Recovering Dad

by Libby Sternberg

  When I walk down the stairs, I’m surprised to see a light on in the kitchen. Connie’s there. I’m about to tease her about her own case of insomnia when I notice she’s dressed funny — black longsleeve tee, black pants, and black boots.

  “Where are you headed?” I ask.

  She doesn’t look at me as she chugs some juice from the fridge. “Nowhere.”

  “Then why’d you change?” At dinner, she had on khakis and a white shirt.

  “Just felt like it.”

  I notice her car keys are on the counter. She notices I notice, and scoops them into her pocket.

  “Connie, you’re going to do some investigating. And Mom specifically told you not to!”

  She faces me now. “Mom said we should let sleeping dogs lie. I have no intention of waking sleeping dogs. I am not doing anything related to dogs. I don’t even like dogs.”

  I roll my eyes and mentally tear my hair. “You know what she meant.”

  “Here’s what I know,” she says in a voice edged with steel. “I know Mom has been hypnotized by our pal Paluchek. I know Paluchek is paying off Gardenia. I know Jimmy Winslow was in trouble with the force and Paluchek arranged it so Winslow’s widow was paid off. I know Gregory Holdene, Paluchek’s partner after Winslow, is nowhere to be found. Everything in me tells me something’s not right. I can’t not investigate, Bianca. It would be irresponsible.”

  I think about this for a while. I’m usually a go-along-to-get-along kind of girl. I want everybody to be happy. I want the boat so unrocked it’s moored in a concrete slab five miles inland. And most of all, I want Mom and Connie to be good together again. But that’s not going to happen until one of them is proven wrong. Either Connie discovers Paluchek’s clean and Mom’s right to marry him, or she discovers he’s not, and saves Mom from disaster.

  “I’m going with you.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “That’s a separate issue. I’m going with you.” I start toward the living room and stairs.

  “I’m leaving now. And you’re not coming along.”

  “You leave and I march upstairs and rat you out.”

  This stops her. She lets out a frustrated sigh, looks at her watch, then at me.

  “Five minutes.”

  Connie’s idea is to drive down to the harbor and the post office and recreate events the night Dad was killed. It creeps me out when she tells me this, and I argue with her for a few minutes about the value of this excursion. But Connie uses the ultimate weapon to silence me — my own words. I, after all, wanted to “solve the murder,” instead of focusing solely on Paluchek. That’s what she’s trying to do now, she says.

  “Sometimes walking through the timeline helps you see something others haven’t seen,” she says, her eyes on the road.

  “Don’t you think they would have done this already?” We drive south and east toward the harbor through deserted residential streets. A sliver of a moon peeps out from behind wispy clouds that decorate the sky like torn sheets. The car smells as sterile and empty as the night.

  “I’m not assuming they were at all thorough.”

  “But he was a cop.”

  “So? If Paluchek was involved in any way in what went down, there are ways he could’ve thrown off the dogs.”

  So we’re back to dogs. Connie turns a sharp corner and looks at notes on her lap.

  “Okay, the shift started here.”

  For the next hour, we follow Dad’s doings on the last night of his life. We don’t chatter. We don’t rib each other. We don’t whine. The only voice is Connie’s when she becomes a talking map. Here’s where they sent a drunk man home. Here’s where they helped the elderly couple with their flat tire. Here’s where they talked with officers in another patrol car. And at every benchmark along the way, I can see my dad — the dad from the photographs, tall and lean and smiling, totally oblivious to the tragedy to come. Even if I weren’t his daughter, it would break my heart to think of it. Connie and I don’t look at each other much. A stray glance would paralyze us.

  As we near the end of his journey that evening, all I can think of is how much I want this stupid exercise over, and how glad I am Connie didn’t do it alone. After several loop-de-loops around downtown byways, she turns onto Frederick Street, headed due south. At Fayette, she hangs a left, and we crawl past the Shot Tower and St. Vincent’s Church, where the homeless have set up a shantytown in the neighboring park. When she hits Colvin, she turns left and stops opposite the entrance to the Post Office parking lot. She consults her notes, and I want to tell her what I already know from Brenda’s story about “Officer Depp” — Dad pulled into the parking lot and drove up to the sidewalk in front of the Post Office doors. That’s where Winslow got out.

