Silent Night Man

“Obviously. You didn’t know the adult John became. You still saw the kid who played sandlot baseball with you in ninth grade.”

“He had a rap sheet. I never knew.”

“He was a troubled man. There’s something else, too. My friend at the precinct said that when they searched John’s room, they found an open bank book on the coffee table. It showed a withdrawal of five thousand dollars in cash—John had apparently sold everything of value that he had. The pawn slips were there, too, neatly arranged. There was a note, addressed to Millie, with only a threat: ‘You’ll be sorry.’ The police haven’t told her yet, and they warned me not to say anything. But I’m afraid for her.”

“What do you think John did with the money?” Tony asked.

“I don’t know.”

Tony was frowning. “Any of those gang members ever been suspected of murdering anybody?”

“Yes,” came the curt reply. “John had a vindictive nature. It wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t put out a contract on Millie.”

The John whom Tony knew as a teen wouldn’t have been capable of such actions. The man he was only now coming to know might well have done it. He could hardly get his mind to function. He’d come home with clear-cut ideas of the good guy and the bad woman, and now his theories were worthless. He was remembering Millie’s tragic expression when he accused her of murdering his friend. He was remembering, too, what Frank had just told him, that Millie had cared about him. It was a good bet that she didn’t anymore, he thought cynically.

Frank checked his watch. “I have to get back to the funeral home. Millie said she was coming over to see John. I tried to talk her out of it, but she said that it was something she had to do, that she felt responsible. Even after all John had done to her, she still felt sorry for him.”

Tony closed his eyes and groaned. He didn’t know how to tell his friend that Millie had already come to see John, and that Tony had treated her like dirt and made her run out of the building in fear of him. It wasn’t a revelation he was looking forward to.

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Frank actually winced when Tony told him how he’d treated Millie when he’d seen her at the funeral home earlier.

“Good God,” Frank said heavily. “That poor woman. How could you, Tony?” he asked accusingly.

Tony grimaced. “I didn’t know any better,” he defended himself. “All I had to go on was the letter John sent me and the memory of those visits I made home, when he’d cry on my shoulder about how bad she was treating him. I was sure that she’d killed my friend with her heartless behavior.”

Frank sighed heavily. “I wish she hadn’t gone to the funeral home early.”

“Yeah. Me, too,” Tony replied. He was never going to be able to forget Millie’s mad dash out the door. It would haunt him. “Look, that friend of yours at the precinct,” he said. “Could you get him to ask around and see if there’s any word on the street about a potential hit?”

“I could do that,” Frank said, and brightened a little.

“Maybe John just left a lot of money to an animal shelter and made the threat to scare her,” Tony said.

Frank gave him a sour look.

Tony held up both hands. “Sorry.”

“It won’t matter what he finds out,” Frank said. “There’s no budget for protective custody on supposition, no matter how educated. They won’t be able to assign anybody to protect her.”

“I’m off until the new year,” Tony said. “I can handle that.”

Frank blinked. “I’m sure she’ll welcome having you around, after the warm reception you gave her at the funeral home.”

Tony flinched. “Yeah. Well, I’ll have to apologize, I suppose.”

Frank didn’t say anything to that. Privately he thought Tony was going to find it difficult to bend enough to convince Millie that he was sorry. His friend had spent most of his life in violent surroundings. His social skills were a bit rusty, especially around women like Millie. Tony’s taste was the brassy, forward sort of females he could find in bars. Millie was both refined and reserved. It would be a tough combination to crack for a hard nut like Tony.

* * *

The next morning, a penitent Tony joined Frank at the funeral home for John’s last rites. There was a very small group of people there, mostly family. A couple of rough-looking men were sitting in the back, looking around constantly. Tony wondered if they might be John’s gang friends.

After the brief service, Tony drove Frank and himself to the cemetery for the graveside service. It was equally brief.

Tony noted that the rough-looking men had also come to the cemetery. One of them was intent on Tony and Frank, as if he found their presence suspicious.

“We’re being watched,” Tony told his friend as they walked back toward Tony’s sports car.

“I noticed,” Frank replied. Working as a bouncer had given him a sixth sense about trouble. Tony, in his line of work, also had developed it. They pretended to talk casually, without making it obvious that they saw the two men.

When they got to the car, and were seated and ready to travel, Tony looked in the rearview mirror and noted that one of the men was unobtrusively writing down his license plate number. He started laughing as he pulled the car around two of the family’s vehicles and exited the cemetery road.

“What’s funny?” Frank asked.

“They’re cops,” he said.

“What?”

“They’re cops,” Tony repeated. “Gang members wouldn’t give a hoot in hell about my plate number. They want to know who I am, and what my connection is to John.” He glanced at his friend. “How about asking your contact in the police department what they want to know about me? I’ll phone him with the details.”

Frank chuckled. “Fair enough. I’ll call him when I get home.”

Tony grinned. It amused him to be viewed with suspicion. He mostly was these days. He kept a low profile and never talked about his job.

He dropped Frank off at his apartment, and promised to meet him the following day for lunch. Then he went back to his hotel.

He noted that he was being followed again. He gave his car keys to the valet who handled the parking, walked into the lobby and slowed his pace as he went toward the elevator. He felt eyes on his back. Someone was following him. This was amusing.

He got into the elevator and pretended to be disinterested in his surroundings. A man whom he recognized as one of the two strangers at the funeral got in with him and stood apart, also pretending unconcern.

When Tony got off, on the wrong floor, he noted that the man remained behind but jotted down a number.

He took the staircase down, and was waiting in the lobby when the man following him got off the elevator. He looked up into Tony’s black eyes and actually jumped.

Tony gave him a worldly look. “If you want to know who I am and why I went to John’s funeral, come on in the bar and I’ll buy you a drink and give you the lowdown.”

The man raised his eyebrows, and then started laughing.

“How did you figure it out?” he asked, when they were seated at the bar.

“I’ve worked with cops before,” Tony told him, “in between jobs overseas.”

“What sort of jobs overseas?”

Tony chuckled, reached into his pocket for his wallet, flipped it open and displayed his credentials.

The man whistled softly. “I thought about going with them, once, but after six months of being called, interrogated, lie-detected, background-checked and otherwise investigated to death, I gave up and joined the police force. The pay’s lousy, but I’ve only been involved in one shoot-out in ten years.” He grinned. “I’ll bet you can’t say that.”