Fragility

1 The Request

February 2nd 1925.

It was a cold, cruddy winter day in the Boston Area. I am in my office, filing the paperwork of the usual suspects, primarily gang-related affiliation and bootlegging busts, who're either of Irish or Italian descent with a Catholic upbringing. I'm not a religious man, nor do I believe in God. I found it laughable that thugs would pose as the religious types, thinking a God's almighty hand would somehow forgive them of their crimes. Not me.

I am the kind of guy who would never forgive or forget. You see, I grew up in the school of hard knocks. This mentality was brought about by my no-good drunk of a father. When my father went to prison, he died there, leaving my mother and me to fend for ourselves. We lived with my grandparents on their farm out in the countryside of Massachusetts. Gramps was an old-timer, a relic from back when men conducted themselves in an honourable manner. I had a lot of respect for Gramps. He taught me well, taught me to be a man, to take care of myself and our family. When I was seventeen, I joined the Army when the US tossed its hat in during the World War back in 1917. Got injured in the Battle of Soissons and earned a Purple Heart and Bronze Star for saving my platoons' ass from a Hun-held machinegun nest.

After the war, I went into police duty for the city of Boston in 1919. The Spanish Flu broke out the previous year and killed millions of young, able men, kids and the elderly. My mother and her folks weren't so fortunate and died during the pandemonium, and I was left alone with a farm to watch over outside the city. The farmer's life I neglected, as the PD was shorthanded and needed folks like me to keep the peace. When prohibition passed, my work more than doubled, and I've been busting gangsters and their operations from Winthrop to Dedham.

On this particular day, I hear a tap on the frosted glass window of my office door and standing through the other side is a silhouette outline of a female.

"Come in!" I called out, closing file folders and clearing my desk of paperwork.

Stepping in was this gorgeous young broad, a blonde bombshell with red-painted lips and blue eyes highlighted by mascara. Her neck-length hair is curly, and she is in a standard white and sky-blue lady's dress with a hat shading her oval face and a thick brown-furred winter coat. She looks like a typical tease I'd bust from a mobster's den of whores. Yet, I can see the sincere worry in her blue eyes as she entered my office with an aura of innocence to her.

"Detective John Lancy?" she asks, "Yep, that's me!" I replied like an eager kid ready to receive a reward from the teacher.

"My name is Clara Gallmore, and I am in need of your help." She began, taking a seat before my view and reaching into her small handbag, where she procured a pack of Camels and a brass lighter.

I can see the intense nervousness in her; in a way, I feel bad for Clara as she reminded me of my mother during my father's drunken nights.

"What do you need help with, Miss Gallmore?" I ask, pushing an ashtray for her smoke.

"My Fa-Father." She stuttered before taking another small drag from her smoke, "My Father is missing, Richard Gallmore."

I've heard of Richard Gallmore from off-handed sources during my career in the PD. An antique collector and bookworm type who owned an antique book store named Gallmore's Antique Archives. He's also a professor and taught in Boston's oldest university, Andover Newton Theological, that's been around since 1807. Gallmore is the typically quiet, reclusive guy that every community never bothered with, yet had his circle of eccentric friends. I have remembered faintly; he had put the money forward for a very good private attorney about two months back to bail out one of his associates. An oddball named William Allan Keller, a fellow book dealer and friend of Richard Gallmore. He was apprehended over an assault and the murder of Father Joshua and Father Herman, both Catholic Priests who came to his home. Father Joshua died from multiple injuries over some sorta dispute. An exorcism that failed, I am told? The details of that particular incident escape my mind as I wasn't investigating it, and last I heard, Mister Keller was placed in some hospital for the mentally ill after that debacle.

"Missing; how and when?" I asked promptly, getting myself to sit straight in my seat, leaning forward to listen intently. I scramble momentarily for my notepad and inkwell pen in my shirt's pocket.

"I don't know how or who took him," she said fearfully, dapping the tip of her smoke into the ashtray.

"B-But, the last time I saw him was in his bookstore, on the night of the 1st, on my birthday; I was having dinner with him there. He seemed okay, his usual normal self. I left him and a book he had for me as a gift. A day later, I realized I didn't have the book he gifted me. I returned to his store and found him nowhere; everything was intact." She paused, taking another drag of her smoke.

Clara let out a relaxed exhale of breath, her blue eyes reflecting on the past events that led her to me.

"I went to his house in Somerville, and it was broken into. The front door was smashed in, statues toppled down, and furniture turned over; everything was a mess. I went to his study, and the place was trashed. I scoured and found blood near the fireplace and a tooth. I ran from the sight and came to you, Detective Lancy."

This case troubled me. Trying to think of what kind of person or persons would have it out for Richard Gallmore? Maybe he ran in bad with the mob? After finishing writing up the information, I closed my notepad.

"Well, Miss Gallmore." I say, "Call me Clara." She insists.

"Well, Clara, I will be going to your father's residence immediately and see what I can find there. Would you like to come along with me?" I ask, adjusting my leg brace attached to my right knee and calf before going to my coat hanger.

Took a bullet to the knee; I hate what I've become. Now I walk stiffly with a slight tilt to my right side.

I put on my grey trench coat, taking off my matching fedora from a hook and a thick wool green scarf that I received last Christmas from Frank, the new kid, said his mother knitted it. He passed a bunch of scarves out to the PD during the Christmas party. Could have given me a grey one, but it does its job and keeps my neck warm on cold days.

"No, I just can't stand seeing blood. I get squeamish and sick at such sights. I will go to a friend's house, Emma Lewis, down south in Quincy, detective."

Clara produced a small piece of paper with a number to Emma Lewis' phone and her address written down in black ink, "Please, contact me once you have information about my father. I'll be there." And with that, Clara finished her smoke and then walked right out of my office, going down the hallway of the PD building. Her heels lightly clicked on the flooring, accompanied by the tacking of a few typewriters.