“Well,” Fidge said, “you’ll be pleased to know Two Dicks has been sick the last couple days. He’s hardly been in the station.”
“Let’s hope it’s nothing painless.”
Fidge and I shared a few bad and ugly stories about Two Dicks. I know the saying is, “the good, the bad, and the ugly,” but there were no good stories about the man.
Fidge had made me a copy of all the documents in the case file so we were looking at the same information while we talked. He recalled the case as if it had happened yesterday instead of eleven years ago. The gist of it went like this: A young fellow hanging out on the beach had looked into Ileana Corrigan’s beach house and saw her murdered.
“We got the witness’s name?”
“It’s all in there,” he said, pointing toward the copied file in front of me, “along with a copy of the report on the stolen Welrod assassin’s pistol, which came nine years after the murder. Like I said, the Welrod wasn’t the murder weapon.”
“Where was the eye witness?”
“About a hundred yards or so out from the house, he had binoculars he used to look out to sea before it got dark. He had fallen asleep on the sand and saw the murder after he woke up. He picked Eddie Whittaker out of a group of pictures. The time of the murder, the witness said was 8:45 at night, and that jibed with the M.E.’s report. An attendant working in a gas station also pointed to Eddie’s picture as having bought gas a little after nine that same night. The station was an old one with a security camera the owner failed to use. The man working the station alone said Eddie paid cash. He remembered because so few folks used cash. The police picked up Eddie. Both the witness to the murder and the gas jockey picked Eddie out of a lineup.
“Two days later, Eddie was released after the D.A. dropped the charges. Eddie’s claim that he had driven up from Long Beach to have an dinner in Buellton was substantiated by a man and his wife who had dined at the same restaurant. A retired middle school principal who lived in Buellton also stepped forward to say he saw Eddie in the restaurant between 8:30 and 9:30.”
“Did Eddie have a credit card transaction or maybe a debit card he used for the dinner? And what about buying the gas? Oh, you said he paid cash for the gas.”
“No dice,” Fidge said. “I verified Eddie Whittaker had gotten pissed at his credit card company, cut up his card and closed the account. He had an application pending at a different local bank, his grandfather’s bank, to get a new credit card. He didn’t have a debit card. They weren’t as popular back then as they are now. So, he was using cash for everything during those few days.”
“That was convenient. That way there would be no paper trail as to where he was during the critical hours.”
“Convenient if he murdered his fiancee. Serendipitous, if he didn’t,” Fidge said. “Nothing else pointed anywhere then and nothing’s come up since. No con or suspect in any other case has offered anything about it to bargain for a better deal. It would seem the murderer has kept his exploits to himself. And you know how rare that is.”
It was rare. Thugs often brag to other thugs about their crimes, as if such behavior constituted something to brag about in the first place. And, later, the listening thug trades that knowledge to bargain with the police for a pass on some lesser charge.
“I understand Ileana Corrigan was pregnant when she was killed. Was a determination made that Eddie Whittaker was the father?”
“When I met with General Whittaker, the general insisted we make that determination. DNA testing was still gaining stature, but it was established. We would have anyway, particularly when Eddie quickly became a suspect, as it could have gone to motive. He was the papa.”
“Bail?”
“Eddie Whittaker had a clean record so his attorney argued he posed no threat to the community. The issue of special circumstances was questionable and the D.A. decided not to pursue that. The bail was set at one million. The general posted the bond. Eddie Whittaker walked.”
Fidge offered another beer but I waved him off, then he said, “Have another, there’s something I wanna kick around.” I nodded and he pulled us two more, twisted the cap off mine, and passed it over. “You heard Salt ate his gun last weekend?”
“I read the piece in the paper. Did any of you pick up on him getting … I don’t know, funny, depressed, like that?”
“No. His partner, Washington, the black guy they call Pepper, had no idea, and if a guy’s partner doesn’t know”-Fidge interrupted himself with a shrug.
“Salt was divorced wasn’t he?” Fidge nodded. “Been a few years, right?”
He nodded again. “About as long as you and Helen. Why?”
“Just trying to get a handle on it.”
“Why is it us cops lead the league in divorce, alcoholism, and suicide?”
“Long hours,” I said, “lots of stress.”
“Hell, hedge fund managers deal with that. Course they make big bucks to salve the shit they handle.”
“I think it’s that cops deal with the crud all the time,” I said. “Lose perspective. Begin to think everybody’s a lowlife. Truth is only a couple percent of folks are rotten, but cops deal almost totally within that couple percentage. It starts to look like the whole world’s that way. You never get ahead of the cases, hell you never even catch up. You keep locking up the bad guys and the world keeps sending more.”
“But I don’t feel that way, Matt.”
“Course not. You lead the league in happiness.”
“Brenda. You know. It’s her. Her and the kids, they keep me rooted.”
“I don’t know why she puts up with you, but I sure hope she stays on the job.”
“Everyone said Salt’s wife always nagged him to can the job. She hated him being a cop. Wanted him to, I don’t know, drive a hack. Be a Wal-Mart greeter. Whatever. He couldn’t do it. He loved being a cop. So do I. Why do we love it? It’s a crummy job. The scum don’t like us. The citizens think we’re all on the take or hassling them for no reason. Every time we get into it with some piece of shit, the folks yell police brutality. The attorneys treat us like we’re idiots. The rules are tilted in favor of the crooks. Why in the hell do we love the job?”
“For all those reasons,” I offered as if I really knew. “Cops like to buck the system. Fight the odds. The thin blue line and all that shit. You hang onto Brenda, she’s aces.”
“Yeah,” Fidge said. Then he shook his head and raised his bottle. “To Salt. Rest in peace.”
“To Salt,” I repeated. “Let’s hope he went somewhere the scum can’t get in.”
“So, how’s the writing business? You got something new coming out soon?”
“In a couple of months. My publisher’s bugging me to get through the proof. I shouldn’t have taken the job from General Whittaker. I went there planning to turn him down.”
“What happened?”
“The old man’s a master strategist. He left me standing in the corner holding a wet paintbrush. I don’t know. In the end, as a soldier he did a lot for us. It could also be because I’m a dumb fuck. I guess that tells it best.”
“Why’s your publisher pressing you?”
“The way it works, the publisher pressures my agent. My agent pressures me. Everyone with a piece wants me to get the next book out.”
“Deadlines,” Fidge says while shaking his head. “Just like at the department, the suits upstairs keep pushing.”
“This is the last book I’m doing for him or any of the big name publishers. They’re not bad people, it’s just the publishing business has left them clinging to a leaky boat. Today’s book buyers are asked to pay too much because of all the layers that stand between the author and the reader. I’m going to start self-publishing. I’ll use a work-for-hire publisher so I can control the rights to my own books. That way I can set lower prices, make a good living and protect my readers from getting ripped off.”