Small Vices
Page 13
"My fucking nose is broke," he said.
"You'll need to go have somebody set it and pack it," I said.
"You ever break your nose?"
"About eight times," I said.
"Bleeds like a bastard."
"Un huh."
We sat some more.
"You are a tough sonova bitch," Miller said.
"Un huh."
Miller got up and went to the sink and rinsed the towel and wrung it out and reapplied it. Then he came back and sat down. He wasn't moving very briskly.
"I know you had Parisi send out some bone breakers to run me off the Ellis Alves case," I said.
"Yeah?" Miller said.
"And I know that Alves didn't do that coed in Pemberton."
"You do, huh?"
"I do, and I'm pretty sure your days of giving lawful orders are over."
"You think so," Miller said.
But there wasn't much force in his voice.
"The question is whether Healy fires you and lets it go at that, or whether you do jail time."
Miller had restabilized enough to show some alarm.
"You talked with Healy already?" he said.
"Not yet."
"You think you can prove any of this?"
"I can prove it to Healy," I said.
"Parisi won't testify," he said.
"You think so?" I said. "You think if he's squeezed he won't talk? You think all four of the jackasses he sent to scare me won't testify if they're looking at jail time?"
Miller thought about it. He started to nod and stopped as if it hurt.
"Whaddya want," he said, his voice muffled by the towel.
"Tell me why you framed Alves."
"What makes you think it was me?"
"It's something a cop would know how to do. Especially a cop who was in charge of the investigation."
"That's just speculation."
"You came up with Ellis Alves," I said. "How? Did you investigate another case where Ellis was involved? Did you request and get a printout on known sex offenders, and pick him off that? You think when Healy starts looking he won't find a connection between you and Alves?"
I was guessing, but it was a plausible guess, and I must have been right. Miller took the towel away from his nose and looked at it. His bleeding had slowed down to a trickle. I got a box of Kleenex from my desk drawer and handed it to him. He carefully tore it into small pieces and wadded them and packed them into each nostril. It made him look funny but it stopped the trickle.
"You got a drink?" he said.
His voice was thick like a man with a bad cold.
I took a bottle of Scotch from the drawer and went to the sink and got a water glass. I poured a couple of inches into the glass.
"You want water?" I said.
He shook his head very gently and pointed at the glass. I handed it to him and he took half of it in a swallow.
"You got your theories," he said in a thick voice. "And you can't prove them. And I ain't going to help you prove them. But I will tell you one thing, and you listen, you'll thank me. Leave this alone."
"Why?"
"You don't know what you're into," he said.
"What am I into?"
"Something too big for you."
"What?"
Miller started to shake his head, but that made his nose hurt, and he stopped in mid shake.
"Too big," he said.
"Tell me about the Gray Man," I said.
"Who?"
"Tall guy, gray hair, pale skin, looks kind of gray, when I saw him he was dressed all in gray."
"Don't know any guy like that," Miller said.
He sounded like he meant it. I had listened to a lot of lies and a little truth in my life, and I thought I had gotten pretty good by now at telling which was which. I didn't depend on the skill. I had been wrong often enough to make me uneasy, but Miller didn't sound like he was lying about the Gray Man.
"You got anybody else out there trying to chase me off this case?" I said.
"It's way above me," he said. "Way above me."
"How far," I said.
"Don't know."
Miller stood up suddenly. He held himself steady with one hand on the back of the chair.
"Don't feel so good," he said. "I'm going."
He turned and walked to my door with a little wobble in his walk and opened the door and went out without closing it. I didn't try to stop him. Instead I sat and thought about the interesting fact that the more I learned, the less I knew. Then I got up and went to the sink and let the cold water run over the knuckles of my left hand for a while.
Chapter 32
MARTIN QUIRK CALLED me at ten minutes of seven while I was shaving in the shower. I got out with lather on my face and caught it on the third ring before my machine picked up. "I'm on the sixth level of the parking garage in Quincy Market," Quirk said. "I think you should come down."
"Can I finish shaving?" I said.
"Sure," Quirk said. "We'll be here all day."
Fresh showered, clean shaven, and smelling manfully of some sort of cologne Susan had given me on my birthday, I arrived at the Quincy Market garage in the middle of a traffic jam. A motorcycle cop was trying to steer traffic away from the garage and since a lot of people who drove in from the suburbs didn't know anywhere to go but Quincy Market, there was a high level of frustration, as people turned into Clinton Street and were waved off by the cop.
When it was my turn, I rolled down my window and said, "Lieutenant Quirk."
The cop nodded and gestured me into the parking garage.
"Park along the right wall there," he said. "Don't pay any attention to the signs."
He pointed emphatically at a Chevrolet sedan and gestured it down Clinton Street.
"And Quirk's a captain now," he said.
"Captain Quirk?"
The motorcycle cop grinned. "Captain Quirk," he said.
