WHEN THEY FIRST arrived they shook me down, looking for the weapon. They spread me on the sidewalk and frisked me, asking questions about cocaine and my drug connections. I lay still with my cheek pressing down onto the cement, watching the thick soles on black shoes. Men and women arrived with the ambulance. There were tackle boxes and many packages of gauze. Men giving orders in urgent whispers. Blue and red lights pulsing, tubes, IV bottles and a stretcher. They loaded Todd into the ambulance. They took me to the police station.
They told me to get a hold of myself. That I would feel better if I told them everything; that nothing could change what had happened but I could change what would happen from here on out if I would just level with them.
If I had been in a little better shape, I would have answered with swelteringly pithy epithets. But I just told them to look around on the hill behind my house for a high-powered shell casing. Beyond that they could fuck off.
They gave me a cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup and a pair of jail pants because they needed my blue jeans, which were sticky with Todd’s blood. They also gave me lots of slow, steady stares as if I were a piece of rotting meat sitting in their station.
They knew I didn’t shoot him but they also knew they wouldn’t mind if they could prove that I had. In most small towns, if a crime is committed and it isn’t painfully obvious who did it, the rule of thumb is to grab the nearest slimeball, so at least you’ll have something to show the D.A.’s office on Monday morning. I was the nearest slimeball.
It was about 10:00 P.M. when Detective Lester Bloom walked into the combination kitchenette and interview room behind the first lockup and said that my loudmouth Jewish lawyer was outside.
My attorney, Dickie Stein, is a rabid terrier, who has a flexible attitude toward reality. The police hate him unless they need to hire him to represent them after they’ve been sued for aggressively counseling prisoners in their cells. He walked in: red high-top sneakers, blue jeans, and an Albert Einstein T-shirt that said, “186,000 MILES PER SECOND ISN’T JUST A GOOD IDEA, IT’S THE LAW.” He sat down.
“What the fuck?”
“Somebody shot Toddy, rifle shot, some distance, never heard a thing. Man—woman, I don’t know. I guess they wanted me.”
“How come?”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to think about it.
“The cops are questioning all of the store owners where Todd stole those clothes.”
“Figures. Is anyone taking time out from making brilliant motivational analyses to check the scene? Did they find the rifle that was stolen from the gun shop yet? Any shell casings, footprints? Or are they hoping to save time by beating a confession out of some of the girls down at the clothing store?”
“They’ll get to it. You know how they like to work. So, you need a lawyer?”
“Ask the police.”
“They’re bored already with the thought of sending you to prison. All they’ve got is a vague description of a guy stealing a rifle earlier today and you, in jail. This is going to be a semi-big deal around here, you know. Somebody’s going to have to go down. Maybe, even if you didn’t shoot him, they might just want to hold on to you. Maybe to see what’s in the toilet after you piss if nothing else. Right now they want to hold you on a firearms violation. So, you want to talk to an attorney?”
“Firearms violation! I want a drink, Dickie. I need to do some more reading and talk to a few people before I can tell you anything. Listen, just get me out of here and as soon as I know something I’ll tell you.”
“Have they taken any pictures of your face?”
“Yeah, when I first came in. I had blood all over it.”
“Any bruises?”
“No.”
“Too bad, but I’ll see what I can do.”
I waited in the kitchenette, I drank coffee and tried to scrape the blood out from under my fingernails with the tines of a plastic fork. After about twenty minutes Bloom came in, his stomach peeking out from where his shirt should have been tucked.
“It doesn’t look like we’ll be needing anything more from you tonight, Mr. Younger. We’re going over the physical evidence and we’ll be in touch.”
“You’re supposed to say ‘Don’t leave town.’”
“Don’t leave town.”
“I’m going to Juneau tomorrow. You can reach me at Lemon Creek.”
Bloom worked on a sly grin.
“You figure you might as well go check yourself into jail now? Awful nice of you to help us out, Cecil.”
“Let’s get out of here, Dickie, before he asks me to squeal like a pig.”
As we walked out of the police station, Dickie stopped and talked with the chief, who was shaking off his raincoat as he came in the door. Dickie assured him he could work something out with me so I wouldn’t pursue a claim against the city for being slapped around by Bloom when I was brought in.
“Not real bright to take pictures of the bloody prisoner, Ed. I can take care of it, but you’ll owe me one. Okay?”
The chief thanked him and promised to have a talk with Bloom. Bloom was just getting the gag, and he didn’t look particularly happy. His face was taking on the character of a basset hound standing in the rain. I didn’t wave as we walked out.
I left Dickie at the intersection and walked up the hill to the hospital. The nurse at the night station told me Todd was in room 203 but that he couldn’t have any visitors. Then she looked at me and at my bloody shirt and my prison pants. Then she said he had just gotten out of the E.R. and someone from the state troopers was in with him now. They were going to do emergency surgery as soon as the surgical team arrived. I told her I was with Todd’s attorney and that the troopers had asked me to come down. I told her this over my shoulder. She began to yell at me as my hand turned the knob of room 203.
