Detective Fiction

by William Wells

  I mentioned that I was living the cop dream by owning a bar and living on a boat. But my life as Frank Chance was so over the top that no cop could even dare to dream it.

  I attended a charity auction with Ash during which one bidder paid more for a bottle of vino than the cost of a car. Someone bought an Alaskan cruise for two for the price of the ship. We went to seafood night at Olde Naples Country Club featuring ice sculptures and all-you-can-eat lobster. I learned that I could eat three. It would have been more if I hadn’t also grazed on the stone crab claws, shrimp, oysters, and assorted other stuff from the land and the sea, plus desserts. I learned I could eat two slices of key lime pie and still have room for a turtle sundae. If I kept chowing down like that, I’d soon be too big for Uncle Reggie’s clothes, and mine.

  Ash brought home some poached salmon for Joe. When she put it in his dish, he rubbed against her leg before digging in.

  “You’re welcome,” she told him.

  IT TOOK the Coast Guard team two days to thoroughly examine the wreckage of Bob Appleby’s boat, which was named Condolences. That name seemed perfect for a vessel owned by the Funeral Home King of Iowa.

  I was washing my car in the driveway at Ash’s house when a messenger delivered a copy of the Coast Guard report, along with the background on Bob Appleby. I finished with the car, then took the reports and a cup of coffee I got from the kitchen to the outside table.

  Martin came into the kitchen as I was pouring the coffee from a pot on the counter. He seemed flustered that he hadn’t been there to meet my every need. I asked him if I could pour a cup for him, too, and when he seemed about to faint from the inappropriateness of it all, I smiled and said, “Just messin’ with ya, Marty my man.”

  To which he replied, “Very well, sir,” and backed out of the room.

  You can take the butler out of Boodle’s but . . .

  From the Coast Guard report, I learned that there was no bomb. The boat’s fuel lines and blower motor had been tampered with. This allowed a build-up of gas fumes in the engine compartment that exploded when the engines were started.

  That confirmed that Bob Appleby and his girlfriend, who’d been identified as a twenty-four-year-old waitress at the Port Royal Club named Tess Johannsen, were murdered. If Eileen Stephenson and Lester Gandolf had been, too, that brought the total to four.

  And if they were all offed by the same person, he could now, according to the standard law enforcement definition, be officially classified as a serial killer, the minimum body count being three.

  If that news ever became public, Sir Reginald’s newspapers would be in tabloid heaven. I could envision a headline in the Tattler: BLOODTHIRSTY KILLER LOOSE IN PARADISE. That would be bigger news than Vladimir Putin’s sexual proclivities and the countless stories about the Air Force’s Area 51 facility in the Nevada desert being UFO Central.

  According to his background report, Bob Appleby had nothing in common with Eileen and Lester except that he, too, was invested in The Atocha Fund. Maybe Count Vasily Petrovich’s hedge fund wasn’t so exclusive after all. I made a note of it and underlined my earlier note about looking into Vasily’s background.

  Without any solid evidence of wrongdoing by Vasily, or even compelling circumstantial evidence, no judge would sign an order allowing me access to The Atocha Fund’s records. Unless Mayor Beaumont’s connections could get that kind of information, I’d need to find another way to pursue this lead.

  The investigation was finally heating up. Not only did I have a solid clue, I also had a lead, which, according to the Detective’s Handbook, is one step up from a clue.

  I looked up from the reports and saw that Joe was sitting beside the table looking at me. That usually meant he wanted something. I checked my watch and saw it was lunchtime. Martin appeared with the handset to a cordless phone. He had a way of suddenly appearing, which can creep you out until you get used to it. It must be something they teach in butler school.

  “A call for you, Mr. Chance,” he said, handing me the phone. Joe followed him into the house, in search of lunch, I assumed.

  “Frank, this is Vasily Petrovich,” the voice on the phone said. “You may recall that we met at Lady Ashley’s dinner party.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, not adding that I’d just been thinking about how to find out if he’d murdered three of his customers and one bystander. If I were sweating him in an interrogation room back in Chicago, I would have just asked him that. Some of my fellow detectives might have hit him in the head with a phone book first, just to get his attention. But, in this circumstance, I didn’t think the straight-out accusation would have been effective.

