Deep Pockets (23 page)

I knew it. Did it do me any good?

I decided on a quick stop at the house to grab the police report on Dowling’s accident. Roz heard my key in the door and wanted my opinion on a prospective tattoo, an abstract bow and arrow design of indelible weirdness that she was planning for her left breast.

“You need money?” I asked, only partially to change the subject.

“Why?” She was wearing what looked like a slip, black and shocking pink, barely covering her butt. Her legs were bare until you got to the big furry puppy slippers. If she’d opened the door to the messenger wearing that outfit — well, I was surprised he wasn’t still panting on the doorstep.

“Impro,” I said. “Improvisational Technologies, a research lab affiliated with Harvard.” I told her I wanted every scrap, who stood to make money, who stood to lose it. Anything and everything she could find, as quickly as possible.

“Oh,” she said. “You got a message. Woman. Jeannie St. something.”

“Cyr.”

“Yeah. She says you should come by and grab a trophy. Does that make sense?”

“Did she leave her number?”

“Yeah.”

“Call her back, tell her you’re my—” What? I thought. Not assistant, not associate. Friend would have to do it. “Say you’re my friend and that I asked you to pick it up for me. Okay? Then do it. Be really nice to her, okay?”

“What? You think I’m not nice?”

“Just be yourself. And take along one of those photos from Magazine Street Beach. Ask Jeannie if she knows the man in the picture.”

“Just knows him?”

“Yeah. And if she ever saw him with Denali.”

“Denali. Like the mountain? Am I supposed to know Denali?”

“Don’t complicate it.”

“Way cool name, Denali.”

She saluted and I took charge of the police report. Before I left, I picked up another photo of Benjy Dowling as well, and a Pepsi from the fridge.

Improvisational Technologies was in north Brighton, the scene of the hit-and-run an easy detour. I headed west on Memorial Drive, took Greenough to Arsenal, crossing over Soldiers Field Road, then turning left to join it. Traffic was light on the Birmingham Parkway, no pedestrians, not even a cyclist. I drove the complete loop of roadway, retraced my route, and pulled into the narrow access road near the Day’s Inn. In the small, deserted parking lot, I came to a halt between yellow lines.

The Birmingham Parkway runs almost parallel to Soldiers Field Road. There’s not much ground between the two big streets, a football field’s worth, maybe. The businesses, a McDonald’s, a Staples, a party store, front on Soldiers Field and turn their backs on Birmingham. Only an oldies radio station and the motel face the parkway. Traffic is heavier on Soldiers Field, cars heading downtown. Trucks take the Birmingham Parkway, the quickest path to North Beacon Street. Across the parkway, a rusty six-foot fence barred pedestrians from the slightly elevated Mass Pike. Farther on the left lay a construction site littered with massive lengths of pipe, wide-diameter pipe big enough to sleep in if you were homeless. But Dowling wasn’t homeless.

I couldn’t imagine what had brought Dowling on foot to this ugly urban stretch of roadway, any more than I could conjure what Denali had seen in him. Maybe he’d hitched a ride as far as Mickey D’s. I wondered if the cops had questioned the burger-flippers and fry cooks. I opened the envelope, read the typed double-spaced report, then exited the car.

Nearly lunchtime. A stream of cars was starting to pull into the McDonald’s drive-through lane, but I could have stood in the middle of the road for five minutes without a car passing the spot where the van had smashed into Dowling. I traced hypothetical footsteps. If he was coming from the river, he’d have had to cross Soldiers Field, scoot through the McDonald’s lot, walk in near darkness down an unpaved path almost as far as the construction site, then cross four more lanes toward the inaccessible turnpike. I considered the path in reverse; no illuminating insights.

According to the police report, all area businesses had been canvassed, all workers, customers, even motel guests questioned, with no results. I walked to the the site the diagram specified as the place the body had been found, an upgrade near the Mass Pike fence. The grass was brown and matted by heavy feet. I yanked out the scene-of-crime photographs.

Dowling looked more like a bloody rag doll than a human, his neck bent at an impossible angle, his legs crushed, his body torn, and yet it was hard for me, even with the awful photos in my face, to regard him in a sympathetic light. Ex-con, blackmailer, deceiver — he might be all of those, I reminded myself, but he was still a victim, dead before his time. For a moment, a thought flickered like a dying bulb and I saw a possible link between Chaney and Dowling. Both victims.

