Sudden Mischief (17 page)

I was inside. I had nothing to do inside or outside. But I hid it better inside. I didn't know where Sterling was. I didn't know if he'd killed Carla, or even Cony Brown for that matter. I had nowhere else to go, and no one to ask, and nothing to follow up. I was thrilled that the phone rang.

"'Talked to Somerville half hour ago," Farrell said. "The gun you took away from Wechsler's shooter?"

"Philchock," I said.

"Yeah. Cambridge passed it over to Somerville and they fired couple rounds and compared them to the bullet that killed Carla Quagliozzi. No match."

"That's too bad," I said.

"On the other hand-it was Quirk's idea-we took the slugs from Carla and compared them to the one came out of Cony Brown, the guy got diced in Sterling's office?"

"And you got a match," I said.

"That's right."

"You noticed where this seems to be going," I said.

"It's beginning to look like Susan's ex," he said. "Lotta questions though."

"A lot," I said.

"You answer any of them, you'll call me," Farrell said.

"First thing," I said.

We hung up. I stood up and stared out my window for a while. I went over to the sink and got a drink of water. I stood for a time and looked at the picture of Jackie Robinson on my wall above the file cabinet. When I got through looking at Jackie, I went back and looked out the window some more. Then I put on my sunglasses and went out of the office and began to walk. After a while I ended up at the Harbor Health Club, in the boxing room, which Henry kept like a family secret in the back end of the club.

I hit the heavy bag for a while. It was the kind of repetitive, effortful, mindless endeavor that I seemed best qualified for. I dug left hooks into it, circled it, landing stiff jabs at will, going to the body hard and when the hands came down, delivering my crushing over-hand right. I stopped, took a breather, drank some water, and did it again. After an hour the bag was ready to say no mas, my hair was plastered to my skull, and my sweatshirt was soaked through. I took some steam, then a shower, and was dressed and admiring myself in the mirror when Henry came into the locker room.

"Am I better looking than Tom Cruise? Or what?"

"You're taller," Henry said. "Settle for that."

"Everybody's taller, for crissake."

"Almost everybody," Henry said. "Susan called. Said to tell you that Brad was visiting at her house."

I said, "Thank you," and walked past Henry and out through the health club.

The Central Artery was always problematic if you were in a hurry, and now that it was in the process of being disassembled and placed underground, it was less reliable than Dennis Rodman. I went up Atlantic Avenue as fast as the spillover from the Big Dig would let me. I went past the North Station on Causeway Street, deked down Lomansy Way, and went along Nashua Street past the Suffolk County Jail and the Spaulding Rehab Hospital. I ran the light at Leverett Circle, which annoyed several drivers, and I was loose and in an open field on Storrow Drive.

In one sense, Brad was Susan's problem. And Susan would, if given enough space, solve her own problems. On the other hand, Brad may have killed two people and while he probably was not as tough as Susan, he was a lot bigger. And she had called.

I pulled up in front of Susan's house twenty-one minutes after I had left the Harbor Health Club and parked and let myself in. The door to her waiting room was closed. I opened it and went in. There was a thin-faced woman reading a copy of The New Yorker in one of the waiting room chairs. She had rimless glasses and a pointy nose. The door to Susan's office was closed. The woman did not look up.

I said, "Excuse me, what time is your appointmement?"

The woman looked at as if I had proposed sodomy.

"Twelve-fifty," she said and returned huffily to studying "Talk of the Town."

It was 12:34. I sat in the chair opposite the door and waited. There was a white sound machine in one corner of the room and it hissed harmonically with the sound of conditioned air moving through the vents. Serenity. I looked at my watch. 12:35. I took some air in through my nose and let it out slowly. The sharpnosed woman didn't look up from The New Yorker, but she managed through body language to convey how boorish she thought I was to breathe deeply this close to the sepulchre. At 12:52 the door to Susan's office opened and a square jawed young man with longish hair came out, and made no eye contact with either me or Needle Nose. Susan was wearing a subdued gray suit. She saw me.

"Please come in, Adele," she said to Eagle Beak. When Adele had put down her New Yorker and stalked into Susan's office, Susan said, "I'll be with you in a moment."

