The Big Dive Read online

  Paula listened without interruption. But the tenseness in her body betrayed her feelings. Her eyes closed at times, though I avoided the bloodiest moments of that night. When I finished, she leaned forward in her chair, eyes accusatory, and said, “It could have been you, Joe. If you’d gone inside instead of Benedict . . . ”

  I held my peace. I couldn’t reassure her that I didn’t believe his murder was a matter of bad luck, bad timing. I couldn’t tell her I suspected the killer was waiting for Benedict.

  She went to bed without another word.

  I sat in the living room downing one beer after another. I speculated what Detective Bock wanted. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be good.

  More worrisome was the thought of facing Benedict’s wife. I had no idea what I would tell her. Not the truth, that was certain. Yet I had questions. Questions I couldn’t explain why I was asking. I would have to sneak them in carefully. Maybe it would help if I took the blame for Benedict’s death. Hell, my second murdered partner. Why not? It would be believable. More believable than telling her some asshole ambushed Benedict for reasons I couldn’t yet fathom. More believable than confiding that her husband might well have been a crooked cop.

  Chapter 4

  Gene Krupa and his orchestra pounded out “Drumboogie” on the radio in my pre-war Studebaker coupé, my foot tapping absently. I lit my third Lucky Strike in the past twenty minutes and blew smoke out the window. A breeze rifled the green shoots on mature maple trees. The sun was working its way to mid-afternoon. The neighborhood where I was parked edged the south side of Sloan’s Lake, 1920s single-story brick bungalows with pre-war Chevys and Fords lining the street. A nice neighborhood but showing its age. My dead partner’s neighborhood.

  Krupa rattled off a drum riff, then a songbird wailed, “Drumboogie, it really is a killer.”

  A killer, yeah, exactly what I needed to hear in a song.

  Following Detective Bock’s orders yesterday, I’d gone to headquarters this morning. Bock, Kaufman, and a third detective re-questioned me for two hours. I’d repeated my story, trying to keep my lies straight. But I was tired. God knows what mistakes I made. Kaufman and the third detective seemed to buy my version, but Bock appeared no more satisfied than he was the night in the alley. Maybe Benedict’s wife would provide answers that would show me a way out of this mess.

  I got out and walked past several homes before turning onto a narrow path to one of the bungalows. A familiar Ford sedan sat parked in the driveway. A boy’s bike lay in the patchy grass, as if hurriedly flung aside.

  I stepped onto the small porch and rang the doorbell.

  “Joe!” answered Ellen Greene from behind the screen door. She rubbed at her milk-white arms showing below her checkered housedress. She wore no makeup except for a touch of faded reddish orange lipstick. Black-rim glasses. Auburn hair cut in a short bob, like Joan Bennet’s in Father of the Bride.

  “Pardon me for dropping by out of the blue, Ellen. I wanted to see how you’re doing.”

  She opened the door. “Come in, come in.” She took my hat and hung it on the hat rack next to a familiar brown fedora. I trailed her into a tiny living room.

  I’d been in the house several times over the years, but this time I took everything in more closely, as I would a suspect’s place, alert for clues. What did I expect to find? Loot stuffed among the knickknacks that filled the floor-to-ceiling bookcase Benedict had built? Burglary tools stashed behind the dark, heavy furniture and chintz drapes?

  Nothing out of the ordinary caught my eye, however. No new furniture, expensive redecorating, or baubles revealing money flush from burglaries. No new car in the driveway. Even the Crosley radio—the one Benedict claimed was on the fritz—sat on the floor as it always had at the far end of the living room.

  If my partner was dirty, what the hell was he doing with the money?

  Ellen directed me to a brown mohair easy chair. Benedict’s chair. I felt uneasy sitting in it.

  “I won’t stay long,” I said. “You must have a lot to do for the funeral.”

  She managed a faint smile. “Benedict’s brother and his parents are doing much of the planning. And the department.”

