Eureka

EPILOGUE
1946

Bannon got a card from Brodie Culhane once while he was overseas. Christmas, 1944. He was in some little town in Normandy. He didn’t remember its name. There wasn’t enough left to remember.

“I know how it is at Christmas,” Brodie had written. “I’ll think of you and hoist a glass of Irish Mist. One cube, please. Take care of yourself, Cowboy.” It was signed “Santa C.”

It had reached Bannon on January third, but it was the thought that counted.

Not a word since, except the card he had received two days ago. And now he was driving down the hill into San Pietro as he had five years before. Nothing had changed except the trees were a little taller and there was a different movie playing at the theater and Max and Lenny weren’t riding herd on him.

He had said very little on the drive up, and the night before he had sat out by the pool, soaking his leg and rereading the file he had kept through the years. It was in a footlocker he had left with her when he went off to the army. He hadn’t paid any attention to the old locker until he got the card, when they got back from their honeymoon.

He read it, showed it to her, then went down in the storm cellar, opened the trunk, and dug it out.

A closed case to everyone but you, Zee, Millicent had thought.

She didn’t ask him about it and they had talked little about the old file on the trip up, but she knew that there were questions in its yellowing pages that had gnawed at him since he had come back from San Pietro that last time. She had sat quietly with her hand on his leg, watching the foothills grow into mountains.

He was going to find the answers.

He took a left at the bottom of the hill, drove up to The Breakers, and parked in front of the entrance.

The valet was a sharp little noodle in a tailored uniform, hair slicked back and a solicitous smile on his face. The closer he got to the car, the more the smile changed from con man to awe. He stopped beside the car and ran the flat of his hand very lightly across the hood.

“Fine,” he said. “Italian paint job.”

He backed up about six feet, checked her out, and came back.

“Twelve cylinders. Speedometer top: one-sixty.”

“Close. One-eighty,” Bannon said.

“British leather and I’ll bet she’s got a Sternberg radio in the dash.”

“Muellenberg.”

He whistled low with great appreciation.

“You think you could find a place to park this baby so she don’t get dinged up or get a door scratched?” Bannon said as he struggled out of the driver’s seat. The kid walked over to help him and he handed the youngster his cane.

“I can handle it,” Zeke said. “Hold on to this for me.” He got out and took the cane, then the kid ran around to the other side of the car and opened the door for Millie. She was stunning as always, dressed in pastel colors: a pale blue skirt and a pink blouse, and she was wearing a yellow straw hat, its brim flopping down around her ears, with her silken hair sweeping over her shoulders. The kid was dazzled. He forgot the car for a minute as he helped her down to the running board and onto the walk. Then he bowed from the waist.

“Thank you,” she said, and flashed him a million-dollar smile. Bannon handed him a five-dollar bill but the kid shook his head.

“No, sir,” he said, looking at the two rows of ribbons on Bannon’s khaki shirt. “I ought to be paying you for the privilege of driving it across the street.”

Then he ran around the front of the car, climbed aboard, and ran his hands lovingly around the oak steering wheel.

They entered the lobby, where Brett Merrill was sitting across the way. He stood up, loped across the room, and shook Bannon’s hand hard enough to loosen a tooth.

“Good to see you, Zeke,” he said with a smile that lit up the soft light of the lobby. “How’s the leg?”

“It’s fine,” Bannon said. “I carry the cane to keep my balance. Millicent, this is Brett Merrill.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Bannon,” he said with courtly grace, and brushed the back of her hand with his lips. “What a delight to meet you.”

As always, a Southern gentleman to the core.

“Let’s have a drink,” Merrill said.

They sat down in the barroom, which was an elegant recessed alcove off the main lobby. Nothing seemed to have changed in the hotel since Bannon had last seen it.

Merrill said to the waiter, “I know what the gentleman will have, unless his taste has changed. Irish Mist, neat, with one cube of ice.” And to Millicent, “What will you have, my dear?”

“Amaretto on the rocks,” she answered, her voice a startling blend of softness and strength. She reached over and held Bannon’s hand. It was a gentle move, one that subtly proclaimed her affection for him. Her eyes said the rest.

