McGuire was directed down a narrow hall lined with metal doors to a guard who ushered him into a room slightly larger than a closet. He sat at a counter staring through heavy glass into an identical cubicle in the next room. Just beyond the cubicle, two guards stood gossiping against a pillar. McGuire grew aware of others on either side of him, prisoners and visitors facing each other through armored glass, the voice of each audible to the other through telephone handsets.
One of the guards on the prisoners’ side nudged the other, and both looked to their left, beyond McGuire’s vision. He followed their gaze until a uniformed female guard appeared, leading Susan Schaeffer around the low wall forming the cubicle on the prisoner’s side.
She was walking with her head and her eyes lowered. Her shoulders sagged, and when the matron guided her to the chair and she looked up for the first time to see McGuire sitting across from her beyond the glass, she began to cry. The matron watched her in disapproval for a moment, then withdrew to stand alongside the two male guards. From their glances and expressions, McGuire knew they were talking about her.
She breathed deeply, withdrew a crumpled tissue from a pocket of her smock, and dabbed at her eyes. Then she lifted the receiver to her ear and spoke into it. “Thank you,” she said in a throaty whisper. “Thank you for coming. You’re the only one I could think of to call.”
“Have they charged you with anything?” McGuire asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? If you’re not charged with anything, why are they holding you here?”
She answered with a shake of her head.
“Do you have a lawyer?” he asked.
“They’re getting me one. They said they would.”
“What happened?”
“They came to arrest me at the candle shop. A couple of hours ago. Two detectives.”
“Who?” McGuire rarely felt sympathy for prisoners, because they all had a reason for being held within steel cages, at least temporarily. But his instincts told him this woman had no reason to be here, and her vulnerability appeared more intense than he expected.
“I don’t remember their names,” she said. “One has red hair, he’s bitter and sarcastic . . .”
“Donovan.”
“Yes.” She rested her head on her hand. “Yes, that’s him.”
“What did they tell you? When they first picked you up, what did they say?”
“That I was being brought here to be questioned about Orin Flanigan’s murder.” She raised her eyes to McGuire’s. “I didn’t even know he was dead,” she said. “Last night, when you dropped me off, I had a long hot bath and read a book and slept late this morning, so I didn’t hear the news, didn’t see a newspaper . . .”
“Why were they talking to you?” McGuire asked. Something was wrong. You don’t jail a murder suspect on the basis of an hour’s questioning, unless you want to confirm hard evidence before laying a charge.
“They didn’t tell me. But they knew so much about Orin and me, about our . . . relationship.”
“I’m going to ask some questions, find out what’s going on. But you have to tell me now. Do you know anything about Flanigan’s murder? Anything at all?”
Her eyes appeared to sag at the corners, and she shook her head.
“Okay, hang in there. Let me find out what’s going on . . .”
She nodded, looking directly at him. “Please get me out of here,” she said. “I can’t stand it in here.”
“I know,” McGuire said. He looked across at the matron, who removed the receiver from Susan’s hand. McGuire burst from the cubical and accosted the duty officer at the front desk. “Where the hell’s Donovan?” he snapped.
“From homicide?” The officer shrugged his shoulders. “I guess he’s up on Berkeley . . .”
McGuire spun on his heel, not responding to the officer’s reminder that he hadn’t signed out, that somebody’d get in trouble if McGuire’s signature wasn’t in the Signed Out column.
This time Stu Cauley was handling day security on Berkeley Street. When McGuire demanded to know if Donovan was upstairs, Cauley nodded, grinned, and said, “Tear a strip off his butt for me, will you?”
McGuire rode alone in the elevator, and grunted in acknowledgment at the few old and tired faces of detectives who recognized him when he stepped out on the Investigations floor. Across the room he saw Donovan sitting on a corner of his desk, a paper in his hand, speaking into the telephone. Donovan looked up at McGuire, then back at the paper in his hand. “Well, if you gotta, you gotta,” he said. “But I’m keeping it in the file anyway, because there’s something to this, I don’t care what you say, or she says, or this dink standing across from me says.” He grinned at McGuire, showing two crooked front teeth behind his thin lips. “McGuire, remember him? Or are you too young. Maybe you don’t go back that far?” He tossed the sheet of paper aside, then slid from his desk and replaced the receiver. “Don Higgins says hello.” Donovan sat in his chair and looked out the window. Higgins was a prosecuting attorney, a quiet, methodical man whom McGuire considered above corruption and profoundly boring.