  The funeral was scheduled for Tuesday. It would be a big show. The department always puts on a big show when an officer was killed in the line of duty. Except when they’d buried my first partner four years ago. No crowd, no pomp and circumstance for that one. Rain that day, for one thing, and Derek Flemming was no Benedict Greene. When I partnered with Flemming as a rookie, he was pushing retirement. A smart cop once but slovenly by then, a tired cynic, divorced, a boozer. No role model for the department to honor.

  “Paula sends her condolences,” I said. “She wondered if she and our daughter might visit tomorrow.”

  Ellen nodded. “I’d like that. Have her call. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Nothing. I only dropped by to—”

  “There’s beer in the fridge. I don’t drink beer.” She paused. “It’ll go to waste otherwise.”

  “Okay. Beer’s fine.”

  She disappeared into the kitchen. I bolted from the chair to their console radio. I brushed my hand over the walnut cabinet. The exterior looked in good condition. I turned it on and the radio dial lit up along the edge. An announcer’s voice boomed into the room and I jerked.

  “We give you now Stella Dallas, a continuation on the air of the true-to-life story of mother love and sacrifice, in which Stella—”

  I fumbled for the volume knob and turned it down. I stared at the radio, angry, betrayed.

  Benedict had lied at the pawnshop that their radio was on the fritz and Ellen wanted a new one. What other lies?

  I punched a button and Judy Garland came on singing “Friendly Star.” She was finishing her song when Ellen entered carrying a tray laden with two cups of coffee, a gold can of Stag beer, and a china plate smothered under a slice of cake.

  I turned off the radio. “Sorry. I’m looking to buy a new radio. Maybe a Crosley like yours.”

  Ellen set the tray on an Early American maple coffee table next to the chair. “Benedict’s folks gave it to us when we moved in. It’s been a good one. Benedict replaced the tubes not long ago. I don’t listen to it much myself. But he and Timothy would sit for hours listening to ball games.”

  Her eyes welled up and she hurriedly bent over the tray. “Have some cake, Joe. I made it shortly before—” She paused, collected herself. “Lemon chiffon was Benedict’s favorite. Timothy and I aren’t eating it. I had some coffee brewed, so I thought you might like it with the cake.”

  I returned to Benedict’s chair. I didn’t have an appetite for cake, either, but I picked up the plate and took a bite anyway, then a sip of coffee.

  Ellen sat on a couch across from me and smoothed her dress over her knees.

  “How is Timothy?” I asked. “Is he back to school?”

  “No, he’s in his room. He won’t go back until after the funeral.”

  Of course. What a stupid question.

  She looked down the hallway. “He never leaves his room except to eat. He’s old enough to understand that his father isn’t coming home again.”

  For the first time since my partner’s death, it struck me what a nightmare it must be to have a loved one in your life gone suddenly, permanently. When Paula left two years ago for her sister’s, perhaps to never return, a hole had grown in me. When she returned, the hole had refilled. But this hole, for Ellen and her son, would remain forever.

  I guzzled a hard drink of beer. “How are you doing, Ellen?”

  She smoothed her dress again and blinked back tears. “It’s like a bad dream that’s happening to someone else.”

  “I keep going over in my mind what I could have done, what I—”

  “It’s okay, Joe. It’s okay. I’m sure you did everything you could. Don’t blame yourself. Benedict was always clear about the risks.”

  I’d known Ellen almost as long as I’d known Benedi
ct. But only in the past few months, since he and I partnered, had I come to know her better. She was one of those cop’s wives proud of the work her husband did. She took in stride the dangers that came with it, never questioning what he was doing or why. Four months ago, I met her at the emergency room at Denver General. Benedict had taken a shotgun blast while trying to settle a domestic. Ellen remained composed and clear-eyed, no hysterics. With the calmness of Lou Sheppard gathering facts for a newspaper story, she asked how badly he was hurt and how it happened. It turned out the asshole had fired birdshot and Benedict’s leg wound was superficial. But from that day forward I never forgot her composure.

  She leaned forward and asked the question I dreaded coming. “What happened, Joe? What went wrong?”

  “Homicide hasn’t told you the details?”

  “Only that he was killed during the burglary of a pawnshop. Nothing beyond that.”

