Amagansett

Sixteen

Hollis had seen Chief Milligan angry before, but never like this—puce with rage, spittle flying.

‘He’s just a big old blowhard,’ he said to himself. Mary Calder’s description of Milligan had proved a source of comfort in recent days, somehow consigning the Chief to the ranks of the ridiculous, emasculating him. Confronted with the volcanic presence before him, however, her words had lost their sting.

‘Well!?’ bellowed Milligan.

Hollis groped his way back to reality. An official complaint from the Maidstone Club. Unseemly conduct. Hollis throwing his weight around.

It wasn’t looking good. Just one thread of hope. There was a chance the complaint hadn’t come from Anthony Cordwell. No. Odds were the complaint had come from the club itself, probably without Cordwell’s knowledge.

‘Well!? What in the hell do you have to say for yourself!?’

‘It’s a bit embarrassing, sir,’ he said, buying himself time to think.

‘Embarrassing!? Is that what you call it? I’ve got the President of the club on the phone accusing you of goddamn intimidation.’

‘I was acting in the club’s best interests, sir.’

He had it now, a story that should just about hold up.

‘Stop mincing your words, man.’

‘It’s like this, sir. The night of Lillian Wallace’s funeral I was on duty here in town. There was an incident on Main Street involving two young ladies. One of them had her dress torn.’

‘What?’

‘She was pretty upset.’

‘Just tell me what in the hell happened.’

‘I didn’t witness it, but it seems they were approached by a group of young men who’d been at the Wallaces’ place, you know, the funeral reception. They were a little…upset.’

‘You mean tight.’

‘As drums. Anyway, they invited the girls to a bar, and when they refused there was some kind of scuffle. That’s when the dress got torn and the men ran off.’

Milligan was going off the boil now. It was time to start boring him into submission with details.

‘I went looking for them, saw four men in a car fitting the description, and tailed them. They ended up at the Maidstone Club. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t do anything at the time. I talked the girls into not pressing charges if the dress was paid for. That’s why I went back to the club the next day, looking for this Anthony Cordwell.’

‘Cordwell, huh?’ Milligan clearly knew the name. ‘Still, it didn’t give you the right to storm right on in there.’

‘Cordwell had been dodging me all morning. If I hadn’t leaned on him he’d be up on a charge of assault right now along with his friends. This way everyone’s happy. Everyone except the Maidstone Club it seems.’

‘You didn’t tell them what you were after Cordwell for?’

‘It didn’t seem right, fair. Sure, they were drunk, they messed up, but they’d just seen their friend put in the ground.’

It was good, good enough, especially the last bit—the note of sympathy for a bunch of grief-stricken drunks tearing at a girl’s dress. That was the sort of thing Milligan could relate to.

‘Why didn’t you come to me with this?’

‘It was Sunday, I didn’t want to bother you.’

He was safe now, but it wasn’t over yet. Milligan would have the last word. He always did. Hollis could see him working up to it as he rounded his desk and settled into his chair.

‘I don’t like you, Hollis. Can’t say I ever have. And it’s not ‘cos you’re a weasely know-it-all little prick.’ He paused for effect. ‘It’s ‘cos I know what you are.’

Hollis felt the blood drain from his cheeks.

Milligan smiled. ‘That’s right. You think I’d have them dump you on me and not check you out? I know people, don’t think I don’t.’ He began playing with a letter-opener, twisting the point into the palm of his hand. ‘Hell of a cover story you New York boys came up with,’ he said, laying the sarcasm on thick. ‘Damn near fell for it, I did.’

Hollis was helpless. Anything he said would be shot down in flames. Milligan mistook his silence for fear.

‘Don’t worry, it stays in this room. Last thing I need is the good people of East Hampton knowing there’s a crooked cop on the force.’

‘Yeah, one’s enough for any town.’

Thankfully, the words died before they reached Hollis’ lips. It would have meant the end. He didn’t care about the job, but he was damned if he was going to jeopardize the investigation, even if it did mean taking abuse from a hypocrite. It was well known that the fortunes of the Milligan household had experienced a marked upturn during Prohibition.

‘Go on,’ said Milligan, ‘clear out.’

Hollis stopped at the door and turned. ‘It’s not true. What you heard about me.’

‘Now how did I know you were going to say that?’ smirked Milligan.

As Hollis crossed the squad room, Bob Hartwell shot him a sheepish glance.

Hollis entered his office and pushed the door shut behind him. He shed his jacket, reached for the mug of cold tea on his desk, but thought better of it. He didn’t want to sit, he didn’t want to stand; he didn’t know what he wanted to do.

The breeze through the open window rattled the blind against the frame. He wandered over, peering down through the slats at the street below. A few people came and went, entering and leaving the Post Office, which occupied the ground floor of the building. Across the way, a dog cocked its leg against the wheel of a parked car.

Cursed.

It would pursue him for the rest of his life.

