Widow’s Walk (14 page)

“Could you call him for me?” I said.

The acting second assistant junior auxiliary vice president who was working with me looked startled.

“Me? Call him at home?”

“Y. Yes.”

“Is it, ah, an emergency?” she said.

“Life and death,” I said.

“Not really?” she said.

“Really,” I said.

She hesitated. I fixed her with my gleaming blue stare. She shrugged and opened her Rolodex and picked up the phone. She gave her hair a little toss to get the phone in under it, and dialed a number. I waited. She was wearing one of those thin, loose-fitting ankle-length flowered dresses that women sometimes wore in Cambridge, I assumed in tribute to a long-gone hippie past. Hers was especially sporty, tan with brown flowers. Whether there was any kind of worthwhile body going on underneath there was difficult to say, but I was ready to give her the benefit of the doubt.

She hung up the phone.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s no answer. Would you like to leave a message for him?”

“You have an address for him?” I said.

“Certainly not,” she said.

I glanced at her Rolodex and she grabbed it and clutched it to her as if she were protecting its virtue. I smiled at her.

“You’ve been more than kind,” I said.

Back in my car I called Bobby Kiley’s office. Argued with the switchboard operator, and the receptionist, and Kiley’s secretary until I got through.

“It would be easier calling the Pope,” I said, when he was on the phone.

“But less useful,” Kiley said. “What do you want?”

“How’s Ann?”

“She’s lousy.”

“I need to know Marvin Conroy’s address,” I said.

“I’ll call you back,” Kiley said.

I gave him my car phone number, which I could never remember and therefore had written on a piece of paper tucked over the sun visor. Then I sat and looked at life in East Cambridge for maybe ten minutes until Kiley called back.

Conroy lived in an apartment in the North End on Commercial Street across from the Coast Guard station and a little ways down the street from the old garage where the Brink’s Robbery had taken place. I went up four cement steps and looked at the small sign that said NORTH CHURCH REALTY. LONG AND SHORT TERM RENTALS. I read the names on the mailboxes. Conroy was on the second floor. I rang. No luck. There were seven other names on the mailboxes. I rang all of them. Only one person, a woman, who sounded sleepy, answered through the speaker.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m from the cable company. We need to check some terminals.”

“Well, check them some other time, pal,” the woman said. “I’m trying to take a freakin‘ nap.”

The speaker went dead. Okay, if the terminals went bad it wasn’t my fault. I leaned my fanny on the black iron porch rail and thought about it. As I was thinking a young man in a gray suit and big glasses came up the steps with his key out. I fumbled in my pockets.

“Oh God,” I said. “I’m staying in 2B and I can’t find my keys.”

He smiled blankly and nodded and opened the door. I walked in right behind him. He disappeared into the elevator. I took the stairs. When I got to Conroy’s place, I looked around in the small hallway. There was only one other apartment. I went to it and knocked on the door. No one answered. I went back to Conroy’s door and kicked it in.

Inside was bedroom, sitting room, bath, kitchenette. It was charmless and impersonal. It showed little signs of occupancy. Cereal in the kitchen cabinet and half a loaf of bread, orange juice, and milk in the refrigerator. Two utility bills on the kitchen counter, both overdue. There were no clothes in the closet. No toiletries in the bath. A bath towel was crumpled on the floor. I picked it up. It was wrinkled, but no longer damp. There were no credit-card receipts, no answering machine with phone messages, no personal computer with e-mail messages. No clue at all about where Marvin Conroy had gone, or who he was.

I took Larson to lunch at Grill 23. I was quite sure that Hawk would make Larson nervous, so he had a sandwich at the bar while Larson and I took a table against the Stuart Street wall.

“Things have changed,” I said. “Several people have died. I’m going to need some truth here, Larson.”

“I’ll try to be forthcoming,” he said.

“You’ll need to be more so than you have been, I think.”

I gave him the hard eye. Larson looked around the room.

“How did you come to know Mary Smith?” I said.

Larson ate a shrimp from his shrimp cocktail. He leaned back a moment to savor it, breathing in as if there were a bouquet to experience. I waited.

“Oh, I’ve known Mary forever,” he said after he’d experienced his shrimp sufficiently.

“How long would that be,” I said.

“Oh.” He paused and sipped a small swallow of ice water and experienced that for a while. “Twenty years or so.”

Since Mary was thirty that meant he’d known her as a child.

“You from Franklin?”

He didn’t answer for a while. I waited. He couldn’t stand the silence.

“Yes.”

“You went to school with her?”

Again the pause. Again the wait. Again he capitulated.

“Grammar school, middle school, high school. Then I went on to college and she stayed in Franklin.”

“Friends?”

“Oh yes. Tight. Buddies, really. Franklin wasn’t the easiest place to grow up.”