  A pawnshop burglary. At least the department was sticking with my account for now.

  “You should wait for the department—”

  “I want to hear it from you, Joe, not the damn department,” she snapped, her face flushed.

  I took a slug of beer and marshaled the lies of a burglary gone wrong. As with Paula, I left out the radio in the alley and the bloodiest parts. Ellen didn’t need to hear the details of her husband’s slashed throat and a knife sticking out of his chest. So far, the department had managed to keep those details out of the paper. Only that he was stabbed to death.

  “If I’d gone inside with him,” I said at the end, “if I’d . . . ”

  She shook her head. “Don’t second-guess yourself, Joe. This can’t be easy for you, either.”

  Yeah, two dead partners in four years. Ranks right up there with widowhood.

  “Benedict was a good cop,” I said, the words catching in my throat. “I’ll miss riding with him.”

  I bit back my bile of anger and sense of betrayal for his assumption that I was burglar material. “You’re one of us,” he’d said moments before he died.

  We fell silent. A clock tick-tocked in another room. I dragged at my beer. Her coffee sat untouched. I complimented her on the cake and then asked, “You two doing okay for money?”

  She blinked as though snapping out of a daze. “You know how it is living on patrolman’s pay. But we’re getting by.”

  “No major debts or medical bills, anything like that?”

  She shifted in her chair. “Why are you asking, Joe?”

  “Something was on Benedict’s mind the last few weeks. He wasn’t himself. He didn’t say what. I thought it might be money issues. You don’t want money issues at a time like this. So if I can help in any way . . . ”

  She hesitated.

  “What is it, Ellen?”

  She sucked in a deep breath. “I went through some financial papers yesterday and discovered that Benedict took out a bank loan several months ago for thirty-five hundred dollars. It’s secured against the house. They showed he was behind in payments. There are letters from the bank. They’re threatening to repossess the house if the loan isn’t brought up current.”

  “God, I’m sorry, Ellen. I’ll do what I can. Guys at work would be more than happy to pitch in to—”

  “It isn’t the money, Joe. We have life insurance and money coming from the Benevolent Association. And his small pension, of course. It’ll be tight but his folks will help out, if necessary. I’ll get us up on the bank payments. I’m telling you because I wasn’t aware of the loan. Did he say anything to you?”

  “No. But it might explain his unusual behavior these last weeks.”

  It sure as hell might explain why a “saint” turned to burglary

  She shook her head. “Benedict handled our finances. Paid all the bills, everything. Thirty-five hundred dollars is a lot of money, and I have no idea why he borrowed it. It’s not as if we bought a new car or built an addition on the house.”

  I pondered for a moment. “Is it possible he got into gambling?” I hadn’t known him to gamble, but as I was painfully coming to discover, even partners keep secrets. It would be easy. Every cop knew bookies.

  She vehemently shook her head. “He seemed under a lot of stress lately. Maybe it was the loan. Though something else upset him, too.”

  “What?”

  “I answered the phone last week and this man identifying himself as Detective Lancaster asked for Benedict. Benedict was on the phone a few minutes with him and got very upset. Said he didn’t want him calling at home anymore. After he hung up, he left right away. I’ve never seen him so angry.”

  “Did he ever say what this detective wanted, why he got upset?”

  Ellen shook her head. “Do you know this Detective Lancaster?”

  “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  I talked to detectives as little as necessary these days. Lancaster could be new to the department, or worked for another police department.

  “Did the guy call again?” I asked.

  “Not that I am aware.”

  I’d gone into this to cover for Benedict, as partners do for each other. To protect Ellen and their son. Until I could find what must be a sensible explanation for his bizarre behavior that night. Now I was beginning to question the man I was trying to protect.

  We fell into a conversation concerning the funeral preparations. I managed to eat half of the cake and finish the beer before standing to go. At the door, I offered my condolences. She gave me a hug I didn’t see coming and for which I felt unworthy.

  She trembled against me. “I miss him, Joe,” she sobbed, and she cried into my shoulder for what felt like an eternity. Paula was right. I was a damn fool about Ellen.

