The World's Finest Mystery Part 20

"I need to know where you were."

Malone nodded understandingly. "I wondered when they'd get around to it." He smiled a slight, cold smile. "Suppose I tell you I was right here at home, alone, all night. What then?"

"Tell me what you did all night."

"Watched the fights on television. Drank too much. Pa.s.sed out here in my chair."

"Who was fighting in the main event?"

Malone shrugged. "Some Puerto Rican against some black guy, I think. I was sleepy by the time the main go came on; I don't remember their names."

"Neither do I," said Dell.

"What?" Dan Malone frowned.

"I don't remember their names either. But you weren't alone that night. That was the night I dropped over. We both drank too much. I fell asleep on the couch. Didn't wake up until after one o'clock. Then I put you to bed and went home. That was the night, wasn't it, Dan?"

The older man's frown faded and his face seemed to go slack. "Yes," he said quietly. "Yes, I do believe that was the night."

There was silence between them again. Neither of them seemed to know what to say next, and they could not look at each other. Malone stared into s.p.a.ce, as he had done earlier; Dell stared at the television, as if it had not been turned off. Only after several minutes did Dell drink the rest of his beer and put the bottle down. He rose.

"I'll be going now. You won't be coming back to work, will you, Dan?"

Malone looked thoughtfully at him. "No," he replied. "I'm thinking of putting in for retirement. My sisters in Florida want me to move down there."

"Good idea. You'd probably enjoy yourself. Lots of retired cops in Florida." Dell walked to the door. "Goodnight, Dan."

"Goodnight, Frank."

Only when he got out into the night air did Dell realize how much he was sweating.

The next morning, Dell typed up a summary of Dan Malone's statement, along with his own corroboration of the alibi. After signing it, he handed the report to Kenmare. The lead homicide detective read it, then pa.s.sed it to Garvan to read.

"You've thought this through, I guess," Kenmare said.

"Backwards and forward," Dell told him.

Garvan raised his eyebrows but said nothing as he handed the report back to Kenmare.

"I don't think the bra.s.s will buy this," Kenmare offered.

"What are they going to do?" Dell asked. "Suspend Dan and me? Open an internal investigation? On what evidence? And how would it look on the evening news?"

"The higher-ups might feel it was worth it," said Garvan.

"Worth it why?" pressed Dell. "What's the gain? The department's getting rid of Dan anyway; he'll be retiring."

"But you won't," Garvan pointed out.

"So? What have I done that the department would want to get rid of me?"

"Helped him get away with it, that's what," said Kenmare.

"If he did it," Dell challenged. "And we don't know that he did. All we know is that we can't find anybody else right now who did do it." He decided to throw down the gauntlet right then. "You guys going to let this report pa.s.s, or are you going to make an issue of it?"

"You didn't mention this alibi last night when we were talking," Kenmare accused.

"Maybe I had my days mixed up." Dell shrugged. "Maybe I thought it had been Monday night I had dropped in; maybe Dan had to remind me it was Tuesday."

"Maybe," Kenmare said. He looked inquiringly at his partner.

"Yeah, maybe," Garvan agreed.

"You're sure Malone's retiring?" Kenmare asked.

"Positive," Dell guaranteed.

Kenmare pulled open a desk drawer and filed the report. "See you around, Dell," he said.

"Yeah," said Garvan. "Take it easy, Dell."

Dell walked out of the squad room without looking back.

That night, when Dell came into the Three Corners Club and took his regular seat at the end of the bar, it was the owner, Tim Callan, who poured his drink and served him.

"I've missed you, Frankie," he said congenially. "How've you been?"

"I've seen better days," Dell allowed.

"Ah, haven't we all," Callan sympathized. He lowered his voice. "I'm really sorry about the young lady. Edie, was that her name?"

"Yeah, Edie." Dell felt the back of his neck go warm.

