Hocus (32 page)

“Good,” Bret said, but he was frowning, watching Frank’s face. He lowered his head in concentration as he began to unfasten the restraint he had so recently attached to the rail.

There it was again, Frank thought. Bret, attuned to his moods, watching for little cues.

He would need to be more careful. Yet here was his hope, perhaps his only hope — Bret’s concern for him.

“Bret—”

Bret looked up at him.

“How does Samuel feel about this?”

Bret smiled, now working to take the restraint off the wrist itself. “He dislikes the idea intensely, but we humor one another. He knows this will make me happy, and so he gives in.”

“And what did you give to him in return?”

His hands stilled. “We don’t have a tally sheet.”

Frank made no other comment as Bret finished removing the left wrist restraint. His impatience to be freed was nearly unbearable now, and he immediately reached to remove the one on the right wrist, only to grow dizzy again. But Bret did not try to interfere; he waited, let Frank free himself, first from the rail, then from the restraint itself. He did not say anything when Frank threw the strap hard to the ground like a hated thing.

Frank blew out a breath, tried to control the rush of emotion he felt as the strap made a satisfying slap on the floor.

He rubbed his wrists as Bret lowered the rail, slightly embarrassed now at the display of temper. But that passed with the anticipation of another measure of freedom.

“Careful now,” Bret said, and helped him from the bed.

He was ridiculously wobbly and dizzy as all hell, but he was on his own two feet. He didn’t know how long he had been here or how long he would remain, but at least he wasn’t tied to the damned bed.

“Thank you,” Frank said, and saw that Bret had some idea of how deeply he meant it.

He walked like an old man to the table, leaning on Bret for the first few steps, then on his own. He eased into a chair, rolled and stretched the stiff muscles of his shoulders and back. He looked at the bed.

“Don’t think about being back there,” Bret said, following Frank’s anxious line of thought. “We have time now, and we should make the most of it. Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” Frank said in the tone of one making a discovery. He felt awkward, unsure of how to proceed.

“Just sandwiches this time, I’m afraid,” Bret said, going to an ice chest.

“You said you have something for me to read?” Frank asked as Bret arrived with paper plates wrapped in plastic wrap, a sandwich and fresh fruit on each. He did not doubt that all of his food would be of a kind that could be eaten without utensils. No makeshift weaponry.

“You can read it after we eat,” Bret said. “Do you remember the Szals?”

“Bernard and Regina? Yes, of course.”

They talked of the Szals and telescopes and aikido. Bret politely steered the conversation away from any potentially touchy subjects, such as the years of silence. Still, Frank could not deny that it was a genuinely pleasant exchange. Bret had come alive, had been enthusiastic, was always eager for Frank’s thoughts and opinions.

After eating, Frank stood and walked slowly around the tent, which was roomy but sparsely furnished. Barefoot, he was fairly certain the floor beneath the tent was wooden. There were several locked trunks of various sizes along one side of the tent; he was curious about them but decided against asking about them now.

His head itched. He reached back to scratch it and felt the shaved and slightly tender skin around the stitches.

“God, it feels good to be able to scratch that damned itch,” he said.

Bret’s face fell. “I’m so sorry. I should have thought of that.”

You try hard to anticipate what others are feeling, Frank thought. Aloud he said, “It wasn’t so bad. I probably shouldn’t be touching it, anyway.”

“There shouldn’t be much of a scar,” Bret said.

“Your hair will cover it, I’m sure.”

“You put in the stitches?”

He couldn’t fail to notice Bret’s sudden pallor.

“No,” Bret said. “No, Samuel did.”

“I’ll have to thank him,” Frank said. “I seem to remember bleeding.” He touched the slightly puffy place on his upper lip. “My lip?”

Bret was looking away now. “Your lip, your nose. Your head. It was terrible.” He shuddered. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Sure.”

He made his way back to the table. He was still plagued by dizziness and weakness, but they seemed to be lessening: the drugs clearing from his system, no doubt. He tried to keep from touching the IV device.

“Here,” Bret said, handing him some papers as he was seated. “I think it’s time you read this.”

While the title — “Father’s Day” — came as no real surprise, almost everything that followed did.

I
DIDN’T EAT MUCH
, even though the food was terrific. The cooks didn’t take it personally. Pete, for one, was too busy glaring at Cecilia.

