“You’re not even a cop any more. What do you care anyway?”
“I told you. The same reason Flanigan came here. Because of Susan. Because of what you did to her.”
“You schmuck.” Myers permitted himself a short laugh, and began to turn away, his eyes on McGuire. “You dumb schmuck.”
McGuire saw the reaction of Myers at the sight of the woman in the trench coat, her head up, her hands in her pockets, her attractive face creased with anger and moist with tears.
“One of your horses?” McGuire said. Christine Diamond had stopped a few feet below Myers, blocking his route back to the car. “Is this one of your good horses, Myers?”
The anger faded from Christine’s face. Her shoulders sagged and her chest began to heave with sobs so heavy that her words were fluid, hardly intelligible. “How could you?” she said to Myers.
“Hey, come on . . .” Myers began.
“It’s gone.” The woman’s voice rose to a shriek. “It’s gone, all of it. Everything Bert left for my babies, it’s all gone!”
“It’s not gone,” Myers said, but he was looking past her at the blonde woman who had stepped out of the Cadillac and stood watching from the base of the rise. “I gave you the papers, the certificates . . .”
“They’re forgeries! Every one of them . . .”
“Who told you that?” Myers was looking for another path, one that would permit him to escape the woman’s fury. He glanced behind him at McGuire, who had positioned himself to block his retreat in that direction. “Look, I got places to go,” Myers said. He turned back towards Christine Diamond.
“With that woman down there in your car? How much do you plan to get out of her?” She was trembling now, her sobs buried within her anger and rage.
McGuire moved to a location where he could read and memorize the license number of the Cadillac. Behind him, he heard Myers speak in a low voice, then Christine Diamond shout again, an explosion of rage and anger: “Don’t you have any heart at all? Don’t you?”
“What the hell are you doing?”
McGuire turned to see Christine Diamond holding the same small black automatic she had pointed at him back at her house. She was aiming it at Myers’s stomach and crying. The gun wavered from side to side as sentences tumbled from her mouth in fragments: “Everything’s gone . . . you lied and lied and lied . . . How could you?” and she fired.
Myers stepped back and watched the red stain on his white shirt grow and expand. He looked back at McGuire, an expression of fear on his face that transformed into something else, and McGuire pictured a small boy who had just been spanked.
Myers turned to flee, one hand at his stomach, the other flailing ahead of him as though pulling him forward and out of danger. From the bottom of the hill McGuire heard a wail, high and piercing, and he wondered for a moment as he scrambled back along the path how an ambulance could have arrived so quickly, until he recognized the sound not as a siren but as a woman’s voice, screaming in fear from beside the Cadillac.
Christine Diamond fired again. The bullet exploded on the ground near the bench where McGuire had waited for Myers. Its impact forced Myers to scramble to his right, away from it, and as he did, he stumbled forward onto his stomach.
Another shot struck Myers in the back and a second scream, lower in pitch and even heavier in anguish, escaped from Myers’s throat as McGuire reached Christine Diamond. He seized her wrist in his hand and pointed the gun at the ground, while her finger squeezed the trigger over and over until the little automatic was empty. She stared at McGuire, seeing him for the first time. “I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t care what happens to me now. Do you see?”
McGuire nodded and assured her that he saw.
Twenty feet away, Myers writhed on the ground, his body twisting like an impaled snake’s, and his voice a guttural cry of agony.
On the street below the hillock, as traffic stopped and pedestrians ran in all directions, some towards the shooting scene, others away from it in fear, the blonde woman shrieked and pounded the roof of the Cadillac, over and over.
The police first interviewed McGuire at the scene, where they discovered him seated on the bench, cradling Christine Diamond in his arms. Later, back in the state police office, they asked him all the usual questions.
When he finished answering their questions, he called Revere Beach and described the scene to Ollie and Susan, who begged him to return quickly, and he promised he would. When he hung up, two state officers announced that Myers had died on the operating-room table, and that Christine Diamond was being charged with first-degree murder.
“It won’t stick,” McGuire said. “A first-degree won’t stick.” They asked him to let them do their business, so McGuire nodded. “How much did he get away with? From her?”
“The woman says over four hundred thousand dollars,” one of the troopers said. “If you believe it.” He removed his trooper hat, revealing hair trimmed within a few millimeters of his skull. McGuire guessed the trooper’s age at twenty-two, twenty-three max.
“You don’t?” McGuire said.
“Her husband left it for her kids,” the trooper responded. “In trust. She couldn’t legally lay a hand on it.” He shrugged. “Hell, any damn fool can figure it out.”
“Obviously I’m not any damn fool,” McGuire said. “So explain it to me.”
The other trooper, older than the first but still yet to reach thirty years of age, spoke in a voice that said he was annoyed, either with McGuire’s obtuseness or his persistence. “The husband died last year. By the time the estate was settled and the bills paid off, all she had left was the house. So she had to go to work selling boats to support herself. Meanwhile, each of her kids got two hundred thousand dollars in trust that she could invest but she couldn’t touch, she was just a co-executor along with a lawyer. It’s pretty clear what happened. She teams up with this guy Myers, he gets some phony stock certificates printed, she tells the lawyer Myers is on the level, and they both get their hands on the money.”
