In five years I put 120,000 miles on my first Beemer. It took me to trout streams from the Catskills to the Cumberland Valley to Nova Scotia and to most trouty waters in between. It zipped through city streets and slipped into undersize parking slots. It never let me down. When I finally, and reluctantly, realized it was time to turn it in, I was faced with a dilemma.
During the time I had been driving it, my car had somehow become a driving machine.
An ultimate driving machine, no less.
And I, by virtue of driving that machine, had become some kind of superannuated yuppie.
I seriously considered getting a Dodge. I don’t like easy labels. A bachelor lawyer driving a BMW—that was too easy.
But I realized that a Dodge, too, would make a statement. As would a Volkswagen, a Ford Escort, or a Ferrari. In the end I said a pox on all of ’em and got myself another little white BMW with an even better stereo system.
This one was five years old now, and pushing 110,000 miles. There were a couple dings on the door panels, and a rust spot the size of a quarter had appeared on the hood. It was about time to turn it in. I supposed I’d get another driving machine.
I nosed it out of the garage and cut across to Storrow Drive. I got behind a van with a bumper sticker that read MAKE WAR, NOT LOVE …IT’S SAFER. A true slogan for our times.
It was when I was crossing the Tobin Bridge that I first noticed the dark blue sedan two cars behind me and realized that it had registered somewhere in my brain back in Copley Square. I wondered if Sylvestro or Finnigan was driving, and decided that they would have assigned an underling the deadly boring task of tailing me.
Then I thought maybe it was some newshound from Channel 8, sniffing out the story he thought he had.
Whoever he was, he was either not very good at it, or else he had been instructed to take no pains to disguise his intentions. I figured it was probably the former.
As I hooked onto Route 93 where it was elevated high above the city, my first impulse was to try to lose the guy in the blue sedan. I figured it wouldn’t be hard in my driving machine.
Then a better idea occurred to me.
So I kept the needle on fifty and the blue sedan in my rearview mirror all the way to the turnoff to Medford Square. I parked in the lot behind the big brick and concrete building. Medford City Hall looked like a big, solid high school, vintage 1950, when they were still making schools that looked like schools rather than California office parks. The blue sedan didn’t follow me into the lot. When I walked around to the front door, I spotted it cruising slowly past.
I figured if he was a cop, he’d radio for someone else to go in after I left, flash his badge, and demand to know what I’d been doing in there, so the guy in the car could continue to follow me.
If it was a reporter, he’d surely want to know what I was doing at Medford City Hall.
Either one was okay with me.
The City Clerk’s office was in Room 103 on the first floor. I walked in and propped my elbows on the counter until a woman at a desk looked up and spotted me. “Help you?” she said without getting up.
“I want to check a marriage license that was issued here,” I said.
“Date?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Between 1970 and 1975, maybe. Is that close enough?”
“I’ll need one of the names…?”
I grinned. “Sure. Karen Lavoie. I want to know who old Karen ended up marrying.”
She smiled and nodded, as if this were a common request. She got up and came to the counter. She wore thick glasses. Behind them were two large blue eyes, one of which wandered off to study the ceiling while the other peered at me. I focused my smile on the one that seemed to be doing most of the work.
She slid a scrap of paper and a pencil to me. “Write down the name on this and I’ll look it up.”
I printed Karen Lavoie’s name on the paper. She picked it up and disappeared around a corner into what I assumed was a room full of records. After what seemed like several minutes she returned with a thick square ledger. She heaved it up on the counter and turned it around for me. It was already opened to the right page.
“There you go,” she said.
She remained standing there, one of her eyes watching me, as I studied the license. It included the place of the wedding (St. Agnes Catholic Church), the person who performed the ceremony (the Rev. Matthew O’Donnell), all other pertinent names, and the date. I said to the clerk, “Can I have another piece of paper, please?”
