Widow’s Walk (9 page)

“Know a broad named Amy Peters?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a cop and I’m asking you,” Belson said.

“Oh,” I said. “That’s why.”

Belson waited. I took the lid off the coffee and drank some. Belson was homicide and Amy Peters had been scared. There was a small sinking feeling in my stomach.

“She was until recently the vice president for public relations at the Pequod Savings and Loan which is headquartered in Cambridge.”

“Why ”until recently“?”

“She got fired.”

“For?”

“Talking to me.”

“About what?”

“About a case I was on.”

“Nathan Smith,” Belson said.

“Yes.”

“You doing anything for her?”

“No.”

“How’d you know she was fired?”

“She came and told me.”

“Why you?” Belson said.

“Why not me,” I said. “What’s up, Frank?”

“She’s dead,” Belson said.

The sinking feeling bottomed. Belson was looking at me carefully.

“We found your card in her purse,” he said. “Nice-looking card.”

“Thanks. How’d she die?”

“Bullet in the head. Looks self-inflicted.”

“Her gun?”

“Unregistered. We’re chasing the serial number.”

“She didn’t seem like somebody who’d have a gun,” I said.

“You knew her?”

“Not really. Just talked with her a couple of times.”

“About Nathan Smith?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“She’d been fired. She seemed a little frightened of the guy who fired her.”

“Marvin Conroy?”

“No grass growing under your feet,” I said.

Belson ignored me.

“She want you to protect her?”

“Not really. Just consolation, I think. I gave her my card.”

“And wrote Hawk’s name and phone on the back,” Belson said.

“Yes. I thought she might feel better if she had somebody to call.”

“I guess she didn’t,” Belson said.

“No.”

My office felt stuffy to me. I got up and opened my window a couple of inches to let the city air in. I looked out at Berkeley Street for a moment, looking at the traffic waiting for the light to change on Boylston.

“She leave a note?” I said.

“Yes. Said she was despondent over being fired.”

“Authentic?”

“Hard to say. She left it on the computer.”

“Technology sucks,” I said.

Below me the light changed and the traffic moved across Boylston Street toward the river.

“Thing bothers me,” Belson said.

I turned away from the window and sat down with my back to the air drifting in through the open window. I waited.

“Found a card for a lawyer in there in her purse where we found yours.”

I waited.

“Ran that down before I came here. Woman lawyer. Says that Amy Peters was planning to sue Pequod for sexual discrimination for firing her.”

“Which seems strange,” I said, “if she was also planning to kill herself.”

“Suicide’s hard to figure,” Belson said. “Women don’t usually do it with a gun.”

“What’s the lawyer’s name?”

“Margaret Mills. Firm is Mills and D’Ambrosio. You planning to help us on this?”

“Bothers me a little.”

“She came to you scared and you sent her away and she ends up dead,” Belson said.

“Something like that.”

“Would bother me, too,” Belson said.

“His real name was Peter Isaacs,” Pryor said. “Kids called him Peter Ike and it eventually became Pike.”

“You remember him well?”

“Oh yeah,” Pryor said. “Kid was a pain in the ass.”

He took a paper napkin from the dispenser and wiped powdered sugar from his mustache.

“Wild-spirited?”

“Mean-spirited. Nasty little bastard. Did a lot of dope.”

“He still around?”

“Yeah.”

“How about Tammy Wagner?”

“She was his girlfriend,” Pryor said. “Pike’s. I don’t know what happened to her.”

“Joey Bucci?”

“Bucci… Yeah, sort of a faggy little kid, used to get bullied a lot. Hung with the burnouts because no one else would hang with him.”

“You know where he is now?”

Pryor shook his head.

“No idea,” he said. “He ain’t around town.”

“Where do I find Pike?”

“He’s still here,” Pryor said. “Works down the bowling alley. Sweeps up, cleans the rest rooms.”

“Nice career choice,” I said.

“Better than jail,” Pryor said.

“Anything else you can tell me about Mary Toricelli?”

“No. Kind of a loser kid. The only reason I remember her is that she hung out with assholes like Isaacs and Levesque.”

“You never got her for anything?”

“No. She was never into much. Just sort of dragged around after the hot shots. What’d she do, got a fast operator like you down here asking about her.”

“Cops think she killed her husband,” I said.

“Honest to God,” Pryor said. “I didn’t think she had the juice for it.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said.

“So why do you want to talk to Isaacs?”

“See what he can tell me.”

Pryor grinned. “Good thinking,” he said. “You know what you’re hoping to hear?”

“No.”

“So how about if you hear it,” Pryor said, “will you know it?”

“I hope so.”

“Man, wait’ll I tell the boys down at the station how I had coffee with a real private eye.”

“You know how it goes,” I said. “You get a case. You just keep poking around, see what scurries out.”

“You get a case,” Pryor said. “Currently I’m trying to catch the kids who spray-painted fuck on the middle-school front door.”

