The Graving Dock

by Gabriel Cohen

  AND SO IT WAS that he found himself driving out into the heart of suburban New Jersey.

  Much of the trip was ugly. First there was the huge toll plaza at the other end of the Lincoln Tunnel, with its pall of exhaust—he couldn’t imagine sitting in one of those booths all day, no matter how good the pay or perks might be. Near the plaza stood several gritty by-the-hour motels, and he knew that if he worked Homicide in Jersey he would be quite familiar with those. Finally, for someone who hated shopping as much as he did, the highways themselves were a vision of hell, mile after endless mile of strip malls: mattress discounters and junk food chains and window foofiness specialists…He knew from prior drives that New Jersey had lots of beautiful countryside, and he expected to end up shortly in an idyllic, picturesque town, but meanwhile the state seemed determined to put its worst features on display.

  IT SEEMED THAT THERE was no human experience that didn’t attract its amateur historians. It didn’t matter if it was trivial or terrible or just of interest to a very limited audience. The horrific World War II Death March from Bataan? Someone kept the memory alive with photos and a pen-pal club. Train schedules in rural England? Hundreds found them fascinating enough to explore every detail.

  Jack had put in a call to Michael Durkin, asking who would know about the island’s history. The security supervisor had called back in a couple of minutes, saying that he had found “just the man.” Five seconds in Gene Hoffer’s study made clear the object of his own itch to memorialize. The paneled walls were covered with framed photos of Governor Island life in the late forties and early fifties, the same self-contained world documented in Robert Sperry’s little photo album.

  Hoffer was a retired insurance executive; he had replaced his business attire with a green flannel shirt and khaki pants. The man’s handsome head was crowned with thick white hair, and he wore thin wire-framed glasses. Behind him, a picture window gave out on a pool covered with a winter tarp, and ranks of what in summer would undoubtedly be impressive flower beds. The pool, the sleek Beemer in the driveway, the huge flat screen TV they had passed in the living room—Hoffer was clearly determined to enjoy his free time and disposable income.

  The man settled down behind his desk and motioned Jack to a white wicker armchair. “What exactly is this about?”

  Jack shrugged. “First off, I was hoping you could tell me a little about what the Island was like back in the old days.” Long experience had shown him that if you cut too directly to the chase, you only got answers to the questions you knew to ask—and risked missing out on all sorts of unexpected material. Sometimes it was best to just let a subject ramble.

  Hoffer chuckled. “Well, you’ve certainly asked the right person.”

  Jack nodded, doing his best to communicate enthusiasm. Most people would be more curious about why an NYPD detective had trekked all the way to another state, but Hoffer impressed him as the kind of man who was chiefly interested in what he himself had to say.

  The man’s wife, a trim, pretty brunette, came in with a tray of refreshments. The couple looked like they spent their days doing something brisk and active, hiking or skiing…“I thought you boys would enjoy a hot drink,” the woman said as she moved aside some papers on her husband’s crowded desk.

  “The best coffee you’re ever going to have,” Hoffer said, turning to Jack. “Did you know that I met Bitsy here when we were both Army brats on the Island?”

  Of course, there was no way Jack could know any such thing, but such was his host’s rhetorical style. He smiled appreciatively, then made a puzzled face. “Wasn’t it a Coast Guard base?”

  Hoffer nodded smugly. “Of course it was, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The island was transferred to the Coast Guard in Sixty-six, but before that the Army had it for over a hundred and fifty years. They constructed Fort Jay and Castle Clinton there between Eighteen-oh-six and Eighteen-oh-nine, and then of course during the War of Eighteen Twelve—”

  “I was asking what it was like back when you were kids there,” Jack said to Mrs. Hoffer, hoping to head off a detailed inventory of the island’s early years.

  The woman smiled. “Oh, it was a paradise for children. Both of those big forts to play in, and the movie theater, and the YMCA—”

  “The Y was supposed to be for the troops,” her husband interjected, “but there were hardly any. At that time the island was the headquarters for the First Army, so there were mostly just officers around.”

