Modern Masters of Noir

by Ed Gorman (ed)

  Well, he thought, that was as good as it was going to get, and to hell with it anyway.

  A discreet sign directed him to the right room. He pushed open a heavy oak door and slipped in. The young man standing just inside looked so much like Mike had when they were first teamed eight years ago, that it sent a stab of pain through him. The kid turned and looked questioningly at Simon. “Uh . . . I’m Hirsch,” he mumbled, trying to smooth his hair again.

  A familiar smile flickered across the young man’s face. “You’re Mike’s partner.”

  “Yeah, I am. Was.” Simon looked around the crowded room. “I just wanted to come by and . . . just to come by. I hope it’s okay?”

  “Sure. You belong here. I feel like I know you already, Mike talked about you so much. I’m his brother, Kevin.”

  “Yes.”

  “Siobahn’s been expecting you.”

  Simon could see Mike’s wife—widow—sitting in the front row. She looked pale, but composed. Turning, she saw him and smiled a little. He nodded.

  Kevin leaned closer. “You can go up front if you like.”

  He didn’t want to. He’d already seen Conroy dead once and that seemed like quite enough, but apparently it was expected, so he walked down the aisle toward the casket. A man and a young girl stood there. They each made the sign of the cross, then the girl leaned over and brushed her lips against Mike’s cheek. Then she turned and followed the man up the aisle past Simon.

  Walking more slowly, Simon approached the coffin. It was strange to see Mike in his dress blues, instead of jeans and a T-shirt. His face was waxen. He didn’t look asleep, like people sometimes said about corpses. He just looked dead.

  Simon dropped to his knees, touching the side of the polished wood box. Ahh, Mikey, he thought wearily, was it worth it? Was any of it worth this? A guy like you, your life should’ve come to something more than just an afterthought of some bastard with a gun.

  His thoughts drifted fuzzily.

  He realized suddenly that he was about to fall asleep right there against the casket, and he got to his feet quickly, hoping no one had noticed. For one more minute he stood there, staring down at what was left of Wild Mike Conroy, then he bent and kissed his partner’s forehead. “Thanks, buddy,” he whispered.

  Siobahn was waiting for him in the hallway. “Thank you for coming, Simon,” she said. “Have you met Mike’s brother, Kevin?”

  “Yes.” Simon was staring at a large crucifix over the door. “Siobahn, I don’t know what to say. If I could’ve got there sooner—”

  She put a finger to his lips. “Hush. Don’t say that.”

  “Well, I’m just so damned sorry.”

  “I know that. We’re all sorry, everyone who loved him.”

  “Yeah,” Simon said.

  “I have a favor to ask of you.”

  He brought his gaze back to her face. “Sure, anything.”

  “Will you speak at the funeral?”

  “Me?” he said, surprised. “But I’m not family or . . . I’m not even Catholic.”

  She smiled. “Mike thought of you as family. In some ways, you were closer to him than anybody else, including me. He loved you, and I think it would please him.” Her eyes darkened. “If you would like to.”

  Simon nodded slowly. “All right. I . . . I hope I can say the right things.”

  She kissed his cheek. “You will.” She gave him a gentle push toward the door. “Go home and get some sleep. You look terrible.”

  He shook hands again with Mike’s brother, whose name he couldn’t remember, and left the two of them standing in the hall.

  By the time he got home, all the lights were off. He let himself in quietly and switched on a small lamp in the living room. The pieces of broken glass were still there on the rug. Simon knelt and began to pick them up. A shadow fell across the room. “Simon?”

  He didn’t look up. “Sorry I woke you.”

  “That’s okay. Don’t cut yourself.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Are you all right?”

  He picked up the last piece of glass and got to his feet. “Uh-huh. The funeral is at two tomorrow.”

  “I know. I’ll be ready.”

  “Thank you. Go back to bed, Kim.”

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  “Yeah, sure. Soon as I dump this into the trash.”

