Don't Ever Look Back: A Mystery (Buck Schatz Series)

by Friedman, Daniel

  I retired from police work in 1976, so all my friends on the force were retired, and very few of them were even alive anymore. I had only one real police contact left, a twenty-six-year-old colored kid named Andre Price. He and I were not friends, on account of I shot his mentor, homicide detective Randall Jennings, in the face with a .357 Magnum revolver.

  Jennings had it coming; he was a scumbag who killed four people and shot me in the back with a deer rifle. But killing him was still a sore point with Price, who had been the only policeman in attendance at Jennings’s funeral. He gave the eulogy.

  There’s nothing to be gained by showing up to bury a disgraced man. There was nobody there for him to ingratiate himself with; no angle to play. Attending that funeral invited scrutiny from Internal Affairs and made any mark on his record look like something to dig into. If he couldn’t stand some heat, he wouldn’t have gone, and even if he was squeaky clean, he was still making trouble for himself that most cops could happily live without.

  I respected Price for eulogizing his scumbag friend. It showed real integrity. Real backbone.

  When I called him on the phone, he hung up on me, which was also an honest thing to do.

  I called him back.

  “Old man, I know you ain’t got nothing to do all day, but I am busy,” he said. “I’ve got no time for you.”

  “Have you got time to be the guy who finally closes a string of bank robberies that have been unsolved for fifty years?”

  “Dude, if you were going to catalog all the things that exist in the world and choose the single Platonic ideal of shit I don’t give a fuck about, a bank robbery from fifty years ago just might be it.”

  “Watch your language.”

  “I’m busy dealing with crimes that happened yesterday. We had half a dozen drug-related killings in the last two weeks, and no arrests yet in any of them. Some robbery from fifty years ago ain’t my problem.”

  This was, of course, an eminently sensible response from him. But he didn’t hang up, so I told him about Elijah, and about my strange breakfast meeting at Valhalla, and the thief’s plea for help.

  “He’s playing you,” Andre said. “Setting something up.”

  “Could be he’s backed into a corner, and this is his only way out.”

  “That’s greedy thinking. You want this, so you’re ignoring all the facts you don’t like. It’s a near certainty that he’s planning some sort of trap or double cross.”

  Greedy thinking. A good way to put it. The entire situation stank. Elijah’s caginess and his secrecy were reasons to distrust him, and if he really wanted to turn himself in, he didn’t need me as an intermediary.

  If he was afraid to walk into a police station, he could have had the police come get him at his lawyer’s office. And if he was worried about his enemies having corrupted members of the police force, the lawyer could probably have steered him toward an honest cop as easily as I could have. More easily. Criminal defense lawyers dealt with cops every day. I was a crippled retiree living in a rest home.

  Elijah was messing with me, and I knew it. Andre knew it. And I was dragging him into a mess anyway, for one reason:

  “When a legendary thief offers to turn himself in, you don’t tell him to take a hike. This is like catching the Zodiac Killer or the Unabomber. This is the kind of thing people write books about.”

  I’d never thought of myself as the kind of man who’d spend a lot of time thinking about his legacy, but I’d become preoccupied with the idea of losing my mind, losing myself. For a couple of days while I hunted for the Nazi fugitive Heinrich Ziegler and his cache of stolen gold, I’d felt like the man I remembered being, back when I packed heat and chased bad guys every day. And then I’d gotten hurt and ended up more decrepit than ever. I wanted to be myself again, even if it meant rushing into a trap. Even if it meant dragging Andre Price into it with me. How bad could things turn out, really?

  “I don’t need any books written about me,” Andre said. “I don’t need to be getting myself backed up into any corners, either.”

  “Some things are worth a little risk,” I said.

  “I know all about you, Buck. I know you’ve walked into a lot of situations you had to shoot your way out of. You and I are very different. I don’t like shooting people, and I really don’t like getting shot at.”

