Eureka (28 page)

I gave him a long stare and said, “You keep saying things that sound like you mean something else.”

He chuckled. “Nah, just a guess. You like to play just off the edge, don't you?”

“Like how?”

“Like coming up here, announcing your arrival, annoying a lot of leading citizens, then going right back at it after I tell you there's nothing to be learned. You take down two boys twice your size and give me the message in a paper bag.”

“Is that why you had your boys work me over?”

He looked out over the bay and sipped his lemonade before answering.

“My friend Brett Merrill once told me I should never make a wish out loud, there are people around who might believe me and make it happen. I do that. Something happens, I get a little pissed, maybe I say something like, ‘I wish a piano would fall off a tall building on that guy,' something like that. I don't mean it, I'm just bitching out loud. Next thing I know, a Steinway lands on somebody.”

“Lenny hits like a Steinway.”

“You do a pretty good job taking care of yourself. Playing the edge. That's why you're a sergeant when most guys your age are still wearing out their shoe soles on a beat out in the boondocks somewhere. I'm not criticizing, mind you. In my book it calls for a certain amount of admiration.”

I changed the subject suddenly. “You didn't tell me the victim in that car wreck at the overlook was Ben Gorman's son,” I said.

He gave me the hard eye and said, “You didn't ask.”

“It wouldn't have occurred to me.”

“Me either. It was a car wreck. A young man we all loved was killed. What's that got to do with anything?”

“It happened the night of the Grand View massacre.”

“Well, we didn't find the car until the next morning. Somebody coming up Cliffside spotted it.”

“That was some night.”

“It was the saddest night in my life,” he said. “I lost Buck Tallman and my godson, back-to-back.”

“He was your godson?”

“Ben Gorman is my best friend.”

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound . . .”

“Suspicious?”

“No. Unfeeling.”

“That's a decent thought. Thank you.”

“Is that what you meant by your life changing forever on the stone bench up there?”

“Isabel and Ben never got over it. Neither did I.”

“I think we saw her about a half hour ago.”

“Isabel Gorman? Where?”

I looked up the cliffside. “Up there. Dressed to the teeth. She threw some flowers down the side.”

He stared up at the overlook for several seconds and then nodded. “She does that once a week. Has for over twenty years,” he said, and there was a deep sadness in his voice.

Ski didn't say a word. He sat there with his hands on his knees, watching through eyes that revealed neither boredom nor interest. But he wasn't missing a thing.

Nobody said anything now. I looked back out in the harbor. The big cruiser was tied down at the end of the pier. Gorman was nowhere to be seen. The Duesenberg was still sitting there.

“So old Ben's going to give me the dodge again,” I said finally.

“I keep telling you, there's nothing to be learned about that dead woman up here.”

“Yeah, you keep telling me. You aren't trying to oil me, are you, Captain?” I said, smiling.

“I'd know better than to try.”

“Wouldn't do you much good this time,” I said.

“Oh? How come?”

“Ski?” I said, and the big man took two folded documents from his inside pocket, then laid them on the table in front of Culhane. He spread them apart with the flat of his hand and eyed them for a minute.

“Search warrants,” I said. “For all the banks. One gives us access to the bank records, the other to safe deposit boxes at our discretion. Moriarity got them from Judge Weidemeyer down in district court.”

He stared at the two folded warrants without speaking. A lot of things kneaded through his tough face. He shook his head ever so slightly, then he suddenly stood up. “I'm going to take a shower,” he announced.

“I'd like to take a gander at the public records,” Ski finally said. “Will that be a problem?”

“Nope.” Culhane didn't bother turning around. “Second floor, records department. Ask for Glenda, she runs the department. Tell her I sent you.”

With that, he got in his car. It made a U-turn, drove past the city hall, and turned right, toward the Breakers Hotel. Ski went up to City Hall. Me? I sat there by myself and stared at the Duesenberg.