“That’s what you think?” McGuire said. “That she was in on it? To get her hands on the money in the trust fund for her children?”
“She’s the one who took the documents to the lawyer,” the first trooper said, “as security for the loan. They were supposed to be worth six hundred thousand. She talked the lawyer into holding them and releasing the money.”
“She didn’t know they were phony,” McGuire said.
The older trooper snorted. “That’s what she’s saying.”
“You really think a woman, bright as she is, would fall for a story from a guy like that?” the younger trooper said. He bent from the waist towards McGuire, as though he didn’t want McGuire to miss a word. “You think she would trust him with that much money, all the cash she’s got in the world, that her husband left for the kids, without wanting to get her hands on some of it herself? You think a woman would do that and not know that he’s pissing it away on new cars and bookies and gifts for her and probably other women?”
McGuire lowered his face into his hands. My God, he thought to himself. They’re not only making them younger every day, they’re making them more stupid, too.
“Maybe she was just jealous,” one of the troopers was saying. “We’re looking into that. The victim, he was engaged to that woman who was waiting for him at the car.”
“The blonde woman,” McGuire said without looking up.
“They were leaving for the Bahamas tomorrow. Apparently he has some investments there. They were going to run a yacht charter or something.”
“You a betting man?” McGuire looked up and smiled at the trooper.
“No sir, I’m not.”
“Too bad,” McGuire said. “Because I’ll bet my ass against every dollar you can raise between here and Nassau that Myers has no investment money anywhere. There’s a better chance th
at he would launch a yacht charter in Las Vegas than in the Bahamas. A month from now that blonde woman, whoever she is, would find herself by the side of the road with nothing to her name but her underwear, if that.” He stood up. “Now, can I get the hell out of here? I’d like to get back to Boston, where cops are cynical about things, and have a right to be.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
McGuire and Susan were making chili the next afternoon when Burnell called from Berkeley Street. “Thought you should know,” the young detective told McGuire, “that we just heard from Annapolis police. Myers had been staying at Christine Diamond’s house, and he was there the day Flanigan arrived. Mrs. Diamond had taken the children to Baltimore that day, with a school excursion.”
“Myers must have said something to get Flanigan over there when the lawyer phoned.”
“Maybe said she couldn’t come to the telephone. If Myers didn’t use his real name, Flanigan wouldn’t have known who he was going to meet. Anyway, it sounds as though Myers gave Flanigan directions to the house. Flanigan shows up, maybe Myers gives him the same story he gave you, finds out why he’s there, realizes the game is up, and gets Flanigan down to the dock or the boathouse.”
“Hits Flanigan on the back of the head and holds him under the water.”
“You can drive right down to the dock there, apparently,” Burnell said. “To launch boats. He could have driven Flanigan’s rented car down there, put the body in the trunk, and headed north. The Diamond woman, she remembers that Myers wasn’t there when she got back from Baltimore late in the day. The waitress at that bar you visited? She says Myers called, asked her to drive his car north and pick him up.”
The next day, McGuire went shopping. From a downtown used-car dealer he chose a ten-year-old sedan with good tires, a better stereo system, and an interior that smelled like pine trees.
On the way back to Revere Beach, he thought about taking Susan away for a few days. To Cape Cod, perhaps. Or in the opposite direction. A night in Cape Ann, then on to Maine. They could find a bed-and-breakfast in one of those coastal towns where the September air is so crisp in the morning you can see your breath, and warm afternoons that send you in search of an ice-cream parlour and maybe a beach to walk on.
“What do you think?” he asked Susan. They were sitting on the back porch of Ollie’s house, drinking coffee.
“It sounds terrific,” Susan said. Then: “I don’t know though . . .”
“If it sounds so good, why do you say you don’t know?”
She set her coffee cup down and looked away. “I think I’d like to go back to the halfway house for a while,” she said. “They’re holding my room until the end of the month.”
“You don’t like sleeping with me?”
She reached a hand to him. “I love sleeping with you.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
She stroked her forehead, as though she felt pain there. “Thomas called while you were out.”
“Thomas?” Then McGuire remembered. “Your ex-husband.”
She nodded. “The children, Jamie and Belinda, they . . . well, they keep asking about me. When I’m coming back. Belinda hasn’t stopped crying since we left. Thomas said he and Sylvia had a talk. She’s a good woman, you can see that. She agreed that the children should see more of me.”
“We can go back for visits.”
“I’m thinking of more than that.” She breathed deeply, as though inhaling courage. “I checked with the supervisor at the halfway house. She said if I can obtain clearance from the court, I can move out of state.”
McGuire understood. “To Arizona.”
“Yes. I loved it there. We could go together.”
“Arizona?” McGuire tried to imagine himself moving there, and couldn’t. “Isn’t it easier to stay here, and visit?”
“I need a job. I need a means of support.” She bit her lip. “I need to see my children more than two or three times a year.”
