His bladder woke him an hour later. He stepped outside the car to relieve himself before driving south to Revere Beach, feeling clear-headed about some things, as confused as ever about others.
He arrived just after eight o’clock. Ronnie was seated at the kitchen table, a cup of black coffee in front of her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she wore a frayed cotton robe. She looked up at him when he entered the room, and her mouth attempted an imitation of a smile.
“You okay?” McGuire said from the doorway.
She closed her eyes and nodded slowly. “I ended it,” she said, looking away. “Last night.”
“Tough?”
She nodded again.
“Need a hug?”
She shook her head. He thought about going to her anyway, but he knew she would resist him, that she would tell him this was something she had to deal with alone. “Sorry if I lectured,” he said.
She brought her hands to her eyes. “You got a phone call,” she said when McGuire turned to leave. “About an hour ago.”
“Who?”
“Woman named Lorna. Wanted to know what happened to you. What’d you do, love ’em and leave ’em again?” This time her smile was more genuine.
“I’m gonna grab an hour’s sleep,” he said. “Ollie okay?”
“Ollie’s fine,” Ronnie said, staring back into her coffee cup. “Ollie’s just fine. Don’t worry about Ollie. Don’t worry about good old Ollie.”
He slept fully clothed, waking two hours later with his head filled with cotton. He showered, dressed, and came downstairs to find Ronnie cleaning the brushes from her paint kit, working with the intense concentration of someone attempting to save their own life.
“You know what we haven’t had in a hell of a while?” he said.
“What?” Keeping her eyes on her work.
“Dinner together. You, me, Ollie, and the TV news. How about it, some night this week?”
“Sure.” Stroking the back of her hand with a camel-hair brush, the motion imitating the application of colour, or the caress of a lover.
He bent to kiss her forehead. “We’ll talk about it tonight. I’ll pick up some steaks, stuff like that.”
Still stroking her hand with the brush, she spread her fingers wide and the soft hairs entered the spaces between them, one by one, over and over. McGuire watched the motions and sensed the barrier that locked him out and sealed her pain in. Then he left.
He spent the morning drafting his report to Cassidy, collecting all the data from the sources he employed—a forensic accountant who examined the balance sheets and profit-and-loss statements, a background search on the few people whose names Cassidy provided, a review of bankruptcy claims and civil-court actions. Everything came up clean. McGuire handed it to one of the stenographers. An hour later he climbed the stairs with his report in hand.
“You’re absolutely certain of this? There is no apparent evidence of criminal intent?” Barry Cassidy held the half-dozen sheets of papers a few inches above the surface of his desk as though hefting their weight.
“You want a guarantee, forget it,” McGuire said. “I don’t give guarantees.” He slouched in the chair opposite the younger lawyer. “Just opinions.”
Cassidy’s blue eyes narrowed slightly in his face, a face, McGuire noted again, that was boyish and pouting, would always be boyish and pouting, and a little snobbish. He probably went to one of those expensive prep schools in Vermont or New Hampshire, where they wear blazers and English haircuts, and their mothers send them cookies baked by a Filipino maid, and they talk half through their snobby god damn turned-up noses. McGuire prided himself on his limited prejudices. The limits did not extend to privileged snobs barely half his age.
“I was not looking for a court document,” Cassidy said. “I just need to know if it was complete.”
“Well, it’s as complete as I can make it. There are some things missing, and a lot of names blacked out. Letters, documents, invoices, other stuff I saw mentioned but weren’t in the file you gave me.”
“I gave you only what you needed.” Cassidy watched him, his eyes unblinking. “I gave you more than you needed. Some confidential things, irrelevant to the matter, you didn’t need so I . . .”
“Where’d you go to school?”
“I beg your pardon?” Cassidy looked annoyed.
“School. Where’d you go?” McGuire angled his head towards Cassidy’s law degree hanging prominently behind his desk. “Before good old Yale. You a Yale man? You look like a Yale man.”
Cassidy gave his familiar head jerk, chin up as though his tab collar was too tight—which it appeared to be, squeezing the flesh of his neck into a soft roll—then tilting his head to one side. “You mean my prep school? It was Rutland. In New Hampshire. Why do you ask?”
“You wear blazers there? Short pants?”
“Why is this of any importance?”
“Was your mother called Muffie?”
“My mother’s name is of no concern to you.”
