Eureka

CHAPTER 24

I’d been nursing my lemonade for about ten minutes when Rusty pulled up in the Packard. He gave the horn a toot, got out, came around and opened the back door, and wiggled a finger at me. I went over and got in, then he drove me around the corner and up three blocks to the front of the Breakers Hotel.

I followed him into the lobby, which was as quiet as a cemetery and as elegant as a tiara. It was about a hundred feet across the lobby to the French doors that opened onto the gardens, swimming pool, and a small outside cafe. The grass was so even I imagined a Japanese gardener on his hands and knees clipping it with a pair of fingernail scissors. Beyond all that, the Pacific Ocean graced anyone who could afford to stay in the place.

The front desk and the concierge’s desk were pure mahogany, as was all the exposed wood in the room. The desk clerk and the concierge were both dressed in navy blue jackets with coats of arms on the left breast. About ten square miles of Persian rug covered hardwood floors. The chairs and sofas were plentiful, conservative, and expensive. To my left was a step-down bar, with about two dozen tables and a French slate bar on the far side. On the opposite side of the room from it was a cafe, with perhaps a dozen tables. The bartender was polishing a pebbled Waterford old-fashioned glass. He held it up to the recessed light behind the bar to make sure he hadn’t missed any smudges, then stacked it on a small shelf behind him. In the restaurant, a waitress in a dark green uniform was arranging the sterling silverware on the linen tablecloths.

Nobody spoke above a whisper, if they spoke at all.

Rusty led me down a long hall, which was to our left and at right angles to the lobby. On the left side of the hallway, more French doors leading to the tennis courts. On the right were the rooms. The hall ended in a T, which was Culhane’s suite. Rusty tapped on the door, then opened it with a key, and ushered me in. I heard the door close quietly behind me and I was alone.

A large room. New carpeting, expensive hotel furniture but hotel furniture nonetheless, more French doors facing the ocean. A fireplace in one corner, with a copper screen, and over it a large piece of what appeared to be a hunk of very faded, red driftwood mounted on the bricks. Beveled paneling stained the color of sun-blanched wood. Light-colored curtains and drapes. Against the right wall, an old rolltop desk with three framed photos on its flat top. A deep-piled white sofa about eight feet long, with matching chairs on both sides, facing the ocean. Bedroom and bath to the right and back toward the lobby. On the left, an alcove with a wet bar facing the living room, and behind it, a small kitchenette. A floor-model RCA radio in the corner adjacent to the desk with a record changer on top of it, which was playing Edith Piaf’s “L’Etranger.”

It was a bright, cheerful suite of rooms with a spectacular view, and a surprise to me. I was expecting dark wood and masculine furniture, with a stuffed marlin over the fireplace and a gun rack in the corner. I was expecting a dirty shirt thrown over the sofa, ashtrays running over with cigarette butts. A glass ring or two on the wooden table. Then I remembered it was a hotel, decorated by the hotel’s interior designer. The few personal touches and the photographs were as out of place as a waiter’s thumb in a bowl of soup.

I walked over to the desk and saw what was apparently part of a leg cast. There was a small gold lieutenant’s bar pinned to it. It was the only visible souvenir of his remarkable war record anywhere in the room.

I checked the piece of driftwood. It appeared to be off the stern of a boat. The black lettering, which was cut off by the shattered wood, said Dool… and under it Prin… Both were faded by sun and sea, and were barely legible.

“That’s what’s left of my old man’s fishing boat,” Culhane’s voice said behind me.

I turned. He was standing in the doorway that led to his bedroom, wearing a dark blue terry-cloth robe and scrubbing his hair with a white towel. He threw the towel over his shoulder and went behind the bar.

“Irish Mist suit you?”

“Doesn’t get any better.”

“Straight up, one cube of ice?”

“That’s a good guess.”

“It’s my drink.”

He filled two highball glasses with more than generous slugs and dropped one ice cube in each. It was a little early for me but I wasn’t going to pass up a glass of Irish whiskey.

“Tommy was a fisherman,” Culhane said, handing me my drink. “He and Kathleen Brodie came over from Doolin, County Clare. She was fifteen when they married.”

“When was that?”

“Eighteen eighty-four. They raced the stork all the way across the Atlantic. They were determined I’d be born on American soil and they just made it. I was born on Ellis Island in the physical examination clinic.”

“How’d they end up out here?” I asked.