“He’s not going to press charges against Susan Schaeffer,” McGuire said.
“He can’t.” Donovan shrugged. “We need more. We’ll get it.”
“What the hell are you doing, locking her up down there? You want to hold her for questioning, you can do it here, downstairs. You got her locked up with whores, with muggers. How the hell can you do that?”
“You don’t know?” Donovan grinned at McGuire. “You really as dumb as you look, McGuire?”
McGuire breathed deeply. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is none of your business.”
“If you haven’t got anything to charge her with, let her go. She’s dying in there.”
“Another couple hours won’t kill her.”
“Donovan, you are such scum.”
Donovan smiled as though hearing a compliment from an unlikely source. “What, we’ve been down to Nashua Street, have we? Checkin’ out our little piece a cheese, seein’ how she’s handling gray bars and black dykes?”
“She had nothing to do with Flanigan’s murder.”
“Yeah? Well, a couple of people disagree with you, McGuire.”
“Somebody gave you a blind tip and you dove right into it, didn’t you?”
“A good tip, McGuire. And not blind. Somebody who knows what was goin’ on between her and the victim, day after day. I knew you’d show up here. When I left that law office where you hang out these days, I knew you’d find out we picked up this Schaeffer woman, and I knew you’d come in, blowin’ off steam as though you’re still cock of the walk around here. I figured it would take you till three o’clock, but I don’t mind if you’re a little early . . .”
McGuire closed his eyes and looked away. “Lorna Robbins, right?” He remembered Lorna’s embarrassed attitude that morning as Donovan and the officers removed files from Flanigan’s office.
“Lorna Robbins knew Flanigan’s comings and goings, knew about the relationship between him and Schaeffer, knew a hell of a lot more about Schaeffer than you do, McGuire. She’s a credible source for an arrest on suspicion of first-degree murder.”
“She tell you everything, Donovan? Did she?”
“Like what?” Donovan opened a desk drawer, removed a package of Dentyne, unwrapped two sticks, and popped them into his mouth.
“Like the fact that Lorna and I were dating each other up until a couple of nights ago?”
Donovan watched McGuire, chewing the gum with his mouth open. “Dating? What’s that, something you do in high school? You were sleeping with her, the Robbins woman, right?”
“None of your goddamn business.”
“Because you know, if you were and you dropped her for the Schaeffer broad, I mean, who could blame you?”
“Lorna Robbins sent you to Susan Schaeffer because she is hurt and jealous. If she said, if she even hinted, that Susan had anything to do with murdering Flanigan, she’s doing it for revenge. That’s her only motive, and you and Don Higgins know it. So let her out now or I’ll see that you’re slapped with a habeas corpus so goddamn fast . . .”
“We’re talking like a lawyer now, are we?” Donovan spoke across the room to two detectives who had been eavesdropping on the conversation. “See what happens, you hang around lawyers too long? You forget you used to be a cop and you start talkin’ like them.”
“Just do it, Donovan.” McGuire turned to leave.
“Hey,” Donovan called to his back. “Hey, McGuire. You think you know everything about this case and that broad, down there on Nashua? Well, I can tell you right now, you don’t know a damn thing, McGuire, and when you find out what’s really goin’ on, you’re gonna look like the dummy you are.”
“Now, please don’t ask me to reveal any details.” Don Higgins’s carefully modulated voice buzzed in McGuire’s ear. Beyond the telephone booth, the midday traffic on Boylston Street hummed past, and McGuire had to cover his other ear with his hand.
“I’m not asking for anything, Don.” McGuire realized he was hungry, and he promised himself a steak at Zoot’s later. “I just want to know. Beyond the things that Lorna Robbins said about Susan Schaeffer, was there any other evidence?”
“Only enough for questioning.”
