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XI.

On the Y Axis;

1975






It was almost quitting time when Cash reached the station, returning from Miss Groloch’s. He was near distraction with the case.

It had taken Harald as long to dispose of Annie and Sister Mary Joseph. They arrived at the same time. Cash told him about the Egan lead.

“Egan’s Rats? Don’t think I ever heard of them.”

“Predecessors of the Syrian Gang, more or less. Goes way back. Bootleggers, train robbers, like that. Some supposedly were the trigger men in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. I was thinking. I know a couple of the old Syrians. They go back far enough. Tommy O’Lochlain in particular might re­member O’Brien.”

The Syrian Gang, with most of its members in their dotage, was probably the last of the Irish outfits. Cash had never learned the reason for their name. Perhaps because there were a number of Lebanese connected.

They moved into the office. From behind his desk Cash asked, “How’d you do with the sister?”

“She went completely drifty. Kept babbling about witch­craft and Satan was going to get her. She’s scared to death of that old lady. It’s weird.”

“What about this morning?”

“Oh.” He took out his notebook. “Didn’t get much that’s solid. She ought to launder money for CREEP.”

“She’s got a lot of stock. Old stuff, in rails and arms, AT&T, companies that have been around as long as she has. She’s also got a growth portfolio that she’s done good with. Like Xerox. Her income, about fifty thousand, is all from dividends. She puts most of it back in. Her brokers have a power of attorney. They pay her living money into an account managed by an accounting company. Those guys take care of her bills, taxes, and things. I couldn’t find out if she has a sav­ings or checking account anywhere. Depending on what she’s buying, she pays cash at her door or has the accountants send a money order. Twice a month they send a messenger with cash and any paperwork that needs signing. She sends back written instructions for the accountants and brokers.

“The brokers are a little scared of her. They’ve had her since the thirties. She never loses money. She doesn’t move often, but when she does she’s always right. When she shakes something out of her portfolio, they pass the word to their other clients. But she’s no Getty. I think because she’s careful. Doesn’t want to attract too much attention.”

“Maybe Annie and the sister are right. Maybe she is a witch. What about everyday things? Maintenance on the house, appliances, like that?”

“Per the letters of instruction. The accountants let me look at their records after I started to make a scene. They wouldn’t let me see the letters without a warrant, though. Anyway, she’s had them on retainer since forty-seven, when they took over from another outfit. Since then, nobody’s done any work inside. But she’s had wallpaper, paint, and stuff like that delivered several times. Outside work, even gardening, she contracts. Lawn mowing and stuff is probably done by neighborhood kids. The furnace was converted to oil in fifty-four. The washer and dryer came in sixty-three. On a trade-in. Probably some real antiques. And a TV just the other day.”

“You said nobody got inside.”

“Not to paint or anything. But the gas company did the fur­nace conversion. The appliance dealer did the delivery and in­stallation on the washer, dryer, and TV. You think we could find any of those guys now? She might be Hitler in drag, but there’s no way to pin her down. She’s stayed so insulated that it’s unreal.”

“On purpose?”

“Hell, why else?”

“So why’s she hiding? From whom? Goddamn, John, if she’s really the same Fiala Groloch who came here a hundred years ago, she’s already outlived anybody who could’ve been after her in the old days. Unless they’re some of those two-hundred-year-old Russians.”

“Or the Secret Masters?”

“What?”

“Just joking. Haven’t you ever heard about the secret so­ciety that runs the world? Sometimes they’re supposed to be immortals.”

“Yeah. And sometimes they’re Communists, Tibetan monks, Rothschilds and Rockefellers, Jews, Masons, Rosicrucians, combinations thereof, or the gang in this Illuminati book Smith was on about the other day. I don’t believe in vast secret conspiracies, John. Not even real ones if I can help it. Wouldn’t it be nice if Patty Hearst and the SLA, or the Manson family, were just some cheap writer’s gimmick? I’ll stick with the time machines, and thank you.”

“Whatever you want, Norm. But you got to admit that her being a spry hundred-and-thirty-plus takes some explaining.”

Everything about Fiala Groloch took some explaining, Cash reflected. He was beginning to wish that he had let Railsback bury the whole thing. “You find anything about a demolition contract?”

“A who?”

Cash explained about the carriage house and pear tree.

