Authors: William G. Tapply
I like poached salmon. But I couldn’t wait to get out of the Commonwealth Club.
It was after eleven when I got back to my apartment. I undressed my way to my bedroom. I pulled on a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt, then went into the living room. I eyed my answering machine cautiously. A steady red eye stared back at me. No messages.
It felt like a stay of execution.
I made myself a mug of Sleepytime in the microwave and took it to the table. I found the SAFE newsletter and sat there with it, sipping my herb tea and trying to read between the lines.
Walt Kinnick was alive, but he was lucky. All but one shot missed him. But that one bullet could have hit him an inch to one side or the other, ripped open a big artery and minced a vital organ or two, and he’d have been dead in three minutes.
Senator Swift had not been hit at all. He had his Army-tuned reflexes to thank for his life, and now he was too scared to talk to the police.
Maybe our assassin was a lousy shot. I found scant consolation in that possibility.
H
OROWITZ WASN’T AT HIS
desk when I called the next morning. It was nearly noontime when he got back to me.
“What now?” he said.
“I got a couple more empty rifle cartridges for you. They’re .223 Remington.”
“Our shooter again?”
“Yes, I’d say so.”
“Where’d you get ’em?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“What the fuck do you mean, you can’t tell me? I’m a cop, for Christ sake.”
“I’m a lawyer, for Christ sake.
“Well, why don’t you take your cartridges and pretend they’re suppositories for your hemorrhoids, then, Coyne. I ain’t got time for games. You trying to pull some kind of privilege shit on me?”
“Yes.” I took a deep breath. “No. Listen. I gave my word. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have gotten the cartridges.”
“You think you’ve got evidence about a felony?”
“Yes. I know I do.”
He was silent for a moment, except for the sounds of gum chewing. I waited for him.
“Okay,” he said. “What can you tell me?”
“These cartridges were fired at a different place and at a different time from those that came from the woods in Fenwick.”
“And at a different person, huh?”
I said nothing.
“If the lab tells us they were fired by the same gun, you know what that means, Coyne?”
“It means you guys would have jurisdiction on the case.”
“Correction,” he said. “It means we
could
have jurisdiction. We need more than some fucking cartridges.”
“I know. You need evidence of where they came from and that they are linked to attempted assassinations.”
“That’s right, Mr. Lawyer. And without that evidence—say, in the form of reliable testimony—hell, I could get by with hearsay testimony—we can’t do squat.”
“I gave my word.”
“So it’s your ass, Coyne.”
“I know. I’d feel better if you guys were on the case. But at least you could take a look at these cartridges.”
He sighed. “Fine. Okay. Someone’ll be over.” And he hung up.
A young female state police detective arrived less than an hour later. I handed her the two empty cartridges. I made sure that I had smudged Senator Swift’s fingerprints on them.
I tossed the last of the day’s paperwork into the Out box a minute before three. Alex Shaw would be over, and I was eager to get out of the office. So when my console buzzed, I assumed that Julie would tell me Alex had arrived. But she said, “You got a call on line two, Brady.”
“Shit,” I said. “Who is it?”
“It’s your wife.”
“My
ex
-wife, Julie. Gloria’s my ex-wife.”
“I know that,” she said sweetly.
I depressed the button and said into the phone, “Hi, hon.”
“Brady,” she said, “why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“I saw that article in the
Globe.
It said you witnessed a shooting. Is that true?”
“Well, more or less. I—”
“So you called me Sunday night and never even mentioned it?”
“You didn’t seem exactly—”
“Brady, I
do
care about you, you know.”
“Sometimes I don’t know that,” I said. “Sometimes I can’t tell.”
She was silent for a moment. I lit a cigarette.
“I know,” she finally said. “I teased you about checking in and out with me. You’ve got to understand, though. You seem much more conscientious about doing that now than you ever did when we were married. It makes me angry. Does that make any sense to you?”
“As much as anything makes sense, I guess.”
“Then when I have to read in the paper that you—you might’ve been killed,
that
makes me angry, too.”
“I wasn’t really in any danger, Gloria. They were after Wally.”
