Perfectly Criminal

by Celeste Marsella

  “What the frig does that mean?”

  “Between this Scott Boardman thing…and then watching Virginia Booth shot like your mother—”

  “You little bitch,” I said to Beth.

  Beth choked on her vodka soda and slammed it down on the bar. “Me?”

  I stood from my stool and stomped over to her. “I actually thought for a minute you'd kept it between us. I actually thought for a goddamn minute you were different from me, not the asshole I am. But you're no better than the rest of us, a rotten little gossip as bad as the day is long. Maybe more so, especially after what I witnessed with you and that little loose-lipped Lolly.”

  “Lolly?”

  “Yeah, you thrive on other people's misery.”

  Beth's lips were quivering. She wasn't crying, but the agony in her face had turned it beet red.

  “Whoa,” Laurie said. “What are you ranting about?”

  “I didn't…” Beth choked out, “didn't say a word…” She turned away from me and faced Joe, who had come over during the melee to make sure his tip was still safely tucked under our bar tab.

  “She told you about my mother and the cancer? How I saw my father shoot her like a lame dog? Fuck!” I said. “You can all go fuck yourselves.” I pulled a wad of cash from my jacket pocket and dropped another twenty on the bar. “You know what? I do need a breather from you. From all of you.”

  I was marching out the door when Marianna ran after me and pulled me to a stop. “I don't know what the hell happened with you and Beth today, Shannon, but she said nothing. Mike told me about your mother. Mike knew about your parents and the…Your father was charged with her murder and then the charges were dropped. He told me a while ago, and I just assumed you knew that we all knew and never wanted to talk about it. I just never brought it up. That's all there is to it. And after today… I just assumed…”

  “Fuck,” I said again. “Fuck!”

  The consonant-filled word seemed to halt my frustrations like a sudden wrong note in a melody, a black-key sharp to a white flat. I looked back at Beth, who was still turned away from me. Laurie remained at her side while Marianna swung away at me. “You hurled your misplaced rage at Beth like a batter trying to bang a home run. But there is no game. Beth didn't utter a word about it. What exactly happened at Virginia Booth's house today?”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I repeated as I looked at my feet. Marianna softened, her shoulders fell. “I'm going home, Mari. Tell Beth what you just told me…about Mike. She'll understand. And she won't be angry with me.” I looked up at Mari. “Okay? Dry her fucking tears for me. I gotta go.”

  “No, Shannon! You do it. Go apologize to her now. Grow the fuck up!”

  I swirled around and left the Fez, bumping into Jeff Kendall halfway down the street to my car.

  “Hey,” he said. “I've been trying to reach you all day. Did Marianna tell you about Brooke Stanford?”

  “What about her?” I said, unlocking my door and hoping he'd disappear into thin air like a bad smell in a breeze.

  “Vince wants her represented by counsel. He didn't even give her an option.”

  It was then that I remembered I'd never told the girls about the little conference room tete-a-tete between Brooke and the Pig.

  “Is he paying you too? To represent her? Is he paying her fee?”

  Jeff was holding on to my door so I couldn't close it. “We didn't get that far. But she can afford me. My family knows hers in Connecticut. I'll get paid.”

  “Yeah, I bet you're all real cozy. Like Virginia Booth, you know her family too? And Muffie, her daughter, the girl who was shot with Pat Boardman? You know that family too? Fucked up. All of you are fucked up.”

  Jeff giggled good-naturedly. “Hey, Lynch, we're all of us fucked up. Me, you, Vince, Beth, Marianna. I don't know about Laurie. Jews are so used to being fucked up and fucked over that they're the only ones who handle it without pulling the trigger. But the rest of us? One big bowl of mixed nuts.”

  “How'd you find me here? I haven't been to this place in over a year.”

  “I let my fingers do the walking. You think the bartenders in this small city don't know all of you by bra size?”

  “So you're going to run and tell Vince again that we're patronizing a mob hangout?”

  Jeff laughed again. “That was between me and Marianna. She busted my chops last year, so I zinged her. Marianna's not the helpless little doe you think she is.”