  Connie must be reading this in her notes, too, because the car creeps forward toward the curb in front of the lobby. The Post Office is a big hulking mass of concrete, an example of what I heard someone call the “brutalist school of architecture.” It looks as if the building would club you if given half the chance. Lights glow in the lobby, pooling half circles near the front doors. Without looking at me, Connie says, “I’ll be Winslow.”

  Dammit. This is too much. I can’t—

  “You be Dad.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  BEFORE I CAN protest, she’s out of the car and walking up to the lobby, which was open that night, as if mailing an important letter, just as Winslow did. I don’t want any part of this, but at the same time, I know if she turns around and doesn’t see me going along with this charade, she’s likely to dissolve in a fit of anger and grief.

  So I take a deep breath. I get out of the car, just as Dad did that night. And as I do so, I wonder: Why did he get out of the car? Wouldn’t he have waited for Winslow to return? Why would he have left the patrol car? I walk over to the sidewalk and stroll toward the building.

  Returning from her faux-errand, Connie turns and sees me, but doesn’t look me in the eye. When she sees me come within ten feet, she says, with no expression, “Bang, bang.”

  She might as well have used a real gun. The sound of those words this empty night penetrate my scraped-out heart like a bullet. This was the moment it all ended. Playing my part, I crumple to the ground. She runs over and kneels by me.

  “Winslow says he tried to revive Dad here. Then he looked up …” She looks into the distance. “Searching for the perps. He ran to the car.” She leaves me and I hear her muffled footsteps headed toward her Saab. “He called for help.” Her voice is soft and faraway. She’s talking for her benefit, not mine. “He came back.” She runs back and kneels next to me again. “He stayed here until help came.” She doesn’t look at me, gazing, instead, deep into the night.

  After a few seconds, I speak. “How long did it take?”

  She doesn’t need to look at her notes. “Five minutes.”

  When she doesn’t move, it’s clear she intends to wait the entire five minutes. Five minutes. A lifetime. The end of a lifetime. I can’t do it. I can’t wait these five minutes in silence. It will drill sadness into me so deep I’ll never be the same again.

  “If Dad was walking toward Winslow, why wouldn’t he have seen the attacker?”

  “Winslow said he saw a group running away — headed that way.” She points straight ahead, down Colvin. If the killers were there, it’s hard to believe Dad didn’t see them. It’s hard to believe Winslow wouldn’t have either.

  “But Winslow had to see something!”

  “The reports say it was too dark for him to make out anybody and he wasn’t looking for trouble when the shots rang out. He was looking at Dad.”

  “Dad was shot here?” I point to my chest.

  Connie nods. That means that Dad would have gotten out of the car and started toward Winslow, but then turned toward the killers.

  “So the perps would have had to be over there.” I point to the corner of the building.

  “The reports say that.”

  “Why did Dad get ou
t of the car?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who was driving that night?”

  “Dad was!” Connie knows I know this.

  Looking around, I sit on the concrete walkway, which is closer to the driveway exit than to the lobby doors. But if Dad was driving and the car was closer to the exit — which is where it was found when the ambulance came — why did he cross to the sidewalk before heading to … to do what? Warn Winslow? Of what?

  “Why didn’t he just walk across the driveway?” I stand and demonstrate, going to where the driver’s door would have been situated in the driveway and then walking diagonally toward the lobby doors, not once treading on concrete pathway. “Why would he have gone around the back of the car to the sidewalk when the driveway was clear and there’s no traffic at that hour?”

  She straightens, says nothing, and then refers to her notes. “I don’t know,” she mumbles. She repeats some facts from the report. “They were planning to get coffee but stopped first at the Post Office,” she says.

  “Do you think he saw something?”

  “That’s the assumption.”

  “But wouldn’t he have gone in that direction?” I point down the street again, across the driveway and beyond the Post Office.