I crossed the road and stared at the construction site. It looked abandoned. I kept walking, found Market Street closer than I expected, over a shallow rise.

The Birmingham Parkway came to a dead end at Market. Faces stared at me speculatively from behind the wheels of Hondas and pickup trucks, and the prickly feeling at the back of my neck made me glance around sharply, searching for — I don’t know — maybe a black TransAm. Everything seemed normal. I was simply the lone pedestrian as far as the eye could see, a curiosity.

I took note of the buildings, the number of
FOR SALE
signs, the new construction. Harvard had bought up a lot of the land here. There was speculation in the newspapers as to which of the Cambridge colleges might be asked to move to this less-desirable location, on the same side of the river as the Business School but without the ivied redbrick splendor of the Cambridge campus, without the storied history.

I walked back to the car, got the address for Improvisational Technologies. Life Street. Off Guest Street. And Guest Street was off Market Street, close, very close. Dowling could have been heading toward Impro when he died.

Chaney’s baby, Improvisational. An attempt to improve the lives of those with AHDH through a new drug, an alternative to Ritalin and Adderall, a better, safer, stronger drug. Fording had pooh-poohed it as a moneymaker, but what had Chaney’s wife said? Her husband wasn’t a wealthy man
yet
. She wouldn’t divorce him
now
. I wondered whether she was waiting for a big score, whether Impro figured into her plans.

I placed the police report on the passenger seat, keyed the ignition. I’d go there, trust to the moment, see what I could learn.

My cell rang. I glared at it, considered ignoring it, then answered. It was Geary, the lawyer, feeling pretty full of himself. He hadn’t had to arrange bail for Chaney after all. The cops didn’t have a leg to stand on. Not only had he fearlessly wrested his client from their clutches but shark-to-shark courtesy had prevailed, and if I could be at 500 Federal Street in fifteen minutes, Mr. Fitch, attorney for the plaintiffs suing Harvard, would grant me an audience.

“Can he see me later today?” I asked. “After lunch?”

“He can see you for five minutes in fifteen minutes, period. Then he’s going to New York and then to Washington, and you’ll be lucky if I can get you in to see him in six weeks.”

There are times I miss being a cop. Not many, granted, but this was one. A cop doesn’t work alone. A cop is part of a team, and right now I wanted to send a member of my team to cover the lawyer while I continued on to Impro. But there was only me.

Fifteen minutes was cutting it close, but I’d absorbed enough caffeine to know I could make it. Hell, I could probably make it if I had to abandon the car and run.

The rowers on the river glided along like
exotic waterfowl, lifting their oars in unison and flowing gracefully under the bridges. The traffic on Storrow Drive, tracing the curve of the Charles, was stop-and-go. Drivers, penned in their stuffy cars, honked and gave one another the finger. The Leverett Circle jam stretched back toward Charles Street, so I took the exit, edging through narrow Beacon Hill streets, using my cabbie know-how to avoid main drags and stoplights. The parking gods smiled, and I hastily pulled into a just-vacated slot. I stuck bare feet into pumps, fed the meter, and rushed down the street, only three minutes behind schedule.

The lobby was marble-tiled, the sign-in desk mahogany, the offices of Hawthorne and Fitch a giant step up from Geary’s Kendall Square den. I admired the Oriental rug in the twelfth-floor waiting room and imagined that Harvard’s lawyers commanded even plusher digs in a more luxuriously appointed building.

A receptionist kept me waiting in a blue velvet armchair for eight minutes before ushering me into a corner office and abandoning me to another blue velvet chair. Had she known me better, she’d have kept me in the outer office. The assumption that clients — and how was she to know I wasn’t one? — don’t snoop is not a good one for a young receptionist to make.

Alas, Mr. T. J. Fitch, Esquire, kept no incriminating papers on his desk. Matter of fact, he kept nothing on his desk. Its shining empty surface, broken only by a vase of tulips and daffodils, made me flat-out suspicious.