  “Don't be telling me what I think, Jeff. You're still in love with her, otherwise you wouldn't still be sniffing after us every chance you get. Why is it so important that we know you're representing Stanford? What's in it for you other than giving you the chance to be around the AG office again, and, more specifically, Marianna?”

  “Mari and I are finished. I just thought you might be curious as to why Vince is being so fatherly with Brooke when he should be chopping her up for pork feed.”

  “I'll tell you why. Because Brooke's an AG employee on leave and Vince has to make sure she doesn't embarrass the office. She's a loose cannon who's still hoping to snag Scott Boardman even if it's in a jailhouse marriage. She knows something about the night of the murders that she's not sharing, and Vince knows you have no allegiance to your clients or the code of professional responsibility, so if he makes you represent her, you'll ignore Brooke's right to privacy and tell him everything he wants to know as long as he dangles the right carrot in front of you. In short, Vince is playing you and Brooke Stanford.”

  Jeff didn't waste time fighting back. With his hand still on my car door, he swung it closed with such force the car shook. I watched him walk off toward the Fez and waited until he disappeared inside before I hopped in and drove off.

  I might have been done for the day—a day that had felt overstuffed with too many hours—but instead I drove by the office once more to see if Vince and Brooke had emptied the bottle of chardonnay (and the lust in Vince's loins). Vince's car was gone. Too tired to make assumptions as to whether Vince had driven Brooke home, or whether he'd taken her home, I simply headed home myself while a jumble of discordant facts banged around in my head like a child with a new set of drums.

  But sleep wasn't on my to-do list, because Scott Boardman was on my answering machine.

  “Call me,” the voice said after I hit the flashing button. Seconds later my cell rang.

  “Where are you?” Scott Boardman said.

  “Home,” I answered.

  “I just called a second ago.”

  “I wasn't home a second ago. I'm tired. What do you want?”

  “To help you. I think I can help find who did this to my wife. To Leo.”

  “Are you sure it wasn't you?”

  “I'm serious.”

  “You've been serious since I met you and we haven't gotten anywhere. Why don't you tell me a good joke?”

  “I miss you, Shannon.”

  I hung up on him, turned the ringer off on my land-line, and then powered down my cell. I was brushing my teeth when I heard the hard rapping at my door.

  “Hey, open up,” Mike called. “Your cell is off and you aren't answering your phone. Are you okay in there?”

  I spit into the bathroom sink and went to the door. No need to peep through the hole. I recognized his voice. I was wiping smeared toothpaste from my mouth as I unbolted the door.

  “Nice look,” he said, pointing to my mouth.

  “If Marianna sent you, I'm fine. Go home. Wherever the hell home is.”

  Mike's glance fell from my Crest-covered mouth to my toes and then traveled slowly up my bare legs, which were left exposed just shy of my crotch by an old white T-shirt I'd donned for bed.

  “You shouldn't be answering the door that way,” he said, his glance returning to my lower extremities.

  “How'd you get in the downstairs door?”

  “An old cop trick,” he said. “There isn't a lock I can't pick.”

  I turned into my apartment. “Mari gave you the keys, hu
h?”

  “Yeah,” he said, following me and slamming the door closed.

  “If she's so worried, why didn't she come herself?” I asked.

  “She said something about you needing breathing space,” he explained while he surveyed my loft. “Nice place. What's it run you a month?”

  “McCoy, it's after midnight. I'm beat.” I pulled a throw from the couch and wrapped it sarong-style around my waist to cover my legs, thereby removing any additional incentive for him to remain—as subliminal as it was.

  He walked to my fridge. “You got a beer?”

  “McCoy, go the fuck home!”

  He ignored me and pulled open the refrigerator door, peering inside and moving things around as if he'd been doing it for years. “Brooke Stanford and Vince Piganno are sharing sheets. Did you know that?”

  “Impossible,” I said. I pulled the throw off me and rushed him at the refrigerator door. “Get out of my house.” I slammed the door closed. “And Vince is just pumping her for information. Nothing more.”

  “Yeah, he's pumping her all right.”

