A matter of time

1975

It was a Friday, but an unusually quiet one. For once Norm didn't have much paperwork. He suspected that it was his temper. It was so foul that the gnome-god who spat blizzards of blank fitness reports and law enforcement assistance forms had been intimidated. The easy load and a quart of Beth's virulent station house coffee had brought him around to semi-human by ten o'clock. He called Tommy O'Lochlain, his man in with the Syrians, and made a lunch date.

O'Lochlain was what the papers called "reputed consigliere" of the gang. His own people didn't call him that, nor did Cash, who had never heard the term before The Godfather, but that was or had been his function. Number Two among those of the gang age and infirmity hadn't yet claimed. They still had their hands in amusements, vending, and gambling, but were no more than a ghost of the old mob. The Italians had begun displacing them as early as the middle thirties. Now the Italians were giving way to blacks, at least on the street level, as time and the IRS depleted their ranks. But such transitions were long and slow and never as bloody or complete as movies and television would indicate.

But that was unimportant to Cash or O'Lochlain.

They were old acquaintances. During his rookie year, when the Syrians had had far more pull, Cash had made the mistake of stopping O'Lochlain for speeding, then had arrested him on a concealed weapons charge. The man had gone in with Cash grinning, chatting amiably, giving advice on what he saw as good police procedure, then had glad-handed it with his company fixer, who had beaten them to the station. Cash had felt, and had looked, so pathetic that O'Lochlain had laughed and promised him better for the future.

Even then the man had been old, a gray-topped mop who had looked like he was dying of cancer.

Though Cash had remained perfectly straight, O'Lochlain had adopted him as his pet cop. The relationship hadn't become friendship, but they respected one another. Both had profited, though Cash had also come by his share of grief. People asked questions, especially when O'Lochlain gained as much as the department.

The trouble with meeting O'Lochlain, even for lunch, was that someone would notice. Even a hood so old that he looked like an oversight in the Reaper's bookkeeping remained a hood. Neither man, from viewpoints on both sides of the law, had any business consorting with the enemy. There was no way to escape watchers. So their meetings were infrequent, always public, and on neutral ground.

Even so, Cash expected some static. He thought it worthwhile when balanced against what he might learn.

"O'Brien?" O'Lochlain asked around a mouthful of expensive spaghetti. "Nineteen twenty-one? What the hell you digging that far back for?" The neutral ground was a restaurant indirectly owned by the man John affectionately called The Head Wop. The clientele were often a mixture of mafiosi and the crime-busters watching them. By meeting there the two announced to these observers that business wasn't on their agenda. There was a ritual and formality to such things, though it was being destroyed by the barbarisms of the sixties and seventies.

"I'm not sure. We've got a stiff that, by every test we've applied, comes up O'Brien. Yet he was supposed to have been killed back then, though the body never turned up. The one we've got is the right age, for then. I heard he ran with the Rats. I thought maybe you knew him."

O'Lochlain did his Fifth Amendment face.

"Hey, look, it's ancient history. And I'm not asking for names."

"I'm not holding out, Rookie. Just thinking. Sure, I remember the guy: wild, scatter-brained; didn't care about anything but himself. What you'd call a security risk nowadays. Couldn't trust him with your money, your secrets, or your woman. If he'd stayed around, he would've taken the ride. One way or another. He was a punk. The top boys were watching him."

"Why?"

"They had him running the bag to the precinct houses and collecting cash and slips from the betting shops. Donkey work, the kind they used for breaking in new fish. It looked like he was skimming, a few bucks every run. Nothing big, but enough so that they wouldn't trust him with a big bag. There was some talk about breaking a bone or two to straighten him out."

"Did it get done?"

"No."

"Ah?"

Playing a game of suspense, O'Lochlain downed mouthful after mouthful of spaghetti, chasing each with huge drafts of steaming coffee. A large pot had been brought to the table for his convenience, without his asking.