She closed the door and walked over to me.

"Pearl is with me in the office," Susan said. "Brad came this morning. He's upstairs. He said he had nowhere else to go. He said he was, quote, at his wit's end, unquote. He's unshaven. He appears exhausted. I think he's been sleeping in parks. When I left, he was asleep on my bed with all his clothes on."

"How would you like me to handle it?" I said.

"As you think best. Today is my short day. Adele is my final patient."

"I'll wait for you here," I said. "And we'll go up together."

"Fine," Susan said and turned back toward her office. With her hand on the doorknob she stopped for a moment and turned and looked at me.

"I'm all right with this," she said.

"Good," I said.

And she went into her office.

"It's me," Susan said.

The door opened fully and Brad came out with a towel wrapped inexpertly around his waist. His hair was wet and he was clean shaven. His skin was pale and sort of inelastic looking, and the hair on his chest was gray, but he hadn't gotten fat. He saw me and jumped about six inches. Not a bad vertical leap for a white Harvard guy.

"Jesus Christ," he said. "It's you."

"Yes it is," I said.

"You startled me," he said. "Lucky I had this towel on."

"Get dressed," I said.

"You bet," he said. "Suze, can you rustle me up a little grub? I'm totally famished."

He went into Susan's bedroom and closed the door. Susan was still in the kitchen.

"I didn't know you rustled up grub," I said.

"I don't."

"I'll make some coffee," I said.

"Fine."

Susan sat on a stool at her kitchen counter and watched me assemble the coffee and water in Mr. Coffee. When it was ready, I poured us each a cup.

"Didn't you leave some Irish whisky here last year?" she said.

"Yes."

"I'll have some in my coffee," she said.

I found the whisky in the cabinet above the refrigerator and poured some into her cup.

"Thank you," she said.

I put some milk and sugar in my coffee and leaned my hips on the counter next to the refrigerator. Brad came into the kitchen, barefoot, wearing a tee shirt and a pair of jeans. The tee shirt hung loose outside the jeans.

"I smell java," he said.

"In the pot on the counter," I said.

He poured some.

"Milk and sugar?"

"Nope, I like it black as the devil's soul, and lots of it," he said. "These are your duds, I assume."

"Yes."

"Pants are a tad short," he said.

"Tee shirt's kind of loose around the chest and arms too," I said.

Susan smiled and sipped her coffee.

"Any chow?" he said.

"There's some eggs in the refrigerator," Susan said.

"Suze, come on, I don't really cook very well."

"Me either."

"No? I figured you'd learned by now."

"Never did," Susan said. "Never wanted to."

"Damn," Brad said. "I'm really hungry."

Neither of us said anything. Brad opened a few cabinet doors randomly and found some rye bread, and a half jar of peanut butter.

"For shame," I said to Susan.

"Only keep it for guests," she said to me.

"You don't have any white bread, do you?"

"No."

"Jelly?"

"Refrigerator."

He found some boysenberry jam in the refrigerator and looked at it the way Macbeth had looked at the spot.

"What kind is this?"

"Boysenberry," Susan said.

"Well, it'll have to do," Brad said. "Got something to make a sandwich?"

"Knife is in the left drawer in front of you," Susan said.

She took another sip of her coffee. Her face was contemplative. She looked as if she had just awakened from a deep refreshing sleep and was waiting to see what the day would bring. Brad made an amateurish looking peanut butter and jelly sandwich and ate it rapidly, hunched over the counter with swallows of coffee in between bites. As soon as he had finished, he made another one. This one was no better looking but it lasted longer. Susan and I were quiet while he ate.

"Sorry to be stowing it away like this," Brad said, "but I am really famished."

He finished his second sandwich and went to the sink to rinse his hands and face. I could see that he had a small gun in his right hip pocket. I took mine off my hip and put it on the counter top and rested my right hand on it, shielded discretely by the refrigerator. Brad dried his hands and face on a paper towel and refilled his cup and came to the counter where we sat and leaned his forearms on it.

"Wow," he said. "Nothing like getting inside a shower and outside of some strong Joe to make you feel brand new."

"So where have you been?" Susan said.

"Round and about," Brad said. "I ran out of money three-four days ago."

