Muscle Memory (15 page)

“Yeah. You go on in there and baby-sit the guy in the first-floor apartment.”

Benetti brushed past me and into the house.

Horowitz sat beside me. “Tell me everything you saw.”

He had his notebook out. I reconstructed everything as well as I could from the time I’d arrived here.

“The rug,” he said. “It was still wet?”

I nodded.

“But the blood was dry.”

“Yes.”

Just then two other unmarked vehicles, both with blinking blue flashers on the roofs, pulled in behind Horowitz’s Taurus. He got up and went to the sidewalk to greet them. They talked for a few minutes, then all of them except Horowitz trooped past me and into the house. “You sit tight,” he said to me. “I’m gonna have to talk to you again soon’s we get a good look up there.”

“How long?”

“As long as it takes, Coyne. Don’t push me.”

I shrugged, and Horowitz went inside.

I’d been sitting there for about half an hour when I became aware of loud voices out on the sidewalk. I looked up and saw the Somerville cop holding Lyn Conley by his shoulders. Conley’s face was red, and so was the back of the cop’s neck.

I got up and went to them. “Hey, Lyn,” I said.

He blinked at me. “What the hell is going on, Brady? Did Mick—”

“He’s gone missing,” I said.

Conley stepped back from the cop, scowled at him, tugged on the lapels of his suit jacket, then smiled quickly at me. “Thank God,” he said. “I was worried that—wait a minute. What do you mean, missing?”

“I can’t say anything else, Lyn.”

“But what the hell—?”

“He’s not home,” I said. “I think you better wait with me. I’m sure the police will want to talk to you.”

He rolled his shoulders. “I don’t get it. What do the police care if Mick’s not home?” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Something’s happened to him, hasn’t it?”

“Looks like it,” I said.

T
HE SOMERVILLE COP PUT
his hand on Lyn Conley’s shoulder. “I gotta keep you two separated,” he said. “That big-shot detective’ll have my ass if I let you guys compare stories.”

Lyn pushed the cop’s hand away. “I don’t have any damn story,” he said. “I’m here to visit my friend.”

“Listen, pal,” said the cop. “You wanna obstruct justice—”

“I want to know what happened to Mick.”

“Just do what I say,” said the cop. “And don’t touch me again.”

“Wait,” I said to the cop. “We’re just upset, both of us. My friend here doesn’t mean anything.”

The cop glared at Lyn for a minute, then turned to me. “Okay. That’s good. I don’t want trouble any more than you do. So why’n’t you go back and sit on the steps where I can see you. And you—” he turned to Lyn “—you can take a seat in the back of my cruiser, there. How’d that be?”

“That’s fine,” I said quickly. I nodded at Lyn.

He frowned at me, gave his head a little shake, then turned and ducked into the backseat of the Somerville cruiser.

I went back and sat on the front steps. Ten or fifteen minutes later, Horowitz came out. He walked past me to where the Somerville cop was standing guard on the sidewalk, and the two of them conferred for a minute. Horowitz glanced at Lyn Conley, patted the cop on the shoulder, then leaned down and said something to Lyn.

A minute later he came back and sat beside me. “Let’s talk about Fallon’s enemies,” he said.

I turned to him. “You think…?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. Looks like there was a helluva row up there.”

“Was there blood anywhere else?”

Horowitz nodded. “A few spots on the living room rug and kitchen floor. Like a trail to the rear exit off the kitchen.”

“If somebody killed him…”

“Why’d they bother taking his body?”

“You think Mick could still be alive?” I said.

“I think it’s possible.”

“Kidnapped or something,” I said. “They had to hurt him. Disable him. Mick’s a big guy. Unlikely to go along willingly.” I nodded. “Sure,” I said. “I see what you’re thinking.”

“I doubt if you see what I’m thinking, Coyne.”

“Well, how do you figure it?”

“Kinda premature to be figuring it,” he said. “What we got is some blood, a trashed apartment, a fire escape off the back of the house, a missing three-hundred pound man, one potential witness who claims he was sleeping, and Fallon’s car still parked on the street. The only actual corpse belongs to a fucking fish.”

“Mick’s daughter gave him that fish,” I said. “He called it Neely.”

Horowitz frowned. “Neely?”

“After the Bruins player.”

“Oh, yeah. The right winger. So the man loved his fish, huh?”

“Well,” I said, “he sure loved his kids.”

