True Detective

entirely blameless. Like him, I was driving rather more fast than would seem in retrospect prudent… anxious to get my children home, wondering why I'd used such bad judgment in bringing them along on an evening call… but then, widower that I was and am, I had no one to stay with them, so I often took them along…'

He stopped. Sipped the coffee. The cup in the thumb and forefinger of the gloved hand looked like an affectation, and added to the peculiarly formal tone of our conversation.

'Mr. Beame. John, I was just curious- it's my nature as a detective, I guess. If this is something you'd rather not discuss…'

'Nate, there's not much left to tell. The collision was head on; both cars ended in the ditch, and there was a fire. I burned my hands pulling my children from the wreckage; burned them worse pulling the drunken fool from his wreckage but he died anyway. His head had hit the windscreen with such force the glass cracked.'

'Mary Ann and Jimmy, were they injured?'

'Minorly. Cuts. Scrapes. They needed considerable chiropractic care. They'd always been close, being twins, but with a boy and a girl, you might expect them to be less close than if they'd been of the same gender. But this experience- this brush with death, if you'll allow an old man his melodrama- brought them even closer together than before.'

'I see.'

'They were, if I recall correctly, seven years old at the time. I believe the experience may have also encouraged their flights of fancy. The world of make-believe was always a better place than the world of reality. for them.'

'That's true for all children.'

He nodded, sadly. 'But most children grow out of it. Jimmy- and, as you can see, Mary Ann- never abandoned their romantic fancies. A boy reads Treasure Island and wants to be a pirate when he grows up; but then he grows up and he is an accountant or a lawyer or a teacher. A girl reads Alice in Wonderland and wants to dress up and chase mythical white rabbits down holes; but then she grows up and is wife and a mother to her own little girls and boys.'

'Sounds like you don't believe in Peter Pan.'

He smiled sadly again. 'Unfortunately, it would seem, my children do.'

'Aren't you being a little unfair, sir? Your daughter is an actress, and that's a recognized profession, in which she seems to be doing rather well.'

-

He shrugged. 'With some help from me.'

'Let me tell you some facts of life about the big city. You can get strings pulled for you, to get into a job; you can have a relative with money or position buy or clout your way in for you. But once you're in. if you don't cut the mustard, you get cut, but fast. If Mary Ann wasn't doing a good job for those radio people, she'd've had her pretty- rear end fired by now, if you'll excuse the crudity.'

He folded his gloved hands, the fingers of his left hand resting over the knuckles of his right, where fingers had been. His smile was gentle. 'I'll excuse it gladly, Nate. Because you're right. I suppose I have been unfair, where my children are concerned. Mary Ann is doing quite well. I only hope Jimmy is.'

'Tell me about him.'

'You have to understand something. During the years Jimmy was growing up, the Tri-Cities was a wild place… in the Chicago, gangster sense, that is. And it still is, to a degree. At any rate, the papers then were full of gunplay and sensationalism, as events admittedly warranted. A gangster named Looney trained his own son as a gunman, and when the son was shot down by rival gangsters, Looney ran on the front of the scandal sheet he published- which he used for purposes of extortion- a photograph of his dead son in his coffin. He accused the other, legitimate newspapers in town of hiring the murder.'

'Your son was a little boy when this was going on?'

'Yes. And I would sit at this very table and, I must say, rant and rave about this deplorable situation; and my wide-eyed son would sit and take it all in, impressionable lad that he was. I would tell my son that this Looney gangster, by publishing his scandal sheet, was disgracing one of America's most honorable institutions: the press. That he was making a laughingstock of one of our greatest freedoms: freedom of the press.'

'And that's when Jimmy caught the newspaper bug?'

'I suspect so. That, and the lurid stories that even our respectable papers were printing, because those things were indeed going on- bootlegging, wide-open gambling houses, houses of ill repute, riots in which innocent bystanders were slain, gangland slayings, all of it. It captured his imagination.'

'That seems normal enough.'

'Then, when he was older, I introduced him to Paul Traynor, a police reporter with the Democrat.'

'When was this?'

'His high school days. Paul liked Jimmy; endured the boy's questions, let him accompany him to trials.

took him home and he and Jimmy would talk for hours. I admit to feeling jealous of Paul, a bit. But I saw nothing unhealthy about it. though Jimmy's fascination with gangsters- he often brought home Chicago papers, and kept a scrapbook of bloody clippings- disturbed me greatly. And Looney's gang had by this time been replaced by another, equally vicious bunch, some of whom are still around.'

'What about Paul Traynor? Is he still around?'

'Oh yes. I can arrange for you to talk with him. if you like.'

'That might be helpful. Did your son live here with you while he was going to college?'

'Yes. He attended Augustana. which is just over in Rock Island. I thought I had him convinced to switch to Palmer, when he left.'