Mary, Mary, Shut the Door

by Benjamin M. Schutz

  “Mind if we join you?”

  “Who the fuck are you two clowns?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Matt said and slid into the booth.

  “We’re detectives, Mr. Docherty. And we have a mystery only you can solve.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Why were you and Damien Sylvester going to get married?”

  The waitress returned with Docherty’s drink and asked what they wanted. “Coffee. Two,” Sean replied.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “We got a copy of the application.”

  “You did? What else do you know?”

  “We know that Damien owed you money. We don’t know why.”

  “So you say.”

  “No. I heard you talking out at the visitor’s center. We have photos of you two talking.” He ad-libbed.

  “You do?”

  Matt’s phone went off. He pulled it out. It was Sandy Jones. “I’ve got information on Peter Docherty. It’s not good news.”

  Docherty sipped his drink. “You have any tapes of us talking?”

  “No,” Sean said. “So what was it? Did he owe you money for drugs or gambling?”

  Docherty smiled and reached into his pocket.

  “My theory was it was a plot to blackmail his mother into not changing her trust.”

  “Docherty’s a contractor for the Boston mob. He’s been linked to three killings but never indicted.”

  Matt nodded, never taking his eyes off of Docherty.

  “That’s great, Sandy. You have all the information we sent you on Docherty, right? The application, all our reports, the photos? Good. No, we’ll be in the office, bright and early Monday to sign all those reports. We just have a couple of loose ends to tie up with Mr. Docherty. In fact, he’s here with us right now. Anything you’d like to ask him?”

  Docherty removed his hand from his jacket. “Put that away,” he whispered.

  “Tell you what, Sandy. Call me back here in five minutes. If I don’t pick up, call the cops in Provincetown.” He gave her the motel’s name and address.

  “Very smart. You know, one thing about our lines of work, you have to be able to improvise.” Docherty finished his drink. “Lots of things happen when you get married. Like you inherit your spouse’s estate, when they die, god forbid. Kind of a nice way to insure payment for services rendered. You also get the protection of spousal privilege. You can’t be compelled to disclose a conversation you’ve had with your loved one. You can’t even waive that protection. You’re covered even if you’re both engaged in a criminal conspiracy. They take the sanctity of marriage very seriously around here. It even survives after divorce. Like a lifetime vow of silence. Lesson’s over. You’re bright boys, you connect the dots.”

  The waitress arrived with the coffees. Docherty paid for his drink and stood up to leave.

  “A final word. You got lucky here. You don’t have any evidence of a crime. Nothing was said to Mr. Sylvester, because we weren’t married yet. But you really fucked up my retirement plans. Cost me a lot of money. Too many people know about you and me for me to do anything about that now. But, if I ever see either of you again, I’ll kill you, no questions asked. Have a nice trip home.”

  When they were sure he was gone, they slowly turned to face each other. It was Matt who broke the silence. “I don’t know about you, Sean, but I think we just earned every penny.”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I’d like to thank defense attorney extraordinaire Peter Greenspun and the queen of private investigators, Joan Beach, for their help with this story. Any errors are entirely my responsibility.

  What Goes Around

  In the darkness things always go away from you. Memory holds you down while regret and sorrow kick hell out of you.

  James Sallis, The Long-Legged Fly

  Trickle down was so much bullshit. If you let the rich get richer then some of that money just had to trickle down through their tightly clenched fists. The only thing that “trickled down” as the economy came to a halt was misery. A monsoon of misery. Lost jobs, lost homes, lost dreams, lost hopes. All of which was good for business. My business, private investigation.

  I was going through our weekly collections, counting up the slow pays, deciding which ones we were going to put on hold, who we were going to introduce to our lawyers.

  “Call for you, Leo, line one,” my secretary, Kelly, announced over the intercom.

  I picked up the phone. “This is Leo Haggerty, what can I do for you?”

  “Mr. Haggerty, my name is Gina Logan, we met once before …”

  “Where was that?”

  “The Virginia Investigators License Course last year. You taught the section on professional ethics and liability.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I was the one who talked to you after the class.”

  “The adoptee, right?”

  “Yes, that’s right. I’m surprised you remembered me.”

  “You asked some very good questions. Did you ever find your mother?”

  “Uh, yes I did.”

  I thought about asking her how it had gone, but didn’t. A triumph she would have already declared; a fiasco was none of my business.

  “Well, how can I help?”

  “I’d like to buy a little of your time, if I could. I need a consultation. I think I’ve made a big mistake that might cost me my license.”

  “Okay. How much of a rush is there? I’m just about ready to leave the office. Can it wait until tomorrow?”

  “I don’t think so. Is there any way we can meet this evening?”

  “Tell you what. I’m going over to Artie’s for dinner. Can you meet me there in say thirty minutes?”

  “Sure, whatever you say.”

  “Okay. The manager’s name is John, tell him you’re meeting me. If you get there first, ask for the last booth on the upper level and ask him to keep the one next to it empty.”

  “Sure thing. Listen, thank you very much. I’ll look for you there.”

