Haunted Hearts (14 page)

When they reached Queensberry, she pointed to a brownstone several doors from the corner, and he pulled to the curb just beyond it. She touched his arm again. “Tell me if you think Orin's dead,” she said. Her mood had grown somber again.

“If he isn't, he's doing a hell of a good job faking it,” McGuire said.

She burst into tears and collapsed against his shoulder. He encircled her in his arm and recalled something Ronnie had said when he moved in with her and Ollie several months earlier. “You're a fixer,” Ronnie told him. “You want to fix things between people. That's why you became a cop and that's why you couldn't stand
being
a cop. You couldn't stand it because there are too many things you can't fix when it comes to people. Ollie, he doesn't care when people are ruining each other's lives, he keeps his mind on the people who count to him, like you and me, but not the whole damn world. You're different. You want to
fix
it and you can't. And that's what makes you angry.”

He had smiled at her words then, thinking there was maybe some truth to them, remembering how as a child he wanted to fix his parents' destructive marriage; wanted to make each love the other and so, perhaps, begin to love him too; wanted his father to stop drinking and his mother to stop despising her life.

Susan finished dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, and she leaned to kiss McGuire's cheek. “Thank you,” she said. “You're not what Orin said at all.”

“What did Orin say about me?”

She reached for the door and opened it. “Orin said you were tough as nails. But you're not at all, are you?”

“I'll come by, see you tomorrow,” McGuire called to her as she closed the car door.

He pulled away from the curb and she stood watching him leave. Then she walked towards the brownstone. She climbed the steps and rang the brass bell, her head still down, waiting for someone to come to the door so she could enter.

McGuire arrived at Revere Beach just after six o'clock, glancing at the empty space in the driveway where Ronnie's car should have been.

When he entered the kitchen, he saw the note propped against a sugar bowl on the small table, his name written in her neat script on the envelope. He held it lightly in his hands for several seconds, as though it were about to burst into flames, then tossed it back on the table and walked to Ollie's room and the sound of the evening television news.

“Just in time for today's disasters,” Ollie said, shifting his eyes from the screen to meet McGuire's. “So far, we got a drive-by shooting in Dorchester, a murder-suicide in Charlestown, and that kid who took you on, Hayhurst? They think he's the guy who pistol-whipped a couple of schoolteachers from Iowa.” His face clouded. “You look like you've had your own fill of troubles. What's up?”

“Nothing special.” He sat on the chair beside the bed. “Where's Ronnie?”

Ollie turned his eyes back to the television screen. “Gone back to her painting class. That's a good sign, ain't it? That she's feelin' better?” Ollie agreed with his own assessment. “Sure it is,” he said.

If he asks, I'll tell him, McGuire told himself. If he doesn't ask, I'll keep my mouth shut. When Ollie didn't speak, McGuire said, “Ronnie give you dinner?”

“Oh sure, sure. She fed me. I'm okay.” He turned his head to McGuire. “Listen, you want to go out for a while or something, you go ahead. I'm all right. There's a ball game on tonight, Sox and the Tigers.”

“I don't think I'll be going out,” McGuire said. He rose from the chair.

“You can, you know. I'm all fed and changed.” Ollie's good hand tilted towards a plastic bowl of candies. “Ronnie left me some wine gums here. I'm all set.”

McGuire was almost at the door when Ollie called his name. “You and Ronnie,” he said when McGuire turned around, “you're worried about me, aren't you?”

“No more than usual,” McGuire said.

“Well, you're worried about something. Both of you. I can tell. Listen, if it's me, forget it. Don't worry about me, okay? Ronnie's applied to get me one of those motorized wheelchairs, she tell you that? I said I'd never get my butt into one of those things, but I was watching a commercial about the Florida Keys. I never been there, the Keys. I thought, Damn, I'd like to sit under a palm tree for a week this winter and look at the ocean, watch the pelicans dive for fish, see the sun go down.”

McGuire stood, waiting.

“So we talked about it, and Ronnie said it would do me a lot of good. I said maybe you'd come along with us, maybe you'd find a whole new herd of widows and divorcees to chase down there. What do you think of that?”

“I don't like Florida,” McGuire said.

“Hell, this ain't Florida. It's the Keys. Different place altogether.”

“Ronnie's right,” McGuire said. “It'll do you a world of good.”

He closed the door behind him and returned to the kitchen, where he eyed the envelope before picking it up again and opening it, making as little noise as possible. I would have told him, McGuire assured himself. If he'd asked, I would have laid it all out for him. He unfolded the small sheet of note paper.