  “I enjoyed our discussion and wondered if we might continue it over lunch,” he told me.

  Bingo.

  “Sure, that sounds good.”

  “If you are free tomorrow, perhaps we can meet at my office and then go somewhere from there.”

  It seemed unusual to meet at his office first instead of at a restaurant. Maybe Vasily wanted to deliver a sales pitch for The Atocha Fund. Frank Chance was, after all, extremely wealthy.

  I wondered if I should bring along my S&W and wear a Kevlar vest under my navy blue blazer just in case he became grouchy if I said no to the investment.

  “Let me check my calendar and get back to you,” I said, making a mental note to go to Office Max and buy an appointment calendar so I could check it. We ended the call. I was again startled to find Martin standing beside me. Maybe butlers should wear bells.

  “Lady Ashley is away, Mr. Chance,” he said. “Would you care to take your lunch out here? Cook has prepared a nice salad with seared ahi tuna steak on top.”

  “Yes, that’d be fine,” I answered, guessing that Joe was in the kitchen enjoying the same thing, minus the salad.

  After lunch, I went to the library, sat at an antique desk with a red leather top, and went back to work on Bill Stevens’s book manuscript. My deadline for editing it was approaching.

  That rascal Jack Stoney was up to his ass in alligators once again. This time, he’d ended up in bed with a mob boss’s wife, not knowing who she was. That was truly fiction, because every time I was in bed with a woman I knew her identity, or at least the one she gave me.

  The difficulty for Jack Stoney was that the FBI had planted bugs in the mob boss’s Gold Coast estate home, including one in the bedroom. The boss was away and his wife, in the throes of passion, had yelled out, “Fuck me, Detective Jack Stoney!”

  Talk about bad luck. At least she didn’t give his badge number. Maybe she was a cop groupie. Or maybe she was a confidential informant for the feds. Or maybe just an orgasmic blabbermouth. Whichever, Stoney had yet another appointment with Internal Affairs.

  In the manuscript, that IA meeting went like this:

  Stoney and two IA guys sat in a conference room at precinct headquarters. The two guys were wearing identical cheap grey suits, Stoney noted, as he walked into the room, purposely fifteen minutes late. Maybe that was the IA unit’s new uniform, purchased at a bulk rate from Men’s Wearhouse.

  The IA guys were seated opposite one another at one end of the table. Instead of taking the chair at the head of the table between them, as they obviously intended, Stoney went to the other end.

  Let the pissing contest begin.

  One of the IA guys was a lieutenant Stoney knew named Stan Caldwell, an African American. He was in his late fifties—a stocky bear of a man whose career had stalled for some reason Stoney didn’t know about, so he’d been sentenced to a term in IA.

  The other was Terry Thornton, a tall, thin man in his late twenties who was either prematurely bald or who’d shaved his head as a fashion statement. He was one of those cops who saw IA as a stepping-stone to advancement in the department, which sometimes it was, if you didn’t make an enemy of the wrong people along the way. He was a sergeant.

  Caldwell cleared his throat, appearing uncomfortable with the proceeding, which he probably was, because he didn’t lik
e his job, and thought that Stoney was an effective, if unorthodox, cop.

  He began: “So, Jack, you know why we’re here. We’ll be recording this session, unless you have an objection, in which case the meeting is over and we’ll need to involve your union rep, or your lawyer.”

  “Let’s get it done,” Stoney told him.

  The “asshole” at the end of that sentence was unspoken, but mutually understood. Stoney didn’t really think that Caldwell was an asshole, he was basically an okay guy, but anyone working in IA was put into that category for the duration of the assignment.

  Caldwell stood and placed a small voice recorder in the middle of the table because of the distance between them, and turned it on.

  “For the record, Detective Jack Stoney, you’ve chosen not to have your union representative or an attorney present, isn’t that correct?” Thornton asked.

  “Yes, that’s correct,” Stoney answered.