  I faced him. Barefoot, I was a couple inches shorter than him. “You want the couch? Because I'm going to sleep.”

  He walked past me to the windows overlooking Providence. “Hey, look, I'm real sorry about your mother. Marianna told me about the face-off at the Fez. I'm the one who told her. I remembered the story from… well… someone told me. I heard it before. I shouldn't have said anything.”

  “You should have come to me first.”

  “You know it was a mercy thing, right? Your old man couldn't stand to see her suffer anymore. It wasn't murder—”

  “Yeah, shit, McCoy. Whatever—”

  “Don't interrupt me when I'm talking.” He flared his nostrils, then lowered his head like a tired bull. “Give me a break here, okay? I don't do sentiment easy, especially with a broad like you who thinks crying is a four-letter word.”

  We faced each other—he across the room by the windows and me standing under the harsh overhead kitchen lights—both of us with our metaphoric guns drawn.

  “See, Marianna's easy,” he said. “She can rip a Band-Aid off a wound so fast you don't feel a thing. But you? Jesus Christ, you are the wound. You're a fucking pain in the ass.”

  “I didn't invite you here.”

  He nodded. “Right. Because you're also a thickheaded pain in the ass. And frankly, I don't know why your friends even put up with you.”

  “Interesting question. I'll sleep on it.”

  “I'm not going anywhere yet, so sit tight. You don't scare me, Slim.” He walked to my couch and sat. “Now bring me a fucking beer and sit down.”

  I went to the kitchen, pulled a cold Heineken from the vegetable bin in the fridge and popped the top off. I brought the beer to the couch and sat, putting the bottle on the table and pulling the throw back over my legs.

  He eyed me a few seconds and winced like he'd gotten stuck with the unfortunate job of cleaning out the elephant cage. “Look, I know about your father. Your friends know too. So, clear the damn air. They'll feel better. You'll feel better—”

  “I need sleep. That's all. Just sleep. No point in going backward, you know?”

  Mike swiped the bottle from the table, took a gulp, and then slammed it back down. Motionless and staring at me, he refused to relieve the uncomfortable silence between us either physically or verbally. He waited for more from me.

  “I got hooked up with some bad people in high school. Did the drug and alcohol thing. A little petty larceny at the local Rite Aid. Nothing big, but on the fast track to the wrong side. One night I ended up in jail for stealing cigarettes from one of those all-night gas stations. I was seventeen and still living at the house pretty much by myself—my father would disappear for long stretches of time. They put me in a cell and tried to find someone to pick me up. After a few minutes some guy in the cell next to me starts talking. ‘I'm sorry,’ he says. ‘I did it for her, but I didn't know what it would be doing to you.’ What the fuck? I look over at this guy. He was a mess. Filthy. A three-day-old beard. And skinny. I remember his ropy neck and the bones running up and down his chest where his shirt was open. And shit, if it's not my old man, who I hadn't seen in months. And he's apologizing to me for killing my mother. Not apologizing for pulling the trigger, but for doing it while I was home. He said he should have made sure I was out of the house first. That's what he said. That he should have sent me to my aunt's first, then shot her head off.”

  Mike sat quietly. I was tired of my confession. Tired of everything. Tired of the emotion that was seeping from my pores like a toxin I was sweating off. “What are you doing here, Mike? Really. What do you want from me?”

  “How'd you get to law school?”

  “Hey, I don't know. It was either law school for three years or jail full-time. And you know me. I don't do things midrange.” I shrugged. “I picked law. Maybe I would have made a better criminal, because my legal skills seem to be waning lately.”

  “You could have been a cop,” he said. “Instead of law.”

  I shook my head. “Cops and criminals use the same tools for their job. And I like guns too much. I needed the safety of books.”

  “Good point,” he conceded. And then he was apparently finished listening to my woeful saga, because he changed keys like a skillful baritone. “Leo Safer killed Pat Boardman,” he said.

  I took a deep breath. “Leo Safer?”

