Haunted Hearts

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  The dark-haired woman watched as he opened the file, which held perhaps two dozen typed pages. Then, throwing a look at the other secretary, she rose from her chair, walked to Fred King’s office, knocked lightly, keeping her eyes on McGuire, and entered.

  McGuire flipped through the sheets, each headed by the name of a Zimmerman, Wheatley and Pratt lawyer, listing senior partners first, then full partners, and finally staff lawyers, all in alphabetical order. He located Barry Cassidy’s sheet just as Fred King’s door opened. The lawyer stood buttoning his jacket. The secretary named Marie stood behind him, her arms folded. “Bit of research, Joe?” King said.

  “Public records,” McGuire said. “Nothing I couldn’t find in a lawyer’s Who’s Who.” He began reading:

  CASSIDY, BARRY JEROME MONTROSE, B.A., LL.B.; b. Boston, MA, 28 Oct. 1967, s. William S. (M.D.) and Helen (Montrose); educ. Rutland, Boston College (B.A. 1988), Yale (LL.B. 1991) . . .

  King’s voice was closer now. “Dick Pinnington and I had a talk a few minutes ago,” King said. “There’s nothing for you to be doing here, is there?”

  McGuire took a step away from the lawyer and continued reading.

  Admitted to the bar 1993, attended state conference on corporate litigation 1996, member Massachusetts Law Society 1997, recording secretary Greater Boston Republican Lawyers’ Advisory Group 1998 . . .

  “McGuire, I don’t believe you are to have access to documentation of any kind without Dick Pinnington’s permission.” King was walking towards him in measured strides. He whispered something to Marie, who nodded and reached for her telephone.

  The woman with copper-coloured hair sat watching the scene, a hand to her mouth.

  Member Mass. General Hospital Volunteer Citizens’ Organization 1998, Chairperson corporate law review sub-committee of Yale Law School Alumni Association 1998-9, contributor “Data Analysis Impact on Corporate Law” Yale Law School Review March–April 1999 . . .

  “Give me the file.” King was approaching McGuire, his hand outstretched, and with his next glance McGuire discovered what he had been looking for, or at least had hoped to find, and there it was.

  Committee member Prospect Hill Community Recreational Council. Married to Kirsten Maureen, daughter of Michael and Maureen De Coursey, Boston, MA. . . .

  McGuire closed the file and tossed it at King. Several sheets of paper spilled from it onto the floor. “All yours, Fred,” he said. “You might want to read the part about Cassidy. You know that fair-haired twit down the hall? If he doesn’t find his name listed as a partner here next month, he might find his ass in jail.”

  He trotted downstairs and called Sleeman again, who told him what he needed to know. “I know the name,” he said, meaning the name on the court document he had accessed. “Didn’t know she had anything to do with Father Frank.”

  “Maybe she didn’t,” McGuire said. “Maybe he was just bragging about it.”

  “Sure as hell didn’t brag about it to the judge.”

  After McGuire hung up, he savoured both a final cup of coffee and a vaguely reassuring feeling of victory before returning upstairs. He walked past Pinnington’s secretary and through the partially open door to find Pinnington behind his desk, making notes on lined sheets of paper in a three-ring binder. Pratt stood nearby, speaking softly into Pinnington’s telephone. Fred King was slouched in one of the wing chairs.

  “We’re cutting you a check,” Pinnington said after glancing up. He appeared to be expecting McGuire. “For your three months of service. We’ll want you to sign a release . . .”

  “Make it certified,” McGuire said.

  “Make what certified?” Pinnington looked up from his notes. King’s smile metamorphosed into a smirk.

  “The check. I want it certified.” McGuire looked across at King and returned the cold smile.

  “You think Zimmerman, Wheatley would bounce a check for a lousy fifteen thousand dollars?” King said.

  “Probably not,” McGuire nodded. “But I want to cash it today for a chunk of money. It’ll be easier if it’s certified.”