Joe,

Ollie's been fed and he's comfortable. I'm not apologizing any more for what I did or where I'm going. I tried and I just couldn't do it (you know what I'm talking about). If you think I'm a selfish, unfaithful bitch, well that's just too bad. There's a possibility you could be reading this tomorrow morning, and if you are, why don't you go down the hall right now and change his diaper and see what I've been doing for years?

I'm telling him tomorrow. Just to spare you the agony. If you're still acting so noble maybe you can do it for me. It's up to you.

R.

McGuire crumpled the note into a ball and tossed across the room. Then he reached for the telephone directory, stared up at the ceiling while he recalled the name, and began flipping through the pages.

“Damn her,” he whispered. “Goddamn her to hell.”

There was a C. Simoni listed as the proprietor of Cedar Lane Gallery on Charles Street near Mt. Vernon. McGuire dialed first the number of the gallery and then the residence, counting nine rings each time before hanging up. After changing into a pair of worn jeans, low-cut Reeboks, a navy turtleneck sweater, and leather jacket, he left the house.

He found a parking spot on Chestnut Street and walked back to Charles. The evening had turned cool and damp, and couples on their way to dinner in one of the brass-and-wicker Beacon Hill bars walked with their arms locked together, huddling against the chill.

Cedar Lane Gallery was in a low storefront building, green, with a small gilt-painted sign on the door. Several paintings and prints were displayed in the window and hung in the one-room gallery itself. They were visible to McGuire through the glass, lit by small ceiling-mounted track lights, the only source of illumination inside the gallery. McGuire knocked on the front door several times, then stepped back to look up at the second floor, where a dim glow shone through curtained windows.

He examined the paintings on display. A few caught his eye because of their familiar style: semi-abstract watercolours executed with casual strokes and in subtle tones. He admired one of a harbour scene, another of an old farmhouse, a third of a seashore. Leaning against the window glass and shielding his eyes, he could read “C. Simoni” at the base of the watercolours, and, on the harbour scene, a price tag that said $3,000.

He walked across Charles Street, then east towards Cambridge and the Longfellow Bridge, which he had driven across with Susan just two hours earlier. He passed florists and antique shops and a small, dark bar crowded with couples, the buzz of their conversation spilling out through the doors towards him. He walked on, past a hardware store and another art gallery, to a sandwich shop almost as crowded as the bar, and he remembered that he hadn't eaten since his lunch with Sleeman. The sandwich shop had large plate-glass windows on either side of the entrance and he stood for a moment, thinking if he sat at a table near the window, he could watch the gallery across the street for Ronnie and her lover to arrive, if they weren't already upstairs in the near-darkness, ignoring telephone calls and knocks on the door.

He wasn't interested in seeing Ronnie. He wanted to see
him
,
wanted to see the man who was threatening to destroy, whether he knew it or not, the only part of Ollie's life worth saving.

The door to the bar opened long enough for the chatter and laughter inside to spill into the street, and in the silence after it closed, McGuire heard a woman's voice, laughing.

He saw Ronnie with her arm locked in the arm of a man barely her own height. The man wore a denim jacket and jeans, and a patterned open-neck shirt beneath the jacket.

They stopped at the curb and the man withdrew a package of cigarettes from the pocket of his jacket, popped one into his mouth, and spoke around it to Ronnie, saying something that made her laugh again. Then he lit a match and cupped it in his hands, bending to light the cigarette. In the glow McGuire saw an aging but still-handsome face, the nose small and straight, set between two eyes that darted back to Ronnie's when the cigarette was lit. His hair was auburn, flecked with silver, a full head of hair that swept over his ears and down the back of his head. She spoke to him and he withdrew the cigarette. He placed it in her mouth and she inhaled, her head back and her eyes closed, while her lover watched her.

Carl Simoni spoke to her again, and when Ronnie erupted in a fit of coughing and laughing, Simoni's expression changed from delight to concern. He placed his hand behind her head, pulled her to him and patted her back. In that moment, his eyes met McGuire's without expression and McGuire watched Simoni comfort her.

Simoni kissed her on the cheek, and when her coughing subsided she began to laugh again, her back to McGuire. They kissed before Simoni guided her through the traffic across Charles Street. McGuire followed, several paces behind.

McGuire watched the man unlock the front door of the gallery and wait for Ronnie to enter before following her, slipping the night latch behind them. He watched Ronnie walk through the gallery towards a door on the far wall, and up the stairs, Simoni following her. He watched the lights glow suddenly bright through the windows of the second floor.

The lights would be extinguished soon, McGuire knew, and he walked away, not wanting to see it happen and know what it meant.

