there or we go to Rocky’s and I buy you a drink. What’s it gonna be, McKnight?”
“Lead the way,” I said.
He got into his car and drove back to the main road, then down a block to Rocky’s place. It was just after 2:00 A.M., but the place was still doing a good business. I parked the truck and met Rudiger at the door.
“I never thought I’d be welcome here,” I said.
“After you,” he said, holding the door open.
I walked in, ready for anything. Surely this was a trap. Rocky and Harry would be waiting to jump me. They’d beat the living hell out of me, and if I was lucky, they’d dump me at the city limits instead of killing me.
Nobody jumped me. Nobody hit me over the head with anything. There were maybe thirty people in the place, mostly men, the late-night crew. The television was off now, the place transformed from a family restaurant to a bar for serious drinkers. Rudiger led me to a place at the horseshoe bar, on Maria’s side-in fact, just a few stools down from where she had been sitting when I first saw her. Rocky looked at me, then at Rudiger. If he was surprised to see us there together, he did a good job of hiding it.
“What’ll you have, McKnight?” Rudiger said.
“Beer will do,” I said.
“Two beers, Rock,” he said. “Put a shot next to mine.”
Rocky set us up without saying a word, then went back to his business.
“I didn’t think you could serve alcohol in this state after two o’clock,” I said.
“I think you’re right,” he said. “Let’s call the police.”
“Never mind,” I said.
He downed his shot and then put the glass down. He didn’t slam it. He placed it so gently, you couldn’t even hear it touch the bar.
“Are you gonna tell me why I’m here?” I said.
“Why do you think you’re here?”
“I can’t even imagine,” I said. “I was under the impression you didn’t care for me too much. I would have put the odds against you buying me a drink around ten thousand to one.”
“That’s quite a long shot,” he said. “What about the odds against me apologizing to you?”
“That would be off the board,” I said.
“You were a cop once yourself. You never heard a police chief apologize to somebody?”
“Not that I can recall.”
He raised a finger to Rocky. The shot glass got refilled.
“Can I ask you a question, McKnight?”
“Go ahead.”
“You ever been in love with somebody?”
I drank my beer. “Chief, why are you asking me that?”
“Just answer it.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I have.”
“You ever do anything stupid because you were in love with somebody?”
I thought about that one. Not so much about the answer but about why the hell he would ask me that. “I’ll say yes to that.”
“How stupid was it?” he said. “What’s the worst thing you ever did just because you were in love with somebody?”
“I’d have to think about that one.”
He nodded and then drained his second shot.
“I knew that that private eye was watching her,” he said. “I could have stopped him anytime.”
“You had no proof he broke into her house,” I said. “You couldn’t have arrested him for anything.”
“I could have made his life a little miserable.”
“Like you did to me.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Did I actually apologize for that yet, or did I just talk about apologizing? I forget.” He raised his finger again. Another shot.
“We’ll say you did,” I said. “So why did you leave Whitley alone? Is that the stupid thing you did because you’re in love?”
He laughed. “Hell, that doesn’t even make the top twenty.”
“How long have you been in love with her?” I said.
He drank his third shot. This one went down even faster than the first two. He put the shot glass down again, as gently as possible. He kept looking at it.
“A long time,” he said finally. “I met her when I was a state trooper. God, when was it? Nineteen seventy- two? I stopped this big convertible on the expressway, guy was doing eighty-five miles an hour. She was in the car with him. Turns out this man was named Harwood, the same son of a bitch that’s been after her all these years. But this was back then, before she married this other guy, Zambelli.”
He raised his finger again. I was hoping Rocky would start acting like a friend and cut him off, but he didn’t. Rudiger drained his fourth shot and continued.
“I ran his driver’s license,” he said. “And then I ran Maria’s, too. Her name was Valenescu back then. I got a hit on her name. She was wanted for questioning, some case down in Detroit. I found out later there were accusations her whole family was involved in a some kind of ongoing con game. Her mother would read fortunes, find out if the customer had any money. If they did, they’d find some way to get their hooks into them. If it was a woman and if she’d fall for it, they’d tell her her children would suffer bad fortune unless she paid for guidance. Or spells to ward off evil spirits. People believe that shit. If it was a man…”
He stopped. He was staring at the empty glass.
“Then they’d find some other way,” he said. “There’s always a way, especially when you have a beautiful daughter. I didn’t know all this at the time, though. I just had this little red flag on Maria Valenescu, to bring her in for questioning. The guy tried to stop me. This Harwood guy. I ended up writing him every ticket I could think of. Then I put Maria in the back of my car and took her in. On the way, she started crying, told me that her family had made her do all this, said she was trying to get away from them. She wanted me to stop so she could explain it all to me. She was afraid of what would happen if I took her to the station.”
He stopped again.
“You never took her in,” I said.
“I was a married man,” he said. “I had three kids. I never thought something like that could happen to me. She was just too…”
He didn’t finish the thought. He just shook his head.
“I kept seeing her,” he said. “Even after she got married. This Zambelli guy, he had to be the most oblivious man who ever lived. Or else he knew and didn’t do anything about it. I suppose that’s possible. Every once in awhile, she’d call me, tell me her family was in a jam, needed some help. A couple times I went and got her brother, Leopold, out of jail, convinced whoever it was that put him there to drop the charges, just forget it ever happened. The one time it was another state trooper, that one was easy. The other time, it was a deputy in Oakland County. Right after Zambelli died, Leopold went after Harwood, threw him down some stairs, I think. That one, I had to be real persuasive with. I can be a persuasive man, McKnight.”
I let him have that one. I finished my beer.
“She disappeared right after that. Before the baby was born. I was back to being a regular married man with three kids. Two of them were out of the house by then, the other one getting ready to go to college. I used to look at my wife and say to myself, This is what you’ve got for the rest of your life. I forgot all about Maria. Didn’t think I’d ever hear from her again. I retired from the state police and took this job. My wife died. I was all by myself here in this town, the town I grew up in. Figured I’d just spend my last twenty years here and that would be it. Then she showed up. Out of nowhere. ‘Hello Howard,’ she says. ‘Remember me?’ I just about died right there on the spot. She was older, of course, but my God, McKnight. I mean, you’ve seen her. It’s not like she doesn’t look like she’s forty-seven years old, you know what I mean? It’s like she’s forty-seven years old and this is what it’s supposed to look like. It’s even better than twenty, better than thirty. Hell, I bet she’ll look even better when she’s sixty. Is that crazy?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all.”