McGuire exhaled slowly, sensing what he was doing, searching for an outlet for his anger, knowing he was bullying Cassidy. Hell, Cassidy wasn’t responsible for the circumstances of his birth any more than McGuire could help being born to sullen working-class parents, a father who carried his abiding rage home every evening on his coveralls, and a mother who focused more attention on the whiteness of her bed sheets than on the happiness of her only child. He stood up. “There it is, the best I can do.”
Cassidy smiled tightly. “I suppose we can ask for no more than that, can we?” As McGuire turned to leave, Cassidy added: “I would like all your notes on this matter.”
“My what?”
“Your notes.” Cassidy had turned to open his briefcase on the credenza behind his desk. “And any relevant documents. Please seal them in an envelope with my name attached and call my secretary when you’ve done so. I’ll send her to obtain them from you.”
McGuire began to speak, then looked away. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll get right to it, Hopalong.”
Cassidy lifted his head slowly, a pained expression on his face.
They called him that all through prep school, McGuire thought, as he turned to leave. Bet they made the little jerk miserable with a name like that.
He was at the copying machine when Lorna approached and said hello as though she were ordering him to leave her alone.
McGuire looked up and grunted. Another sheet of his notes on Cassidy’s investigation glided into the output tray.
A young lawyer walked by, a woman in a tweed suit, who smiled at Lorna as she passed. “Did you have a nice time last night?” Lorna asked McGuire, smiling back at the lawyer.
“Not bad,” McGuire said. “Quiet evening. You?” The last sheet of notes slid from the machine.
“It was okay,” Lorna said, glancing at the copies. “But I misplaced something.”
“What was that?”
She stepped closer as though to use the machine. “You, you bastard,” she said, barely moving her lips.
“Well, you found it now.” McGuire carried both sets of the notes back to his office, listening to Lorna’s heels clip-clopping after him.
“What the hell do you think I am?” she spat at him after closing the door behind her. “Some little bimbo, screwing her way through the office?”
McGuire sat in his chair, avoiding her eyes. “You’re overreacting.”
“Overreacting, hell.” Her eyes grew wet, but the force of her anger trampled any other emotion she might have been feeling. “You just leave like that? You didn’t even go home. You don’t say goodbye, you don’t go home, you walk out like I’m some kind of baggage you can leave anywhere.”
“You want an apology?” McGuire looked back at her. Jesus, he had seen this movie before. He had been in this movie before.
“You’re damn right I want an apology,” she said.
“You got one.” McGuire forced a smile. “I’m sorry.”
Her expression relaxed. She folded her arms, looked away, then back at him. “Where’d you go?”
“For a drive. All night long. Wound up at Swampscott, watching the sun come up.”
“Yeah?” She forced a smile. “I used to do that. Just before I got married. I had a car, a little Volkswagen, and I’d drive to some place near the ocean and sit there listening to the radio, thinking, wondering if I was doing the right thing, sometimes crying about nothing, just enjoying the loneliness. You do that a lot?”
“Sometimes.”
She walked towards him. “Next time, take me with you?”
“Sure.”
She rubbed her knee against his leg. “You wanta make up?”
He agreed to see her for dinner that evening, and later he was angry at his own weakness, angry at deceiving both Lorna and himself. But it was better than spending an entire evening at Zoot’s, or returning to the charged atmosphere of Ollie and Ronnie’s.
Ronnie’s broken it off, he reminded himself. It’s over. They need to be alone, the two of them, her and Ollie. If I stay with Lorna tonight, it will be good for everybody.
He sent the original copies of his notes to Cassidy, hid the second set in his files, and spent the rest of the day reading memos and reports directed to his attention, searching for any that might require his services, and feeling relieved at finding none.
Around three o’clock Lorna phoned him. “The police were just here,” she whispered into the receiver. “Asking about Orin.”
“What’re they looking for?”
“Just what he did, where we thought he might be. Missing-persons stuff.”
“They have any ideas?”
“Nothing. They said they’re checking his credit cards, car rentals, airline records.” She lowered her voice even further. “Joe, do you think he’s dead?”
“Why ask me?”
“Wasn’t this your line of work?”
“Not missing persons. By the time I got involved, they were dead beyond a doubt.”
“You won’t be annoyed if I’m not a hundred percent tonight, will you? This is really upsetting.”
McGuire assured her he wouldn’t let it bother him, and promised to meet her at seven.
“I need time to get things ready,” she said.
“Get what ready?”
“You’ll see. I’m going to make something to cheer us up. Both of us.”
