The Eighty-eighth Key Ch. 36

Part IV

Chapter 36

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He walked towards Cathy's kitchen, his eyes downcast, his mood bleak, yet when he opened the door all kinds of aromas rushed through the air...with all the scents of 'home' and 'breakfast' making a fast assault on his senses. In a way, they tried to push aside Callahan's sudden depression and, in a way, they did indeed work a little of their magic. He looked up and tried to smile, saw Frank and Evelyn looking at him, while Cathy seemed to reserve her examination to Evelyn, and, perhaps, how she was reacting to Harry.

"You passed out on me," Frank said as Callahan stepped inside, "and I thought I'd just better let sleeping dogs lie, ya know?"

"Thanks. It kind of feels like I passed out," Callahan said as he carried his coffee cup over to the sink. He rinsed it off and left it in the sink. "Man, it sure smells good in here."

Cathy chimed in then: "I'm doing the eggs and bacon; Evelyn is making pancakes. And Harry, she makes good pancakes, so beware..."

"Yeah. Harry, come on over and meet my sister," Frank said. "Evelyn? Meet my partner in crime, Harry Callahan."

"Please to meet you," Evelyn said, and Callahan found he simply couldn't take his eyes of hers. They were kind of silver-blue, like Franks, but there all similarities ended. Her eyes were soft, almost liquid, whereas Frank's were peregrine. Frank was, generally speaking, compact, almost brutally so, while Evelyn seemed almost the exact opposite...fluid and almost lanky while not really tall. She was soft and polished where Frank was hard as nails.

"Yeah," Harry said, hold ing out his right hand, "me too. I've heard a lot about you." She grinned, and Callahan noted an uncanny similarity to Franks.

"All bad, I'm sure."

Harry smiled. "All of it. Every word."

She feigned anger and turned on her big brother. "Oh...you!" she said as pretended to sock her brother's arm - in slow motion.

"Well," Frank continued, "she really does make the best pancakes, and she brought some real maple syrup with her."

"Oh?" Callahan said. "Where from?"

"Vermont. We, I mean, well, I have been teaching there for a couple of years. It's more addicting than heroin, or so I'm told."

"I'll take your word for it."

She smiled, but it was kind of pouty-frown kind of smile, though her eyes sparkled. "Okay, I need to get in there and wash my hands. Why don't you guys get lost for a little bit - while Cathy and I get to work?"

"Got it," Bullitt said, turning to Harry. "Let's go over and take a look at your house."

Harry nodded when he saw the look in Frank's eyes, and he followed Frank out the front door.

"A-Chief called me first thing this morning. Threlkis' lawyers plan to file a wrongful death action first thing tomorrow morning."

"So the old fart croaked?"

"Big time. Right there at the table, in front of God and about two hundred hoods. My guess is those hoods now have a lottery going, to see who can nail you first."

"Good. Sounds fun."

Damnit, Harry, don't you get it? Every goon in California just pasted a target on your back."

"Yeah? So what's new?"

"What do you have on that homicide out at Sutro?"

"The vic lives in San Paulo. I have a possible suspect, she lives in the city, but grew up there."

"Next step?"

"Going to send a request to the San Paulo PD CID for more information on the vic and his ties to a couple of gangs operating in the area..."

"What was his CCH?"

"Robberies, drugs, dealing, a couple of DUIs, and he was recently found not guilty on a homicide case up in Oregon."

"Prison?"

"Yup. A couple of long stretches."

"Ballistics?"

"A thirty-eight plus P; Remington, semi-jacketed hollow point. Fired into the area above the penis with the muzzle less than an inch off the skin. The bullet - was lodged in the tailbone."

"Ouch."

"Bad way to end the day, that's for sure. Second tap was on the forehead, same thing, about an inch from the skin."

"So, she knew enough not to put the barrel directly on the vic. Interesting."

"Firearms training, according to a recent arrest report, as well as a White Warrant application."

"No shit?"

"Yeah, Frank. She was on a mission."

"Next step?"

"Going to look around the city for her, tomorrow afternoon. I've got court first thing in the morning."

"Anything I was in on?"

"No, just a petty thug, the evidence is pretty thin though. DA thinks he'll walk."

"Figures."

"Same song, different day."

"Okay, boys," Evelyn said through a barely cracked front door, "y'all come on in now!"

"Coming," Frank said, then he turned to Harry. "So, what do you think?"

"About?"

"Evelyn, you moron!"

"She's cute."

"And?"

"Frank?"

