Widow’s Walk (10 page)

She shook her head. We were at a small table in the high-ceilinged bar at the Hotel Meridien. I had beer. Susan was barely touching a cosmopolitan.

“That’s the answer everybody gives me,” I said.

“The parents of the boy who committed suicide are suing me,” Susan said.

“They blame you,” I said.

“Yes.”

“I guess they’d probably have to,” I said.

“I know.”

“You’ve seen a lawyer?”

“I talked with Rita.”

“Rita? I thought you didn’t trust Rita.”

“I don’t trust her with you,” Susan said. “I think she’s a good lawyer.”

“She is,” I said. “And a big firm like Cone Oakes has a lot of resources.”

Susan smiled without much pleasure. “So I’m employing Rita,” Susan said. “And she’s employing you.”

“What’s she say about the lawsuit?”

“She feels it’s groundless.”

The Hotel Meridien was in a building that had once been a bank. The bar was in a room where they probably used to keep the money. The ornate ceiling looked fifty feet high.

“How do you feel?”

“I feel guilty.”

I ate a few peanuts. Eating a few peanuts was not easy. Mostly, I tended to eat them all.

“Be surprising if you didn’t,” I said.

“I know. I know the guilty feeling comes from my reaction to the event. Not the event itself.”

“Still feels bad, though,” I said.

“Yes.”

I ate a few more peanuts, and determined to eat no more. The waitress brought me a second beer. Susan took in a milligram of her drink.

“You know what makes me love you?” she said.

“My manliness?”

She smiled.

“You haven’t tried to talk me out of feeling guilty,” she said.

“Be aimless,” I said.

“Yes. But not everyone would know that.”

“It’s a gift,” I said.

I could almost see Susan decide that she had been down as much as she was prepared to be.

“Tell me about what’s going on in that case you’re working on for Rita.”

“It keeps spreading out on me,” I said. “The more I investigate, the more I learn. And the more I learn, the more I don’t know what’s going on.”

“That happens to me often in therapy,” Susan said. “I know something’s in there in the dark and I keep groping for it.”

“That would be me,” I said. “Groping.”

“What do you know?”

“I know that Smith is dead. I know that I talked to a woman at his bank and she got fired and now she’s dead.”

“How did she die?”

“Appears to be suicide,” I said.

“But?”

“But she had just been to a lawyer about a gender discrimination lawsuit against the bank,” I said.

“So why would she be making long-range plans just before killing herself?”

“Yes.”

“It happens sometimes,” Susan said. “It is an attempt to convince themselves of the future.”

I shrugged and had a Brazil nut that I plucked out from among the remaining peanuts. One Brazil nut wouldn’t hurt anything.

“The bank was a family-owned business, until Marvin Conroy came aboard. He fired the woman for incompetence. And he doesn’t want to talk with me. I know that some people from Soldiers Field Development Limited are interested in what I’m doing and want me to stop doing it. I talked with Smith’s broker and was assaulted shortly thereafter.”

“Assaulted?”

“Yeah. They weren’t very good at it.”

“That’s nice,” Susan said.

“DeRosa, the guy that says Mary Smith wanted him to kill her husband, is represented by Ann Kiley, Bobby Kiley’s daughter.”

“The defense lawyer?”

“Yes. The firm is Kiley and Harbaugh, but it’s really Kiley and Kiley. Father and daughter.”

“That’s sort of charming,” Susan said.

“It is,” I said. “But why is a firm like that representing a stiff like DeRosa?”

“Social conscience?”

“You bet,” I said. “And then we have Mary Smith herself. She still seems to have a relationship of some sort with an old high school boyfriend who is evasive when asked about it.”

“By you.”

“By me.”

“And what did he say?”

“As I recall,” I said, “he told me to ”shove fucking off.“”

“She must have been attracted to him by his silver tongue,” Susan said. “What does Mary say?”

“You’d have to talk with Mary to understand,” I said.