  “This guy is worth taking a look at. Whatever Elijah is after, I don’t think it is a gunfight. If the situation looks bad, we can just leave, but it’s at least worth taking an hour to maybe solve a famous crime.”

  “I can’t believe I am actually considering this,” Andre said.

  “Come pick me up at Valhalla, and I’ll set up the meeting.”

  “You expect me to give you a ride? Do I look like Morgan Freeman to you, Jessica Tandy?”

  “Do you want me to try to drive myself?”

  “Fuck.” He paused. “Be waiting for me, because I don’t plan to wait for you.”

  Almost as soon as I hung the phone up, it rang again.

  “There is a Jewish cemetery off of South Parkway,” Elijah said. “I will meet you and your police contact there. Do you know this place?”

  “I know it. Why do you want to meet there?”

  “It is close to my lawyer’s office. He recommended the location, when I told him I did not want to be cornered indoors when you came for me. There is little traffic, and no surveillance. It is adjacent to a railyard, so there are no tall buildings nearby. There is good visibility in every direction. If you are followed, I will see the tail. If there is an ambush, I will see it coming. If I don’t like the look of the men who accompany you, I will have routes of escape.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” I said.

  “Do you have a problem with this place?”

  “No.” I saw no need to tell him my son was buried there; he almost certainly knew it already.

  8

  2009

  Valhalla was built in 2003, but the front entrance had an old-fashioned wraparound porch built onto it, with rocking chairs where residents could sit on warm days and enjoy a nice view of the cars in the lot and, beyond that, six scenic lanes of Kirby Parkway.

  When Andre arrived, I was sitting in one of the rockers and smoking a cigarette. He parked in the fire lane and flicked on his hazard lights, and then he climbed out of the car.

  “Is that your walker?” he asked.

  “You see anyone else out here?”

  He laughed. “It suits you. I like the chrome finish.”

  I lifted myself painfully out of the chair. There were three steep steps to the sidewalk from the porch, and Andre didn’t disguise his amusement as he watched me navigate them. There was a ramp around the side of the building that I could have used, but I felt like avoiding the steps would have made me look weak.

  I opened the passenger’s-side door and started folding up the walker.

  Andre was driving an unmarked police car. An unmarked car is exactly what the name suggests; a patrol cruiser, but without the markings. It doesn’t have a black-and-white paint job, and it doesn’t have an array of flashing lightbars mounted on the roof, but it’s still a cop car; a four-door American sedan like a Caprice or a Crown Victoria. Often, as was the case with Andre’s ride, an unmarked car will come complete with a perp cage in the backseat and a radio antenna.

  “What is that you’re wearing?” Andre asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Clothes.”

  “That’s some vintage shit.” He walked around the car to get a better look at me. I was still wrestling with the walker. He didn’t seem inclined to help. “Is that a Members Only jacket?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “That is totally a Members Only jacket. It’s got the epaulets and everything.”

  “It was a gift from my son.”

  “When? In 1985?”

  I stopped what I was doing with the walker. “1986,” I said. “It was for my sixty-fifth birthday. My son and his wife took Rose and
me to the Folk’s Folly steakhouse. I got the rib eye. Ordered it medium-rare, but they cooked it to medium-well, and I ate it anyway.”

  I could remember that, but I couldn’t remember Cloudy-ah’s list. Funny thing, memory.

  “It’s almost July, Buck. Isn’t it a little warm for a jacket?”

  “I got bad circulation.”

  “Why don’t you let me hold that coat for you?”

  “Why?”

  He wasn’t smiling now. “Because I want you to take it off.”

  “Leave it alone,” I said.

  “We ain’t going anywhere until you take off that jacket.”

  I stared at him and considered my options for a minute. Then I flicked my cigarette onto the asphalt and unzipped the jacket. Underneath it, I was wearing my .357, tucked under my arm in a shoulder holster.

  “That’s what I thought,” Andre said. “You are not bringing that weapon in my vehicle.”