"Yeah, Harry."

"Don't set a wedding date just yet."

"Already have. Christmas Day."

Callahan shook his head as he followed Frank back into the house.

"Swell," he whispered as he walked into the kitchen...where he was confronted by a plate groaning under the strain of a mountain-sized portion of pancakes. "Is this for the table?" he asked.

"Nope," Evelyn said. "Those are all for you!"

There were five pancakes on the plate, each one not quite an inch thick and about a foot in diameter. He groaned as he guessed that about one stick of butter had been slathered on top of and between the stacks...

"You're over here," Cathy said, pointing to the place next to her's.

And he saw another plate was already there, this one containing three eggs, a pile of bacon, and some honeydew melon.

"Damn, Cathy, I've got enough right on my plate to feed a family...!"

"Frank has this every morning," she said, grinning. "Don't you, honey?"

Frank was bug-eyed as he carried his platter to the table. "Oh, sure. You bet," he just managed to say before he burst out laughing.

Evelyn came over and sat on Callahan's other side, and her plate had one small pancake and a single over-easy egg.

Callahan frowned. "I sense a plot at work here, Frank. Don't you?" And then Harry used a knife and fork to lift two pancakes, and these he placed on Evelyn's plate. "There. An equitable arrangement, I think."

And he was surprised by the look on her face when she heard that word: "equitable..." - because, he sensed, her life had been anything but, at least so far.

When they finished breakfast Frank and Cathy insisted they would handle clean up duties, and Cathy practically begged Harry to take Evelyn for a walk. And when Frank herded them to the front door and pushed them out into the sunshine, Harry understood. Frank and Cathy had been apart for a couple of weeks, and Frank was chomping at the bits...

"Cathy told me that's your house," Evelyn said as they made their way to the street. "Could you show me around?"

"Sure. At least, I'll try."

"What?"

"This morning was...the first time I've seen it. Not even the plans."

"Are you serious?"

Harry nodded. "Frank and Cathy were having trouble, most of it my fault, so I asked her to build this for me. I looked at it as equal parts couple's therapy and retirement planning."

He looked at her when she didn't say anything, and he found her staring at him.

"Did I say something wrong?" he asked.

"No. Pretty much the opposite of wrong. I can't imagine someone doing that."

"Frank and Cathy are my best friends. I'd do anything for them."

She chuckled at that. "I'd say you already have."

He shrugged. "I guess I've discovered that real friends are hard to come by. And friendship is worth preserving. Whatever the cost."

"Your house looks so different than Cathy's, at least from here."

"Yeah. It blends into the site, doesn't it? Like it was designed to almost disappear."

He led her to what would one day be the front door and helped her step up into the entry, then they walked to the huge expanse of windows that overlooked the cliffs, and the sea beyond.

"Now that's a view," she said as she reached the wall, then she turned and looked around. "Now...that's odd..."

"What?"

"There's not a single ninety-degree angle."

"What? Really?" he said as he too turned and looked. Then he walked over to the roughed-in walls of his bedroom and looked closer. "I'll be damned. You're right."

Everywhere he looked he saw rooms shaped like flattened and stretched hexagons, and she was correct...he found not a single right angle, and many exterior 'corners' were framed to utilize mitered glass windows so that, in effect, corners were wrapped in glass. The view wasn't compartmentalized, and the result seemed to bring the outside world into these inside spaces.

"I told her I think she's a genius. That may be an understatement."

"I wonder how many clients turn her loose, let her follow her instincts. Sounds like the opportunity of a lifetime, to me, anyway. So, why'd you become a cop?"

"Wow. Now that was a change of subject..."

"Sorry."

"If I could put it down to one reason...I guess it was because I rode around with a cop after witnessing a robbery. There's a lot of crime that boils along just under the surface, that most people, thankfully, never see and so don't have to deal with. But when bad stuff happens, I think it helps keep society together when there's a group of people actively helping to keep some semblance of order. For us, it's cops; other people use the military, while some can do without much of anything to maintain cohesion."

She shook her head. "That sounds like the kind of answer you'd give to a reporter."

"Sorry."

"What did you learn from that first ride-along?"

"That there are a lot of very bad people out on the street. Predators, really, and most people simply have no idea how vulnerable they are. Until something goes down, anyway. I think I fell in love with the idea of figuring out how to help people get through those moments."

She nodded. "That I can buy, Harry Callahan."

"So, what do you do?"

"Frank hasn't told you?"

"Nope. He's never even mentioned you, or anything about your family, until he picked you up at the airport last week."

