“You don’t want a fax or nothin’, do ya?”
It was barely an hour later, long enough for McGuire to return to his office, make a pot of coffee, and find a reason to stroll upstairs past Lorna Robbins’s desk and smile at her. His telephone was ringing when he returned. Sleeman began speaking, keeping his voice low so that McGuire had to press the telephone receiver tightly against his ear to catch his words. “Only if you got a photo,” McGuire said. He grabbed a pencil and sat with it poised above a yellow lined notepad.
“No photos, Joe, like I told ya. Gotta sign mug shots out now, you hear about that? Anyway, this guy Myers is some kind of dancer. Got more moves than Fred Astaire. Found himself charged with a bunch of stuff three years ago. Fraud, embezzlement, minor assault, tax evasion. They nailed him on one reduced charge, bit of a deal they cut with him.”
“What’d he get?”
“Six months. Served the whole time.”
“He give an address?”
Sleeman snorted. “Yeah. The Seaview Motel in Fall River. Bit of a come-down from Marlborough Street, right? Anyway, Myers likes to live well. He was drivin’ a Caddie Seville back in ’99, belonged to a bunch of clubs in Miami, had a condo there, owned a couple of racehorses.”
“Liked to play them, I hear.”
“That’s what brought him down.”
“Married?”
“Divorced.”
“Kids?”
“None shown. That’s gonna take a fair bit of diggin’, you want stuff like that.”
“Probably two more bottles of Glenfiddich, too.”
“Funny you should mention it.”
“You still drop into Zoot’s the odd night after work?”
“The odd night.”
“Herbie Stone still tending bar in there?”
“Never misses a beat.”
“Maybe Herbie’ll have a little gift for you, you drop in tonight.”
“Yeah? Now won’t that be nice of old Herbie.”
McGuire hung up and was refilling the coffeemaker when Richard Pinnington tapped lightly on the door and entered. “You want some good news?” he asked, his tanned face split with a wide grin.
“Long as it doesn’t cost me.”
Pinnington’s grin vanished and he gestured at the coffeemaker. “You know, you could get one of the girls to do that for you.”
McGuire poured the water into the top of the machine. “I like to do things myself.” He turned on the machine and looked at Pinnington. “What’s the good news?”
“I just had lunch with Russell. He left on the shuttle to New York, but he wanted me to tell you about the material you gathered on that back-injury case.”
“Guy who hurt himself in a brawl?”
“Pee-Wee had an after-hours chat with counsel from the other side, a kind of off-the-record pre-discovery session. Let him see your report and gave him the name of the other guy in the brawl and his brother. Counsel for the plaintiff made noises about backing off, once he looked into things. He’s probably advising their client that he doesn’t have a case, and that he might even risk charges of attempted fraud. Meanwhile, our client’s impressed all to hell by our efficiency. Your efficiency, I mean. Congratulations.”
McGuire nodded.
“You know, you might have earned your entire month’s income with that one project. Our client was facing a three-million-dollar settlement without it.”
“Three million dollars to a guy who gets beat up in a bar fight and tries to do a con job on some insurance company.” McGuire shook his head.
“Well, you struck a blow for ethics.” Pinnington folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe. “So. Are you working on anything else, or do you plan to take the rest of the month off?”
McGuire gestured at a scattering of file folders on his desk. “Too busy. I’m looking at some guy who disappeared with a business plan, tracking a missing person for Orin Flanigan . . .”
“Orin gets into some heartbreakers, doesn’t he? Abused kids, all the trash left over from divorces. But he’s damn good. Sometimes, though, I get the feeling that he finds it hard to separate himself from the cases.” Pinnington pushed himself from the door and checked his watch. “You want to get together for lunch some time? Maybe a drink in my office after hours, a little parachute to let you down easy at the end of the day?”
McGuire said sure.
McGuire wasted the rest of the afternoon, leaving at four to purchase the Scotch for Sleeman and driving down Boylston to Zoot’s, where he left the brown-paper sack with Herbie Stone. Stone had been a prison guard at Worcester until he and three other guards were taken hostage in a riot six years earlier. Neither Herbie nor the other guards were harmed, but for two nights and a day they watched as the inmates tortured and killed three prisoners, two of them child molesters and the third a suspected informer. The rioters used a blowtorch, screwdrivers, and their bare hands, and the screams of the victims etched themselves into Herbie Stone’s memory, leaving scars he would never lose. Now he managed Zoot’s, a dimly lit hangout for cops, with a sound system that played quiet jazz. There, the major drama of the day wasn’t hearing someone scream as his testicles were burned to carbon, but running out of Triple See for frozen margaritas that Herbie claimed were the best north of the Rio Grande.
McGuire had a beer in Zoot’s, nodding to the few cops whose faces he recognized. Then he walked down Boylston to a restaurant and devoured bacon and eggs, because he felt like eating bacon and eggs. As he ate he watched the other patrons, especially women his age or younger. He thought about Lorna Robbins and her little-girl smile, her giggles, her full bosom. He wondered if he would enjoy an evening with her, perhaps dinner, perhaps more. He knew she would accept his invitation for the same reason he would offer it. Out of loneliness. Out of a need to escape the feeling of waste, of irretrievable loss, for at least one night of their lives.
He read the paper, paid his bill, walked back to Zoot’s to discover Wally Sleeman had already picked up his Scotch, then drove to Revere Beach.
He parked the car and strode up the walk to the front door, finding the interior of the house darkened and quiet. Behind him he heard another car arrive, and he turned to see Ronnie close the car door.
She watched the vehicle leave before she headed up the walk and discovered McGuire. “Hi,” she said, trying to hide her surprise at his presence. “I’ve got something to show you,” and he stood aside as she entered the house, carrying a large flat package under her arm. She set it on the kitchen table. “Look what I did today!”
Her fingers tore at the brown paper wrapping, and she withdrew a watercolour landscape set in a simple pine frame. Executed with simple, strong brushstrokes, the painting showed a farm field in spring, the bare ground seen through receding snow in brown furrows, and the sun shining, weak but with promise.
McGuire was impressed.
“I never tried this before, leaving white for snow like that, and just putting a blush of blue on it. See the blue? It’s so faint, yet it’s so strong like that, giving shadows and all.” She held the picture in her hands at arm’s length, her eyes glowing with pride. “Carl was so pleased with it, he insisted on taking it to his gallery and framing it himself. That’s why I’m late.”
“Carl?”
“My teacher. I told you about him. God, he has talent! I painted it from a picture he took in Vermont last year.”
She set the painting on a kitchen chair and stepped back to study it as though never having seen it before. “Do you like it?” she asked. “I know I’m fishing for compliments. But I never thought I could do anything this good.” She turned to McGuire. “Do you like it? Really?”
McGuire said he did.
She shrugged out of her coat and glanced at the clock. “I’d better tend to Ollie.” She turned and began walking down the hall. At the mirror she paused to study her reflection and tuck an errant lock of hair into place.
McGuire watched her, glanced at the picture, looked up to see Ronnie entering Ollie’s room, and turned back to the picture again.