Tight Lines (20 page)

“Why,” I said, “does anybody want to be a lawyer?”

“They think their practice will be like yours,” she said. “You’re probably going home now. You don’t have a desk piled with half-written briefs and volumes of precedents and correspondence, overflowing manila folders, unopened mail, right?”

I smiled. “Nope. I’ve got a very efficient secretary. Mostly, my desk is piled with L. L. Bean catalogs.”

“See?” she said. “That’s why every lawyer in town envies you. I’d love to have dinner with you. Hell, I’d love to have another Scotch, and a couple more of your cigarettes. But I can’t.”

“Well,” I said, “another time, maybe.”

She smiled. “I’d like that.”

She reached into her pocketbook and took out a couple of bills. She put them on the table.

“I’ll get it,” I said.

“My invitation,” she said, “my treat.” She smiled. “It
was
a treat.”

I shrugged. “Okay. Thanks. Next time’ll be mine.”

After she left I decided to have another Jack Daniel’s. I tried to imagine how Susan would feel when she realized that Mary Ellen had bequeathed most of her estate to her.

W
HEN I CALLED CHARLIE
McDevitt the next morning and asked him to meet me at Marie’s for lunch, he must have detected something in my voice, because he didn’t give me a lot of shit about who owed whom a favor, or how much busier than me he was, or how much more important his work was than mine. He didn’t tell me a rambling joke or cautionary tale or shaggy dog story.

He just said, “Sure. Of course.”

And he was waiting at our table nibbling a breadstick when I got there.

I slid into the seat across from him. “Boy, thanks,” I said. “It was short notice.”

He shrugged. “Does this have something to do with that phone number I got for you?”

I nodded. “Yes. The way it started, I was just looking for the daughter of one of my clients. They’d been estranged for about eleven years, and the mother’s got terminal cancer so she wanted to reconcile with her daughter. Now it looks like the daughter’s been murdered.”

Charlie arched his brows. “Whew,” he breathed.

“It’s complicated,” I told him. “Let’s order. I’ll tell you about it.”

Charlie ordered the calamari, the way he always does at Marie’s. I had the stuffed ziti. We declined Marie’s standard complimentary carafe of wine. We both had an afternoon’s work facing us.

And while we ate, I tried to summarize what I was coming to think of as the Mary Ellen Ames Case for him. Talking about it to Charlie, trying to be logical and sequential in my recitation, identifying the connections that I recognized and pinpointing the gaps as they appeared, all helped me to see things a little more clearly.

And Charlie, good listener and good friend that he was, didn’t interrupt. He nodded here, frowned there, and pursed his lips at the other places.

We were sipping coffee when I told him about my tête-à-tête with Liz McCarron. Then he started grinning. I guess I embellished her physical appearance more than was necessary for the smooth continuity of my tale.

“Anyway,” I concluded, waving my hands, “it looks to me like someone murdered her.”

Charlie nodded. “You do tend to overthink problems, Coyne.”

“You don’t agree with me?”

“I follow your logic, all right. But you keep forgetting the first rule of all science and philosophy.”

I frowned.

“Occam’s razor,” said Charlie with a shrug.

“Huh?” Charlie had a way of making me feel ignorant sometimes.

“The first rule. It states that the simplest explanation for any unknown phenomenon is preferable to a more complex one, and that you should attempt your explanation on the basis of what is known rather than assuming there are unknowns that need to be discovered.”

“Indulge my ignorance,” I said. “But, if you will please, apply Mr. Occam’s wisdom to the present conundrum.”

Charlie grinned. “Okay, Counselor. Answer me this. What quacks like an accident, waddles like an accident, flies like an accident, and lays eggs like an accident?”

I nodded. “Sure. Except—”

Charlie held up his hand. “Hey, Brady?”

“Yeah?”

“What does this
not
quack like?”

“It does not,” I admitted, “quack like a murder. No physical clues. No witnesses. No single outstanding suspect.”

“Nevertheless…”

“If it’s murder,” I said, “it’s a cleverly plotted and executed one.”

“Which,” said Charlie, “is the least simple explanation of all. As you know.”

“Nevertheless,” I said, “I think one of these folks murdered Mary Ellen Ames.”

“You are a stubborn son of a bitch,” he said. Then he nodded. “However, sometimes Occam’s razor doesn’t apply.”

