“MR. CUDDY. C’MON IN.”
If the conference room had been bright and airy, Tyrone Xavier’s office was more like a reinforced bunker. The feeling of whitewashed cinder blocks was hard to avoid, and the wall decorations managed to bring out the starkness of the background even more. He did have a window two feet high by nine feet long above his Plexiglas desktop, the three-quarter-inch material seeming to be general issue at DRM.
Xavier came from behind his desk to shake hands again. He’d taken off the blue blazer, a well-developed physique on about six feet under the dress shirt.
“Mr. Xavier.”
“Please, call me Ty, all right?”
“All right.”
Xavier smiled again, too, showing about as many teeth as a case has beer cans. “A lot of people are put off a little when I introduce myself. You know, I say, ‘Hi, I’m Tyrone Xavier’ and they keep leaning in, expecting a last name to complete things.”
“Why not add one, then?”
Xavier’s smile wavered, then came back as he bade me take an admiral’s chair, more general issue at DRM. “I kind of like putting them a little off balance at first. Also, the name’s memorable the way it is, and a memorable name helps you cut through when you make a callback.”
“Calling back a potential customer?”
“Right.”
“How do you like sales?”
The smile wavered again, for only half as long. “It’s fine, fine. Lots of freedom, lots of chances to meet new people, make contacts that could help later on. Downside is, the travel’s not what they say it used to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, used to be, everybody for an outfit like this would get to go first-class on the airlines, best hotels. Image, you know? Customers want to deal with the company that looks like it’s doing the best, because that’s where the best product likely is. Now, though, we’ve got a ‘corporate travel manager.’ Coach instead of first-class—which is really torture, you’re anything over five-five—caps on your hotel per diem. You still get to go to some great restaurants, because now you impress the customer with food and wine. But you’ve got to account for everything, and it’s kind of a pain.”
“Any other downsides?”
Xavier made his smile go coy. “Well, you heard how traveling salesmen do just fine in the lady department? That’s still true. Only thing is, you really got to ask yourself, you get my meaning?”
“AIDS?”
“That’s it. That’s it exactly. I mean, I’m in a bar, some nice hotel. Lady sidles up, looks nice, talks nice, I got to ask myself first, is she a pro? If not, I still got to ask myself, lady’s so hot to trot with me, how many other guys she had the last year? You see what I’m saying here?”
“The best you could hope for might be the worst that could happen.”
“That’s it. Exactly, again.” The big smile, again.
I said, “You don’t get tired, cozying up to people you might not like?”
“Hey, the price you pay, right? I mean, there’s a reason it’s pronounced ‘suck-cess,’ you know?”
“You ever get tired of Steven Shea?”
The smile went back to coy. “I was wondering why we were going all around the mulberry bush. Figured it was part of the ritual, what a private eye has to go through.”
“How about you and Shea?”
“Aw, man. Steve, he was—is—an all right guy. I was recruited out of the service to come on board here after Mr. Davison got Steve away from some computer company.”
“How were you recruited?”
“I was nearing the end of my hitch. Spent some time up here, kind of liked the area.”
“Where’d you spend your time?”
“Harvard.”
“The school, not the town.”
“That’s right.”
“Go on.”
“Well, like I said, I was short-timing, so I sent for information on companies up here, papered them with resumes, and got a nibble from DRM.”
“From who here?”
“Mr. Davison himself.”
“Not Shea?”
“No. At least, not initially.”
“Then what?”
“Pretty typical, I think. They flew me into an airport conference center—Continental’s, down at Newark—and I met Mr. Davison and Steve there.”
“Why an airport?”
“Usually they’d do that if there was some hush-hush about things. You know, you’re Company A, and you want a guy from Company B, but don’t want Company B to wonder why he’s all of a sudden going to Boston one day. For me, I remember it was just that Mr. Davison and Steve were flying somewhere, and Newark was a good spot for everybody to meet.”
“Sounds kind of noisy.”
“No, no. These conference centers, they’re like little offices away from home. I use them all the time, now. An airline will have this club you join, a hundred, maybe a hundred-fifty a year for a fee. Then you get to use their center, with phones, faxes, photocopiers, even personal computers. It’s a great deal.”
“Why were you recruited?”
“Why?”
“If Steve’s such an all right guy on his own.”
Xavier moved his tongue around inside his mouth, maybe trying to assess how much his boss would have told me about his employees. “Steve has a great touch with a lot of people, but I guess Mr. Davison felt I might be an asset with some of the customers out there.”
“Because Shea hadn’t been in the military?”
“Partly. But hell, I was a Marine captain, a ground-pounder, not an electronics jock. Mostly it was because DRM was trying to appeal to some countries run by people of color, and I was a nice addition to the team.”
After seeing Shea’s living room, I could understand that. “You work pretty closely with Shea?”
“You could say that.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well—you know much about how our business works?”
“Just a little.”
“Okay. Say we’ve done some presentations here and there around this world of ours. Say I’ve helped out with some, but not with others. A potential calls in, wants some more facts, but Steve’s on a layover or the middle leg of a long trip. I get the request, coordinate with our tech people, try to get the customer back an answer.”