  “I might need it, if things get sticky.”

  “We’re going to get a guy who robbed a bank fifty years ago. How old is he now? Seventy-five?”

  I counted in my head. “He was thirteen in the camps, in 1944, so he’s seventy-eight,” I said.

  “I can handle a seventy-eight-year-old man. I don’t need you backing me up,” Andre said.

  “Anybody who can hold a gun is capable of being dangerous,” I told him.

  “I know. That’s why I don’t want you standing behind me with a firearm,” he said. “Go back inside and put that up.”

  I didn’t move.

  “I’m not taking you anywhere as long as you have that,” Andre said.

  “I don’t like you,” I said.

  “Then why did you call me?”

  I unfolded the walker and wrestled it back up the three stairs. When I got up to our unit, I found Rose inside, watching television.

  “Why are you wearing your coat?” she asked. “It’s a hundred degrees out.”

  I balled up the jacket and threw it on the floor.

  “Is that your gun you’ve got?” She looked worried now.

  “I’m just putting it away.” I fumbled my old shoe box down off the shelf in the closet and wrapped the gun back in its cheesecloth.

  “Why did you have it out in the first place?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters that you’re walking around with your gun strapped on. I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

  “I’ve got this under control.”

  “What is it you’ve got under control? Is this about Mr. Connor? Vivienne Wyatt found me during mah-jongg and gave me quite an earful.”

  “I’ve settled up with Connor. Everything is fine.” I put the box back on the shelf and threw the holster in the back of the closet. I started to pick up the jacket, but I didn’t really need it, so I left it for Rose to deal with. Bending over was pretty difficult; that was why I’d quit wearing shoes with laces.

  “She made me promise to get rid of your hatchet. I think she’d just about lose her mind if she knew you had a gun in here. You shouldn’t be wearing that around.”

  “I know. That’s why I am putting it away.”

  “June twenty-first was last week,” Rose said. “It’s been seven years. I thought it was better if I didn’t mention it, since you’ve been so preoccupied with your rehab. But maybe we should have done something. Maybe we should have talked about it. Maybe we should have gone to the cemetery.”

  “Funny you should mention that,” I said.

  “Why is that funny?”

  “It isn’t. Never mind.”

  “It’s not weak to mourn, Buck. I know you have feelings.”

  “I never said I didn’t. But I don’t see any point in talking about them.”

  “I’ve been married to you sixty-four years, and he was our son. It’s been hard for me as well to leave the house behind. I shouldn’t have to feel like I am alone with this.”

  “You’re not alone,” I said. “I will be back by dinnertime. Everything is fine.”

  And then I grabbed the walker and pushed it out the door.

  9

  2009

  “You got to understand, I ain’t upset with you over Jennings,” Andre said. “He was always good to me, but when it came down to a situation where it was you or him, I appreciate that survival has got to trump other concerns in that kind of scenario. I take issue, though, with your underlying philosophy of police work.”

  I squirmed in my seat and fiddled with the belt. I didn’t like being a passenger in somebody else’s car. “How do you mean?” I said.

  “You got this kind of moralistic Old Testament view of justice; smiting down the evildoers and shit. You can’t look at crime that way. Crime is, like, a social phenomenon. You have to get past this idea of punishment and look at how to remedy the root causes. Otherwise, you’re just blaming the desperate for being born into adverse circumstances.”

  “I’ve met plenty of thieves, but I ain’t never met a man who stole because he was hungry,” I said. “People steal because they want drugs, or because it’s easier than work, or because they lack the moral and intellectual capacity to understand that it’s wrong to hold people up at gunpoint.”

  “Even so, we’re still talking about a social problem. I read about this study that finds a very strong correlation between toxic lead exposure and crime. When little kids are exposed to lead, it disrupts their brain development. Lead causes lower IQs and it damages the capacity for empathy and self-discipline.”

  “Sounds like a bunch of hogwash to me.”