When the army had sent Bannon to the hospital in San Diego, Millicent had insisted on coming to see him. He had resisted at first. He wanted to get through rehab, get himself back to together, be whole again. Get rid of the demons that follow all men home from the battlefield: guilt because he had survived when others around him had died; fear that is so real it tastes like acid in the throat.

But she had come anyway, driving down to the hospital every weekend, nursing him back with love and caring, cheering him up when he got the blues, chasing away the nightmares. The war had added a few years to Bannon’s handsome features, but he seemed fit and looked well.

“The place hasn’t changed,” he said, making conversation as he looked around the lobby.

“No,” Merrill answered. “It’s reached that traditional stage. I have a feeling it will change, though. Times have changed. The old place will have to catch up.”

“That’s too bad,” Millicent said. “There’s something to be said for tradition, don’t you think?”

“I do indeed,” Merrill answered.

“Sorry it took so long for us to get up here,” Bannon said. “That last card from Brodie was in a stack of mail that was forwarded to me from the hospital. I guess it had been bouncing around APOs for a month or two. Hope he wasn’t pissed that I didn’t answer sooner.”

“Brodie? Never,” Merrill said.

“How’s it going with him?”

“Still alive,” Merrill said with a smile. “You know Brodie. He defies the odds.” There was a catch in his voice when he said it.

“Hell, I didn’t really know him at all,” said Bannon.

“Yes, you did. In some ways, maybe more than any of us. You got in his skin, and you know a lot about a person when that happens. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

He swallowed a couple of times and went on. “He had a heart attack last November. Actually, the day after Thanksgiving. We had breakfast together at Wendy’s and we were walking up the courthouse steps. He was glad-handing everybody, as usual. All of a sudden he stopped and sat down on the steps and said, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack. I feel like my chest is gonna explode.’ He was right. Massive coronary. He almost didn’t come back from that one. Doc Fleming gave him a week. Then two weeks, then two months. Two months later, he gave him six more weeks, and two months after that Brodie was holding court every day out in the garden. Smoking, having a couple of drinks, everything he wasn’t supposed to do. But he was going downhill fast. You could see a change every day. Yesterday, when I asked how it was going, Fleming said, ‘He’s sicker than most dead people I know.’ ”

Neither of them said much for a minute or two.

“You’re right about Brodie, Brett,” Bannon said. “I knew him for what? Two weeks? But he stayed with me. I thought a lot about him through the years.”

“That’s the way it is with the Captain.”

“It’s that damned army mail system,” Bannon said angrily. “The card should’ve been here weeks ago.”

“He understands that. When he read Pennington’s story about you getting the DSC and the Purple Heart, he did an Irish jig around the apartment. ‘And shot in the leg, just like me, wouldn’t you know it!’ he said. He was very proud of you. It doesn’t take two weeks to measure the strength of a man.”

“How true,” Millicent Bannon said, and looked at Bannon adoringly.

A lucky man, Merrill thought. And aloud, “Had a rough time of it, didn’t you?”

“Not really,” he answered. “Most of the time I was a glorified traffic cop, moving tanks, jeeps, half-tracks, quarter-tons through bottlenecks, getting them up to the front. We were near the German border and a German Tiger tank broke through the lines. We were caught in the middle of a firefight. I drove over a mine. Next thing I remember, I was under the damn jeep, with a fifty-caliber shooting at everything that moved. We slowed the bastard down just long enough for our artillery to get its range. It didn’t help win the war. Just another hour in the life of World War Two.”

“That isn’t exactly the way I heard it,” said Merrill.

“That’s exactly the way it happened,” Bannon said.

Merrill looked past him, smiled, and stood up.

“Here’s Del,” he said.

Delilah hadn’t changed a bit. Not a wrinkle, not a smile line, not a gray hair. Maybe Grand View was sitting on top of the fountain of youth, thought Bannon.

“Hi, hero,” she said, giving him a peck on the cheek and immediately turning her attention to his wife.

“You must be Millicent,” she said, offering her hand. Bannon watched her quick appraisal, saw the glint in her eye. All class, that’s what she’s thinking.

“How are things at Grand View?” Bannon asked.

“Nothing’s changed,” her dusky voice answered. “Things seemed to freeze in time during the war. You’re looking fit as a fiddle, Zeke.” She looked back at Millicent with a smile. “Must be the company you keep. Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Millicent answered. She was a bit ill at ease, like meeting in-laws for the first time, and Delilah sensed it. Then Millicent said, “I feel as if I know you all. Zee has told me a lot about you. Actually, I met him the day before he came to San Pietro for the first time.”

