“Sloppy work, Ollie. Nothing like the way it was when you were there.” McGuire shook his head in wonder. “Half the files shouldn’t be grey, they should be C and C.” He finished the slice of Ronnie’s lemon cake and set the plate aside.
Solved cases were stamped “C&C” before the files were transferred to a warehouse. It meant “Convicted and Closed.” Law and order prevail. Take a bow. Have a drink. Get some sleep. Tomorrow there’ll be another corpse to view.
Ollie Schantz watched McGuire through half-lowered lids. The bed had been raised to sitting level and the limbs of his body, their corners sharpened from the weight loss he had endured, poked against the covers. Beyond the window the coast light winked through the November dusk, flashing off and on, monotonous, precise, comforting.
“Nothing new about sloppy work,” Ollie said.
McGuire nodded. “But coming at the cases fresh, you see all the mistakes hanging out there like rooming house laundry.” He sat back and studied the blinking light shining across the water. “You know, there could be a real need for a guy like me to do nothing but review grey files.”
“Second-guessing your old buddies.” Ollie moved his head in a pale imitation of a laugh. “You do that, Joseph, and you’ll be as popular as a nudist at a Baptist meeting.”
The door opened behind McGuire and he turned to see Ronnie standing there in a woollen winter coat, a kerchief tied over her head. “I’m leaving now,” she said to Ollie. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?”
“Don’t plan on going anywhere,” he replied, staring out the window, avoiding her eyes.
“You really want me to get them?” she asked. She turned to McGuire. “Tennis balls. He wants me to buy him a can of tennis balls.” She shook her head and left, closing the door gently behind her.
“What the hell do you want with tennis balls?” McGuire asked.
Ollie turned his head from the window and studied McGuire coolly. “Tell me about the files.”
“Which ones?”
“The good ones.”
“Maybe two are worth working on. The rest are drunks run over in alleyways, dead-end John Does, stuff that was never meant to be solved. But there’s Silky Pete Genovese. Remember him? Hit and run down on Atlantic near Beach one Saturday night? Lot of people assumed it was a professional hit.”
“Running down a guy in the street, that’s Hollywood stunt man stuff.”
McGuire nodded assent. “And if it wasn’t pros, it was some poor sucker being shook down by Silky at a hundred percent interest a month. Which means it was somebody local, because Silky wouldn’t deal out of state and risk a federal charge.”
“We check his records?”
“Found a whole book of them back at Silky’s apartment but nobody could break the code. It’s all initials and nicknames only Silky knew. Besides, he kept most of his business in his head.”
“Who worked the case?”
“Fat Eddie Vance and Timmy Fox.”
“That explains it. Eddie needs a road map to find his own pecker and Timmy can’t see anything when that fat toothbrush Vance keeps getting in his way.”
“There’s no record of body work on Buicks like the one that hit him, and the state bureau can account for all but three of them registered this year. One’s in California, the other two were wrecked before Silky died.”
“So what’s your problem?”
McGuire began pacing as he talked. “No confirmation is my problem. Sloppy work. It all needs checking out. Maybe we should subpoena financial records, see if any owners had money trouble that might link them with Silky.”
He looked down to see the other man’s eyes closed, his breathing slow and shallow. McGuire spoke Ollie’s name softly once, twice.
“I hear you,” Ollie answered. When his eyes opened they were shiny. “Want to watch the Celtics?” His right hand flopped in short hops to pounce on the remote control. The ceiling-mounted television set flashed to life; slim bodies raced across its face, silhouetted against a golden floor. “There’s beer in the fridge,” Ollie said without shifting his eyes from the screen. “I’d get you one myself but . . .” His oversized mouth widened into a grin without warmth or humour.
“I’m okay,” McGuire answered, and he sat beside his friend for the next hour, both of them motionless, one by chance and one by choice, as they watched tall young men running, leaping, soaring across the floor of a distant arena.
With two minutes remaining and the Celtics leading by a slim three points, the front door opened and Ronnie Schantz walked lightly down the hall to Ollie’s room. Before the door opened, Ollie’s hand tripped the remote control and the images on the television set faded.
“Hi, guys.” Ronnie Schantz entered, her kerchief wet with rain. “Terrible night out there.” She reached into a plastic bag and withdrew a can of tennis balls. “Found them for you,” she said to her husband, who had turned his face to the window. “Hard to get this time of year, that’s what everybody told me. Unless you go downtown. But a place on Winthrop had them.”
McGuire said goodbye to Ronnie, brushing her cheek with his lips, then turned and began shrugging into his topcoat. “You going to tell me what you want with tennis balls?” he asked the figure on the bed.
“Sure,” Ollie said to the light across the bay. “Plan to play a set with McEnroe. What else you do with tennis balls?”
By morning the rain had been swept out to sea and the drab autumn landscape lay bare beneath a brilliant sun.