“No. But that’s something we should be able to trace at City Hall. I was going down tomorrow to check out the house anyway.” He put the notebook away, rose. “But right now I’m getting the hell out of here. Don’t want to think about this anymore for a while. Maybe I’ll take Carrie to see Jaws. They say that’ll blow anything out of your head.”

“Yeah, me too. I keep finding myself wishing these were the old days and we could just drag her down into the dungeon and get the answers with the whips and chains. The good old Iron Maiden....”

Just then he spied Railsback backing from his office while arguing vehemently with someone inside. Beth made violent signals indicating they should use the door. “Time to make a break, old buddy. Hank’s going to have somebody’s ass on toast in a minute.”

Harald made it, but by the time Cash had gone down to his personal automobile, discovered he had left his keys in his desk, and had returned for them, Railsback was a thunderhead on a course to intercept him at the door.

“What the hell kind of clown’s festival did you and the kid put on today?” he thundered, startling every eye into looking their way. “I thought I told you to keep it quiet.”

Cash put on his puzzled-but-curious face and asked, “What’s the matter?”

“I got some bozo from the Argus, of all goddamned things, in there bugging me for an old-fashioned scoop, and I don’t even know what the hell he’s talking about. He’s got more imagination than you and the kid combined.”

The Argus was a small but highly respected newspaper, the oldest black business in the city. The source of the leak was obvious. The morgue attendant. Equally obvious was the fact that the major dailies and electronic media would be on it by tomorrow.

Cash shrugged. “We just took the old lady in for a look at the stiff. She claimed we were working a frame. Where’s the hassle?”

“There was this attendant, see? And he listened to every­thing, see? Maybe he didn’t hear so good, but there was this spooky old lady, this hysterical nun, and these two weird cops claiming the stiff was a guy that got croaked fifty years ago.... I got to say more? Can you see it when it hits the Post? They’ll go the ‘Cops roust little old granny lady over science-fiction theory’ route. And that bleeding heart jackoff McCauley could turn it into the biggest show around here since the World’s Fair.”

Over the past ten years, the Post’s editorial stance had be­come ever more left-radical, and Railsback’s opinion of it had declined proportionally. There were times when he mumbled about driving a stake through the heart of Jason McCauley, especially when that worthy did one of his columns bemoaning the plight of some prisoner it had taken city and state years to put inside. Cash suspected that his superior lived in terror of being discovered by the newspaper. It had ruined careers before. Cash had his own differences with the Post, but re­mained amused by Railsback’s pointed fingers and endless cries of “Anti-Christ!”

“They wouldn’t go that far.”

“The hell they wouldn’t. Stay away from them, Norm. Don’t give them anything. Let them dig it out without any help from us. Maybe they will come up with a rational ex­planation. Now get the hell home before I blow a fuse. Best to Annie.”

“Yeah. ’Lo to Marylin, too.” Cash made himself scarce.

“Honey,” he said as he pushed through the door, “you started supper yet?”

“Got some hamburger thawing.”

“Put it back in. I’m taking you out. Movie, too.”

“What brought this on?” Being taken out to dinner was an event so rare it called for some questioning.

“I just need to get out. Away.” He described the encounter with Hank.

“What if Nancy calls? The kids might need some­thing....”

“She should be able to cope for one night. Come on, get your purse. Don’t even bother fixing up.”

She went with great reluctance, and dinner was no success.

“What’s worrying you?” Cash finally demanded, after his second and third choices of movies elicited flat refusals.

“I just think we should be home in case....”

“Christ! How come you’re so all-fired sure....”

“I ran into Martha Schnieder at Kroger yesterday. She told me her daughter has been baby-sitting for Nancy.”

“Huh? So?”

“So lately it’s been three or four nights a week. Nancy has been hanging out at the Red Carpet Lounge in Cahokia. Sometimes she doesn’t come home till three or four in the morning....”

It finally sank in. And for a minute his emotions rushed this way and that. Finally, he took her hands in his. “Honey, there’s a fact that we’ve all got to face. Michael’s been gone for eight years. And Nancy’s still young.”

“Norman, that’s enough. I know it all by heart. Every damned argument: ‘It’s time we accepted the fact that Michael’s dead’; ‘Nancy has the right to a sex life’; ‘She has the right to find a new husband.’ And on and on. Anything you can think of, I’ve thought of already. And it’s all true. But dammit, Norm, it hurts. She and the kids are all that’s left.”