In spite of the disappointing desk, I had plenty to admire. The view from the window was superb — blue sky, jagged rooftops, the cranes and shovels of the Dig, the aqua ocean. There must have been fifty pictures on the far wall, not counting certificates. Every honor Theodore Jackson Fitch had garnered in his life, he’d framed, including his high school diploma, which was from Boston College High. The Boston College diploma was there as well, which made him a double eagle in local lingo. I looked for his law school diploma. If he’d gone to BC Law, he’d be a triple. Nope. He’d gone to Yale.

I recognized several faces in the photos and started to make the connections you make in a small city like Boston. I recognized a group of lawyers known around town as “the Big Tobacco boys,” guys who’d made the industry cry uncle and pay up. Many had pocketed million-dollar fees. I identified Fitch from his presence in so many shots. He had a nice even smile, which he bestowed on many politicos, Republicans and Democrats alike.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said pointedly, apparently unhappy to find me standing behind his desk instead of sitting in the supplicant’s chair. “I haven’t got a lot of time, but Todd Geary was extremely insistent.”

Good for Geary, I thought.

He wore a suit that must have set him back a thousand bucks, Canali or Zegna, one of those Italian labels they carry at Neiman Marcus or Bloomingdale’s. His shirt was snowy white, his tie hand-painted silk. Maybe he was expecting to have his photo taken again. I regretted not wearing my suit. I was definitely outclassed, but what can you do?

“So what is it you want?” He settled behind his massive desk, nodded me back into the blue velvet chair.

“Did Mr. Geary tell you I was in his employ?”

“He did.” The lawyer kicked back in his chair, placed one leg on the corner of his desk, displaying a Bally loafer. I wondered if he’d worn such nice footwear before the tobacco firms settled.

“The name Denali Brinkman has come up in an investigation relating to one of Mr. Geary’s clients.”

“Brinkman.”

I thought it odd that he chose to repeat the last name. Denali’s the odd name, the one anyone hearing it for the first time would be likely to echo. The vague politeness of his voice told me he had no recollection of the name, but the brief flash of interest in his eye said something entirely different.

I said, “I’d like you to tell me what you can about her connection with the suit you’ve filed against Harvard.”

“Because you ask.”

“Because Todd Geary asks.”

I watched him sum me up, trying to decide how little he could get away with revealing. He assumed a bland and pleasant demeanor.

“We live in a age of corporate responsibility,” he began. “Corporations used to feel they could boss everyone around. ‘What’s good for General Motors,’ you know?”

“ ‘Is good for the country,’ ” I responded.

“Right. And what’s good for the chemical companies and what’s good for the tobacco industry, and then people realized what they’ve always known: Might doesn’t make right. And look at things now. Big Tobacco took a huge hit. The Roman Catholic Church is going to have to sell major property to settle its sex-abuse cases. McDonald’s is going to have to face the fact that it’s poisoning its consumers every bit as much as Big Tobacco ever did. These giants do not police themselves.”

I nodded because he seemed to expect a reaction.

“Here’s a corollary: If we hold corporations responsible for their actions, shouldn’t we hold colleges responsible for theirs? We give them not simply our dollars but our most precious thing, our children.”

He stopped, as though waiting for applause from a crowded courtroom. I was obviously there to warm him up for a courtroom appearance.

“Brinkman’s name,” he went on, “was part of a class-action suit brought against Harvard University.”

“And the class?”

“Parents who’ve lost their children.”

“It can’t be a very large class,” I said. A very sympathetic class, though, I thought. If I were bringing the suit, I’d go for a jury trial.

“Larger than you might think,” he said. “And there are other suits, against other prestigious universities.”

He didn’t finish the thought, but he didn’t have to; it was there on his walls, in the photographs. He was thinking of bringing all the suits together. One big class, like the tobacco suit, but more exclusive.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but are you talking about an extension of Tarasoff?”

“Very good,” he said. “You’ve come across it?”

I nodded. It was an old decision, 1976 or thereabouts, that talked of a “duty to warn.” Psychiatrists, in particular, had been held liable for not warning the parents of suicidal minors, or the potential victims of homicidal patients.

“It’s my understanding that Miss Brinkman is no longer involved in the lawsuit,” I said.

He smiled. “If she was, I wouldn’t be talking to you, in spite of any favors I might owe Todd Geary.”

“Can you give me a time line? Was Brinkman one of your first clients?”