Perfectly Criminal

by Celeste Marsella

  He looked over at me. “And the drinking and the pills? That was all true. When I began receiving those”— he glanced at the photos—“I started taking pills, and I'd been drinking with Leo earlier, and with Brooke before that. The combination made me pass out… and I guess the shock of seeing those women brutalized…”

  “When did you begin getting the pictures?”

  “When I started breaking it off with Brooke. I suspected she was blackmailing me, but she steadfastly denied it in that sweet innocent way she has. And I didn't think her capable. Didn't think she'd know the first thing about hiring a private investigator and resorting to blackmail. Who knows? Maybe it isn't her. Maybe it's politically motivated. Who the hell knows anything anymore?”

  “You,” Mike said from the window. “The Black Horse Tavern is less than fifteen minutes from the boat. You could have left Leo Safer, gone to the boat, and killed your wife—or maybe you killed her before you met Safer—had a stiff drink with Safer to calm down, and then hoofed it back to Providence to see Weller.”

  “But I didn't,” Scott said, regaining some of his old composure. “I was with Brooke until I left her to meet Leo. And you can't prove otherwise.”

  “So where do we go from here, Scott?” I asked.

  He nodded toward the desk. “Those pictures need to be kept quiet—at least for now—please don't turn them in.”

  “Can't do that. They're now part of a murder investigation.”

  “Maybe I should take Doogie's road to perdition and just shoot myself.”

  “Aw fuck,” Mike said, straightening his jacket to leave. “I'm not standing around here listening to him cry. You girls do what you need to do with him. I'm out of here.”

  Mike walked out and I looked up at Marianna, expecting her to leave with him.

  “Let's go find Brooke,” Marianna said to me. “Let's ask her about those pictures.”

  I stood and walked to the desk, glancing down at the grainy black-and-white prints, where in the background I now recognized the bed by which I'd fallen the day Leo Safer was killed.

  I picked up the picture up by the same towel Mike had used. “These were taken on your boat,” I said to Scott. “This is the bed in the main berth. Who were you with?”

  “It doesn't matter, does it?”

  “Yes, I think it does. Maybe this guy has a motive for murder. You can't ignore any clues.”

  “The man in those pictures is dead. It was Leo.”

  PAW PRINTS

  MARIANNA AND I LEFT SCOTT SITTING ON THE edge of his unmade bed, examining his hands as if trying to read his future in their palms.

  While Marianna and I walked across town back to the office, I thought of Scott's words to me the night we first met. “You know what he said that first night?” I said to Marianna. “He told me I was the most sexy yet unfeminine woman he'd ever met. Was that why he liked me? Because he's bisexual and I remind him of a guy?”

  “I don't believe in bisexuality. I think Boardman's gay but keeps fighting it and sleeping with women to convince himself he's not. Maybe I'm wrong, but bisexuality makes no sense to me.”

  “With all due respect, Mari, you're not exactly Masters and Johnson on the subject. I mean, Christ, you're sleeping with Mike McCoy.”

  She stopped in the street. “What does that mean?”

  “McCoy reaches the outer limits on the macho meter.

  He's so far from gay he probably winces when he looks in a mirror from the waist down.”

  Marianna laughed out loud. I didn't get the joke.

  “He told me his headboard is mirrored,” she explained. “I won't even go inside his place to check it out.”

  “Where the hell does McCoy live, anyway? I wouldn't be surprised if his legal address was a PO box and he sleeps in his car outside the U.S. Post Office.”

  “He rents a two-bedroom bungalow in Oak Hill just over the East Side border in Pawtucket. Cute from the outside. It has an adorable navy-and-white-striped awning over the front porch. Really quaint.”

  “Thank God it's a rental so he can't do any permanent design changes. McCoy has the taste of a Doberman pinscher.”

  “It's a damn good thing my ego is strong and intact today, Shannon, because you are really testing me now.”

  “What are you getting all huffy about? I've been trying to have sex with a homosexual. I mean, how off is my fucking love meter that I should be poking fun at yours?”

  We called a truce and trudged the rest of the way in silence until we reached our building. “I'm going to see Vince,” I said, jogging up the steps. “I'm sure he knows where his little love boat Brooke is.”