George Doggy sat next to Toddy’s bed, changing the batteries in his backup tape machine while he rewound the tape on the machine plugged into a socket. He was wearing a strange outfit of running pants, a T-shirt, and a tweed jacket. His gray hair was wet and uncombed. It looked like he had come from his workout.
Doggy had been around since before statehood. He had been involved in every successful investigation the state ever ran. When the time came, he didn’t want to retire, so the state sent him to Sitka to be a consultant to the police academy, which is the statewide training center for all the law enforcement in Alaska. As far as I could tell, he mostly walked around in his sweats carrying his athletic bag. But they kept him on the payroll and when something interesting came along anywhere in the state, the commissioner in Juneau sent Doggy out to “ease around the investigation” and report back to him.
When I first started doing defense investigations 1 had the idea that all cops in Alaska were ape-like creatures without enough integrity to keep their jobs as bouncers in the pipeline strip joints where most of them came from. And for the first few years of doing traffic accidents and nickel-bag drug cases this image held up pretty well. Doggy changed that. He only had to report to one man plus the governor. And all of the governors since statehood were scared of him. They were never sure how much he knew and they were never sure they wanted to know. He hated politics and political pressure but he understood them both, and there was speculation that he thoroughly documented any loose political talk that came his way, and a lot must have passed by him over the years. Doggy rarely kept notes but he was always covered. He wasn’t afraid to admit a mistake and he didn’t care if a defense lawyer tramped on his ego but he never got caught in a contradiction or a knowing lie. This put him up there with Buddha as far as most police investigators were concerned. Doggy didn’t play games and he knew that “just the facts” could be a twisty mess that would take a cop with patience and intelligence a long time to unravel.
“He can’t talk now, Cecil.” Doggy unplugged the machine and began curling the cord around his fist. He looked the way men in good shape look when they are called out on a job late at night, tired but healthy.
“They’re not going to ship him to Seattle. It’s bad, but not worth the risk of transporting him. He looks like a strong kid.”
My clothes were stained with Todd’s blood. My shirt was stiff with it and I smelled like a soggy meat wrapper. My head hurt and I was having trouble focusing.
Doggy smiled up at me, and motioned for me to sit. “I think they are going to want your clothes.”
I nodded.
“Did they interview you already?”
“Yeah. They acted a little disappointed that I didn’t break down and confess so they could get back to their TV shows.”
“Now, Cecil, you know they don’t have a lot to work with.” And he smiled again. “What do you think?”
I buried my head in my hands and then stared down at his running shoes. “I don’t know, Doggy. He said it was somebody with a scratchy voice at the door who wanted to talk to me. He didn’t know who it was.”
“They found a shell casing near the Russian blockhouse across the way from your place. It’s a .308. It’s a good thing it didn’t hit him solidly but more or less passed through his lung. And there’s this …”
He pulled a scrawled-over piece of paper from a bag at his feet. He also pulled his half glasses out and reviewed the paper.
“A rifle consistent with this shell casing was stolen today from a gun shop. A woman saw a guy run out with it. She tried to chase him but he lost her. She described him as a white male, unknown age, blond or sandy brown hair, wearing a halibut jacket and maybe a hooded sweatshirt and a baseball cap.
“That could be anybody off any fishing boat in the North Pacific, Doggy. Who’s the woman who saw him?”
“I don’t know who she was. She wasn’t from here. Who was the guy? Do you have any ideas? What do you think?”
“Stop asking me. I don’t know what I think. How in the hell should I know who stole the rifle?”
“Were you drinking tonight?”
“No—a couple of beers.”
“A couple of beers.”
“I drank a lot last night.”
“I know that. I already talked to Duarte. Sounds like a big night. By the way, he gave me this.”
He reached into his bag and handed me my credit card.
“He said you left this at the restaurant. I think he may have been on the phone all morning. I’ll call the company and tell them you might have some funny charges, if you like.”
“Thanks, I’ll take care of it.”
Being in debt to a cop is a bad way to start off an interview. Doggy knew exactly that. He smiled a kind of mean avuncular grin.
“Listen, Cecil, I know you’re not supposed to talk about your cases but it looks like someone tried to whack you tonight. What are you working on?”
“Nothing. Nothing. A stupid real-estate claim, a Workers’ Comp. neck-brace thing, and a couple of piddly sexual assaults where the guys are going to plead out. Nothing to get killed over.”
“You had a bunch of papers in your house about an old murder case.”
“Louis Victor. That’s right.”
“You’ve got to talk to me, Cecil. I’m trying to help you. If you know anything, you should tell me. This is obviously bigger than you bargained for. No matter what it is.”
“It’s nothing, Doggy. It’s a writing job. The old lady in the home wants to die happy. I’m going to tell her what she wants to know and then send her a bill. Doggy—you know that the Louis Victor case is already solved.”