CHAPTER 24

I'd been nursing my lemonade for about ten minutes when Rusty pulled up in the Packard. He gave the horn a toot, got out, came around and opened the back door, and wiggled a finger at me. I went over and got in, then he drove me around the corner and up three blocks to the front of the Breakers Hotel.

I followed him into the lobby, which was as quiet as a cemetery and as elegant as a tiara. It was about a hundred feet across the lobby to the French doors that opened onto the gardens, swimming pool, and a small outside café. The grass was so even I imagined a Japanese gardener on his hands and knees clipping it with a pair of fingernail scissors. Beyond all that, the Pacific Ocean graced anyone who could afford to stay in the place.

The front desk and the concierge's desk were pure mahogany, as was all the exposed wood in the room. The desk clerk and the concierge were both dressed in navy blue jackets with coats of arms on the left breast. About ten square miles of Persian rug covered hardwood floors. The chairs and sofas were plentiful, conservative, and expensive. To my left was a step-down bar, with about two dozen tables and a French slate bar on the far side. On the opposite side of the room from it was a café, with perhaps a dozen tables. The bartender was polishing a pebbled Waterford old-fashioned glass. He held it up to the recessed light behind the bar to make sure he hadn't missed any smudges, then stacked it on a small shelf behind him. In the restaurant, a waitress in a dark green uniform was arranging the sterling silverware on the linen tablecloths.

Nobody spoke above a whisper, if they spoke at all.

Rusty led me down a long hall, which was to our left and at right angles to the lobby. On the left side of the hallway, more French doors leading to the tennis courts. On the right were the rooms. The hall ended in a T, which was Culhane's suite. Rusty tapped on the door, then opened it with a key, and ushered me in. I heard the door close quietly behind me and I was alone.

A large room. New carpeting, expensive hotel furniture but hotel furniture nonetheless, more French doors facing the ocean. A fireplace in one corner, with a copper screen, and over it a large piece of what appeared to be a hunk of very faded, red driftwood mounted on the bricks. Beveled paneling stained the color of sun-blanched wood. Light-colored curtains and drapes. Against the right wall, an old rolltop desk with three framed photos on its flat top. A deep-piled white sofa about eight feet long, with matching chairs on both sides, facing the ocean. Bedroom and bath to the right and back toward the lobby. On the left, an alcove with a wet bar facing the living room, and behind it, a small kitchenette. A floor-model RCA radio in the corner adjacent to the desk with a record changer on top of it, which was playing Edith Piaf's “L'Etranger.”

It was a bright, cheerful suite of rooms with a spectacular view, and a surprise to me. I was expecting dark wood and masculine furniture, with a stuffed marlin over the fireplace and a gun rack in the corner. I was expecting a dirty shirt thrown over the sofa, ashtrays running over with cigarette butts. A glass ring or two on the wooden table. Then I remembered it was a hotel, decorated by the hotel's interior designer. The few personal touches and the photographs were as out of place as a waiter's thumb in a bowl of soup.

I walked over to the desk and saw what was apparently part of a leg cast. There was a small gold lieutenant's bar pinned to it. It was the only visible souvenir of his remarkable war record anywhere in the room.

I checked the piece of driftwood. It appeared to be off the stern of a boat. The black lettering, which was cut off by the shattered wood, said
Dool
. . . and under it
Prin
. . . Both were faded by sun and sea, and were barely legible.

“That's what's left of my old man's fishing boat,” Culhane's voice said behind me.

I turned. He was standing in the doorway that led to his bedroom, wearing a dark blue terry-cloth robe and scrubbing his hair with a white towel. He threw the towel over his shoulder and went behind the bar.

“Irish Mist suit you?”

“Doesn't get any better.”

“Straight up, one cube of ice?”

“That's a good guess.”

“It's my drink.”

He filled two highball glasses with more than generous slugs and dropped one ice cube in each. It was a little early for me but I wasn't going to pass up a glass of Irish whiskey.

“Tommy was a fisherman,” Culhane said, handing me my drink. “He and Kathleen Brodie came over from Doolin, County Clare. She was fifteen when they married.”

“When was that?”

