All the Pieces Fall: SpoCompton, #3

By Frank Zafiro

Book #3 in the SpoCompton crime series!

George "Mase" Masaryk knows about secrets. He has a few of his own, including the reason he left the police department. The son of Czechoslovak hippies, his life has been a strange journey from rebel to cop to private investigator.
It is a path his parents would never have chosen for him.

One full of secrets and regrets.

He is mulling over those secrets when businessman Andrew McDonough sits down next to him at the bar and the pair start drinking heavily. McDonough eventually asks Mase to help him with some "women problems." It is a request Mase doesn't even remember the next day, only recalling the foggy memory when Faye McDonough, Andrew's wife, shows up at his office to hire him almost a week later.

Faye wants him to find McDonough, who is now missing. She doesn't know if he's run off with a lover, been kidnapped, or is dead somewhere, but expects Mase to find out. As he delves into the twisting secrets that surround Andrew McDonough, Mase encounters more questions than answers. All the questions are dangerous ones and if he's going to survive to learn the truth, he needs to figure out that one fact that will make all of the pieces fall into place…

*All the Pieces Fall was selected by the Independent Fiction Alliance as one of the best "truly independent" titles of 2022!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Code 4 Press
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9798224842650

Frank Zafiro

Frank Zafiro was a police officer from 1993 to 2013. He is the author of more than two dozen crime novels. In addition to writing, Frank is an avid hockey fan and a tortured guitarist. He lives in Redmond, Oregon.  

Book preview

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

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Author’s Note & Acknowledgments

About the Author

BOOKS BY FRANK ZAFIRO

For Colin,

Thanks for the partnership.

To perceive is to suffer.

—Aristotle

1

Death begets drink.

I wondered where that phrase originated. To my ear, it seemed like something the Irish might say. They’re fond of pithy sayings, especially ones that reference Guinness or whisky.

Then again, it could be the Russians. They drink at least as well as the Irish and are every bit as grim. So maybe that’s who coined the phrase.

I didn’t know for sure. Honestly, I didn’t really care, either. But since I was sitting in The Lower Deck, a dive bar with a nautical theme, and nursing some bourbon from the bottom shelf because of a death, it seemed like a fitting question.

I finished off my drink and pushed it forward to signal for another. The bartender ambled over, a tall and lanky man, with the greasy, rugged look of a biker to him. I’d been in the place often enough to know that everyone called him by the unimaginative moniker Tall Ed.

Ed filled my glass. The bartender’s stony visage betrayed nothing. Oddly, it also seemed to invite a person to confide in the man. That paradox didn’t sit well with me. It seemed an untrustworthy idea somehow. A trick, or worse yet, a joke.

Still, I nodded my thanks for the pour. I didn’t tend to overdo social niceties, but if you were going to be polite to anyone, the bartender currently pouring the drinks made for a strong candidate.

You look like a man deep in thought.

I thought at first it had been Ed who spoke but then realized that the voice came from my left. I turned slowly toward the noise. A man sat two stools away. An old fashioned rested on the bar in front of him. To any practiced eye, he looked out of place. Solidly upper middle class and not a fit for the working-class clientele of The Lower Deck. Probably in business of some kind, I guessed. His haircut was sharp and recent. His nails were manicured. The jeans and blue-collar shirt he wore reeked of REI-casual.

What’s it to you? I growled.

I hoped my tone might curtail any further conversation. The man, however, wasn’t so easily put off.

Nothing, I suppose, he said. I’m just naturally curious about people. He flashed a winning grin, revealing perfect, white teeth.

I grunted. Try being curious somewhere else.

The man raised his hands slightly, placating. No offense meant.

He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. Probably none taken or some other social bullshit.

I said nothing.

The man lowered his hands. Tell you what. He motioned toward my bourbon. How about I get your next one and all is forgiven?

I studied him more closely, trying to read his intent. My senses were dulled from previous drinks but even with that handicap, I felt confident I could figure out what this guy wanted. I wasn’t getting a straight-up shady vibe from him exactly. It felt like he wanted something, though. This wasn’t just friendly banter. There was intent behind it all.

You hitting on me? I asked.

The man cocked his head in genuine surprise. "Am I what?"

Hitting on me. Because I’m not interested.

The man laughed. No. I’m just being friendly, that’s all.

Why?

It’s a bar. People talk in bars.

People keep to themselves, too.

The man raised his hands in that same easy, man gesture. It reminded me of something my father did to try to defuse one of our many clashes while I was growing up. The memory irritated me.

Like I said, I meant no offense. If you want to be alone –

I do.

The man shrugged. No worries. He gave Tall Ed a wave and pointed. Your next one is still on me, though.

I turned sideways on my stool. What the fuck is your deal? Do you just go into bars and bother people who want to be left alone?

The man laughed again. I guess that is kind of my thing, isn’t it? He stuck out his hand. I’m Andrew McDonough.

I stared at the proffered hand. I almost turned away and ignored it. But in my peripheral vision, Ed was already pouring the drink my new friend was paying for. So, I reached out and shook the man’s hand.

George Masaryk, I muttered. But call me Mase.