Half an hour later he shrugged into his coat and walked out of his office, thinking of nursing a beer at Zoot’s and eavesdropping on police gossip before going to Lorna’s. He owed Lorna that much. Their expectations for this affair couldn’t be different, McGuire knew. Somewhere in the back of their minds, they might have both started with hopes of a long-term attraction. Now, only Lorna believed in it. Or wanted to. Any port in a storm, McGuire thought. Any woman on a lonely night. Sometimes, he added, walking through the corridor towards the reception area, you can’t be both honest and proud.
He would see Lorna tonight. He would make her laugh again. They would sleep in each other’s arms.
In the office foyer he saw Susan Schaeffer wringing a handkerchief in her hands and staring at the receptionist. “You can’t,” the receptionist was saying. “I’m not authorized to permit you to go down there anymore . . .”
Susan Schaeffer forced a smile. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”
McGuire stepped to the elevator, pushed the button, and stared at his shoes.
“Hello.”
He turned to see Susan Schaeffer beside him, smiling in that strange, sad manner. He grunted and dipped his head. The elevator arrived, empty, and he stepped aside to permit her to enter.
“Where is Mr. Flanigan?” she said to him when the doors closed and the elevator began descending. Her eyes were brimming with tears.
“I have no idea.” McGuire tried to maintain a cool, detached attitude.
“You were doing work for him. You went to find somebody.”
“That’s right.”
“He’s gone away. Did he tell you where he might be going?”
“I thought you might know.”
“Me?” She stepped back as though she had been slapped, or was about to be.
“You two are more than good friends.”
“Yes . . .”
“You’re a client?”
“Not exactly.”
“So maybe you do other kinds of business.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
The elevator stopped at the foyer and the doors opened, revealing a knot of people waiting to enter. Among them was Richard Pinnington, who started at the sight of McGuire and the woman, looking back and forth between them.
McGuire smiled at Pinnington. The lawyer watched McGuire leave, Susan Schaeffer trotting quickly behind him.
“Please tell me what you found out for Mr. Flanigan,” she said when she caught up with McGuire at the door to State Street.
McGuire pushed his way outside. He remembered Thoreau’s three rules for a happy life. Simplify, simplify, simplify. He was seeing Lorna tonight. He would make her laugh. She would make him feel good. Don’t screw things up.
It was raining again, the drops falling gray and greasy to the pavement. He turned up the collar of his topcoat, scanned the sky, and jammed his hands in his pockets. Susan Schaeffer was next to him, waiting for an answer. “Strictly between me and him,” he said. Too much rain to walk to Zoot’s. He set out towards Quincy Market.
“It had something to do with me, didn’t it?” She walked quickly beside him, trying to match his pace.
“Probably. Maybe.”
“Have you talked to the police? About Mr. Flanigan?”
“Not yet.” McGuire crossed State Street, hearing the woman behind him.
“If you will, are you going . . .”
McGuire stepped under an awning out of the rain, and turned to face her. He snapped his words at her, biting off the ends. “I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, but it’s none of my business and there’s no way I’m going to make it my business. If Orin’s disappeared, leave it to the police, and whoever else wants to get involved, to find him. It’s not my job, it’s not your job, and if Orin broke a promise or stood you up, well, that’s too bad and you probably didn’t deserve it, but nobody ever does, do they?”
She stood staring at him, numb.
He threw her a smile, trying to soften his words. Then he hunched his shoulders against the rain again and set off down State Street. The hell with a beer, he told himself, he’d get an Irish coffee or two. There was a bar on Congress, near the market, with a decent jazz piano player from four o’clock on. Hear a little music, warm up with a couple of drinks, then go see what Lorna has for dinner . . .
He stopped at the corner and listened. There were no footsteps behind him.
He looked back.
She was standing beneath the awning, watching him. Even from that distance he could see the tears streaming down her cheeks, and the resignation and defeat in the slope of her shoulders.
McGuire walked back to her. “You got anywhere to go?” Water dripped from the edge of the awning onto his collar and down his back. He stepped further within the awning’s shelter, and she backed away from him, hesitant, afraid.
She shook her head.
“I’m going to a place near the market for an Irish coffee. You want to join me?”
“Okay.” She smiled and McGuire caught his breath. He had never seen a woman’s beauty shine through so suddenly with a smile, as though a mask had been removed, or another woman had stepped into her soul. “We haven’t . . .” she began. “I’m Susan.”
“I know. My name’s McGuire.”
“I know.”
“There’s a little bar near the Bostonian.”
“Okay.”