  “And parolees,” his wife added.

  Jack perked up. “Parolees? From what?”

  Mr. Hoffer took the question. “They were Army prisoners in the fort who were allowed out to do chores. They were mostly just homesick kids themselves; they taught us kids how to throw a baseball.”

  “Those were innocent times,” Hoffer’s wife said. “And the island was a wonderful, safe place to grow up. There was no crime at all to speak of.”

  “Well…” Hoffer said, and he and his wife chuckled.

  “Did I miss something?” Jack asked.

  Hoffer grinned. “The only crime on the island was perpetuated by adolescent boys. Gosh, we had some fun. It would only take six or eight of us to tip one of those old cannons onto its muzzle. And there was that time with the fireworks—”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t tell that one to a policeman,” chided Mrs. H.

  Her husband smiled. “I think only an MP would have jurisdiction, and anyhow the statute of limitations has long expired.”

  “What happened?”

  Hoffer placed both of his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “One time, several boys—and I’m not saying who—set off some fireworks on the Fourth of July. Only problem was, we didn’t realize that we were doing it right on top of the munitions storage area.”

  “Was there an explosion?”

  Hoffer smiled. “Let’s just say that we were very, very lucky.”

  His wife shook her head. “You boys were a terror. How about the things you used to put in the cannons?”

  Jack turned to Mr. Hoffer. He was beginning to feel as if he was watching a Ping-Pong match.

  The man smiled impishly. “The howitzer crews used to fire test rounds. They only used blanks, of course, and they never checked the bores. So we kids would put things in there and watch them get a free ride over to Manhattan. One time there was this dead cat—”

  “Don’t tell that one,” his wife said, with considerably less humor.

  Jack stood up. “Mind if I take a look at your photos?”

  “Go right ahead,” Hoffer said. He kept up a running commentary as Jack moved from picture to picture. “That was the time we had a little circus. That was our Friday bowling night. That was our Little League team…”

  Jack scanned the photos, searching for the faces of one particular boy and his father. After an exhaustive catalog of every possible childhood activity and party, he came up with zilch.

  He reached into his sports coat and pulled out several snapshots of his own. He held up a picture of Sperry as a boy, and another of the man in military regalia who appeared to be the child’s father. “Do you recognize these people?”

  Hoffer’s face immediately clouded up. His wife came around and peered over his shoulder, and she also turned grim. Jack could almost sense the milk curdling in his perfect cup of coffee.

  Hoffer shook his head. “Listen, officer, I don’t know why you’re bringing this up. Isn’t it just ancient history?”

  The question, coming from this compulsive recorder of past events, almost made Jack laugh, but he pressed on. “Do you know the boy in these pictures? Why don’t you tell me about him?”

  Hoffer stared down at his desk for a moment. When he looked up, he was scowling. “I’m going to tell you, detective, and then—and I don’t mean to be rude—I’m going to have to request that you leave.”

  CHAPTER thirty

  JACK REFLECTED ON HOFFER’S tale as he sat in his car the next day, but other, more mundane matters
kept intruding into his thoughts. He cast an envious eye on a man walking by with a cup of deli coffee; he could have used the wake-up, but he had no idea how long he’d be waiting on this quiet Cobble Hill street, and he didn’t want to have to pee. He shivered; the morning sun was too weak to take the stinging chill out of the air. He turned on the engine to warm up the car for a minute, then glanced down at his watch. He’d have to be gone by afternoon, when his next tour began.

  With any luck, by then he might receive a fax that would go a long way toward completing the back story of Robert Dietrich Sperry. He wasn’t counting on it, though. Arlington, Virginia, was a long way from New York, both in distance and in attitude: The Pentagon’s Office of the Judge Advocate General sounded like a typical bureaucratic sinkhole, and the records he was seeking were half a century old. If found, though, they might complete what Gene Hoffer had started: detailing the childhood roots of Sperry’s recent penchant for homicide.

