“Andrew Ernest Snyder!” McGuire slapped his notebook on Ollie’s bed and began pacing the length of the room, almost strutting with pride. “She had a foster brother named Andrew, damn it. From San Antonio.”
Ollie Schantz watched him silently.
“I’ll call Kavander for an arrest warrant and take off for Texas,” McGuire continued.
“How about a description?” Ollie asked in a flat voice. “You got a description to match this guy?”
“I’ve got a name, I’ve got a connection, he’s the right age. Come on, Ollie. How much more do I need?”
“It would help if Kavander didn’t want you waltzing away from the case.”
“But if I do, who finds the killer?” McGuire almost shouted. “Fat Eddie Vance and his gang of merry men? Look, Ollie. If Kavander gets in my way on this one, I’ll call every greaseball reporter in the state and tell them that our captain of detectives wants to suppress a murder investigation.”
Ollie stared at him, blinking once, then twice. “Call him,” he said finally.
Back in the kitchen, McGuire waited for a desk officer to make the connection to Kavander’s office. It was five-thirty; the odds were good that Jack the Bear was still at his desk, writing sarcastic comments on investigation reports.
“He ain’t here,” said the desk officer when he returned to the phone.
“Who’s this?”
“Sergeant Cauley. So who the hell’s this?”
“Joe McGuire, Stew. How are you?”
“Hey, Joe-Joe! I’m okay, but you’re three storeys below the shithouse. With the Bear, anyway.”
“That’s one reason I have to talk to him. So where is he?”
“Down at the Copley. Probably on his third Martini. Getting ready to pinch a waitress’s ass. Testimonial dinner there for the commissioner. Listen, you call him there, I didn’t tell you where to find him, okay?”
“Stew, I haven’t talked to you all year. Thanks.”
It took three people to connect McGuire with Jack Kavander in the Waltham Room of the hotel. Against a deep layer of conversation and a thin veneer of instrumental music, he heard Jack Kavander’s voice bark its owner’s name.
“Jack, it’s McGuire.”
He waited for a response. Instead, all he heard were peals of distant laughter and two bars of “It Was Just One of Those Things.”
“Jack, I know you’re pissed with me, but I’ve got something on one of the cases—”
“McGuire?” Kavander spat into the telephone. “How did you know where I was?”
“It’s scribbled in washrooms all over town. Listen, Jack—”
“Goddamn it, McGuire. In ten minutes I’m making a law-and-order speech to half the politicians in the state.”
“Good. Tell them what a great fucking job your Homicide squad is doing,” McGuire shouted into the receiver. He glanced up to see Ronnie peering at him over the top of her newspaper, and shrugged apologetically.
McGuire counted another bar of the old song from the hotel’s music system before Kavander replied in a tight, even voice. “McGuire, if you have something we should know about, you bring it to my office tomorrow at noon and you lay it out for me and Lieutenant Vance and his people. And if you have sufficient cause, we will certainly follow routine procedures to launch an appropriate investigation.”
“Fat Eddie? Jack, that horse’s foot blew this case in the first place.”
“Preliminaries, McGuire. That’s what we’ll do first.”
“The guy we want is down in Texas, for Christ’s sake!”
Another pause. “All the more reason to do the preliminaries.” Kavander lowered his voice even further. “I’m telling you, McGuire. If you have something, you turn it over to the staff. Because right now your career is hanging by a thread—”
“Which is wrapped around your balls!” McGuire replaced the receiver and stared at the telephone before looking around to see Ronnie studying him. A slight smile played across her face.
“Next time, give him Ollie’s love too,” she said.
He grinned back and leaned to kiss her on the forehead. “I need to make another call or two,” he said. “One of them is long-distance. To Texas.”
“Not a place I ever wanted to visit,” she said.
McGuire grunted, flipped through the telephone book for airline listings, and within five minutes had booked himself on a morning flight to San Antonio.
He made the next call to the San Antonio Police Department, where a Sergeant Maydelle answered on the first ring.
McGuire introduced himself. “I have a Murder One investigation that concerns the son of one Ernest Edward Snyder of your city.”
“Heard about that ol’ dog this afternoon,” Maydelle drawled. “Y’all coming down here, shake some sand out of your boots?”
“I plan on arriving tomorrow to ask him a few questions, with the cooperation of your department.”
“Glad to help,” Maydelle said. “Give me your flight number. I’ll have one of our young ’uns meet you, give you a tour, maybe recommend a good place for a taco and beer.”
McGuire recited his flight number.
“Look for a San Antonio officer holding a red file folder when you arrive at the airport,” Maydelle instructed. “Bring your ID. We’ll do the rest.”
“I got ears. I heard,” Ollie said when Joe returned to his room and began describing his conversation with Kavander. “He’s going to shoot you down in flames, Joe.”
“Not me, Ollie,” McGuire answered, slipping into his topcoat. “I’m not going to ignore the only solid lead that’s turned up on the case in six months and add another NETGO stamp to the file. I do that and I deserve to spend the rest of my life in the Bomb Shelter with all the files Fat Eddie has screwed up, just counting the days until I’m pensioned off.”
“You never learned to play politics, Joe. That’s your problem. Fat Eddie, he’s not the greatest cop in the world but he knows the politics.” Ollie shifted his head slowly, his eyes searching for the offshore light in the darkness, his hand still squeezing and releasing the tennis ball.
“And you did?”
“Damn right I did.”
“How?” McGuire spread his hands. “I never saw any of it. Hell, you were twice as driven as I am. Ask anybody on Berkeley Street. Ask them if Ollie Schantz ever played politics. They’ll all say ‘Like hell he did.’ When did you ever get down in the dirt with those political bastards? I sure as hell never saw it.”
In a slow, almost creaking motion, Ollie’s head swivelled back to stare coldly at McGuire. “Maybe,” he said, “I was so good at it that nobody ever noticed. Did you ever think of that?”
McGuire slept fitfully, waking to imagined sounds in his apartment while his mind scrambled to regain vestiges of dreams. In the morning he dressed in a tweed jacket, flannel slacks, white button-down shirt and black knit tie. He threw socks, underwear, a clean shirt and toiletries into his suitcase, along with his Police Special revolver and cartridges wrapped in a heavy bath towel.
Climbing into a cab in the fading darkness on Commonwealth Avenue, he leaned back in the seat and allowed the winter chill to finish waking him up.