Cop Job (30 page)

“Was his family military?” I asked.

“On Long Island? Not his family. His wife’s. Big mob of Italians that lived in Queens. Poor choice of words. You know what I mean.”

“We do,” said Jackie. “So he was married during his tenure here.”

“Married while still in the army. Nice girl, if you could get past the accent. You could cut it with a knife.”

Jackie looked over at me, a person she often accused of torturing vowels to telegraph my Long Island roots.

“Hard to judge a person by the way they talk,” I said, making sure the accent showed through.

“Right,” said Chaplin. “Anyway Herschel lived in Queens and commuted into the city and trained with the guard until he shipped out to Iraq, and it sounds like you know what happened after that.”

“We think we do, but why don’t you tell it,” said Jackie.

So he did, with little deviation from Cardozo’s version, without the military nomenclature. The effort made Chaplin noticeably sadder, something describing Bergeron’s ultimate heroism did little to allay.

“I’m sorry,” said Jackie.

“Don’t get me started on that idiot war,” said Chaplin.

“I think we already did,” said Jackie. “So I’m doubly sorry.”

He grinned a sad little grin.

“Do you know if he knew an RISD transfer named Oksana Quan? Good-looking platinum blonde?” I asked, giving him the year she would have been on campus.

The sad face abruptly turned angry, and suspicious.

“What does that have to do with a homicide investigation?” he asked.

“As we said, background,” said Jackie. “Mr. Bergeron served in Iraq with the victim.”

“Herschel was a devoted family man. Loved his wife, loved his kids. A real square, as we once said. It wasn’t his fault the girl developed a crush. Nothing ever came of it, that I assure you.”

“Though you knew her,” I said.

“She’d visit him here at the office, and I’d see them around campus,” said Chaplin. “I know it sounds bad, but you didn’t know him as I did. He was eager to mentor, and the students loved him. Not in that way,” he added, frustrated with fumbling the defense of his dead assistant.

“We believe you,” said Jackie.

She must have meant herself and somebody else in the room, because I sure as hell didn’t.

“Everyone thought they were doing it,” I said.

That pained him further, but he nodded his head.

“Is that why he left for NYU?” Jackie asked.

He nodded again.

“His wife wanted to move back to Long Island, but not just to be close to family,” he said quietly into his desk. Then he looked up. “It’s hard to exaggerate Oksana’s beauty. I don’t know why she didn’t go into modeling. Maybe she did. I don’t know.”

“So you don’t know what happened to her,” I said.

“I don’t. Never tried to find out. Herschel never mentioned her after he left. We eventually stopped writing each other, and then he was dead. The whole thing was so awful I suppose I just wanted to forget about it. That’s all I can tell you, which is a lot more than I probably should have.”

Jackie assured him his candor was welcomed and well within the limits of propriety, and he would never have to revisit the subject again. That seemed to relieve him and he was gracious when he showed us out the door.

Jackie was quiet as we walked across the campus, and it seemed wise not to talk about our chat with the dean until we were safely back in the car. As the doors closed I asked her the one question stuck at the front of my mind.

“Say, Jackie, where did Oksana go to law school?”

She dug out her smartphone and tapped around the screen for a few moments, then handed it to me.

“It’s in her official New York DOJ biography,” she said. “Look near the bottom.”

After zooming in to raise the type size, and moving the text around with my index finger, I finally found it.

“NYU,” I said.

Jackie didn’t bother to respond, since she knew that already.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
OUR

J
ackie had me drive the Volvo back to Long Island so she could make calls, text, and send e-mails from her smartphone. It made me glad I didn’t own one of those things, though I was a little curious about how they worked.

She claimed to know people at NYU law school, people who would freely tell her things and not force her into unethical deception, much less outright fraud. She wrote them as we drove, and I occupied myself piloting the heavy station wagon through New England traffic down to the ferry landing in New London.

Among the many fine amenities on the big ferry was a full-scale bar with a real live bartender. I took the drink out on deck to watch for sailboats and allow the stiff sea breeze to ventilate the pondering part of my brain. Jackie was mostly quiet, tangled in deep deliberations of her own. She didn’t share her thoughts, nor press me on mine. I had the feeling we were following similar mental paths, and maybe she did, too, so there was no need at that point to expend conversational energy.