“We saw the announcement in the Times that you two tied the knot.”

“We sneaked up to Monterey and got married. Neither of us wanted a big wedding. It upset my family but they’ll get over it.”

“I didn’t get the card until two days ago. It’s the damned army mail system…” Bannon started to repeat the excuse.

“That’s exactly what Brodie said.”

There was a moment of awkward silence and then Delilah said, “He’s out in the garden. Bring your drinks, we’ll freshen them outside.”

“I have to beg off,” Merrill said. “Today’s our anniversary. I’m taking Susan up to San Francisco for a week. We’re going to hole up at the St. Francis, have room service, and make believe we’re twenty again.”

“Congratulations,” said Millicent. “I’m sure you’ll have a grand time.”

They said their goodbyes and Merrill strode out of the hotel.

“Prepare yourself,” Delilah said, leading them across the sprawling lobby and out the French doors. “He’s taken a licking.”

It was a dazzling day, cloudless with a hint of wind, and the garden nestled between two wings of the hotel was a spotless oasis of emerald green grass bordered with flowers. Beyond it, the Pacific was as serene as a fish pond.

Brodie Culhane was sitting under a striped umbrella at a secluded table surrounded by acacia trees. His frame was spare. His failing heart had stripped away most of his weight and hollowed his cheeks. His skin was stretched tight over thick bones and had an almost translucent quality. His thinning hair was white as a swan.

There was a blanket over his shoulders even though it was a warm day. But though his body had betrayed him, his indomitable spirit had refused to surrender. He sat in a wheelchair, straight as a billiard cue, and his blue eyes were as alert as ever. As they approached the table, the Captain’s crooked, arrogant grin brightened his withered features.

“Well, it’s about damned time,” he said. His voice had lost some of its timbre but the rascally quality was still there. He turned his attention immediately to Millicent. He reached out, took her hand, and held it for a long time.

“Saw your picture in the society pages when you got married,” he said gruffly. “Beautiful, but pictures don’t do you justice. No wonder it took him so long to bring you up here. Probably afraid I’d steal your heart and we’d run off together.”

“We might still,” Mil said with mischief in her smile as well.

“She dragged my sorry carcass back to the living,” Bannon said. “She wouldn’t let me feel sorry for myself.”

“You’re a lucky man, Cowboy.”

They sat down around the table, relaxed like old friends. Brodie’s nature dispelled any sense of awkwardness. There was a small table beside him, with a bottle of Irish Mist and a sterling ice bucket sweating in the warm day. A half-dozen rolled cigarettes and a cheap lighter lay beside the bucket.

Brodie stared across the table at Zeke Bannon and saw a look he was familiar with, a look he still saw occasionally when he peered in the mirror.

“You heard them, didn’t you,” he said.

“Heard what?” Bannon asked.

“You know what I mean. You heard ’em flapping on your shoulder. Lying under the jeep, you figured he was there, come to get you. I know, pal, I heard ’em, too, lying in that ditch in France. Those wings. The Angel of Death, waiting to take you. Then he just flew away, like a robin you walk up on and scare off. That’s how close you came. Scared you right to the bones, didn’t it?”

Bannon didn’t say anything but Millie reached out and took his hand.

“Ever tell Millie?” Culhane said.

“He did,” she answered. “In his own way.”

“Fear’s a hard thing to admit,” said Bannon. “I never got that close to anyone.” He looked at Delilah and added, “My loss.” He turned back to Bannon. “So? How’s the leg?”

“Still a little gimpy. Another month I’ll lose the cane.”

“That was quite a piece your pal Pennington wrote about you. Still suckin’ up to the press, I see.”

“Yeah. You know me, Headline Harry.”

“So what’re your plans now that you’re all married and settled down?”

“No idea,” Bannon said. “I’m checking over my options.”

“Still thinkin’ about playing cops and robbers?”

“I don’t think so, Brodie. But you never know.”

“How do you feel about that?” he asked Millicent.

“Whatever he wants to do,” she said.

He laughed and shook his head. “Got it all, Cowboy. Well, you deserve the best.”

“Thanks.”

