by Peter Colt
“I am Special Agent Brenda Watts. Danny is in trouble. His mob friends think he is on the cusp of something. They know he wants out and they don’t want that. They are worried that whatever it is, it could buy him his freedom. These are the type of people who don’t believe in attorney-client privilege.
“They kill people for less. People who know far less than Danny knows about their operations. We don’t know what they think Danny has, but we know that they visit him daily. There are arguments, yelling matches, and one name keeps coming up. Can you guess whose it is?”
I was not in the mood for rhetorical questions from Feds, even pretty, athletic ones who smelled nice.
“Your name keeps coming up. Something about you is bothering them. Something about you and Danny is bothering them. Let us help you, Andy. You and Danny. Help me convince Danny to come in and talk to us? We are the only ones who can help you. Who can help him. We can protect you.” It had never occurred to me that Danny would want out, much less with my help. Not out. He wanted respectability. He wasn’t the kid from Southie. He wanted a seat at the table with the Brahmans.
I thought that Danny enjoyed the perks, the life, and the cash. Nice cars, power, influence, who knows, broads and coke, too. Now there was a chink in his armor and his masters’. The Feds would drive a wedge in as deep and as wide as they could. The Feds were their own type of mafia. They didn’t think they were because they were on a crusade for truth and justice.
“Agent Watts, what do you think I can do?”
“Danny Sullivan listens to you, trust you. If you helped us convince him to get out . . . to come to us.”
“And give you everything he has on his clients? Ha. Even if it wasn’t unethical Danny would never give up privileged information.”
“He might if you were to help us. We might not be able to use all of it in a court of law, but think of how valuable that type of intelligence would be. He has a unique view into the world of organized crime in New England.”
“Why are they mad at him?”
“They aren’t comfortable with his relationship with you. You used to be a cop, you are a private eye now . . . not exactly their type. They think you are a bad influence on him.” It was clever of her to put it on me. Give me an incentive to help, to want to help. They were slippery and manipulative, the Feds.
“You think you can help him? You are his salvation? I don’t know what Wheaton and Vassar were turning out the year you graduated, but common sense was lacking.”
“USC, and you and I know that he extends himself to look out for you. We can get him out.”
“No, you can screw him over without my help. Thanks for the drink.”
I left the drink on the bar, left Special Agent Brenda Watts, and walked out. I left her sitting there, looking good, looking like a dream. I left a pretty woman in a warm bar.
I walked back to my apartment in the darkening fall evening. Lights were on in apartments and old brownstones. People in the windows looked warm, cozy, and happy. People walked by in the street, heading home from work or off to meet someone. The occasional couple walked by, leisurely, arm in arm, more focused on each other than anything else. I walked, stewing in my anger and hurt. I walked along with the coppery taste of blood in my mouth. Danny was my oldest friend, and I had not expected any of this. I certainly hadn’t expected the FBI. I wasn’t sure what the Feds had, but Brenda Watts reaching out to me in a bar was not part of the playbook. The Feds like cases that are 100% locked up. They don’t go in for reckless moves. I was sure they would keep coming at Danny but was reasonably confident that they didn’t have much or Brenda Watts would never have bought me a drink. Maybe they wanted me to reach out to Danny, spook him, or maybe they wanted his masters to be spooked. Scare them into doing something stupid that would help Danny change his mind. That would certainly fit with how the Feds work. They wanted him, the whole enchilada to turn state’s evidence. I couldn’t see Danny doing it.
Or maybe they wanted me to jump in too deep. Danny would have to bail me out in their way of thinking. I couldn’t make the plays, but then again, I was bad at chess because I couldn’t see many moves ahead.
Why now? Why were the Feds interested in him, and why the big push right now? What had changed that they were willing to try to broach me in a bar. Something had changed. They thought he was in it for the money. That was funny, they misread Danny. He liked, loved the money, but he was in it because he liked not being one of the little people. The regular people. He wouldn’t give that up for me no matter how much Special Agent Brenda Watts wanted him to.