He knew she was describing a battle he still had to fight. Not yet engaged, he could observe, “I don’t think she’d cut us out. She’s still family. The most she’d want is for us to mind our own business. It is her life.”

“What if she married somebody who had to move some­where else?”

“We’d just have to live with it.”

“I don’t want to live with it!”

She was getting loud enough to draw curious glances. “We’d better go. Come on, I’ll take you to Baskin-Robbins.” She loved ice cream. A cone had smoothed over many a rough spot.

They spent the rest of the evening in front of the TV. As Cash had predicted, the phone didn’t ring once. Instead of watching Carson, he turned in early.

He didn’t sleep well. Michael’s ghost hovered over his bed whispering about time machines.

The media did get hold of the story next day, but didn’t play it up. Cash supposed it was because they could get nothing to sink their teeth into, though Railsback offered the opinion that reportorial imaginations bogged down when wandering outside the traditional bounds of business, politics, and crime. Harald claimed it was because the department itself was for a time diverted.

The entire department became embroiled in a series of crash priority cases, a hectic mishmash of murder probably due, in part, to the torrid weather. There was the killing of an off-duty patrolman during the holdup of an evening church serv­ice, then the rape-murder of a ten-year-old girl, followed by the molestation-immolation of two young boys by a gang of teenagers, and a homosexual jealousy homicide involving the scion of a prominent family. Next came a flare-up in the on­going struggle for control of heroin traffic in the heavily black central and north wards. There, every time a big fish got sent up, the medium fishes shot it out for the top spot.

It was busy busy busy. If not hunting down a convicted murderer who simply bolted from the courtroom as the verdict was delivered, or beating the bushes in a panicky search for two teenage girls who had run away from the School for the Blind, Cash and Harald were continually in court. Their cases seemed to be coming to trial all at once. Most were disap­pointing in result. The fifteen-year-old who had gunned down a retired lieutenant, in the course of a robbery witnessed by the forty-three passengers aboard the bus from which the victim had just descended, was found guilty of assault and robbery, but the jury couldn’t agree on the murder charge. Cash, being an officer, had never done jury duty. He couldn’t begin to fathom the workings of the juror’s mind. He sometimes wondered how anyone got put away.

But they both managed a nickel-dime investigation in spare moments. Harald continued doing the donkey work, discover­ing that the Groloch house had started construction early in 1869, and that the carriage house had been demolished in 1939. He actually located one of the workmen, but the man barely remembered the job, and had seen nothing out of the ordinary. No one remembered Miss Groloch ever having possessed either car or carriage.

And Harald discovered that large quantities of sand, gravel, cement, and building stone had been delivered to the house in July 1914. Presumably these were the materials used to pour the basement floor and wall off part. Cash went back to Carstairs’s report several times, but there was nothing in it to indicate that he had thought the basement unusual.

And again he returned to the report. He had copies run off and took one home with the notion of musing over it while watching TV, and of letting Annie worry it instead of why they hadn’t heard from the Relocation Board. Somewhere in the report, he thought, overlooked by everyone, was the key.

He had to keep reminding himself that he and Carstairs weren’t working the same case, only cases with a coincidental connection spanning fifty-four years.

Cash passed another birthday. Each seemed more miserable than the last. Somewhere around twenty you began the down­hill slide, he reflected, though you didn’t realize it till years later. Around thirty you tried to stop looking forward. There was one bad ambush up there that you got more and more reluctant to approach. No matter what you had accomplished, you felt like a failure because there was so much more you should have done. By forty you were moving along looking backward, engrossed in might-have-beens. You remembered the girls who were willing when you were too chicken, opportunities that went begging because you dithered when you should have dashed in, alternate branches of the road you didn’t even recognize at the time. You cried a lot inside, and died a little more each day. Maybe you fought the hook a little that decade, but by fifty you had surrendered.

Sitting at his desk, before going home to a “surprise” party put on by Annie, Nancy, and his grandchildren, he did his silent dying and penned a fragment of a poem:


Time wanders into oblivion, gentle as a rose

A traitor only too late revealing, had I but known,

The perfect moment.


There were times when, even more than immortality, he wanted a time machine with which he could go back and ad­just.... Or, at least, use to send an admonitory message to his younger self.


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Framed