Cop Job

by Chris Knopf

  Danny met me at the door.

  “Long gone,” he said. “Can they ID?”

  “No,” I said, repeating their story.

  “What the hell,” he said.

  “That’s what I’m wondering.”

  “I can run through here every day on patrol, but I can’t park in your driveway.”

  “I know. Do what you can.”

  The ambulance, also lit up like a roman candle, finally wallowed down the driveway. We watched them pack up Hodges and haul him out of there. I got a chance to squeeze his shoulder and do a lousy job telling him how grateful I was.

  “Just do me a favor,” he said, as the paramedics hoisted him into the ambulance. “When you find those guys? Truly fuck them up.”

  Danny Izard sat in his car and called in the report, and I went back in the house. Amanda was in the kitchen working on Nathan’s wound.

  “He refused to go with Hodges,” she said.

  “I’m fine. No way I’m going anywhere anyhow.”

  “So nothing at all that could identify them,” I said.

  He shook his head, causing Amanda to pull back her hands.

  “Two men. One tall, one short. Jeans and hoodies, with no logos, or any of that stuff. They both had big, square hammers.”

  “More like a mallet,” I said.

  “Yeah. Better to pound on people’s heads.”

  “Did they say anything?”

  “No. Not that I could have heard over Hodges’s cursing and screaming.”

  “You’d think that would’ve scared them away,” I said.

  I left him with Amanda so she could finish fussing around with the wound and went upstairs. Allison was sitting up in bed, her eyes red and swollen and the bandage on her right cheek soaked with tears.

  “Daddy?”

  I sat on the bed and let her hug me. Her body shook as she took deep, hoarse breaths. I hugged her back and stroked her long hair where it fell down her back until she wanted to let go.

  “Everything’s going to be okay,” I said.

  “No it’s not and you know it.”

  “Yes it is. It’s one thing to beat up my daughter, but go after my bartenders, that’s taking things too far.”

  “I don’t think you’re funny,” she said.

  “Yes you do. You’re actually laughing on the inside.”

  “How’s Nathan?”

  “He’s downstairs. Refused to leave you.”

  “I don’t deserve him. I treat him like shit and he’s being, like, Mr. Impossibly Wonderful.”

  “He’s wonderful because you do, in fact, deserve him.”

  She looked over my shoulder and made a frightened little yelp. I turned my head toward the door, even though all the muscles in my neck had turned to steel rods. It was Danny Izard, filling the room with his dark blue uniform and the panoply of weapons and electronic devices hanging from his belt.

  “How’re we doing?” he asked, looking at Allison.

  “Peachy, Danny,” she said. “Are you coming to stay with me?”

  “No, but Joe Sullivan is,” he said, now looking at me.

  “Really,” I said.

  “I’m hanging around till he gets here. I’m supposed to tell you he’s taking another leave of absence to move in with Amanda and the gang. Say, Sam, that gun the kid fired. I’m sure it’s registered, right?”

  “If I told you it was, you’d believe me?”

  He frowned. Not unlike Sullivan, Danny thought strictly adhering to every dopey law and regulation was something law enforcement officers were put on earth to do.

  “I might,” he said.

  “Well, then there’s your answer,” I said.

  “It’s not an answer, but I’ll take it for now.”

  When he left, Allison confessed that she’d had a bit of a thing for Danny ever since they were teenagers hanging out at the surfers’ beach off Flying Point. I asked her what a tall, square-jawed, narrow-waisted, broad-shouldered, steely-eyed boy scout like Danny Izard could possibly have on a scrawny nebbish like Nathan Hepner.

  “I have a secret lust for boy scouts, though that’s not the kind of thing a daughter should discuss with her father.”

  “Agreed. I have a better subject.”

  She looked defensive.

  “I’m working rehab like a good little girl. They’ll tell you.”

  “It’s not that,” I said, then took a deep breath and said, “Honey, do you have any idea, whatsoever, of what you might have done to attract this kind of attention? Did you see anything, do anything, say anything to the wrong person, anything at all?”