Horowitz stared at the ground for a minute, then turned to me. “I need to know who Fallon’s enemies are.”

I nodded. “You’ve got to understand that I don’t know that much about him. He’s only been my client for a few weeks, and before that, he was just a guy I ran into a few times at Skeeter’s. He lied to me about several things. I do know he was a gambler. He owed money. In pretty deep, I think. And there were those two hoods at Skeeter’s.”

“Russo’s boys. I know all about that.”

I nodded. “Anyway, that was way back in February. Also, of course, there might be someone who thought he killed his wife and didn’t like it. Or,” I said, “the same person who killed her could’ve come after him.”

“Some kind of grudge against both of them?”

I shrugged.

“What’s his problem?” he jerked his chin toward the cruiser where Lyn Conley was sitting in the backseat. “That’s the guy whose wife found Mrs. Fallon’s body. What’s he doing here?”

“He and Mick were old friends. He’s been visiting every day since Kaye got killed. Sort of looking out for him, I guess.”

Horowitz chewed his lip. “Look,” he said after a minute, “I know you’re his lawyer, and I know what you can and can’t tell me. But I’m gonna tell you something.”

“You were planning to arrest Mick this morning,” I said. “Right?”

He nodded.

“You’ve been gathering evidence against him. You subpoenaed the deposition, interviewed Barbara Cooper.” I arched my eyebrows.

Horowitz nodded. “And we found a witness.”

“What kind of witness?”

“Solid eyewitness. Saw Fallon that night in Lexington.”

“At Kaye’s? The night she—?”

“Yep. Sunday night around eleven.”

“This witness reliable?”

“Neighbor across the street. Retired banker, for Christ’s sake. Sober, conservative. You know the type. Perfect witness. Recognized Fallon, of course. Fallon had lived there for a long time. Hard to confuse Mick Fallon with anybody else.”

I blew out a breath. Mick had sworn to me he’d been in his apartment all night on Sunday. Assuming the witness was telling the truth, Mick had lied to me again. “This witness,” I said to Horowitz, “he’s sure of the day and the time?”

“I’ll tell you his name,” he said, “because I’m obligated to. I don’t have to tell you anything else, and I ain’t gonna.”

“I’ll interview him myself.”

“Of course you will. Mitchell Selvy’s his name.”

“And he lives across the street from the Fallons’ house?”

Horowitz nodded.

“Thank you.” I stood up and arched my back. “Can I go?”

“Sure. Go.”

“What happens next?”

“Me, I’m gonna go talk some more with that Conley guy in the cruiser, then head back to the office, catch up on my messages, think about lunch. You probably oughta go to your office, compose a will or something.” He gave me his cynical Jack Nicholson grin. “Cops’ll do their job, Coyne. You’ll do yours.”

“What about Mick?” I said.

“Oh, we’ll find him. Let’s hope it’s not in a Dumpster behind some strip joint in Revere.”

I nodded to Horowitz and started down the path toward the street.

“Hang on,” he said.

I turned. “What?”

“Let’s keep this out of the newspapers for now, huh?”

“I don’t have a problem with that,” I said.

I got to the office a little before eleven. Julie looked up from her computer and said, “You could’ve called, you know.”

“Actually, I couldn’t,” I said. “Or I would’ve.” I filled her in on the morning’s adventures.

“So is Mr. Fallon—?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Julie stared at me for a minute. Then she shook her head, sighed, and picked up a memo pad. “Mr. McDevitt called. Something about fishing.” She looked up at me and smiled quickly. “Bet you won’t forget to call him.”

“No, indeed,” I said.

I poured myself a mug of coffee, took it into my office, and called Charlie McDevitt at his office in the Federal Building where he prosecuted cases for the Justice Department. I exchanged gossip with Shirley, Charlie’s secretary, about my two boys and her countless grandchildren, and then she put me through to him.

“Did you hear about that behavioral laboratory out in Mill Valley, California, that started using lawyers instead of white rats for their experiments?” he said without preliminary.

“This is why you called?”

“Some of those experiments were getting screwed up because the technicians were feeling sorry for the rats,” said Charlie. “Besides, there were some things that rats refused to do. They figured lawyers would solve all their problems. Plus, of course, lawyers are more abundant than rats.”

I was glad Charlie couldn’t see me smiling.

“The lawyers didn’t work out, though,” he said. “They had to go back to using rats.”