When she dropped me off at the cottage I changed my clothes and went down to the shop after calling Nathan and getting the message that all was status quo. So neither good nor bad.

After achieving enough progress to satisfy my schedule with Entwhistle, I cleaned up and took the Grand Prix into Southampton Village.

Mad Martha’s was filling up fast, but I found a spot at the bar in one of the darkened corners. I knew a lot of the people in there, but didn’t see Jimmy Watruss, the person I was looking for. I asked the bartender if Jaybo was in the back orchestrating things like he usually did. The bartender said he’d go get him.

“Say, Sam, wazup?” Jaybo asked, walking down the bar wiping his hands on a bloody apron. “How’re you feeling?”

“A lot better,” I said. “Ribs only hurt when I get out of bed. Makes you want to sleep in more.”

“I hear you,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”

I shooed the thought away.

“Knock it off about that. Do you know if Jimmy is coming in?”

“I don’t think so. Some tenants moved out of a shop on Jobs Lane without telling him. Or paying all the rent. Left a mess. He’s been over there cleaning up and yelling about lawsuits.”

I thanked him after getting the address and took my time leaving the bar and walking down Main Street into the Village and hooking a right onto Jobs Lane. Night had settled in by then and the air was warm with a dash of damp Atlantic breeze. The wind was out of the southwest, which brought along the sound of the ocean waves, faint but undeniable.

The sign above the place said, “Totally Hip, Totally Now,” which explained why it flopped faster than a suicidal mayfly. Someone had taped brown paper over the insides of the windows, but light was seeping through around the edges. I pounded on the front door and Jimmy answered.

“Shit, Sam, I thought it was my disappeared tenants,” said Jimmy.

“That’d make them bad at disappearing.”

The store was brightly lit by ceiling lamps, and a few work lights mounted on floor stands. The white walls reflected it all into a blinding glare. Chrome clothing racks stood empty, or lay on the floor as if tossed there by the escaping retailers. Jimmy was featuring his usual rangy cowboy look, complete with chewing tobacco, that made him seem more like a squatter than the owner of the place.

“Fuckin’ asshole Romanians,” he said.

“Romanians?”

“That’s what they told me anyway. The rental agent thought they were actually Bulgarian, like, what the fuck’s the difference? All I got was the two months upfront and a security deposit, and these racks. What do you think they’re worth?”

“Nothing to me,” I said.

He looked at me as if suddenly realizing I was in his abandoned store.

“What’s up, anyway?” he asked.

“I want to talk. When you’re not busy.”

“Nothing busy about this. I’m just standing around getting pissed.”

“So let’s sit,” I said, and sat on the dirty industrial carpet and leaned against the wall. He sat and leaned against the opposite wall.

“How’d you know I was here?” he asked.

“Jaybo told me.”

He took off his baseball cap and scratched his head, as if still getting used to the recent crew cut.

“Kid works too hard,” he said. “There day and night. Almost makes me want to get back in the kitchen and help him out. Almost.”

“I never told you what a nice job you did at Alfie’s funeral,” I said. “Probably not easy dragging all that stuff up, even for a good cause.”

He didn’t seem entirely pleased with the compliment.

“I didn’t say anything special. Just talked about what was.”

“And it was pretty bad,” I said. “I got the story from Colonel Cardozo.”

He looked even less pleased.

“Freaking, drunk-ass head shrinker. How would he know? He wasn’t there.”

“He thinks a lot of you.”

He closed his eyes and rolled his head around, stretching his neck muscles.

“He’s all right. Means well.”

“I’m wondering why you didn’t mention Herschel Bergeron. From what I hear, he saved both your lives.”

“Saved? You mean by keeping us from getting killed? Oh, that. He did that. You weren’t in the service were you.”

“No,” I said.

“Too bad. They could’ve used you.”

“Thanks, Jimmy.”

“Bergeron was a good man. I mean like in a good person. You run into a lot of asshole officers in a situation like that. Not all actually did the job they were supposed to while acting like a human being.”

“I’m sorry he didn’t make it,” I said.

I noticed his eyes were wet with tears, though he did nothing to hide it.

“You know, this isn’t my favorite topic of conversation,” he said. “I like you, Sam, but I’m wondering why we’re having it.”