“No fishing in New York City. So they bundled me up and headed across the country to this ocean. Fishing was all he knew. He hired out until he saved enough money to buy his first boat, called her Doolin Princess after my mom, and painted her bright red, Mom’s favorite color.”

“I mean how did they end up in San Pietro?” I asked.

“Back in those days this was a fisherman’s community. The natural bay, great fishing waters ten miles out there.” He waved vaguely toward the Pacific. “Hell, there used to be an icehouse just about where you’re sitting, ice to keep the fish fresh until they got back on the Hill. So this is where they settled. We lived in a little shack up in the village, when it was called Eureka.”

“And you use your mother’s maiden name instead of your father’s first name?”

“That was his idea. He said one Tommy in the family was enough.”

He turned and held his glass up to the piece of wood.

“Here’s to both of you,” he said.

“They’re both dead?” I asked, joining the toast.

“Yeah. Tommy went out one day with his three-man crew. A heavy blow came up and we never saw him again. Couple of months later a guy down in Milltown who knew me saw that on the rocks. That’s all we found. No other wreckage, no bodies. The Pacific has an ironic name. It can be damn unforgiving.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“He was okay, Tommy Culhane was. Good husband, good father, and one hell of a fisherman. Nothing breathing scared him.” He chuckled, and added, “Loved a good brawl as long as it wasn’t over anything serious.”

“How old where you?”

“Eleven. My mom died two years later. In the state hospital, of pneumonia.”

I knew about institutions like that. My mother had spent two years in and out of such dismal places, ending up in a state hole jokingly called a hospital. No matter how you dolled them up, nothing changed. There were always the smells of Lysol mixed with feces lingering in the halls and rooms; always burly men in sterile white pants and shirts, who called themselves “attendants” and resolved “incidents” by bending fingers back or hitting places that did not bruise easily; who slaughtered the King’s English but used long medical terms as casually as a preacher throws around cynical hypotheses like “God” and “Christ.” My mother’s fingers were permanently crippled and her dementia was so deep that lethargy was a generous way of explaining her state of mind. She lay comatose for a month before she died of what was wryly diagnosed as pneumonia. I knew she was not comatose, I could tell by the way her eyes flicked briefly toward me. There was a momentary hint of recognition in that glassy stare when I went to visit her. I think she found some semblance of comfort in retreating into her own troubled and chaotic psyche. The last time I saw her she was skeletal and her gnarled fingers lay limp and useless at her sides. Truth be known, she died of starvation, which I learned is not an unpleasant way to die. For a few years after her death, my dreams were often haunted by the sudden intrusion of her mummified look and by the way her hand felt when I held it, like a bunch of twigs. I would awaken squeezing my own hand. Eventually these troubling images became less and less frequent but they never fully vanished.

And I thought about Brodie Culhane; about a thirteen-year-old kid left alone in a rough-and-tumble waterfront town like Eureka, a town without laws or morals; a kid growing up with a strong sense of justice in spite of it all, a sense of justice possibly tempered by expediency.

“What’d you do?”

He took a hard sip of his drink, let it roll around in his mouth for a second or two before swallowing it, and smiled. It was a fond smile, a good-memory smile.

“I became a stableboy.”

“You’re kidding.”

He shook his head. “But I was the Gormans’ stableboy,” he said rather proudly. “After the funeral, Ben took me up to meet old man Gorman. Mr. Eli took me by the shoulder and said, ‘I’ve got a job for you,’ and led me to the stable. I had a small apartment over the stalls. I’ll tell you, the old man could be a real pisser but he looked after me like I was a gold nugget. I was treated like family, rode to school every day in the shay with Ben, ate dinner with them at night. I even had a yarmulke for meals and holidays, but he had the buggy take me down to the Catholic mission every Sunday for mass.”

“How come he treated you so well?” I asked.

“My mom was their washerwoman. And I was Ben’s best friend. Still am.” He went back into the bedroom. “I’ll be about five minutes,” he said.

I walked over to the rolltop and looked at the photos. One was a tintype, obviously Culhane with his mother and father. Culhane looked to be about seven or eight, a tough-looking little boy in a hand-knit sweater and a cap pulled down above one eye. He was wearing knickers and one leg sagged down around his ankle. Even at that age there was defiance in his wary smile. His father was a big, hefty, dark-haired man with a robust smile, his arm resting on Culhane’s shoulder, while his mother was a wisp of a woman no more than five feet tall, dressed in a long skirt and a sailor’s pea jacket. In the background was the Doolin Princess.