  Her face immediately turned overcast.

  “I knew you were going to blame me.”

  “I knew you were going to say that. I’m not. Do you know how many innocent bystanders are killed every year just because some sick shit wants to eliminate witnesses?”

  “No, do you? Do you study crime statistics?”

  “Just answer me,” I said, as gently as I could.

  She looked down at her hands folded in her lap.

  “No,” she said, softly. “I think about it all the time. I have no idea.”

  “What about the copywriter, Brandon Weeks? People tell us you and him had a bad falling out.”

  She cracked a surprisingly broad smile.

  “That dickless jerk? More likely I’d kick his ass from here to Cleveland.”

  “Tough break for Cleveland.”

  “Brandon is harmless,” she said. “Unless you count the damage his lousy copy has done to the consumer psyche.”

  “Another reason not to watch TV.”

  “You probably don’t remember teaching me how to fight,” she said. “All the dirty tricks.”

  “Not dirty enough, apparently.”

  “Let’s decide that when we see the other guy.”

  I gripped her knee through the sheet and gave it a little shake.

  “We’re working on that, Allison. This stuff can take longer than anyone wants it to.”

  “What about forever? How long does that sound? Joe Sullivan has to go back to his job. I’ve got to go back to my job. Nathan has to actually get one.”

  It was times like these that I understood why Abby called my daughter The Apple.

  “My faith in you is limitless, my appreciation of your drive and relentless work ethic unsurpassed,” I said.

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “You’re not the type to give up.”

  “I‘m persistent,” she said, “if that’s what you mean.”

  “You’re pig-headed.”

  “Like you.”

  She let it go at that, and I stood up to leave, which I did after asking one more question.

  “How do you know that guy doesn’t have a dick?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Joe Sullivan arrived shortly after with a camo backpack and a grim expression on his face. Danny had briefed him, so we didn’t have much more to talk about. He put his stuff in Hodges’s bedroom after poking his head in to chat with Allison, then he joined me, Nathan, and Amanda out on the patio. He told us he would be on guard for all but eight hours from early afternoon through the night—two hours for beer, six for sleep. Nathan would take over during his time off, with backup from me. When I asked if that was enough relief, he told us it was better for him to be on all the way, all the time.

  Eddie and I spent that night with Amanda in the first-floor bedroom suite, though only Eddie got much sleep, evidenced by the low, but persistent snoring coming from the foot of the bed.

  So I was up early enough to make coffee for Nathan when he took over active duty, and sit with Sullivan while he downed a six-pack before lumbering up the stairs to bed. I would have hung with Nathan, but after the night before, the kid deserved to know he had my full confidence. So I went back to my cottage and spent the morning in distracted and inefficient woodcraft.

  This was the pattern we settled into over the following few days. The first real
interruption came when Jackie called my cell phone and told me she’d finally put together a memorial service for Alfie Aldergreen. It was to be held at the Polish Catholic church in Southampton.

  “Aldergreen doesn’t sound very Polish,” I said.

  “It isn’t. But it’s Father Dent’s church and he’s the only priest I know. You better show up.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  SO IT was the next day I was standing outside the front doors of the Polish church with Jackie, Amanda, Joe Sullivan (while Danny Izard spotted him at Amanda’s house), Esther Ferguson, Jimmy Watruss, Jaybo Flynn, and Lionel Veckstrom, who had the good sense to come without his campaign flacks. Father Dent asked us to wait outside while he and some laypeople spruced up the altar. It was another lustrous Hamptons summer day, so no one complained.

  It wasn’t the ideal conversational configuration. Sullivan stood like a statue with his hands in the pockets of a lightweight jacket underneath which was enough firepower to storm a hostile nation. Veckstrom wore an off-white linen suit, which wasn’t as well made as the one I was wearing, a long-ago gift from Abby whose sartorial sensibilities I’d pit against all but the most supercilious toff. Jackie was speaking sotto voce to Amanda, holding the tips of her fingers up to her mouth to catch errant syllables. Jimmy and Jaybo were likewise a separate sphere, though I could hear them talking about a fishmonger’s impending arrival at the wholesale shed behind the restaurant.