  “You’re a goddamn pain,” Pinnington muttered, not lifting his head.

  “Pain, hell,” McGuire said. “Up to now I’ve been a mild itch.”

  Pinnington looked at McGuire again, his eyebrows arched, and McGuire waited until Pratt finished speaking on the telephone and replaced the receiver. “There’s some information in Orin Flanigan’s files I want,” McGuire said.

  King snorted. Pratt looked from McGuire to Pinnington and back again.

  “Well, forget it,” Pinnington said. “First, Orin’s files are possible evidence in his murder investigation, and second, I wouldn’t let you read our telephone directory right now . . .”

  “He grabbed the personnel file right out of Marie’s hand,” King said from the corner.

  “You want the check certified, come back in an hour,” Pinnington said.

  “I want an address from Orin’s file.” McGuire stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at each of the men in turn. “It has nothing to do with Flanigan’s murder.”

  “I said forget it,” Pinnington said.

  “Whose address?” Pratt asked. His voice was soft, his manner wary.

  “Thomas Schaeffer,” McGuire said. “Flanigan acted for him in a child-custody case about two years ago.”

  “Schaeffer?” Pinnington frowned at McGuire. “Let me guess. He’s Susan Schaeffer’s former husband.”

  McGuire nodded.

  “You’re nuts,” King said. “That’s a breach of confidentiality, especially if the client gave specific instructions not to reveal his whereabouts. No lawyer in town would agree to that. Why don’t you just clear your desk out . . .”

  “I’m trading something for it,” McGuire said.

  “Like what?” It was Pratt. He rested one buttock on Pinnington’s desk.

  “The fact that your boy Barry Cassidy not only has a serious conflict of interest with a client . . .”

  “Cassidy?” It was King, his mouth open and his eyes swinging from Pinnington to McGuire and back again.

  “You’ve really got it in for him, haven’t you?” Pinnington said.

  “What else?” Pratt said.

  “He may have been involved in concealing criminal activity . . .” McGuire began.

  “What is this crap?” King said, still smiling.

  “Why don’t you just get the hell out of here?” Pinnington slammed the binder closed.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” It was Pratt. His arms were folded across his chest and he leaned towards McGuire but spoke to King. “Close the door,” he said. Then to McGuire: “What are you talking about?”

  McGuire waited for King to return and stand beside Pinnington. “Cassidy is married to a woman, Kirsten, I believe her name is,” he said. “Her maiden name is De Coursey. He gave me documents to examine on a company called Amherst Electronics, a customer of one of your clients, Saugus Incorporated . . .”

  “Ray Finkle’s company,” Pratt said to Pinnington.

  “Amherst is owned by TriTech, a holding company headed by a guy named Stoller, who lives in the Caymans.” McGuire paused to look at each of the three men in turn, and when they made no comment, he went on. “TriTech is supported by two silent investors, Boston families. There’s no record of either one on any documents Cassidy gave me. But of course, neither is TriTech. That wouldn’t have been so hard to find anyway. Finding the families was the hard part. One’s named . . .” McGuire removed the crumbled sheet of notepaper from his pocket and glanced at it. “Van der Kramer.” He looked up again and smiled. “The other’s De Coursey.”

  There was a pause while each of the others absorbed McGuire’s news.

  King was the first to act. “Doesn’t mean a thing,” he said, waving his hand in McGuire’s direction.

  “Sure,�
�� McGuire said. “Look it up. There are a dozen De Courseys in the telephone book. I mean, what can the odds be, right?”

  “Where’d you discover this?” Pratt said.

  Pinnington lowered himself into his chair.

  “TriTech is the name Cassidy blacked out on all the documents,” McGuire said. “I didn’t know TriTech owned Amherst, or that they were headquartered in the Caymans, either. I didn’t get that information from Cassidy. As a matter of fact, he did everything he could to keep me from knowing about it. Which is why he also was worried that I might make copies of the stuff he gave me.”

  “A bit of prima facie,” Pratt said.

