“How so?”
“I think he has allegiances outside the bank,” she said.
“Why do you think that?”
She was sitting very straight in her chair, sitting with her knees together, leaning forward from the waist. The position hiked her short skirt to mid thigh. I admired her legs.
“Well, he came in as a partner all of a sudden,” she said. “This was a family-owned bank for more than a hundred years and all of a sudden here comes this man who’s not a member of the family, and not, um, not of the social class you’d expect. And he wasn’t in the bank much. When he was, he was… I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just an impression. But he was like some kind of court-appointed monitor, you know, like he was overseeing something.”
“What social class is Conroy?”
“I don’t mean he’s what my mother would have called low class. But Mr. Smith was always so civilized and charming and gentle. He’d never fire anybody. He always made sure people were taken care of if they were sick or on maternity leave or anything. If there was an employee problem, he would call them into his office and talk it through with them.”
“Conroy was a little less civilized?”
“He wasn’t a dese, dem, dose kind of man. He was obviously educated. But he was very…” She searched for a phrase. “He was a bottom-line person. Very hard-nosed, no nonsense.”
“Do you have an address for Conroy?” I said.
“Just the bank,” she said.
“Okay. I’ll go see him there.”
“You won’t tell him I spoke to you?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“He’s so…” She fluttered her hand. “He’s so cold. He seems like someone who doesn’t care about people.”
“Does he frighten you?”
“Yes.”
“It’ll be our secret,” I said.
She sat back, her body still straight, her knees still together. Both her feet were firmly on the floor, and she tugged the hem of her skirt slightly forward toward her knees. It was an automatic grooming gesture, like fluffing her hair. She probably didn’t know she was doing it.
I smiled at her.
She looked at me.
“That’s the other reason I came to tell you about this,” she said.
“Which is?”
“That he frightens me.”
I nodded.
“You seemed like someone to talk to if I’m frightened,” she said.
I didn’t have anything to say about that, so I smiled encouragingly.
“You seem like someone who would protect me,” she said.
“Do you think you need protection?” I said.
“No, not really. I think I’m probably being a bit of a sissy.”
“Anyone threaten you?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. Conroy said I wasn’t to talk of this matter, but he meant if I wanted a letter of reference for my next job.”
I gave her my card. On the back of it, I wrote Hawk’s name and cell phone number.
“If you feel threatened, call me, at any hour. If you don’t reach me, call the number on the back. It’s a large black man with his head shaved who could protect Australia if he were asked.”
“Will he know who I am?”
“Yes.”
“It’s silly, of course. But I feel better knowing there’s someone I can call.”
“Anyone would,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Do you think she’s in any real danger?” Susan said. “Probably not,” I said. “She’s a bright young woman. Went to school, got an MBA, and this is the first time she’s been fired.”
“So her ego requires her to invest it with cosmic proportion.”
“Once she’s been fired a few times, she’ll get used to it,” I said.
“The voice of experience?”
“Something like that,” I said.
I was cooking supper and Susan was pitching in by sitting at my kitchen counter drinking white wine and watching.
“Are you sure you’re cooking those scallops long enough?” she said.
“Of what can we be sure,” I said, “in this uncertain world?”
“We’re not going to discuss the nature of being, are we?” Susan said.
“No.”
“Thank God.”
“Or whoever,” I said.
“Stop that,” Susan said.
She sipped her wine. I tossed the scallops in the saute pan one more time and slid them onto a plate.
“They don’t look cooked to me,” she said.
“Suze,” I said, “when you make tea, you burn the water.”
“Do I hear you saying shut the fuck up?”
“At least about cooking,” I said.
“Mum’s the word.”
I also dente’d the pasta and found it correct and poured it through a colander. I added some green peas and the sauteed scallops and tossed it all with some pesto sauce and put it on the counter. We ate at the counter, sitting side by side. Susan broke off a tiny piece from a loaf of French bread and ate it with a minimalist forkful of the pasta.
“You’re right,” she said. “You don’t need my help.”
“Not to cook,” I said.
“Or much of anything else,” she said.
I glanced at her sideways. “What about, you know?” I said.
“I don’t consider that help,” she said.
“Well, you are certainly not a hindrance,” I said.
“Sometimes I think it’s the only thing I’m good at.”
I drank some beer. “Well, if there could only be one thing…” I said.
She didn’t say anything. I could feel us drifting into a more serious corner of the evening.
“I can’t get that kid out of my head,” Susan said.
“The suicide?”
“Yes.”
“Would you expect to, this soon after?”
“No,” she said, “I suppose I wouldn’t.”
“In time,” I said, “the sharp edges round off.”
“I hope so.”
“Seems a shame,” I said, “that so harmless a variation should cause such pain.”