  Jack reached down and made sure that his cell phone was on. He was running two investigations simultaneously, one very high profile and by-the-book, one unofficial and secret. Right now he was off the clock, freezing his balls off just for the sake of finding out what Tommy Balfa had been up to in his ill-fated final days. Which was not necessarily a smart career move. The Department was only concerned with Dead Tommy Balfa, Hero Cop. Alive, the man had presented problems, and if Jack kept tugging at those unresolved threads, who knew what was going to come unraveled, or where the strands might lead?

  One definitely led to Maureen Duffy. Other residents of her brownstone-lined street were coming down off their stoops, heading toward the subway and their day jobs, but Duffy worked just a few blocks away, as a night nurse at the local hospital. Jack glanced down at the seat next to him at a photocopy he had run off earlier in the Midwood precinct house. Judging by her driver’s license photo, Duffy didn’t look much like the femme fatale he had been imagining for the past few days, after he had glimpsed her driving away from the side street where she had dropped Tommy Balfa. She was an attractive redhead, but she was only twenty-three, with the healthy, freckled wholesomeness of a girl who had grown up in a big, happy Irish family. It was easy to picture her babysitting nieces and nephews, or tending to some elderly patient; harder to imagine her having a fling with a married man. Jack frowned. Who knew?…Maybe they weren’t having an affair at all. Maybe he had jumped to conclusions. Hopefully soon, she would walk out of that heavy front door and he’d find out for sure.

  The day before, when he got back to the office, it had occurred to him that maybe Tommy Balfa had not planned to leave town alone. The man had bought only one plane ticket, but that didn’t mean that his female friend had not booked a seat, too. Balfa, unexpectedly deceased, had never boarded the plane; Jack called the airline and asked who else had not shown up for the flight. Only two other names popped: a businessman from Kansas City who had missed his connecting leg, and one Maureen Duffy from Brooklyn, New York. Jack called the DMV and got her driver’s license photo—bingo.

  He shifted around in his seat, trying to get comfortable. Anybody who thought detective work was nonstop excitement should be forced to participate in a long stakeout. It would make a hell of a reality TV show: a bunch of cops sit in cars for hours; they get booted off the show one by one as they succumb to the need to doze or to pee. He glanced in his rearview mirror, wondering if the young woman was already out of the house, maybe on her way back, but a large van obscured his view. He heard a high-pitched yapping. On the sidewalk a few houses down an elderly woman was walking a little sculpted poodle.

  Some other motion caught the corner of Jack’s eye. His body tightened. No mistaking that red hair, it was Duffy and she was already halfway down the front stoop. He swung his door open, got out, and began crossing the street. Duffy had stopped on the sidewalk and was staring his way. There was something odd about her gaze, though, and it took him a moment to figure it out. She was staring in his direction, but not at him.

  He looked over his shoulder: Two men were walking quickly down the middle of the street, toward Duffy. He took in quick impressions: One was big as a soda machine, the other just very large. They shared the meaty, disgruntled look of men who threatened other people for a living.

  “Tipsy, no!”

  He swiveled back. The neighbor with the poodle had returned, and was trying to remove something from the animal’s mouth. Jack looked over his shoulder again: The two strangers had paused at the sight of the old woman, but they were moving forward again, and opening their jackets.

  Duffy stared at them like a mouse hypnotized by a snake.

  Jack reached into his own coat. Not for his gun—he wasn’t about to instigate a shootout on a Cobble Hill street—but for his badge. He pulled out the leather case, flipped it open, and held it up high so everyone could see.

  “Miss Duffy,” he called out. “I’m with the NYPD. I need to speak with you.”

  He looked over his shoulder: Thankfully, the two men had stopped. The badge seemed to work on them like a cross on vampires. They stared at it, stared at Jack, stared at each other, confused and clearly pissed off, and then—without a word—they turned and strode away.

  Jack turned back. Maureen Duffy had slumped down on her stoop, and as he came near he could see that she was trembling. He sat down next to her, then lifted up a bit to tuck the back of his coat between his ass and the cold brown concrete.

