Ed Gorman: Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool

The alibi was what I was worried about.

Married or not, the woman needed to come forward.

David came over. “I’m ready.”

“Just be sure not to tell the counselor here that we worked you over with a rubber hose.”

“Is he always this funny?” David asked me.

“This is the good stuff. Wait till you hear the bad stuff.”

“Two funny guys,” Cliffie said. “Two very funny guys.”

Rita drifted over. She apparently didn’t want to get anywhere near Cliffie.

Given her temper, she might have attacked him.

“You have a hankie, Mr. McCain?”

“Sure.”

She put the hankie to her pert, freckled nose. She had one of those faces doubly pretty because of its vitality.

“He didn’t kill her,” she said.

“I know.”

“But that damned Cliffie’ll railroad him.”

“We won’t let him.”

She looked at me. “Who’ll pay you, Mr.

McCain?”

“We’ll work it out.”

She glanced around the gravel parking lot. The cruisers. The Jeep. Then she looked at the two-story concrete block building. The bars on the windows. The bars never really get to you until you know somebody behind them.

“Will they hurt him?”

“No.”

“Cliffie hurt you that time.”

Couple years back Cliffie, half drunk, had a good time jabbing me with his nightstick. Hard enough to inflict real pain and draw real blood. I’d brought an excessive force suit against him, then agreed to drop it if he went on the local radio station and apologized to me. He did it. He made a joke of it in places. And he hinted that he’d been justified in doing it. But he did it and that was enough for me.

“Things have changed. The courts are a lot tougher on cops these days.”

“Even with Cliffie’s old man running the town?”

I nodded. “Even with that.”

“You want to know who killed her?”

“Who?”

“Molly. Molly Blessing.”

“Why would Molly kill her?”

“Because she was so jealous of Sara Griffin.”

“And you weren’t?”

“I don’t have the temper Molly does.”

I smiled. “C’mon, Rita.”

“No, really. Everybody thinks because she’s so quiet and everything, she doesn’t blow up like I d. But she came at me with a knife one night.

I thought she was going to kill me.”

“Funny, Molly said the same thing about you.”

“That I tried to stab her?”

“No, that you killed Sara.”

“That bitch.”

I nodded to the door. “I think I’ll go inside. Maybe I don’t trust Cliffie as much as I said.”

“That bitch really said I killed Sara?”

I gave her shoulder a little squeeze. “That’s what she said, Rita.”

“Bitch.”

“Yeah, I think you said that already.”

Mom and Dad got the Hawkeye tickets, which was fine because their wedding anniversary was coming up and Mom had never been to a college football game before and was a lot more excited about going than I would have suspected. I told them that Mrs.

Goldman would let them into my apartment and where they’d find the tickets.

“I forgot to bring her that chocolate-chip cookie recipe,” Mom said on the phone. “The one with the coconut in it. I’d better be sure and dig it out this time.”

The interrogation consisted of Cliffie controlling his natural instincts because I was there and David not saying much except, “I didn’t kill her.”

“If you didn’t kill her, then who did?”

“I think,” I said, “that’s sort of your job, isn’t it?”

“You stay out of this, McCain. He did it and you know he did it and I know he did it and he knows he did it. And I’m gonna stay here until he admits it.”

Or at least until the Hawkeyes scored.

“Shit,” Cliffie said, “I wanted to listen to the game. Have somebody bring in a radio.”

I don’t know about you but I want my villains to be arch villains. Fu Manchu, now there was a villain. Same for Batman’s nemesis, The Joker, and all the various nemeses Tarzan of the Apes ran up against.

Villains through and through.

You see all the great crime movies and the crooked, stupid cops in them are tireless in their villainy. Eye gouging? Brass knuckles?

Shin kicking? And that’s just for starters. But Cliffie was sort of a villain but not sort of a villain, too. He would suddenly lunge at David and shout in his face, “You killed her, you little punk! Now just admit it!” And then before David could say even a word-assuming, of course, that he wanted to say a word-Cliffie would say to his patrolman, “Turn that radio up a little, will ya?”

I’m pretty sure Fu Manchu never listened to a football game while he was interrogating somebody. Sort of spoils the effect, wouldn’t you say?

I was in the middle of repeating my 842 best reasons for letting David go when Cliffie jumped up in the air like the world’s oldest male cheerleader. His holster flapped against his leg. His badge jumped on his chest. His face got a deep, beery red. “Touchdown!” he cried, slamming his fist into his palm. “Kill those bastards! Kill those bastards!”

I hoped that wasn’t the cheer going through the stands.

I wouldn’t have wanted my Mom’s first Hawkeye game to be spoiled by an obscene cheer. (i could hear her now: “I never knew they used language like that at those football games, Sam. I was sort of surprised.”)

The score was tied at halftime and Cliffie had to make a decision.

He said, “He’s guilty.”

“Yes, I know you think he’s guilty. But that doesn’t make him guilty.” Then I said, “I’d like to talk to you in the hall.”

“Why?”

“Just because it’s sort of personal.”

“You’re wasting your time, trying all those legal tricks on me.”

“Two minutes is all I need.”

He looked at his officer, the narrow one leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his chest.

“Can you believe the shit this guy asks me to do?”

Cliffie asked him.

The officer grinned around his toothpick.

“He’s a ballsy bastard.”

“Hear that, McCain? “A ballsy bastard.” That about says it all.”

“Yeah, I heard. Now could I have two minutes of your time in the hall?”

So we went into the hall.

He said, “I’m not gonna let him go.”

“I didn’t want to resort to this but I don’t have any choice.”

I couldn’t believe he didn’t know what was coming but it was obvious he didn’t.

“I want to remind you about the last three murder cases we’ve had in this town.”

And then he knew what was coming. And I almost felt sorry for him.

“You arrested three people right off the bat for each murder.”

“I had good reason to.”

“Maybe. But each person turned out to be innocent.”

His cheeks were tinted a faint red now. He was not happy to be reminded of his past limitations as an investigator.

“They talk about that, Chief.”

“Talk about what?”

“How you’ve gone three for three.”

“Who talks about it?”

“P. In town here.”

“Bastards. I was just doin’ my job.”

“I’m sure I can talk Judge Whitney into approving bail.”

“Hell, yes, you can. She’d do anything to embarrass me.”

“This’ll keep you from embarrassment, Chief.

You’ll name him as a suspect but you’ll allow him to be bailed out. This’ll make you look a lot better than locking him up for six or seven days and then finding out he’s innocent.”

He scowled at me. “I just noticed somethin’.”

“What?”

“You never called me “Chief” before. Now you’re callin’ me that all the time.”