Sorrow's Anthem

CHAPTER 7

Amy went back to work and Joe and I went back to the office. I spent most of the ride burning over Gajovich’s words, but even while they’d angered me, they’d helped me. I knew now I was going to have to return Scott Draper’s call, after all. My knowledge of Ed’s life effectively ended seven years before he died. I needed to talk to someone who’d been close to him, and Draper was the best option I had.

“Lincoln,” Draper said when I identified myself, “thanks for calling me back, man. I wanted to apologize. That thing in the street, it was bullshit. The cops told me what happened, told me you didn’t push him. From my angle, it looked like something it wasn’t. Still, I should have better sense than to pull shit like that. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Look, you got a few minutes? Time to run down here and grab a beer?”

“A beer in the morning?”

“Doesn’t have to be right now. Whenever you have a chance.”

“I’ll come down around noon.”

I’d just hung up the phone when the door swung open and Detective Cal Richards stepped into the room.

He was a tall, lean black man with a face that was all hard angles and edges, like a wood carving. He wore black slacks with a blue shirt and matching tie, and a badge was clipped onto his belt. None of that stood out as much as the scowl on his face, though.

“Gentlemen,” he said, easing into one of our client chairs. We have two standard client chairs and a set of wooden stadium seats from the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, and he gave those a curious glance as he sat.

“How are you, Detective?” I said, offering my hand. He didn’t take it.

“How are you, Detective?” he mimicked. “I’m a little pissed off, Perry. Pissed off that somehow you got kicked loose last night before I had a chance to talk with you, but for that I can blame an incompetent sergeant who thinks he’s got authority just because he’s old. But lest you think all the blame’s headed in that direction, I’m also pissed off at you. I just got off the phone with a source who informed me you intend to run a parallel investigation into the Sentalar death without bothering to contact me.”

I pulled my hand back. “That’s not true.”

“You’re not investigating?”

I hesitated, and his gaze turned even more unfriendly. “I stump you with that one, Perry? I can speak slower.”

Beside me, Joe was grinning. I gave him a glare and then looked back at Richards.

“I am not investigating in any sort of official capacity, Detective. Ed Gradduk was a friend of mine. A close friend, a long time ago. I saw him on the night that he died, and he talked with me briefly. You already know that from the police reports, I’m sure.”

He nodded. “And now you want to fool around with this, compromise my investigation?”

“I have no intention of compromising anyone’s investigation, and if I am investigating, I promise it won’t be ‘fooling around,’ Richards,” I said, a touch of hostility creeping into my own voice. “I’m pretty good at what I do. I was going to contact you this afternoon, so don’t get all bent out of shape over my failing to notify you of my interest. It’s a waste of our mutual time.”

He loosened his tie and leaned back in his chair. “You interfere with this and I’ll take you down hard, Perry. You know that, because you know my rep.”

“And you know mine.”

A slight smile played on his face. “Oh, yes. Yes, I do know your rep, friend.” He jerked his head at Joe. “And your partner’s, of course. Thirty years of distinction. You, Perry? Not so many.”

“Should be enough,” I said.

“It is enough,” he said, “provided you don’t get clever with me on this.”

“Anything I know, you’ll know, too.”

He chewed on that for a while before speaking again. “Your buddy’s been dead less than twenty-four hours and already you’re on the move and concerning people. Makes me wonder what you know.”

“Not a damn thing,” I said. “And your source for this information couldn’t be more obvious, because the only person we’ve talked to today is Mike Gajovich.”

Richards smiled then, and something about the look made me think that if I had to pick just one man in the city that I would never cross, he would have to be close to the top of the list. Something in that smile spoke of a total self-confidence and dangerous intuitiveness that few men possessed, and I knew at that moment that never in Cal Richards’s life had he acted simply because it was what another man told him to do.

“Listen,” he said, “Mike Gajovich has hardly given me the time of day before this morning. Then suddenly we’re best friends and he wants to keep me apprised of something that could jeopardize my investigation. You want to know how I responded to that? By losing whatever respect I ever had for the man. Because as soon as he tells me this, I know he’s made the call only to save his own ass. Why? I don’t know. But don’t think I’m buying it.”

Joe looked at me and grinned as if to say, Isn’t this guy a scream?