The second photo showed Buck Tallman in the saddle of a big Appaloosa. Culhane was standing in front of the horse holding its bridle. A good-looking kid in his late teens or early twenties, whom I assumed was Ben Gorman, was sitting behind Tallman, his hands around the big lawman’s waist.

The last picture was of Culhane standing with a young man who had one arm around Brodie and his other around the waist of a small woman. She looked to be in her early thirties, striking and beautifully groomed, with the dark hair and sharp features of a Jewess. Next to her was Ben Gorman. I assumed the woman was Ben’s wife, Isabel, and the young man their son, Eli, who had died in the car wreck. From their dress, the picture appeared to have been taken in the early twenties. It was an intimate photograph; they were all hunched together and smiling warmly at the camera.

He returned to the room dressed in black pants and a lightweight plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up halfway to his elbows.

“Nice photo,” I said, nodding toward the picture.

“Isn’t it though,” he said, and led me toward the French doors.

“Give you a start, brother?” Ben said. The two men rushed together, hugging and laughing like children. They walked briskly back to the house, both chattering away, cutting each other off with one story after another. Ben didn’t talk about the future. He didn’t have to.

“Eli and Isabel will be home in the morning,” Gorman said. “The kid’s dying to meet you. You’re his hero, Brodie.”

Culhane dreaded the meeting.

He was edgy when he and Ben had breakfast but tried to conceal it. They joked about the past, about kids who had grown up and moved on, about Delilah O’Dell and her infamous club. Ben drove them out to end-o’-track, and Brodie strolled back and forth trying to appear casual. He tried to roll a cigarette but his left hand was still stiff from a shrapnel wound and the tobacco fell out and was whisked away by the wind. He balled up the paper and stuck it in his mouth.

“Here comes the train,” Ben said gleefully. “Come on, come on.”

He took Brodie by the arm and they walked up to the makeshift station as the train rounded a bend and appeared through a thicket of pine trees. As the big engine hissed and puffed to a stop, he saw the kid on the platform between cars, looking through the steam, seeing his father and waving, and then, behind him, the tiny, dainty figure of Isabel, one hand holding her hat to keep it from flying off. The kid helped her off the train as Ben and Brodie went to meet them.

Time had been more than generous to her.

Or perhaps his memory was tainted.

He remembered Isabel as a tiny voice in the dark, the words chiseled in his brain. “First love is forever.”

He smiled at her, stepped close, kissed her on the cheek, and gave her a hug. He could feel her heart quicken the way it once had so long ago and for a moment he was swept back to the greenhouse with her beside him in the dark on a horse blanket.

He stepped away from her. “You haven’t aged a minute in twenty years,” he said in a voice that the years and the Marines had toughened.

“Irish blarney,” she said with a smile and, turning to the youth, said proudly, “Brodie, this is Eli, your godson.”

He was taller than Brodie and shorter than his father. A husky kid in good shape: dark hair, brown eyes with a touch of mischief in them, and a solid grip when Brodie shook his hand.

“I feel like I know you already,” the kid said, and looked at the bars on the shoulders of his uniform. “We followed the war from the day it started, wondering where you were over there. They didn’t tell me you were a captain.” Brodie could tell the kid was impressed.

“Last-minute thing,” he said. “They upped me just before I got discharged. The pension’s fatter. You play baseball like your old man?”

“Football’s my game,” he said. “More action. Baseball’s kind of boring.”

“Boring, then!” Brodie answered, and looked at Ben. “What have you been teaching the kid?”

Ben shrugged. “He’s a halfback at the University of Pennsylvania,” he said.

“One more year to go,” Eli announced. “I took this semester off. Got a busted knee in the Army game so I’m taking it easy.”

“Then what?”

“Haven’t decided yet. I may stay back East for a while. I’ve got some friends in Boston.”

“Male or female?”

A cocky grin: “Both.”

“Wanderlust, huh.”

Eli stuck his hands in his coat pockets and looked down at the ground. “I don’t think I’d make a good banker,” he said.

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” Brodie said. “Neither would I.”

The kid laughed, and looked back and forth at his parents as if to say, “See, he understands.”

“I got a friend from the service who works down in Hollywood making moving pictures. Maybe you and me, we could take a day or two and go down, see how they do it.”

“That sounds great!” the kid said eagerly.