  Artie’s was my favorite restaurant. Its fine food and bustling crowds were welcome antidotes to my life alone. A year’s worth of meals there had earned me some consideration.

  I finished my work with the billing logs, reviewed tomorrow’s schedule with Kelly, and left to meet Gina Logan.

  On the way over, I tried to remember what she had looked like. Nothing came to me. I’d check her ID anyway. I parked at Artie’s, entered, and waved to John. The end booth was empty. I pointed to it and he nodded that it was fine.

  I slid in and John came over. We shook hands and I asked him if he could keep the next booth empty.

  “Sure. You working?”

  “Yeah. I’ll try to keep it brief.”

  “No problem. Just let us know when we can open it up.”

  “Thanks, John.”

  I ordered the calamari and waited for Gina Logan. Fifteen minutes later I looked up from my plate to see a woman standing there.

  “Mr. Haggerty, I’m Gina Logan.” She put out her hand. I stood partway up, shook it, and motioned for her to join me.

  She set her bag aside, took off her raincoat and said, “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice. I really appreciate it.”

  “No problem. Why don’t you tell me what your situation is? Don’t give me any particulars, keep it real general,” I said and forked some squid into my mouth.

  “Okay. I’m a free-lance investigator. I’ve been trying to supplement that with direct referrals, maybe start my own shop some day. Anyway, about ten days ago I got one, my first one, in fact. So I met with the client. He tells me he thinks his wife is having an affair. He wants me to follow her to see if it’s true. He’s going out of town for the weekend, a business trip. It’s the perfect opportunity for her if it’s true. So I got the details on the wife, a retainer for two days of my time, and I tailed her.”

  “When did you start?”

  “The next day. He was going
from my office to the airport. This was Thursday evening. I started with her around eleven-thirty.”

  “In case she was having a nooner.”

  “Right.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Well, she wasn’t going out on her lunch break, but …”

  A waiter appeared to fill her water glass and ask if she wanted a menu.

  “No, thank you. A cup of coffee would be nice though.”

  “Anything else for you, Mr. Haggerty?”

  Yeah, a refresher course on manners. “No, I’m fine for now.” I set my fork down.

  When the waiter left, I looked up from my plate. “Sorry, that was rude of me. I guess I’ve been eating alone too long.”

  “No need to apologize, I’m fine. I never eat this early anyway.”

  “Well, if you change your mind …”

  “Thanks, but coffee will be fine.”

  “So, you were saying …”

  “Where was I … oh, right, she didn’t leave her office for lunch but at five she came out of the front of the building, stood on the sidewalk for a couple of minutes, and was met by a man.”

  “Not her husband.”

  “Not even close. They walked down the street to a restaurant with a bar, went in, had a few drinks, stayed for dinner, then went back to his car. He drove her to her car and followed her home. Where he spent the night, departing around ten-thirty the next morning.”

  “You’ve got opportunity and inclination. Job well done. You confirmed that the guy wasn’t her cousin or brother, right?”

  “Yes. I did stay awake through your lecture, you know.” She smiled.

  “Apparently. I hope it wasn’t too difficult to do.”

  “Not at all. Your stories were a great relief. At least, to me they were. To know what kind of mistakes you’d made over the course of your career, and what you’d learned from them. That was why I called you. I figured that if anyone would understand how I’d gotten myself into this jam, you would. I even have a quote from your lecture on my desk. I start off each day looking at it.”

  “What did I say? I’ll be honest, I didn’t prepare that talk. I was winging it.”

  “You said, ‘It’s not the mistakes you make, but what you make of them that’s important. Nothing will make you a better detective, faster, than a good mistake, if you let it.’”

  I thought about all the qualifiers I’d trim that brave talk with now, but kept them to myself.

  “So far, you’ve done everything right. Where’s the mistake?”

  “You asked if I checked the guy out, right? I did. I ran his plates through DMV and got his name, address, and so on. Monday I called him, posing as a cosmetics salesperson, and found out that he had no female family in the area who could use our free samples. Anyway, Monday evening my client calls me and I have to give him the bad news. I’ve done this before, so I go into my newscaster imitation, and give him the facts, no nonsense, straight out, boom-boom. I tell him I have pictures if he needs them. I was down in my bunker waiting for the explosion. You know how it is when they first find out. It’s either hiccups and tears and it can’t be true or they go ballistic and every other word is kill or fucking fill-in-the-blank. This guy was only interested in who the man was. He was convinced it was someone he knew, either at work or a friend. He just wanted to know who it was and whether he’d been betrayed twice.”

  “And you said that knowing who it was really wasn’t going to help anything, that he needed to decide what he wanted to do about this and if he’d have his lawyer contact you, you’d discuss the evidence you had.”

  “Right, but he said he couldn’t decide what he wanted to do until he knew what he was dealing with and then he started asking me questions, you know the gory-detail ones that nobody needs to know. Did they do this, did they do that. I couldn’t stand it, he was tearing himself apart …”

  “So, you told him the name of the guy.”

