"No. I've been meaning to drop by and talk to you about it, but I thought you probably still had family staying with you."
"My two sisters were here for a week," Dan said. "And there've been nieces and nephews running in and out like mice. Finally I had enough and ran them all off. Then my phone started ringing off the hook all day, so I finally unplugged that just to get some peace and quiet. I guess they all think I'm suicidal or something."
"Are you?" Dell asked.
Dan gave him a long look. "No. Any reason I should be?"
Dell shrugged. "Sometimes things like this are hard to get over. Some people want to do it quickly."
"That's not the case with me," the older man assured him. "I lost Edie a long time ago, Frank. I think I probably started losing her when she slept with her first man. Then every man after that, I lost her a little more. Until finally she was gone completely."
"Were there that many men?"
"You're working the case; you ought to know."
"We've only found three."
Malone grunted cynically. "You must not have gone back very far." He stared into space. "I used to follow her sometimes. She'd go into a bar and come out an hour later with a man. Night after night. Different bars, different men. It was like some kind of sickness with her."
They both fell silent and sat drinking for several minutes. Dell, who had always been so comfortable with his partner, felt peculiarly ill at ease, as if he had now become an outsider with Dan Malone as he had with the two homicide detectives. Finally he decided not to prolong the visit any more than necessary.
"How long have we known each other, Dan?" he asked.
"What's on your mind, Frank?" the older policeman asked knowingly.
It had been he who taught Dell that reminiscing frequently led to other things.
"The night of Edie's murder."
"What about it?"
"I need to know where you were."
Malone nodded understandingly. "I wondered when they'd get around to it." He smiled a slight, cold smile. "Suppose I tell you I was right here at home, alone, all night. What then?"
"Tell me what you did all night."
"Watched the fights on television. Drank too much. Passed out here in my chair."
"Who was fighting in the main event?"
Malone shrugged. "Some Puerto Rican against some black guy, I think. I was sleepy by the time the main go came on; I don't remember their names."
"Neither do I," said Dell.
"What?" Dan Malone frowned.
"I don't remember their names either. But you weren't alone that night. That was the night I dropped over. We both drank too much. I fell asleep on the couch. Didn't wake up until after one o'clock. Then I put you to bed and went home. That was the night, wasn't it, Dan?"
The older man's frown faded and his face seemed to go slack. "Yes," he said quietly. "Yes, I do believe that was the night."
There was silence between them again. Neither of them seemed to know what to say next, and they could not look at each other. Malone stared into space, as he had done earlier; Dell stared at the television, as if it had not been turned off. Only after several minutes did Dell drink the rest of his beer and put the bottle down. He rose.
"I'll be going now. You won't be coming back to work, will you, Dan?"
Malone looked thoughtfully at him. "No," he replied. "I'm thinking of putting in for retirement. My sisters in Florida want me to move down there."
"Good idea. You'd probably enjoy yourself. Lots of retired cops in Florida." Dell walked to the door. "Goodnight, Dan."
"Goodnight, Frank."
Only when he got out into the night air did Dell realize how much he was sweating.
* * *
The next morning, Dell typed up a summary of Dan Malone's statement, along with his own corroboration of the alibi. After signing it, he handed the report to Kenmare. The lead homicide detective read it, then passed it to Garvan to read.
"You've thought this through, I guess," Kenmare said.
"Backwards and forward," Dell told him.
Garvan raised his eyebrows but said nothing as he handed the report back to Kenmare.
"I don't think the brass will buy this," Kenmare offered.
"What are they going to do?" Dell asked. "Suspend Dan
and
me? Open an internal investigation? On what evidence? And how would it look on the evening news?"
"The higher-ups might feel it was worth it," said Garvan.
"Worth it why?" pressed Dell. "What's the gain? The department's getting rid of Dan anyway; he'll be retiring."
"But you won't," Garvan pointed out.
"So? What have I done that the department would want to get rid of me?"
"Helped him get away with it, that's what," said Kenmare.
"
If
he did it," Dell challenged. "And we don't know that he did. All we know is that we can't find anybody else right now who
did
do it." He decided to throw down the gauntlet right then. "You guys going to let this report pass, or are you going to make an issue of it?"
"You didn't mention this alibi last night when we were talking," Kenmare accused.
"Maybe I had my days mixed up." Dell shrugged. "Maybe I thought it had been Monday night I had dropped in; maybe Dan had to remind me it was Tuesday."
"Maybe," Kenmare said. He looked inquiringly at his partner.
"Yeah, maybe," Garvan agreed.
"You're sure Malone's retiring?" Kenmare asked.
"Positive," Dell guaranteed.
Kenmare pulled open a desk drawer and filed the report. "See you around, Dell," he said.
"Yeah," said Garvan. "Take it easy, Dell."
Dell walked out of the squad room without looking back.
* * *
That night, when Dell came into the Three Corners Club and took his regular seat at the end of the bar, it was the owner, Tim Callan, who poured his drink and served him.
"I've missed you, Frankie," he said congenially. "How've you been?"
"I've seen better days," Dell allowed.
"Ah, haven't we all," Callan sympathized. He lowered his voice. "I'm really sorry about the young lady. Edie, was that her name?"
"Yeah, Edie." Dell felt the back of his neck go warm.
