They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee Read Online Free PDF Page A

doesn’t turn out for kidney failure.” He crossed himself. “Let’s just do what we came here to do. You remember the detective’s name, right?”
    â€œCaliparri, retired member of the Detective Bureau of the Newark, New Jersey Police Department.”
    â€œGood.”
    The desk sergeant didn’t exactly snap to attention when we approached. That was fine with me. It gave me more time to study the soft lines of her face and imagine how her pulled-back auburn hair might fall against her lightly freckled skin. When she looked up, the corners of her full lips smiled politely, but the corners of her eyes smiled not at all. Eyes shot with blood are never easy to look at. The blue shine of her eyes made the contrast even harder to take.
    â€œHow can I help you gentlemen?” she asked, her voice cracking slightly.
    â€œDetective Caliparri?” She went pale. “Your names?”
    â€œDylan Klein. John MacClough.”
    â€œOne moment.” She picked up the phone, punched in a few numbers, and turned her back to us. We could hear her whisper, but not her words. With some color having returned to her cheeks, she faced us and said: “Staircase to your right. One flight up, third door to your left.”
    â€œThank you, Sergeant. . .Hurley,” I read off her name tag. “Sorry for your loss.”
    She just bowed her head and waved us up the steps.

    â€œCome,” the answer came to my knock.
    By the time MacClough closed the door behind us, my clothes needed washing. The place reeked of cigarettes and a layer of smoke hung in midair like a sleeping ghost. A man, trying hard to look disinterested, sat on the corner of a desk smoking a Kent. He had a kind, meaty face with a nose that twisted more ways than a ski trail. He was dark-skinned, gray-haired, and brown-eyed. His smoke-yellowed fingers were thick and square at the nail. When he finally stopped the disinterested act, he looked right past me: “John MacClough.” His voice was raspy. His tone was equal parts anger and disdain.
    â€œKlein,” Johnny said, “meet Detective Nick Fazio, late of the NYPD.”
    I shook his hand. He shook back. Whatever Fazio had against MacClough apparently wasn’t going to be held against me.
    â€œLook,” I said, “it’s nice that you guys go back. I’m all for reunions, but I’m here to talk to Detective Caliparri.”
    â€œThen I guess you’re gonna have to hold a seance. Caliparri’s dead. Someone broke into his house last night and decided to give him a haircut with a shotgun.”
    â€œRobbery?” MacClough wanted to know.
    â€œThe place was ransacked,” Fazio answered, “but the perp left a few grand in cash and jewelery untouched. So whatever he was there for, it wasn’t money. What did you want to talk to him about Mr. Klein?”
    â€œMy nephew, Zak Klein. My older brother reported him—”
    â€œHere it is!” Fazio pulled a folder off his desk, waved it at me, stopped and read through it. He looked up and flicked his cigarette butt at MacClough’s feet. “So you’re Jeffrey Klein’s brother.”
    â€œI have that dubious distinction,” I confessed.
    â€œSo now I understand why you’re here, sort of. What’s his excuse?”
    â€œHe’s a close family friend.”
    â€œReally!” Fazio stood, walked by me, and got right in MacClough’s face. “Geez, and I thought it might have something to do with Hernandez, this being a missing kid and all.”
    There was that name again, Hernandez. Ten years we’d known each other and the name Hernandez had only come up in relation to Mets’ baseball. Now, two days in a row, it surfaces in connection with one of MacClough’s cases. Weird. Over the past decade, I thought I’d heard every lurid detail of every big case—good and bad—involving John MacClough. Apparently, one case