"Thing came up where they were short on men. They decided to give him the acid test. They palled him with Fred Burke and sent him to Torrio with some new girls. They were doing a triangle with Torrio and the Purple Gang, with Maddox in Chi directing the thing. Girls recruited here usually went to Chi for training, then Torrio would wholesale them to Detroit for Canadian whiskey. Detroit girls came here, then went to Chi. And so on. Sometimes they went the other way. Clothing factory work was usually the hook. Sometimes they got suspicious. That's why they needed a couple of guys along.

"This time there was merchandise both ways. Torrio's people had gotten onto some good counterfeit. They were going to bring back twenty Gs to, what you might say, test market. If it went, they'd buy in. They didn't tell O'Brien. Wanted to see what he'd do around that much cash."

While O'Lochlain paused for more spaghetti and coffee, Cash reflected that the man's theys were sometimes hard to follow. But Tommy had always been reluctant to name certain names.

"What he did was knock Burke in the head and jump the train while it was pulling into Union Station."

"And?"

"They put a thousand on him; a G and a half for recovery."

"Anybody collect?"

"No. Not even when they went to twenty-five and opened the contract. Not a whisper. The G-men never got him either. Their people on the inside were watching for him. He just disappeared, Rookie. Like Judge Crater. They figured his girl friend got him, same as the bulls."

Cash asked the date. Perfect fit. O'Brien had jumped the train in the morning. The screams at Miss Groloch's had been heard that afternoon.

"Did you know him well enough to finger him if he walked in here right now?"

"Yeah. I'll tell you, Rookie, I was hoping I'd be the guy who collected on that one. I owed him." But he wouldn't go into detail.

"Want to come look at the stiff we've got?"

"No."

"Hey. I paid. Give me a break."

"Sure you did. On the expense account. Okay. But I don't like morgues."

Cash grinned, thought, I can see why. You're afraid they'll realize they've overlooked you and yank your card out of the living file.

"Good," he said. "Maybe we'll stir something up. I haven't had a row about being on the pad for years."

"Rookie, I'm out of it. Everybody knows that."

"And you were saying that before I was born."

O'Lochlain smiled, downed another cup of coffee. "Kojak you're not."

The lean black attendant was getting used to it. "Twenty-three again?" he asked, pulling the card.

"Right."

"How long's this guy been there?" O'Lochlain asked.

"Since March fourth."

"Christ."

"They pumped him full of something. They're kind of in a tight spot. Can't get rid of him."

"Oh, Christ!"

The attendant had rolled out the corpse. Cash glanced at O'Lochlain. "What?"

"It's him. The sonofabitch. Only it can't be, can it?" He stared, stared.

Cash felt like the Hindenburg, after. Down in flames. There was just no way to keep that bastard from being Jack O'Brien. "You know anybody else that might remember him?"

He shrugged. "Looking for an out, Rookie?"

O'Lochlain was quick. He had seen the whole problem without being told.

"You won't get it from me. I know it's impossible, you know it's impossible, but you park my butt on the stand, I'm going to say it's him. That's how it hangs. Sorry."

"You're sorry? You don't have to live with it."

"Are you finished with me? I'd better make a Mass. I feel the need coming on. You know, when you called, I figured you was going to be after me about Hoffa."

"Hoffa?"

"Sure. Every cop in the country is after every guy that's ever been even remotely connected, trying to make a name by being the guy who finds out what happened. Going to be some heat on over that one. Hope the guys who did it got paid off in suitcases full of money."

"I haven't been paying much attention. He asked for it."

"Yeah."

As they walked down exterior steps to where O'Lochlain's driver had parked his limo in a No Parking zone, the Irishman asked, "You got any angles?"

"Not that I can believe. Either it's O'Brien and he's been moved fifty-four years, without damage, or it's not, and nobody in the whole goddamned country knows who he is."

"Maybe he's a Russian spy."

"Maybe." Cash chuckled, didn't bother giving details which made that answer less than satisfactory. He said goodbye and returned to the station, where Railsback was waiting with the third degree about consorting with known hoodlums. The lieutenant was sorry he asked.

John came in later, looking glum. "Gardner won't help."

"Why not?"

"I laid it all out. He only asked one question."