"My, my," she said - a little too wistfully, "how he's changed."

"I guess."

"Well, back to me. I teach biochemistry; both at graduate and medical schools."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I thought I wanted to be a physician until I realized how much I loved chemistry. Do you, uh, think that maybe we could go out, maybe have some dinner?"

"Man, you really can change gears!"

"Sorry, but I always just say what I think, what I'm feeling."

"That's cool. Kind of refreshing. So, what did you have in mind?"

"What?"

"What kind of grub?"

She shrugged. "Seafood, I guess. You know, every time I've visited Frank he promises to take me to Fisherman's Wharf, and somehow we've never made it..."

"Okay, that sounds like a challenge I can handle, but the next couple of weeks might be kind of dicey..."

"The Threlkis stuff?"

"Yeah. Did Cathy tell you about that?"

She nodded. "Sounds awful, all this stuff with vigilante cops, the mob."

"What else did Cathy tell you?"

"About your wife, you mean?"

"Yeah. Well, I guess you just answered that one."

"Don't be angry," she said. "Please?"

He turned and looked at her, saw that she seemed to have turned inward on herself, almost reflexively. "I'm not angry, Evelyn. Like I said, Cathy and Frank are my friends, and I truth them. Whatever she tells you, I know she'll tell you the truth."

"And you're not afraid of the truth?"

And in that instant he saw Crawford's face lined up in the PSGs scope, then he relived the moment as he increased the pressure on his trigger finger. He shivered, and then saw...

"What are you thinking about right now?" she asked, concern clear in her voice.

"The truth."

"You look sad and angry, at the same time, and maybe a little scared, too."

He nodded.

"You want to talk about it?"

He shook his head. "Maybe someday. Not yet."

"I guess you have to carry around a lot of bad stuff..."

"Yeah. Sometimes."

"Well, if you ever do want to talk?"

"Yeah. I hear you."

"Cathy says you play the piano. Like really, really play the piano."

He nodded. "Sometimes more than others."

"Now that's an odd thing to say?"

"Is it?"

"Yeah. Like...why are some times better?"

He sighed. "There are times when music helps..."

"And others when it's too painful?"

"Yeah."

"Cathy bought a recording of the concert in Israel..."

Harry held up a hand and shook his head: "Please, Evelyn. No. That's one of the things, one of the places I just can't go yet."

"Okay." She seemed to deflate, and then she turned and walked away, looking at the framed walls as she made her way to the front door. "Could we walk down to the rocks?"

"Yes, sure, but the best way is from over here."

She came back to him. "Oh?"

"Would you mind if we just hugged for a minute?"

And she stepped into his arms, wrapped her arms around him. Both seemed to relax, neither wanted to let go.

'I want to fall in love,' he thought - in the heat of the moment. 'I'm tired of being alone. I'm scared of living my life alone.'

"This feels so good," she said, her voice almost muffled.

"It's almost like we fit together."

She nodded. "I was thinking that. Like two pieces of a puzzle."

"So, let me show you the way down."

"Down?"

"To the water."

She shook her head. "I'm fine right here."

"Has it been a while?"

"A while?"

"Since you could just let go, feel safe like this?"

"I never felt like this," she said. "I never felt safe."

He struggled with that for a while, then: "So, why? Why'd you get married?"

She shrugged. "I think I just wanted to strike out on my own, but that meant getting married, didn't it? Like in that Carly Simon song, That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be. That's what it was like...living life in the shadow of other people's expectations. The only problem with that," she said, now with a tremor in her voice, "is that you can drown in other people's expectations."

"Is that why you didn't feel safe?"

She shook all over now, buried her face in his chest and he felt her grabbing the back of his windbreaker, her fists balling-up defensively - like she was preparing to ward off blows...

And all he could do was pull her close, run his fingers through her hair, then he smelled her hair and seemed to drift away, wanted to fall away inside this moment. Hold time back...

She pulled away some time later, and he looked into her eyes, melted at the sight of tears on her cheeks. He cupped her face in his hands, wiped away her tears with his thumbs and lifted her lips to his.

Theirs was a gentle first kiss, as unexpected as it was an expression of tremendous need, then they fell back into this new embrace they'd discovered, each unwilling to be the first to let go...

"Knock-knock," Cathy said from someplace outside this new little universe. "Mind if we come in?"

But they were already inside. Indeed, they had been watching for some time, holding hands like a couple of mad alchemists in love with their latest creation, smiling at the simplicity this life presented - even in the quietest moments.