As they started toward the car, Ben ran ahead. “Wait there a minute,” he called over his shoulder. He reached in the car and got his Brownie camera.

“Can you work one of these?” he asked the conductor.

“I can try,” he answered. Ben handed him the camera. “Just look through here, hold it real still, and press the button.”

So they stood together: Brodie, with his godson’s arm around his shoulder and his arm around the boy’s waist, and Isabel with an arm around Eli and Ben. And a stranger took their picture and Culhane knew in his heart he was back to stay.

He opened the French doors and I followed him out to a redwood deck facing the bay. Culhane took my glass and went inside to freshen our drinks.

“Your partner’s still in the hall of records, which is what we laughingly call it,” Culhane said. “He says he’ll meet you after lunch. I ordered us steak sandwiches and baked potatoes. Sound okay?”

“Sure, thanks.”

I rolled two cigarettes and handed him one and lit them both. We leaned on the railing and watched a sailboat tacking its way to the mouth of the bay. I was wondering what he was thinking and why we were suddenly getting so chummy. Then he said, “How did you ever get in so deep with Palomino that time?”

He said it so casually it almost went by me. Then it hit me. I had thought we had finished elbowing each other and were ready to get down to business. Now he was bringing up my old business, a thing that had been put to bed a couple of years ago.

“Touche,” I said with half a grin.

“Just curious,” he said with a shrug.

“I made a mistake in a poker game,” I told him, without taking my eyes off the boat.

“How’s that?”

“I was playing on borrowed money. If you don’t have the price in your kick, never get in the game.”

“You were playing on Palomino’s money, right?”

“That’s right, and it was his game.” I shook my head. “That was my second mistake. Incidentally, it was never proven. That I didn’t settle up with him, I mean.”

“Well, killing him did raise some eyebrows,” he said, raising his own.

“He more than had it coming,” I said, looking at him. “He was holding a fistful of hot diamonds and had left a string of bodies behind to get them, when it all went sour on him.”

“And three of his hooligans backing him up. That one was right on the edge, taking them all on like that.”

“I didn’t have much choice,” I said. “They didn’t want to go to the gas chamber and I was the only thing between them and the exit. We got all the rocks back, you should know that, having brought it up. Two hundred grand in hot ice. There wasn’t an inquiry about the thou some people said I owed Palomino. That’s why I have to wonder where you heard it. Sounds like something Eddie Woods might tumble onto.”

“Know Eddie, do you?”

“You know I met him yesterday,” I said flatly. “Until then, I wouldn’t have known him if he’d walked up and kicked me in the ankle.”

“That thing with Fontonio was unfortunate.”

After a moment or two, I said, “Is it my turn yet?”

He smiled back with his lips. His eyes got a little bluer, a little less mischievous, a little warier.

“You want a look in my closet now, is that it?”

“It crossed my mind. How come you’re not up at the club playing golf with the rest of the elite?”

“I have a bar tab in the clubhouse, that’s as far as it goes. Sometimes somebody picks it up. Anonymously. That way it’s not a bribe. The apartment and the car come with the job.”

“I’ve never been that lucky.”

“It’s not luck, it’s appreciation.” He looked at me and his eyes had softened again. “Everybody knows I’m underpaid, just like you are. All cops are underpaid and underappreciated. All we get is the dirty laundry.”

“So ask for a raise.”

“I don’t need a raise. I do what I do because it’s my job, just like you do. I don’t want any more money. I’d just end up buying a lot of crap I don’t need.”

The doorbell chimed and Culhane opened the door to a callow young man whose blue jacket was a little too broad in the shoulders and waist. He wheeled in the table, busied himself setting out sterling silver knives and forks, and lace napkins, and a sterling silver pot of coffee, then brought up sandwiches, still hot under stainless covers. Culhane gave him a dollar. There was no check to sign.

We sat down to eat. The sandwich was an inch-thick boneless sirloin larger than the slice of white bread that provided the sandwich part of the meal. The potato had been cut open, stuffed with butter, and mashed in the skin.

“What the hell are you really after, Cowboy?”

“The five hundred a month,” I said. “I think it was blackmail.”

“Maybe it was. But maybe it was a gift. And maybe you’re looking in the wrong place.”

“Where would you look?”