Chapter 20
I made my way to my apartment and up the stairs. I turned on the lights and the radio. I listened to the news on the public radio station. I paced around. Pulled a book off of the bookshelf and then put it back. I went into the kitchen and looked in the icebox, but didn’t like what I saw. I took out one of the green bottles of beer and opened it, but didn’t take more than a sip. I lit, took two puffs, and then stubbed out half a dozen cigarettes.
The phone rang. The bell startled me, and when I picked it up I expected it to be Danny calling to apologize for being a grade A asshole. It wasn’t. It was Shelly.
“Hi, Tomcat. Miss me?”
“Like a saucer of milk.”
“Knowing you, it is a saucer filled with whiskey.”
“Ha, too true.”
“Tomcat, I am on the mainland. I came over for some shopping and now have a big, empty hotel room, with a big, empty bed. I could use some company.”
“Where are you?” It occurred to me that I could use some company. That I could stand to have some of my wounds licked.
“Hyannis. Near the ferry.”
“I can be there in an hour or a little more.”
“Oh, Tomcat, you know just what to say to a girl.”
We said our goodbyes. I promised to bring whiskey or grass. It would be whiskey. It also wasn’t lost on me that Ruth Silvia’s farm was nearby and that I could take a look at the fire. The timing of it was just too funny. That and someone had pushed me off of a bluff. And Danny had punched me. Things were getting weird.
It took me a little over an hour to get to the Anchor Inn. Every seaside town in the English-speaking world has an Anchor Inn—it is a law. It was evening and dark when I knocked on her door and she opened it. She looked great, big smile and mischief in her eyes.
“Hi, Tomcat. You are a sight for sore eyes.”
“Normally I’m just a sight.” She kissed me and pulled me into her room. My canvas mail bag ended up in a chair as did my coat, and I ended up in her arms. She pulled back and looked at the spot on my face where Danny had slugged me.
“Tomcat, what happened?” She was tracing her fingers along the slight swelling.
“My lawyer friend punched me.”
“It seems like I can’t leave you alone. Pushed off a bluff, punched in the face. You are not a very good tough guy.” Well, she was right about that. “Well, Tomcat, at least you didn’t say ‘you should see the other guy.’ ”
“No, I never laid a hand on him.” I said it with a laugh, but I was still smarting. I didn’t have many friends left. She took my mind off of it by wrestling around on the bed with me. I let her win, but I was all right with it.
“Well, Tomcat, wanna see what this burgh has to offer for food?” She had wriggled into black boots with a little heel. She informed me she had just picked them up. We ended up eating at a small Italian restaurant, talking to each other about the things that new lovers talk about. Sharing stories of childhood and other intimacies. Her father had been an Air Force officer. He had flown cargo planes, and she grew up moving around the country and the world.
“How did you end up interested in art?”
“The post library at Pope Air Force base. They had these big books with glossy photos. Pictures of art that were beautiful. Fayetteville wasn’t a cultural mecca in the sixties. I would take those books out as a little girl and pour over them. My dad
eventually started to order them from special booksellers in New York and Boston. Then my mom would take me to art galleries. First in Raleigh and Charlotte, then Washington, then the Gardner in Boston, and then we would make weekends of it in New York. Paintings, they speak to me, the colors, the textures, the canvas, even the frames, the whole thing is a conversation.”
“I had never thought of that. Not like that.”
“Seriously. When I look at a painting, I see it very differently than you do. It isn’t just a two-dimensional, colored picture to me, it is like a series of small building blocks that subtly add up, making a single experience.” She was in love with it. You could tell by the way it engrossed her. When she was talking about art, she definitely did not see me.
We left the restaurant, deciding against a bar in favor of whiskey in her hotel room. We walked toward the Ghia, and the only other pedestrian nearby walked over to it and started to kick out the passenger side headlight, then systematically started to smash the heel of his steel toe work boot into the front body work. I couldn’t believe some asshole was assaulting my Ghia, denting the shit out of it.