  Caldwell stood, turned off the recorder, and said, “I think that’s unwise, Jack.”

  I made a note in the margin here telling Bill that an initial IA interview like this one would not be recorded. No cop would be dumb enough to allow that, especially without a union rep or lawyer present. Only an official deposition, if things went that far, would be recorded.

  I continued reading:

  Stoney looked at Caldwell and said, “What’s unwise is wasting my time with bullshit like this while the real bad guys are taking over the streets of the City of Chicago.”

  I always had a union rep or a union lawyer, or sometimes both, present when called on the carpet by Internal Affairs, and I knew enough not to wise off like that. But I liked the way Stoney was handling it, so I left that part alone. He could afford to push it because, as I’ve noted, he wasn’t real and could never be fired, unless Bill decided he should be. Detective fiction is like that.

  With the help of a police union lawyer, I could have fought my forced retirement, and maybe won. But I was offered three-quarter pension payments for life. If there ever was a time to begin the second act in the Jack Starkey story, that was it.

  It turned out that the joke was on the taxpayers of the City of Chicago. I returned to the gym as soon as I could after my injury, and now my shoulder works as good as ever. I don’t feel guilty about taking the money, however. If I left it in the city kitty, the pols would squander it or steal it. That’s how it works in my hometown. Four of the last seven Illinois governors were sent to prison, with two serving at the same time when I left.

  Gotta love a state like that.

  15.

  CLAIRE, JENNY, HAROLD, ALICE, AND JOE

  As I was reading the manuscript, my cell phone rang. I had to stand to get it out of the pocket of my jeans, which had become tighter since this highly caloric assignment began.

  “Hello, Jack, how are you?” a familiar voice said. It was Claire, my ex-wife. Her call was even more surprising to me than Vasily’s. We talked every now and then, but I always initiated the calls.

  “I’m fine, Claire. What’s up?”

  I wished that I could tell her how great I really was doing as Frank Chance. I think she would have liked Frank, as long as he never lapsed into Jack Starkey-like behavior.

  “Jack, I wanted to tell you that Jenny was engaged and . . .”

  I interrupted her, stunned and saddened that our daughter had developed such a close relationship with a man I knew nothing about.

  “Engaged? To who?”

  “To whom. You don’t know him. He’s an assistant US attorney in Chicago.”

  “As long as he isn’t a cop. Was engaged? So they broke it off?”

  “In a manner of speaking. They got married.”

  Now I was beyond stunned. I was gobsmacked. “When?”

  “Last Saturday,” Claire said in a soft voice. “It was very nice. The ceremony was at Saint Stephen’s and the reception was at the Ritz-Carlton.”

  “I guess my invitation got lost in the mail.”

  “Jack, I’m sorry. Truly. Jenny and I had a long talk about inviting you. I thought her father should be there to give her away. But she still has a lot of anger about . . .”

  “It’s okay. I don’t blame her.”

  “I know it hurts.”

  “No more than a triple bypass without anesthesia.”

  “Jack—”

  “It’s not her fault, Claire. It’s mine. I take full responsibility for our relationship. Do you like him?”

  “He’s very sweet and they’re very much in love.”

  I wanted to say that we were like that once. But she knew it.

  “It’s not forever,” Claire said. “You can still rebuild your relationship with Jenny. I know, deep down, she wants that too.”

  “I’m working on a case,” I said. “When I’m done with it, I’ll come there for a visit.”

  Claire was silent. I knew I’d blown it again with my family. I was working on a case, and that came first. She didn’t ask what the case was or if I’d become a cop again. I guess she didn’t care.

  “Thanks for telling me,” I said. “I will visit.”

  “We’ll get together when you do,” she said. “It’ll be good to see you.”

  “You too. Bye.”

  Although my relationship with my daughter was still on the rocks, my ex-wife said it would be good to see me. I didn’t know if, given the chance, I’d want to get back together with Claire. Or if I wanted my relationship with Marisa to become more than it was. But it’s bad karma to have someone on the planet hating you, so it would be good if Claire and Jenny could someday forgive me my sins of omission and commission. According to Brother Timothy, God could. But could they?