  She stood there a moment longer, then vanished. Simon walked through the house to the back door. The plastic trash can sat beside the porch. He lifted the lid and dropped all the pieces of glass but one in. He held that single jagged sliver thoughtfully. After a moment, he took it between the fingers of his left hand, and carefully ran the sharp edge across his right palm. A thin trail of blood appeared in the wake of the moving glass. It hurt. He stared at the cut for a moment, then dropped the glass in with the rest, and went back into the house.

  Chapter 3

  Joey Belmondo was a punk.

  It wasn’t the first time Belmondo had faced Simon across the table in the interrogation room. If anything, they knew one another too well. That had the advantage, at least, of cutting down on the preliminaries. Simon, dressed in his best (only) black suit, a new white shirt, and a black tie, came into the room and sat down. He lit a cigarette. “I don’t have a whole lot of time, Joey,” he said flatly. “So let’s just skip the foreplay and get right down to business.”

  Joey stared at him, grinning. “You look like a fucking preacher or something.”

  “Maybe I finally got religion.”

  That seemed to strike Joey’s funny bone and he laughed. “Hey,” he said, “I got it—they must be planting your late deceased partner today.”

  Simon took a long drag on the cigarette. “As a matter of fact, they are.” He flicked ashes onto the floor, keeping his gaze on Joey. “So maybe you’ll understand that I’m not in the best of moods this morning.”

  Joey shrugged. “Nobody ever did accuse you of being Mr. Nice Guy, far as I know.”

  “You got it. I’ve always been irritable. Now I’m mean.” It had been at their first interrogation together that the roles were set. He was the bad cop and Mike was the good, buddy-buddy cop. Now he couldn’t remember if the choice had been an accident, maybe decided by flipping a coin, or whether it had actually been an astute case of type-casting. Anyway, by this time, it came easier being hostile than being nice. Especially today. “Talk to me, Joey. Who wanted Papagallos dead?”

  “Gee, I don’t know,” Joey said, scratching his head in mock thoughtfulness. “Who wanted your partner dead?” He brightened. “You know, that’s an idea. Did’ja stop to think that maybe somebody was really after Conroy and got Papa by mistake?”

  Simon just looked at him.

  Joey shifted in the chair a little. “I got a question.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’d like to know how Conroy got so close to Papa. Hell, I worked for that bastard three years, and I only saw him once. Never talked to him at all. How’d he do it?”

  Simon slowly crushed out the cigarette. “Conroy was smart,” he said.

  “Yeah?” Joey laughed again. “So how come he’s dead, and I’m still here?”

  There was a long silence in the room. Simon put two fingers inside his collar and tugged at the tie that was strangling him. “Joey,” he said finally, gently, “I got a ten-year-old boy waiting in the wings. A kid named Teddy Newhouse. You remember Teddy?”

  Some of the bravado seemed to drain from Belmondo. “Never heard of him,” he mumbled.

  “Gee, that’s funny, Joey, because he remembers you real good. He especially remembers the night you took him behind the garage to play games.”

  Joey sank further into the chair, his face pushed into a fatuous pout. “Ah, shit,” he said sullenly.

  “I’ve been keeping Teddy on ice, because he’s just a kid and I sort of hated to make him get on the stand and go over the whole thing again.” He paused, checking his watch. “But, see, that won’t wash anymore. Ask me why, Joe
y.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to find out who killed Conroy. No, wait a minute, scratch that. I will find out who did it.” He stood, carefully shaking down the crease in his trousers. “And I’ll tell you something else, Joey. I don’t much care who gets run over in the process.” He smiled pleasantly. “I gotta go now, but we’ll talk again. Count on that.”

  He walked out and found Troy, wearing his dress uniform for the funeral, standing in the hall. The lieutenant had been listening to the interrogation on the intercom. He turned and looked at Simon. “Did you mean that?”

  Simon didn’t glance up as he busied himself brushing some ashes from the sleeve of his jacket. “What?”

  “About not caring who gets run over.”

  Now Simon looked at him. “I meant it.”

  Troy’s face was suddenly older. “You’re a cop, Hirsch, not a vigilante.”

  “I know that.”

  The other man nodded grimly. “Make sure you don’t forget it.”