"And you came to me," Susan said. "Do you think I'll give you money?"

"I had nowhere else to go, Suzie-Q."

"Why didn't you go home?" Susan said.

Her voice was calm and pleasant and implacable. Occasionally she raised her coffee cup with both hands and took a sip.

"We're maybe not married anymore, sure, but hell, we're still family."

"No, Brad, we're not family. That's what divorce means."

"We meant something to one another, Suzuki. We meant quite a lot."

"Brad, think about this for a moment. There was a reason why I divorced you."

"Well, sure, I made some mistakes."

"We both did, but finally after all that is taken into account, and to oversimplify a little perhaps, for effect, there's more to it than that. I divorced you because I didn't like you."

Brad straightened as if he'd been stuck with a pin. He frowned and opened his mouth and closed it and opened it again and said, "I can't believe you said that."

"One of the biggest problems you have, Brad," Susan said, "is you can only believe what you want to or need to. I didn't like you. I don't like you. The first time you came to see me I thought you were asking for help and I felt enough guilt to try to get you help."

"Him?" Brad said.

"Now I realize you were asking me for money," Susan said. "But I was not sufficiently, ah, evolved, and I misunderstood. I tried to save you."

"By sending me him? Thanks a lot."

"It was my mistake and it is my responsibility that he's involved with you. But I'm not going to compound that mistake by lying to you or to myself."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that when you have finished your coffee and we're through talking, you'll have to leave."

"And go where?"

"Probably to hell."

"And you don't care?"

"You'll get there anyway," Susan said. "Whatever I do."

"That's cold, Sue, that's really cold."

"Yes," she said.

"I'm just trying to stay alive, Susie."

"I wish you success," Susan said.

"And what happens if I won't leave? Your bully boy throws me out?"

I smiled courteously.

"You'll have to leave," Susan said.

"Well, let me tell you right, damned, now, Suzie Qu-sie, I've dealt with tougher guys than him."

"There's no need to put it to the test," Susan said. "I'll simply call the police."

"Susan, for God's sake, I can't let the cops find me. If I have to leave here, I've got no place to go. If they find me, they'll kill me."

"The cops?"

"Of course not."

"Who?"

She said it so gently, and it slipped into the flow of the argument so easily that Brad answered it before he knew he'd been asked.

"Wechsler and Gavin," he said in the exasperated tone one uses to explain the obvious to an idiot. Susan was looking at him over the rim of her cup. She sipped a little of the whisky-laced coffee and then slowly lowered the cup, and sat back a little.

"Why?"

"Why for crissake…"

In mid-sentence Brad realized that he had said too much. He stopped and shut his mouth and his face had a set look to it.

"Why are Gavin and Wechsler after you?"

Brad shook his head. Susan was silent, waiting. Brad tried to match her silence but he couldn't.

"They think I got something they want," he said.

"What?"

Brad clamped his mouth shut and shook his head.

Susan waited. Brad shook his head. Susan looked at me.

"Would you like to contribute?" she said.

"It's a blue floppy disk," I said. "For a computer."

"Shut up," Brad said.

"What's on the disk?" Susan said.

Brad shook his head. Susan looked at me.

"I'd guess it was the record of his scam with Gavin," I said, "and indirectly, Wechsler."

"Is that right?" Susan said to Brad.

"Of course not," Brad said. "But you'll probably believe him anyway."

"I probably will," Susan said. "Go ahead."

"This is how I think it went," I said to Brad. "Feel free to correct me. I think you were looking for money and, being the way you are, you went to Carla Quagliozzi, your ex-wife, and tried to get some. She wouldn't give you any, but she sent you to her boyfriend, Richard Gavin, who is Haskell Wechsler's lawyer."

"I don't have to stand around here and listen to this tripe," Brad said to Susan.

"No," Susan said, "you don't."

"Gavin arranged for you to borrow some money from Haskell," I said, "and of course you couldn't pay it back, and of course you got behind on the interest. Maybe Gavin expected that. Maybe Gavin baited you with the loan so they could squeeze you later. I don't know how clever he is."

Brad tried looking out the window as if he were bored.