  “You can look at the statistics. The proliferation of lead-burning automobiles predicts the urban crime wave of 1970s, and the widespread adoption of unleaded gasoline predicts the decline of crime through the 1990s.”

  I let out a contemptuous belch, and Andre turned up the air conditioner to blow it into the backseat.

  “That’s how you and I are different,” I said. “You look at crime as a computer program. As a collection of statistics. It’s easy to take a compassionate view of criminals when you treat them as a group of the disenfranchised and the downtrodden. You have to sympathize with them in the aggregate, because on an individual basis, these motherfuckers are goddamn intolerable. And statistics turn the suffering of the victims into an abstraction. Crime, to me, was always personal; a thing people do to each other.”

  He turned his head away from the road and looked at me, like he was appraising a side of beef. “How did your son die, anyway?” he asked.

  The stretch of I-240 we were cruising down was called the Avron B. Fogelman Expressway. They had Jewish highways now.

  “What kind of question is that?” I said.

  “I don’t know. Just curious, I guess. Is it some kind of a secret?”

  “No. I just don’t like talking about it.”

  “I mean, why not? Was it, like, cancer? Was it a car accident? Was it—something else?”

  “There was a thing about it in the Commercial Appeal. Go be a policeman and pull it up on the microfiche if you want to know what happened. Just don’t bother me with it.”

  “Okay, first of all, don’t get all snippy with me, old man. And second, I don’t think a microfiche is a thing that exists anymore.”

  “What does it matter to you, how he died?” I asked. “Is there something you want to understand about me that you think will somehow be illuminated if you know that?”

  “I mean, maybe. I don’t know. I was just making conversation.”

  “He was my son, and he’s dead, and I buried him. Talking about it just drags him back up, so I have to bury him again. What’s the use?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe talking and dealing with it is how you get past it.”

  “There’s no getting past it. Better to just leave it alone.”

  “Suit yourself, Buck. Ain’t my problem.”

  “You’re right. It isn’t.”

  We rode in silence the rest of the way to the small Jewish cemetery,
out on South Parkway in a blighted part of Midtown Memphis. A hundred and twenty years ago, all the Jews had lived in this area, but over time, the neighborhood turned black, and then most of the blacks moved away and the area turned industrial, and then the industry went away and it turned desolate. The cemetery’s neighbor was now an abandoned factory. Across the street was a freight yard filled with shipping containers.

  The railroad tracks were just fifty yards from my son’s grave, and the rumble of trains frequently interrupted funeral services. To the east was some kind of weird quarry; a deep scar cut in the landscape with stagnant, standing water in the bottom of it. The cemetery was small; a couple of green acres amidst the dust and ruin, maintained by the membership fees of an aging and shrinking synagogue congregation.

  The people who had lived here had gone. The shipping containers were on their way somewhere over the horizon, and so were the freight trains.

  For me, though, this place that everything else passed through was a destination. An ending point. Everything around here was transient except me. I came here to get here; to this tiny patch of earth that held my dead. This place, to me, meant permanence. It wouldn’t be so very long before I’d come here for the last time, and I wouldn’t leave.

  We parked in the lot and walked through a gap in the hedge around the cemetery grounds. There was an awning up over a fresh grave, which meant there’d been a funeral recently, but we found the place empty and silent, except for a stray dog chasing a squirrel among the headstones and Elijah, who was looking at graves with his lawyer in the oldest section.

  I never really wanted to come here; I had avoided it the previous week on the anniversary of my son’s death. I’d avoided even mentioning the anniversary to Rose, because I was afraid that conversation would end with a trip to this place.

  And now I had come to the cemetery without hesitation to arrest a man I hadn’t even thought about in decades, before that morning. I lit a cigarette and decided to take the opportunity to refuse to have a moment of self-realization.

  “At least this doesn’t seem to be an ambush,” I said.

  “Were you expecting an ambush?” Andre asked.