  Simon pulled at his shirt cuffs. The vivid gash across his palm made his hand feel stiff and awkward. “I won’t.”

  “What happened to your hand?”

  He shrugged. “Cut it, I guess. Hey, I gotta go. Kim’s waiting. See you later.”

  The building was beginning to look strangely empty as all but the most essential office personnel left to attend the funeral. Simon hurried through the quiet hallways to the parking garage.

  The traffic jam began four blocks from St. David’s. Their car inched forward slowly, as Simon hunched over the wheel, his face closed and expressionless. Kimberly sat next to him, tugging at the hem of her black dress nervously.

  “She should’ve come,” he muttered finally.

  “Why? It would only upset her.”

  “Maybe it’s time she got a little upset over something. I don’t think it shows much respect for her not to be here.”

  Kimberly sighed. “Honey, we’ve been all through this. Tammy didn’t want to come, and I don’t think it would have been a very good idea to force her.” She glanced at him. “Besides, she has cheerleading tryouts today.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure.” He shut up about it, but the fact that his own daughter wasn’t there left a bad taste in his mouth.

  He managed to get the car to within a block of the church. At that point, he waved to a traffic cop he knew slightly. “Hey, Jeff, I gotta get in there. Take care of this thing for me, willya?”

  The cop nodded. “Sure thing, Inspector.”

  They got out of the car and Kimberly held his arm as they walked to the church and up the wide steps. Just before going in, Simon paused. He pulled a black yarmulke from his pocket and settled it on his head.

  The large church was already packed. They stood for a moment, looking around for a place to sit, before Mike’s brother came up the aisle toward them. “Hi, Inspector,” he said softly.

  Simon nodded, still not remembering the kid’s name.

  “Your places are down front.” He led them to the second row, just behind Siobahn and the two kids, boys, aged five and seven. Siobahn turned her head and smiled. Simon sat straight-backed, both hands resting on his knees.

  “So many people,” Kimberly whispered.

  “Mike had a lot of friends.”

  “I even saw a TV camera outside.”

  Simon’s fingers moved a little against the material of the black suit. “He was a hero,” he said softly. “The media loves a hero.”

  “Will they put you on the news, do you think?”

  “Me? Why the hell should they? I’m just the guy who got there too late.” He couldn’t take his eyes off the coffin, draped in the flag, that sat in front of the altar. Outside, an airplane roared over, drowning out the soft hum of conversation, and the noise of people settling in.

  It was nearly twenty minutes before the service began. The priest, a tall, gaunt man with steel-grey hair led the proceedings. Simon scarcely listened. He followed the lead of those around him in when to stand and sit. He couldn’t kneel, though.

  When the priest nodded at him, he took a deep breath and walked to the front, pausing only a split second as he passed the coffin. Standing behind the pulpit, he stared out over the sea of faces. He cleared his throat, wishing that he’d thought to write down what he wanted to say. Except that he didn’t know. His first words were in Aramaic, then he translated. “Magnified and sanctified is the name of the Lord.” He tried to focus on the faces below. “Those are the opening words of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. My father is a rabbi, and I know all the right things to say when someone dies.”

  His glance went to the coffin.

  He sighed. “Yeah, I know the words, all right, but I don’t think I can say them. Not for Mike. Because once the words are said, it all becomes very real.” His voice was growing stronger. “Mike was a cop, and I guess every officer on the force knows that someday this could happen to him. We all think about it.” He shook his head, smiling faintly. “Yeah, I figured it might happen to me. But I never once thought about it happening to Mike. That’s kinda funny, isn’t it? Guess I was tempting the fates.”

  He bit his lip, deciding that was probably the wrong thing to say in church.

  “Being a cop is not a very nice job sometimes, but having Mike for a partner made it easier. Made it bearable. A lot of times when I wanted to cry over some of the shit we have to deal with, he would make me laugh instead.” As he spoke, Simon absently rubbed one finger over the cut on his palm. “I guess I’ll probably still laugh. I mean, life goes on, right? Yeah, right. It’s gonna be a whole lot harder now, though.” He was quiet for a moment, staring out over the crowd. “I said before that my father is a rabbi. There have been a lot of rabbis in my family. There had never been a cop before. Doctors, lawyers, yeah. But no cops. Until me.” The cut began to bleed. “My father thinks I have chosen a degrading way of life. A dirty job. He’s right. But it’s also an important job. I guess.”