McGuire shook his head. “I couldn’t move to Arizona. I couldn’t imagine living there. No ocean, no snow. No police buddies.”
“I’m going, Joe. I loved it there.”
“I know. I can tell.”
“I would prefer that you came with me.”
McGuire shook his head. “How about I visit now and then?”
“I wish you would. I hope you will.”
McGuire drove Susan back to the halfway house that evening. She had called Thomas that afternoon.
“It will take a couple of weeks for me to get the papers in order,” she said. “Thomas says the children are so excited they can hardly sit still. He says there are lots of jobs there. I can get an apartment in Tucson. Can we still go to the Cape together before I leave? Will you promise to come and see me in Arizona when I’m settled? You know how terrible it gets here in November, it’s so cold and damp. Wouldn’t you like to get away for a few days then? You might even get to like it there.” When he smiled and shook his head, she pulled him towards her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He arrived back at Revere Beach after ten o’clock to find Ronnie’s car in the driveway. Inside, she was seated at the kitchen table, looking through a box of old photographs. From the upstairs bedroom, McGuire heard the repetitive thumping of Liz Worthington’s portable stereo.
“Look at this picture of Ollie,” Ronnie said. She held a photograph for him to see. It was as though she had never left, as though McGuire had just returned from a walk around the block. “You took this, didn’t you? It was Ollie’s birthday, and you and Dave Sadowsky and Bernie what’s-his-name . . .”
“Lipson.”
“Bernie Lipson. A nice man. You took Ollie to that bar on Newbury for his birthday . . .”
“What are you doing here?” McGuire pulled up a chair and sat down.
“I came back to check up on my husband.”
“You moved out.”
“I know.” She gathered the photographs together, like a deck of cards. “You don’t have to tell me that.” She looked up at the ceiling. “God, can’t somebody tell that woman to turn that music off? She’s terrible, Joe. She’s not feeding Ollie right, she’s not taking care of him . . .”
“Not the way you did. Ollie’s all right. How are you doing?”
“Fine.” She looked at him and smiled. “Terrible. I’m fine and I’m terrible, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I thought you had a live-in girlfriend. Ollie told me about her. Where is she?”
“On her way to Arizona.” McGuire told her about Susan’s plan to move closer to her children.
“You can visit her,” Ronnie said. “You two can work something out. A lot of people do.”
“So I hear,” McGuire said.
Don Higgins fast-tracked Susan’s request for a waiver of her travel restrictions. Within a week she was free to leave Massachusetts. She would register with the parole office in Arizona and keep the office in Massachusetts informed of her address there.
“I can leave any time,” she said. “Maybe after we go away for a week, up north somewhere.”
“Go now,” McGuire said. “Go as soon as you can.”
“I thought you would say that,” she said. “I knew you would say that.”
The day after McGuire drove Susan to the airport and stood watching her walk through the gate to the aircraft, and stood long enough to see the jet take off and turn west before driving to Zoot’s, where he sat alone for an hour and drank only soda water, Ronnie arrived home again. She was there when McGuire arrived.
“I can’t make it work,” she said when he walked through the door. She was at the kitchen table.
“With Carl?” McGuire said.
“Without Ollie. So we’ve been talking, Ollie and me.” She had been back for visits each day for a week, spending her time in Ollie’s room, banishing the nurse while she was
there. “We have an arrangement.” She smiled with more irony than pleasure. “I’m moving back. We’ll have a nurse to spell me a couple of days a week.”
“And you’ll keep seeing Carl.”
She nodded. “Now and then. Believe it or not, I think it will be harder on Carl than on me.”
“I believe it. What will you tell Ollie when you’re not here?”
“Nothing. We have a deal. Don’t ask. Don’t tell.”
“I’ve heard about deals like that.”
“That nurse, Liz, she’s leaving today.”
“Darn. Just when I’m starting to like Eminem.”
“So we’re back where we were a month ago, you and me and Ollie.”
“Almost,” McGuire said.
She rose from her chair. “I bought some of those pastries you like,” she said. “Those little pecan tarts full of butter and sugar. And there’s fresh coffee made. Ollie was asking when you’d get home. The baseball playoffs are on television.” She looked at her watch. “They just started. Why don’t you go in and watch them with him? Take some tarts and coffee with you.”
He walked to her and hugged her. “You know what Ollie used to call you, down on Berkeley Street?” He stood back and looked at her, his hands on her shoulders. “You know what he’d say after bragging about something you did for him, or something you’d said to him?”
“What?”
“He’d say you were a good broad.”
“Wonderful. I’m a good broad.”
“It’s his highest compliment to a woman.”
“I know. Isn’t it disgusting?” She held his face in her hands. “Isn’t that a terrible thing for a lady like me to put up with?” Then she walked to the cupboard and took down a coffee mug and a small plate.
A minute later, McGuire was walking down the hall to Ollie’s room, a coffee in one hand, a plate of fattening pastries in the other. “That you Joseph?” Ollie called through the partially opened door.
“Nobody else,” McGuire said.
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