by Noel Hynd
“Talk to me, Captain,” he would say. “You once told me this job would slowly kill any man who took it. And I said I'd be certifiably insane the day I accepted it.”
He'd pause. “Now look what's happened. You were a more sagacious old goat than I ever imagined.”
O'Hara asked these questions and said these things aloud and unabashedly. Those who passed in cars and trucks could see their new homicide chief carrying on an animated conversation with the tombstones. But was there any surprise there? Frank O'Hara had been talking to the dead for many years, since he first partnered with Carl Reissman and studied those faces staring down from their bulletin board of open cases.
“What do you think now, Cap?” he would press. “Same opinion as ever. You're dead and I'm nuts.”
Sometimes, if O'Hara listened with something more than his ears, he thought he heard the captain answer. And not always with pleasure.
Then there was another reason O'Hara stayed on. The state had been awash in homicide again. The department needed leadership and a firm hand on top. Those in authority felt Frank O'Hara could supply that hand, even if it was common currency that Frank O'Hara seemed a little wacky these days.
So what? The long winters and the career as a death dick would turn anyone into a nut case.
Wouldn't it?
But in private, O'Hara had even expanded on his ulterior reason for staying to two deputies. The Abigail Negri case. Everyone else might have considered it closed, but he didn't. And as the captain of state police homicide, he was free to kick asses wherever he so desired, within reason.
O'Hara had this theory that the money that financed Sandor Clay's low art had come from a respectable source in Concord. So O'Hara spent much time hanging around that area of the state, falling into chance meetings with Wilhelm Negri, making the radio commentator and publisher jittery as a dozen spooked cats, and casting accusatory suggestions and glances his way whenever he saw fit.
“You're nuts, O'Hara,” Negri had finally told him one day. “Everybody knows it. It's a matter of time before people lock you up.”
“The guy who's going to be locked up,” O'Hara steamed, “is you. And I'm going to do it.”
So it continued.
As the events of December receded, O'Hara continued to see Dr. Julie Steinberg. They developed an excellent relationship. They spent some time together. They had a brief affair. And in May, when the longest winter on record finally broke, and as the Negri investigation continued to occupy O'Hara's thoughts, four months were up.
O'Hara had his retirement papers processed. A successor was in the offing. All that remained was for Frank O'Hara to take the release that he had so badly wanted for these last few years.
As a sad commentary on his nuttiness, he didn't grab it.
“I have my reasons,” he said. And no one walking the Earth would understand them.
To some, it was comprehensible:
He was still having an affair with Julie Steinberg, they said, and wasn't going to leave the state now that he had finally found domestic contentment.
He was on the verge of blowing the lid off the Negri case, the reporters in Concord and Nashua whispered, and would stay until that business was completed. Even a few of the big time national media had sent reporters to the state to see if there was anything to the rumors.
Some big-name reporters sought audiences with O'Hara, but he wasn't talking. One writer left New Hampshire the day after he arrived, referring to Frank O'Hara as “a madman.”
Then there was a third school of thought. There wasn't a damned other thing in life O'Hara could do, this theory went, other than investigate murders. So, like a dog who chases cars and finally catches one, O'Hara, faced with freedom, had no plans for it when he finally had it.
All of those theories made sense. There were elements of truth to all three accounts. But none had hit the center of the target.
Fact was, O'Hara had found love. But in a way that no man could imagine.
At the end of the Ledbetter case, O'Hara had envisioned many times a huge face superimposed against the winter night. Sometimes he saw this face upon his house. Other times, in the sky. Always, he had identified it as Gary. The face of a dead man watching him.
But actually, the face had belonged to a woman, though maybe in truth the face did represent a different aspect of the larger Ledbetter psyche.
On cold winter nights, and later on chilly spring nights, O'Hara would come home from his day on homicide. He would make his personal phone calls and fix himself dinner. Then he would have a few drinks.
He would not get drunk. Instead, he would have just enough of one sort of spirits to raise another sort. He would bring himself to a certain alcoholic haze and then stop. He wasn't even sure whether the booze was necessary. But this was the way he had always done it. So this was the way it would continue to be.
Then he would go upstairs to his bedroom. He would wait. He would wait until a visitor would come forth, beckoned from God-knew-where, caught between God-knew-where.
Joining him on a trip God-knew-where.
He would do this in the dark or with the light on. Either. It made no difference, other than the fact that Carolyn could be summoned only during the night, much the same way her brother could be summoned when his spirit still inhabited the Earth.
O'Hara would close his eyes. He would drift.
Then he would feel the weight of a female body settling onto the bed. He would open his eyes, and Carolyn would be there. She would be there because he had never sent her back to that place where she had been.
The mental institution. The grave. And beyond.
She wasn't going back, it was clear, until that day in the near future when O'Hara was coming with her.
His home was her refuge. As long as he was there, he kept open a room for the dead.
“Hello?” she would ask, her hand settling upon him.
“Hello.”
“How was your day, lover?”
“This is the best part of it.”
“Put down your drink,” she would say. “I'm here now. You don't have to drink any more.”
He would set it aside. Her hand was on the glass, guiding it. He would reach for the tape player. “Do you mind some Sinatra?”
“Why would I? I love Sinatra.”
“You're the only one who does besides me.”
“Who needs anyone else?”
Some days Carolyn would be beautifully attired in silk, an elegant lady from the city. Other times she would wear gingham or blue jeans skirts. A Southern gal.
She would wear whatever he wanted. And she would listen to whatever Sinatra he wanted.
Moody Frank. Or snap-brimmed, jaunty Frank. Frank with the blues. Frank in love. Or all the different Franks, one after another.
“You are a ghost,” he would whisper sometimes. “I know that. But I can still be in love. And I can still be safe with you.”
She would lean forward and kiss him. In the midst of the glacial coldness of New England, her kiss was as soft as an ocean breeze from a warm place. And it was faintly scented with orange blossoms. This scene would repeat itself as often as he wished. Gradually, other rooms in his home were given over to O'Hara's relationship with Carolyn . . . and his love for her. He knew the day was coming when all the rooms would surrender . . . and he would depart with her.
“Seen Gary?” he asked her once.
“Gary's content now,” she assured him. “Gary's gone.”
“I won't ask to where.”
“Please don't.”
She smiled. Her smile was like music. Sinatra sang, too.
Sometimes on evenings like these, friends phoned O'Hara to see how he was doing. He seemed fine, although sometimes it sounded like he had company. No one ever heard a voice in the background, however. And he never invited anyone to his home any more.
Julie Steinberg took an interest in his welfare. She had a sense that over the course of the Ledbetter case, both instal
lments of it, O'Hara had made a descent from light to darkness and back up to light again. And now, it seemed, he was on his way back down to darkness. She knew he was drinking again. And she wasn't sure what she could do about it.
Nor did she even know what he was still doing in the state.
Her professional opinion wasn't too far from that of certain friends who observed O'Hara's behavior and were troubled by it.
These friends said that O'Hara had gone completely crazy.
But O’Hara knew better. For the first time in two decades, he was at peace with himself. And, as Carolyn kept him company during the final months of his life, Frank O'Hara was as happy as he had ever been in this world.
THE END
Also by Noel Hynd in E-book format:
Spy Stories
Flowers From Berlin
Revenge
The Sandler Inquiry
Hostage in Havana
Conspiracy in Kiev
Countdown in Cairo
Midnight in Madrid
Ghost Stories
Ghosts
Cemetery of Angels
The Prodigy
Non-fiction
Marquard and Seeley - A True Love Story (Summer 2011)
Readers may contact Noel Hynd at [email protected] or on Facebook.