  She pursed her mouth and nodded. “Yeah, I told him who the guy was. He was real grateful, it wasn’t anyone he knew. He said he’d discuss it with his lawyer and get back to me.”

  “And?”

  “And I didn’t hear back from the guy or his lawyer.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “A week. That’s too long. If you’ve got a lawyer and you tell him what’s happened and what you’ve got, the lawyer is going to tell you to go with it. If you act on it immediately, you’ve got all the leverage.”

  “Maybe the guy hasn’t called his attorney yet. Maybe he’s mulling it over, maybe he and the wife are getting into therapy instead. Maybe he wasn’t such a great husband in the first place.”

  “I wish. No, I got antsy and I started thinking about things. The more I thought about them the less I liked what I was thinking.”

  “Which was?”

  “That the wife and her boyfriend didn’t seem at all self-conscious about their displays of affection. They met right in front of her office and kissed very openly on the sidewalk. Suppose a co-worker came out? Anyway the kicker was when I called the DMV back. I ran her plates and asked for any other cars registered at that address. None. No car. No hubby.”

  “Did you have his plates?”

  “No. He said he was leaving his car at the airport. She’d only have the other one to use.”

  “Maybe his car is a company car.”

  “No. I went by the house yesterday, caught the mailman. He says she lives alone. He never delivers mail to anyone but her at that address.”

  “So your client lied to you and you’re afraid that …”

  “He’s a stalker and he’s going to use the information I gave him to hurt someone, probably the boyfriend.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “First, can I tell the boyfriend what’s happened and that he might be in danger? Is that a breach of client confidentiality? Secondly, am I at any risk if this guy hurts someone?”

  “First things first. Let me see your investigator’s license and your driver’s license.”

  “Why?”

  “Because all the time I’ve been listening I haven’t been able to picture you at the lecture. Oh, I remember talking to someone but I can’t physically place you, so before I open my mouth and get into this mess, I want to be sure you are you.”

  “Oh.” She took being forgotten pretty well, and pulled her licenses out of her wallet and handed them to me.

  Gina Logan was licensed by the State of Virginia as a private investigator. The start date was right for the course she claimed to have taken. I looked at the back of her driver’s license and memorized her address, date of birth, and social security number. The picture was a good likeness: large deep-set eyes ringed in shadows; pale skin contrasting with her plum red lips. Any more color on them would look like a hemorrhage. Her license said brown and brown, five-five and one hundred and ten pounds. My eyes agreed, but there were pewter streaks in her hair.

  “Okay. First question. You don’t owe your client squat. He hired you under false pretenses and that voids the contract, explicit or implicit, that governs your services. You won’t be violating a client’s confidence by talking to the target because your client’s behavior has waived that protection.

  “Second question. Are you at risk if someone gets hurt? Yes. The vicarious liability laws would extend to you if information you gave led to an injury.”

  “So, I shouldn’t have told him the guy’s name.”

  “Yup.”

  “I guess I should contact the guy and warn him right away.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because this may be only half of the problem.”

  She frowned for a moment. Then she said, “I don’t understand. What’s the rest of the problem?”

  “I’ve been doing this work for almost twenty years and this has happened to me two, maybe three times. Your first case and you get set up this well. I don’t think so. How did this guy find you?”

  �
��He said he looked me up in the yellow pages.”

  “Nobody referred him to you?”

  “No.”

  “Think about that for a second. What does your listing say?”

  “My name and number.”

  “Address?”

  “No. I work out of—”

  “Your home and you’re a single woman, no ring on your left hand, and don’t want clients to have that information. Just the way I recommended in the lecture.

  “Without a referral, people go through the phone book and find an agency by location. Then they compare rates over the phone and go to the nearest and cheapest. If they feel comfortable after the first interview, you’ve got a client. Did you talk money over the phone with him?”

  “No, I was so excited to have a client, I forgot. I made sure that we talked about it first thing when we met.”

  “And he had no problem with your fees, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s your client’s name?”

  “Todd Berman.”

  “I’ll tell you what else your client didn’t do. He didn’t go through the yellow pages alphabetically. Franklin Investigations would be before you and we didn’t get a call like this in the last week. If we had, we’d have taken the case and it wouldn’t have gotten to you. So it wasn’t a referral, it wasn’t your ad, and it wasn’t alphabetical. Only one other way this guy found you.”

  “And that is?”

  “Somebody sent him to you. Somebody who doesn’t like you. Not one bit. If I was you, I’d like to know who that is. Then figure out what I want to do about it.”

  “Yeah, I’d like to know that. Do you have any ideas?”

  “First, let’s keep you away from the target. Your client knows what you look like. If he sees you near the guy, he’ll know his story was blown. That’s okay as far as him not hurting anyone, but once he backs off it’ll be twice as hard to find out who set you up. Why don’t I contact the guy? I can warn him without your client wising up. That way we may still be able to flush out whoever has it in for you.”

  “Okay. What can I do?”

  “Right now, nothing. I’m going to call some other people in town tomorrow. See if any of them had contact with this Berman guy before you. Try to trace his steps looking for a P.I. If that turns anything up, you can do the legwork on it.”