“It still must have taken a pretty strong statement to haul somebody in like that.”
“There were claims of direct involvement, yes.”
“Claims? That’s it? Unsubstantiated stuff, gossip? Is that enough to be booked on suspicion of murder these days?”
“It came from a source close to the victim.” Higgins sounded defensive. “His own private secretary. You have to assume some validity. And there were other considerations.”
“Do you know there’s a motive on Robbins’s part? For saying what she said?”
“Phil Donovan called and told me that, a few minutes ago.” McGuire heard Higgins exhale into the receiver. “Okay, repeat this and I’ll deny it, but I have a feeling Donovan acted prematurely in making the arrest. Certainly, had we known this Robbins woman had reason to attack Miss Schaeffer . . . well, frankly we’re all looking a little silly here.”
“Don, I can’t believe you agreed to book her without something more solid.”
“It wasn’t just the tip. It was the other thing too.”
“What other thing?” McGuire heard a moment of dead air. “Is this is the other consideration you talked about? What other thing?”
“I can’t go into that.”
“Aw, come on, Don. Look, let’s say I have a personal interest in this Schaeffer woman.”
“All the more reason I shouldn’t say anything.”
“You’re talking in riddles, Don. Come on, it’s me, McGuire. You and I have traded secrets over the years . . .”
“Did you ever take this woman home?”
“Yeah, I took her home. Just last night. Nice little brownstone on Queensberry. What about it?”
“Then you know it’s a halfway house.”
McGuire closed his eyes. “No,” he said. He had never lied to Don Higgins in his life, and he didn’t feel like creating any sense of bravado, any false knowledge now. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.” Higgins’ voice softened. The two men, so contrasting in every aspect of their lives—social level, education, demeanour—had always retained something more than professional respect and something less than affection for each other. “She is on parole, so she is subject to arrest and confinement for twenty-four hours at any time on suspicion of possible felonious conduct in this state. You know that, McGuire. Anyway, Donovan’s partner on this thing, he made inquiries today and confirmed her presence there every evening for the past several weeks. We could hold her overnight if we wanted, but I instructed Donovan to release her. By the way, I would appreciate it if you didn’t identify me as the source of this information.”
McGuire turned to watch the traffic pass. “Thanks, Don. I owe you.”
“No, you don’t,” Higgins said.
McGuire stared at the traffic for several moments after Higgins hung up. Then he shook his head, flipped through the telephone book, dug in his pocket for a quarter, and made another call.
Half an hour later he was slouched against a scarred oak bench in a corridor of the old courthouse, his eyes closed. He should be with Ollie now, he told himself. He should be offering to do whatever he could, and trying to explain the things he couldn’t do. He couldn’t prevent Ronnie from leaving. And he couldn’t condemn her now the way he might have a few days ago, not after seeing how her face glowed in the presence of her lover.
He had made so many errors, it seemed. An error in criticizing Ronnie, an error in believing he could save Ollie, now an error about Susan Schaeffer (although he knew nothing about its extent yet), and he recognized how little he knew about happiness in others, even as he sought it in himself.
“I have ten minutes.”
McGuire looked up to see Marv Rosen standing in front of him. The lawyer’s deep-set eyes were watching McGuire without expression. His blue suit hung perfectly on his slim frame. He held an oxblood leather attaché case in one hand, and a heavy gold bracelet dangled from that wrist. Behind Rosen, an aide stood waiting impatiently, a young man with an oversized mustache, holding thick files in front of him. The younger man reminded McGuire of a schoolboy currying favour by carrying a friend’s textbooks.
McGuire rose from the bench, one knee popping audibly. “You got a place we can meet?” he said, and the lawyer nodded and turned to walk down the corridor, leading McGuire and his aide like a member of royalty with his entourage.
“I’d say we’re an odd couple, you and me.” Rosen pulled on the French cuffs of his starched white shirt, exposing gold cufflinks set with diamond chips. They were seated in a counselor’s room, one of several small cubicles set among the courtrooms. Rosen flashed a tight smile across the battered oak desk at McGuire, who was wishing he were somewhere else. “But the law can be like politics at times. Strange bedfellows and all that.”
