“Give me a break, Skeeter.”
“With my bum heart, what’s the money gonna get me, a marble headstone, an extra bagpiper? Plus, I’d lose my subsidized apartment. It ain’t Beacon Hill here but I like it here. On top of all that I have a disgruntled ex-wife. If I went on the books, I’d have to give her half.”
“So you went to Cawley instead.”
“I’d rather pay Cawley’s vig than my wife’s alimony.”
I walked to the window, thought about Skeeter’s story, and tried to punch holes in it but couldn’t. Senseless as it was, the story rang true. I stared out to the twilight. On a flat rooftop across the courtyard, three boys ran in circles, skirting the edge of the building, oblivious to the three-story fall. They shoved each other and taunted each other and disappeared into a stairwell — future loopers, no doubt.
“I just wanted a good time,” Skeeter said. “I didn’t care about winning or losing. I wanted the adventure, the thrill of seeing the Southwest, just like Martin Milner and George Maharis. With my bad ticker, I’m rounding third and heading for home.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“I never exaggerate,” he said. “I wanted one last fling before they plant me. And you wanna know something? My bucket list is fulfilled. How many guys can say that in life? Even if Bo kills me, I’ll go out with a smile on my face, an empty-bucket smile.”
“Is there any money left?”
“Not a nickel,” he said.
“And obviously the Corvette is gone.”
“It’s buses and subways from now on.” The lighthearted banter ended, and his tone grew desperate. “Please don’t tell Bo. He’ll kill me.” He perspired and held his chest. “Please, Sparhawk, don’t tell him.”
“Calm down, Skeeter. I won’t tell him if what you say is true, but if you had anything to do with Gert’s killing, you’ll be seeing Bo real soon.”
I started to leave and stopped.
“Do you have a copy of the lottery ticket?”
“Yeah.”
He gave it to me.
In the hallway, amid the stink and dead air, I stood thinking. The lottery ticket was the key to this thing. I knew with complete certainty that the ticket would point me to the killer, and yet I had no idea where to begin my search for him. But with little bit of legwork and a little bit of bulldog, I would find the bastard. I was closing in.
I drove to Franklin Park Golf Course to talk to Cawley, the man who cashed the ticket for Skeeter. I went through the gate and told an attendant in the booth that I wanted golf lessons.
“Talk to Michael Cawley. He’s the golf pro here.”
“Where can I find him?”
“In the clubhouse. Tall guy wearing a purple shirt.”
I found him sitting at a table sipping a bottle of Amstel light. His reddish hair was short and curly, and his long arms were tanned and sinewy. I sat in the chair across from him and said, “Michael Cawley?”
“That’s me, need a lesson?”
“Maybe later,” I said. “Right now I’d like to ask you a few questions. I’m investigating a murder, and Skeeter Gruskowski is in the middle of it.”
“Skeeter?” He rested the bottle on a cardboard coaster. “Who are you?”
I told him who I was and said, “Gruskowski said you cashed a lottery ticket for him. Is that true?”
He didn’t answer my question. Instead, he said, “Dermot Sparhawk, you played football at Boston College. I went to Holy Cross.”
I was about to ask him if he knew Superintendent Hanson, another Holy Cross man, but I didn’t want to ruin my day. “About Skeeter —”
He put up his hand in a stop gesture.
“I don’t discuss my business dealings with outsiders. Confidentiality is important in my line of work.”
I nodded my head as if I understood.
“Can you tell me this much? Do you cash lottery tickets for people who want to protect their privacy?”
“Cashing lottery tickets is one of my offerings.”
“Can you tell me how you know Skeeter?”
“Sure. My brother worked with Skeeter at the Conley Terminal in South Boston. Longshoremen, they became good friends.”
I gently grasped the salt shaker and slid it like a chess piece.
“If I wanted you to cash a ticket for me, how would I go about it?”
“The process is very simple.” And then Cawley explained the simple process, losing me after the first sentence. “It’s a legitimate transaction,” he said. “All the taxes are paid, so the government is happy. The clients’ privacy is protected, so they don’t have to worry about leaches pestering them. Everything gets filed in court. Everything’s on the up and up.”
“And what do you get out of it?”
“Ten percent of the gross,” he said.
“Not bad.”
“Yeah, not bad at all,” he said and took another sip. “If I like a client, I might give him a discount. For example, if the client was my brother’s friend, I might take ten percent of the net instead. So — just to pick a random number — if the gross was $1.4 million and the net was say $900,000, I’d take ninety grand, not a hundred and forty grand.”
“Charitable.”
“I think so.”
48
After another trying visit with Cheyenne — she was still comatose and totally inert — I left the hospital and took an Uber to Charlestown, getting out at Avakian’s Market. Gert’s lottery ticket was troubling me, and I wanted to ask to Bianca Sanchez about it. I went inside but she wasn’t there. In her place stood a new cashier, a goofy kid with scraggly black sideburns and buck teeth. He looked like a computer geek, not a liquor store attendant.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“Where’s Bianca?”