Richards said, “Here’s what I’m going to tell you: Stay away from the Anita Sentalar murder investigation. I don’t like free-lancers stepping inside. However . . . if you want to dig up every last damn thing you can about Ed Gradduk’s recent past, go for it. I know you two are capable investigators. It’s very simple: You don’t interfere with my work, and I won’t waste my time on you. Sound fair?”

“Sounds fair,” I said after pausing long enough to make his eyes narrow. “But can I ask you if there’s anything to suggest the victim even knew Ed Gradduk?”

Richards took a deep breath, his broad chest filling with air. “I’ll get back to you on that one.”

“Come on.”

He shook his head. “Sorry, Perry. That’s the very thing I’ve been busting my ass on all day, and while I have a start, I’m not to the point where I want to throw around theories. When I nail their relationship down, I’ll let you know.”

“But they did have a relationship? Not total strangers?”

“Not total strangers,” Richards said. “But I’m not taking more questions. Just stay the hell away from my murder investigation. You want to look at Gradduk, fine. Not Sentalar. Clear?”

“Clear.”

He shifted his eyes to Joe. “You were a hell of a cop, Pritchard. Everyone knows that. I’m trusting you to keep your cowboy partner’s heart in the right place.”

“I’m usually too concerned with keeping his head out of his ass, but I’ll try to worry about the heart, too,” Joe said.

Richards turned back to me. “Now we’re going to have an official talk. This is my murder investigation, and that incompetent asshole Padgett took it upon himself to conduct an interview with you and then put you back on the streets last night without ever bothering to check in with me. I’ve already put the fear of God into him, but I still need to hear what went down.”

And so I told it again, a story I was already growing weary of telling. Richards asked more questions than anyone else had, so it took longer to tell, but in the end I couldn’t provide him with anything more.

“Were you with Padgett and Rabold when they went to arrest Ed Gradduk?” Joe asked Richards when I was done.

He shook his head. “No. They got the tip from the liquor store owner, it seems. Not too surprising, considering those guys have worked that neighborhood for years. They got hungry for a headline, went in alone, and botched the arrest. Gradduk got away, and then your partner saw how well it turned out.”

I willed away an image that came with sounds of squealing brakes and crunching bone.

“Yeah,” I said. “I saw.”

Richards got to his feet, and this time he offered his hand to me. “I owe you a shake. But take me seriously with this, and don’t get in my way on this investigation.” He released my hand. “I forgot how damn young you are. Have you even hit thirty yet?”

“Not yet, but I’m about to take a swing.”

He pursed his lips and whistled noiselessly. “You must have been the youngest detective in department history.”

“No. But I was close.”

“Ever miss it?”

“Just pissing off the brass,” I said, and he almost smiled before he left.

It was harder for me to walk into the Hideaway this time. It had given me a moment’s pause the night before, standing at the threshold of a building filled with memories. But that night I’d had a mission, and at its end was a chance to see an old friend. This time I would walk out of here alone.

Only a handful of people were at the bar when I stepped inside—two guys and three women, all of them smoking cigarettes and drinking Budweiser. When I opened the door, I sent sunlight spilling into the dark room, and everyone turned and squinted at me, expecting a familiar face. Those were the faces you saw most in the Hideaway, and that antiquated the place maybe even more than the ancient building itself. The kid from my last visit was behind the bar again, and Scott Draper was standing beside him, talking softly over the counter with an older guy who wore jeans and a silk shirt. I moved toward them, but before I got to the bar, someone spoke from behind me.

“The hell you think you’re doing in here, prick.”

I turned to see an old man with an ugly scowl set on his fleshy face sitting at one of the little tables across from the bar. He was maybe sixty, with thick gray hair and red-rimmed eyes, and he was staring at me like he wanted to break his beer bottle over my head.

“Good to see you, too, Bill,” I said.

“Kiss my ass.”

Bill Foulks had been in the neighborhood for every one of his sixty-some years on the earth, and as far as I knew, he’d never left for more than a week. He’d worked at one of the meat shops in the West Side Market when I was a kid, and he’d been one of Norm Gradduk’s closest friends.