  As I sat there after the call, I thought about my former life in Chicago. My father, Harold Starkey, was a Chicago fireman. He and my mother, Alice, denied themselves many luxuries in order to afford the steep tuition at Saint Leo’s high school and Loyola University for me, and for my older brother, Joe.

  The Jesuits at both institutions made certain that Joe and I got first-rate educations, despite the fact that I was more interested in sports and girls than schoolwork. I played basketball for the Loyola Ramblers. Joe was a three-sport athlete and a more serious student.

  I once asked Brother Timothy why I had to learn “all this kind of arcane stuff” I’d never use “in real life.”

  He replied, “Because, first of all, Mr. Starkey, we are teaching you how to think, not necessarily how to remember ‘all this kind of arcane stuff,’ and second, I still work the heavy bag in the gym, and I’ll explain to you in the ring why you should diligently apply yourself to your studies.”

  He added, “But you do get points for using the word arcane, so consider your ass safe for today.”

  I found that to be an extremely persuasive argument for doing my homework, and not cutting classes.

  After graduating from Loyola, I did a tour as an officer in the Marine Corps, and then became a cop. The marines taught me to shoot; where else but the police force could I use that skill legally and get paid for it?

  Joe followed dad into the fire department, although our parents wanted him to go to law school. He did enroll in Loyola’s evening law program so he could work and pay for his own tuition. He died when the roof of a burning South Side tenement collapsed on him as he was attempting to rescue a little boy’s golden retriever puppy, which my Uncle Tommy was able to save.

  I met Claire Nordquist when I was a rookie patrolman, riding in a squad car with a partner named Jim Lorenzo. Claire grew up in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and was working as an art director at a Chicago advertising agency. She was coming out of a restaurant in Old (not Olde) Town with two girlfriends as Jim and I were cruising along North Wells Street. A guy wearing a black hoodie came up behind the girls, grabbed Claire’s purse, and ran.

  Jim was driving. He stopped the car; I jumped out and ran after the thief. It took two blocks for me to catch up and tackle him. I cuffed him and walked him back to the scene
of the crime. Before driving the perp to the station house, I asked Claire if I could call her sometime. She said thanks, but no, she was involved in a relationship. I called her anyway, using the number she gave on the police report. She agreed to lunch, maybe only because she was grateful for the return of her purse.

  Claire’s boyfriend at the time was a dentist. Perhaps, when our lunches eventually turned to dinners, she liked my blue uniform more than the dentist’s white tunic. Maybe she found my charms irresistible. Maybe it was because I kept saying, “Rinse, please,” evoking a dentist’s spit sink and making her laugh. We were married a year after we met.

  Jenny was born two years after that. By then, I was a detective sergeant assigned to the homicide division. Because of the stress of the job, or just using that as an excuse, I began stopping at the Baby Doll Polka Lounge on the way home after my shifts. A lot of cops did that, and some became alcoholics and were eventually served with divorce papers.

  I knew that Claire didn’t bad-mouth me to our daughter. She didn’t have to. When you miss enough family dinners, birthday parties, school plays, and soccer games, it becomes obvious that you are falling short in the parenting department. By the time Jenny was in high school, she seemed to have given up on me. And Claire clearly had too.

  At Claire’s request, I moved out of our townhouse in Rogers Park and into an apartment in Wrigleyville. Not long after that, living alone, it occurred to me that this was not the life I wanted. I started going to AA meetings in church basements, where we sat in folding chairs and told our sad stories to fellow drunks. But it was too late to save my marriage, or my relationship with my daughter.

  I really did intend to go to Chicago to see Claire and Jenny as soon as I could. Making amends to people you’ve hurt is the ninth of the Alcoholics Anonymous twelve-step program. It was time for me to take that step.

  I should have taken a break from the case and flown to O’Hare that day. In Bill Stevens’s novel Stoney’s Escape, my alter ego was successful in reclaiming a relationship with his ex-wife and daughter. But, as I said, Jack Stoney is a better man than I.