  He nodded at the street. “Do you know those charming individuals?”

  The young woman shifted away from him until she was backed up against the curlicued stair rail. She wasn’t sultry, or beautiful—she was cute. “How do I know you’re a cop?” she said. “You can buy a fake badge in Times Square.”

  Jack shook his head somewhat ruefully. “Those days are gone. It’s all Disney now.” He took out his business card and his cell phone. “Here. You can dial my office number, or get the NYPD number from Information.”

  She took the card and stared at it dully.

  Jack stood up. “It’s freezing out here. Can we talk inside? Or in a coffee shop somewhere?”

  She stared up at him. Green eyes, freckles, rounded cheeks. A quirky mouth that under brighter circumstances might curve up into a mischievous grin.

  She wasn’t smiling now.

  “Who are you? What do you want from me?”

  Jack shrugged. “If you ask me, your real worry is what those two meatheads want.”

  Maureen Duffy tried to look defiant, but couldn’t hide the fact that she was scared stiff.

  “I’M NOT HUNGRY,” SHE said, pushing away the menu. They were in the back of a Greek coffee shop, which didn’t fit in with the neighborhood’s new program of trendy bistros and swank bars.

  The waiter, a doleful little man with stringy hair that looked coated with black shoe polish, shrugged sadly, then turned to Jack.

  “I’ll just have a cup of coffee.”

  A little sign on the table said that there was a five-dollar minimum, but the waiter looked too resigned to the general injustice of life to attempt to enforce it.

  “I’ll have a corn muffin, too,” Jack added, mostly for the old guy’s benefit. “Toasted.” He shook his head at Maureen as the man trudged away. “I can never believe how long the menus are at these places. There’s no way they could keep all this stuff around fresh.” Bullshit small talk, to put the girl at ease.

  It wasn’t working. She had her paper napkin in her hands and was twisting it as if it were some kind of abdominal exerciser.

  “Did Tommy treat you well?”

  That got her attention. She looked frightened all over again.

  Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of antacids. “Here—take one of these. I’m a bit of a worrier myself…”

  “I know it’s wrong,” she blurted, “but I didn’t think it was an actual crime.”

  Jack did his best to keep his eyes from widening at this shift into confessional mode. “Whoa. Slow down a minute. You d
idn’t think what was a crime?”

  She slumped back into the booth’s padded seat. “I knew he was married. I’m not stupid.”

  Jack raised his hands in mock surrender. “Okay. Nobody’s saying you are. But what wasn’t a crime?”

  She looked at him as if he was stupid. “Having an affair. It’s not illegal, is it?”

  The waiter swung by with Jack’s cup of coffee and he waited until the old man was out of hearing distance before he continued. “Why don’t you tell me about those two creeps?”

  She returned a look of wide-eyed innocence. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen them before. Maybe they were sent by Tommy’s wife?”

  Her ditziness sounded convincing, but Jack wasn’t quite buying it. A changeup, to throw her off balance: “Where did he get the money?”

  She frowned. “What money?”

  “Come on, Maureen. I already know about it.”

  She just stared. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Then why were you running away with him?”

  She looked confused. “Running? What do you mean? He said he wanted to take me on a vacation.”

  “With less than twenty-four hours notice?”

  She nodded. “He’s…he was a very spontaneous kind of person.” She paused a moment to snuffle back a tear. “He was a lot of fun. And I work a flexible schedule. I got some of the other girls to cover my shifts.”

  Jack frowned. This description of a freewheeling, joyous Tommy Balfa didn’t exactly accord with his own experience. But then, he wasn’t a cute twenty-three-year-old…“Why did you buy a oneway ticket?”

  She shrugged. “That’s what he told me to get.”

  “And you didn’t think that was strange?”

  She looked down at the table and sighed. In a softer, more tentative voice: “I was hoping he was going to tell me he was leaving his wife. And that he was going to propose to me. I thought maybe he had booked tickets for some sort of trip to celebrate from there. That’s just the kind of thing he would do.”