“Somebody invite you here, asshole?” he said. “You haven’t had the balls to hang around here since you busted Eddie, but now that he’s dead you think it’s okay? Think something changed? Well, nothing has. Get the hell out.”

I was opening my mouth to suggest Bill get his fat ass off the stool to make it easier for me to throw him through the window when Scott Draper stepped over.

“Give it a rest, Bill,” he said.

Foulks looked at him with wide eyes. “You shittin’ me, Scott? This prick’s the guy—”

“I know damn well who he is,” Draper said, his voice low and cold, “and I don’t need to hear your opinion on him, either. Lincoln’s here because I asked him to be.”

Foulks gaped at him in disgust. “You telling me you want the son of a bitch down here?”

Draper wouldn’t look at me. “He’s here on business,” he told Foulks, and then he motioned for me to follow him back into the dining room. Foulks glared at me and showed me his fat middle finger as I left.

I followed Draper into the dining room, which was empty. On the wall all along this row of booths were pictures of the neighborhood through the years. I was in one of them, standing with Ed and Draper on the steps outside the bar the day we graduated from high school, and I was pleasantly surprised to notice the picture still hung above the old booth where we’d all carved our names. I took a step toward it, wanting a closer look, but Draper took my elbow and guided me away from it and into another booth.

“What can I get you to drink? On the house, of course.”

“Whatever’s cold and in a bottle.”

“Be right back.” He went back out to the bar, and I heard him talking in low tones with Bill Foulks. I wondered what Draper was saying. Probably not giving me a hell of a lot of support. He’s here on business.

When Draper came back to the dining room, he had a bottle of Moosehead Canadian in each hand, and the guy in the jeans and silk shirt trailing behind him. Draper handed me one of the beers, then nodded at his companion.

“This guy was Ed’s boss,” Draper said. “I was just filling him in on what happened last night.”

I looked at the stranger with interest now.

“Jimmy Cancerno,” he said, offering his hand as he slid into the booth beside Draper. He wasn’t as old as I’d originally thought, probably no more than fifty, but he carried himself with slouched shoulders, and his thinning hair was shot with gray.

“You want anything to eat?” Draper asked me.

“You kidding me?” I hadn’t eaten in many hours, but the Hide-away food wasn’t going to improve on an empty stomach.

“What? Food’s better around here now, Lincoln. We made some changes.”

“So the grill got cleaned?”

He grinned. “Some of the changes are still on the list. But we got new pickles.”

“Dill chips?”

“Spicy dill chips. They were on sale, of course.”

Cancerno watched this interplay without interest. We were jammed together in one of the tiny booths, hunched over an old wooden table. Above the booth we sat in today was an old black-and-white photograph showing Draper’s grandfather sitting on the hood of a big Oldsmobile, probably taken around 1950.

“Bar’s been here a long time,” I said, looking at the picture.

“Better than a half century,” Draper said. “My grandfather opened it when he got back from World War II. Dad took over when he came home from ’Nam. Family tradition called for me to fight a war before I could run the show, but then my old man died before I had the chance, so I took over.”

“Died too young,” I said. David Draper had died from lung cancer a few years after we graduated from high school. He’d smoked better than a pack a day for forty years and spent the rest of his time working in a bar that was generally so hazy with smoke it was difficult to see the television screens.

“Hell, all of our dads did,” Draper said. “Yours was the oldest when he went, and he was still too young.”

Draper took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out for himself, and offered them to me. Apparently his father’s illness had done nothing to deter Scott’s habit. I declined, and he lit his own, then immediately set it on the edge of the ashtray.

“They put Ed in the ground this week,” he said, and his brown eyes were flat. “I haven’t decided if I’m going out for it or not. Wouldn’t make a bit of difference to Ed.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Poor bastard,” Draper said, sighing and lifting his cigarette back to his lips. “But in a way, it’s almost better, you know? Things would have been ugly for him, Lincoln. You know that.”

“If he didn’t kill her, we could have proven that, maybe gotten him back out.”

“We?”

I shrugged. “The police, then. I offered to help him, but it’s too late now.”

Draper drained a third of his Moosehead in one swallow and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He was wearing a white T-shirt that hugged his muscles closely, a thin silver chain hanging over the collar.