“Right,” I said. “It’s just a matter of figuring out which one of these people stands to gain the most from her death.”

“Or,” said Charlie slowly, “the other way ’round.”

“Huh?”

“You know. Who stands to lose the most from her living.”

I stared at him for a minute, then nodded. “Sure. You’re right.”

We talked about it some more while we finished our coffee. Then I paid for our lunches and we walked out. We turtled into our trench coats against the slicing wind that swirled around Kenmore Square. A miniature tornado of brown leaves twisted down the sidewalk. An odd sight, inasmuch as no trees grew in Kenmore Square.

Charlie waved down a taxi. “What’re you going to do?” he said to me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Shake a few bushes, see what flies out quacking.”

“Watch out something doesn’t fall on your head, Counselor.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

The last time I had eaten at Marie’s was with Gloria a couple of weeks earlier. That day I had taken the T to Central Square in Cambridge to visit Sidney Raiford in his bookstore. I did the same thing this time.

Head Start Books still had its sooty windows and its hand-lettered signs. Inside, it was gloomy and empty of customers, just as it had been the first time I was there.

I worked my way through the narrow aisles between the bookshelves, pretending to peruse the merchandise. As I approached the back of the store I saw Raiford. His long gray ponytail was tied back with a pink ribbon. He was seated at a messy desk talking on the telephone. He glanced up when he saw me, held up one finger, and went back to his conversation. I picked up a book on Eastern religions and paged idly through it.

A minute later Raiford came up to me. “We still got nothing on fishing, man. Did you try the Coop?”

“You remember me?”

He grinned. “Shit, guy, you’re like one of my best customers.”

I held my hand to him. “I’m Brady Coyne.”

He grabbed my thumb in what I took to be an alternative handshake. “Sid Raiford. Sole proprietor. Listen, man. I can order something if you know what you want. You don’t see it, I can get it. New, used, whatever. Dig?”

“I dig,” I said. “What I’m really after, though, is some information.”

He rolled his eyes. “Ah, fuck. So you’re a cop, huh?”

“No.” I fumbled a business card from my jacket and handed it to him. “I’m a lawyer.”

He glanced at it and shrugged. “Six a one, half a dozen a the other. Look, mister. I’ve been clean a long time, okay? I don’t even hang around with those dudes anymore. Who is it this time, anyway?”

“Mary Ellen Ames.”

Up close, Sid Raiford looked even older than from a distance. He was over sixty. His face was crosshatched and weathered like the sheer side of a rock cliff. He had a high sloping forehead. The hair that was pulled straight back over his head was thin, so that his skull shone through. And when he attempted to smile, his teeth showed gray and stubbed.

“Who?” he said.

“Come on, Mr. Raiford,” I said. “I’m not a cop. But I know many cops. I just want to talk with you about Mary Ellen.”

He shrugged stubbornly. “Sorry, man.”

“She’s dead, you know.”

His head jerked back. “Say what?”

“Mary Ellen died a couple weeks ago.”

“What happened?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

He cocked his head and stared at me for a moment. Then he said, “I can’t tell you what I don’t know. But you want to talk, I’m cool. Come on out back.”

He went to the front door and flipped around the sign that hung there, so that potential patrons would know that he was out to lunch, expected back soon. Then he led me through the store to a back room. It was piled with books of all descriptions, cardboard boxes, old magazines, empty Coca-Cola cans, and a large coffee urn. There were two threadbare upholstered chairs. He gestured for me to take one.

“Coffee?” he said.

I nodded. “Sure. Black.”

“Black’s all we got, man.”

He handed me a styrofoam cup of coffee. Then he took the other chair. “You’re jiving me about Mary Ellen, right?”

I shook my head. “No. She’s dead. She drowned.”

“Damn,” he muttered. “She was a nice little chick.”

“How well did you know her?”

He smiled at me. “I wasn’t boffing her, if that’s what you mean. Shit, man, I coulda been her grandfather, practically. I gave her a job a long time ago. She was one messed-up little bird, I can tell you that. Too much money, too little of anything else. She wanted to do something, you know? I let her handle the cash register. In those days, we actually got a customer now and then. She lasted a couple months. Then she stopped showing up.” He looked at me and flapped his hands. “Sayonara,” he added.

“You haven’t seen her since then?”

He shook his head.

