Barry Friedman - Dead End

by Barry Friedman

  “I bet!”

  “Are you home?”

  “Uh-huh. Where were you last Sunday? I was expecting you.”

  Maharos’ feet hit the floor. Jesus, he had promised Annie he’d take her to lunch and a movie. He had gotten so wrapped up in the Horner thing, he had forgotten it was Sunday. “Annie, you want the truth?”

  “ ‘Course.”

  “I was so busy I forgot it was Sunday. Honest. Look, if it’s okay with Mom, how about I pick you up Saturday morning and we spend the weekend together. Lunch at McDonald’s, a movie or whatever you want. Sunday we can drive out somewhere and picnic, just the two of us. How about it?”

  He pictured the long-legged twelve-year-old, running her fingers through her long silky hair, auburn like her mother’s, chewing on a strand while she talked. Scratching the tip of her small, upturned nose by running her palm up and down over it. He thanked God she had inherited the looks of the O’Learys, Marcie’s side. From Maharos all she got was love.

  “Wellll..”

  “Want me to ask?”

  “Yeah. Maybe you’d better. Only she’s not home now.”

  “Okay, I’ll call back later.”

  “Don’t forget. Today is Thursday already.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t. Bye, honey.”

  Four years since the divorce. Their fifteen-year marriage had been great for him, lousy for Marcie. The same tired story he’d heard from every other divorced police officer: Come home to change clothes, leave the dirty laundry and go. She often said she wished it had been another woman instead of The Job. Another woman she could compete with.

  “Quit the force,” she’d pleaded.

  He’d said, “Don’t ask me to do that, it’s the only thing I know. The only thing I’m good at.”

  “You could be good at anything you wanted. You could be a concert violinist if you devoted as much time to that as you do to being a cop.”

  Maharos smiled thinking about it now. He couldn’t carry a tune on a kazoo.

  Annie. It took seven years, half a dozen fertility tests and three miscarriages before Marcie had to call a black and white patrol car to take her to the hospital with labor pains coming every three minutes. Maharos was staked out in a fleabag hotel, in the room next door to the girl friend of a murder suspect, waiting for him to show. The girl on the switchboard back at the station was new, and didn’t know how to reach him until an hour after Annie, covered with slimy meconium, was welcomed with a slap on the ass by the obstetrician.

  Looking back on it, that’s when Marcie changed. She began carping at him about raising her daughter as a single parent. Not that she didn’t have a legitimate beef, but the few hours he was home he didn’t want to hear complaints. At first he just tuned her out. Then came the spats. They weren’t quite in the plate-throwing, fuck-you-and-your-family category. Not quite. But when Marcie’s Irish temper flared it could rock the civilization that had been born in Greece centuries before. He told her that the wives of Greek men raised the children. The husband worked and drank ouzo with his buddies. That’s the way it was gonna be. Furthermore, he was taking a week of vacation time starting the day after next, going off to Georgian Bay fishing with two of his detective buddies. She reminded him her name had started with an O-apostrophe before they were married, it didn’t end with -os, and she suggested what he could do with his Greek customs. When he returned a week later with two walleye that barely made the legal size, Marcie and Annie were replaced by a note.

  Now Marcie was remarried. He knew she wouldn’t be on the open market very long. Sam Hudson was a comfortable, unexciting widower who owned an insurance agency. At fifty-eight, sixteen years older than Marcie, he had two grown and married children. Most important to Maharos, Annie adored the guy.

  Marcie had gotten the house in the divorce arrangements, sold it when she married Sam. Maharos still lived in the two-bedroom apartment he had taken when they separated. Three times a week, Louella Watson came in to clean up the mess he had made the other four days.

  Maharos scratched a note on the appointment page of a spiral calendar that lay open at the current date, Thursday, June 5. “Call Marcie—weekend with Annie.”

  SIX

  Interstate 77 starts at Cleveland’s west side and threads its way south, down the eastern third of the state. The freeway crosses the Ohio River at Marietta and continues on through West Virginia finally ending at Columbia, South Carolina.

