Last Dance, Last Chance

Craven were the “odd couple” of the D.A.’s office, but they worked so well together that they fit like a pair of gloves. Their only shared traits were that they were both Irish and had grown up in the same South Buffalo neighborhood.
    Buffalo is rife with nicknames, and Chuck Craven was called Chickie because the old-timers remembered that was his dad’s nickname when he was a sergeant in Homicide in the Buffalo Police Department. Chickie Senior cast a long shadow. He was a great detective and an athlete who played his last hockey game when he was sixty-nine.
    Craven had an Irish mug, but then so did Finnerty, who liked to say that he was a “potato-faced Irishman.” Craven’s hair was brown with a red cast, and Finnerty’s was gray with a reddish glow—or red with some gray, depending on how the light hit it. Craven’s easygoing grin belied the fact that he was a relentless and clever detective. Finnerty was taller and burlier, and he looked grumpy even when he wasn’t. He was also a merciless practical joker, enlisting Craven in his plots to catch the gullible unaware.
    “Pat liked to walk down the hall,” Craven said, “and pretend to walk into a doorjamb and bang his head. Then, if somebody laughed because he was clumsy, I had to whisper that he was blind in one eye because of an injury he suffered when he was in the Secret Service, and he couldn’t help it. Then, naturally, they were embarrassed—and he had them. But he’s probably the best investigator I’ve ever worked with. I’ve learned more from Pat than any detective I ever knew.”
    Pat Finnerty was once the Special Agent in Charge for the U.S. Secret Service office in Buffalo. Although one of its divisions guards the President of the United States, the Secret Service’s primary function is to protect the financial integrity of the country. Finnerty knew everything there was to know about the way money changes hands—for both legal and illegal uses. He could follow a paper trail like a bloodhound. He knew the many facets of white-collar crime; there was never a scam invented that fooled Pat Finnerty. He was a complete professional, and he distrusted anyone who was remotely connected to the media.
    But still, he could send victim’s advocate Sharon Simon and Chuck Craven into muffled laughter with the tricks he played on young prosecutors or detectives. Finnerty kept a fake “Wanted” poster of David Janssen as the Dr. Richard Kimball character on The Fugitive tacked to his office wall, convincing them that Kimball was still out there and needed to be caught.
    “They believed him,” Craven remembered, “and when he got on a crowded elevator and pretended he was having a panic attack because he forgot his ‘big pill’ that day, people who didn’t know him were squeezing against the wall. Pat is a very big guy.”
    Humor is vital in police departments and prosecutors’ offices. Without it, there is no relief from the tragedies that come through their doors day and night.
    Chuck Craven was born and raised in Buffalo, the only son in a flock of five sisters. He joined the U.S. Air Force and was sent to Clovis, New Mexico, where he met his future wife, Laurie. Six months later, he was ordered to Vietnam, where he fueled airplanes. After a stint in Thailand, he came back to New Mexico and reenlisted for three more years. He and Laurie moved to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, where their daughter, Christine, was born. And then, probably genetically driven, Craven transferred into the Security Police.
    But Chuck Craven’s goal was to work in a civilian police department, and he joined the Clovis Police Department. At the same time, he finished college with an A.A. in Criminal Justice and a B.A. in Liberal Studies. The Cravens moved West, and Chuck joined the Scottsdale, Arizona, Police Department. He worked narcotics, one of the more dangerous units in any police department. He was usually unshaven and dressed like the people he hunted.
    He shrugs it off, but Craven was nearly killed when he was shot during a drug raid. Hit in the neck, he was very lucky that the bullet narrowly missed his carotid artery. Still, it would take a long time for him to recover—and his department told him he would never be cleared for full duty. He didn’t want a desk job; he wanted to be out in a squad car and, eventually, to be a detective.
    Instead, Craven was given a full retirement when he was only 36. He was not about to give up