“Hell, I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “I keep telling you, I never heard of this lady until you came along, and you’ve been in my hair ever since. You think I’ve been paying her five bills a month for all those years? I make six bills a month. I started at one-twenty-five. My raises come every three years and once in a while the council gives me a little Christmas bonus. I never take it unless my boys get the same. They provide me with this suite of rooms and the Packard, which belongs to the county.” He waved a hand toward the rooms. “And I don’t have a printing press in the back room cranking out C-notes.”

“What do you know about electricity?” I asked, changing the subject.

“I know they use it to kill people back East. A hangman’s knot is a hell of a lot easier. Even gas is kinder.”

“When you get electrocuted everything stops. You heart stops beating, your digestion stops, your brain fries, you stop breathing. Instantly.” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that.”

“Well, maybe I’m wrong, it just seems like an ugly way to dispose of even the most serious felon.”

“Verna Hicks’s lungs were full of water.”

I said it casually, between bites. He looked at me as if to say, So what? Then I watched the sun rise behind his eyes, like dawn crawling over a mountaintop. He looked at his sandwich and then back at me. He put his fork down, got up, walked to the railing, and stared out at the ocean for a minute or so, then turned to face me.

“You sure know how to ruin a guy’s meal,” he said. A growl, almost a whisper.

“You suspect this? That why you been sniffing around up here?”

“It’s my business,” I said.

“It’s my county,” he roared. “If somebody up here killed that lady, whoever did it, they’ll answer to me.”

“It was done on my watch and my beat,” I said firmly. “If somebody up here’s responsible, I intend to send them across.”

His frigid eyes stayed on me.

“I don’t know who killed her,” I went on. “She’s been down five days. You know how that is, every day the trail gets colder. The only clues I’ve got are those checks and a vague description of a guy who was seen in the neighborhood about the time she was dusted.”

It got dead silent.

“Jesus, how I hate murder,” he said. Then after a long pause: “And you say this lady had a decent life?”

“She was happily married and doing great until her husband was ironed out by a hit-and-runner four years ago,” I said, rolling him the cigarette. “She was just getting back on her feet.”

Culhane got up, and walked back to the railing of the deck, and smoked another cigarette silently for a while. I finished my lunch.

“I’ll tell you this,” he said finally, looking me directly in the eyes. “Nobody I know personally is capable of such an act. Or having it done. Take that or leave it.”

“I have a hunch who she is. Or was.”

“Yeah? Who would that be?”

“Lila Parrish.”

Culhane looked stunned. “Lila Parrish?”

“The missing witness from the Thompson case.”

“I know who the hell Lila Parrish is. Where the hell did you come up with that notion?”

“She vanished before the appeal. Then Verna popped up a year later in L.A. with no pedigree. She had four grand in cash, used it to open a bank account. And then there was the five hundred a month. She saved almost all of it, bought a house and occasionally a new car, some antiques. She lived a simple life.”

He stared at me for a long minute, letting that sink in.

“So naturally you figure she was being paid off to drop out of sight.”

“You got a better idea?”

“I don’t think much of that one.”

“Maybe she was having an affair with somebody up here and took a powder, or was paid to,” I said. “Maybe there isn’t any connection with the Thompson case. But I have to find out. The money leads here, and I’ll be here until I arrest the man or woman who killed her or I’m convinced otherwise.”

He smoked the butt almost to his fingers. He flicked the end off it, split the butt down the middle, and dumped the remaining tobacco into the wind. Then he balled the paper into a fly speck and popped it in his mouth.

“That’s the way a Marine does it,” he said, and sat back down and poured us each a cup of coffee.

“How long were you in?” I asked.

“Two months short of sixteen years.” He stared into his cup for a long minute. “It was fine until we went over there. The Western Front was a stinking, bloody burial ground. I lost most of my company in two days. But we got across the river.” Then his lip curled and he repeated the line to himself, low with controlled rage and almost under his breath. “We got across that fucking river.”

In the time I knew Culhane, I rarely heard the sheriff use that word. When he did use it, it was when nothing else was appropriate.

The doorbell rang again and he left the table, returning a few seconds later with a tall, deeply tanned, angular man, over six feet, with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, a hawk nose, and the saddest eyes I had ever seen. He was wearing a pale gray silk sports jacket and dark gray flannels.

Culhane introduced us. “Sergeant Bannon, this is Ben Gorman.”

Gorman nodded at me and we shook hands.

“Want a drink? Cup of coffee?” Culhane asked.