I parked where he told me and ignored the No Parking signs like he said and walked back to the elevator and went up to the sixth floor. Since Quirk was the homicide commander, and there were cop cars and cops all over the building, I pretty well knew what I'd find on the sixth floor. What I didn't know was who.
When I got off the elevator I could see the yellow crime scene tape stretched across the far northwest corner of the garage, and a group of cops, mostly in plainclothes, doing what cops mostly do at crime scenes, which is to stand around. There were only a few cars scattered around the floor. Quirk was standing with his back to me wearing a Harris tweed top coat with the collar up. He had his hands in the pockets of the coat and he was looking down at something on the floor of the garage.
The parking garage walls were only about chest high and the wind, funneled through the open construction, was sharp. I put up my own collar. As I approached the group, one of the plainclothes cops said, "Hey."
Quirk looked up and saw me and said, "Let him through," and I walked past the other cops and stood beside him. And looked down. It was a dead man, and his name was Tommy Miller.
"Know him?" Quirk said.
"Yeah. State cop named Tommy Miller."
"He had your address on a piece of paper in his pocket," Quirk said. "You know why?"
"Yeah, but it's a long story."
"Okay, we'll get to it. He'd been punched around before he was shot. You know anything about that?"
"Yeah. It was me did the punching."
"How about the shooting?"
"Nope. Where'd he get it?"
Quirk settled onto his haunches and turned Miller's head to the left. There was a small puffy hole behind his ear.
"One shot?" I said.
"Yep, no exit wound. Slug must have rattled around in there for a while."
"Twenty-two?"
"Be my guess. We're looking for a shell casing."
"Might have been a revolver," I said.
"Un huh."
"Might have cleaned up his brass," I said.
"Un huh."<
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"State cops know about this?" I said.
"Healy's on his way," Quirk said. "You want to wait for him, make one statement instead of two?"
"Yes.
"Anything I need to know right now?"
"Miller's involved in the case that you got Belson and Farrell assigned to in Cambridge… captain." Quirk's face had no expression. He was as big as I was, and thick. He was hatless, his dense black hair cut short and brushed back.
"I'm really something now," he said.
Across the floor the elevator doors opened and Healy got out. He had on a trenchcoat and a soft hat. He pulled the hat on harder and put his collar up as the wind swirled past him. He was alone. When he got to the crime scene he said, "Hello, Martin."
Quirk said hello. Healy nodded at me and looked down at Miller's body.
"Tommy Miller," he said. "Been in a fight."
"With me," I said.
Healy studied me for a minute.
"Looks like you won," he said. He looked at Quirk. "I got a couple of my crime scene people coming by. You got any problem with that?"
"None," Quirk said. "I'm about to gossip a little with Philo Vance, here. You want to join us?"
"Yeah," Healy said. "Let's get off this roof."
"We'll go over to the Market," Quirk said. "Get some breakfast."
Chapter 33
MOST OF THE traffic in the Quincy Market Building was ambulatory. People going to work, picking up coffee on the way. We got one of the little tables at the east end of the Market and a waitress gave us coffee while we studied the menu. When we had ordered, Quirk said, "Spenser thinks this is part of something he's working on."
"You think this has something to do with the Alves case?" Healy said.
"Yeah."
"You know the Alves case, Martin?" Healy said.
"No."
"Why don't you tell Martin about the Alves case and then go ahead and tell both of us what you know," Healy said.
So I did, sticking to what I knew and not theorizing, while eggs and ham and toast and coffee were brought and eaten and the table was cleared and more coffee was poured. No one asked us to move when we were finished. Neither Quirk nor Healy showed a badge, but there was something about them that people recognized. We were welcome all day if we wished.
While I talked, neither Quirk nor Healy spoke, or even moved except to drink coffee. I could feel the weight of their concentration. When I was through, they were both quiet, thinking about what I'd told them.
"And you didn't shoot him?" Healy said.
"You know he didn't shoot him," Quirk said.
Healy nodded sadly.
"Yeah, I know," he said. "I knew it when I asked the question."
"Okay, we got the same facts you do. You want to theorize with us?"
"Sure," I said.
"You figure Miller put Parisi on you," Quirk said.
"Yeah. He'd know guys like Parisi, and he'd have leverage to make Parisi do him a favor."
"And he showed up right after Parisi got collared," Healy said.
"Why'd he do it?" Quirk said.
"Miller? I figure he talked with the kid, at the time of the murder…"
"Stapleton," Quirk said.
"Yeah, and the kid mentioned that his pro tennis career would be adversely affected if he got hauled in and questioned about his girlfriend's murder."
"And?" Healy said.
"And he may have mentioned to Miller that his dad had around two hundred gazillion dollars."
"So they made a deal?"
"Yeah."
"And Miller rigged it for Ellis Alves to take the fall so the pressure would be off the kid," Healy said.