  Marianna lagged behind and nodded in disgust.

  I didn't have to go far to find Vince or Brooke. Vince was stationed behind his massive mahogany desk, wearing, I think, a genuine smile. My uncertainty of the true nature of Vince's dreamy countenance was based in part on Vince's overall and general lack of mirth. His normal everyday smile was sardonic in nature and resembled the dental exhibition of a rabid dog. It was the added sparkle in his beady brown eyes that tipped me off: It could only be Brooke or some newly installed carbon copy that could induce his hot-off-the-griddle authentic glee.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  When he saw me in his doorway, he clamped his paw over the mouthpiece of his phone. His face fell to its relaxed state, and the Vince that I knew and loathed returned in the familiar scowl of an aging bulldog. “I'll talk to ya later,” he said into the phone, and hung up. “What do you want?” he barked at me. “And don't ever interrupt me again when I'm on the phone.”

  “Was that Brooke?”

  “When it's your business, I'll tell you.”

  “She's blackmailing Scott Boardman. You may think she's in love with you, or she may think you're in love with her, or the two of you may be mutually delusional, but the fact is, she wants Scott Boardman come hell or the next Hengchun earthquake.”

  Vince scratched the back of his head, twisting his neck as if he had bugs crawling up his neck. “She's blackmailing Boardman?”

  “You betcha. And the goblins'll get you if you don't watch out.”

  “Close my door,” he ordered.

  “Why? The whole freaking office already knows. Andy is the one who gave me the tip. You're becoming a joke in your own sty. What is it about that little twit Brooke Stanford that has all of you rats following her into the river like the Pied Piper?”

  Vince needed to work off steam, so he pushed himself up from his desk and lumbered heavily to his door, huffing by me like I was a pool of excrement. He slammed his door closed and walked by again. “Sit, or don't sit. Do it however you want, Lynch. But tell me what you know.”

  “Now we're getting somewhere, boss.” I wanted to be far enough away in case he threw something across the room (he had notoriously bad aim), so I pulled a chair a few yards away from his desk and tossed the envelope full of photos on his desk. “Brooke made Andy, on a tacit assumption of authority from you, deliver an envelope full of black-and-white prints to Scott Boardman's hotel room. Scott Boardman apparently blows both ways in the breeze, if you get my multisexual drift.”

  Vince began an explosion of laughter the likes of which I'd never seen. I have to admit, I didn't see it coming. I waited. He couldn't stop. Tears were forming at the outer corners of his eyes. I saw teeth so far back in his mouth that I almost blushed. If I didn't know better, I'd swear he still had his tonsils, but what the hell did a tonsil even look like? I reserved the right to find out later, and then rip them from his throat.

  His lips finally came together and formed some words…then a couple more…then a complete sentence: “You were trying [laugh, laugh] to seduce [guffaw] a fag?”

  “Stop it, Vince! That's a politically incorrect word and it's cruel.” I lowered my head. “And he's bisexual,” I muttered.

  “And I bet you almost did make it with him. I always said you were a guy under all that… well, I guess you really don't have a lot o
f that girl stuff hanging off you, do you?”

  “Let's cut to the chase, okay, big fella? Because being here with you like this hurts me more than it hurts you.”

  “Look, Lynch, if Boardman's gay, then why the hell would someone like Brooke want him?”

  “Because Brooke is a wannabe. She wants to be a billionaire socialite from Newport. She wants to be Mrs. Senator Scott Boardman from Fairfield, Connecticut. She wants to be the fucking First Lady of the goddamn United States of America! And if that means she has to be Marilyn Monroe with you, and Rock Hudson taking it up the ass with Scott Boardman, then that's what she'll do.”

  If nothing else, my little spiel had clamped Vince's trap shut.

  “And I'll clue you in on one more thing,” I continued. “Scott gave Brooke the royal dump the night Pat Boardman was murdered.”

  “He was dumping her a long time before that,” Vince said. “When he started pulling strings to get her the job here, he was unraveling his ties with her and hooking her up to our lamppost. It was payoff for services rendered. And maybe he was calling it quits with women altogether at that point, but he was letting Brooke down long before Pat Boardman was killed.”