  Once you get past Canton, where you could wave at the Football Hall of Fame and the Hoover and Timkin plants as you drive by, the landscape on both sides consists of trees and gently rolling hills. About 25 miles south of Canton, New Philadelphia and Dover sit side-by-side just off the highway.

  If your farm was, say, off State Route 39 or 516, and you needed feed for your livestock, you’d probably load your pickup at Noah Hamberger’s Feed and Hay store in New Philly. Hamberger’s a surly son of a bitch but people buy from him because his DoubleX Hybrid is good quality for the money. Besides, his is the only feed store for miles around.

  Of course, if it were Sunday, Hamberger wouldn’t be at the store. He’d be home, a white frame three-story house off Rainbow Lane surrounded by some rye grass and two acres of tall elms, sturdy oaks, buckeyes, some maples and a few pine trees. He’d probably be tinkering in the barn with his 1984 Buick Century, his 1973 Ford Pickup, or the International Harvester Riding Tractor.

  In fact, that’s exactly where he was at 10:30, the morning of June 7. Under the Buick, draining the oil. He was on his back, lying on a flat wooden platform fitted with roller wheels so he could roll himself under the car. It was a squeeze, and he had to suck in his big belly to make it under the car frame. His wife Martha always told him that at his age, fifty-seven, he ought to take it over to Pete Fisher’s Shell Station and let Pete do it, rather than strain himself. But he was a hardheaded, tight-fisted Dutchman and he wasn’t going to part with $14.85, oil and labor, for a simple job like changing the oil. Besides, Martha wasn’t home to object. On summer Sundays she stayed on at Lutheran Church after services to help the other ladies of the auxiliary, arrange tables for the afternoon outdoor social.

  Couldn’t ask for a better day for it. Even now, mid-morning, it was sunny with just enough of a breeze to blow the humidity away. The thick stand of trees that almost surrounded the house gave enough shade to keep it cool.

  Their shadows were good cover for Ephraim Rankins who had been standing, hidden behind the thick trunk of an oak, waiting for Hamberger like he’d done on each of the previous three Sunday mornings. At eight that morning, he’d parked his Dodge van on a dirt road that ran between a couple of fields about a quarter-mile past New Philadelphia’s business district. He strolled the mile and a half to Hamberger’s house and had been there, behind the oak, when Hamberger, returning from church, parked the Buick in the barn. He waited while Hamberger walked back to the house, changed out of his Sunday suit to overalls and came back to the barn to work on the machines like he did every Sunday.

  He watched as Hamberger rolled himself on his back under the car. Then he crept to the barn door; careful he didn’t step on gravel or loose stones to crunch underfoot. He grabbed the shovel he’d leaned against the wall just outside the barn while he was waiting. Now he was in the barn, three feet from where just the top of Hamberger’s head poked out under the car frame.

  He listened to the musical sound the oil made as it dripped into the metal basin Hamberger balanced on his chest. After the oil stream stopped, Hamberger turned the cock closing the oil drainage valve. He steadied the basin of waste oil and, using his heels to push against the barn floor, began propelling himself backwards, from under the car. He kept his eyes on the basin, keeping it level so the oil wouldn’t spill. His head, neck and upper chest had cleared the car frame when his backward progress was stopped. Rankins’ feet were blocking the wheels of the roller platform. Hamberger shifted his gaze from the basin and looked straight up into Rankins’ face.

  Ha
mberger sucked in his breath. He squinted like he was trying to recognize the face. He said, “Who is it?”

  Rankins just smiled.

  Again Hamberger said, “Who is it?”

  Rankins’ answer was to swing the shovel with both hands, like a baseball bat, and smash it down into Hamberger’s face.

  He watched for a moment, the shovel poised to strike again. Hamberger’s arms and legs twitched a few times, then he lay still, blood pouring out of his nose and mouth. Funny how they all twitched like that for a few seconds.

  Rankins dropped the shovel, then pushed Hamberger, still on the roller platform, to the pickup. A large canvas tarp covered the truck bed. It was secured by a piece of clothesline that ran through grommets along the tarp’s free edges. He pulled about six feet of line free of the grommets, took a knife from his pocket and cut it off from the rest of the line, then cut that in half. He used one half to tie Hamberger’s hands behind his back. With the other half he tied his feet together at the ankles.

