by Bill Bernico
“You’re all a sight for sore eyes,” Dean said. “Come in, come in.”
Gloria wrapped her arms around Dean and gave him an extended hug. “You’re looking good these days, Dean,” she said.
Dad shook Dean’s hand. “Retirement certainly agrees with you,” Dad said. “Look at you. You never looked this good.”
“Thanks, I think,” Dean said. He turned to me. “Elliott, how’s your boy? How’s little Matt?”
“Getting bigger every day,” I said. “One of these days I’ll have to take him in and get him fitted for a shoulder holster.” Gloria gave me a stern look. “Maybe that can wait a while yet,” I said.
Footsteps sounded from the kitchen and soon Dean’s wife Helen appeared in the living room. We all greeted her and exchanged pleasantries before she asked us if we’d like anything to drink. We all waved her off, saying that we’d all just finished a soda back at the hotel. Helen returned to the kitchen.
Dean invited us to sit. “So tell me,” he said. “What’s on your minds today?”
Dad leaned in toward Dean and said in a low voice, “How does Helen feel about your retirement?”
“What do you mean?” Dean said.
“I mean, is she okay with it?” Dad said, “Or is she after you do get out of the house and do something every now and then?”
“You know Helen,” Dean said. “Sometimes she just likes having the house to herself and I have to get lost and pretend to be doing something. Why?”
“How would she feel about you joining the three of us on a case?” Dad said.
Dean paused and thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said. “She was awfully glad when I retired from the department. She said that now she could stop worrying about me all the time.”
“Well,” Dad said, “we wouldn’t put you in any danger. But we could use your expertise and experience on a potential case we were thinking about taking on. Your replacement, Eric Anderson, is a fine cop, but let’s face it; he’s bogged down with so many other cases. How much attention could he give this one case?”
“And which case are we talking about here?” Dean said.
Gloria leaned in now and said, “My father’s murder. The three of us were thinking about following up on it and we need your help. You were in charge when Dad was killed. I vaguely remember talking to someone at the department about it. Could have been you, I don’t remember. Anyway, does the name Ross Campbell ring any bells with you, Dean?”
Dean sighed. “Does it?” he said. “That’s one case that’s kept me up on more than one occasion, let me tell you. It bothered me that I had to retire without marking that file closed. I always wished there was something more I could have done.”
“Well, now there is,” I said, getting into the conversation. “Between the four of us, we should be able to help you tie up a few loose ends. And you’d be helping Gloria get the closure she needs as well. What do you say? Would you like in on this one?”
“Would I?” Dean said. “Just let me run this by Helen and see what she thinks.”
“Helen,” Dean called to the kitchen. “Would you come in here for a minute, please?” Helen returned to the living room, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
“Yes, dear,” she said, “what is it?”
“How’d you like me to spend a little more time out of the house?” Dean said.
Helen’s face lit up. “Really?” she said. “You mean I can have the house to myself for a while?”
Dean nodded and smiled. “These three need my help for a while and I could really use something to do. It could take a few days.”
“Go ahead, dear,” Helen said. “Knock yourself out. As long as you’re not chasing after anyone with a gun.”
We all looked at Dean. “Nothing like that,” he said, lying through his teeth. “Just some routine stuff that could use an extra body. Shouldn’t take us long to wrap it up.”
“Sure,” Helen said. “Go ahead.” She turned and walked back into the kitchen.
Dean extended his hand and Dad shook it. “Thank you,” he mouthed without actually saying it. “When did you want to start?”
“Are you used to sleeping in?” Dad said. “Or can you be at our office by nine tomorrow morning?”
“If I had a key,” Dean said, “I’d be there by eight and have the coffee ready when you got there. Of course I can be there by nine.”
“Great,” Dad said. “We’ll all see you then.”
The three of us stood and headed for the front door. Before we left Dean laid his hand on Dad’s shoulder and said, “Thanks, Clay. I needed this.”
“And we needed you,” Dad said, stepping down off the porch and walking back to his car. Gloria and I followed close behind.
A few minutes before nine o’clock the next morning, Gloria and I stepped off the elevator and walked down the hall to our office. The outer office door was unlocked and we could hear voices in the inner office. We found Dad and Dean sitting on the leather sofa in the corner of the office drinking coffee. They seemed to be reminiscing about the old days. They both raised their cups to us as we entered.
“Good morning, kids,” Dad said and then sipped from his cup.
“I might have figured you’d both be here already,” I said. “Not too eager to get started, are you?”
“Must be that older generation work ethic,” Dean said.
Gloria poured herself a cup of coffee and took it back to her desk. Personally, I could never understand what people saw in coffee. In all my life I’d only tasted one sip and I’d even spit that much out. To me it was a bitter, unpleasant taste and I’d decided long ago to stick with something more palatable—chocolate milk.
We had a small, two-foot-square refrigerator on a low table that stood next to the coffee maker. I made sure I kept it stocked with half-pint containers of chocolate milk. I took one out of the refrigerator and carried it back to my desk and set it down while I stepped over to the file cabinet and withdrew one of the older files. I sat at my desk and started flipping through the pages. I stopped when I found the one I was looking for. I read the part that I’d been thinking about last night and turned to Gloria.