A waiter brought a bottle of Amaretto and Delilah busied herself making a round of drinks. Brodie reached for a cigarette, and Millicent produced her Dunhill and lit it.

“Remember the last time we saw each other?” Culhane asked.

“Sure,” Bannon said. “Up there in the ballroom. You had just retired from politics.”

“I think it’s time to talk about it,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you at the time because it would have hurt too many people, people I loved and who loved me.”

Bannon sat forward in his chair. He had been waiting five years for answers to questions he thought he’d never get. Millicent looked at Bannon from the corner of her eye.

“You don’t have to do this, Brodie,” Bannon said.

“Isabel died in 1942. Heart attack. Ben lasted another two years but he was lost without her. I think if it’s true that you can die of a broken heart, then that’s what Ben died of.”

“Maybe I should take a walk,” Millicent said.

“Nah,” Brodie said gruffly. “What the hell, he’ll tell you the story anyway. May as well get it firsthand.”

He stopped for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts together.

“Actually Del knows more about some of it than I do, but I’ll tell it my way and she can jump in if she gets the urge.”

Bannon didn’t say anything. He waited. And Culhane began to speak.

I never did tell you properly, but you played the Verna Hicks murder like the pro you are. Your instincts were right on target. Trouble was, you were stuck on one idea: that the Riker frame was a giant conspiracy between me, Eddie, Brett-the whole bunch of us. That’s only partly right. But it wasn’t about a frame-up, it was about loyalty and friendship that turned into murder and revenge. I didn’t level with you then. I couldn’t. Too many people to hurt. Too many secrets to reveal.

You were dead right about one thing.

It blew up that night at Grand View.

But the roots went way back to the poker game in 1900-the night Eli Gorman beat Del’s old man, who left the Hill forever. And deeded off the town of Eureka to Arnold Riker.

I was an outsider on the Hill. Eureka was hometown to me, much as I hated it. Had it not been for Eli Gorman, I probably would have ended up a hooligan for that son of a bitch Riker. When my mom died, Eli took me in and showed me a life beyond any dream I ever had. I was a scared, lonely kid. No family left. But Eli and Ben and Ma Gorman gave me that in spades.

Eli was a dreamer. A rich man with a vision. The joker in the deck was Riker but we’ll get to that.

Four of us kids were friends in the truest sense of the word. There was Ben, Isabel Hoffman, Delilah, and me. We went to school together, played together, and lived the sweet life together on the Hill.

That’s where I first learned what the word friendship meant.

I learned about loyalty in France, with men who gave up their lives fighting for five miles of mud. I think Brett said it best. Courage is being there, heroism is staying alive.

I learned about love from a friend whom I betrayed, and who knew it and never mentioned it. He’s still my best friend, although he’s long gone. And his wife, dear Isabel, taught me that first love is forever.

Eli had our lives planned out for us. Ben and Isabel would marry. Ben would take over the bank. I’d take Buck Tallman’s place when the time came, and clean up Eureka. Trouble was, I was in love with Isabel and she was in love with me. But she was engaged to Ben and she truly adored him, too. So one night, I packed my duds and left. Joined the Marines, traveled the world, and ended up in France in 1918. I truly thought I would spend the rest of my life as a leatherneck but the war put an end to that. You know how that can be. Fate can change your life in the time it takes a howitzer shell to go off.

Eli once told me everybody has to have a home to come back to. I guess that’s why I came back to Eureka when I got out of the hospital. It was the only home I had left. I had a godson and a family, and Delilah was here. And old Eli’s plan was waiting. I became Buck Tallman’s deputy. It was still a tough town because Riker still ran it. But that was about to change. Delilah ought to tell you about how that night started. Unfortunately, I was late for the party or history might have a different story to tell.

It’s still hard to talk about, Delilah said. It was the worst night, the worst memory of my life. I remember every detail.

Bucky was upstairs in my apartment. He always came by about six, for a cup of coffee and to listen to some opera records I had. It was a ritual. His deputy, Andy Sloan, was downstairs keeping an eye on things when the four of them came in.

I heard some swearing downstairs, walked to the head of the stairs and one of them, an out-of-towner, they all were, told me to come down and talk. I knew what they were, I could tell by looking at them. At that point, Bucky walked up beside me. The lead man sneered at Bucky, said something about him being Buffalo Bill, and Bucky walked down the steps and up to him. They were nose-to-nose. Bucky said, “You oughta brush your teeth sometimes, your breath smells like a dead cat’s.”

