King of the Holly Hop is the 14th book in the Milan Jacovich
(pronounced MY-lan YOCK-ovich) mystery series by Cleveland writer Les
Roberts. Recently published in a new paperback edition, the book
centers around the 40th reunion of Milan’s St. Clair High School
graduating class where he gets a rude surprise: One of his classmates,
the philandering Dr. Philip Kohn, is found dead after a public
altercation. Jacovich is hired by another former classmate, successful
playwright Tommy Wiggins, to help prove his innocence and find the real
killer. In the following book excerpt, Milan connects with Lt. Florence
McHargue of the Third District Cleveland Police as part of his
investigation.

When I arrived at my office fifteen minutes before nine the next
morning, my voice mail light was flashing at me. I played back the
single message, logged in at 8:07 a.m. The caller didn’t have to
identify herself. I’d recognize Lieutenant Florence McHargue’s menacing
voice anywhere.

“Jacovich, if I don’t see your ass here within the hour, I’m going
to set it on fire — personally.”

Click.

Nice message. All the warmth of an Antarctic penguin who somehow
missed out on the long march.

I didn’t even take off my parka. I got to her office at the Third
District just in time to save my ass from burning.

Having spent several years in blue and several more after I left the
force just visiting, I’m as familiar with the Third District precinct
house, on Payne Avenue and East 21st Street, as I am with the house in
which I grew up. The station, built in Federalist style early in the
twentieth century, had slowly but steadily fallen into disrepair, and
was contemptuously called the Rock Pile until it was spiffed up enough
to look clean and inhabitable to commuters who drove past it on the way
downtown in the morning. The inside, however, still stinks of a century
of lawbreakers and frightened victims, and to most cops, it remains the
Rock Pile.

There was a time when the Cleveland gangsters hanging out in the
Third were glamorous, exciting and even romantic in the literary sense
— colorful, charming guys like Irish mobster Danny Greene and his
Hungarian rival, Shondor Birns. They had good friends in the rich and
fashionable social crowd as well as their pals from the criminal side,
and athletes and entertainers, too. The outlaws laughed, rollicked and
partied downtown in safety on the east side of the Cuyahoga River, and
bought drinks for anyone who even said hello to them at places where
they made their home away from home, like the Hickory House and the
Theatrical Grill on Short Vincent Street — both just memories
now. Everybody had a good old time with the smiling tough guys, who had
style and class all their own. That’s why they used to call the police
precinct the Roaring Third.

Danny and Shondor died thirty years ago, in separate car bombings
— Shondor on West 25th and Lorain on the bank of the river, and
Danny in a Beachwood parking lot where he’d spent his last afternoon
with his dentist — and when the smoke cleared there was little
left of either of them to mourn. That’s why the Third District doesn’t
roar anymore. Today the criminals who are escorted through the Third
District doors are pond scum with gold teeth and gold-plated Caddys,
and their imaginations begin and end with violence. They’ve forgotten
that when you’re rich, powerful and celebrated, you’re expected to give
back some of the money you’ve cadged and chiseled and stolen from
honest people.

I was a patrol cop back then, not much more than a rookie. I’d met
Birns and Green a few times — moments always strained with
cops-and-robbers tension. But oddly enough I miss them today. They were
part of the lively, colorful Cleveland history that’s quietly faded
away.

Florence McHargue — I never heard anyone refer to her as “Flo”
— hasn’t faded away, nor is she quiet. She rarely raises her
voice, but her words are acid, and sound worse than yelling.

When I walked into her cluttered office, she checked her watch.
“You’re a lucky man, Jacovich. You’re about six minutes away from big
trouble.”

“Good morning to you too, Lieutenant.” I sat down.

She noticed, and her tone got even more sarcastic. “Please do sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”

“I’ve got things to do today,” I said. “So can we just cut the small
talk? You can get to the business of chewing me a new one and then you
can send me on my way.”

“You’re on my schedule. I’m not on yours.”

Florence was a nice-looking woman when she wasn’t snarling. She was
in her mid-forties and had dropped about ten pounds since I’d last seen
her. Her straightened hair was always done up in a severe bun, but long
enough to fall below her shoulders if she let it. Her burnished skin
was coffee-colored with a dash of cream, and her eyes large and brown
behind her glasses. With more attention to her hair and makeup —
and a concerted effort to smile occasionally — she’d be really
attractive.

But she hadn’t earned her lieutenant’s badge by being cute. Her bad
temper on the Job and perhaps off the job too, made sure she kept the
rank — and the power. You can tell she enjoys the power.

“Jacovich, the way you’re running your own investigation makes you
seem like you look under beds the way old ladies do,” she said. “You
not only compromise this department’s investigation, but you deny
you’re also a potential suspect in the murder of Philip Kohn.”

“I’m not denying anything,” I said. “So I guess I am a suspect, even
if you know damn well I’m not.”

“You’re working for Ben Magruder.” She mulled that over. “He was at
the hotel Friday too, along with Wiggins. Now he’s paying you to take
the heat off his famous new client, who is a suspect too.”

“So is everybody,” I said, “including about a hundred hotel
employees who were there that night, and the St. Clair grads who didn’t
show up at all. For all we know, it was someone from the medical
community or the country club Kohn belonged to — or maybe an
out-of-towner none of us has heard of. Come on, Lieutenant — give
me some slack.”

McHargue said, “You’ve been off the Job and out of a blue uniform
too long. Did you forget police officers don’t give slack
— especially to hotshot private tin like you who get off on
making us look bad?”

“How do I make the police look bad?”

“Let me count the ways.” McHargue raised three fingers and began
ticking the reasons off, starting with her index finger. “Showing up
places you’re not supposed to. Our people have to interview a witness
or suspect who’s pissed off and wrung dry because they already talked
themselves out to you.” After a pause, the ring finger went down too.
“You find things out that might be important to our investigation
— but you don’t share them with us. Makes us look like holy
asses.”

The only finger still erect was the middle one — make of it
what you will. “And when you do crack a case, which you can’t
legally shove your way into, your name hits the papers, and suddenly
every mouth breather in town who believes half of what they read starts
thinking you’re the Caped Crusader — and that us real cops spend
all our time eating free Dunkin’ Donuts and taking kickbacks from guys
we should throw in jail anyway.”

I watched with perverse fascination as she mercifully lowered her
middle finger. “Is that all?” I said.

Adapted from the book King of the Holly Hop © by Les
Roberts. Reprinted with permission of Gray & Company, Publishers
(grayco.com).

This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2009.