  Hamberger was a stocky son of a bitch, unconscious he was dead weight. It took most of Rankins’ strength to stand him up and prop his body against the tailgate. By bending him backwards and boosting him, he was able to get Hamberger’s upper body far enough into the truck bed so he wouldn’t slip back down to the barn floor. Then, he climbed into the truck, pulled Hamberger to the center of the truck bed, and covered him with the tarp.

  Rankins stood, stretched, and pressed his fists into his aching back for a moment. Rubbing where the scar was, helped ease the pain. He climbed down from the truck bed, took a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket and pulled them on. With a handkerchief, he wiped the handle of the shovel he’d used to club Hamberger. In the cab of the truck, the key was in the ignition. He started the motor, backed out of the barn and headed out of the driveway on to Rainbow Lane. It was a quiet, peaceful, sunny morning in early June. Couldn’t ask for better weather for the church social that afternoon. Too bad Noah Hamberger couldn’t make it.

  SEVEN

  The water in the pool at Firestone Park, outside Youngstown was still cold even though the air temperature was 82. It would be mid-July before the water would be warm enough to stay in for longer than a few minutes. Annie Maharos’ lips were blue and she shivered as she shook her hair out of her bathing cap while she jogged to where Al Maharos sat on a blanket spread out on the spacious lawn surrounding the public pool. She flopped down on the blanket next to him. His plaid shorts had gone out of style ten years ago, but the hell with it. Why spring for a new pair then wear them once a year? A floppy hat kept his scalp from burning. A picnic basket next to the blanket was filled with ham and egg salad sandwiches and cans of Coke and two cans of beer for him. They had made the sandwiches in his apartment that morning before taking off for the park.

  Maharos looked up at the sun. “Getting hungry yet?”

  “I guess I could eat,” said Annie.

  She reached into the basket and handed him one of the ham sandwiches. She unwrapped an egg salad sandwich for herself and popped open a can of Coke.

  “What a day,” said Maharos. He hadn’t felt this much at ease for months. A lump filled his throat as he gazed at Annie. She wore a flowered Bikini that covered almost nothing of her thin body. He noticed that she was starting to bud breasts. She’ll have nice boobs like Marcie, he thought.

  “Going out much?”

  Annie looked at him through the hair that covered part of her face. “You mean am I dating?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She shrugged. “Tommy Ames took me to the June dance at school. His Mom drove us. After, we went to The Liberty for ice cream. I went to the movies with him last week too”

  “What, are you going steady with Tommy?”

  “Oh Daddy!”

  “Just asking.”

  She shoved his shoulder and grinned. “What is this going to be, a lecture on the birds and bees?”

  “Yeah. Maybe you’re ready.”

  “Oh, Daddy!”

  Maharos was a little embarrassed talking to her about sex, but he didn’t know how much she already knew. “Hey, I see kids your age get in all kinds of trouble. I want to be sure you aren’t one of them.”

  “Oh, Daddy. Don’t be such an old fud. Next you’ll be asking me if I’m on the pill.”

  Jesus. “You know about the pill already.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “ ‘Course. Anyway, don’t worry. I know how to take care of myself—and I’m not on the pill.”

  The kids today. He’d have to have a talk with Marcie. Find out what Annie knew and didn’t know.

  Annie was taking small nibbles of her egg salad sandwich. She looked at Maharos out of the corners of her eyes. “Wanna hear something? Janie? You know, Janie Boyd? Well she started her periods. We went to see ‘Ghostbusters II’ and just when it got exciting, Janie pokes me and goes, ‘I got a terrible cramp.’ I go, ‘Oh no!’ And she goes, ‘I gotta go to the bathroom. Please, come along with me.’ These guys we know from school are sitting in front of us? And when they see us get up they start whistling and stuff. So we go to the Ladies Room and her panties are soaked with blood. Yuck! Well, they had one of those machines, you know, like Coke machines—.”

  “Vending machines.”

  “What?”

  “They’re called vending machines. You put a quarter or a half a dollar in them and you get a sanitary napkin.”