They walked in silence through the rain, past Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market to Congress Street and the businessman’s bar. Just inside the door the pianist, a slim, gray-haired man, was playing a slow twelve-bar blues, and he nodded at McGuire and Susan as they entered. McGuire paused at the bar long enough to order two Irish coffees, then led Susan towards a booth against an inside wall, away from the chill of the windows. He helped her out of her coat, admiring the lines of her figure in a dark sweater and wool skirt.
“This is nice,” she said, glancing around after settling herself in the booth. “I’ve seen this place often, just passing by, but I’ve never come in.”
“You live near here?”
“No.” She angled her head towards Quincy Market. “I work over there. In a candle shop. Just in the mornings. I have afternoons to myself.” She played with her fingers, looked up to see him watching her, smiled briefly, then folded her hands in her lap.
“Why are you so nervous?” McGuire asked.
She shrugged. “I guess because I haven’t been with a man on a date since my divorce. This isn’t a date, I know, but having a drink and so on . . .”
“When were you divorced?”
“Two . . .” She swallowed and began again. “Two years ago.”
“Isn’t it about time you began going out and meeting men?”
“I suppose so.”
The Irish coffees arrived, and he watched as she sipped hers then set it down, wrapping both hands around the heavy glass to absorb its warmth. She looked up and saw him watching her, and she smiled again, still nervous. Her eyes were large in a face that could age from twenty to forty in the time it took for the lines on her brow to erase the brilliance of her smile. “It’s good,” she said. “I haven’t had an Irish coffee in years. I’d almost forgotten how good they taste.” She looked back at the pianist, who had slipped into a slow ballad, lush with thick chords. “That’s pretty, the song he’s playing.”
McGuire listened for a moment, trying to hear the words in his mind. “I know it,” he said. “Well, I should know it. It’s an old song, the kind jazz musicians like. Hardly hear it any more. Hardly hear any old songs like that, except in places like this.”
“It’s lovely,” she said, looking down at her drink. “My grandfather would have liked it. He loved old songs.”
Her expression grew solemn and she was lost in her thoughts before looking up at McGuire and smiling with embarrassment. When she emerged from her reverie McGuire said, “What’s your relationship with Orin Flanigan?”
“Friends. We’re just friends.”
“Some people think you’re more than that.”
“I know. But we’re not.” She bit her bottom lip. “Orin’s doing something that he thinks needs to be done.”
“What is it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s something he shouldn’t be doing. I mean, it’s not illegal, it’s what Orin does, except he shouldn’t be doing it.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.”
“Did you know his daughter?”
She shook her head. “Funny you should ask that. Orin says I remind him of her. She’s ten years younger than me, or she would have been. Do you know about her?”
McGuire nodded. “Have you and your husband really been divorced for two years?”
“Yes. Yes, we have. Honestly.”
“And you haven’t been out with anyone since?”
“No.” She looked up at him with a pleading expression. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything else, but there’s more to this than you know.”
She took another drink of the coffee, and McGuire watched the way she avoided his eyes until she smiled again. She rested her chin on her hand and stared in the direction of the piano. What was it Flanigan had called her? Innocent. No, an innocent. She appeared almost forty years old, an age when no one can claim innocence any more, but McGuire recognized that quality within her, along with something he couldn’t immediately identify. Fear, perhaps. Vulnerability, certainly. And something he shouldn’t detect in a woman like her.
“Want another?” he asked when she drained the glass.
“I’d love one but . . .” She looked up at the clock over the bar. “I have to be going . . .”
“It’s barely five o’clock.”
“I know, but I have to be home . . .”
“We’ll go back to my car, I’ll drive you . . .”
“No, please, it’s all right.” She was close to panic. “I’ll take the subway . . .”
He reached to touch her hand. “Hey, it’s not a problem.” Beneath his fingers he felt the tension in her hand. “Just let me get to the men’s room, then we’ll go. It’s the coffee. Can’t hold as much as I used to.” He rose from the booth. “Back in two minutes and we’ll be off. Maybe buy an umbrella on the way. I can use one in this weather.”
“Thank you.” Her hands were trembling.
In the washroom, he remembered the title of the song the pianist had been playing. “Haunted Heart.” Good. The brain cells weren’t dying off as fast as he feared. He even recalled some of the words. Dreams are dust, something like that.
It was no more than three minutes later when he returned, rounding the corner from the washroom and seeing the empty booth with its two drained glasses. McGuire was standing looking down at them when the waiter approached and asked if there would be anything else. McGuire said Yeah, one more, and sat down, staring out at the rain and listening to the piano player.