"They just never said anything. No one did. I never asked, but… I didn’t know I was supposed to,” Florence said.
“Well, how do you think your father made his money?” Detective Amos asked.
“Garbage,” she replied.
“Garbage?”
“Yeah, garbage. He worked in waste management,” she said.
The detective stroked his moustache as he looked on the twelve-year-old. He was conscious of the time he had allocated for the interview. She was unaccompanied, and he still hadn’t informed her of the truth yet… he was waiting on that. That would be the hard part. The body had only been discovered during their conversation. Up until that point, it was a missing persons case, but he knew better.
“What specifically about waste management did you think your dad did for work, Florence?” Amos asked.
“I don’t know,” the tween said. “He, like, picked up people’s rubbish and they paid him,” she said.
“Household rubbish?” he asked.
“No, like for businesses and stuff… What is all this about anyway? My dad is missing, is this really important?” she stressed.
“Believe me, honey, it’s really important,” the detective said.
“I want my Mom,” she cried.
“Florence, your mother is in the interview room next door being asked the same questions as you are right now,” he told her. He hated lying, but there was no choice. Her mother was in custody. The prime suspect.
“Why can’t you talk to us together then?” she asked. The clever girl.
“Because it’s standard police procedure to separate the subjects of an interview investigation,” he replied. “So that we can get the facts straight… No conflicting information. We can cross-check what she said with you and cross-check what you said with her yadda, yadda, yadda… All standard police stuff,” he explained. He knew he was overselling it. She gave a look of disdain. He wasn’t sure whether he succeeded or not.
“So did your father mention anyone by the name of Tony B or Tony C?” he continued.
She hesitated for a moment. He wondered if he detected a hint of recognition.
“No,” she eventually said.
A thought pierced her memory. She was taken to the Women’s World Cup soccer by her father. The USA versus Hungary. For some unknown reason, Tony C had met them in the parking lot near the train station. He had a bag under his arm and waved them over as they approached.
“Is Uncle Tony coming with us?” she remembered asking her father.
“No, darling, he’s just here to give me my wallet. I left it at the office earlier,” he told her.
She breathed a sigh of relief, not wanting to share the quality time with her creepy uncle.
“Hi, Uncle T!” she exclaimed as they reached him. He ignored her completely and drew a pistol from the bag and hid it under her father’s ribs, away from the view of the other fans that made their way to the station turnstiles for the next service to the stadium.
“I didn’t want it to come to this, Marko!” Uncle T said. “Truly, I didn’t, in front of your little girl and everything… But you left me no choice, you son of a bitch!” he yelled.
“Calm down, Tony!” her dad yelled back. “You’re being hysterical!”
“Am I!”
A uniformed police officer was nearby and this caused Tony C to put the weapon in his jacket pocket.
“Next week! Monday!” he said, pointing to her father as he walked back to his vehicle. “No excuses!”
Her father patted her on the back as they continued their commute to the station entrance.
“It’s okay honey, come on, let’s go have some fun!” he said in a voice as easygoing as an ice cream order on a sunny Friday afternoon.
That was eight months earlier.
“Not Tony B or Tony C?” Detective Amos asked again.
“No! I already told you!” she blurted. That was her tell. If this was a game of poker, she would have lost her hand. Don’t bet the house, sweetheart, he thought.
“Florence, you know it’s an offence to lie to a police officer?” he said. Pulling out the big guns. The illegal manoeuvres. He was thankful he wasn’t recording the conversation, although he did look over his shoulder at the CCTV to make sure the red light was not flashing.
“I’m not lying!” she yelled.
“Then why the aggression, honey?”
“I’m not being aggressive,” she said with a fold of her arms and a roll of her eyes.
Pre-teens were so stupid.
“You don’t want me to get my cuffs, do you?” he asked rhetorically. “You surely don’t want to share a cell with the other roughnecks we pick up on a nightly basis,” he said. He probably shouldn't have said that last part.
“Okay, okay,” she replied. She had relented. “Tony B is my Godfather, and Tony C is my second cousin. I call him Uncle Tony,” she said. “What have they got to do with this?” she wanted to know.
“Your father may have got into a little disagreement with them these past few months. When was the last time you saw either of them?” he asked.
“I don’t know… A long time ago,” she said. Then she started to panic. “Are you telling me they have something to do with Dad going missing?” she pleaded.
Amos leaned back in his seat. It was time to fess up. Her father was dead, lying on his back in the rear of a warehouse over on Easter Street. Her mother was found with the murder weapon in her purse, having thrown it from the Pier Street Bridge twelve hours later. But why waste an opportunity to get intel on the Caroochi brothers, ‘B’ and ‘C’? Who cares if their boss was dead? The perfect tell-all sat in front of the detective unvarnished, unprotected by her dad, who was now completely out of the equation.
If the time to get intel from her was ever made, that time would be now. Before grief removed her from the equation altogether.
“Tell me everything you know about your Godfather and your second cousin now and I’ll tell you what I know, so far, about your dad,” he bargained.
“You know where my father is?!” she pleaded.
Quid pro quo.
“Tony B and Tony C first… Then we talk your father,” he said.
She frowned her lips. She hesitated, but he knew she would talk.