“No thanks,” Gorman answered. “Isabel’s waiting on the patio. We’re having lunch.” He sat down at the table and looked across at me. “Sorry if I’ve been inhospitable, Sergeant,” he said. He took a folded 8^1?2-by-11 manila envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket, unfolded it, laid it on the table, and slid it in front of me.

I opened the envelope. There were three cashier’s checks inside, made out to Verna Hicks, one dated March the first, 1941. The other two were dated a year or so ago. The signatures on the checks were all the same: Marsha Whittaker.

“Is Miss Whittaker still with the bank?” I asked.

Gorman nodded. “She’ll be there until two.”

“May I talk to her?”

Gorman nodded. “She’s expecting you.”

“Benny, the woman the checks are made out to, Verna Hicks?” Culhane said. “She wasn’t killed in an accident. She was murdered.”

Gorman was stunned. He looked at me and then at Culhane, and said, almost in a whisper, “My God, Brodie, you told me she drowned in her tub.”

“She did, only it wasn’t an accident,” I said. “Somebody shoved her head underwater and held it there until she died.”

A minute passed and nobody said anything. Then Gorman, sounding genuinely upset, said, “You think someone in San Pietro had something to do with this?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Gorman,” I said. “I have a homicide on my hands. Somebody has been giving Verna Hicks five hundred a month for almost twenty years. That money trail leads here. That seems like more than a coincidence, and coincidence makes me nervous.”

“On the other hand, it could have nothing at all to do with her death,” said Culhane.

“Sure,” I agreed. “We have people working a lot of angles in L.A. But right now this is the angle I’m working on. If it’s a dead end, I’ll be the first to admit it.”

“Well,” Gorman said, “I don’t want to keep my wife waiting. Come say hello, Brodie.”

“Of course,” Culhane said. “We’re just wrapping things up.”

I followed the two men down the hall and through the lobby to the patio. Isabel Gorman was indeed the woman in the photo on Gorman’s rolltop. She was as dignified in life as in the photograph, except her black hair was streaked with gray, there were lines around her mouth, and she had the same sorrow reflecting in her brown eyes as in Gorman’s. She smiled sweetly when she saw Brodie.

“Hello, my dear,” Culhane said, with a softness in his voice I had not heard before. He kissed her hand. She ran it tenderly down his cheek. “Dear Brodie,” is all she said.

Gorman introduced her to me.

“What brings you up here, Sergeant?” she asked innocently.

“It’s a homicide investigation,” Gorman said gently. “Sergeant Bannon thinks the woman may have lived here at one time.”

“Oh?” she said. “What was her name?”

“Hicks,” I said. “Verna Hicks.”

The name made no impression at all. She looked off at the ocean for a minute with her brows bunched together and then she slowly shook her head. “I don’t recall that name,” she said.

“We have to be going,” Culhane said. “Just wanted to say hello.”

“Thank you,” she said, and patted Culhane’s hand, and to me, “Good luck, Sergeant.”

Gorman offered me his hand. “It was a pleasure meeting you,” he said.

“My pleasure, Mr. Gorman. Thanks for your help.”

I followed Culhane to the hotel entrance. When we got outside, Rusty was waiting and he offered me a ride to the bank.

“No thanks,” I said. “The walk’ll do me good.”

“Then I’ll walk with you,” Culhane said. We strolled down toward town. The ocean breeze rattled the palm fronds and cut the summer heat. As we entered the park we walked, in silence, toward the beach.

As we neared the far end of the park there was a small marble headstone at the edge of the sidewalk. Someone had put a bunch of wildflowers beside it and a withered apple. The inscription

etched into its smooth face said: cyclone 1897–1936 sorely missed by the people of san pietro.

“Who was Cyclone?” I asked.

“A horse,” he said.

“A horse?”

“Everybody in town knew him. He used to jump the fence at the stable and wander downtown looking for a handout. Apples mostly. He loved apples. When he died, the people in town chipped in and bought him the marker.”

We went to the end of the park. Rusty was waiting with the Packard.

“You got a lot of options,” Culhane said as we reached the car.

“Which one do you like?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Take your pick,” he said. He thought for a minute and added, “Just remember this: no matter how it comes out in the end, I’ll be able to look you in the eye and say, ‘I told you so.’ ”

“Now what the hell does that mean?” I asked.

He stared at me for a long time. I think he wanted me to figure it out.

Rusty opened the car door for him.

“It’s about choices, pal,” he said as he got in. “Every time you make one, you close a door and narrow your odds.”