"I seen her picture in the paper and on the news. Took me a few looks to place her. Then I says to myself, 'why, that's the young lady Frankie used to bring in here. Always wanted the booth 'way in the back for privacy.' " Callan smiled artificially. "I remember that every time I loaned you the key to use the apartment upstairs, I had to make you promise to be out by midnight so's I could get the poker game started. And you never let me down, Frank. Not once. 'Course, we go back a long ways, you and me." Now Callan's expression saddened, genuinely so. "I'm really sorry, Frank, that things didn't work out between you and Edie."

"Thank you, Tim. So am I." Dell's heart hurt when he said it.

"They still don't know who did it?"

Dell looked hard at him. "No."

They locked eyes for a long moment, two old friends, each of whom could read the other like scripture.

"What was the name of that brother-in-law of yours charged with receiving stolen property?" Dell finally asked.

"Nick Santore," said Callan. "Funny you should ask. His preliminary hearing's day after tomorrow."

"I'll talk to the a.s.sistant state's attorney," Dell said. "I'll tell him the guy's going to be a snitch for me, that I need him on the street. I'll get him to recommend probation."

"Ah, Frankie, you're a prince," Callan praised, clasping one of Dell's hands with both of his own. "I owe you, big time."

"No," Frank Dell said, "we're even, Timmy."

Both men knew it was so.

S. J. Rozan.

Childhood.

S. J. ROZAN is the acclaimed Shamus and Anthony winning author of the Lydia Chin and Bill Smith series. She combines the serious purpose of the literary ethnic novels of the forties and fifties with the penetrating style and wit of the contemporary urban crime novel. With each book, her audience increases. She is already a major figure on the suspense scene; it's just that some people have yet to get the message. "Childhood" first appeared as part of the electronic anthology Compulsion.

Childhood.

S. J. Rozan.

I haunted the Maine coast that year as summer turned to fall, a restless ghost too real, footsteps too heavy on the wet, sinking sand, shape too solid moving through the fog. Long after it was over, I stood on the cliff, listening for cries long since silenced, searching the rocks and the tugging surf for floating, broken forms forever gone. I never told Ben, but over and over, maybe after dinner, maybe before breakfast, I found myself locking up my place, getting out the car. I made the long drive, six hours of highway and then the smaller roads, always knowing I had to go, always knowing I could do no good.

Those times, after, I turned straight for the sh.o.r.e; but that first time, when it started, I drove into town, parked in the sheriff's lot, went in to see Ben.

It was a long way to come, six states distant, but Ben and I went way back. We'd been in the navy together, both of us joining up at seventeen, both of us coming from Brooklyn, though I'd lived there not two years and Ben all his life. We met the first week in basic training and it turned out we served the whole three years together; same base, same s.h.i.+ps. Ben was as rock steady as I was explosive, those years; any trouble I managed to stay out of, it was because Ben was there, holding me back. The difference between us: Ben liked the navy, I hated it. After discharge, we both went back to New York, me to college and Ben to the NYPD, but Ben didn't stay long. The sea was part of him now, the way it was always changing and always the same, and after a few years he headed up to Maine. In the small coastal town of Phillip's Point he found an opening in the county sheriff's office. Now, twenty years later, Ben was sheriff.

When he'd called, I wasn't surprised. That was how it went with us, a call every six, eight months from the big wooden house with the porches and gardens to my apartment in New York where the trucks rumbled over the streets outside and the stars were invisible in the night-lit sky. We'd talk, saying nothing, and sometimes he'd invite me up and if I could I'd go, spend a weekend doing nothing in Maine. The only times I'd been on a boat and liked it since the day I left the navy were times in Phillip's Point with Ben.

"d.a.m.n tourists in the summer," he'd say when you asked how life was up there. "d.a.m.n rain in winter. d.a.m.n redneck hicks in this two-bit burg." Ben loved his town and he loved his job.

But what he'd said on the phone that night, the call that started it, was, "I need help."