And just like that, the bastard pulled his pistol and shot Bucky in the stomach. And all hell broke loose.

Bucky grunted and staggered backward, pulled that Peacemaker and fanned three shots into him. Bangbangbang, just like that, so fast you could hardly tell them apart.

Five men were still standing and they all started shooting at once. It was unbelievable. Bullets shattered lamps and windows, and ripped into walls. I remember bits and pieces after that, like a collage: a vase of flowers bursting apart; the mobster standing against the wall to Andy’s right, turning toward him and taking Andy’s bullet in the face, falling on his knees and then doubling up, and falling forward with his head resting on the carpet; Bucky’s. 44 making twice as much noise as all the other guns; the thug near the inside bedroom door spinning around with tufts of gabardine flying off his chest and back; the bastard near the door firing a single shot at Andy, blowing open the back of his head, and knocking him backward over a large, stuffed easy chair.

It all happened in less than a minute. One of the hoodlums decided to run for it and Bucky shot him as he went out the door. Then Bucky fell against the staircase banister, started reloading his pistol, and the one who had shot Andy started to get up. He was crawling around on his knees looking for his gun. Then I heard a shot outside.

Culhane: When I came through the door, there was Bucky, gut shot, trying to reload his Peacemaker, his hands so bloody the bullets kept slipping through his fingers and falling on the floor. Andy Sloan was dead on the floor. Everybody was dead but Bucky, me, and the last of Riker’s men. He and Buck were both shot all to hell. They were across the room from each other, probably twenty, thirty feet apart.

Through the years, I’ve played what happened next over and over in my head like one of those slow-motion movies, and I wish I could stop it. I wish I could turn off the projector and stop time.

I was twenty feet to the left of Riker’s man.

He’s struggling to his feet. He’s raising his gun.

Buck slaps the cylinder shut on his. 44 and his arm is going up.

I go for a head shot, figuring I’m closest. But even shot up as he was, Bucky was faster than me. Probably by half a second. Bucky shoots and I shoot. His bullet hits the gunman first, a split second before mine. His head snaps backward, and my shot goes right past him and hits the door to the bedroom on the first floor.

Bucky looks up at Del and says, “Wouldn’t you know it. Killed in a whorehouse.”

And then a woman screamed. She was behind the door to the first-floor bedroom, which was more or less reserved for locals. I ran across the room and kicked open the door. There was a man lying on the Persian rug, shot in the throat. Blood was spouting out of the wound. The woman was covered with his blood and hysterical. Her bloody hands were crossed over her face. She was shaking all over. But I wasn’t looking at her.

“Get her out of here,” I yelled to Delilah, and they were gone, and I was looking down at the youngster lying at my feet. I saw his eyes go blank.

It was my godson, Eli Junior.

My bullet killed him.

They both stopped talking. They were long past tears but the depth of their sadness swept through the garden like a cold wind. Bannon took Millicent’s hand with both of his, held it tightly, and kissed it. Tears trickled down her face.

All I could think of was to get Eli out of there. I moved as fast I could. Wrapped him up in the Persian rug, which was drenched in blood. There was hardly any blood in the room except on the bedspread. I ripped it off the bed and threw it in the closet. Then I picked Eli up and carried him outside through the side door by the hedgerow, down to his car, and put him in the trunk. When I came back, the coroner was just arriving. I said as casually as I could, “Nothing in the bedroom.” I had left the door open so he wouldn’t see the hole in the door.

Then I made the toughest phone call I ever made in my life. I called Ben and told him to meet me at the overlook. It was foggy as hell. You couldn’t even see your belt buckle. He met me there and we mourned over Eli. We prayed over him and we talked to him and we were dying inside. We decided his mother could never know what happened. Killed in a whorehouse, killed by a man she loved. It would have killed her. He was her magic child, the mortar in a great friendship. So we cranked up the Chevy and I got behind the wheel, drove it to the edge, and jumped out. It seemed to take forever before it hit the shelf. And then a minute or so later, it exploded.