I had forgotten that Pete — for reasons he had never confided in me — disliked her intensely. He did little to disguise that fact at dinner. Rachel kept muttering things to him in Italian, while Cookie — as I was learning to refer to Nat Cook — was doing his best to distract Cecilia. He needn’t have bothered.

Cookie was the oldest of the three. Bear was next, then Gus. Gus was still brawny, while Cookie appeared to be quite frail.

Bea suggested we adjourn to the living room, but Rachel agreed only on the condition that she and Pete would clear the table and do the dishes. I could see Pete’s rebellion forming, but not in time to save himself — she all but grabbed him by the ear. Cassidy took in all of this with amusement.

Before the trio arrived, Cassidy had taken me aside and asked me not to jump in with any questions of my own until he asked one about the Ryan-Neukirk case. From there, he said, I’d be asking most of them, at least in the beginning. “And don’t go convicting Bradshaw just yet,” he added sternly. “You’ve got to act as calm and natural as you can tonight. I’m depending on it. Don’t let me catch you giving him the evil eye or fidgeting like you’ve got a bumblebee in your drawers. You think of him as the man who brought you and Frank together — that guy you talked about when we had lunch the other day.”

I tried to heed his warnings but still felt nervous as we sat down to dinner. Early attention and talk, fortunately, was focused on Greg Bradshaw’s knee surgery. By the time I had calmed myself enough to look up from the first course, I realized Cassidy had somehow taken control of the conversation. He seemed to set some silent ground rule: no one would discuss Frank’s captivity or, by extension, the Ryan-Neukirk murders. He did not announce this; he merely started several discussions that were obviously not about our great concern. Everyone picked up on this cue, probably certain that he was doing this to keep Frank’s mother or wife calm during a meal he called — despite Pete’s constant corrections — our “Eye-talian supper.” I think he was getting back at Pete for harassing Cecilia, since Rachel seemed to be suppressing a laugh every time he said it.

Once Cassidy got the ball rolling in the direction he wanted it to go, he spent most of his time listening to the three older cops argue with one another over who told the true version of whichever war story was under discussion.

The stories began to have similar themes. If they were about Gus, they were wild-man exploits: Gus diving and tackling an armed suspect in an alley after his own gun had jammed; Gus climbing a water tower (while drunk) because he saw a pretty girl on it, only to discover it was a long-haired young man who was contemplating suicide — managing to talk the young man out of it; Gus hearing other cops call him “What’s-your-twenty-Matthews” — a reference to the dispatchers’ frequent efforts to locate him. These were the stories about Gus: often heroic, more often foolish.

It was clear that Gus thought nothing of bucking authority, had put in some drinking years, had paid a price for both by never managing to hold on to a promotion for long. But he seemed untroubled by that fact, and whenever Bear or Cookie alluded to it, he smiled and said, “What the hell? I enjoyed my work. It was a good ride. I never had your finesse, is all. You two were a couple of sneaks.”

He was right; while tales were told in which Bear and Cookie were heroes, these almost always involved outwitting criminals rather than Gus’s brute force or action. Within the department, both were pranksters. Bear’s pranks were on a relatively small scale. They were similar to those he played on Frank as a rookie — putting a penny in a patrol car hubcap to make a maddening rattle, putting shoe polish on the rim of a motorcycle cop’s goggles.

Cookie’s pranks involved more strategy. One summer the sound of church bells was broadcast over all the department radios. Bells ringing at midnight, twelve long tolls. When it was heard every night for three nights in a row, the infuriated chief put detectives on the task of discovering the culprit. They compared bell sounds to recordings of the midnight broadcasts. The bells had a distinctive sound, and their most likely source was a certain church. The minister gave permission for police to search it. Nothing was found. Undeterred, the chief ordered the building surrounded and watched. As on previous nights, bells marked midnight and were heard over the radios, although clearly not being transmitted by anyone present.

“Because,” Bear said, “Cookie is a dozen miles away, parked up on a hill, with a little cassette deck in his car playing a tape of those bells!”

Cassidy also told a few anecdotes from his own law enforcement career, with the same flair for humorous storytelling he had demonstrated during our drive to Bakersfield. They took to him, accepted him as one of their own. That, I began to see, was the point.

