Kissing the Beehive (7 page)

"Okay, Mr. _Happy Days_, so what is your greatest memory of high school?"

"I guess finding Pauline Ostrova."

"_Dad_, that's not a memory, it's a horror. I mean normal stuff. You know, like the prom or the homecoming game."

"Being in love. Learning how to be in love. One day girls went from just being there to being the center of everything."

"When did it happen with you?"

I lifted a hand off the steering wheel and turned it palm up. "I don't really remember. I just know I walked into school one day and everything was different. There were all these swirling skirts and bosoms and beautiful smiles."

She rolled down the window. The wind whipped her hair across her face.

"You know what I think sometimes? When I'm really sad or depressed, I think _he's_ out there somewhere and sooner or later we'll meet.

"Then I wonder, what's he doing this minute? Does he ever think the same thing? Does he ever
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wonder what I'm like or where I am? He's probably reading _Playboy_ and dreaming of boobs."

I thought about that a moment and had to agree. "Boys do tend to do that. Judging from my own experience, he's either already somewhere in your life but hasn't materialized in your thoughts yet. Like people when they're beaming up in _Star Trek_? You know, when they're halfway there but still look like club-soda bubbles? Or else he's in Mali or Breslau and you won't see him for a while. But you can be sure no matter where he is, he thinks about you a lot."

She shrugged. "Speaking of such things, what's with your new girlfriend?"

"I don't know yet. She's still in a fuzzy pink frame for me."

"What does that mean?" Cass put her bare feet up on the dashboard.

"It means she's still too much of a sweetie pie for me to have any perspective on the situation.

Everything she does is adorable."

"What's her name again, Greta Garbo?"

"Don't be a wise guy; you know her name -- Veronica Lake."

"When do I get to meet her?"

"The next time I come into the city and can wrest you away from your mother. We're all going to have dinner together."

We stopped for lunch at Scrappy's Diner and surprisingly Donna the waitress remembered me from the last visit. She asked if I had gone to see her uncle Frannie yet. I said today was the day.

She looked at Cass curiously so I

introduced them.

"Donna, this is my daughter Cassandra. Donna's uncle is Frannie McCabe."

Cass whistled loudly, thoroughly impressed. "Frannie McCabe is my father's hero. Every bad guy in every book he ever wrote has some of Frannie in him."

Donna giggled and asked if I would like her to call the station to see if he was in. I said sure. She went off and was back in five minutes. "He remembered you! He says to come down."

Half an hour later we walked through the door of the Crane's View police station. I found myself unconsciously shaking my head. "The last time I was in here, a whole bunch of us were dragged in for fighting at a football game."

A young policeman passed on his way out and gave Cass an appreciative look. The dad in me clenched but I kept moving. Just inside the door a woman in uniform sat at a desk. I asked if we could speak to the chief. After asking my name, she picked up a phone and called. A moment later the door behind her opened. A gaunt man in an expensive dark suit emerged wearing a smile I'd know a thousand years from now.

"Fuckin'-a, it's Bayer aspirin! I just want to know one thing -- you got cigarettes?"

"Frannie!"

We shook hands a long time while staring at each other, checking the wrinkles, the signs, the years across each other's faces.

"You aren't dressed too sharp for a famous author. That last book of yours -- I laughed so loud at the end, I got a sore throat."

"It was supposed to be sad!"

He took hold of my chin and squeezed it. "Our bestseller. Sammy Bayer on the _New York Times_ bestseller list. You can't imagine how happy I was when I saw your name there the first time."

His hair was brushed back and gelled into place, _GQ_ magazine style.

His rep tie was elegant and understated; the shirt as smooth and white as fresh milk. He looked either like a successful stockbroker or a professional basketball coach. The same crazy energy I remembered so well glowed on him, but his face was extremely pale and there were deep blue circles under his eyes. It looked like he was halfway through recuperating from a serious illness.

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"Who's this?"

"My daughter Cassandra."

He put out a hand to shake, but Cass surprised both of us by stepping forward and embracing him. He looked at me over her shoulder and smiled. "Hey, what's this?"