He walked to the end of Charles Street and up Cambridge to a bar, where he ordered pizza and a beer. Half an hour later he was sitting back in his car on Chestnut Street, tapping the steering wheel with his fingers, recalling the sound of Ronnie's laughter and the look of concern on her lover's face when she began to cough.

He had never seen Ronnie smoke before, and he had not heard her laugh like that, so easy and relaxed and genuine, in a very long time. He loved the idea that she could revel in such easy joy. He hated what she had to do to experience it. But now he understood.

Twenty minutes later he was back in the small white house in Revere Beach. Before he could slip out of his jacket, he heard Ollie's voice call his name.

“What's up?” McGuire asked when he entered Ollie's room.

“Little bit of excitement, put a fire under your buns,” Ollie said, grinning up at him. “You know that guy, lawyer named Flanigan, down at that place where you're puttin' in time?”

“What about him?” McGuire asked, dreading the answer.

“He's in the river, under the Charlestown Bridge. That's where they found him this afternoon.”

“How'd you hear?”

“Guy named Pinnington called, said you oughta know about it. Said he's going down to Berkeley Street, give the police whatever they need to know. That's how he put it. Said he'll do whatever it takes. Thought you should know, maybe join him there. I said I'd tell you if you showed up before the sun did.”

“What's your name again?” The night cop at the entrance to Boston Police Headquarters on Berkeley Street was still in his twenties, pink-cheeked and sullen-eyed. He ran his finger down a printed list.

“McGuire. Joe McGuire. I used to be in homicide here.”

“That right?” The young cop didn't even look up. “Well, your name's not here, and if your name's not here, I can't let you up without permission.”

“Then get permission,” McGuire hissed.

The cop looked at him, his eyes like glass marbles. “Look, if you've got a problem, take it up with the citizen's commission . . .

“You found a body in the river tonight,” McGuire said. “I may know something about the circumstances, which makes me a citizen with information relating to a possible homicide. Now you get me in touch with the investigating team or I'll talk to somebody about putting your ass back directing traffic at the airport.”

“Just who the hell do you think . . .” the cop began, until a voice behind McGuire said, “Joe?”

McGuire turned to face a middle-aged man in an oversized tweed topcoat, a wide grin beneath his salt-and-pepper mustache.

“Barton,” McGuire said.

“Barnston.” The man's smile wavered a little. “It's Barnston. Jerry Barnston.”

“Yeah, right.” McGuire shook the detective's hand. “Listen, I have to talk to whoever's working on the guy they fished out of the river an hour or so ago . . .”

“The lawyer,” Barnston nodded. “I think it's Donovan's case. Come on up. Jeez, it's good to see you again.”

Without looking back, McGuire raised a hand and twisted it around, over his shoulder, waving farewell to the duty cop, who said “Big deal” to McGuire's back and turned away, pulling at a thumbnail with his teeth.

Phil Donovan had been just another ambitious junior detective years earlier when McGuire and Ollie Schantz were the hottest homicide team on the force. Now he was a full lieutenant, adding another layer of arrogance to the personality of the thin, red-haired man who looked up from his desk as McGuire approached.

“What the hell is this?” Donovan sneered.

Across from him Richard Pinnington sat cross-legged, his open Burberry topcoat slung over his shoulders like a cape.

McGuire nodded at Pinnington and glared at Donovan. More than a year earlier, Donovan had shot Dan Scrignoli, a Boston cop gone bad, in front of McGuire's eyes. Scrignoli had been in the process of surrendering his weapon, withdrawing it from inside his jacket. Donovan claimed the action had been aggressive and threatening, and that he fired in self-defense. McGuire knew better. Scrignoli died later that day. Donovan received a public commendation for his heroic actions. McGuire and Donovan hadn't met since.

“I hear you're the guy to see about Orin Flanigan,” McGuire said.

“McGuire,” Donovan said, “I'm the guy you gotta talk to if you wanta take a leak in this place, okay?” The Irish detective was wearing a knit tie pulled away from the collar of his striped dress shirt, and his brown leather shoulder holster was unbuckled. A cheap black blazer hung over the back of a folding chair behind him.

McGuire seized the empty chair next to Pinnington, swung it around, and straddled it, resting his arms on the back. “How'd they find him?” he asked Pinnington.

“They found him dead, you dink.” Donovan placed his feet onto the corner of his desk. “And smelly.”

Pinnington's face turned crimson, and he avoided McGuire's and Donovan's eyes. “He was caught in some old reinforcing rod under the bridge. The body . . .” Pinnington brought his hand to his eyes and cleared his throat. “The body was mostly underwater. He could have been there several days.”