“Why? What’s she like?”

I found another Brazil nut in the dish, and a cashew. I ate both of them. I hadn’t seen the cashew before.

“She’s a living testament to the power of dumb.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you ask her something and she seems too dumb to answer it. You can’t catch her in contradictions because she doesn’t seem aware of them even after they’re pointed out.”

“Seems kind of smart to me,” Susan said.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think she knows she’s dumb and sort of uses it.”

“Maximizing her potential,” Susan said. “Anything else bothering you?”

“Yeah. Nathan Smith. He was unmarried until he married Mary, in his fifties. According to Mary, he was a friend and helper to a number of young men, both prior to and during his marriage to her.”

“If he were gay, would he have hidden it? This is not a closeted age.”

“Old Yankee family. President of the family bank.”

“Still,” Susan said.

“Remember your patient,” I said.

“He was a boy. And he was very troubled.”

“Nathan Smith was once a boy.”

Susan nodded.

“Of course,” she said.

“It’s something I’ve got to look into.”

“Because you think it would have bearing on his death?”

“Suze, I don’t have a goddamned clue what has a bearing on his death. Every time I find a rock I turn it over.”

We sat quiet for a time. She held her partially sipped cosmopolitan in both hands, looking at its pink surface.

“It bothers you that the woman from the bank died.”

“She came to me and told me about getting fired,” I said. “She said she was afraid of Conroy, the new CEO.”

“And you feel you should have protected her?”

I shrugged.

“S.” Susan’s eyes were very big as she looked up at me over the glass. “You’re feeling a little guilty, too.”

“Yep.”

“And, like me, you know that it’s not rational.”

“Just like you,” I said.

“I think you’ve never quite altogether forgiven yourself for that woman in Los Angeles all that time ago.”

“Candy Sloan,” I said.

Susan nodded.

“Only time I ever cheated on you,” I said.

“Makes it that much worse, doesn’t it?” Susan said.

“I’m not sure it makes any difference,” I said.

Susan smiled the smile she used when she knew I was wrong but planned to let me get away with it.

“It’s frustrating to have so many questions,” Susan said.

“It gives me a lot of handholds,” I said. “I keep groping long enough I’ll get hold of an answer.”

“Yes,” Susan said. “You will.”

“You too,” I said.

Susan smiled at me.

“We persist,” she said.

The waitress came to ask if we needed anything. Susan shook her head. I ordered another beer.

“And another bowl of nuts,” I said.

“You’re wearing your hat indoors,” I said. “Is it a gay thing?”

“Race Witherspoon,” he said. “Super sleuth.”

“I gather you have information for me,” I said.

Race sat down in a client chair facing me and crossed one leg over the other. He had on knee-length black shorts and dark leather sandals.

“Nice pedicure,” I said.

“How sweet of you to notice, bubeleh.”

“Years of training,” I said.

“Nathan Smith was a serious chickenfucker,” Race said.

“How nicely put,” I said. “He was drawn to young boys?”

“Early adolescent when he could get them,” Race said.

“How solid is this?”

“Honey,” Race said, “I talked with some of the chickens.”

“He give them money?”

“Yes, but not like it sounds. He was more like a fairy godfather.” Race grinned. “So to speak. He’d pay for dance lessons or music lessons or whatever. He set up scholarships for them to go to college. Paid for counseling. Wish I’d met the dear man when I was younger.”

“So you could have gotten counseling?” I said.

Race snorted.

“How out was he?” I said.

“Way in the back of the closet, darlin‘. Told people at Nellie’s his name was Marvin Conroy.”

“Marvin Conroy?”

“Un-huh. Nice butch name.”

“Nice butch guy,” I said. “Nathan had a sense of humor.”

“So he borrowed some straight guy’s name,” Race said.

“Yes.”

“Bet the straight guy wouldn’t like it.”

“No.”

“Another thing,” Race said. “One of the bartenders at Nellie’s told me that somebody else had been in a year and a half ago asking about the same guy.”