  Jimmy wore his staff sergeant dress uniform, with a beret and a chestful of ribbons. I didn’t know what any of it meant, but there were too many colorful stripes to be routine commendations. As if to complete the effect, he’d shaved and cut his hair back to regulation length. Jaybo, not a military man, had cleaned up as well, presumably out of respect for Jimmy. It struck me he was actually a decent-looking kid.

  By default I was stuck with Esther Ferguson, who must have felt odd surrounded by so many people she would have far preferred to avoid. To make it easier for her, I talked about some of the park bench conversations I’d had with Alfie, on subjects both earthbound and surreal. She had similar recollections, and we managed to find some common ground of loss and affection for the troubled vet. She even talked briefly about her brother, how she often wondered if she would have cared for him as much if he hadn’t been mentally ill. It was a surprising admission, which I honored by assuring her she certainly would have.

  To everyone’s relief, Father Dent finally came out and herded us into the church. He assigned seating in the pews, breaking up the natural pairings, as if to assure a seamless atmosphere of social unease. This time I drew Lionel Veckstrom and Jackie got Esther.

  Dent was not a young man, but he wore his years with a clear eye and ramrod posture. I wasn’t much for organized religion, though Dent’s charm was manifest, made more so for me by a borough accent you could cut with a knife.

  Still as soon as he started running through the standard prayers and invocations, my mind did what it always did during church services. Drift off into the clouds. That’s why I didn’t realize Jimmy Watruss was up at the pulpit until he started to speak.

  “I asked the Father if I could say a few words and he told me that’s what these things are for, so here goes. I’m not going to tell you that when you serve with other soldiers during wartime, you get to know each other in ways you can never duplicate in any other part of life. You know that already, since you’ve seen the movies and read the books. What you don’t know is that for over a year, Alfie and I spent almost all our time crammed into an armored tin can called a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which is like a cross between a tank and a personnel carrier, if that makes any sense. Alfie was our driver. I handled the weapons, including the 25-millimeter cannon, TOW missile launcher, and M240G machine gun. Which means you get busy when things heat up, and you can’t be worrying about how your driver’s going to perform. I never worried about Alfie. Not in training, or out on the gunnery, or in combat. I trusted him to do his job without thinking twice about it, meaning I could concentrate on doing mine.”

  He paused and looked down at the pulpit, closing, then opening, his eyes again and raising his head.

  “So whatever you might have thought about Alfie Alder-green, the nut job cripple with the saxophone, the Looney Tunes going on about elves and wizards, that wasn’t the Specialist Alfred P. Aldergreen that I knew in situations I can’t really describe here. I won’t describe here, because I can never do justice to the bravery and sacrifice people like Alfie demonstrated every day in places so distant and different from a town like Southampton, they might as well be on the planet Mars.”

  He smiled.

  “Maybe that’s where Alfie thought he was. I hope so. It might’ve made it easier to take.”

  He almost looked like he wanted to say more, but after a brief hesitation, he thanked Jackie and Father Dent for putting on the memorial service, and promised everyone a night of free drinks back at Mad Martha’s if we wanted to stop by.

  “So they did see combat together,” I said to Veckstrom in a soft whisper, since Father Dent was up at the pulpit again wrapping up the ceremonies.

  “So what,” he said.

  “It’s interesting.”

  Veckstrom looked over at me.

  “Why interesting?”

  “Just interesting,” I said. “I’m interested in lots of things.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m interested that all three snitches knew each other,” I said, in a seeming non sequitur, though he knew what I meant.

  “There are often subterranean relationships between people, invisible ties, sometimes quite strong,” he said. “But you know that better than anyone, don’t you, Acquillo?”

  “I know a lot, but I don’t know everything,” I said. “If we pooled our knowledge, we’d figure this thing out a lot quicker.”