“I guess you’re not allowed to shoot them,” I said.

“No,” Pryor said. “They get to talk with a guidance counselor.”

“How’s that work?” I said.

“Keeps the guidance counselor employed,” Pryor said.

I paid for the coffee. Pryor directed me to the bowling alley, and I drove on over to see Pike.

A couple of women in tight jeans and loose T-shirts were bowling candle pins in the first alley. The rest of the alleys were empty. The guy at the desk directed me to Pike, who was replacing the sand in the big free-standing ashtrays that stood near each lane. One of the women bowled a spare, and the clash of the pins echoed loudly off the hard surfaces. I showed him my license and we sat on one of the banquets where, when business was good, bowlers sat and waited for their turn.

Pike was a tallish guy with narrow shoulders and thinning blond hair that hadn’t been cut. His face was red. When he sat next to me I could smell the booze on him.

“Jesus Christ, a fucking private detective? How about that? Goddamn. You ever see that movie Chinatown?”

“What can you tell me about Mary Toricelli?” I said.

“You know, Jack Nicholson gets his nose cut, and he goes around with this fucking bandage on the whole freakin‘ movie.”

“That’s just what it’s like,” I said. “Mary Toricelli?”

“What about her?”

“What can you tell me about her?” I said.

“It worth any dough?”

“Maybe.”

“Lemme see?”

I took a twenty out and showed it to him.

He grinned. “All right!” he said. “Whaddya wanna know?”

“Whatever you can tell me,” I said.

“What if it ain’t worth twenty?”

“Sitting there and saying nothing isn’t worth anything,” I said.

“So I may as well say something, huh?”

“May as well,” I said.

One of the women rolled a strike. Both of them cheered and low fived each other.

“She turned out to be a lot better-looking than she was in school. You know? Sometimes that’ll happen with a broad. She grows up and learns to take care of herself and turns out to be some pretty good-looking pussy.”

“You’ve noticed that, too,” I said.

“You should be talking to Roy Levesque. You know Roy?”

“We’ve met. Why should I talk to him?”

“He still sees her.”

“And you don’t?”

“Well, I mean I see her in town sometimes,” Pike said. “With Roy. But I mean Roy’s seeing her, you know?”

“They intimate?”

“Oh sure, Roy’s been fucking her for twenty years.”

“I heard she was married,” I said.

“Yeah, some rich guy. Never bothered her and Roy though.”

“Was she going with Roy before she got married?”

“Sure.”

“How’d Roy feel about her getting married?”

“He liked it. All that dough?”

“He get some of it?”

Pike looked at me like I’d asked about the Easter bunny. “‘Course he got some of it.”

From the front desk the manager yelled at Pike. “Leagues start pouring in here at five,” he said. “I need them ashtrays clean by then.”

“Fuck you,” Pike muttered but not so loud that the manager could hear him.

He stood and looked at me. “I gotta get to work,” he said. “That worth twenty to you?”

I gave him the bill. He folded it over and stuck it in his pocket. Then he had a thought. I could tell he wasn’t used to it.

“Hey, you’re not gonna tell Roy I was talking about him, are you?”

“Why not?” I said.

“He don’t like people talking about him. You gonna tell him, I’ll give you back your twenty.”

“Why doesn’t he like people talking about him?”

“Roy’s a mean bastard,” Pike said. “You don’t know what he’s gonna do.”

“What might he do?” I said.

“I just told you,” Pike said. “You don’t never know what he’s gonna do.”

From his shirt pocket he took a little nip bottle of vodka, unscrewed the cap, and drank it.

“Little cocktail,” he said. “Settle my stomach.”

“I won’t tell Roy,” I said.

“There’s always a case,” Maggie Mills said, “especially if you are one of a discriminated minority.”

She was a senior partner at the law firm of Mills and D’Ambrosio, about fifty-five, and small, with crisp gray hair and hard blue eyes.

“Like women,” I said.

“Women are a good example,” she said. “It is nearly always possible to raise the issue of gender discrimination.”

“Was it justified in this instance?”

Maggie Mills smiled. It was a somewhat frosty smile.

“That would need to be adjudicated,” she said. “Clearly there was something at issue besides her professional competence.”

“Why do you say so?”

“Among other things, she was frightened,” Maggie Mills said.

“I know. Do you think she came to you because she was scared?”

Maggie Mills shook her head briskly.

“She came to me because her ego couldn’t take it,” Maggie Mills said. “She couldn’t stand being fired.”

“Did you gather she was afraid of her boss?”

“I didn’t gather anything,” Maggie Mills said. “She didn’t speak of it. But I have been in business for a long time, and I can recognize a frightened woman.”

“You have any reason to think she was suicidal?” I said.