“What makes me angry is that I had to read it in the paper. Brady, I worry. It’s my nature. I imagine bad things. I worry about William and Joseph all the time. And I try to imagine what would become of them if…”
“If something happened to me?”
“Yes.”
“They’d be fine. Gloria. They’re strong young men.”
“Or me.”
“Huh?”
“What would become of me?” she said. “I mean, if something…”
“To quote you, we’re divorced, remember?”
“Does that mean we’re no longer—connected?”
“I never thought it meant that,” I said. “No.”
“That I can’t still care about you?”
“No.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t think you cared.”
“Really?” she said. “You really didn’t think I cared?”
“Actually,” I said, “I thought you did care. I was going to tell you when I called. I
wanted
to tell you. To talk to you about it. But when we started talking…”
“I was bitchy.”
“Yes.”
“But you know me,” she said. “You know that doesn’t mean anything.”
I sighed. “Gloria, listen.”
“What?”
“I know you, yes. I guess I understand your—your moods. Just like you understand mine. But if you recall, we don’t like them. Each other’s moods. They upset us, make us angry. They make us not want to communicate with each other. It’s the way we’ve always been. It’s why we’re divorced.”
“Which we should be,” she said.
“Sure.”
“It still…”
“It’s over, anyway;” I said. “It happened. Wally got shot, but he’s going to be fine, and I’m fine. Okay?”
There was a hesitation. “Okay.” Her voice was small and strangled. “Fine.”
“Are you crying?”
“Of course I’m not crying. Why should I cry?”
“It sounded as if you were crying,” I said.
“I’m
not
crying. You think—”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You make me so angry sometimes.”
“I know,” I said. “I don’t mean to. It’s bow we are.”
“We didn’t used to be that way.”
“No. It’s too bad. I don’t have any wisdom on it.”
She laughed softly. “There’s a first.”
“What?”
“You admitting you don’t have wisdom on something.”
“You—us—you’re much too complex for my simple brain, hon.”
“Anyway,” she said after a moment, “you’re okay, huh?”
“Yes. Thanks. I’m okay”
“Well, good. Next time…”
“I hope there won’t be a next time.”
“Me, too,” she said quietly.
Julie tapped on my door and stepped into my office just an instant after I hung up with Gloria. “The light went off,” she said. “I know you’re off the phone,”
I sighed and nodded. “I’m off the phone.”
“Are you all right?”
“Fine.”
“She really cares about you, you know.”
“Who?”
“Gloria.”
I nodded. Julie believed in marriage. Hers with Edward appeared to be working well. She was happy. She wanted the same happiness for me. Julie believed that my divorce from Gloria was a mere aberration, a pothole in the highway toward marital bliss.
Julie figured that eventually Gloria and I would recognize the error of our ways and reunite.
Actually, Julie believed that the errors were in
my
ways. She believed that Gloria would take me back instantly, and I had learned that there was no sense in trying to explain to her that things were much more complicated than that.
“You love her, don’t you?” she would say.
And I would admit that yes, in certain peculiar ways, I loved Gloria.
“And she loves you?”
I would nod and shrug.
“So?”
And I would say, “Well, you never know what might happen,” because that was the only thing I could say that would get Julie off the subject. But it also convinced her that she was right, and that Gloria and I shared a destiny.
“So,” she said, standing in front of my desk with her lists placed on her slim and shapely hips, “did you get things worked out?”
“With Gloria?”
“Yes.”
I nodded. “Yes. Everything’s fine.”
“Well, good. She was upset.”
“I know. Things are fine now.”
Julie sat in the chair across from me. “There’s somebody here to see you.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“Brady,” she said, “I felt so bad. I mean, there you are, talking with Gloria on the phone, and she’s all upset and needing you, and right there in our office is this gorgeous woman who you have a dale with.”
“That’s Alexandria Shaw.”
“I
know
who she is.”
“She’s a reporter, Julie.”
“So? Everybody’s got to be something, no matter how—how
predatory
they are.”