Using one of the department’s portable computers to gain access to law enforcement data banks in California and Massachusetts, McGuire confirmed that one 1988 Buick Le Sabre had been destroyed in a highway accident on New Year’s Eve, the driver charged with D.W.I. A second Buick matching the description of the car that killed Silky Pete had been registered in La Jolla, California since February fourth. Its owner, a retired newspaper publisher, still resided there. He was seventy-three years old and had sold his weekly paper for a substantial sum before trading the Massachusetts winter for California sun.
The third Buick had been involved in a fatal accident on an interstate highway near Mansfield in the early morning of . . .
McGuire blinked. March 5th. The lone driver, killed in the accident, had been a thirty-eight-year-old resident of Taunton. He had owned a chain of three restaurants in the Taunton-Brockton area.
McGuire made two telephone calls before driving south to Taunton, cursing the sloppy police work he had exposed.
Five hours later he was sitting in Kavander’s office on Berkeley Street.
“He was doing at least ninety when he hit the bridge abutment,” McGuire said. Silky Pete’s grey file lay between them on Kavander’s desk. “State cop I talked to said they literally peeled him off the concrete.”
“Go on.” Kavander looked bored, restless. He removed the toothpick from his mouth, examined the tip, and replaced it between his teeth.
“Dumb whistles talk to the wife and she tells them it happened on Saturday night. The cops check their calendars, say Gee, that’s March 4th. Too bad. We’re looking for a car involved in an accident on March 5th. Sorry to bother you, have a nice day, la-di-da, let’s go have a coffee. See, it happened within an hour of Silky being hit. All the cops are given is a date. One o’clock in the morning, the wife still considers it Saturday night. No witnesses, but a truck driver said he saw the car come up behind him maybe a mile ahead of the bridge. He said the Buick passed him at close to a hundred. Guess how he remembered the car.”
Kavander shrugged.
“It had one headlight. Only the left one was working. The right headlight was out. This guy in the Buick, his name was Skerrett and he was in trouble at the beginning of the year. Bad money trouble. The bank was ready to call its loan, he’s behind on payments to his suppliers, he’s working with nothing but a skeleton staff at his restaurants. Then, end of January, he pays a big chunk on the bank loan. He gets the suppliers off his back, hires enough staff to get customers back, and he’s golden. Nobody knows where he gets the money. And he’s not talking.”
Kavander studied his fingernails.
“You seeing a pattern here?” McGuire asked.
“You got more?”
“Lots more. I visit Skerrett’s widow. Big house on a hill in Taunton. She’s got two kids and some young guy has moved in with her. She sold the restaurants, even though she didn’t have to. Skerrett’s insurance company paid off on a half-million dollar accidental death policy with a lot of reluctance. I just finished talking to the investigator with the company and he’s convinced Skerrett didn’t fall asleep at the wheel. He figures the guy aimed the goddamned Buick at the wall because his business was going under.”
“It’s happened before.”
“But it wasn’t going under, Jack. He’d turned it around with about two hundred grand in cash. So where did he get it?”
Kavander inspected his toothpick again and began breaking it into tiny pieces. “How the hell do I know?”
“You know where he got it. He touched Silky for it and when he couldn’t make the vigorish, or didn’t want to, he arranged a meet. Silky figures the guy’s a cream puff, he’s standing around Atlantic Avenue looking for Skerrett’s car and here comes the Buick. Silky’s caught like a rabbit on the road. Bang, Silky’s dead, and on the way home either Skerrett figures it’s all over, because he knows we’ll trace him and collar him, or maybe he planned to do it from the beginning. Anyway, there’s a bull’s-eye on a concrete wall ahead . . .” McGuire halted his gesturing. “You listening to me?”
“Yeah, and I’m hearing nothing.” Kavander tossed the toothpick splinters into his wastebasket. “Nothing we can ever take to the D.A.’s office anyway.”
“What is this, Helen Keller day? All of a sudden you can’t hear, you can’t see—”
“Hey!” Kavander pointed his finger at McGuire like a loaded weapon. It shook as he spoke. “You don’t come in here accusing fellow officers of shoddy police work just because some guy turned himself into wallpaper paste against a highway bridge.”
“It fits, Jack.”
“It fits your ass, McGuire!” Kavander shook his head and leaned back in the chair. “Damn it, don’t you know when to back off?”
“You going to mark it C and C?”
“Only when you bring me facts. Not opinions. Hell, even the insurance company paid up, didn’t they?”
“They wouldn’t have if they’d known what we know now.”
“We don’t know anything, McGuire. We’re doing a lot of guessing but we don’t know a damn thing. What else are you working on?”
McGuire stared at Kavander in angry silence before turning away to look out the window. “There’s only one other file worth anything. The Cornell murder. All the rest are whores in ditches and drunks in back alleys—”
“I hear Rosen’s suing,” Kavander interrupted.