"My guess," I said. "Either he came across Alves in the course of his employment or he looked him up in the case files under Rape."
"We can look at Miller's finances," Healy said. "See if he was involved in a case that Alves was involved in. See if we've got Alves in the Rape files."
"Then you show up and talk to the kid, Stapleton, and the kid gets scared," Quirk said. "And he calls Miller and Miller sends out some sluggers because he thinks you're like a regular person and a few big guys with guinea names can scare you right back to doing divorce tails."
"Guy I know heard that someone was looking to, ah, coerce me, so I had Hawk with me."
"Don't seem fair," Quirk said.
"Seemed fair to me," I said.
"Okay, I like it pretty good so far. Why'd Miller come after you himself when Parisi was picked up?" Quirk said.
"He was a cop," I said. "And a particular kind of cop. He was used to scaring people. He was a big tough guy. He was used to getting things done by slapping people around."
"Maybe so," Healy said.
"But I don't see why he comes on like Conan the Barbarian," Healy said.
"He came in, wanted me to stand up, I declined, and he came for me. I think before he started trying to find out what I knew, he wanted to be sure I wasn't wearing a wire," I said. "And things got away from him."
"Meaning you kicked his ass," Quirk said.
"In a manner of speaking," I said modestly.
"Which made scaring you to death sort of problematic," Healy said.
"Yes."
"So he didn't get to find out what you knew, and he didn't get you to walk away from the case."
I shrugged.
"Tommy was a tough guy," Healy said.
"So who popped him?" Quirk said.
"The Gray Guy?"
"Miller told me it was way above," I said.
"Above what?"
"Above all of us," I said.
"You figure the Gray Guy comes from above?" Quirk said.
"He's not somebody you hire out of a pool hall someplace," I said.
"Kind of guy might use a.22?" Quirk said.
"Looked like a small hole in Miller," Healy said.
"Yep."
"Guy uses a.22 is a specialist," Quirk said. "Anybody can blow a hole the size of an ashtray in some guy's skull with a.44 Magnum."
"Guy uses a.22, wants people to know he's a specialist," Healy said. "Know how good he is."
"Use the right load and know where to shoot and you can put one in his head and have it ping-pong around inside the skull," Quirk said. "Do more damage than a Mag."
"How much more damage do you need to do?" Healy said.
The people moving through the marketplace were changing character. The workers in suits and overcoats had given way to the tourists in parkas and warmup jackets. They didn't hurry. They meandered, stopping at food stalls, looking at the food.
Quirk said, "You think this kid Stapleton did his girlfriend?"
"He's a better bet than Alves," I said.
"He got the kind of reach that could orchestrate this kind of coverup?" Healy said.
"The Gray Man and all?"
"I doubt it," I said. "But his father might."
"You think he hired the Gray Man?"
"He might have."
"You think the Gray Man clipped Miller?"
"Yes."
"You got any evidence for any of it?" Quirk said.
"Not a jot or a tittle," I said.
"How you going to get some?"
"I'll talk to the Stapleton kid again, see what happens."
"You want some cover?" Healy said.
I shook my head.
"No point being more macho than you need to be," Healy said.
"That ain't it," Quirk said. "He figures to keep pushing until the Gray Man makes a run at him again."
Healy looked at me. I nodded.
"You figure to take him?" Healy said.
I nodded again.
"Pretty big risk for a guy like Ellis Alves," Healy said.
"He ain't taking the risk for Alves," Quirk said.
"Then who the hell…" Healy stopped halfway into the sentence and closed his mouth and looked at me for a minute. Then he nodded.
"Never mind," he said.
Chapter 34
"Now just what in the fuck do you want?" Clint said.
"You ever think of the metaphysical aspects of that question?" I said.
"I got no time for jiving," he said.
He pronounced all the letters, jive-ing, like some guy at a Princeton eating club trying to get down. I inched my foot into the doorway and hoped he wouldn't slam it. I was wearing running shoes.
"We need to talk a little more," I said.
"About what?"
"About Melissa, about your pro career, about your cousin Hunt, about Tommy Miller, stuff like that."
Clint didn't know what to do. He started to speak, and didn't. He looked over his shoulder back into the room behind him. He looked at me. I smiled.
"Can't it wait?" he said. "I got company."
I shook my head and smiled some more. Maybe if sleuthing didn't work out, I could get a job selling aluminum siding, door to door.
He backed away from the front door and opened it wider.
"Okay," he said. "Come in."
I walked into a small entry hall with a stairway along the right-hand wall. A breakfast nook and a kitchen was to my left. The living room was straight ahead. A pretty girl with no makeup and straight blond hair that hung below her shoulders appeared in the door to the breakfast nook wearing a pale pink velour robe. She too was barefooted, her toenails painted pale pink. She might have been twenty.