I waited for a minute, then said, “Okay. How come they had to go back to using rats?”

“With lawyers,” he said, “they weren’t able to extrapolate their results to human beings.”

“Well,” I said, “I know what you mean. Fact is, I’ve been feeling a lot like a stupid white rat in a maze lately.”

“The Mick Fallon thing?”

“Yep.”

“That’s the reason I called.”

“Steer me out of the maze.”

“Yes. Trout, Coyne. And the gurgle of clean running water, and the soft June breeze whispering through the hemlocks. Cedar waxwings flitting in the aspens, mayflies and caddisflies clouding over the water, good manly conversation, none of it about business or finance or world affairs.”

“Manly conversation,” I said. “The Red Sox. Beer. Women.”

“That sort of thing. Exactly.”

“The Deerfield or the Farmington?”

“Deerfield okay with you? Been daydreaming about it all week.”

“Tomorrow or Sunday?”

“Sunday. Meet me at the old Hojo’s by the rotary in Concord at, say, nine?”

“It’s an Italian restaurant now.”

“Oh, good point. Another treasured New England tradition down the tubes. Well, screw it. Let’s meet there anyway.”

“Nine o’clock,” I said. “Even if it’s raining.”

“Especially if it’s raining,” said Charlie.

I like to work late on Friday afternoons. It gives me a good rationalization for not lugging a briefcase home for the weekend. So I tried to put Mick Fallon out of my mind and spent the rest of the day scrutinizing contracts and divorce decrees and wills, touching base with a few clients on the telephone, setting up appointments and dickering settlements with fellow lawyers, sketching out the draft of an article I was supposed to write for the
Yale Law Review,
and in general depriving my conscience of any good reason to distract me from a Sunday of trout fishing.

Julie blew me a good-bye kiss precisely at five.

The next time I glanced at my watch, it was nearly seven-thirty.

Then I remembered.

Sylvie.

Shit.

I’d told her I’d meet her at the Ritz bar at six-thirty.

I turned off my computer and Mr. Coffee and the lights, turned on the office answering machine, and got the hell out of there.

I double-timed it down Newbury Street, slipped into the side door of the Ritz-Carlton, strode across the lobby, and stopped at the top of the two steps that descended into the bar.

The June sun still shone brightly outside, but the elegant Ritz barroom, with its dark woodwork, leather furniture, and glittering crystal, lay subdued and dim and conspiratorial. The nooks and crannies and thick carpeting and high ceiling muffled the voices, the clink of silver against glass, the occasional burst of laughter. It looked as if every table was occupied. A pinstriped businessman with gray at his temples leaned over his manhattan to confer with a thin blonde who, I’d’ve bet my favorite fly rod, was not his wife. Five swarthy Middle-Eastern investor types wearing light-colored silk suits were crowded around a table for two, jabbering loudly in foreign tongues. A middle-aged couple from someplace like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, were sipping wine and frowning at a menu. A fortyish rock star guy with a ponytail and two earrings grinned possessively at the three virtually identical raven-haired groupies seated with him. More pinstripes, more blondes. More middle-aged tourists from Cedar Rapids.

The Ritz bar on a Friday evening.

I spotted Sylvie sitting alone at a table by the window. Her chin rested in her hand, and her head was turned away from me. I guessed she hadn’t seen me. She was gazing out across Arlington Street toward the Public Gardens.

I weaved among the tables and took the chair across from her.

“Hi, sexy,” I said.

She turned her head slowly. When she looked at me, she was not smiling.

I reached across the table and took her hand. “Sorry I’m late. I should’ve called. You must’ve thought…”

She squeezed my hand. “Oh, I knew you’d come,” she said. “I’m not upset with you.”

“Something’s the matter,” I said. “When you don’t smile at me, I know something’s wrong.”

“I don’t want to talk about it now.” She gave me a quick, unconvincing smile. “Right now, I just want a martini.”

I arched my eyebrows. “A
martini
?” Sylvie, I knew, liked domestic beer and jug wine, and when she ordered an actual drink, it was generally a Bloody Mary or one of those sweet rum concoctions that Chinese restaurants specialize in, the kind that comes with a paper parasol sticking out of it.

She shrugged. “I like martinis.” She turned her head and gazed out the window onto Arlington Street.

As if he had heard Sylvie utter the word “martini,” a waiter appeared at our table. “Perhaps Miss Szabo is ready to order now?” he said.