McGuire swung his eyes back to the police captain. “Suing who?”
“You. For common assault. And the city. For endangerment of a bona fide court official.”
“For Christ’s sake.”
“And he’ll sue the department for harassment and false arrest of his client, Arthur Trevor Wilmer.”
“Why haven’t I heard about this?”
“Because he hasn’t announced it.” Kavander lifted his wrist and glanced at his watch. “He’s holding a press conference right now to formally tell the world. Timed it just right to be the lead story on every TV channel in the state tonight.” He opened his desk drawer for another toothpick. “You got a lawyer, McGuire?”
Kavander’s door opened and a round face peered in, looking with uncertainty at McGuire and Kavander. “Sorry, Captain,” Fat Eddie Vance said in his baritone voice. “Didn’t know you were busy. Hi, Joe,” he added in response to McGuire’s glare.
“What do you want, Eddie?” Kavander demanded.
“I was looking for some files and they told me you had them.” Vance smiled warmly at Kavander. “Thought I’d examine some old cases on the weekend, see what’s worth reviewing.”
“What files are you talking about?” Kavander turned to a stack of folders on the shelf behind his desk.
“Just a few of the grey ones from last year. Silky Pete was one, and that Fens murder.”
“I’ve got them,” McGuire snapped.
Vance’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. “You have?” He paused, waiting for a response. When McGuire provided none, Vance continued: “Well, you need any help, Joe, you just call me, okay?” He smiled at Kavander. “Talk to you later, Chief.”
Kavander stared at the door for a moment before saying: “I know what you’re thinking, McGuire. But Vance is just overloaded, that’s why things are a bit sloppy. Extra work comes along, Vance is the first in line to take it on. When he’s got the time to do it right, Fat Eddie is the best detail man in the department.”
“Maybe,” McGuire muttered. “Just one thing I can’t figure.”
“What’s that?”
“If God created the world, how come he had to make both Vance and maggots?”
“Son of a bitch!” Tim Fox grabbed for his beer and drained the glass in one swallow.
“Bad clam?” Ralph Innes reached into the oversized bowl in the centre of the table and selected another steamed clam. “Gotta expect one now and then, Timmy,” he said, prying open the shell. “Little guy’ll get his revenge on you while you’re sleeping tonight. Just make sure yo mama’s not between you and the john.”
Every Wednesday was Bucket Night at Hutch’s, when six dollars bought all the steamed clams you could eat, with bowls of garlic butter and cocktail sauce set among baskets of crusty bread and pitchers of cold beer.
“You married, Timmy?” Janet Parsons held a small unopened clam delicately between the rips of her fingers. With a deft movement she separated the two halves of the shell and transferred the meat to her mouth. The entire motion, smooth and graceful, was watched with an expression of hunger by Ralph Innes.
“Just six months,” Fox answered. He frowned; the clam had left a sour, unpleasant taste.
“Still on your honeymoon,” Janet smiled at him.
“I was almost married once,” Ralph Innes offered, trying to decide which clam to devour next.
“What happened, Ralph?” Janet Parsons asked. “Did her father run out of shells for his shotgun?”
“Look at this fat little guy,” Innes said, holding an over-sized clam for everyone to admire. “Naw, Janet. I just figured that the screwing you get isn’t worth the screwing you get!” He pried the shell open and looked around at the others at the table, his eyes settling on McGuire. “You’ve been married, right Joe? Couple of times, weren’t you?”
McGuire nodded but didn’t reply. He wanted out of there.
“Janet, you’re married to the luckiest hash slinger in town.” Ralph Innes skewered the clam meat with his folk and waved it in her direction. “Now there’s a guy to envy. A bar full of booze and sweet old Janet to come home to every night.”
“How are those grey files coming, Joe?” Tim Fox was waving a waiter over to the table.
“One down, a million to go,” McGuire replied.
“Have you come across the Cornell file?” Ralph Innes asked.
“The one in the Fens?” McGuire shook his head at more beer. “Just to look at. I’ll start working on it in the morning.”
“Broad gets her head conked over in the Fens,” Ralph Innes began explaining to the others as he sorted through the remainder of the clams. “Falls in the water and drowns. Me and Bernie, we worked on it, looking for her brother. Best lead was her brother . . . Archie, Allen . . . Andrew, that was it. Then we got yanked. The case died after that.”
McGuire looked up from his clams. “Who yanked you?”
“Jack the Bear. Said we weren’t getting anywhere so he moved Fat Eddie Vance on it. Fat Eddie went nowhere, far as I know. Thing’s cold now, worn down like a hooker’s heels. We had three good suspects too.” Innes looked up at McGuire. “Take a look at that one, Joe. You figure it out, you’re Sherlock Holmes, I swear.”