She gave me one and the pencil, too. I printed “Peter Roland Gorwacz” on the paper. I was delighted it wasn’t Smith. I gave the pencil back to the woman.
“She married Pete Gorwacz,” I said to the clerk. “Son of a gun.”
She smiled at me in her walleyed way.
“Thank you very much for your help,” I added.
She just shrugged. It was her job.
I paused at the foot of the steps outside City Hall to light a cigarette. The blue sedan was nowhere to be seen. It didn’t matter. My tail knew where I’d been. If he was any good, he’d find out what I had been doing there. I strolled around back to the parking lot. I slid into my car and took the scrap of paper out of my shirt pocket. Peter Roland Gorwacz. A helluva name. I figured it would be an easy name to track down. I figured I’d be able to find Karen Lavoie Gorwacz, wherever she was.
I also figured either the cops or Channel Eight would do the same. Sooner or later, it would lead them to Chester Y. Popowski.
When I walked into my office, Julie looked up at me with that tight little grimace on her lips and that hooded look in her eyes that said, “So nice you could drop in.”
I hung up my coat and went to her. I stood before her desk like a contrite schoolboy who has been nailed by his principal for playing hooky. “Hi,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, flashing a big phony smile of greeting. “How wonderful.”
“I have returned.”
“For how long?”
“For the whole entire rest of the day.”
“Why?”
“Because I work here.”
“You do?”
“Well, actually, I may leave a little early. Barring court appearances and whatnot, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Had lunch?” I said.
“Oh, sure. I had nothing else to do. Just closed up shop, hopped a cab, and had the daily catch at Jimmy’s. Coupla martinis.” She sighed. “How the hell could I have lunch?”
“I dunno. Sorry. Hey. Let’s celebrate. How about a big fat Italian sub with lots of hot peppers, extra cheese?”
“Celebrate? What’s to celebrate?”
I shrugged elaborately. “I don’t know. Another beautiful winter’s day? The benign hibernation of Punxsutawney Phil? The fact that in a month I can go trout fishing if I’m willing to freeze my assets?”
“My,” she said, her head cocked to one side, smiling for the first time since I had walked in, showing me that big dimple in her cheek. “Aren’t we chipper this afternoon.”
“I’ve had a productive morning.”
“Me too,” she said pointedly.
“So what about the sub?”
“With a Pepsi Cola?”
“Absolutely.”
She tilted her head at me. “Do I have to run out for it?”
“No. I will run out for it.”
“Go,” she said. “And quickly, before you change your mind.”
I went. I was back twenty minutes later. We spread out the waxed paper on my desk and leaned over it while we ripped chunks out of the big sub rolls. Oil dribbled off our chins. Pieces of pickle and hot pepper and chopped onion and tomato spattered down on the paper.
We ate without talking. When we were done, Julie wiped her mouth with a paper napkin, belched delicately behind her hand, and said, “Okay. Peace offering accepted.” She sipped from her can of Pepsi.
“Thank you.”
“Wanna talk shop?”
<
br /> I shrugged. “Do I have to?”
“It’s unavoidable.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
She rattled off a list of clients and lawyers who had called, or who I should call. She reminded me of a conference with a client scheduled for Tuesday, two appointments with lawyers on Wednesday, and a Bar Association luncheon on Friday.
There had also been, she added, a call from Mickey Gillis. And yet another from Rodney Dennis.
After Julie left I lit a cigarette. I had to be careful. Since Channel Eight had decided to offer a reward, the media competition for the Churchill story would have escalated.
Dennis’s call I would not return. I owed him nothing. But I had to call Mickey. She was a good friend. She was a better reporter, though, than she was a friend, I reminded myself.
I stubbed out my cigarette and called her.
“Mickey Gillis,” she said.
“It’s Brady.”
“Oh, hi. Hang on a minute.”