"But I know how clever you are," I said. "So after they threatened you enough to scare you, they made you a proposition. Haskell accumulates a lot of cash, being a loan shark, and he needed to launder it. You run fund-raising events. So they'd finance the fundraisers, like Galapalooza, and you would then donate their costs, plus maybe a little extra for your vig, back to them through a dummy charity called Civil Streets."

"See." Brad said. "See, Susan, how he is? If what he said was true, then Gavin and Wechsler would love me. Why would they be after me?"

"Because you, being you, skimmed on them. You were supposed to pay off the other charities too, to make it look right. But you didn't. From Galapalooza you gave them what you agreed to, but you kept the rest, and stiffed the other charities."

"You were supposed to be helping me with that harassment case," Brad said. "How come you been snooping around in my other business?"

"It fell in my lap," I said. "And I admit I stirred it up a bit, and maybe because I did, Gavin found out that you were cheating on the other charities. But it would have happened sooner or later. The charity groups talk to each other. Anyway, Gavin looked into it himself and was very unhappy to find that you'd cheated everyone else, because it meant sooner or later someone would complain and the AG's office would look into it, and everybody's fat would be in the fire."

"Suze, do you believe all this?" Brad said.

"Yes."

"Well, I suppose you would, wouldn't you," he said.

"So Gavin sent over a guy he'd once represented, guy named Cony Brown, to persuade you to cough up the money you'd skimmed. And of course you couldn't because you didn't have it, because you spent it as soon as you got it. And Cony got aggressive and you shot him, and took the disk-I assume you figured it would protect you if they didn't know where it was-and you scooted."

"I should have sent you packing," Brad said, "the minute she sent you to me."

"I probably hurried things along," I said. "But you'd have gotten yourself into this rat's alley anyway."

"What I don't understand," Susan said, "the sexual harassment suit really started the unraveling of this whole thing. Why didn't you just show the pictures of Jeanette to her husband. It would have stopped him in his tracks."

"I don't kiss and tell," Brad said.

"Chivalry?" Susan said.

"Whatever you think of me," Brad said, "there are things I believe in."

Susan looked at me. I shrugged.

"Hitler liked dogs," I said.

"What the hell's that supposed to mean," Brad said.

"People are inconsistent," I said.

"Then why in heaven's name did you let him in?" Susan said.

I knew the "him" was me. Neither one of them seemed able to use my name. I wasn't sure why, but I didn't mind.

"To humor you."

"You think?" Susan said to me.

"Maybe there was a little more," I said. "Maybe he hoped that I would find him in such serious need of cash that you would relent and open your heart and your coffers."

Susan nodded.

"And he was probably scared. Gavin and Wechsler would have leaned on him pretty hard before they set him up in the fund-raiser scam. He might have thought a, ah, bully boy would be useful."

"And he would have thought he could manipulate you," Susan said. "And he would have assumed that you would protect him because of me."

"Which I will," I said.

"No," Susan said. "You won't."

The kitchen was quiet except for the soft white sound of air conditioning. I let my gun rest against my right thigh. Cony Brown was a pro and Brad had cranked him.

"So," Sterling said, "you are prepared to throw me to the wolves? Both of you?"

He looked hard at Susan. She had one last sip of her strong coffee and put the cup down and folded her hands behind it on the counter top. She looked back at Sterling.

Then she said to me, her eyes still on Sterling, "Do you think he killed Carla Quagliozzi?"

"Yes."

"And… cut out her tongue?"

"Yes."

Something happened to Sterling's face. Something stirred behind his eyes that changed the way he looked. Something repellent peeked out through the bland Ivy League disguise. It was nameless, and base, and it wasn't human. We both saw it. Perhaps Susan had seen it as often in her work. She didn't flinch.

She said, "You did that, didn't you, Brad."

The thing darted in and out of sight behind his eyes. He didn't speak. Susan got up from the counter and walked around it and stood in front of Sterling.

"You killed that woman and cut her tongue out," she said. "Didn't you."

The kitchen was cool and still. I could feel the trapezius muscles on top of my shoulders begin to bunch. I took in some air and made them relax. When Sterling finally spoke it was shocking. His voice came out in an eerily adolescent whine.