I don’t know how Ben kept his sanity when he went home to Isabel. He had to wait until the next morning, until a newsboy saw the wreck on his way up Cliffside Road, and I went over and told them both.

He stopped and held his glass up. Delilah filled it. Bannon looked across the table at the old warrior.

“And you kept that secret until Isabel died?”

Culhane nodded. “Me, Ben, Delilah, and old Eli knew.”

“And one more,” Bannon said. “The girl young Eli was with-Wilma Thompson.”

Millicent looked shocked. Delilah surprised. Culhane just smiled.

“Figured it out, didn’t you, Cowboy?”

“It’s the only way it made sense. The out-of-towners weren’t coming to barter for a piece of the action. Riker sent them because he figured Delilah was hiding Wilma at Grand View.”

“He had just done ten lousy days in the local jail for beating her up,” Delilah said. “It should have been ten years. When she dropped out of sight, he sent those animals up to my place to find her.”

Delilah is in her apartment when Noah taps on the door.

“It’s old Mist’ Eli,” Noah says. “He’s downstairs in his car. Can’t come in ’cause of the wheelchair.”

Delilah and Eli are friends, have been for years. Not social friends. Eli had never been to Grand View, but they talked on the phone once a week or so, about Eureka, about Riker. Delilah grabs her mink, wraps herself in it, and goes down. Raymond, Eli’s chauffeur, holds the door for her and she gets in the backseat. Raymond wanders off in the dark.

Eli looks frail; even in the darkness of the car she can see the toll the shooting has taken on him. Six months and he is still mourning. Will always mourn the loss of his grandson. But his eyes glitter in the gloom. The window is cracked slightly and smoke from his cigar wisps through it.

“Does the cigar bother you?” he asks. Always the gentleman.

“Don’t be silly,” she says and lights a cigarette.

“There’s nobody I can trust as much as I trust you, Del,” he says. There is something in his voice, a cruelness she has not heard before. Anger, yes, but not cruelty.

She says nothing.

“The young girl, Wilma? You are protecting her, aren’t you?”

Delilah doesn’t answer at first. Then she slowly nods.

“She’s not one of my girls, Eli. She does some work around the place and I pay her a salary, but she stays under cover.”

“She meant a lot to young Eli, didn’t she?”

Delilah nods. “She’s a decent young woman. Just got mixed up with Riker. Those things happen.”

“I have a plan,” the old man says.

“What kind of plan?”

“To get rid of Riker once and for all.”

Delilah just nods, wondering where he is heading with this.

“They call the son of a bitch ‘the Fisherman’ because he kills people and drops them at sea for the fish to eat. He probably doesn’t do the killing himself, his kind never do. They have scum who do it for them.”

Delilah still doesn’t say a word.

“Supposing it appeared that he killed Wilma?”

“Kill Wilma!”

“I said ‘appears.’ ”

Delilah stares at him, at the tip of the cigar glowing in the dark.

“You want to frame Riker?” she say cautiously.

“He lives on his boat. I hear he drinks heavily. Drunk almost every night…”

“You want to frame him,” she says, and it is not a question.

He quickly outlines his plan.

Delilah sits quietly for a minute.

“Brodie won’t buy it, Eli. Brett Merrill won’t either.”

“I know that. We need somebody else to do it, somebody who’ll pull it off without a hitch, so nobody ever knows. Wilma can disappear, go anywhere she wants. I’ll arrange for her to get a new license, a new identity, and make life easy for her for the rest of her life.”

Delilah is quiet again. A long minute passes.

“This is a very risky thing.”

“I know that, my dear.” His voice is the voice of the crafty old fox. The man who outfoxed her father. Age and illness had wasted his body but not his brain.

“You want me to set this up?”

“No. Just find the right man. I’ll do the talking. Only the three of us will ever know. When I die, I want to know we are rid of Riker forever.”

“Let me think about it,” she says after a little thought.

Two nights later she comes to his house. They sit in his library.

“Do you know Eddie Woods?” she asks.

“I met him when he first came on the force. And his friend…”

“Dave Carney. Woods saved Brodie’s life.”

“I know all about that.”

“Woods is from Boston. A tough street kid. After he got out of the Marines, he was headed for trouble. Carney was a Boston cop. He and Woods served in Merrill’s regiment together. They became friends. Carney was married, had two kids. But he had heart problems and the Boston police retired him early. Not much of a pension for a man with three mouths to feed. When Brodie called Woods and asked him to come on the force, he brought Carney in, too. You know Brodie. Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

The old man nods.