  He looked at me again, through partially hooded eyes.

  “That would be a cold day in hell.”

  “Okay,” I said with a shrug. “Don’t say I didn’t give you a fair shot.”

  “Whatever the hell that means.”

  “You’ll know.”

  Father Dent was still chanting on about something, but I had to get up at that point and go back out for some fresh air. It wasn’t all Veckstrom’s fault. This usually happened to me whenever I got stuck in a church. I blame it on my mother, who hated pomp and circumstance even more than I, but dragged me to church every Sunday anyway out of some misplaced concern for my everlasting soul.

  AS TEMPTING as it was, Amanda, Sullivan, and I passed on Jimmy’s offer of free drinks at his restaurant and headed back to Oak Point. Amanda drove with Sullivan so I could stop at Hawk Pond Marina on the way and check in on Paul Hodges, who’d been released from the hospital and was recuperating on his boat. Since my boat, the Carpe Mañana, was berthed in the next slip, I got to check in on her as well.

  I’d bought the boat from my friend Burton Lewis after he decided it was more of a heavy displacement cruiser than he wanted, having succumbed to the questionable allure of club racing, a pursuit I would never understand. The last thing I wanted to do was compete in a sailboat. For me, the point of sailing was to ghost along under a moderate breeze while avoiding drunken idiots in big powerboats who thought spending about one hundred dollars a minute producing deafening noise and spine-crushing vibration was fun.

  She seemed shipshape, so I went next door. Hodges was in the cockpit with his two lazy shih tzus lying all over him. He had a bandage around his head, not unlike Allison’s, and a drink in his hand, which was encouraging. I’d brought along the reserve supply of Absolut from the Carpe Mañana. After digging into Hodges’s ice chest and topping off one of his plastic mugs, I made myself at home in his cockpit.

  “How’s the head?” I asked.

  “Better since the two double bourbons.”

  “Shouldn’t mix with the painkillers.”

  “They are the painkillers.”

  “Sorry I got you into
this,” I said.

  “I’m sorry I fucked it up. Not your fault.”

  “You didn’t fuck it up. They got the drop on you.”

  “Nah. Wouldn’t have happened ten years ago. I’m too old and too slow.”

  “Like I said, I’m sorry I got you into it. Sullivan’s taken over the position. He’s on a leave of absence.”

  “So now you want to hope those knuckleheads try again.”

  We sat for a few moments in silence, drinking, and relishing the images that notion conjured up.

  “We had a memorial service for Alfie Aldergreen today,” I said. “Jackie set it up with Father Dent.”

  “I thought the VA was handling that.”

  “Just the burial. Though we did get a surprise eulogy from Jimmy Watruss. Showed up in full-dress uniform.”

  “Good for him he can still wear it. My uniform pants wouldn’t get past my knees.”

  “Turns out he and Alfie were in the same armored vehicle,” I said. “I wonder why I never knew that.”

  “Cause you’re a civilian and it’s none of your damn business.”

  Hodges had been on a patrol boat on a river in Vietnam, the result of an enlistment in the coast guard that went terribly wrong.

  “I guess you’re right,” I said. “Even Alfie kept a tight lip when it came to Iraq. He was more focused on the great sack of the Dwarven City of Khazad-dûm.”

  “Guys stuck in a war together are funny about that,” said Hodges. “To this day, I’d give my life for any of my shipmates if it came to that. Provided there weren’t any sledgehammers involved.”

  “Stop talking like that or I’ll whack you on the head myself.”

  We drank in silence for a bit, then Hodges said, “Somebody bought Joey Wentworth’s picnic boat. I guess it came with rights to the slip.”

  “Really. Nice boat.”

  “Haven’t seen the new owner. Just hear those twin power plants firing up. Or feel the vibrations, more like it. That thing must go like snot.”

  “Joey’s commercial interests required fast transit,” I said, describing Joey’s part in the burgeoning drug flow through the East End.