I smiled. “The last time she was here, you insisted I see her. You said she had a job to do and I should help her.”
“The last time she was here,” said Julie, “she wasn’t gorgeous. She had these big goofy glasses down on the end of her nose, and if you don’t think I understand what’s going on when she comes in here in her tight pants and perfect cheekbones and no glasses…”
She sputtered to a stop. I smiled.
“You’re such an old letch,” she mumbled.
“You’re worried about Alex’s virtue?”
“No.” She allowed herself to smile. “Yours.”
I reached across the desk and gripped Julie’s hand. “Gloria and I really are divorced,” I said.
“Yeah, well that’s just stupid.”
“Go tell Alex I’ll be out in one minute, will you?” Julie nodded. She stood up and started for the door. Then she turned to face me. “I hope you were nice to her,” she said.
“Gloria?”
“Yes.”
I nodded. “I think I was, yes.”
Julie was hunched over the keyboard. Alex Shaw sat across from her with her knees pressed together and her briefcase on her lap.
The two women were studiously ignoring each other.
“Hi,” I said to Alex.
She looked up without smiling, then stood and moved toward the door.
“See you tomorrow,” I said to Julie.
She glanced up at me, nodded once, then bent back to the keyboard.
Alex drove a small Toyota sedan. She had double-parked in front of my building. We climbed in. She started up. A Bonnie Raitt tape was playing. Alex hummed tunelessly as she cut expertly through the city streets. Soon we were on Route 2, heading west toward Clinton.
We didn’t talk.
When we turned onto Route 62 in Concord, I finally said, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“You haven’t spoken to me since we left my office. Something’s the matter.”
She shrugged.
When we got to Maynard, “I said, “Stop the car, please.”
Alex turned to me. “Why?”
“Please. Pull over.”
She did. She turned to look at me. “What’s this all about?”
“I want to get out.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t need this.”
“This what?”
“This silence. I’ll catch a cab back to the office”
“It’s not you,” she said.
“Who, then?”
“Me, I guess.”
“You better tell me about it.”
“Actually,” she said, “it’s your secretary.”
“Was she rude to you?”
“Oh no. Friendly as all get out. Tells me you’ll be ready in a minute, but you’re on a very important phone call. Your wife. ‘He’s on the phone with his wife,’ she says. Like I’m supposed to understand this is a major priority for you. Now, I know she means ex-wife. But she says wife, and even though I know what she’s trying to do, I’m still thinking, what’s he doing talking with his ex-wife and keeping me waiting when he knows I’ve gotta be in Clinton by four, and your secretary keeps chatting away, telling me what a terrific father you are and how devoted you are to your family—she calls it family, see, implying, that it’s not just your sons but her, too—your wife—and by the time you come out I’m—aggravated. Aggravated with your secretary for fucking with my head, angry with myself for letting my head be fucked with so easy, and mainly angry at you, because…”
“Because?”
“Because, God damn it, I’m a woman and I’m entitled to be angry with a guy if I want.”
“Aha!” I said. “My first insight of the day.”
She smiled. “Insight, huh?”
“Yes. I know men are no smarter or more competent or anything than women. But I’ve always maintained that we’re different.”
“Well, jeez. Of course we’re different.” She reached over and put her hand on my leg. “Thank God.” she said.
“Most women,” I said, “seem to think it’s an insult to make note of differences between the genders.”
“We’re different, all right.”
“I wish I understood it better.”
“Don’t try,” said Alex. “Just enjoy it.” She drummed her lingers on the steering wheel, then said, “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Are you gonna get out?”
“Guess not,” I said. “It’s an expensive cab ride hack to Boston from here.” I reached over and touched her hair. “I’m sorry about Julie.”
“That’s okay,” said Alex. “She’s a woman. I understand.”
She pulled away from the curb. A minute or so later we passed a car that had pulled to the side of the road. I turned to look at it. It was a blue Ford Escort. A classically nondescript vehicle.
“What’s the matter?” said Alex.
“That car back there.”
“That little Ford?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“I think it was behind us on Storrow Drive.”
“There must be a million of those cars on the road.”