We stared at each other for a long awkward moment until we both realized that we were staring. And then we paused to see who could get out gracefully.
“Yeah, I know.” Doggy smiled again. “It’s just that I’m a little concerned about you, Cecil. I knew your father. I’m sorry about him. You and I don’t know each other real well but I know a lot about you. I don’t want you to get in trouble or hurt.”
“Doggy, you don’t know shit about me….”
“Now, Cecil, that’s not quite true,” he said firmly, with the tone of a patient day-care worker. He reached into his bag and brought out a file, replaced his half glasses, and started reading.
“You are… let’s see… thirty-six and you were born in Juneau. Your dad, of course, is…was”—he looked up with that sympathetic look that addresses my family’s disappointment—“‘the Judge.’ Your sister’s earned a good name as an attorney and now teaches at Yale. You studied music and art history at Reed College until you were thrown out. You got into drugs. The drugs weren’t the problem at Reed. You got tossed for never showing up for lectures or exams.”
He looked up with a cute little “fuck you” grin and kept reading.
“After Reed, in ’73 you traveled in Africa and Asia, studying religion and music, and … I don’t suppose you call it ‘contemplating your navel,’ do you? No. You worked for a time in the oil patch in Wyoming and on the tugs on the Inside Passage, and you traveled around the South singing in choirs—?”
Another look.
“Sacred Harp chorus. Get to the good stuff.”
His voice was taking on more of a biting tone. There were no happy lines around his eyes. “The good stuff. Well, your daddy wanted you to be a lawyer, so he set you up as an investigator with the Public Defender Agency, hoping that if you carried enough briefcases for snotty little lawyers younger than you, you’d be shamed into going to law school. But you got in some trouble that involved cocaine and a small matter of suborning perjury. You did a little time—very little time—and your record was wiped clean. You moved to Sitka and played at being Sam Spade with your sister’s money. You stayed sober until your daddy died, and then you played the drunken aesthete until your girlfriend left you. Now your roommate is shot in the chest and may die.”
“What’s the point?”
“The point is this, friend. This is real life. This is Toddy’s life. I’d feel a little better about all of this if you had gotten shot, but you didn’t. So go home, get drunk or fucked up any way you want. But stay out of this. What happened tonight is a real crime, Younger. There is no room for a damaged, confused rich kid roaming around fucking up this investigation.”
I should have thought of some icy retort that would have shown him how cool and incisive I was. I should have said something that would have thrown the entire weight of his disdain back on him in three or four words.
“Oh, yeah? Make me.”
“Get out of here, Younger. Get drunk. Get stoned. Just stay out of the way.”
He walked out the door and I settled back in the chair by the window. Across the road there was a street lamp above the water and the reflection was milky white on the surface of the bay. I thought of broken bones.
Toddy lay in bed surrounded by blinking machines and tubes. His face was as white as a plaster mask. I wanted to shake him, scold him for being so lazy as to be in bed. I wanted to wrap him up and take him home to our house, the fire, the halibut, and the certainties of the encyclopedias. The nurse came in and told me to leave. I was not to have any more meetings in Todd’s room and there was someone else outside to see me.
It was a nice young cop outside the room who was embarrassed about not taking my shirt at the police station. It was useless to put up much of a fuss. Even through his embarrassment he had a stiff way of asking questions that became even stiffer as Doggy passed in the hall. He slipped the shirt into a paper bag and, after stapling it closed, he thanked me. He told me to have a nice evening. I wanted to go home.
The rain was hardly noticeable as I walked down the main street past the cathedral. I turned at the Pioneer Home. My jail pants slowly became heavy and damp, my hair matted down. I had my jacket on with no shirt underneath. It seemed to be darker than usual. The street lamps were like stepping-stones of light. I walked from one to another with my head down, my hands jammed into my pockets. If someone was trying to kill me, I would be an easy shot but I didn’t much care. The blood that had dried to a dark crust on the rims of my fingernails was liquid again in the rain. I could smell blood on my skin. I thought of the surf breaking in the darkness on the outer rocks, and I thought of someone trying to kill me.
On the waterfront, the bar was clogged with fishermen, hooting and telling stories. The cracked speaker on the jukebox buzzed as another Bruce Springsteen song limped out of it. It was bingo night at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall. A Tlingit kid was riding his tricycle at the door, skirting the edge of the sidewalk as his brother watched him. As I walked by he looked over his handlebars and whispered, “Hi, Cecil.”
Down at our house the cops had finished digging the slug out of the door frame and there was yellow tape strung over the entrance. A hand-painted sign that said, “CRIME SCENE. DO NOT ENTER” was taped to the door. Upstairs, a white linen curtain billowed out of an open window.
I thought of Peter Pan, never wanting to grow up, lifting children in their nightgowns out of open windows. The curtain, soaking in the rain, popped in the breeze once, and I thought of a white plume of air escaping a sinking ship.