LA. Franco Mysteries: End Of Watch Part 19

"Good. It's not pretty." Frank sc.r.a.ped the bottom of the pint. "So let me ask you somethin'. What's the whole story?"

"Whaddaya talkin' about?"

"Last night. When I said you weren't selfish you said I didn't know the whole story."

For a second Annie was still. She said nothing, but started was.h.i.+ng the dishes again. Frank waited and was rewarded.

"I had three kids. Ben, Lisa and Brian. Brian was six when I got a call from the school saying he was in the hospital. You know those playground carousels the kids push and then jump on to? Well, he went to jump on and misjudged his step. He tripped. His chin hit the metal floor and he bounced his skull into the foot of one of the bars. Bruised his brain. Contrecoup injury. They couldn't get the swelling down. He died next morning. Never regained consciousness."

Annie rinsed the roasting pan, searching for a place to put it. Frank took the pan, drying it as Annie continued.

"I made sergeant after that. Left Ben and Lisa with my mom as much as possible. Or with their aunts. After sergeant I went for my s.h.i.+eld. I worked hard for it. Took me three years to make gold. I worked twelve, sixteen, eighteen hours-whatever it took-everyday. Whenever the Job needed me. I didn't think about Brian when I was workin'. Ben and Lisa either. So it was selfish. Very selfish."

Annie pa.s.sed Frank a pot. She toweled it and put it away. "You must have done somethin' right. It seems like you have pretty good kids."

Shrugging, Annie replied, "It kinda all came to a head when Ben was in seventh grade. The detective's son was caught peddlin' dope in the boys' room at school. I didn't know how to deal with that. I was floored. A cop's son, right? He should know better. My mother, my sisters, they ganged up on me. Said they weren't gonna help with the kids anymore unless I got into counseling. Oh, let me tell ya, I was steamin'. What did I have to go to counselin' for? It was Ben with the problem, not me. But I went. Turned out a large part a Ben's problem was not havin' a father or a mother. I got better after that. Put in for days whenever I could get aem. Brought work home instead of stayin' at the House. Got involved with their lives. Poor kids. They was bein' pa.s.sed around like orphans. Half the time I didn't know if they were at their grandmother's or their aunt's."

Frank wagged her head.

"What?" Annie asked.

"Nothin'. I was just thinking this morning, the paths our lives took. I was feeling bad about all the running I've done, running from my past, but this is where it's brought me. Here tonight. Sober. Helping with the dishes. Talking to a friend. Full belly. Warm bed. Laying ghosts to rest. Hard as a lot of it's been, I guess I wouldn't trade any of it. Even the bad stuff."

Annie offered a wan smile. She nodded. "I haven't told that story in years." Pulling the drain plug, she added, "Thanks for listenin'."

"Thanks for tellin' me. I got bad news, though."

"What's that?"

"While you were talkin'? I ate all the ice cream."

"No." Annie chuckled. "That's good news."

CHAPTER 33.

Tuesday, 18 Jan 05-Canarsie Mary Catherine Franco.

Sounds so churchy. So Boston Irish. Neither of which my mother was. She was born Mary Catherine Stenthorst. Good Swedish name. Sounds like stamping your feet in the snow and ordering your horse to stand. Nothing churchy about that.

Mary Catherine Franco.

She loved snow and daisies and sugar cookies with lemon icing. She was young once and pretty. Beautiful even. She turned men's heads. She was slim and tall, very Nordic. A blonde Julie Newmar, only not so jaded. Or stacked. I got her height and her flat chest. Better than being barrel-shaped like Dad. She had gorgeous cheekbones. She could hang clothes on them. But she hated her eyelashes. Called them stumpy. Td sit on the toilet watching her curl them, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, swearing at them as she layered on coat after coat of mascara, an old-fas.h.i.+oned sweating on the sink. They always drank old-fas.h.i.+oneds before they went out. Dad showed me how to make them. I forget now, but something about muddling sugar and bitters-that's what he called it, muddling. Critical step-you muddle the sugar and bitters in a teaspoon of water, add ice, bourbon and a maraschino cherry. I loved the cherries after they'd been soaking in the booze. Sure sounds good right about now.

See, that's how I know Tm an alcoholic-it's ten in the morning, the middle of winter and my toes are frozen yet an icy, dripping, old-fas.h.i.+oned sounds like heaven. And I don't even like sweet drinks. Tm a rummy, just like Hemingway's drunks. Sounds so much more genteel than alcoholic. Alcoholic is so clinical. Has no charm. Rummy sounds quaint, amusing. If a rummy sticks a gun in his mouth and almost pulls the trigger it's amusing. If an alcoholic does it it's desperate. There's a lot in a name.