“There may not be any easy places,” I said.

Larson carefully dabbed a little horseradish into his cocktail sauce. It bothered me that I hadn’t come across his name.

“You know her other friends?” I said.

He smiled. Apparently he’d decided that frank disclosure might relieve tension.

“Sure,” he said. “Roy, Pike, Tammy? Sure.”

“How about Joey Bucci?”

Larson had ordered a glass of Chablis with his appetizer. He sipped a small sip of it, savored it self-consciously, and smiled at me.

“Why do you ask about Joey Bucci,” he said.

“He was described as part of her group,” I said. “Nobody mentioned you.”

Larson had another shrimp. He looked thoughtful, but it might have been just his savoring look. He took in some air and let it out slowly.

Then he said, “I used to be Joey Bucci.”

“You changed it,” I said.

“I just didn’t feel like a Joey Bucci,” he said.

“You felt like a Larson Graff?”

He smiled. “In my business more Larson Graff and less Joey Bucci is a good thing,” he said.

“Mary says you came to her through her husband.”

“Only indirectly,” Larson said. “He called and said Mary was looking for a public relations advisor and had asked him to call me. That’s how I met him.”

His shrimp cocktail was gone, leaving him more time to fully examine the remaining Chablis. It was his third.

“Through Mary?” I said.

My head was beginning to hurt.

“Yes.”

“And you became friends independent of her?”

Larson smiled and tilted his head.

“We shared a common interest,” he said.

“Young men?” I said.

“S. You know about Nathan?”

“I do.”

“Poor old queen,” Larson said. “Still deep in the closet in this day and age.”

I nodded. He sipped his wine.

“Pathetic, really,” Larson said.

“Mary says she met her husband through you.”

He laughed. “That’s Mary. She can’t string five words together and make sense. She probably said it backwards from what she meant. I met Nathan through her.”

I nodded. Old Mary. Dumb as a flounder. As opposed to me, the brainy crimebuster, who seemed to be losing brain cells every day he was on this case.

“If Nathan was gay, what do you suppose Mary did for a sex life?”

Larson laughed again. Having committed to the conversation, he seemed to have jumped in feet first.

“Some of us can go both ways,” he said.

“Was Nathan one who could?”

“I don’t think so,” Graff said, a little singsong in his voice.

“So did Mary have any other possibilities for a sex life?”

“I hope so,” Graff said.

“And if she did, would you have any candidates?”

“For fucking Mary?” Graff said. “Hard to narrow it down.”

“She was promiscuous?”

“Oh,” Graff said. “I don’t know, really. I was being facetious.”

“So when you’re not being facetious,” I said, “who would be a good candidate to, ah, help Mary out.”

“I’d say,” Larson almost giggled, “I’d say the fickle finger of suspicion points at Roy.”

“Roy Levesque?” I said. “The former boyfriend?”

“Maybe once and future,” Graff said.

“Any dates and places?” I said.

“No. Just a guess.”

“Okay. You know anything about Smith’s banking business?”

“No.” Larson was working on his fourth glass of Chablis. “That’s not the business he and I shared an interest in.”

“Soldiers Field Development?” I said.

Graff shook his head.

I said, “Marvin Conroy? Felton Shawcross? Amy Peters? Jack DeRosa? Kevin McGonigle? Margaret McDermott?”

“I don’t know any of those people,” he said. “Conroy and Shawcross sound familiar. They might have been on Mary’s invitation list. The others…” He shrugged, putting a lot into it.

“You have any idea,” I said, “who killed Nathan Smith?”

“None,” he said.

He stood. So I stood.

“Thanks for lunch,” he said. “I really do have to get back to the office.”

We shook hands. I watched him go. I thought of Jay Gatsby. Somewhere back there, when he was a kid, Joey Bucci had invented just the kind of Larson Graff that a kid was likely to invent, and to that invention he was remaining faithful. I paid the check and when I left, Hawk eased off his bar stool and left with me. Which was comforting.

“I think I want a raise,” I said.

“And you don’t want to take it out in trade?” Rita said.

“Perhaps my associate,” I said.

Hawk smiled serenely.

“You think?” Rita said.

“One never knows,” Hawk said. “Do one.”

“Keep me in mind,” Rita said, and to me, “Why do you need a raise?”

“Wear and tear on my brain,” I said. “Every time I turn over a rock, there’s three more rocks.”

“I’ll help you,” Rita said. “Tell me about it.”

She sat back in her big leather swivel chair and crossed her admirable legs and listened, while I told her about it. As far as I could tell, when she slipped into her professional mode, she banished all thoughts of sexual excess.

“Okay,” she said when I finished. “Obviously there’s something going on between Pequod Bank, and Soldiers Field Development, and Marvin Conroy.”

“Yep.”