“Pinnington suggested I make contact with you,” McGuire said.
“I know. Dick’s afraid of dealing with this kind of stuff directly. That’s the problem with big corporate firms. Always so tight-assed about crime.” Rosen’s voice was almost warm towards his former adversary. “That’s why I went into criminal law, you know. You get to work with real people, real problems. Corporate lawyers get uncomfortable around people like you and me.”
McGuire looked across at Rosen, who, satisfied with the exposure of his cufflinks, sat with his hands clasped together in front of his face and stared over his knuckles. McGuire said nothing, knowing Rosen had more philosophy to dispense.
“You and I build our reputations, such as they are, by being associated with a certain class of people,” Rosen was saying. “The same class of people cannot be seen with Dick Pinnington and the rest of them. Yet we’re supposedly all in the same business.”
McGuire figured he had let Rosen ramble long enough. “What do you know about a guy named Myers?”
“Myers?” Rosen looked up at the scarred and stained ceiling. “I’m not sure who you’re referring to . . .”
“He was your client. You defended him on an embezzlement and tax-evasion charge . . .”
“Right, right.” Rosen nodded. “I do remember Mr. Myers, yes. What about him?”
“He could be implicated in this.”
“Really?” The lawyer looked concerned. “Pinnington didn’t mention his name to me.”
“You didn’t get any files from Pinnington?”
“Look.” Rosen spread his hands wide, as though about to reveal a basic fact of life to a small child. “I’m retained, just like you are, by Zimmerman, Wheatley. They need me, they use me. They don’t need me, they don’t call me. Either way, I cash my monthly retainer. The same as you, am I correct?”
McGuire nodded.
“Something else comes with the deal. You know what it is? It’s the understanding that they don’t tell us anything they think we don’t need to know. That’s good for both of us, McGuire.”
“They didn’t tell you about Myers.”
“I just said that . . .”
“They didn’t tell you that Flanigan assigned me to confirm his presence in Annapolis.”
“Is that where he is?”
“Or in Florida. Myers doesn’t owe you money, does he?”
“Trust me, McGuire. I may lose a case now and then, but I never lose money defending a client. No, Mr. Myers does not owe me any money.”
“He seems to have a habit of skipping out on his debts.”
“Not mine, he didn’t.”
“So how much do you know about Flanigan’s murder?”
“Quite honestly, only what I read in the newspapers.”
“Did you know Orin Flanigan?”
The lawyer studied his nails. “Of course I knew him. Orin was a good man. A good lawyer, a fine person.”
“Do you think he’d ever be involved in anything criminal?”
“I never believe any of my clients can be involved in anything criminal, and a few of them surprise me by doing just that.”
“But Orin Flanigan was never a client of yours.”
“Of course not. And the idea of him doing anything beyond the pale is outrageous.” Rosen permitted himself another quick smile and looked at his wristwatch. “What else do you have? I’m scheduled upstairs in a few minutes . . .”
“What about Susan Schaeffer?”
“Who?” The lawyer was already half out of his chair.
“Susan Schaeffer. Do you know her? Have you ever defended her?”
Rosen paused, blinked, checked his cuffs again. “I have never defended a client by that name . . .”
“But you know her, don’t you? How?” McGuire was rising from his chair as well.
“Is this relevant to the question of Orin Flanigan’s murder?” Rosen stood across from McGuire, his chin raised, his expression almost defiant.
“You’re damn right it is. She’s sitting down on Nashua Street right now on a cheap-shot suspicion charge. Of Flanigan’s murder. Set up by a bunch of lies.”
“Really?” Rosen eyebrows shot up his forehead.
“She could use a lawyer,” McGuire said. “Somebody better than the legal-aid flunky they’re probably assigning to her. You interested?”
“No.” Rosen seized the handle of his briefcase. “Afraid not. Look, if any potential criminal activity arises that’s directly connected to anyone over at Zimmerman. . . .”
“How do you know Susan Schaeffer?” McGuire demanded. The door to the corridor opened, and Rosen’s aide stood waiting, a look of impatience on his face.
“Unless that’s directly related to a question of criminal activity . . .”