Tim Fox snapped his fingers. “I remember that one now,” he nodded. “Fat Eddie spent maybe two days scoffing some free drinks from a bar where the victim hung out. Did it all alone too. Kept me on the desk scratching my ass. Fat jerk.”
“That’s a case for you if there ever was one,” Ralph Innes said, pointing his fork across the table at McGuire. “I can see you and Ollie Schantz taking that one apart. Old Ollie, he’d sit back, shake out all the garbage, and write it up over a bowl of chowder. Am I right, Timmy?” Tim Fox nodded agreement. “Hell, he was some guy, wasn’t he?” Innes rambled on before launching into a story about Ollie Schantz. The tale had the smooth burnish acquired from being told many times over many bowls of clams and pitchers of beer. The others chewed and sipped in silence while Innes dotted his story with laughter and obscenities, speaking of Ollie Schantz as though he were a legend from a distant era.
The telephone was ringing when McGuire arrived at his apartment near Kenmore Square. He walked briskly to his desk at the bay window facing Commonwealth Avenue and picked up the receiver while watching Janet Parsons back her Honda into a parking space.
The caller introduced herself as a reporter from the Globe. “Do you have any comment on the charges made by lawyer Rosen today?” she asked.
McGuire told her he hadn’t seen them.
“But they were covered by all the television stations this evening,” the reporter noted. “How could you miss them?”
“I was performing my duties,” McGuire said. Down in the street, Janet stepped out of her car and locked the door.
“Your police duties?”
“That’s right.” Janet glanced up at his window and waved.
“Did you assault Arthur Wilmer?”
“I have never assaulted a prisoner in my life.” He leaned forward to watch her climb the steps into his building.
“Did you plant evidence that might implicate him?”
McGuire turned to study his apartment door, visualizing Janet ascending the staircase to his second-floor apartment. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said in a tired voice.
“Would you consent to an interview tomorrow?”
“Only if you clear it with Berkeley Street first,” he replied. Promising to get back to him quickly, the reporter hung up.
By the time McGuire had begun to make coffee, he could hear Janet tapping at his door. When he opened it she was leaning against the frame, eying him from behind lowered lids.
“What kept you, sailor?” she smirked.
“Some reporter,” he answered. He checked the hallway, then closed and bolted the door behind them. “Rosen’s press conference has stirred up—”
The telephone rang again.
“She’s back,” McGuire shrugged. “You want to finish making the coffee while I get rid of her?”
He strode to the ringing telephone, seized the receiver and barked his name into the mouthpiece.
There was no voice on the other end. Instead, McGuire heard distant rock music hovering above a soft roar like running water: the background noise of a busy diner.
Finally, a hoarse whisper: “She’s there, isn’t she?”
“Who?” McGuire asked. “Who are you talking about?”
In reply he heard the distant wail of an amplified guitar, and then another wail, closer to the telephone, this one soft and human, before the man hung up.
McGuire replaced the receiver and turned to see Janet watching curiously from the kitchen door.
“Your husband,” he said, answering her unspoken question.
She reacted with a toss of her head. “Was he upset?”
“I guess so.” McGuire sat heavily on the edge of the desk, looking at his hands. “He was crying.”
Paul Desmond’s saxophone floated from the stereo, soaring romantically through the melody of an old and forgotten ballad. Janet leaned against McGuire on the sofa, her legs tucked beneath her, her hands cupping a coffee mug. Such long, slender hands. McGuire had watched those hands squeeze six shots from a Police Special .38 to score the thirdhighest rapid-fire score in the history of the Boston Police Department.
“Anything I can do?” McGuire asked, and she shook her head sadly.
They sat in silence as Desmond wove in and out of the melody, lighting upon it and flitting away like a hummingbird. McGuire loved jazz from the late fifties. It was a time when music fit neatly into a small number of well-defined categories. Jazz was accessible, rock and roll was for hoodlums, and the classics were highbrow.
“I used to be flattered he needed me so much,” Janet said when the music ended. “He was this big, good-looking guy who could handle himself in any kind of situation, and he needed me. I had never been around an independent man who needed me like that.” She sipped her coffee, staring into the darkness. “Every woman wants a strong man to need her. They’re the two biggest attractions for a woman, strength and need. The strong father figure and the weak child, all in one. But the more a man like that needs you, the less appealing his strength is and the less independent he becomes. And that’s what attracted you in the first place.” She turned to look at him. “Can men understand that? How the more someone needs you, the less you are attracted to them?”
McGuire nodded. But he didn’t understand at all.
Before she left they kissed at the door, long kisses empty of passion but suffused with feeling. He watched her descend the stairs before closing the door and walking to his window, where he stood until the tail-lights of her car receded into the darkness. Then he turned and opened the thick grey folder holding details of the investigation into the death of Jennifer Judith Cornell on a soft June morning in the murky waters and tangled gardens that the people of Boston have always called The Fens.