He turned to face us. He was big, thick shoulders and big hands. Longish dark hair and looked like he pounded nails for a living and just vandalized cars for fun. He smiled at me.
“How does it feel, asshole? This will teach you. I thought you would have learned at the lighthouse.”
“What did my car ever do to you?”
“Huh?”
While he was puzzling over it, I snapped my left foot into his crotch. His legs started to buckle, and I stepped in and caught him from falling. Grabbing his shoulders for leverage, I twisted at the hip and drove my right knee into his crotch. He, predictably, doubled over, and I repeated the move into his floating ribs three times. There was no more fight left in him after that. I let him crash onto the cold sidewalk. I knelt down next to him and with my left hand grabbed a handful of dark hair.
“Listen to me, shit-bird. The next time you come for me, you had better kill me. If I see you, if you try this shit again, I won’t beat you up. I won’t hurt you. I will just fucking kill you. Do you understand?” Each word of the last two sentences was punctuated by a hard, right jab to his nose. He was retching but nodded.
I stood up. Shelly was looking at me the way the townspeople look at Frankenstein before they get the pitchforks and torches. She shook her head but didn’t say much.
“Do you know him?”
“That’s Troy, the ex I was telling you about.”
“Oh.”
“He’s been following me around and calling all the time.”
“Aha. Probably doesn’t like that we’ve been spending time together.”
We got in the car and drove back to the hotel in awkward silence. The rest of the night was a wash. We tried to make love, but neither of us felt much like it. She was freaked out by the violence. I was upset at letting her see it. In the morning, it was a little better. We had breakfast and didn’t talk about her ex.
“What are you doing now, Tomcat? Going back to Boston?”
“Not just yet. I have to go check on a fire that might be suspicious.”
“An arson investigation? Is it insurance fraud?” She seemed interested.
“Something along those lines.” I didn’t feel like explaining more.
“My ferry isn’t until noon. I could go with you if you like?”
Eager for a chance to make up for the night before, eager to keep her interested, I agreed. The drive out to the Silvia place didn’t seem as long this time. I wasn’t drunk, and it was daytime. This time, I drove right up the long driveway, stopping the Ghia at the blackened ruin of her house. Just past the barn.
The barn hadn’t fared well, either. The roof had caved in and the walls had given way also. The barn was a big pile of burned lumber and ashes. It looked as though it had blown up and the remains landed back on themselves in an uneven pile of burned lumber.
We got out. The first thing I noticed was the smell. House fires aren’t like campfires or the fire in your fireplace. Those smell nice, folksy or woodsy. House fires smell acrid, burnt wood, burnt plastics, and rubber. Things burn in a house fire that should never be near a flame. Couches and carpet are little more than stored fossil fuels.
The roof had caved in, as had the walls. The foundation was just charred rubble. I was not surprised, given all of the oil lamps she had in the place. Old wood burns fast—it burns faster when there is lamp oil around.
“What do you think, Tomcat?” She was standing next to me.
“It definitely burned fast, but I am not sure that it was arson.”
“It must have taken the fire department a long time to get out here.”
“Yes, they would have been in time to water down the foundation.”
We were walking around the wreckage. This is where the TV detectives would find some clue that the arson investigators and the cops would have missed. In reality, they were paid by the hour, took their time, and didn’t miss much. We were working our way around the back side of the house. No clues, just broken glass from the heat of the fire. No smell of gasoline or kerosene.
We were just coming back around by the front near the barn when I heard an angry hummingbird whiz by my head and then something smacked into the wood behind me. You don’t hear the gunshot first if it is coming at you. You hear it whiz by, if it doesn’t hit you.
I threw Shelly down onto the damp, muddy ground and fell on top of her. The report of the rifle went off. It was big, .30 caliber big, like an AK. She tried to get up, and I pushed her down.