We sat together after that. As I’d hoped, McDougall or McDonald or whatever his name was, took over buying the rounds. Even though I would have preferred to be alone, I preferred having my drinks paid for even more. So, I steeled myself to deal with the man’s jocularity. Considered it the price of admission for the free drinks.

He surprised me, though. Once he was ensconced on the stool beside me, he didn’t talk nearly as much. Instead, he seemed content with the occasional exchange and shared silences. I kept forgetting his name and finally settled on just calling him Mick.

Eventually, that led to me mentioning the proverb to him.

Death begets drink? Mick mulled it over. That from the Bible?

I hadn’t considered this possibility. I thought about it for a few seconds. Finally, I shook my head. I don’t think so. I was thinking Irish. Or maybe Russian.

Mick raised a brow in agreement. Fits either one. My people always were a dour lot. Not that the Russians weren’t.

My parents hated them.

Mick’s brow went higher, questioning. Which?

The Russians, I explained. When a bunch of them started pouring into Spokane about twenty-five, maybe thirty years ago, my folks weren’t thrilled.

Why not?

They came here from Czechoslovakia.

No shit?

The vulgarity seemed a little foreign on Mick’s lips, as if he were trying too hard to be edgy. But I was beyond caring. I nodded in response, taking a slow sip of the bourbon. It was good. Once Mick started buying, we’d moved up a couple of shelves to the better stuff. They fled the old country in the aftermath of the Prague Spring, back in ’68.

Prague Spring? What was that?

A bunch of hippies trying to challenge the Soviets, basically.

Mick grimaced. I wager it didn’t end well.

"It worked out fine for the Russians. They rolled in with their tanks and promptly shut that shit down."

Sounds about right. Mick signaled Tall Ed, making a circular motion with his fingers. But your folks got out?

They did. Through Yugoslavia. Went on a vacation and never went home.

And came here? To Spokane? Seems like an odd choice for a destination.

I shrugged. They were hippies. 

I hadn’t thought about my parents for a while. At least, not in anything more than a fleeting fashion. A pair of free-love, idealistic activists from a communist nation, I wondered how surprised they’d been when everyone in the US of A didn’t welcome them with open arms.

I grunted at that, sure they’d been shocked to discover the nation they’d escaped to wasn’t quite the utopia it was rumored to be. Nevertheless, they took it in stride and clung to their ideals.

In other words, they never learned.

The two of them tried to pass on their philosophies to me, of course. I stared into my drink, trying to remember how old I was when I started rejecting first their ideas, and then their ideals. Sixteen? Earlier? I liked to believe that on some level I always knew better but that wasn’t true. I’d seen the photographs of myself as a boy, dressed in a tie-dye shirt, with fringed buckskins and matching moccasins, flashing a peace sign and a beaming smile.

That kid believed. At least, he did then, even if he didn’t know better. Whether I preferred it or not, that was the truth, and one thing I believed in was facing the truth. If you’re going to be a pragmatist, it’s pretty much a requirement.

Communist hippies, mused Mick. That’s a little funny.

They were true believers. I polished off my drink and accepted a new one from Tall Ed. I stared down at the amber liquid, remembering.

My father once lamented to me that I got all the best things from my mother. Her sharp eyes, wiry strength, fly-away hair. According to him, all he gave me was a little size and a lot of ugly. But his ideas, he stressed, were the true gifts that he yearned to pass on to me. That was during my especially rebellious years, so I shot back that my father’s ideas weren’t gifts, but curses. I was rewarded with seeing tears well up in my father’s eyes. That felt good and shitty at the same time.

Still, my parents did give me one gift, without question. Based on the date on my birth certificate compared with the date on their immigration paperwork, I was conceived in the old country but born in the new. That made me an American, and I was glad for that. It might be a dirty word in many parts of the world, but it still meant something in the corner that I lived in.

I swirled my drink slightly. The corner I lived in. Spokane, Washington. SpoCompton to the cynics. Which means people in the know. It was a bit of a grimy corner, if I was being honest, though much of that grime lay underneath a veneer of natural beauty. Probably most of the people that lived here only saw that surface. They were the ones who bought into the slogan Near Nature, Near Perfect. They were people who celebrated what a wonderful place this eastern Washington burg was in which to visit, live, work, and play.

People like my parents.

Which, I suppose, was why an overnight stopover on the way to Seattle turned into a lifelong residency for them.

Sometimes I marveled at how that simple decision impacted my own life. I never would have joined the police department here if my parents hadn’t decided that Spokane was the perfect place to live out their oh-so-compassionate lives.

Would I still have become a cop, though? That was the real question.

I took another sip of my drink, setting my mind to that conundrum. If they’d made it all the way to Seattle as planned and settled there, would my destiny have still been to wear the badge? Just for a different SPD?

Probably.

Becoming a cop fit me. It was a practical job and I was practical-minded. And it was also the furthest thing from what my parents had hoped I’d become, the absolute antithesis of their belief system. The police represented repression. They were the American equivalent of the Soviet occupiers of their homeland. Me joining their ranks should have crushed their souls, or so I thought.