  He could see Kimberly watching him, and Siobahn, and Mike’s brother, and other men from the department. And a lot of strangers—people, he realized suddenly, that had been a part of Mike’s other life, the part that he didn’t know.

  Abruptly, he felt very tired. “But there is something I want to say. If being a cop brought me nothing but pain, if my father never speaks to me again, if the rest of my life goes to hell because of the job, if it all adds up to nothing more than a bullet for me, too . . . if all this is true, it still will have been worth it, because once I had a partner and a friend like Mike Conroy.”

  He looked down and saw the blood on his hand. He closed the fingers into a fist. “None of this is probably what I should have said up here. I don’t know. Probably I should have talked about God, or faith, or how Mike is in heaven now. But I’m not a very religious person. If there is a heaven, I know Mike is there, but, see, that doesn’t make me feel any better. I don’t want him in heaven. I want him here.” He stopped to take a breath. “Or maybe I should have talked about some of the things Mike and I did together. But those memories belong to me. I’m just not very good at talking in public. I only know about doing my job.”

  He leaned forward a little. “The Bible says ‘an eye for an eye.’ That’s my job. Exacting justice.” He raised both hands, palms upwards, in a gesture of total hopelessness. “But what kind of justice can there be for Mike?” He looked around and stared at the priest, almost expecting—hoping—that there would be an answer. But the man was silent, so Simon turned back to the front. “Michael Francis Conroy was a good cop. A good man. And the best damned partner in the world. I’m sorry he’s dead.” He took two steps backwards and ducked his head a little. “I guess that’s all I have to say,” he mumbled.

  He left the altar, this time stopping to rest his hand on top of the coffin briefly. A little of his blood stained the fabric of the flag.

  The rest of the service was a blur for Simon, and without really knowing how, he found himself standing on the f
ront steps of the church again. Siobahn was there, too, and she embraced him. “Thank you, Simon.”

  He shoved both hands into his pockets. “I didn’t know what to say.”

  “You said what was in your heart. It was fine.”

  He tried to smile, then followed Kimberly to where the car was parked. They fell into place behind the winding motorcade making its slow way to the cemetery. Kimberly twisted her handkerchief. “I hate funerals,” she said.

  “Yeah, they’re not much fun,” he agreed.

  She looked at him. “That was kind of a funny eulogy you gave.”

  “Was it?” He had no idea what he’d said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well,” she said, obviously trying to put the best light on it, “they probably just assumed it’s because you’re Jewish.”

  “Probably.”

  The graveside ceremony was mercifully brief, almost military.

  Simon spent most of the time watching the birds overhead. When the rifle salute shattered the stillness, he flinched visibly, hearing all too clearly the echo of the shots that had come over his radio on Sunday. The flag was folded and presented to Siobahn. Simon joined the line of people walking slowly by the grave. He bent and picked up a handful of dirt, held it tightly for a moment, then sprinkled the soil on top of the coffin.

  Back in the car, finally, Kimberly relaxed with a long sigh. “Oh, God, I’ll be glad to get home.”

  “We have to go by Mike’s . . . Siobahn’s first,” he said shortly, pulling the car out of the cemetery drive sharply.

  “Why?”

  “It’s expected.”

  She didn’t argue.

  There was a table of food set up in the dining room, and a lot of people stood around eating and drinking and talking, mostly about Mike. Siobahn sat in a rocking chair in the living room, accepting the condolences with a kind of weary grace. Simon poured himself a shot of whiskey from the bar on the sideboard, and walked around the room, sipping the drink slowly. He stopped finally in front of a large framed photo of Mike and himself, taken some four years earlier, after an intra-departmental softball game. They were both sweaty and filthy, grinning like idiots.