“She’s off tonight,” he answered with an air of smugness. “Actually, she’s off forever, as in permanently — period.”
“Why would Mr. Avakian fire his star employee?”
“She wasn’t his star employee, I was. I just worked in the back.”
“So that’s why I haven’t seen you before. I don’t know, she seemed like a star to me.”
“She’s no star. She dated that guy that killed the old lady in the projects.”
“She dated Victor Diaz?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Mr. Avakian promoted me to night manager.” He shifted into his new role, plugging the store’s wares. “Mega Millions is worth $80 million tonight. Do you want to play?”
“I’d have a better chance of getting hit by —”
“Not in this store. Look at all the winners we sold this month. The red star means the ticket was sold in this store.” He pointed to a lottery chart on the wall, the same chart I looked at when Kid asked me to check his tickets. “Last week we sold a Lucky for Life that hit — a thousand bucks a day for life. Not bad, eh? See the red star next to it?”
“I see it.” I looked at my copy of Skeeter’s winning ticket and searched the chart for it. I found the number listed, but it wasn’t marked with a red star. I said to the geek, “How do you know to mark the number with a star? Do the winners tell you?”
“Sometimes they do, but they usually don’t,” he said. “We get a printout from the state lottery each week, an official report.”
“You find out about the winning numbers weekly, but not the names of the winners, is that what you said?”
“Yes,” he replied with irritation in his voice. Maybe the pressure of the new position was getting to him, or maybe he was hiding something.
“I don’t mean to pester you,” I said.
“You’re not pestering me. Why did you say that?”
“No reason.”
No red star, it had to mean something. Gertrude Murray was killed the night she bought the lottery ticket, the same night sh
e gave the ticket to Skeeter. Skeeter said he didn’t know it was a winner until days later, and he didn’t hire the go-between Cawley until days after that.
Mr. Avakian came out of the back room, holding a clipboard.
I said to him, “You fired Bianca.”
Avakian looked up and said, “It’s none of your business.”
The new kid said, “I told him she was a scuzz, her boyfriend killing that old lady.”
“Shut up and go in the back,” Avakian said.
“Victor Diaz didn’t kill Gert, Mr. Avakian,” I said.
“The police arrested him for it. Victor Diaz knew about Gertrude’s coins, because Bianca told him.”
“Maybe Diaz wasn’t after coins,” I said.
“He had the coins in his pocket when they arrested him.”
“Maybe he was after a winning lottery ticket.”
“Winning lottery ticket?” Mr. Avakian adjusted his thick glasses and said, “What are you talking about?”
“Gert Murray bought a winning ticket here the night she was murdered.” I showed him a copy of it. “What’s going on here, Mr. Avakian.”
“Nothing’s going on,” he said. “I don’t answer to you. Get out of my store.”
Bianca lived in Roslindale in the Washington-Beech projects, once a dreary maze of dirty red bricks that had been transformed into clapboard townhouses. I drove down Washington Street, going by the composer streets — Liszt, Brahms, Haydn, Mendelssohn — and parked at the Pleasant Cafe. I knocked on her door. Bianca opened it and closed it just as fast. I jammed my foot into the door wedge and said, “I need to talk to you.”
“Take your foot out of my door or I’ll call the cops.”
“I’m sure the cops would love to know about Gert’s winning lottery ticket and the part you played in her murder.”
“What are you talking about?” She opened the door a bit.
“The lottery ticket, I know all about it. I’m on my way to the police station to tell them about it.”
“I had nothing to do with Gertrude Murray’s death,” she said.
“Gertrude Murray bought a lottery ticket the night she was murdered,” I said. “It turned out to be a winner worth one-point-four million dollars.”
“I don’t know anything about it.”
She blocked the doorway, while I remained in the hallway. I moved ahead with caution. “You sold her the winning ticket,” I said, guessing.
“What if I did?” Her voice grew stronger. “I sell lottery tickets all day long, or I used to until you got me fired.”
“You sold Gert a ticket, and when you found out it was a winner, you told Victor Diaz about it.” I paused, but she didn’t react, so I continued. “You told him about the lottery ticket, and that’s why he robbed Gertrude Murray.”
“You’re wrong, asshole. I didn’t know I sold a winner that day, but even if I did, I’d have no idea who bought it. How could I know who bought it?”
“Come on, Bianca, you remember selling it.”
“I don’t.” Bianca came closer to me. A faint smell of perfume wafted from her body and filled my nostrils. In a husky voice she said, “I had no idea Mrs. Murray bought a winning lottery ticket. I wouldn’t know unless she told me.”
“She didn’t live long enough to tell you,” I said. “You also told Victor about the coins?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Bianca sounded believable. Was it a coincidence that Diaz robbed Gert for the coins on the same day she bought a winning ticket? It didn’t seem probable, but it was possible. I hated explaining things by coincidence. It’s the lazy way out. There had to be an angle I was missing, another explanation.
“Suppose Mr. Avakian got wind of the winning ticket,” I said. “Could he have identified the person who bought it?”
