then they don’t want anything to do with you. They’re already burdened with unsolved crimes and vics and pains in the ass of every stripe. They pretend to be busy and refuse to meet your eye. They don’t check up on you. They hope the next cop down the line will take care of you instead.
First thing I did when I walked into the squad room was scan the on-call board. Gilmore had the late shift and wouldn’t be on until midnight. I went looking for his desk.
I recognized the framed photo of his two daughters, Maggie and Melanie. It was an old picture. No snapshots of his wife. A happily married man always puts a photo of his wife on his desk. He changes the pictures of his kids and keeps them up-to-date, unless they no longer live at home with him. Like my father had said, Phyllis had finally walked out and taken their daughters with her.
I sat in his chair and went through his desk hoping I might find Collie’s jacket or files on the case. It was a long shot and I came up empty. I did find an old rent receipt that gave me Gilmore’s new address. I knew the apartment house. The neighborhood was good, but he wasn’t paying much. Police discount.
Cops walked past me by the boatload. They dragged in suspects who whined and complained and tried to look menacing. They threatened to sue, wanted their lawyers, proclaimed their innocence. The cops ignored them. So did I.
Under Gilmore’s phone was a directory sheet of extension numbers. I called the archives room and asked them to bring up Collie Rand’s file. Some old-timer gave me static about proper channels.
I kept my voice quiet but filled with a self-righteous sharpness. “Move your wrinkled ass, pops. Protocol takes time and we don’t have any to waste.”
The geezer sputtered. I told him to leave the file on my desk in the next ten minutes, even if I wasn’t there. That brought another round of protests. I cut him off. “If you don’t get moving now you fiI kn d’ll work the last of your thirty on the bay this winter. It’ll be the boat for you. You got insulated drawers, old-timer? You ever seen hypothermia of the ball sac? You want to go out of the game with your ex-wives knowing you’ve lost your package?”
I hung up.
The desk next to Gilmore’s was also unoccupied. I went and sat over there and watched the squad room fill and empty. I went to the little kitchenette area and got myself a cup of coffee and a stale bagel. It wasn’t until I took the first bite that I realized I hadn’t eaten anything all day and I was starving.
Gilmore was one of those cops who had more in common with the criminals he was trying to put away than with the rest of the joe-citizen world. He’d been in trouble himself as a teenager, orphaned early and kicked around the foster-family system, spent some time in the juvie reformatory and then county lockup later on. He’d steal a car, go joyriding, get laid in the backseat, then return it a couple of days later.
He had his big turnaround when he tried to outrun a statie with his girlfriend riding shotgun and got into a minor crackup on the LIE that cost her the full use of her right arm. He did a nine-month jolt, came out, and started going to a community college. Must’ve stood on tippy-toes to get him over the police height requirement and graduated middle of the pack at the academy. For years he kept changing divisions-bunko, vice, narco-but they all brought him around to Big Dan Thompson.
Big Dan had a way of working his magic on a cop like Gilmore. Gilmore wasn’t dirty but he was just bent enough to help Big Dan out on occasion. So if Dan knew a little about one of the rival syndicates-the Chinese, the Colombians, the Russians-maybe what time a shipment was coming in or who pulled the trigger on some witness for the D.A., he’d turn Gilmore on to it for some kind of trade. Nothing that couldn’t be considered a legal gray area. Maybe Gilmore would let one of Big Dan’s boys off on a leg-breaking rap or he wouldn’t get around to popping one of the big games even when he knew about it. I never found out if Big Dan gave Gilmore a monthly envelope, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Gilmore had a wedge of Dan’s cash hidden in a lockbox buried in his yard someplace.
Gilmore hooked on to me when I was sixteen because he suspected I was the one pulling burglaries in Dix Hills, a ritzy neighborhood where some of the residents had clout with the town council. He was right, I was. He followed me for days, trying to catch me climbing into someone’s window. He dragged in known fences and tried to get them to roll on me.
He braced me hard the first time-cuffs, twelve hours in the holding tank without a phone call, no food or toilet break, threats against the family-and then later he tried playing soft, telling me about his own run-in with the law, giving me his whole life story. I thought he was lying but later on found out it was all true.
While he chased after me, I watched him. He was a little bulldog who seemed to be running from himself. It was written in his face. He eventually caught on that the Rands were satellite members of the Thompson crew and started coming around the house. At first he just rousted my father and uncles and Collie, trying to pick up information in exchange for favors. Except the Rands didn’t play that kind of game.
For some reason, he seemed to like the family. He couldn’t hide his interest in us. I knew it was because he’d never had a family of his own, no father to talk to about guys like Big Dan. He rousted us less and less and starwidss and stted hanging around. Eventually he began sitting out on the porch, having beers with my father. My mother knew the birthdays of his kids and would send cards.
One time Gilmore found me reading to Dale and said, “That’s not how you do it. You have to work the voices, put on a show. When the vampires bite, you have to pull back your lips, show teeth.” He told me how he read children’s books to his two daughters, the way he’d get into character, the different voices he’d use. At the time his daughters were three and four, and Dale was ten. He didn’t think it mattered.
When Collie dove into the underneath Gilmore actually came around and tried to console my parents. He hugged my mother and patted my father’s arm. He brought flowers like he was attending a funeral. He didn’t cry with them but I could see that he was trying to. I thought, even then, Gilmore, he’s going to be the one in the end who gets close enough to stick in the knife.
I finished my bagel and scarfed down two more. When I returned to Gilmore’s desk Collie’s file was there. Five files, actually, stuck inside a huge accordion folder. I photocopied everything. I had a stack of about a hundred pages. I found a couple of thick rubber bands in Gilmore’s junk drawer and snapped them around the bundle. I called the geezer back and told him to come pick up the file. He started yelling and I said, “You did good, pops, you may have just saved a life,” and walked out.
10
JFK met me at the bottom of the driveway. He looked regal and aware, his eyes lit by the setting sun. I got the sense that he knew there was potential trouble coming down from different quarters and he planned on being ready for it.
I left the thick sheaf of paperwork under the passenger seat and slid out of the car. As I moved up the walk I called JFK to me, but he remained staunchly on guard, continuing his watch.
I passed the trash can and thought of chucking all the pages in and forgetting my brother had said anything at all. I thought I could very easily live in denial back at the ranch or at another one like it. I had already done it for five years. I could do it for another fifty. If anyone asked if I had a brother I could say no or say yeah, he lives back east, or say he was dead without explaining anything more. I could sleep well without any remorse for never following up.
My old man was inside with my mother, watching television with Gramp. My uncles and sister were nowhere in sight. I could hear my dad talking to his father as if he might get coherent responses. My mother did the same thing. They were having a lively conversation that would sound buoyant to anyone else but sounded strained to me.
They weren’t doing it just for Gramp’s benefit, hoping to keep what little personality he had left alive for as long as they could. They were doing it for themselves because it was the only way they could possibly accept the burden of caring for him. Pretending that it mattered. I imagined that when my father spoke to Old Shep he heard the man’s deep voice talking back to him. His thunderous laughter so forceful that you had to lean away from it.
I tried to figure out how much I should tell them. Would it make them feel any better that Collie now admitted to killing only seven people instead of eight? Hell, I decided to say nothing. It wasn’t much of a decision. It was the path of least resistance. When you heard someone at the door, you dove out the window. Avoides ›You tl confrontation, hide or run away. I’d been doing it my whole life.