  He retrieved his beer. “And then I think Boardman knocked Safer off. Think about it.” Mike took a few hefty gulps, burped, and then continued. “Let's just say maybe Pat Boardman panicked after Muffie got clobbered by her mother, so she called Leo Safer to do damage control. So Safer goes to the scene and finds Muffie Booth dead and Pat huddled in a corner not knowing what the hell to do. Leo Safer thinks fast and slick—like a good campaign manager. If he pulls some drawers out, throws things around—it's just an unfortunate random killing of a woman on an expensive yacht. Except he knows Pat Boardman isn't going to go along with his story, so he puts a clean painless bullet through the back of her head when she's not looking. Now Scott Boardman's campaign can proceed and maybe even prosper with some nice sympathy votes from the public. He just lost his wife in an act of random violence. Maybe Boardman's new position will be let's-get-tough-on-crime kind of thing.”

  “And under your theory, does Scott know Leo Safer killed his wife?”

  “Not at first. But when he puts two and two together, Safer winds up dead. That's the day we found you on his boat knocked out—and Boardman nicked in the arm by a bullet. He staged it. It's the Stanford-Boardman vacillating alibi story that causes the problems. One or both of 'em are lying.”

  “Why? To protect Leo Safer after Scott just killed him?” I shook my head. “More likely Scott would try to expose Safer as the murderer.”

  “Not if Scott Boardman wanted to stay alive politically. He's still a senator. Even if the presidential campaign is now out of reach, this whole dirty mess would have his senatorial constituency clamoring for his resignation.”

  Mike slugged down the rest of his beer and again slammed the bottle down hard on the glass coffee table. “The answer is in the soup of characters we already have. Stanford has been lying from the start to protect Boardman, but she's doing him more harm than good by changing stories and creating suspicion. But I think after Boardman killed Safer, that's when he started to lie.”

  “And Brooke is innocent of everything except being in love with Scott Boardman?”

  “And sleeping with Vince Piganno—”

  I covered my face with my hands. The mental picture of Vince grunting on top of Brooke Stanford was too horrific an image to conjure. “So Scott's the only bad man still walking. That's your conclusion? Virginia Booth killed Muffie by accident, Pat was murdered by Leo Safer to protect Scott's campaign, and Scott killed Leo Safer to end the whole sordid affair and cover all the tracks leading back to him and his campaign?”

  He
nodded. “And unless someone comes up with some new evidence,” Mike said, then burped, “Boardman's going to walk for his part in it.”

  Mike brought his empty bottle to my kitchen. “You recycle here?” He opened the cabinet under the sink and then, giving up, placed the bottle on the countertop. “Look, Mata Hari, I think you got a bad crush on the senator, so feel free to screw his brains out while you're working him for information. But be prepared to give him up to the cops when that sterling moment of truth hits you like the flush from your first kiss.”

  Mike walked to the door and then turned to face me. He was nodding lethargically with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. How Marianna could stomach the guy, I didn't know, because I felt like forcibly removing his two front teeth with my one right foot.

  “So you work on Boardman,” he said with his hand on the door handle, “while Piganno porks Stanford. Between the two of you I'm sure you'll figure out how to pin the tail on the ass.”

  “You've got it all wrong between Vince and Brooke Stanford.”

  “I'm a man,” he said. “I know how guys think. And no matter how hard you try, Slim, you're not thinking like a guy this time.”

  FIRE AND ICE

  IT WAS HARD GOING BACK TO WORK THE NEXT morning. I went to Laurie's office first. She was gathering up papers for court and had little time to chat.

  “Just get it over with, Shannon. Go to Beth and apologize. She'll forgive you before you get to the end of the sentence.”

  I nodded at my feet. “Bad stuff. My mother and shit. I thought Freud said you're supposed to have some revelation when the truth finally stares you in the face. I don't feel any different.”

  “Freud's a bunch of hooey. Besides, you always knew what happened with your parents. You just didn't want to dwell on it, so you pushed it to the back of your mind. But whatever damage it did—if it did any at all—was already done when it happened.” She looked up at me, ready to bolt out the door. “We are who we are. Knowing all the details of what made us that way doesn't change a damn thing.”

  “Yeah, sure, you're right. But if I'm an asshole, I should try to change. No?”