“The police asked me the same thing,” Maggie Mills said. “And I’ll answer you the same thing I answered them. I’m an attorney, not a psychiatrist. I don’t know what someone is like when they are suicidal. But it seems odd to me, personally, that she would hire a lawyer and then kill herself.”

“At least until the bill came.”

“The death of a young woman should not evoke levity,” she said.

“One of my failings,” I said, “is finding levity where it doesn’t belong.”

“What is your interest in the case?”

“It may be pertinent to another case I’m working on,” I said.

“Do you have any other interest?”

“She came to me and told me she was scared and I reassured her.”

“And you are now reconsidering that?”

“It would have been nice if I’d done something useful.”

Maggie Mills studied me for a time. “So her death is not solely an occasion for levity.”

“Not solely,” I said.

“I didn’t help her either,” Maggie Mills said.

I nodded.

“It seems that both of us might have failed her.”

“Seems possible,” I said.

“It is my intention to continue to look into the gender discrimination matter,” Maggie Mills said.

“Even though your client is dead.”

“The crime didn’t die with her,” Maggie Mills said. “If either of us discovers anything, perhaps we could share it.”

“I’m already employed by Cone Oakes,” I said.

“This is not a professional matter,” Maggie Mills said. “This is personal.”

“Yes,” I said. “It is.” CHAPTER THIRTY It was Marvin Conroy’s turn. No one at the bank knew where he was. His ferocious-looking secretary knew only that he wasn’t there. She had no idea where he was. On my way out I picked up a copy of the bank’s annual report and took it with me. I found it difficult to believe that no one at the bank knew where the CEO was, so I went and sat in my car across the street and looked at the report. In the front was a big picture of Nathan Smith and, on the facing page, a big picture of Marvin Conroy. He looked as if someone had advertised for an actor who looked like a chief executive. Square jaw, receding hair, clear eyes that looked right through the camera lens. I put the report aside with Conroy’s picture up, and waited.

At 2:15 he came out of the bank and walked down First Street, toward the Cambridge Galleria, a big shopping center that backed up onto the old canal. This part of Cambridge wasn’t one where a lot of people walked, and I had to let him get pretty far ahead of me to keep from being obvious. But Conroy wasn’t looking for a tail. He was a big guy with a good tan and an athletic stride. He was balder than his picture indicated, but he made no attempt to conceal the fact, wearing his hair very short. It looked like he went to a good barber.

He went into the Galleria with me behind him and walked straight to the food court. He stood in line for a meatball sandwich and a large Coke, and when he got it took it to an empty table. It was a standard shopping-center food hall with maybe fifteen fast food outlets surrounding an open area full of small tables. The patrons were mostly adolescent kids, as was the service staff.

I’d been hoping we’d end up at an elegant club that catered to CEO’S. But experienced detectives are flexible. I bought a cup of coffee and went over and sat down at his table with him. He glanced up at me, looked around at the number of empty tables still available, and looked back at me with a frown.

“Do I know you?” he said.

“This is very disappointing,” I said. “The CEO of a multibranch bank and you’re eating in the Galleria food court.”

“Cut the crap,” he said. “Who the hell are you?”

He had a very cold gaze. There was something cruel about the way his forehead sloped down over his little sharp eyes, something about the aggressive jut of his prominent nose, and the thickness of his wide jaw.

“Who are any of us,” I said. “Why’d you fire Amy Peters?”

“What?”

“It was a two-part question. I raised the metaphysical question about human identity, and the more worldly question of why you fired Amy Peters.”

“What the hell business is it of yours?”

“Human identity is a concern to us all,” I said.

“Goddamn it, I’m talking about Amy Peters. Why are you asking me about her?”

“Amy Peters is dead,” I said. “I want to know why.”

A couple of teenaged kids passed by wearing baggy jeans and do-rags. They each had a tray of french fries and a giant Coke. I wondered if there were such a thing as negative nourishment.

“Are you a policeman?” Conroy said.

I gave him my most coppish deadpan stare.

“What was she fired for?” I said.

“I know nothing of her death,” Conroy said. “She was fired because she was incompetent.”

“She was bringing suit against you for gender discrimination.”

“Of course she was. They all do. You fire somebody and it’s suddenly un-American.”

“Can you tell me about her incompetence?”

Conroy leaned back in his chair a little, and gave me a hard CEO look.

“I guess I’d better see some identification,” he said.

“Amy Peters told me she was fired because she talked to me.”

“You’re that fucking private detective,” Conroy said.

I smiled at him.

“I am he,” I said.

Conroy stared at me and opened his mouth and thought about what he was going to say and decided not to say it and closed his mouth. Then he thought of something else.

“Fuck you,” he said.

He stood abruptly and walked through the food court and out into the mall. I got up and strolled into the mall after him. At the far end I saw Vinnie Morris come out of a music store wearing a Walkman and earphones. He went out through the mall door onto the street ahead of Conroy. After Conroy went out, Hawk stopped window-shopping and drifted out after him.