“Made like a barge on the ol' Mississippi, just a-floatin' downstream.” Donovan was watching McGuire, the grin frozen on his face.

“Suicide?” McGuire asked, although he didn't believe it.

“They don't . . .” Pinnington began.

“Sure, suicide.” Donovan's voice had a serrated edge. “Guy parks his car in Weymouth, maybe hitchhikes twenty miles downtown, bops himself on the back of his head, and jumps in the river. Sure he does.”

“Who identified him?” McGuire asked.

“I did,” the lawyer said. “I couldn't ask his wife to do that.” Pinnington stroked his forehead, his voice almost breaking. “It wasn't a pretty sight.”

“Was there any identification on him?” McGuire said. “His wallet maybe?”

“Hey, McGuire.” Donovan jabbed a finger in his direction. “Last I heard, your name wasn't back on the roster here, was it?”

“Was he carrying any ID?” McGuire said, speaking slowly.

“Yeah, he had ID,” Donovan said. “What's that tell you, hotshot?”

McGuire shrugged.

Pinnington stood up. “Will you need anything else from me?” he said to Donovan.

The detective lifted a pad of lined yellow paper from his desk and looked at his notes. “Not right away. We'll be in, talk to you tomorrow.”

Pinnington nodded. McGuire touched the lawyer's arm as he walked past. “Anything I can do?” he asked.

“No.” Pinnington breathed deeply and seemed to rise in height. “I'm going to visit Nancy now. Orin's wife. This isn't going to be easy. You'll be in tomorrow morning?” McGuire nodded. “See me, first thing,” Pinnington said.

“What else is there?” McGuire asked Donovan when Pinnington left.

“You can read about it in the papers.” Donovan swung his feet off the desk and flipped his notepad to a fresh sheet. “So, what've you got to tell me?”

“How long had the body been in the water?”

“Hey.” Donovan jabbed at the top of his desk as he spoke. “You wanta come in here like a concerned citizen and help with this investigation, you can do it. You wanta know anything else, you do like the rest of the city and wait your turn.”

McGuire stood up. “Where's Eddie?”

“Probably home, pickin' his toes. What the hell do you want with Eddie Vance?”

“See you.” McGuire turned and began walking away.

Donovan called McGuire's name. When McGuire kept walking, Donovan shouted again, and two detectives looked up from their computer terminals. “Hey, old man. You didn't find out shit in Annapolis, you know.”

McGuire stopped and looked back at Donovan, who rose from his desk and approached McGuire, carrying his notepad with him.

“You went looking for some guy name Myers? Told Flanigan he was down there selling yachts? Well, that outfit never heard of him. Nobody's heard of him.”

“A woman at the yacht brokerage . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Broad named . . .” Donovan flipped a page on his notepad. “Diamond. Talked to her already. She never heard of the guy either. But she remembers you. Says you looked like just another cheap talker, come in acting like you want to lay a hundred grand on a yacht when you couldn't afford to buy a pair of oars, so she gave you the brush-off.”

“You talked to people down there already?”

“Talked to Diamond and talked to her boss. Then we talked to the local dicks. They checked around, said Myers has dropped out of sight. He'd been spreadin' the word about sellin' yachts, maybe down in Miami or Lauderdale. Now we've got Florida checkin' up on him, runnin' their tracer program. He'll turn up soon. You've been out of the loop too long, you geezer. Everything's on computers now. We got rid of a lot of you dead-asses so we could get things done, you know what I'm sayin'?”

“When's the autopsy?”

“Why, you wanta go down, show Mel Doitch your crochet stitch or something?”

McGuire stared back at Donovan, who returned the look with a grin for a moment, then called across at two detectives who had been watching them over their computer terminals. “You guys heard of the famous Joseph P. McGuire? Hotshot homicide Louie? Well, here he is. Used to be a medicine man, poppin' pills in the combat zone. Now he plays skip tracer for a bunch of lawyers. Except he couldn't find his ass if the directions were printed on his hand.”

Leave it, McGuire told himself. Just leave it. He turned to walk towards the elevator.

“'Course, you could tell us about that little piece you've been seen with lately,” Donovan called to his back. “What's her name? Oh yeah. Schaeffer. Heard all about her.”

“What?” McGuire turned to face Donovan. “What have you heard?”

“She and the victim used to play pinch-and-giggle in his office at noon.”

“That's crap.”