“I got to admit, I was pissed off at you last night, and I mean good,” he said. “It’s for the best that they put you in the police car. I was blaming you for it, even if you hadn’t shoved him. I mean, he was fine upstairs until you showed up.”

I sipped my beer and kept silent. Ed had been anything but fine, hiding out in a bar, drunk, with a cop’s blood on his shirt, but if Draper wanted to tell himself he’d played the role of a protector, I wouldn’t challenge it.

“I’m past that now,” he said. “Blaming you, that is. You showed up, right? And I know you showed up ’cause you wanted to help him. That took some serious balls, Lincoln.”

I leaned back, trying to clear some space in the little booth. He watched my face carefully, smoking his cigarette. Then he shrugged. “I think Ed had to appreciate the effort. And if he was going to go down that day, well, must have been nice for him to have an old friend by his side as he went.”

I thought of Ed’s drunken run into the street, the clumsy way his feet had tangled, the screech of brakes that were doing too little, too late.

“Sure,” I said. “Must have been nice.”

Cancerno hadn’t said a word during our exchange, just sat and sipped a whiskey on the rocks.

“How long had Ed worked for you?” I asked him.

“Six months, maybe?” He shrugged. “Scott’s the one recommended him to me.” He gave Draper a look that had more bite than the whiskey in his glass.

Draper met it coolly. “I’d recommend him to you again, Jimmy.”

“Hell of a thing to say, considering.” Cancerno scowled.

“Pretty broken up about Ed, huh?” I said, the small booth feeling smaller to me with every word Cancerno said.

“I supposed to give a shit?” he said, eyes wide. “I hardly knew the guy. He was just a carpenter and a painter, same as a dozen other guys. ’Cept a dozen other guys don’t bring the cops to my door.”

“That bothers you,” I said, and his gaze narrowed.

“Yeah. It bothers me. I’m a guy that likes his distance from the cops, asshole. That’s all you need to know.”

“Easy, Jimmy, Lincoln’s not challenging you.” Draper’s tone made it clear that if I was challenging him, I’d better stop it.

We drank for a bit, none of us speaking. Draper finished his cigarette and took the pack out, but didn’t light another one.

“You guys were gone, what, ten minutes before he got hit by that car?” he asked.

“Not even that.”

“But enough time to talk a little, right?”

“We talked. He was pretty drunk. His mind was going places without taking me along.”

“What do you mean?”

“Seemed like he was talking to himself as much as he was talking to me,” I said. “He’d hint at some stuff but not get specific. When I asked questions, he jumped in new directions.”

Draper stared at the table, sliding the pack of cigarettes back and forth between his fingers.

“He was into some trouble,” I said, and Draper looked up. “You know anything about that? Who he was dealing with?”

“As far as I knew, he was clean and had been for years.” Draper stood up. “I’m going to grab another beer. Be right back.”

He slid out and then it was just me and Jimmy Cancerno in the booth. Cancerno worked on what was left of his whiskey and looked bored.

“Was he a good worker for you?” I asked.

He spoke over the glass. “Good as any of them. Showed up on time and went home on time and billed for the time he’d worked. We do things a little different on my projects, see. Not a lot of paperwork. Pay in cash. It was a good job for him.”

“What kind of projects was he working on?”

“Fixed houses, mostly. Was supposed to be fixing the one he burned down. It was a small job; I wouldn’t have made much off it. Now I’m likely to get sued thanks to the son of a bitch.”

“I thought the house was empty.”

“It was,” Cancerno said as if he were explaining something to a child. “But the property company that owned the place wanted it fixed. So they could sell it, right? Go figure.”

I leaned forward, suddenly glad Cancerno was here, after all. “But he had a reason to be on the property, then?”

Cancerno hacked something up and re-swallowed it. Attractive.

“We hadn’t started the work on that house yet, but he knew it was coming, and he had the keys. Could be he went over to get a look, maybe think about what materials would be needed.”

“Well, that’s pretty damn important,” I said. Cancerno looked as if he couldn’t care less.

“That’s better beer than I remembered,” Draper said, sliding a fresh Moosehead across the table to me and dropping back in the booth. “I sell it, but I don’t drink it much. Might have to change that.”

I didn’t touch the bottle. “I need to know what that girl was to Ed.”