“I know,” Susan said. “People, especially young people, often think the circles they are in are the only circles that matter. They don’t realize that there is a world where nobody much gives a goddamn.”
Susan finished her wine. I poured her some more. She gestured me to stop at half a glass.
“It’s not the condition,” she said, “or whatever. It’s the concealment.”
“Like Watergate,” I said. “It wasn’t the burglary that caused all the trouble; it was the cover-up.”
“Something like that,” Susan said. “Pretending to be what you are not fills people with self-loathing. If they share their secret, even with a sex partner, then others have power over them. They are vulnerable to blackmail of one kind or another.”
I carefully twirled some pasta onto my fork. Susan could eat with chopsticks, but she was nowhere at twirling pasta.
“You know,” I said, “prior to Mary Smith, I cannot find any sign of a sex partner for Nathan Smith.”
“How old was he when he got married?”
“Fifty-one,” I said.
“Children?” Susan said. “With Mary?”
“No. But she told me that he was friendly with a number of young boys.”
“Maybe you’re looking for the wrong kind of sex partner,” Susan said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
There was a photographer I knew named Race Witherspoon who was gayer than springtime and quite happy about it. He had his studios this year in a fourth-floor loft in South Boston, just across Fort Point Channel. His studio was cluttered with tripods, and reflector umbrellas, and props, and Diet Coke cans. Curled Polaroid peel-offs were everywhere. A Flintlock musket leaned in a corner. A red feather boa was draped over the edge of an old rolltop desk. A cowboy hat lay on top of a file cabi
net, a pair of combat boots stood side by side on an overturned milk carton. Light flooded in through a skylight. On the wall was a huge black-and-white blowup of two naked men. I tried to remain calm about it.
In the middle of the clutter Race was surgically immaculate. His white flannel pants were sharply creased. His turquoise shirt was fitted. His black-and-white shoes were gleaming.
“Oh my God!” Race said. “Man of my dreams.”
“How unfortunate,” I said.
“Well, honey,” he said, “sooner or later they all come back.”
“I need homo info,” I said.
Race grinned and did a small shuffle ball change and spread his arms.
“You’ve come to the right place, Big Boy.”
“If you were an older man,” I said.
“Which I’m not,” Race said.
“Certainly not,” I said. “In all the years I’ve known you you haven’t aged any more than I have.”
“That’s unkind,” Race said. “But go ahead, if I were an older man…”
“Where would you be likely to go to meet young men?”
“How young.”
“Boys.”
“Nellie’s,” Race said. “Third floor. It’s chickenfucker central.”
“Joint in Bay Village?” I said.
“Nice turn of phrase, honey,” Race said.
“I try to be appropriate,” I said. “Bay Village?”
“Where else?”
“Ever go there?”
“Downstairs,” he said. “I don’t like children much.”
I took the picture of Nathan Smith out and held it up for him. “Ever see this guy?”
Race examined the picture. “Not my type,” he said.
“You know him?”
“No.”
“If I took this picture down to Nellie’s and showed it around, you think they’d tell me anything?”
“Nellie’s doesn’t stay in business by telling secrets,” Race said.
“How about I pretended I was in your program?” I said. I shot out my right hip and put my fist on it.
Race said, “They could tell.”
“How could they tell?”
“They could tell, honey.”
“I’m not even sure this guy was gay,” I said.
“And you’re trying to decide?”
“I’m not trying to out him. He’s been murdered.”
Race nodded. “I’ll tell you what, darlin‘. You give me the picture. I’ll find out for you.”
I gave him the picture.
“Isn’t there some saying about set a queer to catch a queer?” Race said.
“I think so,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Frank Belson, with a fresh shave and his suit pressed, came into my office carrying two cups of coffee. He put one on my desk and sat down in a client chair and took a sip from the other one. “Know a broad named Amy Peters?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a cop and I’m asking you,” Belson said.
“Oh,” I said. “That’s why.”
Belson waited. I took the lid off the coffee and drank some. Belson was homicide and Amy Peters had been scared. There was a small sinking feeling in my stomach.
“She was until recently the vice president for public relations at the Pequod Savings and Loan which is headquartered in Cambridge.”
“Why ”until recently“?”
“She got fired.”
“For?”
“Talking to me.”
“About what?”
“About a case I was on.”
“Nathan Smith,” Belson said.
“Yes.”
“You doing anything for her?”
“No.”
“How’d you know she was fired?”
“She came and told me.”
“Why you?” Belson said.
“Why not me,” I said. “What’s up, Frank?”
“She’s dead,” Belson said.
The sinking feeling bottomed. Belson was looking at me carefully.
“We found your card in her purse,” he said. “Nice-looking card.”
“Thanks. How’d she die?”
“Bullet in the head. Looks self-inflicted.”
“Her gun?”