“So you’ve seen Shea in action?”
“Many times.”
“Any reason he’d have drawn somebody’s anger?”
“Anger? You’re saying, like enough to do the thing up in Maine?”
“Right.”
“Lord, no. We deal with heads of major government departments, sometimes the brother of the president for some country you never heard of that’s the new name for a country you barely heard of. But by the time we’re talking to them, they’re past the gangster stage, you know what I’m saying?”
“You don’t see any of your potential customers doing something like this.”
“Absolutely not.”
“How about a competitor?”
“You’re going to have to talk with Dwight about that.”
“How about the names of the competitors?”
“Same.”
I sat back a bit. “I don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“I can see you guys being tight with the names of your customers. But why the names of your competitors?”
“Because that’s the way it is.”
“Meaning Mr. Davison’s way is the way it is.”
A shrug
I said, “Meaning Schoonmaker isn’t going to give me anything on the competitors, either.”
“That would be up to him.”
I nodded. “You know much about Shea’s private life?”
“You mean away from DRM?”
“Right.”
“No. We worked together, but we weren’t really social buddies. We had a drink, it was for business reasons.”
“You ever been up to Shea’s lake place?”
Xavier rearranged himself in his desk chair. “Jumping around like this, it works for you?”
“Sometimes, when people don’t try to buy themselves time by asking a question back.”
The coy smile. “I’ve been up there. Once. Kind of a company outing.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Mr. Davison, Dwight, Anna-Pia. Steve and his wife, Sandy. Me. Friday night to Sunday afternoon. Too much booze, too much barbecue, too much forced laughter. But, hey, like I said, that’s why it’s pronounced that way.”
Success. “What kinds of things did you all do up there?”
“Do?”
“Activities.”
“Let’s see. We swam, went for a ride around the lake in Steve’s boat, some water-skiing. I begged off for an hour, took a little canoe paddle, felt good.”
When Xavier didn’t continue, I said, “You play with the crossbow?”
“Yeah. Saturday afternoon, Steve hauled it out for a while. It got old pretty fast.”
“Where’d he keep it?”
The eyes closed. “I’d bet my next commission you already know the answer to that one.”
“Everybody give it a try?”
Xavier opened his eyes. “Everybody except Anna-Pia and Sandy. Mr. Davison was good, I wasn’t too bad.”
“And Schoonmaker?”
“Like he was William Tell. Bull’s-eye or close to it, every time. The reason it got old so fast.”
“You have any idea why Schoonmaker was so good?”
“He’s got certificates in his office on weapons proficiency.”
“Suitable for framing?”
“Suitable for flaunting, more like it. They’re off to the side of his desk, where you can’t help but see them when you’re sitting in his visitor’s chair.”
“You don’t think all that much of Schoonmaker.”
“Hard to hide it.”
“Why don’t you like him?”
“I get the feeling he thinks people of color make good Indians but bad chiefs.”
“And he sees you as a chief now?”
Xavier started to say something, then kept it back behind the big smile. “You’re right, there. The jumping around, it does make a man want to jump back at you. Fact is, Steve got himself in a load of shit. Fact is, that made me kind of indispensable. Fact is, Schoonmaker resented me before and twice as much now.”
“Now that you stand to pull down around a million for the deal.”
“Your numbers are off.”
“How’s a range of half a million to one-point-two sound?”
Xavier’s smile wavered some more. “Sure, I sat down with Mr. Davison. Told him he wanted me to close for Steve, I get Steve’s package. Nothing wrong with that.”
“And you figure you’re close to closing?”
“That’s why I’m here instead of on the road. Waiting for the little phone to ring. Or bleat, which is how they sound now.”
“You’re sitting where I am, sounds like one hell of a motive.”
Xavier dropped any pretense of a smile. “I’ll tell you something. That’s exactly what hit me, too, when I saw it on the TV. Then I thought things through, like you’re going to. The money, getting Steve’s package, that might give me a good reason to kill him, but accidentally, like a car accident or fall, something might not look like murder. This here up in Maine? No way, José. Man like me wants to step into Steve’s shoes, he isn’t going to massacre most of two families. Too much investigation, too much publicity that might scare off our potential customer. Besides, when we drove up there for the outing, I didn’t so much as see another brother once I was north of the New Hampshire border. I’d kind of stand out up there, you know what I’m saying?”
“You mentioned hearing about the massacre from television.”
“Right.”
“Did you mean the night it happened?”
“Yeah. I was home watching the Red Sox, game was over maybe ten-thirty. I switched to the news, and they just had a bulletin about this ‘tragedy’ in Maine, no details except for some names.”
“Where do you live?”
“Haverhill. Condo in a converted mill overlooking the Merrimack.”
Haverhill’s an hour north of Boston and only about ten miles from Interstate 95 toward Maine. “I don’t suppose anybody else was with you that night?”
“Nobody. But I still didn’t do it.”
“Then who did?”
Xavier eased back in his chair. “Ask Dwight. He’s got a theory you might like.”