"What?"

"Did we have any evidence that a crime had been committed."

"Yeah. I should've figured."

"But I do have a new angle." And suddenly he seemed frightened and nervous. Cash was puzzled by it.

"Norm, if I tell you something personal, will you keep it quiet?"

"Eh? Sure."

"I mean really. Not even tell Annie. Especially not Annie. Or any body."

"Hey, if you're that worried about it, you better keep it to yourself. That way nobody can tell."

"Well, if I tell my news, I have to tell the other thing too."

What the hell? Cash thought. He had known John since Michael's second day of grammar school, didn't think there was much he didn't know about the younger man. "It's up to you. But I'll keep it under my hat."

"Well, there's this girl. We went to high school together."

A ghost of a smile fleeted across Cash's lips. So John was messing around. He almost confessed his own secret, in the matter of the doctored photograph, but remembered his own advice. There was no way he would risk getting that stirred up again.

"She works at the Post. In Classifieds. I had this wild hunch last night, see, so I called her and asked her to do some checking."

He had turned a startling red. Cash began to suspect a name: Teri Middleton. John and Michael both had pursued her during their senior year, and, Cash suspected, had caught her. They had vied for her weekends while in college. She had gotten married somewhere along the way, about the time that Nancy and Carrie had come into the picture, and had dropped from sight. Cash thought he remembered Annie saying she had gotten a divorce after two and a half years and two kids. For a while there, the girl had been as much a part of the family as John.

"Anyway, we had lunch and she gave me this." He offered a pink, scented bit of stationery covered with numbers. "She's going to check some more."

"I can't make anything out of this. What is it?"

"Dates and codes. These first numbers are the dates they ran classified ads for a certain party."

"Miss Groloch?"

"I think so. They were put in by her accountants. And get this. When she showed me this, I asked her to check her subscription file. She got back to me a few minutes ago. Sure enough. They've got one to Rochester, New York, in the name of Fial Groloch, that's been going out regular as long as they've been keeping track."

It was a breakthrough of sorts, proof that there was more than one Groloch, and pinned him or her to a specific address.

"Kind of corny, don't you think? And clumsy. And slow. But secure, I guess. Lucky you thought about it."

"Carrie's fault, really. She was reading the paper and asked me what I thought some Personal meant. You know how cryptic some of them are. Anyway, I started thinking about spy stories where they sent messages that way. And Sherlock Holmes. He was always putting ads in. Then I remembered you said she took the paper. Decided to check it. But I never thought I'd find anything."

"Serendipity, that's what you call it when you get something good when you don't expect it. Still good thinking, though. You get any of the ads?"

"Not yet. She's going to check through their file copies. She has to do it on her own time. You won't say anything, will you?"

Cash tried for a bemused expression. "About what? I haven't heard anything yet. I can't tell what I don't know."

Harald relaxed a little. "I won't hear anything more at least till Monday…"

"It's another piece in the puzzle, but it probably won't get us anywhere. All we found out is that Fial Groloch, or somebody using the name, is alive and well enough to subscribe. Doesn't help us with our dead man."

"Maybe not, but it makes me wonder if we shouldn't bring in the FBI, or somebody."

"What the hell for? Don't we have problems enough?"

"Norm, don't it bug you that we've got a woman a hundred and thirty years old hiding out here? And she's got a relative in Rochester who might be even older? Goddamned, they must be some kind of Draculas. And you keep worrying about the dead guy. I'm starting to think maybe he shouldn't matter so much, that we should be worrying about the ones that're still alive."

"John, there's people in Russia that old. There's even this old guy down in Florida that was in the army during the Civil War and can prove it. Anyway, we don't have a shred of proof that these people are really that old. They don't have to be the same Groiochs…"

Harald looked at him. Cash looked back. "You're ducking it," said John. "I don't believe it's that simple. And I don't think you do either. Only you're scared of the can of worms…"

"I'm scared? Anyway, what right do we have? We can push about the corpse, but the rest really isn't any of our business."

"Yeah?"

