Glen Cook - A matter of time

"You guys get anything?" Cash asked.

"Pee-pneumonia."

"Frostbite, maybe."

"John thinks maybe he was visiting somebody's wife. Any possibles?"

Tucholski exhaled a stormcloud. "Broad at… shit. Middle of the block. Kid's got it in the book. What was her name?"

There were two Kids in the squad. Harald by Railsback's designation, Smith by Tucholski's. Both were in their late twenties.

Smith, a black, was the smartest of the new generation coming into the department. Cash figured he would go far even without affirmative action. He stayed even with Tucholski by having a Polish joke for every occasion.

"Gobielowski. Wouldn't you know it? All we have to do is find the bowling shirt the guy left behind."

Smith and Tucholski bickered constantly, yet were close. Their feud was entirely in honor of tradition.

It was lucky, Cash thought, that neither had a hair-trigger temper.

"John?"

Harald, too, had to keep the notes. "A Mrs. McDaniel. Looked the type, too. In the upstairs flat in the first building east of the old lady's."

"Put them down for a followup."

"Gentlemen," said Railsback, "it's almost shift's end and I know you want to finish your paperwork so you can get home and shovel the sidewalks, so we'll start in the morning."

"Shit," said Tucholski. "He's had one of his brainstorms."

"Tomorrow," Railsback said, "you guys are going to take the pictures around to the coin shops. Somebody'll know him."

"You want to bet?" Cash asked. "I've got a hunch we imagined this guy."

"It's too early for pessimism," Smith observed. "The body's hardly cold." The investigative machinery had barely started rolling.

"FBI will ID him," said Railsback. "They'll find him in the military files."

"Or we might get a confession from a wife with a guilty conscience," said Harald, without conviction. "Or a witness might pop up like a genie out of a bottle."

"We might find an illegally parked car come sweeper day," Cash suggested. "Wednesdays and Thursdays are street-sweeping days over there."

"A thought," Railsback agreed. "I'll have a car check it."

Fifteen minutes later Cash finished his paperwork and left.

Annie had haddock on for dinner, because of his cholesterol. On the bad days, if it were not for her, he would break down and hit a dozen pork chops like Attila the Hun. He had a little sign on his desk at work, one of several homespun gems: You know you're past it when a doctor, not the law or church, takes away everything you like. He was supposed to shun coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, and cholesterol. He did all right on the latter two.

Sometimes it was a pain in the butt. He managed with cussing and little self-reminding notes about having to hang on long enough to collect the pension he had been getting ripped off for all these years.

"Bad day?" Annie guessed.

"The worst." He explained. She had a good head. Interested in his work. He told her what he could. But she was a little drifty about it. She was a mystery buff. Any given time there would be ten to fifteen paperbacks scattered round the house. She came up with some weird suggestions.

"He wasn't dumped? There's that drug war on the North Side."

"No. The doctor says not. The scene agrees. With the snow and everything, they got it pinned. He died where they found him when there was an inch of snow on the ground. He was barely cold when they spotted him. This fish isn't bad. What'd you do?"

"No tire tracks or anything?" Her quick little mind was cataloging possibilities from mysteries read. She had the memory of the proverbial elephant, though it was as cluttered as a scrapyard.

"Not even tracks for him past three steps. They claim they went over that alley with everything. It's like he stepped out of thin air, walked a few steps, then croaked.”

"Kaspar Hauser," she mumbled. "How about a fall?"

"Nope. Nothing he could've fallen from. No bruises or anything, either. Just some passion scratches on his back." Her eyebrows arched. "That's what John thinks."

"There goes my helicopter idea. Eat your broccoli."

Ech, he thought. Especially broccoli. But cauliflower was worse and he would get that tomorrow if he didn't eat up today. He was the only baby she had now.

"Matthew called," she said, and was off with the latest from their youngest, who was at UMC and costing more than some of Uncle Sam's earlier wars. His major was Criminal Science. He wanted to follow in his father's footsteps, he said. Cash was not sure why, did not understand, but was pleased. Most kids weren't interested in their old man's work. Especially cops' kids. They all wanted to make a new world and a million bucks. Cash wasn't against doing either. It was just that the youngsters apparently believed in witchcraft, that somewhere, maybe in Washington, there was a magic button. If you were to push it, all the bad guys would get good, all the poor people would get rich, and all the starving would be fed. But the Powers had hidden it, because for some obscure reason that was to their advantage.

Talking about Matthew inevitably led to their other son, Michael. Obliquely, Annie asked, "When are you going to have John and Carrie over again?"

John Harald and Michael had grown up together, gone to college together, and had been in the war together. Vietnam. That had been "The War" to them. To Cash it was that nearly forgotten playground squabble with the Madman of Berlin. To each generation its own, he thought.

Michael Cash had not come home from his. He was still technically MIA. It was a thing between John and Cash that sometimes made them uncomfortable with one another, though they had few differences over the war itself.

"Did you hear me, Norman?"

"Sorry. It's the case."

"I asked what block."

"Eh? Oh. Forty-two hundred. Four or five places west of where you used to live."

"Ech. Good place for it. Right behind old spooky Groloch's. Is she still there? Did you meet her?"

"Yeah. Nice old lady. Reminded me of Auntie Gertie."

"We thought she was a witch when I was little. Took a dare to get us to go past on her side of the street."

"She's been there that long?"

"Was I born in the Dark Ages? Just because little Mike thinks I polished cannonballs for George Washington…"

"You know what I mean. Nobody stays around over there. She's probably the only one on the block that was there five years ago."

"Another murder mystery at Miss Groloch's," Annie mused. "What do you want to watch tonight? There's a Tony Curtis movie on Channel Five. An original, one of those pilot things. Or 'Hawaii Five-O'?"

"Cop shows, cop shows, that's all you get on Tuesday. Let's watch the movie. What do you mean, another murder mystery?"

"Oh, a long time ago, before I was born, they tried to get Miss Groloch for murdering her… lover, I guess. Only they never found the body."

"Warm up the time machine. I'll send them mine. Then we'll all be happy."

"That's not fair. I think she was innocent. He probably ran off with her money. He was a rat."

"If you weren't even born…"

"Mom told me about him. Even if she was guilty, she should've gotten a medal. When I was a kid, people still talked about how rotten Jack O'Brien was. Most of them did think she killed him, but they were on her side. They said he was a liar, a thief, a cheat, that he never worked a day. And that the only reason he would've hung around an older woman was to use her somehow. But nobody ever figured how she could've done it. That's how come we were scared."

"How old is she, anyway?"

"I don't know. At least eighty-five. That was in nineteen twenty-one…"

"Twenty-one?" Cash echoed, startled.

"Yes. So?"

"This guy… he had a pocketful of old coins. A twenty-one dime was the newest."