She took a step back. "I know you already. I've been hearing stories about you since I was a baby."

"Really?" He was embarrassed and very pleased. "What'd your dad say about me?"

"I know about the Coke-bottle bombs, the VFW Hall, Anthony Scaro's Chevelle --"

"Whoa! Come on into my office before you get me arrested."

The office was huge and bare of anything but a big scarred desk and two chairs facing it.

"It looks exactly the same as it did twenty years ago!"

Sitting on the other side of the desk, Frannie looked over his shoulder at the room. "I took the Rembrandt down so you'd feel at home. How many times did they have us in here, Sam?"

"You more than me, chief. They should have put up a memorial plaque for you in here."

"I got tired of sitting on your side of the desk and havin' someone hit me on the head with the Yellow Pages. I thought I'd take over and get to do the hitting."

My daughter the pacifist stiffened. "Do you really do that? Hit people with telephone books?"

"Nah, Cassandra, the good old days are over. Now they make us use psychology. But now and then if they get fresh we sneak in and poke 'em with an electric cattle prod."

As I so well remembered, his face gave away nothing. All innocent calm and empty, that perfected poker face had gotten him out of a lot of trouble twenty-five years before.

"Tell her you're joking, Frannie."

"I'm joking, Cass. So, Mr. Bayer Aspirin, how come you've graced us with your presence after two decades?"

"Before we get into that, tell me how in God's name you ended up chief of police? I was sure you'd be --"

"In jail? Thank you. That's what everyone says. I didn't have a religious conversion, if that's what you're worried about. Better -- I went to

Vietnam. Things happened. Good guys died but I didn't. You remember Andy Eldritch? He was eating a can of Bumble Bee tuna his mom had sent and then suddenly he was dead two feet away from me. I'd just asked him if I could have a bite. Things like that. I got pissed off. Life couldn't be _that_ worthless, you know? When I got out, I went to Macalester College in St. Paul and got a

B.S. Then, I don't know, I became a cop. It made sense."

"Are you married?"

"_Was_, but no more. Now I'm single as a thumb."

"Dad's been married three times."

Frannie opened a desk drawer and took out a pack of Marlboros. "Doesn't surprise me. Your dad was always odder than a Brussels sprout. I guess he still is."

"You can say that again. Now he's dating a woman named Veronica Lake."

"Isn't she dead? Well, it takes all kinds."

"Fuck you, Frannie. Listen, remember Pauline Ostrova?"

"Sure, you pulled her out of the river. The day we all grew up."

"You remember everything about that day?"

"Damn right I do, Sam! How many people get murdered in this burg?"

"How many _do_?"

"Two, as long as I've been on the force. That's seventeen years. Both marital things. Very pathetic and uninteresting."

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"Who did it? Who killed Pauline?"

"Who do they _say_ did it, or who did it?" He lit a cigarette and closed his lighter with a hard snap.

Cass and I looked at each other and waited for him to continue. He didn't.

Smiling, he wiggled his eyebrows. "I should have been an actor. How's that for dramatic tension?

I think they should cast Andy Garcia as me in the movie.

"The best part of being chief of police is I get to look in all the old files and see what really went on here when we were kids. There's still a file on you, Sam. Now that you're famous, you think I could get some money telling the world you were once half a juvenile delinquent?"

"Frannie, what about Pauline?"

"The case was open-and-shut. She had a boyfriend from college named Edward Durant. They arrested him, he confessed, they cut a deal with the prosecutor and sent him up to Sing Sing for life. He's dead."

Cass gasped.

Frannie ran a hand through his hair. "This is ugly stuff, Cassandra. You sure you want to hear it?"

She licked her lips, nodded slowly, then quickly.

"As soon as he got up there, the bad boys started using him for a fu --

uh, love doll until he couldn't take it anymore and hanged himself in his cell."

"Jesus! How old was he?"

"Twenty-one. Nice-looking boy. Highest honors at Swarthmore. But he didn't do it."

"Who did?" I realized I was breathing too quickly.

"I'm not positive, but I've got my suspicions. You didn't know Pauline did you? She was from another dimension. Why do you want to know about her now?"