"All right. Look. I know a guy in New York. We did the FBI course together, years ago. I'll call him Monday. Maybe he'll dig something up. Give me that Rochester address. And I'll try Immigration on the name Groloch. I don't know if their records go back far enough, but it's worth a try. The Feds never throw anything away."

Harald settled himself in a chair and put on his stubborn look. Maybe he was right, Cash thought. Maybe it was time to get some government agency involved. Somewhere in Washington, with its numberless bureaucrats, and bureaus, there was bound to be an outfit that investigated people like Miss Groloch.

"You get anything more from your Mrs. Caldwell?"

Harald shrugged. "Been trying to stay away. But she should have her stuff ready sometime next week. She called about it the other day. What about your saucer people?"

Cash had almost forgotten. "Nothing. They made copies of everything we had, then disappeared. One guy said they wouldn't bother me till they got something."

Harald's expression grew more stubborn. "Norm, I'm getting some really bad vibes from this thing. If we can't give it to the Feds, maybe we should let it go."

Where had his enthusiasm gone? Cash wondered. It was just minutes since he had been excited.

"How? The way I see it, we're riding a tiger. People have started to notice, to watch. Might be some difficult questions if we turned loose now."

John nodded, looked more glum, glanced at the clock. For an instant Cash saw another Hank Railsback foreshadowed in the younger man's face.

"You and Carrie having trouble?"

He seemed startled. "Is the Pope a Catholic?" Then, "It shows, huh?" He remained silent so long that Cash decided he would go no further. But, finally, "Norm, you've been married a long time. Can you figure Annie?"

"Whenever I start thinking I do she surprises me. Like this refugee business. I would've bet anything she wouldn't have gone through with it."

"You know how Carrie gets when she's pregnant?"

Cash didn't know the woman as well as Annie did or his daughter-in-law, but recalled that during each of three pregnancies she had made life hell for those around her. And the nearer full term, the worse. The last time it had carried over postpartum, and had come close to taking the marriage to court.

On the surface it seemed she hated John for causing her condition. For the final four months of that last pregnancy they had slept in separate bedrooms. Cash had once overheard Carrie telling Annie she would castrate John if it happened again.

"Yeah."

"Well, she's started yakking about wanting another kid."

"Oh, shit."

"Is right. Norm, I had a vasectomy after the last one. I never told her. I don't know what she'll do if she finds out."

"How'd you manage that?"

"I lied. Told them I was divorced. They never checked."

Cash pursed his lips and exhaled thoughtfully, slowly shook his head. "I don't know what to say. Sounds like you're between a rock and a hard place. If it was Annie and she got the way Carrie does, I'd just keep my mouth shut and make like I was trying. Way she was before, she'd probably change her mind as soon as it was too late."

"I know she would. And I know I couldn't go through that crap again. That's why I got the operation. But she might get to be hell on wheels anyway."

"Uhm." And there's Teri, too, Cash thought. He wondered how much she had had to do with the operation. He didn't ask.

"You know, Norm, lately I've been asking myself a lot what the hell am I doing here. Why I bother. You think it matters? You know what I keep thinking? I could just jump on my cycle and head for the coast. Let her have everything. You can live on the beaches around L.A…"

" 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,' " Cash quoted. " 'What doth a man profit?

"What the hell?"

"Ecclesiastes. The Bible. You aren't the first. Everybody feels that way sometimes. Especially if you step back and look at your life and you see it going by and you're not really doing anything with it. The things you wanted to do before you had to spend all your time coping with babies and bills. I know I do. Mostly I just hang in there and hope something will come up to make it worth the pain."

" 'The majority of men lead lives of quiet desperation.' "

"Something like that."

Cash was not sure he had made any impression. John could be hard to reach. But, at least, he had matured enough not to sneer at the voice of experience. Cash smiled, remembering John and Michael and their self-certainty, what seemed just a few months ago, when they had been in high school. As one local wit had been heard to observe, there is a substitute for experience: Being sixteen.

"Maybe. Maybe. But sometimes I just get so depressed…"

"If it's that bad, maybe you'd better see the departmental psychologist."