  “Winslow said he was probably coming to get him — to tell him what he was doing.”

  In my mind, that makes his movements even more suspect. If Dad wanted to warn Winslow, he would have chosen the shortest route, which was diagonally across the driveway.

  “Did he draw his gun?” I ask.

  “No. It was still holstered.”

  “So why did they shoot him? He gets out of the car and walks toward Winslow. Why would they assume he was going to come after them?”

  Connie shrugs. “Random violence.”

  “But I thought the reports indicated it was tied to gang activity — the immigrant smugglers.”

  She nods.

  “Connie, this doesn’t make sense. He gets out of the car to observe suspicious activity, then takes a detour to tell Winslow. But he doesn’t rush. Instead, he forgoes the direct route across the driveway from the car and walks on the sidewalk like a good little boy. And he doesn’t draw his gun even though he thinks he might be on to something, which means both he and Winslow are in danger.” I stand beside her. “The gang’s first reaction would be to run. Why take a chance shooting at a cop?” Looking up the steps of the building, I say what I know Connie must have thought at some point, “Winslow could have done it.”

  Connie’s brow is wrinkled with confusion. “He was cleared. No connection to the gun, which was never found. No motive. Plus he was so broken up afterward, he had to take a leave of absence. Was never the same again. Some people thought his death … wasn’t an accident.”

  “Maybe he was overwhelmed by guilt.”

  She looks up at me, her eyes brimming with an emotion somewhere between anger and pain. “Funny how Paluchek doesn’t share that burden. And he’s obviously paying off Winslow’s widow!” She stomps off toward her car, clicking the door open. I scurry after her.

  “Connie, I think we need to find out more about Winslow.”

  “What do you think I’ve been doing? I saw his widow again, for crying out loud. And all I got was more of what we knew. Paluchek was in on something.”

  Helping Mrs. Winslow out after her husband’s death is hardly evidence of a crime, but Connie just can’t give up on the idea of Paluchek being the perp.

  “I want to drive around some more,” Connie says, sliding into the front seat.

  After I get in the car, she turns on the engine and heads toward the exit. Before she hits the road, her headlight beams catch the front of a boarded-up corner store across the street. In faded letters above the door, I can barely read its old name — Bromowich’s.

  Bromowich’s!

  One of the names on the list I found in Paluchek’s file — the list of items under my father’s name. Did my father go into that store the night of his murder? Suddenly, an answer to my earlier question emerges: He didn’t take the “direct route” from his car to fetch Winslow because he wasn’t walking from the car. He was walking from across the street — from Bromowich’s store. Coming from there, he would have stepped onto the sidewalk and not used the driveway. It makes perfect sense. But why didn’t Winslow tell the cops that?

  My heart’s in my stomach. I want so badly to tell Connie, but if I do, she’ll want to know how I know this, the list will come up, and I can’t tell her about it — can’t scrape her heart raw when it’s already tender. So I spend a miserable few minutes as she drives further toward the harbor, around the glitz of Harborplace. We move along Key Highway, beyond the pricey waterfront condos now on the rise, past the Museum of Industry and Domino Sugar sign, and back into the working neighborhoods below Federal Hill, the ones that butt up against drydocks and ports with huge cranes and machinery looming against the night sky like creatures from a horror movie.

  “How long was Winslow in the Post Office?” I ask.

  “Dunno. Just as long as it takes to mail something.”

  “So Winslow gets out of the car and heads up to the Post Office, does his thing, turns around, and Dad’s heading his way …”

  “That’s his story.”

  “I don’t buy it,” I say.

  Connie actually smiles. “So you think you know more than the guys on the force who investigated it?”

  “Hey, you yourself said it could have been a cover-up.”

  “Yeah,” says Connie, “but you don’t believe me because you’ve been suckered in by Paluchek’s good cop act, just like Mom.”

  “I have not been suckered! I am anything but a sucker! I’m just wondering if we’re barking up the wrong tree by going after Paluchek when Winslow might be our guy.” The gloom is lifting. We’re back on safer ground — sniping at each other. And I’ve even managed a dog metaphor.