“Maybe,” she said. “The tickets are timestamped.”
“Could he find the buyer using the timestamp?” I asked.
“It’s possible, but not likely.”
“How is it possible?”
“Surveillance cameras,” she said, “the store has surveillance cameras. If Mr. Avakian knew the time of purchase, he could play the surveillance video and find the buyer that way.”
“That sounds pretty easy,” I said. “Why did you say it was possible but not likely?”
“Mr. Avakian is a total klutz with computers,” she said. “He doesn’t even own a cell phone. He uses the store phone that has one of those old answering machines with a cassette.”
“Do you know how to watch the tapes?”
“I don’t have access to them, asshole.”
“How does the store get notified of a lottery winner?” I asked.
“The lottery sends a report,” Bianca said. “If we sell a big winner, we tape a printout of the ticket under the glass counter, so the customers can see it. Then we put a red star next to the number on the lottery chart that lists the winners.”
That’s what the geek told me. “But the lottery doesn’t notify the store the night you sell the ticket.”
“No, they send a report. I think they send it once a week.”
“That shreds my theory,” I said. “If Avakian didn’t know he sold a winner the night of the murder, he’d have no reason to look at the video to find the buyer, in this case Gert Murray.”
“Mr. Avakian has a friend at the lottery,” she said. “When we sell a big winner his friend calls the store and tells him about it.”
“One-point-four million must qualify as a big winner,” I said, mostly to myself. “Did the lottery man call Avakian the night Gert won?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was Avakian working that night?”
“He works every night.” She let go of the knob and dropped her arms to the side. “I think the lottery man is an old friend of Mr. Avakian’s, maybe a childhood friend, because he calls on holidays, too. His name is Norm.”
“Norm,” I said, removing my foot from the door jamb. “Do you know his last name?”
“No, I don’t. And don’t come here again.” she said and slammed the door shut.
49
I needed to get Mr. Avakian’s fingerprints to see if they matched the partial print the police found found in Gertrude’s apartment. I went to Avakian’s Market and waited outside until my mark came around. And then I saw him, a man wearing a stained raincoat and high-top sneakers with no laces. He might have just got out of jail. They take away your shoelaces when they book you. When he reached me, I said to him, “I’d like you to do a job for me.”
“A job?” His eyes were lifeless. “I can use the money.”
“It’ll take five minutes.”
“Five minutes?” His interest grew. “How much?”
“Twenty bucks.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Buy a bottle of wine from the old guy guy at the counter.”
“What kind of wine do you want?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Just make sure it’s in a bag.”
I handed him twenty for his services and twenty more for the wine, and he went into the market. I watched the transaction from across the street, making sure that Mr. Avakian served him, which he did, ensuring his fingerprints would be on the bag. A minute later the man came out and walked over to me.
“Can I keep the change?” he asked.
“Keep it,” I said.
He walked away twenty bucks to the better. I walked away wondering if I should have bought a jug for a fellow drunk.
50
I phoned Keira McKenzie, a fiery redhead who works as a lab technician in the forensics unit of the Boston Police Department. We had worked together on a case a couple of years ago and hit it off, both professionally and personally. She was smart, beautiful, and sophisticated, everything you’d want in a woman, with
one glaring exception — she was married. I left her a message and ten minutes later she called back.
“How have you been?” she asked.
I told her that I was doing fine, and she told me that she was expecting her first child, and the small talk tapered off.
“I need a favor,” I said.
“And I thought you were calling to say hello.”
“I’d like you to run some fingerprints for me.”
“Keep talking,” she said.
“I want to know if they match a partial print found at the Murray murder scene,” I said. “Are you familiar with the case?”
“I should be,” she said. “I was on the team that processed it. I saw you when we rolled out the body.”
“How did I miss you?”
“You were in shock, Dermot,” she said.
I explained my tunnel vision, telling Keira about my close relationship with Gertrude Murray, and then I said, “What do you think about running the prints?”
“You’re asking me to violate protocol. The police frown on that sort of thing.”
“I don’t want to get you into trouble.”
“On the other hand, I did the lab work on the case, which means I have direct access to the evidence.”
“It sounds like you’re considering it,” I said.
“Possibly. Meet me at Doyle’s tonight at seven o’clock, and bring the evidence with you. I’ll decide then.”
“Thanks, Keira.”
“How did you get the prints?” she said.
“Nothing illegal, I promise you. The prints are on a bag with a bottle in it. I don’t drink anymore, so you can have the bottle.”
“You’re a big spender, you know that.” She laughed.
“Thanks, Kiera. I’ll see you at Doyle’s.”
I arrived at Doyle’s Cafe at seven, and the first thing I saw was a huge monochrome photo of heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan, the Boston Strong Boy, with his bare fists clenched and ready to go. I walked to the end of the bar and carved out a spot by the TV. I told the barman I’d like a Coke, no ice. At quarter past seven Kiera McKenzie came in and pulled out the stool next to me. I asked her how she was feeling. She said that she was fine, and that the morning sickness had passed. She positioned herself on the stool.
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