"Harry?"

"Yes?"

"The A-Chief called. He wants to see us, ASAP. You ready to roll?"

She felt him tense, felt the moment wither and fall away.

"Yeah. Might as well face the music," she heard him say, yet she wanted to stop him, wanted to protect him, wanted to keep him from hurting himself because, she suddenly realized, that's what he had been doing all his life.

"Harry," she whispered, "we can do this. We can make this happen, let it happen..."

But by then he had pulled away, their timeless connection broken. She watched him walk away and she felt so alone, just the way she'd always heard it should be.

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"Goddammit, Callahan, what is it with you? Everywhere you go, people end up dead. It ain't right, and the Chief has had it. He wants your badge..."

Frank cleared his throat: "Uh, Chief," Bullitt began, "this op was my idea. Bullitt went in because Threlkis doesn't know me from Adam. I figured that was the best way to..."

"To what? Give the fucker a goddamn mother-fucking heart attack?"

"No, sir..."

"Then, please, tell me. Tell me what the point of this goddamn clusterfuck was. Because I'd really like to know..."

"The case against him was at a standstill..."

"So? You decided to terrorize the man at his daughter's wedding? Have you, like, forgotten those words we print up and put on the sides of our patrol cars? To Protect and Serve? Does that compute, or are you two operating on some other principle I'm not yet aware of?"

"No," Callahan said.

"No, what, Callahan?"

"No, sir."

"Alright, so hear this, you two. The Threlkis family is going to sue the city for something like ten million, and you know what? We will. We'll probably settle on a lower figure, but so what. Because of your chickenshit bullshit, we're going to end paying a crime family millions of bucks. Does that sound like effective policing to you clowns?"

"Look, Chief," Callahan said, "no one knew he had a defective ticker..."

"Goddamnit to Hell, Callahan! Are you deaf as well as mentally retarded! Did you not hear one mother-fucking word I just said...?"

"We hear you, Chief," Bullitt said.

"And now I hear about some retired cop from Oakland PD, living up by Lake Shasta. Shot in the fucking face, dead as a fucking doornail. The poor SOBs fucking eight-year-old daughter found him, too. And the word is he's the cop that took a couple of shots at you a few months ago. And now, guess what, Callahan? Investigators up there want to question you about this shit, too."

"What?" Bullitt said. "When did this happen?"

"Saturday night, Sunday morning. That timeframe."

"Callahan was with us, Chief. Up at Sea Ranch."

The Assistant Chief looked from Callahan to Bullitt. "Is that right? Well, I hope so. I sure fucking hope so. Because you two wouldn't last a goddam week inside fuckin' San Quentin. I mean, I hope that's fuckin' clear as glass. Now, get the fuck out of my sight - both of you!"

"Well, that was fun," Frank said when they were clear of the office.

They walked to the parking garage and got in Frank's Mustang, then drove to where Callahan had parked the rental car.

"I'll follow you to the drop-off, give you a ride back into the city."

Callahan nodded and they drove out to SFO. Callahan fumed the entire way, tried to think of one good reason to stay with the department - and couldn't. On the drive back to the city with Bullitt, that was about all Callahan could think to talk about.

"You can't quit now," Frank said. "That would be tantamount to an admission of guilt."

"Yeah? Well, I'm getting tired of all the bullshit, Frank. I'm doing the job I was supposed to, you know. And yeah, I know, our operations are compartmentalized. No one in the department knows what we're up to, and yeah, sure, I know I've got a 'get out jail card' stashed away and I'm not worried about it, but really? We got hoods pushing on us from one side, the courts pushing on us from another, and then, just for the joy of it all, we got our own supervisors pushing from yet another side. Who pushes back for us, Frank? Who takes our side, when we're in the right, or even when we're wrong? No one. No one, Frank. And do you really think that's right?"

"No, not really."

"Come on, is that all you can say? Look, most of us come to this job thinking we're going to do some good, maybe get to help people every now and then, and how do we get paid back for that. We're a bunch of kids trying to do the right thing and nothing less than a herd of legal eagles line up and pick apart every decision we make. And they get to do that from the comfort of their swivel chairs in their padded offices, while we get to make the decisions in the rain, in the middle of the night, when we've had to pull a double shift or right after wives die, or, more likely, file for divorce. Come on, do you really think this is fair? Or is this stacked deck really nothing more than a sideshow a bunch of lawyers cooked up on a slow Saturday night - you know, for their amusement?"