursday.

"Suddenly, as if a celestial dam had broken,
they began to come in a flood. In real gray flannel suits. Remember
those days, when clothes were uniforms, they made statements? They
were Identity. Anyway, we were blown out on some truly righteous
Purple Owsley, and suddenly I saw all these people with love. The
myth was that they were oppressed gray automatons caught in the Kafka
K of Amerika.

"I blew through the myth. They were people.
Functioning, having homes, man—woman relating,
having-raising-loving children. And I saw that hippie, soldier, gray
flannelier, philosoph or coach, if you were living a human life—it
was all the same.

"Suddenly I felt free. I was free. I could
conform.

"I ran out of the station, through the crowds,
to find the nearest Brooks Brothers. There it was, on Madison Avenue.
Tripping my brains out, I made my way to the tie department, to find
out if it was really true, if it was all possible. They had beautiful
things, wool, silk, cotton. Some exquisitely dull. Some foolishly
playful. I knew, at first glance, that on those racks was my tie,
waiting."

"Oh wow," I said for only the second time
in one and a half decades. "So you bought the tie, went
straight, and gave up drugs," I concluded for him.

"Oh no. Oh yes. Oh no," he clarified.

"Oh no? Oh yes? Oh no?" I asked.

"I stole the tie."

"Of course." I should have thought of that.

"I was gonna write a book, called Steal This
Tie! but then Abbie wrote his."

"A great opportunity preempted."