  “Three of TriTech’s investments have gone broke in the last two years, just like Amherst did.” McGuire looked at each man as he spoke. “Amherst was bought a couple of years ago. All its assets were liquidated and it didn’t pay any suppliers for the last six months. I’m not an accountant, but it sure as hell looked to me as though ten million dollars disappeared from Amherst after it was bought.” His eyes hung on Pinnington. “I’ll bet everything I own against your ass that it’s somewhere in the Caymans, along with ten or twenty million from the other two companies. These guys are running scams and your man Cassidy’s making sure their tracks are covered.”

  Pinnington’s face was a pale mask.

  Only Pratt spoke. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “Here’s what I’m not going to do.” McGuire placed his palms on Pinnington’s desk and leaned forward, looking into Pinnington’s eyes. “I’m not going to let anybody, especially Thomas Schaeffer, know where I obtained his address. If I had a week and a thousand dollars to spare, somebody I know might locate him anyway. But I don’t want to waste the money or the time. The second thing I’m not going to do is, I’m not going to pass copies of my notes along to the Law Society, or to a buddy on the Fraud squad, or to one of the hairball reporters at Eyewitness News, who keep wanting to interview me about last night. I’m not going to tell anybody that, when Amherst Electronics folded, it left a two-million-dollar debt after paying a five-million-dollar dividend to its partner in the Caymans, who just happens to be in bed with a family connected with your heir apparent, Barry Cassidy, B.A., LL.D., Yale alumni, good Republican, future general partner, and all-round dickhead. And who, instead of blowing a whistle or bowing gracefully out of the picture, appears to have used me to confirm that everybody’s nose was clean.” McGuire took a long, slow breath. “That’s what I’m not going to do,” he said. “What I’m going to do now is go to lunch, come back in an hour, clean out my office, pick up my check, and look inside it for Thomas Schaeffer’s address, which I am told is somewhere in Arizona.”

  Susan was waiting for him in a booth, the Globe open in front of her, a half-filled cup of black coffee sitting to one side. McGuire bent to kiss her on the cheek.

  “You’re big news,” she said. The front page of the newspaper showed McGuire’s car being towed from the alley, along with a mug shot of Hayhurst and an old police-file photo of McGuire.

  He shrugged out of his sports jacket, tossed it on the seat, and sat across from her. “What are the terms of your parole? Can you leave the state?”

  “If I have permission, and if I report back when they tell me to.”

  “Permission from whom?”

  “The police.”

  “You might be going to Arizona this weekend.”

  “Why?”

  “To find your ex-husband. To see your kids.”

  When she finished crying, he squeezed her hand, ordered soup and salad for her, a beer and sandwich for himself.

  “You’ll come with me, I assume.”

  “I hope,” McGuire said. “I never assume.”

  When they finished eating, he left her to use the pay telephone and call Frank DeLisle.

  Facing Pinnington and the other lawyers had been almost a joy, a retribution of sorts. Dealing with DeLisle, he knew, would not be so easy.

  DeLisle was waiting for him in the marble foyer on Berkeley Street, the detective tossing peanuts into his mouth from a crumpled paper sack, making small talk with uniformed officers and staff people as they passed.

  “What’s up?” he said when McGuire led him towards an empty corner.

  “You owe somebody a favour,” McGuire said.

  DeLisle tilted his head back and emptied the remaining peanuts into his mouth. He chewed on them while squeezing the empty bag into a tight paper ball. “I owe half of Dorchester Street favours,” he said. He waved and smiled at a woman staff member walking towards an elevator.

  “This one doesn’t live in Dorchester,” McGuire said. “She lived for two years in Cedar Hill.”

  DeLisle looked at McGuire, then down at the crumpled paper in his hand. “Susan Schaeffer. I heard you were seeing her.” He looked up at McGuire. “How’s she doing?”

  “What the hell do you care?”

  DeLisle looked around for a place to dispose of the paper. “I discovered evidence of grand larceny, so I did what I’m supposed to do.”

