They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee

You’ll Be Wrong

The desk clerk grabbed me on the way up to my room at the Old Watermill and handed me a few sheets of fax paper. He reminded me that the inn was going to throw its weekly fish fry tonight. I thanked him, but told him I’d have to take a pass on the fried fish. Before parting company, I asked him to deliver two cups of coffee to the campus security officers parked across the street in the blue minivan. The clerk didn’t bat an eye and wondered if I might not have a message to deliver with the coffee?

I said I did. “Tell them I know how bad surveillance duty sucks. Tell them if they should feel nature call, to just piss into the empty cups.”

It was a real Hollywood gesture, but having been there recently, I figured I was excused. The clerk loved it. I didn’t imagine he got to do a whole lot of Hollywood material there in the land of fish fries. I slipped him a twenty for the coffee and future considerations. It was, after all, Jeffrey’s money.

I tossed the fax on the bed and headed straight for the shower. The jail stink came off in layers. As I washed, I went over my little conference with Dean Dallenbach. He’d been relatively civil and more understanding than I had reason to expect, but, in spite of my brave front, I was a bit unnerved by my visit to city jail and the dean’s office. I don’t know, maybe it was the town getting to me. I was beginning to think Riversborough was the kind of place that was best experienced on a picture postcard. There were probably lots of nasty things buried beneath the snow.

Larry’s cover letter read like this:

Klein-

Schmuck! It was the Boatswain case, not Hernandez.

If you said that up front, I could’ve had this shit for you almost immediately. Read between the lines and between the lines you can’t see. As you’re reading, think about why people you’re close to refer to this using Hernandez’s name. When you reach a conclusion, you’ll be wrong. Call me for the truth.

You owe me, baby,

Feld

Oh that Larry, he was such a charmer. Even when he did right, he made you want to poke his eyes out. And when Larry mentioned reading between the lines, he wasn’t kidding. Pages two and three of the fax were simply compilations of headlines from the three New York City dailies. Atop page two, there was a handwritten message from Feld advising me that the headlines first appeared in the papers between March 14, 1972 and January 4, 1973 and that they appeared in chronological order. This is what I looked at:

March 14, 1972-

Post BOY-NAPPED News RIVERDALE TEEN TAKEN

Times CARDIOLOGIST’S SON TAKEN

March 16, 1972-

Post RING FINGER, RANSOM NOTE

News RANSOM IN RIVERDALE

Times MACABRE NOTE RECEIVED

March 19, 1972-

Post FEDS BLOW IT News DELIVERY DISASTER

Times CAPTURE ATTEMPT GOES AWRY

March 22, 1972-

Post NEW FINGER, NEW DEMANDS

News GRISLY DO-OVER Times NEW DEMANDS

March 23, 1972-

Post SPOOKED News NAPPERS-NO SHOW

Times KIDNAPPERS REFUSE RANSOM

March 28, 1972-

Post HOPES FADE News GOING, GOING. .

Times FEDERAL AGENTS PESSIMISTIC

April 22, 1972-

Post HERO COP FINDS BODY

News. .GONE, BOY’S BODY FOUND Times TRAGIC ENDING

April 23, 1972-

Post COWARD’S WAY OUT-KIDNAPPER EATS BULLET

News KIDNAPPER SUICIDE ONLY FITTING

Times ALLEGED KIDNAPPER FOUND DEAD

April 28, 1972-

Post KIDNAP BOY BURIED-HERO COP PROMOTED

News BOATSWAIN BOY LAID TO REST TODAY

Times BOATSWAIN BURIAL TODAY

June 30, 1972-

Post HERO COP UNDER GUN

News POLICE TO PROBE CRUSADING COP

TimesINVESTIGATION IN BOATSWAIN KIDNAPPING

October 12, 1972-

Post FAMILY AFFAIR-KIDNAPPER’S BROTHER FOR MACHETE KILLING

News HERNANDEZ BROTHER UP FOR MURDER ONE

January 4, 1973-

Post HERO COP CLEARED News MACCLOUGH IS CLEAN

Times BOATSWAIN CASE CLOSED

The final page of the fax was a grainy photostat of a redacted NYPD document dated May 7, 1972. It was a formal complaint and request for investigation sent to the Internal Affairs Division of the NYPD located on Poplar Street in Brooklyn. The name of the officer requesting the investigation was blacked out as were all the names on the document. But one thing was clear, one police officer was accusing another of executing a suspect in a high-profile case. Given the date of the complaint and the headlines on the previous pages, filling in the redacted names became rather easy guesswork. Fazio had made the complaint against MacClough.

I was pretty sure I now had a grasp on everyone’s attachment to the Hernandez or Boatswain or whatever-you-wanted-to-call-it case. MacClough would never consider himself a hero for doing his job. Furthermore, John would consider himself a failure for getting to the boy too late. And even though he’d been cleared of wrongdoing, MacClough would see the investigation as a black mark, a scar on his reputation. I don’t think this was the type of thing he would discuss with anyone. As for my eternally pragmatic brother, his motivation for involving MacClough was apparent. If MacClough had been willing to risk so much for the Boatswain boy, a boy he had no obvious emotional ties to, then imagine what MacClough might do when trying to locate his best friend’s nephew. Jeffrey also knew that MacClough would look at this as a second chance. This time he might get to the boy before it was too late. The reason for the tension between Fazio and MacClough was palpable, and now, completely understandable.

So why was it, if I had such a strong grasp on all the players’ motivations, that I felt so uneasy? Because I couldn’t get Larry’s caveat out of my head: “When you reach a conclusion, you’ll be wrong.” Of course, if Larry had bothered to forward the actual newspaper articles along with the head lines, I might have felt a bit more secure in my analysis. But that wasn’t the way Larry operated. He needed to be needed. It’s why he did favors for me at all. It was sort of a dance we did that went back to when we were kids.

As I picked up the phone to do my part of the cha-cha there was a knock at the door. I put the phone back in its cradle and answered the door: “Who’s there?”

“I have come to show you what the night has brought.” Kira stepped shyly into my room. “I didn’t want to come.”

“Why did you?”

“My heart gave me no choice.”