Jonathon King - A Killing Night

She agreed to meet with me, in a public place. Her son had an ice hockey game at three the next day. Meet her there, with identification, and we could talk. No promises. I pulled around to the back of McLaughlin's at eight. It was already dark and I had missed the transition from daylight. There was no fade of color, no blue to disappear, no rose-tinged cloud of sunset. The gray had simply turned a deeper gray and then been overtaken by the dusty glow of city light. The sleet had turned to light snow and up in the high streetlights it drifted down and swirled in whatever wind current caught it off the buildings. It turned to slush on contact with the concrete and car tires slashed through it on the street. I was hatless and shivered and then heard the music in McLaughlin's buzz against the window and went inside.

The place was full and conversation was battling with an Irish melody on the speakers, neither winning. For someone used to the natural humidity of the subtropics, the hot, dry air was enough to make you want to drink just to dehydrate. It was a cop bar, dominated by clean-shaven faces, working men's clothing, the pre-game show to the 76ers game, an appropriate locker room level of loud voices and the guffaws of a joke badly told. The few women present were older wives and the young ones' impressionable girlfriends.

I spotted my uncle at a table in the back. He was flanked by a couple of cronies his own age. As I worked my way back I saw his eyes pick me up halfway and make a decision before the smile started. He was out of his chair, rattling the pitcher and glasses on the table with his girth before I reached him.

"Christ in heaven, Maxey boy," he said, embracing me with his stovepipe arms and wrapping me in the smell of cigar smoke and Old Spice aftershave.

"You are as skinny as a fuckin' sapling, boy," he said, standing back at arm's length. "And dark as a goddamn field hand." A few heads turned, but not for more than a look. My uncle was an old- timer. Gray-haired and thirty years with the department, his language and his political incorrectness was grandfathered in. He introduced me to his friends, both with over twenty years themselves, and we sat. There was a pitcher of beer on the table with a frozen bag of ice floating in it. An open flask of what I knew was Uncle Keith's special blend of Scotch stood as its companion. He poured shots all around and raised his own for a toast.

"To the wayward son, what took the money and run," he announced with a wink.

"Aye," said the others, and we drank.

For the next three hours we drank and they told old stories. Carefully and with loyalty to my uncle no mention was made of my father, the legendary one whose death would always remain a secret of the brotherhood of the blue. We drank and I described only the beauties of Florida, and their eyes went glassy with reverence of a dream of golf and sun. We drank and my uncle exhorted me to show the bullet wound scar in my neck and they toasted Mother Mary for bad aim and mercy. We drank and they bitched about pensions and union stewards and the job in general and when I found an opening and asked Keith about an IAD contact they stopped drinking.

"We got a guy there, I called and gave him a heads-up, Maxey," my uncle said. "His name is Fried. He got attached over there a few years back after blowing out his hip in a pileup with a fire truck responding. He was with the detective squad up in East Kensington. He'll give you what he can."

I nodded my head and watched the others doing the same, avoiding my eyes. I could feel the vacuum at the table.

"IAD and lawyers, Max," he said, echoing his words on the phone from Florida. "Can I ask what it is you're into, son?"

We leaned our heads in together and the others tried unsuccessfully to pay no attention.

"I'm actually checking in on a former cop, a guy from my rookie class, Colin O'Shea, from the neighborhood," I said. "Any recollection?"

Since I was a pissant kid I'd known my uncle's brilliance for names and descriptions. He was the human equivalent to getting Googled. When he hesitated I knew it wasn't because he was stumped. He was considering his answer as he looked around the table and caught the glances of his crew.

"That would be the O'Shea of the Faith Hamlin situation?" he said, now watching my eyes.

"Yeah," I said. "I did some research."

Now he and the rest were looking down into their drinks, uncle Keith shaking his big head.

"Not a good time for the department or the district, Maxey," he said.

"Tell me."

He brought his eyes up and started in, his voice low but his mouth stiffening with the distaste of the telling.

"Had to be four years ago, after you left, word goes out on a missing persons' report out of the district. A woman, middle twenties, ya know, kind that elopes to Atlantic City or something. At first nobody pays much mind."

He stopped to sip his special blend. The other guys are straight- faced, like a poker game, but when they follow my uncle's lead, you know they're all listening and agreeing.

"But this girl, people know. She was a kid from the neighborhood who was kind of an outcast. Connellys down on Tasker had taken her in from a relation when she was young 'cause they couldn't handle her. She was, you know, not really retarded, but slow. Kids her age avoided her. But she did know how to, you know, ingratiate herself on people, trying to get them to, uh, accept her I guess."

"An' not bad-lookin', neither," said one of the crew, a veteran who'd been introduced as Sergeant Doug Haas.

"Not that I was going to add that detail," Uncle Keith said, narrowing his eyes at Haas.

"What?" his friend said. "I'm lying?"

Keith turned away.

"The family understood this, her physical attributes, and tried to keep her in someplace low profile," he continued. "They got her a counter job, working the register at this little corner store on Fifth Street near Sinai Med Center. She did the overnight, selling coffee and smokes to ambulance drivers and such who worked late."

"And cops on the beat," I said.

"Yeah," Keith said, and the heads went down and shook together.

"So somebody gets the word when she goes missing and tongues are waggin' because these cops on the Charlie shift are always in the place and they aren't offering up much in the way of information, like on the last time they seen her and such, being that she just disappeared off the face of the earth in the middle of her shift and nobody sees anything."

He took another sip, getting to it more slowly than Uncle Keith was used to getting to it.

"The rumor ain't rumor for long. Word gets around that these four cops were passing her around, each getting a piece of it back in the storage room while each partner was watching the front."

"They said she liked to pay them back for protecting her," Sergeant Haas broke in again.

This time my uncle just shook his head in agreement.

"And Colin O'Shea was a part of this?" I said.

"He was one of them," Keith said. "And once IAD got onto the case, he was the only one who didn't come out and finally own up to what they'd done."

"They cracked them?"

"Like fuckin' walnuts, Maxey. All of them were suspended and eventually fired for what they did to the girl even though she wasn't underage and she wasn't around to dispute that it was consensual. But to a man, they all said they didn't know where she'd gone or what happened to her."

"All except O'Shea," I said.

"He never admitted any part of it and was never seen in the city again."

"Christ, IAD must have done some knuckle pounding," I said. "Was this guy Fried the lead on the case?"

The table again went dead still. No one would look up from their whiskey. No sipping, no head shaking.

"And what else, Uncle Keith?" I finally said.