"I seen her picture in the paper and on the news. Took me a few looks to place her. Then I says to myself, 'why, that's the young lady Frankie used to bring in here. Always wanted the booth 'way in the back for privacy.' " Callan smiled artificially. "I remember that every time I loaned you the key to use the apartment upstairs, I had to make you promise to be out by midnight so's I could get the poker game started. And you never let me down, Frank. Not once. 'Course, we go back a long ways, you and me." Now Callan's expression saddened, genuinely so. "I'm really sorry, Frank, that things didn't work out between you and Edie."
"Thank you, Tim. So am I." Dell's heart hurt when he said it.
"They still don't know who did it?"
Dell looked hard at him. "No."
They locked eyes for a long moment, two old friends, each of whom could read the other like scripture.
"What was the name of that brother-in-law of yours charged with receiving stolen property?" Dell finally asked.
"Nick Santore," said Callan. "Funny you should ask. His preliminary hearing's day after tomorrow."
"I'll talk to the assistant state's attorney," Dell said. "I'll tell him the guy's going to be a snitch for me, that I need him on the street. I'll get him to recommend probation."
"Ah, Frankie, you're a prince," Callan praised, clasping one of Dell's hands with both of his own. "I owe you, big time."
"No," Frank Dell said, "we're even, Timmy."
Both men knew it was so.
S. J. Rozan
Childhood
S. J. ROZAN
is the acclaimed Shamus and Anthony winning author of the Lydia Chin and Bill Smith series. She combines the serious purpose of the literary ethnic novels of the forties and fifties with the penetrating style and wit of the contemporary urban crime novel. With each book, her audience increases. She is already a major figure on the suspense scene; it's just that some people have yet to get the message. "Childhood" first appeared as part of the electronic anthology
Compulsion
.
Childhood
S. J. Rozan
I
haunted the Maine coast that year as summer turned to fall, a restless ghost too real, footsteps too heavy on the wet, sinking sand, shape too solid moving through the fog. Long after it was over, I stood on the cliff, listening for cries long since silenced, searching the rocks and the tugging surf for floating, broken forms forever gone. I never told Ben, but over and over, maybe after dinner, maybe before breakfast, I found myself locking up my place, getting out the car. I made the long drive, six hours of highway and then the smaller roads, always knowing I had to go, always knowing I could do no good.
Those times, after, I turned straight for the shore; but that first time, when it started, I drove into town, parked in the sheriff's lot, went in to see Ben.
It was a long way to come, six states distant, but Ben and I went way back. We'd been in the navy together, both of us joining up at seventeen, both of us coming from Brooklyn, though I'd lived there not two years and Ben all his life. We met the first week in basic training and it turned out we served the whole three years together; same base, same ships. Ben was as rock steady as I was explosive, those years; any trouble I managed to stay out of, it was because Ben was there, holding me back. The difference between us: Ben liked the navy, I hated it. After discharge, we both went back to New York, me to college and Ben to the NYPD, but Ben didn't stay long. The sea was part of him now, the way it was always changing and always the same, and after a few years he headed up to Maine. In the small coastal town of Phillip's Point he found an opening in the county sheriff's office. Now, twenty years later, Ben was sheriff.
When he'd called, I wasn't surprised. That was how it went with us, a call every six, eight months from the big wooden house with the porches and gardens to my apartment in New York where the trucks rumbled over the streets outside and the stars were invisible in the night-lit sky. We'd talk, saying nothing, and sometimes he'd invite me up and if I could I'd go, spend a weekend doing nothing in Maine. The only times I'd been on a boat and liked it since the day I left the navy were times in Phillip's Point with Ben.
"Damn tourists in the summer," he'd say when you asked how life was up there. "Damn rain in winter. Damn redneck hicks in this two-bit burg." Ben loved his town and he loved his job.
But what he'd said on the phone that night, the call that started it, was, "I need help."
I leaned back in my chair with the beer I'd opened before the phone had rung. "Guy climbs onto ten feet of fiberglass, gets sunburned and soaked, catches two fish and calls it fun? Damn right you need help."
"No," Ben said, "real help. I need you to come up here."
This was different, his voice, his tone.
"What's wrong? Are you okay? Alice, the kids?"
"Yeah, they're fine. But I got a situation up here. I need someone from outside."
"You want me to come do a job?"
"Something like that, yeah."
I shook a cigarette from the pack. "I'm not licensed up there, Ben."
"I'll put in a word for you," he grunted. "With the sheriff."
That was late at night; early the next morning I was on the road, Joe Williams in the tape deck as the tired trees of late summer slipped past me on the interstate. I pulled into Phillip's Point midafternoon, parked on Main Street. Inside the blue-shuttered, whitewashed county hall, I introduced myself to the young deputy behind the desk.
The kid jumped up from his chair, all muscles and brush-cut helpfulness. "Yes, sir, Sheriff Martin's expecting you. Let me see if he's free." He stuck his head into the office behind him, said something, and came out with a smile, visibly relieved that he had no bad news for me.
Ben came to greet me, took me behind the desk. "I told him not to ask," he grumbled, closing the door on the sheriff's private office. "I told him, just bring you in." He pointed me to a worn leather armchair. Sun streamed in the open windows. "You must've flown pretty low," Ben said. "Or gotten up with the chickens." He pressed a speaker-phone button. "Hey, Richie, see if you can scare up some coffee."
"Yes, sir!" Richie's voice crackled, attentive and efficient. Ben rolled his eyes.