“How long ago would you say that was?”

“I dunno. Six, eight years.”

I stood up. “Thank you, Mr. Raiford.”

He looked up at me. “That’s it? That’s all you wanted to know?”

I nodded. “I just wanted to know whether you intended to tell me the truth. Since you don’t, I’m not going to waste my time. I expect you’ll be having other customers coming around pretty soon. I’ll recommend your place to some of my friends.”

“Wait a minute.”

“No, that’s okay. Have a nice day, Mr. Raiford.”

“Hey, shit, man. Sit down, huh?”

“Why?”

“I don’t need any cops coming around, okay? Lawyers either. Come on. Sit down. I’ll talk to you.”

I sat down. “Okay. Talk to me, then.”

“I will,” he said. “But first tell me how you know about me and Mary Ellen.”

“The security people in her building have seen you coming and going. Some of her friends know of you. Besides,” I added, “you’re one of the beneficiaries in her will.”

“Say what?”

“You’re inheriting some money from her.”

“You’re bagging me.”

“I’m not bagging you, Mr. Raiford. You didn’t know about it?”

“Would you believe me?”

“I don’t know.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t know. Honest, man. Jesus, no wonder…”

“No wonder what?”

“Well, you must think I killed her or something, huh?”

“I think somebody might have. What do you think?”

He shook his head slowly. “Listen, okay? She was this wasted little bird, maybe twenty-one or -two. She was trying to get away from some guy who was giving her a hard time. I didn’t know her from Adam and Eve, but she kept coming in here, hanging around, not buying anything, just sitting cross-legged on the floor in the corner reading my books. Shit, didn’t matter to me. Those days, lots of kids from the Square’d wander in here. It was a safe place for them while they waited to finish their trips, come down, sober up, whatever. I got to know her, talked with her. She was different from the others. Older, for one thing. Lot of those kids were like thirteen or fourteen. Mary Ellen was on her own, not trying to hide out from rich parents in Dover or someplace. And she had plenty of bread, dressed nice, always wore makeup. So I gave her a job; we got to be friends. We’d blow a little weed now and then. After she stopped coming to work I didn’t see her for, I don’t know, a few years, anyway. Then she came by. Looking really together. She—”

“When was this?”

He rubbed his chin. “Three, four years ago? Yeah, about four years ago. She tells me she’s got her shit together, in therapy, got herself a nice place to live, car, all that. I’m happy for her. We go out to dinner. Over at the Charles Hotel, no less. Hey, she was paying, right? She tells me she’s found a guy, only he don’t know it yet, whatever that was supposed to mean. Funny broad, Mary Ellen. Anyways, she comes around to telling me that what she’d really like is to get ahold of some good stuff.”

“Dope, huh?”

He shrugged. “Just grass, a little nose sugar, that’s all. She wasn’t into anything weird. I tell her, this is no problem. Look, honest. I gave up dealing. I mean, I’m losing my ass on this store, but I can’t afford to fuck around anymore. People look at me, they see this poor old hippie who did it all. Shit, I tripped with old Tim Leary over at Harvard. I was in Chicago in ’68, Woodstock, you name it. I was a Deadhead for about a year. Cops all know me. So I gotta stay straight. But for friends, I can help out. Mary Ellen wants to get ahold of some good stuff…” He spread his hands and smiled.

“And you did.”

“Sure. And I helped her smoke it and sniff it, too. I didn’t make a profit or anything. She’d give me some bread, I’d get her a baggie or two. We’d crash at her pad for a few days. What’s wrong with that?”

“I guess that’s a matter of opinion,” I said. “But what’s a matter of fact here is that she is dead. And you stand to inherit a hundred grand.”

“A loyal chick, Mary Ellen,” he said.

“Mr. Raiford,” I said, “somebody killed her.”

“I feel terrible about it,” he said. “I really do. But it wasn’t me, friend.”

“Who, then?”

“You asking me?”

I nodded.

“How the hell would I know?”

“She must have talked about people.”

“I suppose she did.”

“Who’d have reason to kill her?”

“Mr. Coyne,” said Raiford slowly, “obviously you didn’t know her.”

I shook my head. “You’re right.”

“Because if you did, you’d know. Nobody would want to kill her. She was easy to love. Guys fell for her. Women liked her. I think you’re on the wrong track.”