  “You ever thought about acting as a defense witness for her?”

  “I was prosecution, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Yeah, and you were married, too.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Bit of a problem up there on the stand, right, Frank? Maybe being asked just how you got to know her so well, then going home to the wife, who starts asking questions about those nights you spent on some case, those nights when you were in a bar or somewhere else? Did you ever tell her, your wife, that you went to New York one weekend on an investigation? Is that what you told her?”

  “I don’t need lectures from you, McGuire.”

  “You could have saved her, Frank.”

  DeLisle discovered something interesting about the toes of his shoes.

  “You could have crossed over before sentencing,” McGuire said. “You could have made a difference of two, three years in the sentence, which would have kept her out of Cedar Hill. Maybe you could have got her probation by testifying about the pressure she was under, what Myers was doing. I think it’s called being a friend of the court.”

  “Now you’re talking like a lawyer.”

  “You owe her, you bastard.”

  “I owe her what?”

  “She needs approval to leave the state for a few days. Terms of her parole. You vouch for her, talk to Higgins and his friends, fill out the form, she can go and not worry about getting shafted by the parole board. Can you do that?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because if you do, maybe I’ll forget your wife’s name and telephone number. Carol Ann, right? Isn’t that your wife’s name?”

  DeLisle tilted his head at McGuire. “You plan on taking her someplace, the Schaeffer woman?”

  “Arizona.”

  “What’s in Arizona?”

  “The Grand fucking Canyon.”

  Upstairs, McGuire waited while DeLisle obtained a travel approval, took it from the detective without a word, and bounded up another flight of stairs to the next floor, where he found Donovan and Burnell bent over a computer terminal. The red-haired detective looked up briefly as McGuire approached from across the open office area.

  “You found Myers yet?” McGuire said when he reached Donovan’s desk.

  “Who?” Donovan’s eyes returned to the computer screen. Burnell looked up and nodded at McGuire.

  “Myers. The guy who killed Orin Flanigan.”

  Donovan glanced over at McGuire and grinned. “Thank the man, Carl. Looks like he’s solved another case for us, and he’s not even drawing salary anymore.”

  “Have you talked to him yet?” McGuire said. “Myers?”

  “Don’t know where he is,” Donovan said. “He moved out of his apartment couple of months ago, said he was going to Florida
. Florida doesn’t know about him, but they’re still looking. How’s that?”

  “And you talked to the yacht broker and Christine Diamond.”

  “Both say they don’t know about Myers. They signed sworn statements, so what can I tell you?” Donovan turned back to the computer and began striking keys.

  “You check Flanigan’s telephone records?”

  “None of your damn business.”

  “Anybody see Flanigan in Annapolis?”

  “Nobody we can find. Told the car-rental agency that he was staying in Washington.”

  “You got the autopsy report?”

  “Whose?” Donovan popped a stick of gum into his mouth.

  “Flanigan’s. You got Doitch’s report on him?”

  “It’s here,” Donovan said. “Why? You want to look at it? Some nice pictures in there, if you like looking at bald dead lawyers.”

  “Let me see it.”

  “What’s this, you’re givin’ the city a freebie?”

  “How’d he die?”

  “He drowned, which is what happens if your lungs suck more water than air, right?”

  “Doitch measure the water in Flanigan’s lungs?”

  “To the c.c.,” Donovan said.

  “How much was there?”

  “Look it up in the goddamn file,” Donovan said to the other detective. “Get him out of our hair.”

  Burnell turned to a file drawer and pulled it open, while Donovan tapped at the computer keyboard. “Here it is,” Burnell said to McGuire.

  “Don’t show him the whole thing,” Donovan said. “Just tell him how many gallons Doitch found in Flanigan so he’ll believe he wasn’t cut up with a machete.”

  Burnell flipped through the file to the autopsy report. “Point six three liters,” he said. He looked up at McGuire. “That’s how much water was in the lungs.”

  “What kind?” McGuire said.