“You spent a lot of time with Alfie and Bergeron in that Bradley Fighting Vehicle,” I said. “From what I understand, it could be pretty boring, when it wasn’t extremely intense. Or terrifying. It’s the sort of situation where you get to learn a lot about each other.”

“You understand correctly,” he said, “though I still don’t know why we’re talking about it.”

“I need to know what he said about Oksana Quan.”

Those wet eyes turned into narrow slits.

“You are one nosy bastard, you know that Sam?”

“I know that,” I said. “I’m also a persistent bastard. Not an easy combination, I admit it. Once I know something, I can’t shake it loose. And I know that you were a lot closer to Alfie than you ever let on. And that Herschel Bergeron was a lot closer to Oksana Quan than he should have been. So what does all that mean? I don’t know. But I think you do.”

He pulled away from the wall and did the stretching thing with his neck again, then shook out his shoulders.

“You wouldn’t know it, but Alfie scored top marks in close quarters combat training. Skinny fucker, but fast. Like a mongoose. The only way to beat him was to get him in a clutch and hold on. Muscle him to the ground and squeeze till his eyeballs popped out.”

“I knew guys like that when I was boxing. Easy to underestimate.”

“He grew up an orphan, living in all sorts of shitholes and foster homes. That’ll toughen you up plenty. Not like me. Had it made. It was too easy. Probably why I joined the army. Prove to myself I had what it takes. Turns out I did. Didn’t matter. An RPG doesn’t care how tough you are.”

“What did Bergeron tell you about Oksana Quan?” I asked.

He shook his head, grinning.

“You’re right. You are a persistent bastard. Who cares what he told us?”

“I’m going to find out anyway, whether you tell me or not. I want to hear it from you.”

The tears had stopped, but now he was breathing hard. There was stored energy in his posture and rampant indecision on his face.

“Let me ask you something,” he said. “How would you like getting your ass kicked? Coming onto my property. Threatening me. I’d be justified.”

I rolled up from a sitting position into a squat. He stayed seated, still leaning against the wall.

“Others have tried.”

“I know you’re good with your fists, Sam, but they won’t do much good on a guy who knows a hundred ways to kill you before you know you’re dead.”

“I know that. I’m not here to fight. I just want information. And if you don’t give it to me, there’ll be other people after me asking the same things. It won’t go away.”

He settled back deeper into the wall.

“Jesus Christ, I hate this shit.”

“What shit?”

“Civilian shit. No honor. No loyalty. Just civilian bullshit.” Not knowing what to say to that, I just waited him out. “The guy was a boy scout, what can I say. But not stuck on himself, not some holier-than-thou. You’re right. You live with somebody day in and day out in those circumstances, you talk about things you’d never talk about with anyone else. Fine for me. I was a general fuck-up and didn’t care one way or the other what anybody thought. But the captain had this one thing eating his guts out.

“The only dumb thing he ever does and he’s like burning up with guilt. You’re Catholic, right? They tell us we have to confess shit like that to keep our ass out of hell. The captain didn’t have a priest handy so me and Alfie were the next best thing.”

“Oksana,” I said.

“What guy doesn’t catch a little extracurricular tail, especially when it’s served up by a drop-dead babe like that? I’ve only seen her a couple times, but oh my Lord.”

I didn’t tell him I never caught the opportunities flung my way when I was in a miserable marriage, nor in any situation where the only restraint was a matter of honor and loyalty.

“I hope it made him feel better,” I said. “Telling you guys.”

His sadness reminded me of Dean Chaplin’s. The type expressed by men who’ve lost other men in ways they have trouble fully understanding.

“I guess,” said Jimmy. “Only it wasn’t the fooling around part that had him so tied up in knots.”

“It wasn’t?”

“I’ll make it easy for you. Oksana had this crazy thing for the captain so he tried to shake her by changing jobs. Got a gig with NYU in the city, but she tracks him down. That’s when the serious shit kicks in. She tells him she’ll put a billboard up in Times Square about the two of them if he doesn’t get her into law school. So he does, somehow, even though she’s no way qualified. That’s what ripped the poor bastard apart. Not boffing the beauty queen, but for cheating to get her into NYU. I’m thinking, that’s it? But everybody’s got their own demons.”