Draper raised his eyebrows. “That’s what the cops said to me. I can only tell you what I told them—I have no clue. I asked him last night when he showed up here, and he ignored me. Just said he didn’t kill her and asked for a drink while he figured out what he needed to do next. Told me to get my ass back downstairs because the cops would be looking for him soon and he needed me to deal with them. I’d hardly sent them away before you showed up.”

“So you’ve got no ideas at all,” I said.

He shook his head, his eyes sad. “Wish I did, Lincoln. Wish I did.”

“Who else was he close with?” I said. “Was there a girlfriend, anything like that?”

“He wasn’t seeing anyone.” This time Draper’s answer was confident. “Worked a lot and came in here and drank and watched baseball. That was really about it. The last couple weeks, he hadn’t even been in here.”

“He told me he went to the prosecutor about something, Scott.”

He frowned. “He went to the prosecutor?”

“Yeah.”

He shook his head again. “Can’t help you. Like I said, he’d been out of sight for the last few weeks.”

I was frustrated with the lack of help. I’d counted on Draper knowing more. I wasn’t sure if he was really this clueless or if he just didn’t want to let me know anything, which was also quite possible. It would be foolish to assume his old bitterness had been washed clean in twenty-four hours.

“He hung around with a guy named Corbett a lot,” Draper said, thoughtful as he sipped his beer. “One of Jimmy’s guys.”

I looked at Cancerno, who nodded. His glass was empty and he’d been looking at his watch.

“Mitch Corbett,” he said. “He was Gradduk’s boss on the work sites. An old-timer. Mitch is a good guy. Between his opinion and Scott’s, I actually felt good enough about hiring that son of a bitch Gradduk that I gave him a raise.”

I took a long drink, letting the cold beer soothe the anger that had risen with Cancerno’s words, then said, “Would Corbett know if Ed had a reason to be in that house the day it burned?”

Cancerno nodded. “Probably. If he’d had a legitimate reason, Mitch would’ve given it to him.”

“I’d like to talk to him, then.”

“To who? Mitch?”

“Yes.”

Cancerno smiled humorlessly. “Me, too, kid.”

I frowned at him, not getting it.

“Corbett hasn’t shown up for work in two days. And the son of a bitch won’t answer his phone, either.” Cancerno got to his feet. “Do me a favor, right? You talk to Corbett, you tell him he better give me a call within the next forty-eight hours if he wants to keep his job. I don’t have the patience for his shit on top of this deal with Gradduk.”

Cancerno said something to Draper before he walked toward the door, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I was thinking about Mitch Corbett with a sense of unease. His boss had delivered the news of his absence casually enough, as if Corbett had been known to miss a few days of work before. I didn’t like it, though. It came too close to everything with Ed.

With Cancerno gone, Draper turned to me. “Sorry about that. He came down here just ahead of you, wanted to see what I knew about Ed. He’s pretty angry about it all, and blaming me because I was the guy who sent Ed to him in the first place.”

“This guy Corbett,” I said, “you think he was pretty tight with Ed? Might know something about whatever Ed got himself into?”

Draper shrugged. “Better chance Corbett will know something than anyone else I can think of.”

“And you don’t think it’s strange the guy’s missing?”

“A little early to say he’s missing, Lincoln. Dude blew off work, is all.”

I nodded, but by now I was convinced I wanted to look for Mitch Corbett. When I got up, Draper followed me to the door. “I appreciate you coming down here,” he said. “I felt bad about the way things happened out there. We were all friends, once.”

“Yes, we were.” Draper had never been as close to me as he was to Ed, but we’d spent enough time around each other growing up. I stepped onto the sidewalk and leaned back, looking up at the old brick building.

“You going to keep the place going, Scott? It’s the last of the old neighborhood bars.”

He leaned against the doorframe. “Hell, yeah, I’ll keep it going. It’s all that’s left of what this neighborhood used to be—a bunch of Poles and Czechs who worked hard and drank harder. Three generations in my family, I’m not going to let it go under that easy.” He gazed up the street. “Clark’s changed, man. Changes more every year. The Hideaway stays the same.”

A flier stuck to the old wooden door read: SEE FOUR ON THE PORCH LIVE ALL SUMMER.

I pointed at it. “What’s Four on the Porch?”