  “But the day he took Brooke out for a drink to recite the final act of their relationship was the night Pat Boardman was killed.”

  “I hope you're not suggesting she did it. Whoever killed Pat Boardman killed Leo Safer too. Same gun. And Brooke was with me the day Safer was shot.”

  “Jesus Christ, Vince. You're her alibi? This has to be the most pathetic AG's office in the country. Not only can't we find murderers, but we hand out alibis like lollipops at the doctor's office.”

  “You're not listening to me, Lynch. Brooke is high-strung, high-maintenance, maybe even a bit of a gold digger, but most of these young girls today are looking for Candy Land. This country's moral code is written by the likes of that Britney Spears broad and her entire pre-pubescent pregnant sisterhood. It's easy pickings in the Lolita slush pile for older guys with a few bucks or a little power. What can I say? She's trying to hitch her ass to some powerful rich guy. But she didn't kill Pat Boardman and she didn't do Safer either. She's desperate, so maybe she's blackmailing Boardman.” He shrugged. “But that ain't murder. And believe me, I've been deep inside the trenches with her, dredging for information.”

  “Don't make me vomit, Vince. She's been using you, and she's still trying to snag Boardman, and you aren't the least bit angry?”

  “Hah.” Vince chuckled again, but no jubilant symphony this time. It seemed he couldn't wait to start singing again. “I had some laughs with Brooke, and while I was laughing, she was talking. So I listened. And what she was saying was real interesting. So interesting, in fact, that I had a warrant sworn out this morning for Jake Weller.” Vince plopped into his desk chair and rolled it back against the back wall so he could hoist his feet up on his desk. “You know Jake Weller, don't you, Lynch?

  He's Boardman's PR guy. The guy who was in love with Boardman's wife, Pat. The guy who went to the Booths' boat the night of the murders to confront Pat Boardman about her philandering husband and ask her to divorce Boardman and marry him. The guy who didn't know that the love of his life, Pat Boardman, was doing girls until he saw her that night with Muffie Booth and flipped out over it. The same night he shot Pat Boardman while her head was up Muffie Booth's twat.”

  I was speechless. I was nauseous. I was in shock. I was angry. Jake Weller? Why hadn't I seen that?

  “How do you know all this? Only from Brooke? No corroborating evidence?”

  “Cell phone records show calls between Brooke and Weller. Brooke says she called Weller after she and Boardman had their farewell toast. She admitted being pissed off about Scott dumping her like the morning trash. Weller then tells her to calm down and don't do anything rash, that he's going to the boat to talk to Pat Boardman.”

  I bolted up from my chair as if hit by lightning. “I'm losing it, Vince. I should get out of this business. I lost the Cohen case, and I was so off on this one. Jake Weller told me he was in love with Pat Boardman. Why didn't I make the leap—”

  “I keep trying to tell you, you let those messy female emotions muck you up. Listen up and I'll give you a quick lesson.”

  He lit another smoke and took a long smooth drag. No coughing this time. He was as cocksure as a stud bull.

  Vince loved to calm his stable of “overemotional” females with some good old-fashioned male horseshit.

  “You see, Lynch, women usually don't kill the object of their affection, they kill the competition. Men? They kill the woman if they can't have her, just so no one else can have her. It's a guy thing. But hey, don't be so hard on yourself. The chief and I are working together on this. So I did have a little help. And we don't have Weller yet. We still got a lot of work to do to get him behind bars. That's where I need you and the rest of this office.”

  I nodded. Downtrodden. Still sick to my stomach. “Chucky?” was all I managed to utter. “How is he?” I asked, looking back up at Vince, who'd lowered his legs and was already poking his head through another file.

  “The chief? He's fine, I guess. I don't ask personal questions. That's why I can do my job here with clarity— you know—with a clear head. The chief doesn't ask me if I got laid the night before, and I don't ask him how the wife and kids are. Just business. That's all.”

  “I thought he and Marjory were separated,” I said.

  Vince looked up at me. “Who the fuck is Marjory?”