“Something’s been bothering me since we agreed to take this case, and I think we should talk about it,” I said to Gloria.
“What is it, Elliott?” Gloria said.
By now Dad and Dean had gotten up off the sofa and had wandered over to my desk.
I held up the page from the file folder and turned to Gloria. “Something didn’t track right,” I said, “but I couldn’t put my finger on it. You originally told me that your father was in a bar one night when a man came in and tried to hold the place up, right?”
Gloria nodded. “Yeah,” she said.
“And according to what you told me when you started here and I took on your case,” I said, “you told me that your father pulled his .38 and told the guy to drop his gun. You said that the guy just fired anyway and hit your father in the chest.”
“That right,” Gloria said. “Where are you going with this, Elliott?”
I read further down from the sheet. “According to you, the guy got away with thirteen dollars and half a bottle of beer that was sitting on the bar. You said that your father got off one shot and hit the robber in the thigh.”
“So what is it that’s troubling you, Elliott?” Dean said.
I turned to Gloria. And the last thing you told me was that the cops caught up with the guy an hour later and that he went down shooting.”
Gloria looked somewhat embarrassed.
Dean turned to Gloria. “Is that what you told Elliott?” he said. He turned to me. “We never found the guy. He just vanished without a trace.”
I turned to Gloria, who had hung her head and couldn’t look at me. “We’ve never had any secrets before, Gloria,” I said.
“Haven’t we?” she said with a bit of an edge to her voice.
No, we haven’t,” I said. “Why did you start out with a lie?”
>
Gloria took a deep breath and let it out. She looked up at me. “I didn’t want anyone trying to talk me out of it,” she said.
“Out of what?” I said.
“I told you that the police had ended it so that you wouldn’t try to do anything about it,” Gloria said. “I wanted to find the guy myself and make him pay for what he did to Dad. I swear if I could have found him, I’d have shot him down like a mad dog in the street.”
“Well why didn’t you ever tell me afterwards?” I said.
Gloria paused and then said, “By then it was too late. I almost started believing the lie myself. Maybe I wanted to believe it so I could move on. Maybe I didn’t want it to get in the way of the life we’d made for ourselves. I don’t know. Does it matter?”
I laid the paper down, stepped over to Gloria’s side and laid my arm over her shoulder. “No it doesn’t,” I said. “The important thing is that it’s all out in the open now and we can move on and do something about it.”
“That’s right,” Dad said. “We’re all here for you and somehow we’ll make it right. If this guy’s still alive and if he’s anywhere in the area, we’ll find him and make him pay for what he did to your father.”
Dean set his coffee cup down on Gloria’s desk and looked at Gloria. “And let’s hear no more about you shooting him down in the street,” he said. “We have to bring him in and let the courts deal with him. Okay?”
“And if he doesn’t want to come peacefully?” Gloria said.
“If it comes down to protecting ourselves,” Dean said, “we’ll blow his fucking head off.”
A single tear had run down Gloria’s cheek, but she forced a smile now. Thank you,” she said. “Thank you all. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get started on this thing before the trail gets cold.”
Apparently that’s all it took to break the tension of the moment and everyone laughed.
“Anyone have any ideas about where to start?” I said.
Dad chimed in. “How about if we start with the bar where Campbell was shot?” he said. “Someone there’s bound to know the shooter.”
“I don’t know,” Dean said. “We questioned everyone who was there that night. No one was talking. I think they were either unwilling to get involved, or they were afraid of this guy.”
“Yeah,” Dad said, “but enough time has passed now and someone might be willing to talk now. We have nothing to lose by asking.”
“How about if we split up into two teams?” Dad said. “Dean and I can take the bar and you two can start asking around some of the emergency rooms and private doctors to see if anyone remembers treating a gunshot wound to the thigh.”
“Any legitimate doctor would have been obligated to tell the police of a gunshot wound,” I said.
“And that means if this guy was treated, it may have been by either an unscrupulous doctor, or one that had lost his license,” Dean said. “It could even have been a veterinarian or someone with no medical experience at all. There’s a lot of ground to cover, so how about if we hit the road?”
The three of them all finished the rest of their coffee and I drained the last drop of chocolate milk out of my container before we hit the streets. Dad and Dean drove south toward downtown while Gloria and I began our search at the library. We found a phone book from four years ago and found a list of doctors in the area. Then we compared it to a list of current doctors. Three names stood out as being conspicuously absent from the newer phone book. We wrote down the information on those names and returned to our car.
“It doesn’t pay to waste time with emergency rooms,” I said. “This guy wouldn’t have gone to any of those. They’d have turned him in to the police. Let’s start with these three names and if they don’t pan out for us, we can always do the same with vets in the area. After that, I don’t know what we’ll do next.”
Clay parked his car in front of Smitty’s Bar on Olivera. He and Dean casually walked in and took a seat at the bar. The men sitting around in this place must have either been third-shifters who had just gotten off work, or they were career drunks. Dad held up one finger and a fat bartender in a dirty apron came over and laid two coasters down in front of them.