The crooked cop.

It had tracked him down, sniffed him out, even here. Why should it ever let up?

It was so ridiculous. If people only knew the truth.

But that wasn’t the way things worked. Once tarred with the brush of scandal there was little to be done to allay their suspicions—not even a full exoneration could do that—some small splinter of doubt always remained lodged in their brains. His parents had been no different. Not that he blamed them; he had rubber-stamped his own guilt when he’d signed up to the lie: a detective second-grade looking for a quieter life on a country force.

Milligan was right. As a cover story, it stank. With the passage of time that much had become evident, like so many other things. It was clear to him now that he should have stood and fought, gone down fighting.

As the memories crowded in on him, he smiled at the absurdity of it all. Making a stand on the hoary issue of police corruption was one thing, but he could at least have chosen one of its grander battlefields on which to lay down his career. For Christ’s sake, there were any number to choose from. But no, he in his wisdom had chosen to impale himself on the blunt dagger of black market gas ration stamps. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d still managed it.

The scam was well established and widespread. Ration stamps filched wholesale from local Price Administration offices were sold on to garages and gas stations for a few paltry cents apiece. The profits were enormous, though, because of the huge scale of the operation. People were involved at all levels, Hollis knew that. Yet he’d still been shocked when a snitch dropped him the name of a precinct detective from the 17th.

The snitch, a pickpocket who worked the Sunday museum crowds, was looking for a break. Well, he got one—a snapped neck in an alleyway at the edge of the Gashouse District.

When Hollis visited the dead man’s girlfriend she went at him with a knife, accusing him of murder. It was a while before he figured she was right. In mentioning the pickpocket’s name to the Captain back at the precinct he had effectively signed the man’s death warrant.

He went to Gaskell with his suspicions, ignoring the Lieutenant’s advice to let the matter drop. A few days later, a batch of stolen ration stamps showed up in Hollis’ locker. When word came through of a couple of lowlifes ready to testify to his involvement in the scam, Hollis knew he was lost.

Whether Gaskell was in on it from the start, he never found out. One thing was clear though, the Lieutenant had never forgiven him for going straight to Beloc at the Homicide Bureau with his theory on the Chadwick case. He wasn’t a team player, said Gaskell, never had been, never would be. The offer of a role on a provincial force—ostensibly to avoid an unseemly scandal—was their way of shutting him up and clearing him out. Turning it down hadn’t even been an option at the time.

Hollis forced his thoughts back to the Wallace investigation, but even that denied him any consolation. Wherever he turned he was confronted with his own eagerness to believe in some sinister plot. What did he really have to go on? The earrings, the raised toilet seat, the nervousness of the maid, the visit paid to Lillian Wallace by her ex-fiancé a month before her death—each and every one of which he had chosen to interpret in its darkest possible light.

He was driven into the chair behind the desk by the weight of the realization: any investigation that existed was entirely of his own invention. He had brought it into the world, breathed life into it through an act of sheer will. He had wanted it to exist, and it had duly obliged.

There was a light knock at the door.

‘Yes.’

It was Hartwell. ‘I swear to God,’ he said, ‘one day…’

He was angry, uncharacteristically so. Hollis stared at him, unable to match the outrage Hartwell felt on his behalf.

‘This is for you. She called while you were with him.’

Hollis took the piece of paper. Verity Brandon. The name meant nothing to him.

‘She said she’s with the Medical Examiner’s office.’

He remembered now—the nameplate on the front desk at the County Morgue, her failure to offer him a glass of water. What did she want?

‘Tom,’ said Hartwell, ‘is something up?’

‘Up?’

‘I don’t know…’

‘Nothing’s up, Bob.’

‘Okay,’ he said, then left the room.

Hollis felt a little bad. It was probably nothing to worry about, but he could still recall Hartwell watching him from afar the day of the funeral, just after his conversation with Penrose.

He reached for the phone and asked the operator to put him through to the morgue in Hauppauge. She answered on the second ring.

‘Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office.’

‘Mrs Brandon?’

‘Miss.’

‘It’s Deputy Chief Hollis, from East Hampton.’

‘Ah, yes. Wait a minute, please.’ He could hear her searching through some papers. ‘I have it here somewhere…a strange request…I mean, we get them sometimes, but they’re rare. I just thought you should know.’

‘What kind of request?’

‘Dash it,’ she said.

‘Miss Brandon…’

‘Someone has asked to see the autopsy report on that poor girl who drowned. A member of the public. It’s their right, you know, we can’t stop them.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘I told him he has to wait a month.’

‘Who?’

‘I have his name here somewhere.’

‘Conrad Labarde,’ said Hollis quietly.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Conrad Labarde.’

There was a silence on the other end of the phone. ‘Well, yes,’ she said, ‘I think that was his name.’

‘Best to be sure though.’

‘Of course. Like I say, I have it here somewhere.’