“And there’s probably something going on among Larson Graff, and Mary Smith, and the boyfriend, whatsisname.”

“Roy Levesque.”

“And maybe Ann Kiley is in there somewhere.”

“Or maybe she’s just Conroy’s girlfriend and loved not wisely but too well,” I said.

“Don’t we all,” Rita said. She looked at Hawk. “Except maybe you,” she said.

Hawk smiled at her. Rita swung her crossed leg thoughtfully. She was wearing a red suit with a just barely street-legal skirt. The suit went surprisingly well with her red hair.

“You’ve got a bank and a development company in some sort of uncertain relationship,” I said. “That raise any flags?”

Rita nodded. “I’ll talk with Abner Grove,” she said. “He’s our tax and finance guy. See what he can find out.”

“It may not help your client,” I said.

“If I am going to put up the best defense I can, I need to know as much as I can. I’m not obliged to use it all. What you can do is come at this from the other end.”

“Mary, Larson, and Roy,” I said.

“Sounds like a singing group.”

“Maybe it will be,” I said.

“So you start from your end, and we’ll start from ours, and maybe we’ll meet in the middle.”

“Or maybe we won’t,” I said.

“Coincidences do exist.”

“They do,” I said.

“You think they exist in this case?”

“No.”

Rita eyed Hawk, who appeared to be thinking of faraway places. I knew he wasn’t. Hawk always knew everything that was going on around him.

“What do you think about coincidence,” Rita said to him.

“Hard to prepare for,” Hawk said.

“Figure you show up in a decent ride,” Hawk said, “they be impressed and tell you everything.”

“You bet,” I said. “That’s how it usually works.”

We found Roy Levesque at the lumberyard where he worked. He wore jeans and work boots and a plaid shirt that hung outside his pants.

“Whaddya want,” Levesque said.

The yard was loud with the sound of a band saw, and busy with trucks loading lumber and Sheetrock.

“See the car I came in?” I said.

“I don’t give a fuck what car you came in,” Roy said.

I looked at Hawk. He shrugged.

“When’s the last time you saw Mary Smith?” I said.

“Mary who?”

I sighed.

“Mary Toricelli,” I said.

“Why?”

“Why not?” I said.

“I don’t know when I seen her, all right?”

“Not all right,” I said. “I’ve been told you and she are still intimate.”

“Huh?”

“He mean you and she still fucking,” Hawk said gently. “He just talk kind of funny.”

“Hey,” Levesque said. “That’s no way to talk about somebody.”

“Just trying to find a language you’re comfortable with,” I said. “What about you and Mary?”

“Who told you that?”

“People who know,” I said.

“So if they know so fucking much, how come you’re asking me?”

“I like to confirm at the source.”

“Huh?”

“He mean ask the one fucking her,” Hawk said.

“Hey, pal, watch your freaking mouth,” Levesque said.

Hawk looked at me. “Pal,” he said.

I nodded. “Limited vocabulary,” I said. “I’m sure he meant no harm.”

“Hey, I’m trying to work here,” Levesque said. “You guys are on private property.”

“Oh my,” Hawk said.

Levesque glanced at Hawk. Hawk made him uneasy.

“My boss sees me talking like this, I could get fired.”

I looked around. We were near the corner of a big corrugated-metal lumber shed.

I said to Levesque, “Let’s go around the corner then.”

Hawk took hold of his left arm and I his right and we moved him pretty quickly around the corner so we were standing out of sight between the back of the warehouse and a hill full of weeds. We banged him hard against the back of the shed, and stepped back.

“What’s going on with you and Mary,” I said.

Levesque put his hand under his shirttail and came out with a gun. It was a squat black semiautomatic.

“You motherfuckers get away from me,” he said.

Hawk smiled. “You not saying it right,” he said. “Correct pronunciation be muthafuckas.”

The gun wasn’t cocked. On a semiautomatic you have to cock it for the first shot.

“Look at me,” I said.

He looked and Hawk took the gun out of his hand. Hawk is very quick.

“Don’t see so many of these,” Hawk said. “Forty-caliber.”

“Forty?”

“Yep.”

“For crissake,” I said.

I put my hand out. Hawk gave me the gun and as he did, Levesque turned and ran.

“You want him?” Hawk said.

I shook my head. I was looking at the gun.

“Nathan Smith was killed with a forty-caliber slug,” I said.

“There’s more than one forty-caliber around,” Hawk said.

“I know,” I said. “Still, most people don’t own one. Most people buy thirty-eights or comnines.”

“If he bought it,” Hawk said.

“Still a large coincidence,” I said. “Smith’s killed by a sort of unusual gun and one of the principals turns up with a gun that’s the same kind of sort of unusual.”

“Gonna take it to Quirk,” Hawk said.

“I am.”

“Then we know,” Hawk said.