  I held her at arm’s length. “I’ll have Paula call you. Oh, and this Detective Lancaster, let’s keep his name between us for now. Should anyone ask.”

  She blinked tears from her eyes. “Why?”

  “I want to find out who he is first, that’s all.”

  “Do you think he knows something about Benedict’s death?”

  “Doubtful. His death was a random act, Ellen . . . bad luck. Wrong place, wrong time. I’m curious why Benedict got upset by the call, that’s all.”

  Her eyes hardened. “There’s more to this than you’re telling me, isn’t there, Joe?”

  I let her go. “Give my best to Timothy,” I said, and stepped off the porch.

  Curiosity was not a smart path for me to take, I reflected as I walked to my car. Nosing into the mysterious Detective Lancaster risked drawing yet more attention from Luther Bock. But I needed to get ahead of anything incriminating they might turn up, and Detective Lancaster was my first lead. I needed to talk to him before Bock did.

  I was home nursing my third beer and listening to a ballgame when the phone rang. A rookie named Willie Mays had just cracked a long home run, so I was slow getting to the phone. Paula answered it.

  “It’s that disgusting reporter from the Rocky,” she snarled, not bothering to muffle the mouthpiece. She’d hated Lou Shepard for creating The Denver Kid.

  I took the receiver and she stomped out of the room. “Whattya want, Lou?”

  “Boy, you’re a sour soul.”

  “I just lost a partner. And it’s Sunday. I’m home with my family. What the hell do you want?”

  “I thought you’d want to hear the headline for the bulldog edition before the paperboy tosses it in your bushes tomorrow morning.”

  “More of your purple prose?”

  “The dicks believe they caught your partner’s killer.”

  I stiffened. “Who?”

  “A taco bender named Hector Diaz. They brought him in this morning.”

  “Jailbait Diaz?”

  “You know him?”

  “I’ve hauled him in a coupla times. Half the uniforms on the force have. You’d need to print a special edition to cover his yellow sheet.”

  “‘Jailbait’ is his nickname?”

  “He likes young skirts.”

&nbs
p; Sheppard yelled aside to someone in the city room asking if there was still time to add to his Diaz copy. Someone yelled back. “Hang on,” Sheppard said to me. He set down the phone and began pounding on his typewriter.

  I downed more beer and mulled over the implications of this development. The manhunt for Benedict’s killer was extensive. Everyone was working off the official line that Benedict stumbled on a vicious burglar inside the pawnshop and was killed—everyone except Detective Bock. I knew my lies risked pushing the investigation in the wrong direction, but that’s the way it would have to be for now.

  Where they’d come up with Diaz, I had no idea, but a scumbag like him could reinforce my story. Maybe get Bock off my neck.

  I heard Sheppard rip paper out of his typewriter and tell someone to rush it downstairs. He picked up the telephone and said, “You still there, Joe?”

  “How’d they come up with Diaz?”

  “Somebody dropped a dime, what else? Those yahoos in homicide couldn’t find an outhouse on a hot day unless someone gave them a map.”

  “Tip from who?”

  “Anonymous.”

  “What evidence?”

  “The snitch claimed Diaz boasted that he stuck the cop. He’s got no alibi for that night. The dicks also found several watches hidden in his room, which he claims he’d never seen before. The pawnshop owner is examining them as we speak. God, criminals sure aren’t bright.”

  “The owner won’t claim them,” I ventured. “They’re probably hot.”

  “They’ll at least hold Diaz several days on suspicion on account he’s a parolee. Regardless, my sources figure the spic is their man. They might get this case wrapped up before the funeral.”

  Hector Diaz could have killed Benedict, all right. His yellow sheet stretched back to age twelve, including assault and battery. He’d pulled three jolts at Cañon City. If he’d been inside that pawnshop, he wouldn’t have hesitated to kill a cop. Yet it was likely Benedict knew his killer. The question Sheppard’s news raised was whether the “we” Benedict mentioned that night included a three-time loser named Hector “Jailbait” Diaz.