“What’ll it be, gents?” he said.
“Couple of beers,” Dean said, reaching for his wallet.
Clay laid his arm across Dean’s chest. “I got these,” he said.
“I’ll get the next round,” Dean said.
“Hopefully there won’t be a next round,” Clay told him.
Dean looked around the place. “I see what you mean,” he said.
The bartender set two mugs of beer in front of them and said, “Three bucks.”
Clay plucked three singles out of his wallet and laid them on the bar, unwilling to touch the bartender’s hand. The bartender walked away, dropped the bills into the open register and turned back toward the two new customers. Clay held up one finger, summoning the fat man back to where they sat.
“You want something else?” the bartender said.
“You look kind of familiar,” Clay said. “Have you worked here long?”
“I don’t work here,” the man said. “Mike Schmidt. I own the place.”
“Really,” Dean said, smiling. “How long have you owned it?”
Schmidt’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling before he announced, “Eight years next month. Why?”
“I thought that was you,” Dean said, feigning recognition of the man. “I was in here a few years ago when some guy held the place up. Do you remember that night?”
“Which night?” Schmidt said. “I’ve been held up five times in eight years, but never again.” He reached under the bar and produced a .38 revolver and laid it in front of us.
Clay held up his palms toward the man. “Whoa,” Dad said. “Put that thing away. Guns make me nervous.”
Schmidt turned toward Dean. “What about you?” he said. “Guns make you nervous, too?”
“Not as nervous as that night I saw that guy hold up this place,” Dean said.
“And when was that?” Schmidt said.
Dean pretended to be thinking and then offered, “Oh, I think this was about three years ago, maybe a little longer. There was some other guy in here who pulled a gun and shot the robber in the leg. All he got for his trouble was dead.”
“Yeah,” Schmidt said. “I remember that one. He should have shot first and asked questions later. He waited too long.”
“Is that what made you decide to get a gun of your own?” Clay said.
“Bought it the very next day,” Schmidt said.
“Didn’t you have to wait seven days before they’d let you have it?” Dean said.
“Fuck that,” Schmidt said. “Ain’t no criminals gonna wait seven days to hold me up. I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six. Know what I mean?”
“I think I do,” Dean said. “I’m sure the police must have asked you at the time if you knew the assailant, but I’m kind of curious myself. Any idea why he picked your bar?”
“I don’t know,” Schmidt said, “and I don’t care, either. But if he ever shows his face around here again, it’ll be his last day on this earth, guaran-goddamned-teed.”
“Did you see the guy get shot?” Clay said.
“Sure did,” Schmidt said. “I was standing right next to the guy who shot him. Hell, if I’d been any closer to him, I’d have taken a slug or two myself. That was one brave guy. Brave or foolish.”
“Do you remember where the robber was hit?” Dean said.
“High up on his right…” Schmidt closed his eyes and tried to picture the event when it had happened. He gestured with his hand. “No, make that his left leg. Someplace above the knee. Yeah, I remember seeing him holding his leg with his hand. Blood was running out between his fingers.”
Dean turned to Clay. “Sounds like Campbell might have hit an artery,” he said. “The guy couldn’t have gotten very fa
r in that condition.”
“Far enough to disappear,” Clay said and then turned to Schmidt. “He must have bled like a stuck pig.”
“That he did,” Schmidt said. “Left a trail on my floor and out the door. It stopped in the street.”
“Sounds like he had a ride waiting for him,” Clay said. “And someone’s car would have had a bloody mess to clean up after the driver dropped the shooter off someplace.”
Schmidt stopped wiping the glass he had in his hand and looked at Dean a bit suspiciously now. “Say, why are you two so interested in that guy anyway?” he said.
Dean shook his head. “No particular reason,” he said. “Thanks for the beers.” He slid off his stool and headed for the door with Clay right behind him.
Schmidt called after them, “You haven’t even touched your beers.” But the two men were already several steps closer to their car. Schmidt grabbed the two mugs of beer and set them down below the bar, ready for the next unsuspecting patrons to walk in and order two beers. These two would see double duty.
Back at the car, Clay slid beneath the wheel and Dean slid in next to him. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Clay said.
“Depends,” Dean said, “on whether you’re thinking that the shooter may be dead and buried someplace and the guy we need to find is the driver.”
“Exactly,” Clay said. “Suppose we check car washes and car detailing places to see if anyone remembers cleaning a car with blood stains back then.” He pulled away from the curb and drove back toward Hollywood.
I let Gloria drive so I could check the list of missing doctors we’d made at the library. There were just three of them, but they were spread out on the map. One had an address in the Hollywood Hills. Another was listed in the Burbank area and the third one had an address on Waring Avenue, north of Melrose. We decided to check the closest one first in Hollywood Hills.
We drove north on Highland and picked up Mulholland Drive, winding through the foothills. The white and yellow house was perched on the side of a hill, its cobblestone driveway looking like it had recently been washed. Gloria pulled to the side of the road and we got out. We’d gone halfway up the driveway when Gloria suddenly gasped and jumped back. The woman who’d been bent over, tending her garden did the same.