  “Only you had to put three quarters in these. Seventy-five cents! For one little pad! Anyway, we both only had dollar bills. So I had to run out to the cashier and get change…”

  Annie was waving her arms telling the story.

  Maharos sat on the grass grinning. He half-listened to what she was saying. He loved to hear her talk with such animation and enthusiasm.

  “—so can we go to Sea World later this afternoon?”

  She caught him by surprise. He hadn’t realized that she had finished telling about Janie’s period.

  “Way over to Geauga Lake Park? That’s a good half-hour drive.”

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “You said we could have the whole day together.”

  Maharos shrugged a shoulder. “Okay. I guess I owe you one anyway, for last weekend.”

  Annie jumped up, threw her arms around his neck and planted a wet kiss mixed with egg salad on his cheek. “You’re fun to be with, Daddy. I wish it wasn’t only on Sundays.”

  “Hey, let’s not get into that again.”

  They finished eating, and while Annie went into the ladies locker room to change into a sun suit, Maharos folded the blanket and packed up the picnic basket.

  * * *

  It was six o’clock and they were in Maharos’ Ford, driving back to Youngstown. Annie was still chattering about the acts the dolphins and Shamu had put on at Sea World. Maharos was peacefully quiet, wearing a faint grin. He was content to listen, occasionally making a comment. The pager on his belt beeped.

  He pulled over to the side of the highway and glanced at the beeper. The call was from Joe Byers, the duty officer in the detective squad room at Youngstown police headquarters. He punched it in on his cell phone.

  Byers said, “Hate to bother you on a Sunday, Al. Something came in over the wire that Fiala said you’d be interested in.”

  “Yeah?”

  “New Philly reported a homicide and Frank thought the M.O. was something like the one you were working on. The one where that lawyer got iced?”

  “Horner?”

  “That’s the one. Anyway, the guy in New Philly was found with his head bashed in and shot in the back.

  Sounded promising.

  “When did the New Philly homicide take place?”

  “The doc thinks it was around noon today.”

  Maharos glanced to the car where Annie was resting her chin on the sill of the car window. Her eyes were closed; she’d had a busy day. “Okay. I’m up near Akron. I’ve got to take my daughter home. I’ll be in the office in about an hour.
You can fill me in on whatever you’ve got then.”

  EIGHT

  Maharos yawned, stretched and said, “Want me to drive?”

  Frank Fiala glanced over to the passenger’s seat. “Have a nice snooze?”

  Maharos had been dozing in the seat next to Fiala during the 90-mile drive from Youngstown to New Philadelphia.

  He asked, “Tired driving?”

  “Nah, we’re almost there. Know where the Sheriff’s Office is?”

  “Yeah, I’ll give you directions when we get into town.”

  Twenty minutes later, Fiala pulled the blue Chevrolet into the parking lot next to the gray limestone Tuscarawas County Administration Building. He parked in a space marked “Reserved for Sheriff Vehicles.”

  The receptionist in the Sheriff’s Office pointed down the corridor, “Sheriff Anderson’s office is 208. You can go right on down.”

  Sheriff Thomas Anderson pushed himself up from his desk chair, a broad smile on his beefy face, and extended a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt. He was a giant, six feet six, weighing almost 300 pounds. His upper arms bulged the seams of his sweat-stained uniform short-sleeved shirt. “Glad to be of help. How was your trip down from the big city?”

  Maharos said, “Thanks for seeing us Sheriff. The big city? Listen, it’s been a few years since I got down here. This place has grown. You’re not too much smaller than Youngstown.” He was thinking that Anderson himself wasn’t a hell of a lot smaller than Youngstown. Enough small talk. “What have you got so far on that homicide?”

  “Hamberger? Noah was a hay and feed dealer here in New Philly. Everybody around here knew the guy. Tough businessman but honest, hard worker.” He shook his head, “Sorry to see old Noah go. The son of a bitch that killed him oughta fry. But these fuckin’ liberal courts… Prob’bly get away with a manslaughter conviction. Guy never had a job in his life, sat around all day suckin’ wine out of a bottle.”

  Maharos and Fiala looked at each other. Maharos said, “You mean you got a collar?”