Turned out I was wrong. Oh, they weren’t thrilled at first. But they remained supportive nonetheless. To the brash twenty-one-year-old version of myself, that part was maddening. I’d expected to see dismay on their faces at my academy graduation when the chief pinned the badge on my chest. That was if they deigned to attend at all. A peaceful boycott of the ceremony was more their style.

Instead, they applauded, beaming with pride. My mother even wept.

Good thing neither of them were around to see how I left the job.

I told some of this to Mick, though the truth was, I lost track of how much exactly. The drink slowly dulled me. That was the point, wasn’t it? So, I sat and thought and remembered. And since Mick paid for the drinks, I shared some, too. I didn’t know if these revelations made complete sense to the man or not, and frankly, I didn’t care.

Are they still true believers? Mick asked at some point. Your parents?

I shook my head. They’re dead.

Oh. I’m sorry.

Don’t be. It’s been over ten years.

A house fire took them one bitterly cold winter night. The home they’d eventually purchased—located, of course, in the neighborhood dubbed Peaceful Valley—was almost a hundred years old. Even with some updates, the wiring was dodgy. I tried to tell them. Those warnings, like all the others I shared about the many perils that existed, went largely unheeded. They saw the world differently.

Fire was a bad way to go. I tried to take some solace in the fact that they’d gone out as they’d lived, together. But that was more idealistic bullshit, meant to anesthetize the pain, and didn’t work on me.

Anniversary? Mick asked.

Huh? I turned to look at him through bleary eyes.

Mick lifted his glass. ‘Death begets drink,’ right? You said it earlier. I thought this might be an anniversary of when you lost them or something.

No.

Oh. Mick shrugged. So not part of the grieving process.

Grieving? I shook my head. I’m not grieving. I’m celebrating.

Genuine surprise registered on Mick’s face. You don’t look like you’re celebrating.

Well, I am. Believe it.

Celebrating what?

I allowed a cruel, ironic grin to twist my lips. Justice, I guess you could say.

What’s that mean?

I turned back to my drink and thought about how to reply. I was beyond drunk now. Getting someone to understand the realities of police work was nigh on impossible when both parties were sober and willing. How could I expect to encapsulate a sixteen-year police career, overshadowed by one dark moment, in a way Mick would understand?

Hell, I didn’t entirely understand the whole thing myself, and I lived it.

It wasn’t just one dark moment, either, I muttered.

What? Mick asked.

My gaze veered back to my drinking partner. How to explain? Then an idea struck me. You ever go inside a meat factory?

Mick squinted in confusion. You mean a sausage factory?

I ignored the correction. Everyone wants the neat package at the end. Cook it up and eat it. Yum, right? I shook my head. No one wants to know how it gets done, though.

I’m not sure what you’re talking about…

I used to be a cop, I blurted.

I know. You told me earlier.

I did?

Yeah. Used to be a cop, now you’re a P.I.

I blinked. I didn’t remember sharing those details.

Mick lifted a card. I recognized the stark business logo and the deep red ink of George Masaryk Investigations, along with my business number.

I grunted. What else had I told him? Did I say why? I ventured, probing.

Why what?

Why I’m not a cop anymore.

Mick shook his head. Retired, I figure. It’s twenty and out, isn’t it? Like the military?

It can be, I whispered.

Not in my case, though. I’d been sixteen and out, and with no retirement. Oh, I got the lump sum reimbursement of my own contributions to the pension fund. They had to give me that. Even a felony conviction didn’t remove that property right, a fact that would outrage most civilians if they knew. Not that I took the felony hit. No, I ended up with something arguably worse.

"So, is that it, then? Mick asked. Celebrating retirement?"

I laughed, a short barking sound that died halfway out of my mouth. I was glad I hadn’t told Mick the truth about why I was drinking today. As congenial as the man had been, even he’d find it macabre.

The news was in the paper that afternoon. A full half page, located on what used to be considered below the fold. I read on my laptop, though, so I imagined there had to be a new term for it now. One scroll down, maybe?

The piece was a fluff obituary for Sergeant Gerald Krauss. Barely known outside the department, the man was a legend within it. At the time of his death, he was the longest tenured cop on the job. Fearless, fearsome, and feared in his early days, partnered up with the man who eventually went on to become chief, Krauss was what every cop aspired to be.

Including me.

Are you taking on new clients? Mick asked from beside me.

I ignored his questioning gaze. Instead, I swirled my drink, remembering. Everyone thought so goddamn highly of Jerry Krauss. His tremendous policing skills, the way he took care of his people, how he seemed to have every answer to every question, no matter how obscure. Even his tendency to reference people and events from history to make his point or teach a lesson became part of the mythos surrounding the man.

And that was the self-righteous son of a bitch who got me bounced off the job. His crew of hot shit investigators came across my transgression and instead of looking the other way, he took it to his buddy, the chief. That’s where my career ended.

No badge.

No retirement.

But then again, no jail, either. So perhaps Krauss was at least a little bit stand up at the end. Maybe I should have shown some gratitude to the sergeant for that, at least.

Maybe so, but fuck it. He didn’t do it for me. He did it for himself. For leverage. To make me his bitch for years to come. Anytime he called with a task, I