  “You’re right about one thing,” Connie says in a patronizing tone, “Winslow was the obvious suspect. But they found nothing to tie him to the shooting. And let’s say he was involved, but not the killer. Maybe his lawyer Moffit even advised him to cut a deal to get out of the soup. His deal is: Tell ’em what you know about the Balducci case, give up the killer. So Winslow is about to spill, and bang, he’s dead, too. What man is the common thread in all these shenanigans? What man has a connection to everyone involved?”

  Paluchek.

  He pops out of my thoughts and into my sight. He, or a man who looks a lot like him, is up ahead, standing on a corner near the Southside Market shopping center. Connie sees him, too. She doesn’t say a word, but slows the car and turns onto Fort Avenue, moving up a block, to where we can still get a good look at the action. She cuts the engine and we sit, waiting, but not knowing what we’re waiting for.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WE DON’T WAIT long. In a few seconds, a tall, lean fellow in a hooded sweatshirt approaches Paluchek. Good Lord — could things get any weirder? What’s he doing here — is he reading our minds or something? Showing up this night of all nights?

  They talk, but we can’t catch what they’re saying. Only the muffled tones float in the air, along with the sound of secrets, of conspiracies, of quick plans and farewells. The hooded guy has a tight, whiny voice. Paluchek’s is too low to pick up. Paluchek passes him something and pats him on the shoulder, then walks at a brisk pace to his car and takes off. This doesn’t look good. In fact, it doesn’t look good that he’s here at all. I’m beginning to think Connie might be right about him.

  Clearly, Connie plans to follow him, but I place my hand on her arm and point to the hooded dude instead. He looks this way and that, as if afraid someone will see him. Then he pulls out a cell phone and makes a call.

  “We’re going to lose him,” Connie hisses at me. She means Paluchek.

  “Something’s happening up there. Let’s wait.” I point to Hooded Dude.

  “I’m going to get going.” As she turns the
key, a van screeches down the street from the opposite direction and zooms around the corner. It skids to a stop by Hooded Dude, and five figures emerge from the side door. Hooded Dude hands the driver something, then waits — I think the driver’s talking. And then Hooded Dude shrugs and turns — toward us!

  The driver must have asked Hooded Dude if he noticed us!

  “Let’s go,” I say to Connie.

  “No, wait. You wanted to stay and you were right.”

  “They saw us, Connie! They saw us!” I want to rip the steering wheel from her hands. I wonder if I can slide over and press the accelerator, nudging her foot aside.

  Hooded Dude is definitely peering our way. My heart pounds so loud I’m sure it’s waking up people in Japan.

  “Get. Us. Out. Of. Here!” I whisper-shout.

  Turning back to the van, Hooded Dude says something, then steps back. Instantly, the van shrieks into reverse, pulling back onto the long road. It’s going to come back our way!

  This finally gets Connie’s attention. She slams the car into drive and zips out of there, down Fort and then, wham, she makes a sharp u-turn, heading back south. But the van follows us. We’re easy prey at this hour in this section of town. There’s not a lot of traffic. When the van closes in, I turn to look, but I can’t see beyond the darkened windshield.

  “Get down, Bianca!” Connie yells. “Lord knows what kind of heat they’re carrying.”

  Heat? Guns? The kind that shoot?!

  Connie makes a hard right into the Phillips Seafood parking lot and burns rubber to turn around once again. As she heads out, the van zooms by on Fort, this time going north.

  She glowers, peering into her rearview mirror, searching for the van.

  “Head for traffic,” I suggest. “We need to get lost in other cars. A sea of cars.”

  “All right, all right!”

  “Just step on it, will ya?”

  She presses her foot to the floor on Fort and before you can say “I don’t want to wet my pants,” she manages to twist and turn until we’re back on Russell Street, with the Ravens stadium looming ahead and Camden Yards just behind. Banners for each of the city’s teams flap in the light night breeze, and it feels normal to be here. Maybe we’re safe now. There’s certainly more traffic now, near the harbor, where friendly brake lights shimmer like the welcoming lamps of a landing strip.