Like Mary Catherine Franco. Lace Irish, Catholicism, white dresses. But not my mom. She was Cat. Always Cat. Never Mary Catherine, and Catherine only when my dad was frustrated with her. He called her everything starting with "cat"-catawampus, cataclysm, catamaran, Katmandu-he'd come home from work and sweep her into his arms, singing, "How do you do, Katmandu?"-catapult, katabatic. When she was in a down cycle, all depressed and lethargic on the couch, he'd hold her head in his lap and stroke her hair, calling her "my catatonia."

He loved her. He loved her so f.u.c.king much. Through the ups, the downs, the in-betweens. There couldn't have been another woman. Yeah, okay, so maybe he knocked off a piece here and there. My mom wasn't exactly available when she was depressed but as far as loving another woman, I can't see it. Not enough for her to still be prowling around his grave after all this time.

And the lows just weren't that bad while he was alive. They were more spread out. Seemed like she was more manic while he was alive and then afterward more depressed. Lucky me. But sometimes the highs were as bad as the lows. Like the night she decided we needed new dishes. She took every plate and bowl we owned and smashed them against the wall. My father tried to stop her but she was just laughing and hurling china. Neighbors called the cops. Thought someone was getting killed.

Crazy cat. Katzenjammer. Cat Ballou. Catamount.

Mom.

CHAPTER 34.

Frank snapped out of a doze to see an elderly white woman walking from the direction of her father's grave.

"Oh, s.h.i.+t." Rocketing from the car, Frank trotted up to the departing woman. "Excuse me. Are you here for the Deluca funeral?"

The woman stared with wide, rheumy eyes. "The Deluca funeral? Oh, no."

"Oh. Which one then?" Frank pressed.

"I'm not here for any funeral. I was visiting my brother."

"Oh. Your brother." Frank made a show of looking beyond the woman. "Is there a funeral goin' on here?"

"Not that I know of." The woman turned, searching too.

"Shoot. I hope I got the right day. Maybe I got the time wrong. I coulda sworn it was this mornin'. Well, thanks anyways." Frank pretended to move away but stopped to ask, "Say, who's ya brother? You're a dead ringer for Frankie Ford."

"Oh, no." The woman smiled. "My brother's Samuel Abrams. He died of cancer two days past Thanksgiving."

"Aw, geez. That's terrible. I'm sorry for your troubles."

"Yes, well, thank you. Maybe you could ask about your funeral at the office."

"Hey, that's a great idea. I'll do that. Thanks. Sorry to bother you."

"Oh, it's no bother."

The woman waved and Frank headed to the office. From a corner of the building she watched the old lady leave, relieved she caught her and disappointed she was n.o.body.

Inside the office, Frank said, "Mornin'. Can you tell me where Samuel Abrams is buried?"

"One minute," the receptionist told her. "I check for you."

Frank followed his directions to Abrams' plot, satisfied with the fresh prints and flowers at Abrams' stone. She checked her father's grave. No prints that weren't her own.

Returning to the Nova she poured coffee and fidgeted. She remembered to call Charlie Mercer and arranged for him to take over surveillance. After talking to him she dialed the squad.

"Homicide, Detective Lewis."

"Sister Shaft. S'appenin'?"

"IT, that you?"

"S'me. S'up?"

"Da-amn, girl. Where you at?"

"Sittin' in a rusty Nova, freezin' my a.s.s off outside a cemetery in Brooklyn."

"Yeah, wha.s.sup up with that? When you comin' home?"

"I'll be back Monday. That's the plan. How's things goin'?"

"Let's see. Bobby's in court. Diego's at the morgue. The new guy's weird."

"How so?"

"Kept callin' me Queen Latifah."

Frank laughed.

"Yeah, funny, right? I got in that home's face and told him if he called me Queen Latifah one more time I was going to f.u.c.k him up so hard make Queen Latifah look like Pee Wee Herman."

"Great." Frank cringed. "How'd that go over?"

"Let's just say Larry be givin' me some s.p.a.ce now."

"Try not to kill him before I get back, okay?"

"Yeah, maybe. We'll see about that."

"Just ice, Joe Louis. He's not so bad."

"Skinhead best not be gettin' in my face again. That's all I gotta say."

"What else? Anyone doing any actual police work or ya'll just hanging out playing kindergarten?"

"We're working," Lewis huffed. She filled Frank in as she absently registered the street. There were faces she'd become familiar with, regulars catching the bus, the old man walking his Airedale, another old man with an obese poodle, a dark woman her age that limped by every day around noon.

Even Frank had her routine. She checked the graves in the morning, then returned to the Nova, content to take in the neighborhood and drink coffee. When she tired of that, she spent the obligatory time on her journal, visited the bathroom and walked around the cemetery. She dawdled, reading names until lunch. If it was nice she ate in the cemetery, and if not, she'd eat in the car and listen to news. After lunch, she'd pour her last cup of coffee and read. She usually nodded off a few times, jerking herself awake. Then it was time for another walk around the cemetery, bemused by both her dreams and the quality of light as the winter sun descended.