Harald didn't become defensive. Cash considered that a good sign.

"I've been thinking about it. Maybe I will. But I don't think it's that bad. Not yet, anyway."

"Then maybe you should put in for vacation. I know for a fact that you haven't taken one since you came to the District."

"That's an idea too. And when was the last time you took off, Norm?"

Cash shrugged. "A long time ago. A week when my mother died." Michael and John had been eight, Matthew newly born. Cash started getting antsy if he were off more than a weekend. "Don't go copying me, John. There're better models."

He had a sudden, frightening intuition, and hoped he was wrong.

John was an only child. His father was a minister. His mother had divorced the man when John was nine. That had been a hard period for both John and Michael, neither of whom had understood. Since, till his marriage, John had lived with his mother, who had never remarried.

Within a year of the divorce, Harald had begun calling Cash "Dad." At the time, Annie and Norm had thought it both cute and pathetic. The behavior had faded when Cash had refused to reinforce it with a positive response.

Could that still be in John's mind, down deep where he didn't recognize it?

Harald always had been nearly as close as Michael, but Christ, Cash thought, this was a responsibility he didn't want. I never did that good by Michael or Matthew. How dared John put that load on him?

It was terrifying.

But flattering.

"You're not that bad, Norm."

"Crap."

"Except maybe you're too private. Know what I wish there was? A machine where you could go right inside somebody's head and figure out what they really think and feel."

"I'll tell you what I really think about that. It sucks, that's what. If some guy ever invents one, and you don't blow his brains out before he can tell anybody, bend over and kiss your ass good-bye. The Gestapo would be lining us up to find out if we're reliable or not."

"Yeah. Probably."

"You better believe."

"I never thought about it. I just thought, like, you could get to know people who mean something to you, because everybody hides from everybody, a little bit. Like, I could understand why Carrie gets the way she does. But, yeah, we could use it too. Round up all the bad guys and ship them out before they hurt any body."

"We're Gestapo enough, John. And I don't think we could resist the temptations. Get thee behind me." How did we get on to this? he wondered.

"Probably be no more reliable than a lie detector, anyway."

"Yeah. Even if you could get Carrie to be honest right now, I bet you couldn't get her to explain herself. She probably doesn't know either. Hormones."

"Bull. She's just trying to get to me."

"Bull to you too. Bet the way you're feeling right now has to do with hormones too."

"Yeah? Maybe."

"I'll tell you what I think. You and Carrie should probably get away from each other for a couple weeks. I mean, every time I see you together and one of you says black, the other one hits the roof screaming white. I don't say you're planning it, but both of you are picking fights. Whatever you do, John, don't end up like Hank."

"Hey, come on. It ain't me…"

"Crap. You think you try. You say you do. So does Carrie. But you don't, not really."

"Hey, this's getting a little heavy…"

"You're both lying to yourselves. What you're really doing is setting each other up to take the blame. Like this guy on the radio was saying the other day, you're not fighting fair. That's why I say get away from each other for a while. Let the scabs heal, think about the real issues. Maybe write them down and trade lists without talking about them."

"You know how jealous she is…"

"Right." Cash now wanted to end the discussion, so made no comment at all about Teri. He had said too much already. He was no Dear Abby. Lifting the lids on the trash cans of others' lives made him too damned uncomfortable. His concern for John had taken him past discomfort to outright embarrassment this time. "What about the case?"

"Why don't we, for Christ's sake, just shitcan the damned thing?"

"Not a viable option. And you know it."

"You threw Bible stuff at me. How about this? 'Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.' That used to be one of my dad's favorites, whenever a spanking was coming on."

"Okay. I already know you don't like it. Some of them I don't like either. But we don't get refusal rights. We have to go by the rules. You have to go after this one just the same as one you did like. I mean, you came up with some good angles already. We get a few more, we might start getting a picture, something that'll give us a handle on it."

"Yeah. We could get lucky." Harald responded with all the enthusiasm of a man asked to fly off a cliff by flapping his arms. "But what you want to bet we don't?"

XVI. On the X Axis;