Now, as the dinner guests were seated around Bea’s living room, Cassidy gave me a smile that was undoubtedly seen as a gesture of reassurance by the others, but that I knew to be a warning.

Get ready.

He stayed on his feet, leaned against the mantel. “Irene, were these old farts this decrepit when you were working here?”

They smiled good-naturedly. “Come here, Tex,” Gus joked, “and I’ll show you what decrepit can do.”

This was met with cheers by Bea and the other two.

“Well, Cassidy,” I said, “not decrepit, but they
were
a little gray headed.” I looked pointedly at his hair. “You know how that can be.”

He smiled at their laughter and ran a hand over his hair. “Well, some men just look more handsome in gray hair, right, fellas?”

“That’s right, that’s right,” Bear said. “Looks distinguished. Remember, Cookie, when old Brian went Grecian Formula on us?”

This brought on more laughter, while Bea turned red with embarrassment. “Greg Bradshaw,” she muttered. “Honestly! The things you are liable to say.”

I sat stunned, quickly reminding myself that Brian Harriman’s hair color was only one reason to believe in him. Cecilia caught my eye, smiled at me. It was enough to calm me down again.

Cassidy, meanwhile, reached over and picked up the photo of Frank and his dad. “By golly, I just might try some of that hair-coloring stuff. Looks damned natural to me.”

“He wasn’t using it then,” Cookie said.

“Yep, Cookie’s right,” Gus said. “Having Frank on the force is what turned poor ol’ Brian gray.”

“It is not!” Bea protested. “He was very proud of Frank.”

“Oh, of course! Of course he was,” Bear soothed, shooting Gus a dirty look. “Hell, everyone knows that. We’re all proud of him. Frank is a damned fine cop. He’s never given anyone any reason not to be proud of him.”

The room fell silent.

“As far as I’m concerned,” I said, trying to steer the conversation back on course, “Frank isn’t going to be any less handsome when he turns gray. How old was Brian when his hair changed?”

“It wasn’t long after Frank joined the department,” Bea said, then added pointedly, “But it wasn’t because he was worried about Frank.” Gus didn’t see her glance or seem to notice her tone of voice. He was bent forward, elbows on widespread knees, hands clasped, looking down at the floor. His facial expressions were hidden.

“Aw, Bea,” Bear said, suddenly caught between loyalties, “nobody is knocking Brian. It was just something funny, that’s all. Brian laughed about it himself. He only used it for a little while, until we gave him so much grief over it, he figured it was easier to be gray. Truth is, he looked fine either way. Right, Cookie?”

“Right. We scared everybody else off of trying to color his gray, though.”

“I vaguely remember a couple of other guys who were going gray,” I said. “A Wilson and… Beech, maybe?”

“Beecham,” Cookie said. “Manny Beecham. And if the Wilson you’re thinking of was gray haired, it was Quinn. Wilson and Beecham were motorcycle cops. Boy, I tell you — that was tough duty. Cold in winter. I knew men who would stuff newspapers in their jackets, trying to stay warm.”

“We weren’t much better off in the cars,” Bear said, watching Gus. “Right, Gus?”

Gus looked up. His eyes looked a little red. “Yeah, Bear, the cars were cold, too.”

“Irene, we didn’t get heaters in our cars until 1958,” Bear said, more animated now that Gus had joined in again. “Brian and I used to turn the spotlight on and aim it into the car just to heat ourselves up.”

“Everybody did that,” Cookie said. “We were supposed to ride with our windows down in the winter, so we could hear what was going on outside the car.”

“I reckon that would make things a little chilly,” Cassidy said.

Gus suddenly got to his feet. “I can’t stand this! We’re sitting in here talking about the fucking weather!”

Cookie stood up, too, and said, “Have a seat, Gus.”

Gus didn’t move. “It ain’t even today’s weather, for God’s sake!”

“Have a seat, Gus,” Bear said quietly. “For Bea’s sake.”

Gus sat.

“And watch your mouth,” Cookie added. “This is Bea’s home. You think if Brian were alive, he’d let you talk like that in front of his wife?”

“He didn’t mean anything by it,” Cecilia said, drawing all eyes. “Gus is just upset, worried about Frank, right?”