True Detective

'Maybe you weren't as close to him as you thought.'

Her eyes stung me. 'We were very close.' Then, offhandedly, she said, 'I knew he had an interest in criminology.'

'He had an interest in criminals.'

'It's the same thing.'

'No it isn't. Ever hear of a guy named Reinhardt Schwimmer?'

She was having liver. She swallowed a bite of it and then said, 'Why of course. Rudolph Schwimmer's name is on the tip of every tongue,' and stuck hers out at me, just a bit. Some college boys who were watching her from a nearby table about fell over when she did that; they'd fallen deeply in love with her back in the cafeteria line.

'Reinhardt Schwimmer,' I said. 'He was an optometrist. He had a fascination for gangsters. And since his practice was in Chicago, he had access to some. He took to hanging around with them, at the speakeasies they frequented, even at some of their places of business, including a garage where trucks of hooch got loaded and unloaded. One day Doc Schwimmer dropped by the garage to talk to the boys, who were waiting for their boss Bugs Moran and his second-in-command, a fella named Newberry, to show, when some cops came barging in and told everybody to put their hands in the air.'

'And the innocent doctor got arrested right along with the bad guys,' she said.

'Not exactly. This was Saint Valentine's, 1929.'

Mary Ann didn't play naive; she knew what I meant.

'They killed him, Mary Ann,' I said. 'He probably told the men with machine guns he wasn't one of the gangsters; that he was just an optometrist. But they killed him anyway. He was there, and he got killed.'

Her eyes were damp. 'Why are you saying these things, Nathan?'

We were on the verse of a scene.

'Hey,' I said, trying to shift gears, 'I shouldn't have got into this here. I'm sorry. I didn't intend to upset you, it just came out… but a picture's starting to form, Mary Ann. A picture of your brother. And he isn't looking too very smart.'

'For your information, my brother was an A student.'

'Mary Ann. There's school, and there's school. Like the hard-knocks kind. Your brother is a kid from Davenport, Iowa. He may have hung around with some bootleggers'- I'd been a little vague with her on this point not wanting to betray Traynor's confidence- 'but he was still a kid from the sticks.'

'What's your point?'

'I don't know. I'm starting to have a sick feeling, that's all. Maybe it's the meat loaf.'

'You've said all along you think Jimmy's off somewhere… riding the rails, seeing the country.'

'I think he probably is. But he's not seeing Chicago, or I'd probably turned him up by now. Some things bother me, Mary Ann. Like his hanging around with hoods, here in Davenport. And did you know your father gave him two hundred dollars for tuition to Parmer, which he pocketed and took with him to Chicago?'

She turned pale. 'No. Jimmy didn't tell me that.'

'He told you he was going to hop a freight, though, didn't he?'

'Yes.'

'If he did, and if he had two hundred dollars on him, well… that worries me.'

'What are you saying?'

'Nothing. But if he made it to Chicago with his two hundred, I'll eat another serving of this meat loaf.'

Her lower lip was trembling; I reached across and touched her hand.

'I'm sorry if I seem a bastard' I said. 'It's just… I want you to be prepared, incase.'

'In case what?'

'In case you have to look at something without the rose-colored glasses on.'

She thought about that; she pushed the plate of liver away.

'Find him, Nathan,' she said. 'Please.'

'I'm going to try.'

'Don't try. Do it. Find him for me.'

'I can't promise that.'

'You have to.'

'Okay. I promise. All right? Are you all right?'

She managed a smile. 'Yes.'

'How about helping me find this brother of yours?'

'Sure,' she said.

She had arranged for me to talk to her brother's journalism instructor at Augustana, across the river in Rock Island; it was a beautiful campus on a rolling green bluff and the building we entered didn't have a single motto on its walls. But the matronly Enslish literature instructor who also taught journalism had nothing illuminating to say