“Nathan Smith?”

“Un-huh, aka Marvin Conroy.”

“The bartender know who this was?”

“Nope, just a middle-aged straight white guy.”

“How could he tell he was straight?”

“Gay-dar,” Race said. “You wouldn’t understand, sweetie.”

“The bartender remember what the guy looked like?”

“Just what I said.”

“What did the bartender tell him?”

“Nothing. I told you, Nellie’s doesn’t stay in business by telling on their clients.”

“Is he sure about the time?” I said.

“It was right after the Super Bowl,” Race said. “The one where the Rams won.”

“People at Nellie’s watch the Super Bowl?” I said.

“All those muscle men in tight pants?” Race said. “All that butt patting? Honey, get real.”

“I never thought of it that way,” I said.

“‘Course you haven’t,” Race said. “You’re much too straight.”

“Unfortunately,” I said, “I’ll think of it now every time I watch football.”

“It’s good to have a queer perspective now and then,” Race said. “How’s Susan?”

“As always,” I said, “beautiful and brilliant.”

“Hot, too.”

“You think?” I said.

“Hot, hot, hot,” Race said. “If I was ever going to jump the fence…”

“But you aren’t,” I said.

“Oh, God, no!” Race said.

“Whew!”

I paused. I had annoyed a lot of people in the last week or so. If someone wanted to shoot me this would be a dandy spot. Come down the stairs behind me, put a bullet in the back of my head, get into the car waiting at the curb, be out of sight in ten seconds. I stood. Nothing happened. I wasn’t even sure I had heard the engine idling. And even if I did, people sat in cars with engines running all the time. Air conditioner on. Waiting for the wife. Listening to the radio. Calling on the car phone. I was probably overreacting. Other than embarrassment and time wasted, however, there was no down side to overreacting. Underreacting might get me killed.

I took my gun out and held it against my side, and walked under the bridge. The iron stairs were on my left, and as I passed them, I turned suddenly and ran up them. Three steps from the top I collided with a guy coming down. He had a gun in his hand and when I ran into him, it went off over my left shoulder. I shot him. He made a soft grunt and fell backward and down onto the wet iron stairs. I turned and ran down the stairs toward the street. Behind me I could hear the body slide down a couple of stairs.

As I reached the street, headlights caught me and a maroon Chrysler pulled out from the curb behind where mine was parked. I dove flat onto the sidewalk at the foot of the stairway and heard a burble of gunshots rattle against the stone bridge buttresses. Automatic weapon. As the car ripped down A Street, its wheels spinning on the wet surface, I got my feet under me and headed back up the stairs. The car did a screeching U-turn and headed back. I stepped over the body of the guy I had shot. His gun lay two steps above him on the metal stair tread. It was a Glock. Below me the car slowed and someone sprayed the area at the foot of the stairs with gunfire. I went to the edge of the overpass and fired straight down into the roof of the car beneath me. The Chrysler lurched once, then surged forward and headed out of sight toward Congress Street, leaving a smell of burnt rubber and gunpowder to mix with the wet smell of the rain, and the more distant smell of the harbor.

I reloaded my gun and went back down the iron steps and knelt beside the man I’d shot. He’d been a tall, young guy, wearing a green satin warmup jacket with Paddy’s in white lettering across the front, broken between the D’s by the snap front of the jacket. His freckled face was blank now, wet with the rain. His eyes were empty. My bullet had caught him under the chin and plowed up through his brain and out the back of his head. There was a rain-diluted splatter of blood and tissue on the step where he’d fallen. He still wore his Red Sox cap.

In his pants pocket I found a spare magazine for the Glock, and two twenty-dollar bills folded over twice. No wallet. No identification. If anybody in the vicinity of Fort Point Channel had heard the gunfire they had ignored it. There was no activity on the street. No sirens. Just the merciless rain, and me.