“Eighteen eighty-four. They raced the stork all the way across the Atlantic. They were determined I'd be born on American soil and they just made it. I was born on Ellis Island in the physical examination clinic.”

“How'd they end up out here?” I asked.

“No fishing in New York City. So they bundled me up and headed across the country to this ocean. Fishing was all he knew. He hired out until he saved enough money to buy his first boat, called her
Doolin Princess
after my mom, and painted her bright red, Mom's favorite color.”

“I mean how did they end up in San Pietro?” I asked.

“Back in those days this was a fisherman's community. The natural bay, great fishing waters ten miles out there.” He waved vaguely toward the Pacific. “Hell, there used to be an icehouse just about where you're sitting, ice to keep the fish fresh until they got back on the Hill. So this is where they settled. We lived in a little shack up in the village, when it was called Eureka.”

“And you use your mother's maiden name instead of your father's first name?”

“That was his idea. He said one Tommy in the family was enough.”

He turned and held his glass up to the piece of wood.

“Here's to both of you,” he said.

“They're both dead?” I asked, joining the toast.

“Yeah. Tommy went out one day with his three-man crew. A heavy blow came up and we never saw him again. Couple of months later a guy down in Milltown who knew me saw that on the rocks. That's all we found. No other wreckage, no bodies. The Pacific has an ironic name. It can be damn unforgiving.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“He was okay, Tommy Culhane was. Good husband, good father, and one hell of a fisherman. Nothing breathing scared him.” He chuckled, and added, “Loved a good brawl as long as it wasn't over anything serious.”

“How old where you?”

“Eleven. My mom died two years later. In the state hospital, of pneumonia.”

I knew about institutions like that. My mother had spent two years in and out of such dismal places, ending up in a state hole jokingly called a hospital. No matter how you dolled them up, nothing changed. There were always the smells of Lysol mixed with feces lingering in the halls and rooms; always burly men in sterile white pants and shirts, who called themselves “attendants” and resolved “incidents” by bending fingers back or hitting places that did not bruise easily; who slaughtered the King's English but used long medical terms as casually as a preacher throws around cynical hypotheses like “God” and “Christ.” My mother's fingers were permanently crippled and her dementia was so deep that lethargy was a generous way of explaining her state of mind. She lay comatose for a month before she died of what was wryly diagnosed as pneumonia. I knew she was not comatose, I could tell by the way her eyes flicked briefly toward me. There was a momentary hint of recognition in that glassy stare when I went to visit her. I think she found some semblance of comfort in retreating into her own troubled and chaotic psyche. The last time I saw her she was skeletal and her gnarled fingers lay limp and useless at her sides. Truth be known, she died of starvation, which I learned is not an unpleasant way to die. For a few years after her death, my dreams were often haunted by the sudden intrusion of her mummified look and by the way her hand felt when I held it, like a bunch of twigs. I would awaken squeezing my own hand. Eventually these troubling images became less and less frequent but they never fully vanished.

And I thought about Brodie Culhane; about a thirteen-year-old kid left alone in a rough-and-tumble waterfront town like Eureka, a town without laws or morals; a kid growing up with a strong sense of justice in spite of it all, a sense of justice possibly tempered by expediency.

“What'd you do?”

He took a hard sip of his drink, let it roll around in his mouth for a second or two before swallowing it, and smiled. It was a fond smile, a good-memory smile.

“I became a stableboy.”

“You're kidding.”

He shook his head. “But I was the Gormans' stableboy,” he said rather proudly. “After the funeral, Ben took me up to meet old man Gorman. Mr. Eli took me by the shoulder and said, ‘I've got a job for you,' and led me to the stable. I had a small apartment over the stalls. I'll tell you, the old man could be a real pisser but he looked after me like I was a gold nugget. I was treated like family, rode to school every day in the shay with Ben, ate dinner with them at night. I even had a yarmulke for meals and holidays, but he had the buggy take me down to the Catholic mission every Sunday for mass.”

“How come he treated you so well?” I asked.