“Crap?” Donovan approached McGuire almost warily and his voice dropped in volume. “You think it's crap? How about this for crap, McGuire. Flanigan was the lawyer who acted for her ex-husband, to help seize her kids. He got custody of them for his client two, three years ago. Didn't Pinnington tell you that? How's that for a picture, McGuire? Lawyer helps a husband steal the kids and disappear, and the ex-wife starts cozying up to him, couple of years later. Course, the lawyer shouldn't have anything to do with an ex-adversary, should he? Except maybe he'll take a few quickie BJs in his office from some desperate broad who wants her kids back . . .”

McGuire's hand shot out and seized Donovan's neck, the same motion he had used when he bloodied Donovan's nose in the basement interrogation room more than a year earlier. At that time, Donovan had been so surprised when McGuire lunged at him that he had fallen backwards against the wall and it was McGuire's forehead, not his fist, that collided with Donovan's nose. Others in the room, including a perturbed Eddie Vance, had separated the two men before Donovan could react.

But this time the detective's hand went to his holster and withdrew his 9mm Glock. He pressed the muzzle against McGuire's head. The two detectives leapt out of their chairs and ran towards Donovan and McGuire, one shouting, “What the hell!”

Donovan kept the gun pressed against McGuire's temple and said, “You think I wouldn't do it, asshole? You think I wouldn't?”

“What the hell's goin' on with you?” Ollie said.

McGuire sat staring down at his feet. His hands were still shaking.

“Assault an armed cop with two juniors as witnesses?” Ollie Schantz was a teacher lecturing an errant student, a father trying to talk sense to a delinquent son. “Those juniors woulda said you looked armed as a Nazi platoon, it came down to an inquiry. They woulda nailed you as a nutcase, a
dead
nutcase, and Donovan would be golden, get a couple of weeks off to let his nerves settle, maybe he'd go to Hawaii or something, and he'd come back in harness and you'd still be worm food.” He watched McGuire in silence for a moment, then said, “Why the hell'd you let a pus-hole like Donovan get to you?”

McGuire knew why. He just couldn't explain it to Ollie. He was having trouble explaining it to himself. It was almost eleven o'clock. “I'm going to bed,” he said.

“Yeah, well now I've got somethin' to tell Ronnie when she gets home.” Ollie turned back to the television. “You and Donovan making like a couple of drunken cowboys right there on Berkeley Street. Wait'll Ronnie hears about that.”

McGuire said the words without thinking, as though they had been set in a trap, and Ollie had pulled the trip wire. “Ronnie's not coming home tonight.” He watched Ollie's reaction from the door, surprised at his own words. I've been wanting to say them for a week, he thought.

“What the hell're you talking about?”

“She's not coming home tonight, Ollie. She told me in a note she left on the table. She'll be here in the morning and she's going to tell you where she's been all these other nights. And with whom.”

McGuire watched Ollie swallow, watched his mouth work as though he were chewing around fish bones. “Get out of here,” he said.

“Ollie, it's true . . .” McGuire began.

“
Get out of here!
” Ollie's voice was a rasp, a cry of rage muted by his inability to rise and strike out.

“You want to talk?”

“
I want you out of here! Out of my house! Get out!
”

McGuire walked slowly down the hall. He's known all along, he realized. In one small corner of his mind, the truth has been there all along, begging him to look at it, and he hasn't been able to see it until now.

He lay on the bed in his room, still dressed, watching his mind leap back and forth between the events of the day, from the probable murder of Orin Flanigan to the explicit infidelity of Ronnie Schantz.

Donovan said Flanigan had been struck on the head. Flanigan's car was left in a public place twenty miles from the river. And the body had been in the water for several days.

Then: Ollie knows about Ronnie. He's lying down there, unable to move, unable to hit the wall or even get drunk, for Christ's sake.

What the hell happened? McGuire asked himself. Something happened to send things out of control, and I don't know what it was, don't even know when it happened.

He recalled Susan Schaeffer in the Harvard Yard church that afternoon. He remembered the expression on her face as the waves of organ music washed over her and the trees moved in the breeze beyond the windows. He saw her there now, imagined himself with her, and the image relaxed him, soothed him. There was a sense of past tragedy about her that haunted McGuire, and he wanted to know, needed to know, the secret of her sadness. Everybody's daily sadness.

He glanced at the clock radio; it was over two hours since he left Ollie. Had he fallen asleep?

He rose from the bed, walked to the top of the stairs, and listened. He heard nothing. He walked downstairs and along the darkened hall. A sliver of light shone beneath Ollie's door. McGuire pushed it open to find Ollie staring at him.

“I thought I told you to get out,” Ollie said in a voice like cardboard, flat and gray.