It went that way Thursday and Friday, with Frank's second Sat.u.r.day at the cemetery fast becoming as fruitless as her first. Warm in the heavy wool coat she'd borrowed from Annie, Frank admired a sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding her crucified son in her lap. The Mary looked so pained and the Jesus so dead. Frank was amazed that stone could be so vivid. She studied the epitaphs of the family beneath the monument, deciding she didn't want to be buried. Who would visit and why waste the s.p.a.ce?

Wondering if she could arrange for her ashes to be put in a dumpster, she eyed a man hurrying by on her right. He was about six feet tall, weighed around one-seventy, maybe black or Latino. She couldn't tell from the way he was hunched into his jacket. He wore John Lennon gla.s.ses and seemed to know where he was going. In one gloved hand he clutched a grocery sack. Yellow chrysanthemums poked from the edge.

Frank followed discretely.

Her heart jumped when he stopped at her father's grave. The man searched the ground. He looked behind the headstones and at the surrounding markers, then knelt and crossed himself. He appeared to pray for a moment. Done with that, he took the flowers from the sack and propped them against the carved letters Francis S. Franco. Then he took a gla.s.s candle from the bag. Stuffing the empty sack into his jacket he fished in a trouser pocket. He struck a match and lit the candle. Arranging it at the base of the flowers, he bowed his head.

Frank edged closer. She drank him down like whiskey. Kinky short hair flecked with gray above a furrowed, walnut-colored face. The skin under his chin bunched under his bent head and she put him in his mid-fifties. He wore black trousers over black lace-ups. The pants and shoes were worn but clean. The down jacket was navy-colored, no brand.

He stood but didn't leave, his gaze rarely straying from her father's headstone. Frank watched, making herself crazy with the possibilities. Could he be the perp? Maybe. Frank tried to see him almost forty years younger. Couldn't. Maybe her father's illegitimate child? Maybe a half brother from somewhere? Maybe he'd been bis.e.xual and this was his old lover. h.e.l.l, after Annie's bombsh.e.l.l Frank was ready to accept anything.

The man looked toward her. Frank checked the monument at her feet, crossing herself like she'd seen Annie do. From the edge of her vision she watched him do the same thing then hurry toward the gate. Frank went after him, keeping half a block between them. He stopped at a bus stop and Frank ducked into a grocery. She watched from there, getting a couple dollars worth of change. Five minutes later a bus pulled up and Frank got on behind him.

The bus zigzagged north through Brooklyn. When the man got off Frank did too. She maintained her half-block trail. He seemed oblivious to her. Various people greeted him as he walked. A few times he stopped for a brief talk. Frank strained to hear but couldn't. She twisted and turned with him until he abruptly crossed the street and entered one of half a dozen entrances into a large brick building. Frank crossed too. Reading a sign on the door listing Rectory Hours, she paused.

A young Hispanic woman came out and lit a cigarette. She quickly puffed half of it and as she stubbed it out against the building Frank approached her.

"Excuse me. Who was that man that just walked in to the rectory? Tall guy, gla.s.ses, dark coat."

"You mean Father Cammayo?"

Frank hid her surprise. "Is that who that was? I lived here a long time ago. I thought I recognized him but I didn't want to go up and say h.e.l.lo to a total stranger."

Flas.h.i.+ng a nervous smile the woman nodded, then returned inside.

Frank walked around the corner and dialed Annie, but she didn't answer. Frank told her voice mail, "It's Frank. I got him. Call me." She pressed end and read the name scrolled above a large set of wooden doors.

Our Lady Queen of Angels.

She climbed the steps to the doors. She pulled a large iron handle and the door gave easily. But she dropped her hand, letting the door close in a whisper of incense. Above her, three stained gla.s.s windows stretched to the sky. One panel looked like Mary ascending to Heaven in the company of angels. The second was a mournful, El Greco-style Christ and a third appeared to be Adam and Eve. While grappling with the significance of the triptych her phone went off. It spooked her and she checked the number, relieved.

"Hey," she told Annie. "I got him."

"So I heard. Where are you?"

"Brooklyn. Williamsburg, I think. I'm at a church." Frank tilted her head back. "Our Lady Queen of Angels. On Eighth Street."

"Is that where he's at?"

"Yeah. He's a f.u.c.kin' priest."

"Hey, hey. Watch your mouth. A priest? How do you know? Did you talk to him?"

"No. He went into the rectory and a minute later a woman came out. I asked who the man was that just went in and she says, aYou mean Father Cammayo?' A priest. Go figure. When can you talk to him?"