“A band with one good-looking black girl who can sing and three drunk white guys with no apparent talents,” Draper said. “They’re fun, though.”

“So even the Hideaway’s not staying entirely the same. Live music is new.”

Draper gazed at the poster. “Yeah, it is. I’ve got to find some way to make money, though. Not enough of the old crowd left. Have to bring people in somehow.” He shifted his eyes to me. “And I guess you’re doing okay, with both of your businesses going. The gym and the detective thing.”

“I’m still afloat. That’s all I can ask for. How’d you know about the gym?”

He stopped looking down the street and met my eyes. “Ed told me. He kept tabs on you, as they say. Didn’t talk to you, maybe, but he knew your score.”

I gave that half a nod. “I had that feeling.”

My father’s funeral is on a Tuesday, and it rains. I have the week off for bereavement leave, but I’ve already decided to go back to work on Wednesday. Better to keep my mind occupied. The turnout is small, maybe because of the weather, or maybe because my father had been a fairly quiet man who’d kept to himself. My sister, Jennifer, is there, as is my father’s sister, his only sibling. Since flying in from New Jersey, she has spent most of her time telling me how proud of me my father was, how many times he called her and told her of this pride. I appreciate her effort, but it bothers me slightly, because I know she is not being honest. My father was proud of me. I know this. He would not talk of his pride, however—not to my aunt, to me, or to anyone else. It was not his nature. My successes are my own, and while he enjoys them, I know he wouldn’t speak of his pride in them. The quality I most respected—and envied—of the man was his humility.

We stand huddled together near the casket, staying close because it is hard to hear the voice of the minister over the rain pounding on the umbrellas. I don’t have one, and I’ve declined offers. After five minutes of it I am thoroughly soaked, my suit saturated, my hair plastered against my skull. I like the smell of the rain on the earth they’ve dug up to make room for my father’s bones. It is a fresh smell, one with some promise to it, and while it seems misplaced in this setting, I am grateful for it.

“Dear family and friends, please accept my sincere sympathy in your grief over the passing of Thomas Perry,” the minister says, struggling to make his voice heard. He is an older man, and he looks frail and ill. I wonder what it feels like to make a business of funeral speeches when you’re in such condition.

“Thomas was a devout man, one who knew his maker well during his time on earth, and I am sure Thomas knows Him even better today,” he continues. “We are aggrieved that we shall not see him again in his earthly being, except through the eye of memory. Today that memory brings sadness, because the pain of loss is so near. But I promise you that sadness will give way to the pleasant remembrance of him as he was in the fullness of his life, and someday, hopefully soon, the memories will bring a loving smile in place of an aching soul.”

While he speaks, my eyes wander. I do not wish to stare endlessly at the casket, and I cannot keep my eyes on the ground, as everyone else is doing. As I scan the cemetery, I become aware of a figure under a tree on a hill some fifty yards from us. He is the only person other than me who does not have an umbrella, but he stands tall, oblivious of the rain pounding at him. Surely, he cannot hear a word of what is being said, but he stands there anyhow, removed from the group, but present. He is a young man, average in height and build, and there is a familiar quality to him. I look closer, and he lifts his own face and meets my gaze. It is Ed Gradduk.

Four years have passed since I last spoke to Ed, and then it was in an interrogation room, him giving me cold eyes while I told him I couldn’t buy any more time—either he talked or went to jail. He went to jail. Stayed three years.

I stare in his direction for a while, then look back at the minister, who is concluding what he had promised would be a brief message. He said it would be brief because that was the unassuming nature of my father, but I think the ever-intensifying rain has played some role in the decision.

“With sure and certain hope, I commend Thomas Perry’s soul to the mercy of God, his creator. May he enjoy forever the company of God together with his loved ones who preceded him in death,” he says, and I think of my mother and smile for the first time in several days.

“In your loving kindness, please keep Thomas in your memory, as he kept you in his heart during his time with you,” the minister concludes. We file up to the casket then, one at a time, and drop a flower on its rain-soaked surface. I go last, and when I have laid the carnation on the casket, I turn my eyes back to the hill in time to see Ed Gradduk disappear over it, walking away without a word.

I call him that night and leave a message. He doesn’t call back. The next day I return to work.