"Because I want to write a book about what really happened to her."

Frannie took a long drag on the cigarette and put his hand behind his head. "Interesting idea."

He looked at the ceiling. "Come on, I want to show you a couple of things." He stood up and gestured for us to follow.

Out on the street he shot his cuffs and walked over to an unmarked Chevrolet. "Hop in."

Driving down the street in a police car with McCabe at the wheel made me laugh. "Frannie, I wish there was some kind of magic available where I could go back and say to fifteen-year-old me, 'Do I have something to tell _you_,'

"He'd never believe you. Here, look at this shitty store. You buy a pair of shoes in there, you're barefoot in two months. Remember Al Salvato?"

'Green Light'?"

"Right." He looked in the rearview mirror at Cass. "Al Salvato was a _svacim_ we grew up with. Whenever someone said something he agreed with, he'd say, 'Green light.' He thought it was cute."

"But Frannie didn't. He punched him in the nose for it."

"That's right. Salvato owns three stores here now. This is one of them.

He brought cheap shoes, a sex store, and bad Greek food to town. Ran for mayor last year and lost, thank God."

Chief McCabe's tour of Crane's View went up and down and all around. He pointed out who owned what, who of our old friends still lived there, and gave a funny running history of what had happened since I'd left. His information only furthered what I already assumed: New money had moved up from Manhattan, thus terminally yuppifying much of the old homestead. There was a cafe now that served cappuccino and croissants, an Audi dealer, a vegetarian restaurant.

What was left existed in a time warp that made the rest of the village look like it hadn't changed a bit. Witness Scrappy's Diner.

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Cass asked more questions than I did. From them, I was touched to hear she remembered many of the stories I had told her over the years. She and Frannie chatted away as he drove us around. After a while I tuned them out.

We drove up Baldwin Street and took a right on Broadway. I smiled, knowing where we were going. He stopped the car in front of a well-kept red and white house with a wraparound porch.

Large chestnut trees flanked it on both sides. It was in much better condition than when I had last seen it.

"You know this house, Cassandra?"

"No." She was leaning forward, her elbows resting on the seat between Frannie and me.

"This is where your dad lived."

"Really? He never showed it to me. Can we go look?"

We got out and stood on the sidewalk in front. "How come I've never been here before, Dad?"

"Because I haven't been back since you were born."

"But you're always telling me stories about Crane's View!"

I was about to answer when Frannie climbed up on the porch and went to the front door. "You want to look inside?" He held up a bunch of keys and jigged them to show he could get in.

"You have a key?"

"To my own house? Sure! Are you nuts?" Without waiting for our reactions, he opened the door and walked in. I caught up as he was walking into the living room. I wanted to ask a dozen questions, but also wanted simply to stand there and remember.

"You _live_ here? You bought my house?"

"Yeah! I've had it seven years."

"What'd you pay for it?"

He looked to see if Cass was near. "None of your fuckin' business.

Bought it when I was married. My wife was an executive producer at NBC so we had a lot of money then. When we split up, she gave me the house."

"Congratulations! Every time 7 got divorced, I had to check to see if I still had all my body parts after the settlement. Can we look around?"

"Sure. You want something to drink? Cassandra, you want anything?"

"Could I have a beer?"

"Sam?"

"Nothing. I'm in too much shock. Frannie McCabe owns my house. You bought it from, who, the Van Gelders?"

"Their son. They moved to Florida and gave it to him." He started for the kitchen. "You wanna look around, go ahead. Go upstairs if you want."

"Dad?" Cass looked at me expectantly.

"You go. I'm going to sit down here a little while."

Frannie was back in a few minutes with a glass of beer in one hand, a glass of milk in the other.

"Milk? _You_?"

"It's good stuff. Now what's with the Pauline thing? How come you want to write about her?"

"Because it's too interesting to pass up. I've been thinking about it awhile now. Why don't you think her boyfriend did it? You've got to tell me everything because I don't know a thing."

He sat down across from me and cradled his glass in both hands. "I'll show you the files. She and this Edward Durant went out the night it happened.