“Stay the fuck down. Someone is shooting at us,” I growled at her. I didn’t like being shot at. I learned that in Vietnam. I started to crawl back behind the part of the building that offered more cover, dragging her with me. Whoever was shooting fired four or five more quick rounds. Then it was quiet.
Shelly started to get up, and I pulled her roughly down.
“Stay down.”
“Tomcat, he’s done shooting.” Then the whiz, crack, crash of another shot.
“He was trying to draw us out. Wait for the sirens.” I had the Colt out, but it was all but useless against someone hidden in the brush with a rifle. It didn’t take much longer. Ten minutes and a lifetime of lying behind the burned-out house and then the sounds of sirens. They were heading up the main road.
While lying there, I saw something fluttering in the wreckage, something yellow, plastic. The only letters I could make out were TO on one line and then below it IPS. Potato chips. Why would the remnants of a bag be lodged in the joists? I knew an arsonist who loved potato chips. They burn fast and hot and tend to get overlooked because they are in almost every kitchen in America.
We got up slowly and then dashed to the Ghia. I drove back toward Hyannis with one eye in the rearview. We passed a State Police Ford and a Barnstable cop as they prowled looking for someone shooting a rifle. We drove to the ferry not saying much. Dampness, mud clung to my knees, and she was spattered with it also.
When we got to the ferry, I waited with her. We didn’t have much to say to each other and we didn’t hold hands. I walked her to the gangway, and Shelly started up it. Then she stopped and came back to kiss me. It was a short, hard kiss on the lips, the type that says goodbye.
“Tomcat . . .” She stopped, bought some time by brushing grass off of my back. “Tomcat, I don’t know if . . . if you . . . Tomcat . . . you are a nice man . . . no. No, you aren’t nice, but you are likable. I just don’t think I am cut out for your sort of life.” She kissed me, turned on her heel and walked up the gangway. She didn’t look back. As I was walking away, I heard a familiar voice.
“Hey, man. Did you find the guy you were looking for?” It was the hippie, Ed Harriet.
“No, not yet.”
“Oh, cool. You going back to the island?” His eyes were twinkling.
“No, I was just here seeing a friend off.”
“Oh, cool man. I hope it was a
real bang.” He looked at me, holding my gaze for a second, and then said, “Good-bye, man.” Then he turned and walked over to his truck, the green one with the wood. He started it and slowly drove it onto the ferry. I wondered if the hippie had a rifle in his truck.
I drove back to Boston. Did Harriet shoot at us and, if not, I wondered who had. I was certain that the fire at the Silvia place had been arson. But who, or why? Was it Shelly’s ex taking potshots at us? We would have been hard to miss for anyone who knew what they were doing. Her ex didn’t strike me as the sort who knew what he was doing. Neither did Harriet. As usual, I had more questions than answers.
The drive was uneventful. I got a crick in my neck from constantly watching the rearview mirror. Traffic was as good as it gets for Boston, and I made good time. I let myself into the apartment and started the process of trying to piece it together.
I called Danny and after a bit I got through to him. After I got done telling him what I had and why I thought we shouldn’t pack it in just yet, the handset to my phone exploded in my ear.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you fucking kidding me? What sort of shit is this? You not only don’t find the guy, you piss off some broad’s boyfriend, and you want me to keep the case open? No, fuck no.”
“Danny, come on. Someone torched that house. Someone shot at me. Those aren’t coincidences.”
“You call yourself a detective. You found a piece of a potato chip bag at a fire. That is a pretty fucking far stretch to turn that into arson.”
“Then who shot at us?”
“You were fucking someone else’s girlfriend. I would shoot at you, too.”
“Come on, man.”
“No, Andy. You fucked up. You own it. For once in your life take some responsibility for your mistakes. Don’t blame your dad, your mom, or Vietnam. You screwed this one up and now you are reaching, clutching at straws, so you don’t have to feel bad. You fucked this up. No one else.” He was yelling and he slammed the phone down. Danny was pissed. He wasn’t the type to yell and slam phones down. He was so angry I never got the chance to tell him about the FBI’s visit.
