Ed Gorman - Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

“Nope.”

“How come?”

I shrugged. “Just don’t is all. Couldn’t tell you why. Just a sense I got.”

“Do you usually guess right?”

“About twenty percent of the time.”

He laughed. Then gave me a full rich phlegmy minute of a cigarette cough. He said, “I didn’t kill her. I sure thought about it when her brother started shaking me down, though.”

“He was shaking you down?”

“Nobody told you?”

“No.”

“Hell, he was shaking all of us down. I got pretty mad and threw him around one night.”

“When was this?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“You talk to Karen Hastings about it?”

“Yeah. She got real mad. Or pretended to, anyway. Told me how much she hated her brother. How she’d traveled with him with his magic act. He’d do the divorce detective routine. Get her in bed with some rich old bastard, hide behind the curtains and take snapshots of them. And then sell the pictures to the guy for a lot of money. She was honest enough to say that she hadn’t minded living that way for several years but then she just wanted out. That’s when we met her. That’s why she agreed to the setup we had. She thought it would get her away from her brother.”

“He told me he couldn’t find her.”

“Bullshit. He’s been out here from day one. She said he had a lot of nasty things going on the side in Chicago but that when he’d run out of money, he came back here and got some from her. Then recently he got the idea of shaking all of us down. Murdoch tells me the little guy hired you?”

“He told me he wanted me to deliver a package. To a woman. That’s all he told me.”

“You ever deliver it to her?”

“She was dead before I got to her.”

He lay his head back on the pillow. For the first time he looked like a sick man. Drained. Weak. “I don’t think my life was supposed to turn out this way. I was always supposed to be the hero. The good-looking football star. Now I’ll be a creep to everybody.”

“Maybe not to the people who matter to you.”

He smiled. “You gonna go ‘Dear Abby’ on me, McCain?”

“Nah. It’s too early in the day for that. I only go ‘Dear Abby’ after a couple of beers.”

I was in court for two hours. My client had been charged with shoplifting. He was seventy-six years old.

Judge Frank Clemmons said, “Sid, what the hell’re we going to do with you?”

There were only four people in the pews. One of them gasped when Clemmons, who was nearly as old as Sid Cosgrove, said “hell” in court. The other three laughed. Clemmons fixed them with the evil eye.

“Sid, now I’ve looked into your Army pension and your social security and your savings account and for the life of me I can’t figure out why you shoplift. You’re not rich but you’re set up pretty good. You don’t have any reason at all to shoplift. Now the first three times you got caught, I’m told that the store just let you make restitution. But you know how Ken Potter is, especially when he’s having a bad day with his rheumatism. Well, looks like you caught him on one of them bad days, Sid, because here you are in court. Now what’ve you got to say for yourself?”

“I just like to have a little fun.”

“That’s your defense? That you like to have a little fun?”

“Sure. I sit out to the danged nursing home all day with nothin’ to do. So every once in a while I walk into town and have myself a little fun. They all know I shoplift by now. So it’s even more fun. See if I can grab somethin’ without them catchin’ me.”

“Well, you’ve been caught four times. That’s not a very good record.”

“Yeah, but it gives us all somethin’ to talk about at suppertime. Instead of hearin’ the same war stories over and over again. Or lookin’ at pitchers of everybody’s grandkids or great-grandkids. Or listenin’ to everybody bitch about their aches and pains. We’re old—seems logical that we’d have aches and pains. What’s the point in complainin’ about ’em?”

“So you shoplift to sort of entertain yourself?”

“Most fun I’ve had in years. People see how old I am and they expect me to fall over dead any minute. So it’s fun to show ’em I’ve still got the stuff.”

Sid made a pretty good case for himself. It was a pretty unique defense and you could see that Judge Clemmons was enjoying himself except when he looked out and saw Ken Potter the dime store owner glaring at him. I would say in fact that Sid was well on his way to becoming a folk hero except that he blew it by falling asleep right then and there. Just dropped off to slumber-land with no warning. And talk about your wall-rattling snoring. Folk heroes aren’t supposed to do that. And it says so very plainly in the folk hero book of rules. At least it did last time I looked.

I was standing on the courthouse steps, Sid’s niece having taken him back to the rest home, when a voice behind me said, “I would’ve put him in jail.”

“Sure you would’ve,” I said when she stood next to me.

“At least for seventy-two hours.”

“Sure you would’ve.”

“Well, at least forty-eight.”

“Not even twenty-four.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“First of all, the jail wouldn’t know what to do with anybody that old. And second of all, even as mean as you can get, you’re not that mean. Well, not usually.”

She gave me one of her rare smiles. She was an undisclosed fifty-something. And still a damned good-looking woman. Hand-tailored business suits, white scarves at the neck, dark hose, one-inch heels, just a touch of gold at the wrist. Standard operating gear for Judge Esme Anne Whitney. All the attire bought, of course, in New York City, which she escaped to three or four times a year.

The day was so ridiculously gorgeous I wanted to run around in circles and give out with Indian whoops. Like a little kid. Maybe roll around in piles of autumn leaves. And then later carve out a jack o’lantern.

“They’re all friends of mine and they’re all ruined,” she said.

“Yeah. I know.”

“I talked to Peter Carlson earlier today. He seems to think that when they find the killer that this’ll start to fade. I felt very sorry for him. But they were so stupid. This was like some fraternity boy prank or something. Keeping a woman, the four of them. My God.” She shook her sculpted head. Great graying hair cut short to emphasize the features of her face. “I know this’ll sound pompous, McCain. But I want to help our little town. If you’ve seen any of the state papers, we’re the laughingstock. ‘Peyton Place Comes to Iowa.’ We don’t deserve that.” She gave me a second rare smile. “Believe it or not, I realized when I saw all those nasty innuendos in the papers that I love this little town. It’s not very sophisticated and there isn’t much to do and the Sykeses haven’t spent a dime on anything remotely resembling culture—but the people are decent and the town’s a nice, safe place to live.”

I looked at her and laughed. “Why, Anne Esme Whitney, I can’t believe it. You’re actually sentimental about our little town here.”

Then she did it. Dipped into the small slash pocket of her custom-tailored suit and pulled out a rubber band. I wasn’t quick enough. She got me on the nose. She loved shooting rubber bands at me, the way Sid liked shoplifting I suppose. Made me really look forward to my own years of senility.

“It’s up to you, McCain.”

“To me? What’s up to me?”

“To find the killer and get this part of it over with at least.”

“Believe me, I’m trying.”

“I’m going to say something and you’ll probably disagree with me. But at least think about it for a while.”