“Unregistered. We’re chasing the serial number.”
“She didn’t seem like somebody who’d have a gun,” I said.
“You knew her?”
“Not really. Just talked with her a couple of times.”
“About Nathan Smith?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“She’d been fired. She seemed a little frightened of the guy who fired her.”
“Marvin Conroy?”
“No grass growing under your feet,” I said.
Belson ignored me.
“She want you to protect her?”
“Not really. Just consolation, I think. I gave her my card.”
“And wrote Hawk’s name and phone on the back,” Belson said.
“Yes. I thought she might feel better if she had somebody to call.”
“I guess she didn’t,” Belson said.
“No.”
My office felt stuffy to me. I got up and opened my window a couple of inches to let the city air in. I looked out at Berkeley Street for a moment, looking at the traffic waiting for the light to change on Boylston.
“She leave a note?” I said.
“Yes. Said she was despondent over being fired.”
“Authentic?”
“Hard to say. She left it on the computer.”
“Technology sucks,” I said.
Below me the light changed and the traffic moved across Boylston Street toward the river.
“Thing bothers me,” Belson said.
I turned away from the window and sat down with my back to the air drifting in through the open window. I waited.
“Found a card for a lawyer in there in her purse where we found yours.”
I waited.
“Ran that down before I came here. Woman lawyer. Says that Amy Peters was planning to sue Pequod for sexual discrimination for firing her.”
“Which seems strange,” I said, “if she was also planning to kill herself.”
“Suicide’s hard to figure,” Belson said. “Women don’t usually do it with a gun.”
“What’s the lawyer’s name?”
“Margaret Mills. Firm is Mills and D’Ambrosio. You planning to help us on this?”
“Bothers me a little.”
“She came to you scared and you sent her away and she ends up dead,” Belson said.
“Something like that.”
“Would bother me, too,” Belson said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I was in a booth in a donut shop talking to a gray-haired guy with a good-sized belly and a big mustache who had been for the last thirty years the youth service officer for the town of Franklin. His name was Pryor. “His real name was Peter Isaacs,” Pryor said. “Kids called him Peter Ike and it eventually became Pike.”
“You remember him well?”
“Oh yeah,” Pryor said. “Kid was a pain in the ass.”
He took a paper napkin from the dispenser and wiped powdered sugar from his mustache.
“Wild-spirited?”
“Mean-spirited. Nasty little bastard. Did a lot of dope.”
“He still around?”
“Yeah.”
“How about Tammy Wagner?”
“She was his girlfriend,” Pryor said. “Pike’s. I don’t know what happened to her.”
“Joey Bucci?”
“Bucci… Yeah, sort of a faggy little kid, used to get bullied a lot. Hung with the burnouts because no one else would hang with him.”
“You know where he is now?”
Pryor shook his head.
“No idea,” he said. “He ain’t around
town.”
“Where do I find Pike?”
“He’s still here,” Pryor said. “Works down the bowling alley. Sweeps up, cleans the rest rooms.”
“Nice career choice,” I said.
“Better than jail,” Pryor said.
“Anything else you can tell me about Mary Toricelli?”
“No. Kind of a loser kid. The only reason I remember her is that she hung out with assholes like Isaacs and Levesque.”
“You never got her for anything?”
“No. She was never into much. Just sort of dragged around after the hot shots. What’d she do, got a fast operator like you down here asking about her.”
“Cops think she killed her husband,” I said.
“Honest to God,” Pryor said. “I didn’t think she had the juice for it.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said.
“So why do you want to talk to Isaacs?”
“See what he can tell me.”
Pryor grinned. “Good thinking,” he said. “You know what you’re hoping to hear?”
“No.”
“So how about if you hear it,” Pryor said, “will you know it?”
“I hope so.”
“Man, wait’ll I tell the boys down at the station how I had coffee with a real private eye.”
“You know how it goes,” I said. “You get a case. You just keep poking around, see what scurries out.”
“You get a case,” Pryor said. “Currently I’m trying to catch the kids who spray-painted fuck on the middle-school front door.”
“I guess you’re not allowed to shoot them,” I said.
“No,” Pryor said. “They get to talk with a guidance counselor.”
“How’s that work?” I said.
“Keeps the guidance counselor employed,” Pryor said.
I paid for the coffee. Pryor directed me to the bowling alley, and I drove on over to see Pike.
A couple of women in tight jeans and loose T-shirts were bowling candle pins in the first alley. The rest of the alleys were empty. The guy at the desk directed me to Pike, who was replacing the sand in the big free-standing ashtrays that stood near each lane. One of the women bowled a spare, and the clash of the pins echoed loudly off the hard surfaces. I showed him my license and we sat on one of the banquets where, when business was good, bowlers sat and waited for their turn.
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