“When he first came here a year or so ago, Eddie used to come by the place every once in a while. Then he started seeing some young girl from down in Milltown. On the sly.”

“Is that important?”

“Woods may need a witness. Without a body, it will be hard to convict Riker.”

“I see.”

“And he may need Carney’s help.”

“That’s a lot of people…”

“You, me, Eddie, Dave, Wilma, and the girl. Six people.”

“I’ll make it profitable for them all.”

“You’ll have to ask him, Eli. Woods is in awe of you. If the idea is presented by you, and he thinks it will help Brodie clean up the town…”

She lets the sentence die.

“Will you set up the meeting with Eddie Woods?”

“Tomorrow night.” Delilah nods. “Just the three of us to start with…”

“It worked like a charm,” Delilah said. “Woods worked out the details. He and Dave spent two months stealing blood from the hospital, a little bit at a time. They grilled Lila Parrish until she had her story down pat. Carney watched Riker like a hawk, knew every move he made. Carney’s payoff was a trust fund for his wife and kids. He knew his ticker wouldn’t last long. Eddie didn’t ask for a dime. But after it was over and Fontonio took over for Riker, Eddie knew he had to take him out, too. Eli set him up in business and gave him twenty thousand dollars to get started.”

“And Lila Parrish?”

“She went to college down in San Diego, on Eli’s tab.”

“And then Eddie married her,” Bannon said.

Brodie is getting tired, Bannon thought. The flash is drifting out of his eyes and his shoulders are beginning to droop. Or maybe just thinking about that night again sapped everything out of him.

“You figured that out, too, huh,” Culhane said.

“And you didn’t know?” Bannon said to Culhane.

Brodie didn’t answer.

“You handled the payoffs,” Bannon said to Delilah.

She smiled. “You had that one right from the start,” she said.

“You were on the right track,” Brodie said. “But I kept telling you, you were after the wrong dog. I figured it was Guilfoyle who killed Wilma. You were the one who nailed Riker.”

“Actually it was Ski who figured it out, lying up there in the hospital.”

And Bannon thought: It was Ski, too, who had wired for young Eli’s birth certificate and figured out that Eli Junior was Brodie Culhane’s son. “That’s why Isabel and Ben Gorman went to Boston and married so soon after Brodie left Eureka,” he had told Bannon while lying in a hospital bed. “I’ll bet old Eli probably fixed the birth certificate, too. Showing Ben as the father.” That was what Brodie meant when he said he had “betrayed a friend,” what he meant by “the mortar in a great friendship.”

Brodie Culhane had accidentally murdered his own son.

There were some things in your past you could run from. But not that. No wonder Brodie seemed to have no fear. There was nothing left that could scare him. The greatest punishment he could have was to go on living every day knowing what he had done.

“How’s that partner of yours doin’?” Culhane asked.

“He made lieutenant,” I said.

“Good for him.”

Bannon had one more question, but Brodie leaned over, reached under the table and brought up a gift-wrapped package. He slid it across the table to Bannon.

“Here,” he said. “Call it a wedding present.”

Bannon and Millicent looked at the package, then Bannon slid it over in front of her.

“You open it,” he said.

She unwrapped it the way women do, pulling on the ribbon until the knot unties, then stripping the ribbon off and laying it carefully to the side. She unwrapped the paper with the same care, without even wrinkling the paper.

It was a walnut box with a small plaque on the lid that said: buck tallman 1899–1920 captain brodie culhane 1921–1946 sergeant zeke bannon 1946-

It was the Peacemaker. Oiled and polished and shined to a fare-thee-well. There was a card inside that said “Don’t shoot your damn foot off.”

“I hope you never use it, Cowboy,” Brodie said. “Hang it on the wall or buy a table and display it in the library. But try not to use it. That’s my wedding gift to you, Millicent.”

Millicent leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

“I have to ask you one more question, Brodie. When did you figure it was a frame-up? Riker, Wilma, Eddie. The whole thing. When did you know?”

He looked at me and suddenly the fire came back in his tired eyes and he got that crooked smile on his lips and his voice got strong.

“What’s the dif?” he said.