I leaned back in my chair with the beer I'd opened before the phone had rung. "Guy climbs onto ten feet of fibergla.s.s, gets sunburned and soaked, catches two fish and calls it fun? d.a.m.n right you need help."

"No," Ben said, "real help. I need you to come up here."

This was different, his voice, his tone.

"What's wrong? Are you okay? Alice, the kids?"

"Yeah, they're fine. But I got a situation up here. I need someone from outside."

"You want me to come do a job?"

"Something like that, yeah."

I shook a cigarette from the pack. "I'm not licensed up there, Ben."

"I'll put in a word for you," he grunted. "With the sheriff."

That was late at night; early the next morning I was on the road, Joe Williams in the tape deck as the tired trees of late summer slipped past me on the interstate. I pulled into Phillip's Point midafternoon, parked on Main Street. Inside the blue-shuttered, whitewashed county hall, I introduced myself to the young deputy behind the desk.

The kid jumped up from his chair, all muscles and brush-cut helpfulness. "Yes, sir, Sheriff Martin's expecting you. Let me see if he's free." He stuck his head into the office behind him, said something, and came out with a smile, visibly relieved that he had no bad news for me.

Ben came to greet me, took me behind the desk. "I told him not to ask," he grumbled, closing the door on the sheriff's private office. "I told him, just bring you in." He pointed me to a worn leather armchair. Sun streamed in the open windows. "You must've flown pretty low," Ben said. "Or gotten up with the chickens." He pressed a speaker-phone b.u.t.ton. "Hey, Richie, see if you can scare up some coffee."

"Yes, sir!" Richie's voice crackled, attentive and efficient. Ben rolled his eyes.

"Chickens in my neighborhood sleep until noon," I said. "I told the Highway Patrol I was on a mission for the sheriff of Phillips County. They were impressed as all h.e.l.l and waved me through."

Ben snorted. Richie came in, two steaming mugs in one hand, a quart of milk and half a dozen sugar packets in the other. The coffee in one mug was pale, the other black. "You want milk, sugar, anything?" Richie asked me, giving Ben the light coffee, waving his offerings in my direction.

"No," I said. "Thanks." I took the mug he handed me. Phillips County coffee was the only good-tasting cop coffee I'd ever had.

Ben sipped from his mug, made a face.

"Oh, s.h.i.+t," said Richie. "Too sweet, huh? I'll get you another one."

"No, Richie, it's okay," Ben said.

"No, I can-"

"It's okay, Richie."

Richie stood for a moment, s.h.i.+fting from one foot to the other.

"Thanks, Richie," Ben said.

Richie grinned, lifted the milk at me again in case I'd changed my mind. When I shook my head he shrugged, turned, and left.

Ben sipped his coffee. "Three years a deputy," he said. "And every time that kid brings me coffee, it's too sweet." His chair creaked as he settled into it. Ben had put on some weight over the years, a comfortable guy in a comfortable place. "Listen, I wouldn't have called you-"

"-if you could've found someone who knew what he was doing, but you couldn't, up here in the middle of nowhere. I count on that to make a living. What's up?"

Ben drank his coffee, looked off over my shoulder for the words he wanted. "No," he said. "Really. When you hear... but I've got to do something here."

The two big windows in his office framed Main Street; beyond it, distant, the sh.o.r.e and the sea. Tourists in Jeep Cherokees and locals in rusted pickups rolled along; people walked the sidewalks in and out of the shade of the awnings at the hardware store, the beauty parlor.

"Little over a week ago, we had a kid killed," Ben said, sipping coffee, watching me. "Eight years old. Tom Rogers' son."

The cry of a gull floated in through the windows, answered by another, then a third. I s.h.i.+fted my gaze to the sky, tried to find them. This was what he'd meant, then, that he wouldn't have called me. In the long years since the navy, Ben and I had both married, and both had children. Ben and Alice's youngest son still lived with them in the big wooden house; their other two were grown and gone. My marriage had been wrong, and short, and the only good to come of it, our daughter, Annie, had died in a car crash when she was nine.