I put my gun back in my holster and went down the stairs to my car and called the cops.

At 4:15 I was lying on my back in my bed, exhausted and wide awake. I had killed people before, and didn’t like it. I’d also had too much coffee. The way the kid’s face had looked with the pleasant summer rain falling on it made me think of Candy Sloan’s face, lying in the rain among the oil derricks, a long time ago. Susan was right. I had never quite put that away.

It was daylight before I got to sleep. I slept and woke up and slept and woke up until 2:30 in the afternoon, when I dragged out of bed, logy with daytime sleep. I took a shower and put on my pants and went to the kitchen, acidic still with too much really bad coffee. I made myself a fruit smoothie with frozen strawberries and a nectarine. I poured the smoothie into a tall glass and took it with me to the living room and sat in a chair by the window and looked out at Marlborough Street and drank some.

The soft rain of the night before had turned harder. It was dark for midafternoon and everything was gleaming wet. Cars were clean. The leaves on the trees were fat and shiny with rain. Good-looking women, of which the Back Bay was full, moved past now and then, alone, or walking dogs in doggie sweaters, or pushing baby strollers protected by transparent rainproof draping. The women often had bright rain gear on, looking like points of Impressionist paint in the dark wet cityscape. My apartment was quiet. I was quiet. The rain was steady and hard but not noisy, coming straight down, not rattling on the window. I sipped my smoothie. My doorbell rang.

I picked up my gun off the kitchen counter and went and buzzed the downstairs door open. And went and looked through the peephole, after a moment. The elevator door opened and Hawk stepped out. I opened the door and he came in, wearing a white raincoat and a panama hat with a big brim. And carrying a paper bag. I knew he saw the gun. He saw everything. But he had no reaction.

“Raspberry turnovers,” he said.

I closed the door. He held out the bag, and I took a turnover. I ate it while I made coffee and Hawk hung up his coat and hat.

“Been following your man Conroy,” Hawk said.

He stirred some sugar into his coffee.

“He make you?”

“Me?” Hawk said. “Vinnie?”

“I withdraw the question,” I said.

Hawk took a turnover from the bag and ate some. I sipped some coffee. It didn’t feel so bad. It sat sort of comfortably on top of the smoothie.

“We picked him up where you left him,” Hawk said.

I nodded.

“I saw you,” I said.

“‘Cause you looking for us.”

“Sure.”

“So me and Vinnie, we double him, me on foot, Vinnie in the car. And he never knows we there. He goes back to the bank. Stays about an hour, then comes out and gets his car. I hop in with Vinnie and we tail him up to Boxford.”

“Long ride,” I said.

“Yeah. Deep into the fucking wilderness,” Hawk said. “Vinnie kept him in sight.”

“Vinnie’s good at this kind of work,” I said.

“He is,” Hawk said.

“But is he fun, like me?”

“Nobody that much fun,” he said. “You like these turnovers?”

“Yes.”

“Place in Mattapan, make the crust with lard, way it’s supposed to be made.”

“That would make them illegal in Cambridge,” I said.

“So Conroy drives to a house in Boxford,” Hawk said, “and parks in the driveway and gets out and goes in, and me and Vinnie sit outside, up the street a ways, and wait.”

I got a second turnover out of the bag and started on it. Lard. Hot diggitty! “How long he in there,” I said.

“He don’t come out,” Hawk said. “Lights go out about eleven-thirty. ‘Bout two in the morning we decide maybe it’s over. So I go check out the house. No name on the door. No name on the mailbox. There was a car in the garage, but I couldn’t see the license plate.”

“So you came home,” I said.

“Yep. Left Vinnie at the bank, pick him up when he come in for work.”

“What was the address up there?” I said.

“Eleven Plumtree Road,” Hawk said. “In a big honky development.”

“How do you know it’s honky?” I said.

Hawk chewed some turnover and swallowed and smiled at me.

“Boxford?” he said.

“Good point,” I said.