Before I could say okay I had been clicked off. I pictured her there in her cluttered office with a phone on each ear pecking at her word processor and riffling through endless stacks of odd-shaped scraps of paper and somehow paying full attention to all of it. I didn’t know how she did it, but she did.
It was five or six minutes before she came back on the line. “Boy,” she sighed. “Guy telling me he saw this state senator in a gay bar down off Boylston Street. Told me he thought it was my kind of story. I asked the guy his name. He wouldn’t tell me. Asked him what he was doing there. He giggled. I told him it wasn’t my kind of story, even if it was a story. Which it isn’t. He giggled some more. Finally I told him to fuck off, and he kinda gagged. What a job this is.”
“Yeah, but you’re so good at it.”
“I am, ain’t I?”
“That you are, Mickey.”
“Reason I called.”
“The Churchill thing, huh? Mickey, please don’t ask me questions.”
“Why Brady Coyne, you big shit. What do you think I am?”
“Sorry, Mickey.”
“Are we becoming paranoid?”
“Why does everybody accuse me of being paranoid?”
I heard her raspy laugh. “I won’t ask you any questions, sweetheart. I thought you might like to know what I’ve found out. Still interested?”
“Sure.”
“Just a few names that might help you. Current and/or recent girlfriends. Turns out old Wayne was quite the cocksmith. Got a pencil?”
I fished one out of my desk drawer and slid a pad of paper toward me. “Yes.”
“Okay. First, Gretchen Warde. Spelled with an e on the end. Chick who found the body. Assistant producer over at Channel Eight, where Churchill worked. God knows she had a motive to snuff the guy.”
“Jealousy, right?”
“Right. The man was juggling three of them at the same time. None was supposed to know about any of the others. Each had a key to his condo. Each had been promised they would soon be permitted to move in and keep house.”
“So all three would’ve had the same motive.”
“Sure. They’re all prime suspects, for obvious reasons, though what I hear, the cops’ve got another hot one. Right?”
“Right,” I said. “Me.”
“Anyway,” she said, “this Gretchen Warde claims she called the cops within five minutes of arriving, and the M.E. placed the time of death at least an hour earlier.”
“Like about what time?”
“Somewhere between ten-thirty and eleven. The girl says she got there a little before midnight.”
“If so, she’s clear, then.”
“Assuming her story holds up.”
“Okay. Who are the others?”
“One named Megan Keeley. Owns a boutique on Newbury Street.”
“Good-looker, I bet.”
“Oh, yeah. Seems to be the kind Churchill specialized in. She says she’s covered for the entire night. She claims she was playing Churchill the same way he was playing her, and has a boyfriend to back her up. I betcha the cops are grilling the two of them. Third name—”
“Suzie Billings,” I said.
Mickey, for once, was silent for an instant. “Hey, I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be. It was an accident.”
“I get most of my good stuff by accident, too.”
“Tell me about Suzie Billings.”
“Secretary in the Clerk Magistrate’s office at the East Cambridge courthouse. Kinda ditzy, what I hear. Probably the best-looker of the three, actually.”
“And she’s got a story, too, huh?”
“My sources are a little vague on that, Brady. None of ’em is exactly clear. This Billings broad’s got the same motive as the other two. More dubious alibi, I hear, though I don’t know what it is. But evidently they don’t see her as the type.”
“There’s a type?”
“You know what I mean.”
“They think I’m the type and she isn’t?”
“Hey,” she said. “I just work here. You want this stuff or don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Then don’t get pissed at the messenger.”
I sighed. “I’m sorry, Mickey. It’s getting downright irritating, that’s all.”
“So maybe you and I should go get drunk.”
“Yeah. Being suspected of murder is one helluva good reason to go get drunk.” I remembered Friday night with Gloria. “In fact, I already tried it.”
“Did it work?”
“For a little while.”
“Yeah, that’s the thing about getting drunk.”
“You got anything else, Mickey?”
“You probably heard, Rod Dennis over at Channel Eight’s offering a reward.”
