Free North of Montana by April Smith Page B

back Sunday afternoons at the YMCA on Long Beach Boulevard, the reward for sustaining a perfect freestyle for fifty yards being holding my cheek to that strong upper quadrant—the compact pectorals, cool feel of chlorine-scented skin, dark furry hair surrounding a useless nipple, fascinating turkey folds under the chin, hard shoulders beneath my small naked feet as he magically lifted me out of the water to dive over his gleaming wet head. I didn’t have a father to teach me to swim; I had Poppy.
    “Happy birthday. You’re looking great.”
    “Not bad for seven decades on this earth. What’re you drinking?”
    “Brought my own.” I slip a bottle out of a bag.
    “White wine?” He shakes his head. “That’s the L.A. crowd.” Grabbing a handful of ice, “Hope you still eat red meat.”
    “I eat it and I fuck it.” Beating him to the punch.
    He cracks a can of 7UP. “Easy on the language.”
    “Sorry. I wouldn’t want to offend Moby Dick.”
    “Is that how Feebees talk?”—derisive cop term for FBI agents—“I thought they were educated bastards.”
    I laugh. Here we go. “We try to be tough. Almost as tough as you.”

    •  •  •

    Poppy sits in a chair near the balcony wearing nothing but the towel, legs crossed demurely, drinking Seven and Sevens until long after it is dark and the relentless air conditioning has given me a chill. The dogs are still out there. From time to time they nose against the glass near his feet like canine spirits conjured up by the original Agua Caliente Indians.
    I admit that the other reason I drove out to the desert was to tell all the details of my perfect bust at California First Bank to Poppy in person. How I was alone. How I staked the guy out and made the right moves and cuffed him with no assistance. How my brilliant interview technique led the suspect to confess to six other robberies. How it was so good it was pure sex.
    I am always offering Poppy things like that. Accomplishments. Gifts. His reaction is usually noncommittal, with the implication that it really isn’t good enough, although he did attend my graduation from Quantico in his lieutenant’s full-dress uniform, and he did cry. Still I keep coming back, hoping that what I’ve done will be better, that it will please Poppy at last.
    Moby Dick is a more appreciative audience and I find myself playing to him. He follows the action as if it were a Police Academy cartoon (which he watches religiously in the shack on Saturday mornings), stomping his huge Jordans and shouting “Right on!” Poppy’s only reaction is to tell about the time he , as a rookie patrol officer, cornered a murder suspect alone on the footpath near the Santa Monica Pier and chased him onto the beach. It was Saturday in July, crowded as hell, the suspect dove into the ocean and was never seen again.
    “Wow, Commissioner, that’s a story,” Moby Dick tells my grandfather reverentially.
    “What else happened when you were a rookie? When we lived north of Montana?”
    “Well, we had the famous Hungry Thief,” Poppy grins, settling back with his drink. “Broke into a market, stole a thousand bucks, left two half-eaten knockwurst sandwiches.”
    Moby Dick laughs, a whistling snort up the nose.
    “I went past the old house on Twelfth Street,” I put in casually. “Trying to remember what it was like. Did you and Mom and I ever live there with my father?”
    “I’ll tell you something that happened,” Poppy says suddenly, eyes bright, blatantly ignoring my question. “I had you down at the station one time when all of a sudden we hear this god-awful racket and we run outside to see what the hell it is, and goddamn, a military helicopter is making a landing right in the parking lot.”
    Moby Dick asks, “What for?”
    “For John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”
    Poppy nods to our dumbfounded silence. “The President wasn’t actually on board, but at that time he used to make quite a lot of trips out to L.A.— they said to see