“I’m not sure,” I said. “Assuming Hocus includes Bret Neukirk and Samuel Ryan, I guess this lets us know some of their personal history. But why not just ask the
“That’s what we have to try to get a handle on,” he said, “and as soon as possible. I keep hoping they’ll state some demands — that would give us a starting point. They haven’t even asked us to release their friends.”
“And they’ve let us know their names.”
“Right. No attempt to stay anonymous — unless this has been some sort of snipe hunt.”
“If they just wanted to get me out of town, they could have told me to go to any number of other cities. Nothing else they’ve done makes much sense to me — at least, not yet. But Bakersfield fits. Frank has a history here.”
“So do you.”
“Yes.” I looked around the coffee shop. “We used to come here. New reporters often get the police beat. That’s how I met Frank — he was a rookie, I was a green reporter. He had late shifts, so did I. His training officer was an old guy they used to call ‘the Bear.’ Bear Bradshaw. I don’t even remember what his real name was. Big guy — guess that’s how he got his nickname. Anyway, Bear was one of the few cops I had managed to coax into talking to me. Bear loved to tease Frank. Constantly giving him a hard time.”
“In what way?”
I smiled. “You must have been a rookie once. Maybe every TO tries to find out if the rookie has the sense of humor it will take to survive the job.”
“Sense of humor and thick hide. You need them both.”
“So you live with a little hazing. But to make matters worse in Frank’s case, his dad was a cop on the same force. Frank had grown up around these guys. So they went out of their way to try to rile him.”
“A chance to get to Frank and his old man at the same time?”
“Right. One time, Bear stuffed a plastic bag full of flour down into the driver’s seat of the cruiser — between the bottom and back of the seat. You know how those seats are — made of leather, so every time you sit down on them, air squeezes out. So the seat acted like a bellows, and every time Frank sat down it blew a little flour out.”
Cassidy smiled. “I take it they were wearing dark uniforms?”
“Exactly. So Frank ended up with a nice white stripe on his behind. Bear kept asking him who the hell he was trying to signal with it. At first, Frank couldn’t figure out what had happened. He’d brush the seat off, brush his pants off, sit down, and it would start all over again. The bag was tucked down deep enough that it wasn’t easy to see. One of the other cops took pity on him and showed him what was happening. Bear liked to brag that it was the last time anybody else had to figure something out for Frank.”
“Frank get back at him?”
“Oh, yes. Later on, of course. Not while Bear was still his TO. But I was with Frank the day he bought the crickets.”
“Crickets?”
“You can buy them at a pet store. People feed them to pet lizards. This group of crickets had more of a fighting chance at survival. They were liberated from their container inside Bear’s cruiser. Old Bear learned it was harder than hell to capture all the little suckers. They found their way into all sorts of nooks and crannies. And bred. They sang to Bear for a long time. The other guys learned what happened, and for months, they would see Bear walking down the hall and stop and cock their heads and say, ‘Hey, Bear! Do you hear a cricket in here?’ Drove him nuts.”
Cassidy laughed. “So you met Frank through Bear?”
“Yes. At first Frank was so quiet, I thought he was one of those guys who had vowed never to talk to a reporter. Bear was choosy about who he talked to, but once he decided you were okay, he was quite the conversationalist. Frank would sit there absolutely silent; first two nights he was around me, he didn’t say a word. Lots of looks across the table, though, so I decided he was shy, not hostile. Third night, Bear turned to him every couple of minutes and said, ‘Shut up, Harriman.’ Frank got the hint.”
The waitress brought our meals. Her arrival at the table snapped me out of my nostalgia and back into the present.
I wondered how long it had been since Frank had been given anything to eat.
Cassidy dug into his meal, but I pushed aside my bowl of soup. He paused and said, “You aren’t going on a hunger strike on me, are you?”
“I can’t eat. It was a stupid idea to come here.”
“Why? Because it made you think of Frank?”
I didn’t reply.
“You would have been thinking about him anyway. Come on, eat something — you can’t get by on two hours of sleep and an empty belly.”
“How about you? You must be exhausted.”
“I’m used to this. Besides, I’ll catch up a little later on today. And I’m eating.”
“I’m not—”
“You’ll think more clearly if you take care of yourself. I can’t do this alone. You’ve got to work with me, Irene.”
I picked up the spoon again, then said, “We never finished our earlier conversation about the media.”