“I just said it was, damn it!” McGuire thumped his fist on the table.
“. . . I cannot discuss my knowledge of her or her activity, and if you persist in threatening violence, McGuire, I’ll have you charged again, and this time you won’t have the City of Boston to defend you!”
“Why won’t you tell me? About Susan Schaeffer?”
“I just said, if I determine that it’s relevant to my obligations to Dick Pinnington and his people, I may be prepared to discuss it . . .”
“You and I, we’re supposed to be working together.”
“As a matter of fact, we are. It would be a good thing if you tried to remember that.” Rosen paused with his hand on the doorknob. His aide was already leading the way down the corridor. “Look, McGuire. When you’re a police detective, you’re expected to pursue every item of information, no matter how small it may appear, or how confidential. But you’re not on that side any more. You’re an operative. Your client isn’t society any more. Your client is Dick Pinnington and his clients. You’re no longer an instrument of the law, you’re a cog. You go only where you’re supposed to go and no further. You learn only what you’re supposed to know and nothing else.”
“I want to know everything.”
“Of course you do. But get used to the idea that you probably won’t. I’ll tell Pinnington we met. He was concerned about that. And I’ll tell him you agreed to contact me whenever you have any hard suspicions of criminal activity by a member of the firm. That’s all.”
McGuire made two telephone calls from a booth in the courthouse lobby. The first was answered by Ronnie Schantz, her voice expectant. “Yes?”
“It’s Joe.”
“Oh.” She had been waiting for someone else to call.
“How are things going?”
“You want to guess?”
“I can come by if you’d like.”
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m leaving. Today. I’m taking . . .” She stumbled, then regained her composure. “I’m taking my clothes, a few pictures, my jewelry.”
“You’re going to Charles Street.”
“Yes. I’m going to Charles Street. I should have expected you’d know more than you let on.”
“How’s Ollie?”
“He’s . . . I don’t know. He’s accepting it.”
“Should I be there?”
“Not until I’m gone, okay? Like, after dinner tonight? Can you wait until then?”
McGuire said he would wait.
“I hired a nurse. We’ve been talking about it for a while, Ollie and me. The Benevolent Fund is sending her up this afternoon. I gave them a key . . .” Something caught in her throat, and she paused to swallow. “She’ll be living here for the first couple of nights.” Another pause to swallow a sob. Then: “Joe?”
“What?”
“Do you hate me? Do you think I’m selfish? Do you think I’m only thinking of myself and nobody else?”
“Yes, you’re selfish,” he said. “Yes, you’re only thinking of yourself. No, I don’t hate you. I wish you only happiness, Ronnie.”
She was crying now. “Thank you. I promise to call, to see you, and maybe explain things . . .”
McGuire said, “Sure, you do that,” and hung up.
“Where you at?” Stu Cauley’s voice rasped in McGuire’s ear, and McGuire read the number of the pay telephone to the duty cop. “Stay there, I’ll get right back to you,” Cauley said.
McGuire leaned against the side of the telephone booth, thinking of Ronnie and Ollie. He remembered the expression on Ronnie’s face when Simoni passed his cigarette to her lips, and the sight of them walking away towards his studio and his bed. They were two middle-aged people playing young lovers, while McGuire watched like a man in a neighbour’s garden at night, peering through lit windows, and while Ronnie’s husband was lying in his bed, unable to strike the lover down and bellow to the skies, as he might have done a few years ago.
What now? McGuire asked himself. In a way, Ronnie was abandoning not only her husband, but McGuire as well.
The telephone rang and he lifted the receiver quickly, like a man shutting off an alarm.
“She’s due out in fifteen minutes,” the voice rasped, and McGuire told Stu Cauley there was a beer with Cauley’s name on it waiting for him at Zoot’s.
“Can’t touch it,” Cauley said. “Ulcer. Didn’t you hear, Joe?”
McGuire said he hadn’t heard.
“I’m heading out to pasture, end of next month,” Cauley said. “Then maybe I’ll come up to Revere Beach and trade lies with you and Ollie.”
McGuire said it sounded like a good idea. Seeing Ollie at the end of next month would be a very good idea.