“My mom was their washerwoman. And I was Ben's best friend. Still am.” He went back into the bedroom. “I'll be about five minutes,” he said.

I walked over to the rolltop and looked at the photos. One was a tintype, obviously Culhane with his mother and father. Culhane looked to be about seven or eight, a tough-looking little boy in a hand-knit sweater and a cap pulled down above one eye. He was wearing knickers and one leg sagged down around his ankle. Even at that age there was defiance in his wary smile. His father was a big, hefty, dark-haired man with a robust smile, his arm resting on Culhane's shoulder, while his mother was a wisp of a woman no more than five feet tall, dressed in a long skirt and a sailor's pea jacket. In the background was the
Doolin Princess
.

The second photo showed Buck Tallman in the saddle of a big Appaloosa. Culhane was standing in front of the horse holding its bridle. A good-looking kid in his late teens or early twenties, whom I assumed was Ben Gorman, was sitting behind Tallman, his hands around the big lawman's waist.

The last picture was of Culhane standing with a young man who had one arm around Brodie and his other around the waist of a small woman. She looked to be in her early thirties, striking and beautifully groomed, with the dark hair and sharp features of a Jewess. Next to her was Ben Gorman. I assumed the woman was Ben's wife, Isabel, and the young man their son, Eli, who had died in the car wreck. From their dress, the picture appeared to have been taken in the early twenties. It was an intimate photograph; they were all hunched together and smiling warmly at the camera.

He returned to the room dressed in black pants and a lightweight plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up halfway to his elbows.

“Nice photo,” I said, nodding toward the picture.

“Isn't it though,” he said, and led me toward the French doors.

“Give you a start, brother?” Ben said. The two men rushed together, hugging and laughing like children. They walked briskly back to the house, both chattering away, cutting each other off with one story after another. Ben didn't talk about the future. He didn't have to.

“Eli and Isabel will be home in the morning,” Gorman said. “The kid's dying to meet you. You're his hero, Brodie.”

Culhane dreaded the meeting.

He was edgy when he and Ben had breakfast but tried to conceal it. They joked about the past, about kids who had grown up and moved on, about Delilah O'Dell and her infamous club. Ben drove them out to end-o'-track, and Brodie strolled back and forth trying to appear casual. He tried to roll a cigarette but his left hand was still stiff from a shrapnel wound and the tobacco fell out and was whisked away by the wind. He balled up the paper and stuck it in his mouth.

“Here comes the train,” Ben said gleefully. “Come on, come on.”

He took Brodie by the arm and they walked up to the makeshift station as the train rounded a bend and appeared through a thicket of pine trees. As the big engine hissed and puffed to a stop, he saw the kid on the platform between cars, looking through the steam, seeing his father and waving, and then, behind him, the tiny, dainty figure of Isabel, one hand holding her hat to keep it from flying off. The kid helped her off the train as Ben and Brodie went to meet them.

Time had been more than generous to her.

Or perhaps his memory was tainted.

He remembered Isabel as a tiny voice in the dark, the words chiseled in his brain. “First love is forever.”

He smiled at her, stepped close, kissed her on the cheek, and gave her a hug. He could feel her heart quicken the way it once had so long ago and for a moment he was swept back to the greenhouse with her beside him in the dark on a horse blanket.

He stepped away from her. “You haven't aged a minute in twenty years,” he said in a voice that the years and the Marines had toughened.

“Irish blarney,” she said with a smile and, turning to the youth, said proudly, “Brodie, this is Eli, your godson.”

He was taller than Brodie and shorter than his father. A husky kid in good shape: dark hair, brown eyes with a touch of mischief in them, and a solid grip when Brodie shook his hand.

“I feel like I know you already,” the kid said, and looked at the bars on the shoulders of his uniform. “We followed the war from the day it started, wondering where you were over there. They didn't tell me you were a captain.” Brodie could tell the kid was impressed.

“Last-minute thing,” he said. “They upped me just before I got discharged. The pension's fatter. You play baseball like your old man?”