William Diehl: Eureka

Delilah and Eli are friends, have been for years. Not social friends. Eli had never been to Grand View, but they talked on the phone once a week or so, about Eureka, about Riker. Delilah grabs her mink, wraps herself in it, and goes down. Raymond, Eli’s chauffeur, holds the door for her and she gets in the backseat. Raymond wanders off in the dark.

Eli looks frail; even in the darkness of the car she can see the toll the shooting has taken on him. Six months and he is still mourning. Will always mourn the loss of his grandson. But his eyes glitter in the gloom. The window is cracked slightly and smoke from his cigar wisps through it.

“Does the cigar bother you?” he asks. Always the gentleman.

“Don’t be silly,” she says and lights a cigarette.

“There’s nobody I can trust as much as I trust you, Del,” he says. There is something in his voice, a cruelness she has not heard before. Anger, yes, but not cruelty.

She says nothing.

“The young girl, Wilma? You are protecting her, aren’t you?”

Delilah doesn’t answer at first. Then she slowly nods.

“She’s not one of my girls, Eli. She does some work around the place and I pay her a salary, but she stays under cover.”

“She meant a lot to young Eli, didn’t she?”

Delilah nods. “She’s a decent young woman. Just got mixed up with Riker. Those things happen.”

“I have a plan,” the old man says.

“What kind of plan?”

“To get rid of Riker once and for all.”

Delilah just nods, wondering where he is heading with this.

“They call the son of a bitch ‘the Fisherman’ because he kills people and drops them at sea for the fish to eat. He probably doesn’t do the killing himself, his kind never do. They have scum who do it for them.”

Delilah still doesn’t say a word.

“Supposing it appeared that he killed Wilma?”

“Kill Wilma!”

“I said ‘appears.’ ”

Delilah stares at him, at the tip of the cigar glowing in the dark.

“You want to frame Riker?” she say cautiously.

“He lives on his boat. I hear he drinks heavily. Drunk almost every night…”

“You want to frame him,” she says, and it is not a question.

He quickly outlines his plan.

Delilah sits quietly for a minute.

“Brodie won’t buy it, Eli. Brett Merrill won’t either.”

“I know that. We need somebody else to do it, somebody who’ll pull it off without a hitch, so nobody ever knows. Wilma can disappear, go anywhere she wants. I’ll arrange for her to get a new license, a new identity, and make life easy for her for the rest of her life.”

Delilah is quiet again. A long minute passes.

“This is a very risky thing.”

“I know that, my dear.” His voice is the voice of the crafty old fox. The man who outfoxed her father. Age and illness had wasted his body but not his brain.

“You want me to set this up?”

“No. Just find the right man. I’ll do the talking. Only the three of us will ever know. When I die, I want to know we are rid of Riker forever.”

“Let me think about it,” she says after a little thought.

Two nights later she comes to his house. They sit in his library.

“Do you know Eddie Woods?” she asks.

“I met him when he first came on the force. And his friend…”

“Dave Carney. Woods saved Brodie’s life.”

“I know all about that.”

“Woods is from Boston. A tough street kid. After he got out of the Marines, he was headed for trouble. Carney was a Boston cop. He and Woods served in Merrill’s regiment together. They became friends. Carney was married, had two kids. But he had heart problems and the Boston police retired him early. Not much of a pension for a man with three mouths to feed. When Brodie called Woods and asked him to come on the force, he brought Carney in, too. You know Brodie. Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

The old man nods.

“When he first came here a year or so ago, Eddie used to come by the place every once in a while. Then he started seeing some young girl from down in Milltown. On the sly.”

“Is that important?”

“Woods may need a witness. Without a body, it will be hard to convict Riker.”

“I see.”

“And he may need Carney’s help.”

“That’s a lot of people…”

“You, me, Eddie, Dave, Wilma, and the girl. Six people.”

“I’ll make it profitable for them all.”

“You’ll have to ask him, Eli. Woods is in awe of you. If the idea is presented by you, and he thinks it will help Brodie clean up the town…”

She lets the sentence die.

“Will you set up the meeting with Eddie Woods?”

“Tomorrow night.” Delilah nods. “Just the three of us to start with…”

“It worked like a charm,” Delilah said. “Woods worked out the details. He and Dave spent two months stealing blood from the hospital, a little bit at a time. They grilled Lila Parrish until she had her story down pat. Carney watched Riker like a hawk, knew every move he made. Carney’s payoff was a trust fund for his wife and kids. He knew his ticker wouldn’t last long. Eddie didn’t ask for a dime. But after it was over and Fontonio took over for Riker, Eddie knew he had to take him out, too. Eli set him up in business and gave him twenty thousand dollars to get started.”

“And Lila Parrish?”

“She went to college down in San Diego, on Eli’s tab.”

“And then Eddie married her,” Bannon said.

Brodie is getting tired, Bannon thought. The flash is drifting out of his eyes and his shoulders are beginning to droop. Or maybe just thinking about that night again sapped everything out of him.

“You figured that out, too, huh,” Culhane said.

“And you didn’t know?” Bannon said to Culhane.

Brodie didn’t answer.

“You handled the payoffs,” Bannon said to Delilah.

She smiled. “You had that one right from the start,” she said.

“You were on the right track,” Brodie said. “But I kept telling you, you were after the wrong dog. I figured it was Guilfoyle who killed Wilma. You were the one who nailed Riker.”

“Actually it was Ski who figured it out, lying up there in the hospital.”

And Bannon thought: It was Ski, too, who had wired for young Eli’s birth certificate and figured out that Eli Junior was Brodie Culhane’s son. “That’s why Isabel and Ben Gorman went to Boston and married so soon after Brodie left Eureka,” he had told Bannon while lying in a hospital bed. “I’ll bet old Eli probably fixed the birth certificate, too. Showing Ben as the father.” That was what Brodie meant when he said he had “betrayed a friend,” what he meant by “the mortar in a great friendship.”

Brodie Culhane had accidentally murdered his own son.

There were some things in your past you could run from. But not that. No wonder Brodie seemed to have no fear. There was nothing left that could scare him. The greatest punishment he could have was to go on living every day knowing what he had done.

“How’s that partner of yours doin’?” Culhane asked.

“He made lieutenant,” I said.

“Good for him.”

Bannon had one more question, but Brodie leaned over, reached under the table and brought up a gift-wrapped package. He slid it across the table to Bannon.

“Here,” he said. “Call it a wedding present.”

Bannon and Millicent looked at the package, then Bannon slid it over in front of her.

“You open it,” he said.

She unwrapped it the way women do, pulling on the ribbon until the knot unties, then stripping the ribbon off and laying it carefully to the side. She unwrapped the paper with the same care, without even wrinkling the paper.

It was a walnut box with a small plaque on the lid that said: buck tallman 1899–1920 captain brodie culhane 1921–1946 sergeant zeke bannon 1946-