“I heard that, yes.”
“I’d really love to scoop the bastards.”
“Mickey, if I could help you, I would.”
“You hear the cops’re looking for a drug angle?”
“Yes, I heard that.”
“How? It’s not in the papers.”
“I’ve got sources, too, Mickey.”
“Mmm. I bet.”
“What about the drugs?”
“Hey, Coyne. You’re the one with the sources. This a one-way street here?”
“It has to be for now, Mickey. I hope you’ll continue to fill me in.”
“Oh, sure. In memory of Granny Hill and the back seat of that old Volkswagen of yours. Anyhow, that’s all I got for now. I still got my feelers out.”
“Keep ’em out, please.”
“I will. Have I earned a dinner? At least a drink?”
“Both, I think. Soon, okay?”
“I’ll have to accept that.”
SIXTEEN
IT WAS A LITTLE before four-thirty. It would take half an hour to wend through the commuter traffic to Zerk’s office in North Cambridge. I went to my office door and poked my head out.
“Hang out the Gone Fishin’ sign,” I said to Julie. “I’m about to depart, and you might as well too.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but I held up my hand. “I’ve got a meeting with Zerk at five.”
“Those policemen, huh?”
I nodded.
“Okay,” she said, shrugging. She switched off her word processor and tugged on its dust cover. “It’ll give me a chance to get some shopping done.”
I went back into my office, hefted the big Boston white pages out of the drawer, and plopped it onto my desk. I looked up Gorwacz. There was a Gorwacz, Michael R., listed for Medford. Peter Roland’s parents, I guessed. Gorwacz, Peter R., had a number in Somerville. There was also a listing for Gorwacz, K. L., on Seventh Street in Cambridge. That was it for the Gorwacz clan. Not a household name in Greater Boston.
It took very little pondering for me to figure out that Karen Gorwacz, née Lavoie, was either separated or divorced from Peter Roland.
I copied down the Seventh Street address and phone number of K. L. Gorwacz into m
y little breast-pocket notebook. Then I retrieved my coat and went down to my car.
Commuter traffic clogged Copley Square, as I had anticipated. I shoved a Sibelius tape into the deck and turned up the volume and inched my way onto Commonwealth Ave. heading toward Mass. Ave. and the Harvard Bridge across the Charles. I kept glancing into my rearview mirror to see if the dark blue sedan had pulled into the traffic behind me, but it was impossible to tell. There were dozens of dark blue sedans back there. Any one of them might be my tail. I hoped so. Eventually I would lead him to Karen Lavoie Gorwacz.
Of course, the clever rascal could have changed cars on me.
Zerk’s office is on Massachusetts Avenue in North Cambridge. It’s in an old refurbished colonial next to a funeral home set close to the street behind a neatly trimmed hedge, which presently lay buried beneath a mound of the weekend’s snow, already stained with dog pee. Zerk had the entire first floor for his suite of offices—one for each of his secretaries, one for himself, and a large conference room.
The upstairs of his building was shared by an accountant and an architect.
Mary was at the receptionist’s desk when I got there almost on the dot of five. She was a big, solid woman with a hard face and a soft smile. I could easily imagine her whacking her kids around and then hugging them to her considerable bosom.
She greeted me with her gap-toothed grin and told me to go on in, Mr. Garrett was waiting for me.
Zerk was at his desk when I pushed open his door. His gray chalk-striped suit jacket hung from a coatrack in the corner. His vest was unbuttoned. His ecru button-down Oxford shirt was loose at the collar. His cuffs were rolled halfway up his thick, ropy forearms, and the knot in his green paisley tie had been pulled loose. He had his feet up on his desk, and he was tilting back in his chair. His dark brow was furrowed as he spoke softly into the telephone that was tucked against his shoulder. He raised his eyebrows when he saw me. A quick grin showed in his dark face. He beckoned me in with a jerk of his head.
Client Privilege Page 15
