Dismas, that was his name. Dismas smiled halfway and said his major concern at the time had been stopping those dominoes from falling, whatever that meant, although Father and the sergeant both seemed to get it.
“Well, your friend here, Dismas, is too modest. He was quite a force for moderation back then. It took some courage for a policeman, and a black one, to take that kind of stand.”
The sergeant seemed a little embarrassed and sipped at his coffee, but not so loudly. “Mostly self-preservation, I’m afraid,” he said. “The trend of importing southern gentlemen for the police force wasn’t going to do my career any good.”
“So what were you two guys doing together?” Dismas asked.
Father smiled, remembering. “The activist days… sometimes I long for them again.”
He had never really been a radical, of course. An activist, yes, but within the system. The kind of man he still was-working for the homeless now, or getting some of the businessmen in the parish to hire boys from the projects.
“A few of us were volunteered to assist Father, that’s all. He had an idea-who knows, it might have worked-that there should be a gun drive where every unregistered piece could be turned in and the citizen would get an immediate amnesty, no questions asked.”
Father shrugged at Dismas. “I’m afraid we were all a little naïve back then.”
The sergeant came to Father’s defense. “It didn’t do all that bad. I was surprised we got the response we did.” He turned to his friend. “Got about a hundred and fifty weapons city-wide.”
“One hundred and sixty-three.”
Father and his memory. Rose was proud of it. She walked over to the pitcher and picked it up. The sergeant held out his cup for more.
Father believed, he was saying in his humble way, that it was better to try things and fail than not try at all. They didn’t know it wouldn’t work until they tried it.
“I know,” Sergeant Glitsky replied, “back then anything seemed possible. The times they were a-changin’.”
Father sat back in his heavy chair, sighing. “Ah, yes, those changin’ times. Back then Reagan was governor, now…”
All the men laughed.
“Thanks, Rose, a little more, please. Now what brings you gentlemen to the church’s door this fine morning?”
Darn! It was more about the Cochran boy’s death. And Father had seemed to be getting over that the last day or two. At least his appetite had returned. Perhaps the accident with Steven had forced him to turn his mind to more immediate problems, but that’s how life was, wasn’t it? One thing after another.
She put the pitcher down and went back to her dusting. There was some talk about Dismas hearing Father’s confession, but that didn’t make any sense, then Father was talking about Eddie coming by with that problem.
“When was that, Father?” the policeman asked. “Do you remember?”
“Actually, he came by twice. Once, I believe it was the Wednesday before… before he died. As I mentioned to Dismas the other day, one of his co-workers had said something about not having to work for very long, that he and Mr. Polk wouldn’t need much money pretty soon. That he, Eddie, didn’t need to worry about building up the business again.”
Father came forward now in his chair. “Eddie was a very smart kid. He put a few things together and came up with the idea that Polk was going to do something illegal-he didn’t know what. So he came by here and wanted my take on some options he’d worked out. But at that time he really didn’t know much, so he left pretty unresolved. Anyway, when I saw him the next time-”
“And when was that?”
Father looked out the window, trying to remember. “If I’m not mistaken, that was Sunday.”
Rose frowned, trying to remember something. Lord! It was hard always remaining a silent fly on the wall. But then she saw Father look at her and smile. She lit up with contentment. With his memory, he was undoubtedly right, and that was the end of it.
“In any event”-he turned back to the others-“he had kept on kind of pushing Alphonse to say specifically-”
“Alphonse? The employee was Alphonse…” That seemed to excite the sergeant. Rose was forgetting to dust.
“Yes, I think that was the name. Anyway, evidently Alphonse wasn’t too bright and said something about drugs.”
“Well, excuse me, Father, but it’s not clear to me where you come in.”
She knew this was a hard question for Father. She knew where he came in-for Eddie, for two dozen or more other people, really for anyone who asked. But how does he tell the sergeant without sounding like he’s bragging?
“Oh, I think Eddie just wanted someone to talk to about it.”
“About what?”
She was getting a little annoyed at the sergeant. He didn’t have to push-Father would tell him.
“What he should do, I guess.”
“This is what he was telling me,” Dismas said to his friend, “at the Shamrock.”
Father nodded sadly. “You had to know Eddie. He was”-he paused, then went on a little more quickly-“he was kind of like all of us were back in the sixties. Thought it was his business to be involved. That if he just stuck his head in and pointed in the right direction, people would see it. He would go and talk to Mr. Cruz-you know him?” Both men nodded. “And see if there might be some way to get back his business for a period of time while Army-Eddie’s company-rebuilt. Then in the meanwhile, if that happened, he thought he had a chance of talking Polk out of it”-he paused-“out of doing something wrong, something that might hurt him.”
Now Father hung his head. “So he asked me about it, and I”- his eyes turned back to the room, pained now-“I, wizard counselor that I am, said he might as well go ahead, that he didn’t have anything to lose.”
Silence. He didn’t need to add-nothing except his life.
“One more thing,” Hardy was saying as he got into his car. “Last night I remembered another thing Cruz had lied to me about.”
“Cruz? Oh yeah, Cruz.” Glitsky was late for another appointment, not at his most attentive.
“I asked him about the scene-his parking lot-what shape it had been in. He told me it was pretty bad.”
“And it wasn’t?”
“No, Abe, wrong point. How could he have seen it? His boy, secretary, whatever, told me it was cleaned up by the morning.”
Glitsky thought a moment “Maybe he saw it on the late news, ran down to check it out.”
“Who called it in?”
Abe rolled his eyes to the still-clearing sky, reached into his car and handed something over the roof to Hardy. “You coming down for the Polk interview? One-thirty?”
Hardy nodded.
“So study the report between now and then and bring it back with you.”
Hardy took the folder.
“But as you’re going through it, checking out Mr. Cruz, say two words to yourself every couple minutes, would you?”
“What’re those, Abe?”
“Alphonse Page.”
Chapter Twenty-two
MATTHEW R. Brody, III, was the managing partner of Brody, Finkel, Wayne & Dodd. The firm had twenty-eight associates and the entire fourteenth floor of Embarcadero I.
Brody, forty-one, stood six feet four and had lately begun using Grecian Formula on his thick head of (now) black hair. He wore a charcoal pin-striped three-piece suit, the coat of which now hung on the gilt rack inside the door to his office.
His face still looked as young as he wished his hair did, with a wide but shallow forehead, a patrician nose, a strong chin. The only moderately distinctive thing about his looks, and it wasn’t much, was his upper lip, which was too long by a centimeter. He would have worn a mustache-did, in fact, while he was in school-but his wife had told him it made him look foreign, so he’d cut it.
(It was one thing to shoot hoops with blacks and have a beaner roommate, she’d told him after he’d passed the bar, when she’d decided to marry him, but another altogether to look like a successful attorney.)