  I nodded and walked dejectedly out of Vince's office. I found Marianna back in her office. Beth was going over a set of interrogatories with her. They looked up at me standing in the threshold. “Where's Laurie?” I asked.

  “Court,” Marianna said. “We're letting all the office work fall behind. What's going on now? Every time I see you, you look worse than before.”

  I shook my head, feeling lost. “Scott Boardman is gay. The Pig isn't really in love with Brooke. Jake Weller killed Pat Boardman and Leo Safer. And Chucky's back with his wife. And I should be singing in the rain?”

  Beth stood and took me by the elbow again, much the same way she'd done with Virginia Booth in her Newport mansion, and then me, later that same day, after Virginia Booth shot herself. Beth led me to the empty chair in Marianna's office and sat me down. No one spoke for a minute or two, after which I heard the bottom drawer of Marianna's desk slide open. She put a bottle of The Glenlivet 21-Year-Old Single Malt scotch on her desk blotter.

  “Neat,” I said.

  BLACK, WHITE, AND BLOOD

  FOR THE SAKE OF FRIENDSHIP, BETH SIPPED HER scotch. With each swallow, she winced as if she was drinking motor oil, but I was ready to give her some time. Eventually, if she managed to make it through law school and hold down a job at the AG's office for a few years, she'd acquire a taste for bitter brews.

  I hadn't said a word yet—hadn't even begun to feel the first warmth of alcohol-induced calm—when Vince's voice came booming through Marianna's intercom.

  “Is she in there with you?”

  Marianna hit the talk button. “Yeah.”

  “Send her back in here. New case I want her to start working on.”

  Marianna's finger hit speaker to turn it off, and I placed my Styrofoam cup on her desk and reached for the scotch bottle just as Beth's hand pulled it from my reach.

  I tossed my empty in the trash like a basketball in a hoop. “I'm burned-out.”

  Marianna rolled her eyes and Beth remained silent— an innocent bystander watching the two of us like she should be taking notes.

  I peered into Marianna's eyes as I spoke, hoping to see any hint of friendly fraud, the kind friends perpetrated on friends when they were trying to save a life. “Did you have any inkling it was Weller?” Then I looked at Beth, trying to reel her into the morass of my rotting morale. The kid needed to know what she was in for if she wanted to make prosecution a lifelong career. “You, Beth?” I asked. “You were with me when we saw Weller in
the bar in Newport. Did you suspect anything? His demeanor? Anything?”

  She shrugged. “I'm so busy trying to absorb information that sometimes the important stuff in the details escapes me. I just remember not liking him much. I remember thinking there's no reason for him to be denigrating Scott Boardman. But I guess if he's guilty, that would be his reason, huh? To divert suspicion to someone else.”

  I stood abruptly. “I'm going home.”

  Marianna stood too. “Christ, Shannon, you can't just walk out if Vince wants you to start a new file. Go ask him for a few days off. Don't just disappear.”

  “Fine, I'll tell him, but he's been porking Brooke Stanford. I'm not asking him anything.”

  I walked to the door and then turned to them. “Have you heard anything about the chief? If he's back with his wife? Has Mike mentioned anything?”

  “Not to me,” Marianna said. “He cut me out of that loop because I gabbed it to you.”

  I nodded, turned, and walked to Vince's office. As luck would have it, he was away from his desk. “Where is he?” I asked Andy.

  “Went over to the police station to see Chief Sewell. He left a file for you.”

  “Put it in my office, will ya? I'm going home for the day.”

  As I was walking to my car, my cell phone registered a call from Scott Boardman. I'd had enough. I didn't answer it. He'd begun to remind me of a spoiled child with too many toys complaining of too few hours in the day in which to play with them.

  Minutes later my cell rang again. I was behind the wheel by then, swerving out of the lot. “Yeah?” I said without reading the screen.

  “I'm free to leave the state,” Scott said. “Just got a call from your chief. I'm no longer a suspect.”

  “You were never under arrest. You stayed voluntarily.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  A few silent seconds later, he spoke again. “I'm checking out of the hotel now. Meet for a good-bye drink downstairs? I promise it's good-bye. I won't bother you anymore.”