He looked back at me and blew the breath he’d been holding out the side of his mouth. “No problem,” he said. “It’s just that it’s been so goddamned long that I, ah... I don’t know, I guess I don’t remember how to, ah...”
“Don’t remember how to what?” I said.
He shrugged it off and tried a smile. “Never mind, forget it. So what’s a guy gotta do to get a beer around here this time a night, anyhow?”
“Come on,” I said. I hooked my arm in his and walked him toward my door. I looked up at him and grinned. “As this old cop I know once told me,” I said, handing him my key, “ ‘Just a matter of knowing who to ask, how to ask, and when.’ ”
Copyright ©2008 Ernest B. & Alice A. Brown
Comes Around
by Chris Rogers
He had the face of a murderer. Nothing else could account for my instant certainty, and I was dead certain. Jake McGrew had killed a fellow being in cold blood.
After twenty years on the job — eight with Homicide before I took retirement — I can get the scent of trouble up my nose like a bloodhound. Finding out who McGrew had killed shouldn’t be impossible. I took it as my personal challenge.
He comes around on our poker nights, supposedly doing a story called “Games People Play.” Claims he’s an essayist, whatever that means, and we let him watch. Came around last night, drew up a chair right beside me, watching how I played my hand.
Around our table, I can sum up each player in a word. Ed Colliard — he’s a joker. Can’t go five minutes without cracking a line. Guess every table has one. Betty Grable — yeah, that’s her real name, and yeah, we don’t mind that she’s female — Betty’s a thinker. Doesn’t talk much, but ask her a question about anything, doesn’t matter — railroads, baked hams, French poodles — she can tell you more than you want to know and pose philosophical suppositions that will numb your mind.
Then there’s Boots Reyes. He’s young, loudmouthed, foulmouthed, smart-mouthed — in a word, callow. That boy has lots to learn. Kevin Locke, he’s reverent. I don’t mean he’s a man of the cloth, although it wouldn’t surprise me to learn he’d been a preacher sometime in his past. What I mean is Kevin has an “oh, wow” attitude about life. He can be awestruck by a blade of Johnson grass.
And now there’s Jake McGrew, killer.
“Boots!” Ed interrupted the kid, who was rambling on and on about a new video game, “would you deal sometime this century? I swear, boy, you could talk your head off and never miss it.”
Boots dealt the cards. “I’m not taking your crap tonight, Ed. So leave off, already.” He cursed a blue streak under his breath.
“How long have you guys been playing poker together?” McGrew asked, smiling as he looked around the table at all of us.
Nobody jumped in to answer him. Finally, Kevin spoke up.
“I had to think a minute there, and now I’m wondering if it can be right. Has it really been nine years, Bradshaw?”
That’s me, by the way, Ford Bradshaw.
“Going on ten,” I said, “for you, me, and Ed.”
“Yeahhhh.” Kevin nodded. “You were still on the force, I had my vet practice, Ed owned the supermarket on Tenth Street—”
“I still own the store,” Ed said. “I just have a menagerie now.”
“Menagerie?” McGrew asked. Only a newcomer would ask.
“General manager, produce manager, meat manager — menagerie.”
Like I said, Ed can’t let a straight line just lie there. McGrew laughed politely. Most people do until they’ve been around Ed for a while. I’d give McGrew an hour.
“So you three are all retired,” he said, taking a small stack of note cards and a pen from his shirt pocket. He scribbled a few words on the top card and slipped it back into his shirt. “What about you, Boots?”
“Do I look like I’m retired?”
“I mean, how long have you been playing with the group?”
“A couple months is all. Somebody moved out of state—”
“Paulie Cade,” Betty said. “Moved to Florida, just as four out of every five retirees do who move out of state when they quit working. What draws them, I wonder? The hurricanes? The drugs? Swamps and alligators? The Disney World tourists? Why not retire to Georgia or Mississippi, where the living is easy?”
She dropped two cards face down on the table and wiggled a finger for Boots to give her two more.
“When did you join the group, Ms. Grable?”
“Just Betty.” Picking up her soda glass, she raised it toward McGrew. “I’m celebrating my paper anniversary with our poker club this very night.”
Maybe McGrew knew what “paper anniversary” meant. I didn’t, and nobody asked.
I drew three cards to a pair of sevens — no help — as I watched McGrew’s hands. How a person uses his hands can reveal plenty, if you think about it. Look at a diagram of the brain sometime, one that shows the parts of the body each area controls. You’ll see about the same amount of brain matter allotted for hand movement as for vocalization. In other words, your hands can say as much as your mouth. The first thing I noticed about McGrew, he’s left handed. Sinister, to use the old terminology. The Boston Strangler was a lefty. So was Jack the Ripper. The American Zuni Indians consider the left hand the hand of judgment.
Ed slid a five-dollar chip into the pot, raising it. Boots and Kevin folded.
“Most people these days who retire before they turn sixty,” McGrew said, “keep busy through consulting or ownership, like Mr. Collins, or go into another line of work.”
Kevin’s eyes grew round like Orphan Annie’s in the comic strip.
“Hey, that’s right! All three of us. I sold the practice, but the young fellow pays me a consulting fee just to keep my name on the door and drop by once a week. And Bradshaw, you’re still a cop, right? Just not on the force.”
McGrew looked at me. “Security guard? Private detective?”
“I find skips and runaways.” My hands remained still as I said it. Most liars, their hands give it away. Like Henry Kissinger, tapping his nose, thumbing his chin. Anybody could see he was pushing the truth around the way his hands were pushing at his face.
“Is that profitable?” McGrew scribbled on another card and slid it into his pocket.
“It’s satisfying.” This time the truth came easy. On the job, the satisfaction of jailing a perpetrator ended when I saw them right back on the street, thanks to an overburdened legal system. Privately, I don’t have to involve jails, lawyers, or judges.
I looked at McGrew’s hands and wondered what weapon he used. He raised his pen and pointed it at Ed the way some men would point a knife for an upward thrust, all four fingers wrapped around the shaft, thumb on top for leverage.
A jolt of excitement whipped through me like an electrical shock. It’s always like that when I close in on a case, but with McGrew I had only a hunch.
“You must know one another pretty well after ten years,” he said.
Ed shrugged. “I know Kevin can’t resist drawing to an inside straight and Bradshaw will bluff with a pair of deuces.” He laid down three sixes and raked in the chips. “That doesn’t tell me if they sleep with their socks on or what they do alone in the shower.”
McGrew smiled. He had a hustler’s smile, the kind of smile that convinces an old woman to part with her life’s savings, or a young one her virginity. Ted Bundy had a smile like that. So did Tom Parker, before I shot him through the right eye.
Parker, from a family with both money and power, had started his life of crime with several occasions of date rape and never served a day in jail. That gave him the brass to push the envelope. He kidnapped a young woman, kept her three days for fun and games, then dumped her in the Gulf of Mexico, which wiped away all evidence. The cops knew, the court knew, I knew, and only one of us had the mettle to give Parker what he deserved.