Next of Kin

by David Hosp

  ‘We need to talk,’ Eamonn said coldly.

  Everyone at the table looked uncomfortable. ‘Do you wanna sit?’ Kevin asked.

  Eamonn shook his head. ‘I want you to stand.’

  Everyone at the table looked at Kevin. He was pinned in at the booth by two people on either side of him. ‘You heard him,’ he barked at the others. ‘Let me out.’ All four moved instantly, and Kevin had the option of moving in either direction. He chose the route that took him furthest from his father. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said to the others once he was out, and they all slid back in.

  Eamonn took a few steps away from the table, making sure that no one was nearby to eavesdrop. ‘You come here often?’ he asked once his son had joined him. The tone in his voice made clear his judgment.

  ‘Sometimes,’ his son admitted. ‘Why? What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘There’s fuckin’ zebras on the seats,’ Eamonn said, shaking his head. ‘You gotta ask me what’s wrong with it?’

  ‘What?’ Kevin asked. ‘The owner says zebra’s the new black.’

  Eamonn raised his hand, as if to hit his son, and Kevin flinched. The reaction was enough to make Eamonn feel better for a moment. ‘You’re a fucking idiot,’ he said.

  ‘Because I like this place?’ Kevin asked.

  ‘No, that’s just tonight’s confirmation.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘I got you a lawyer,’ Eamonn said. ‘One of the best. And you don’t even use him? You give him attitude? I don’t need this shite, you understand, boy?’

  Kevin folded his arms defiantly. ‘He wants me to take a plea that would put me in jail,’ he said. ‘I’m not going in.’

  Eamonn McDougal sighed heavily. ‘You really are stupid, boy. You think I’d let you go to jail?’ He shook his head. ‘It might be the best thing for you – show you what real life is – but you wouldn’t survive. I know that.’

  ‘But that’s what the lawyer said,’ the son protested.

  ‘Shut the fuck up, and do as I say. The lawyer isn’t going to let you go to jail, no matter what he tells you right now, you understand? He’s gonna get you off. Period.’

  ‘That’s not what he told me.’

  ‘Yeah, well, he’ll change his mind.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I can be very persuasive.’ He looked at the outfit his son was wearing and shook his head. He grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him in close so that he could look into his eyes. They were red and watery, and they betrayed his recreational inclinations. If they hadn’t been in public, Eamonn probably would have thrown his son through the wall. ‘Get off the shit,’ he growled.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Kevin said. ‘What shit?’

  Eamonn squeezed his son’s shoulders with his massive hands until he grunted in pain. ‘I’m deadly serious, boy,’ he said. ‘It’s time for you to get right, you understand? If it doesn’t happen now, it won’t happen at all, and I’m not going to watch you put your mother through that. If it comes to that, I’ll make it quick and painless, for you and for her, you understand? I shit you not.’ He squeezed the boy’s shoulders even harder. ‘You understand?’

  ‘Aaargh!’ Kevin grunted, writhing out of his father’s grip. ‘Okay,’ he protested. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Now, you get your ass back to the lawyer, and you tell him you’re in. Tomorrow. You understand?’

  ‘Yeah, okay.’ Kevin rubbed his shoulders.

  Eamonn nodded, turned on his heels and walked to the front door. As he passed the bar, he looked at the bartender. He was wearing tight-fitting black pants, a white T-shirt two sizes too small, and a black leather vest. He had three earrings in both earlobes. ‘Tell your boss to make sure his insurance is paid up,’ Eamonn said. The bartender frowned in confusion. He started to say something, but Eamonn held his hand up. He was in no mood. ‘Just tell him.’ With that, he pushed the door open and headed back out to his waiting car and driver.

  Long sat in his car, scribbling notes into the small pad he kept with him. There wasn’t a lot to write, but he worked hard to cram as much detail as he could onto the tiny pages. The key to his work was in following the details, keeping track of them, herding them into paddocks to let them feed and interact and mate. Every once in a while, if you let yourself get to really know the details, you saw the patterns you were looking for, the inconsistencies that were the hallmarks of guilt.

  So far, he’d seen none of those hallmarks in his brief conversation with Scott Finn. The man had been nervous, but the nervousness seemed born of the sheer scale of Long’s revelation to him. Long could discern no prevarication. The only aspect of the lawyer’s life that seemed out of place was the girl. Long would look into her situation, but his hunch was that it would lead nowhere.

  When he was done scribbling in his notebook, he slid it back into the breast pocket of his raincoat. He reached down and felt for the bottle under the car seat. It was there, but when he brought it up to his lips, it was empty. He shook his head. It was a bad sign – he had no recollection of finishing it.

  Finn was still sitting on the sofa, staring at the wall. ‘You gonna stay like that for the rest of the night?’ Sally asked.

  He turned and looked at her. She was standing in the doorway wearing an over-sized T-shirt and leggings. She looked at him the way an oncologist might examine a patient in remission, searching warily for any sign of disease – some indication that the patient might convulse at any moment. ‘You were listening,’ Finn said.

  ‘Yeah,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘I was.’

  ‘So you heard.’ He didn’t like the fact that she’d been eavesdropping. His childhood abandonment was a window into his psyche he’d have preferred she hadn’t looked through.

  ‘That was the basic point of listening,’ she pointed out. Finn closed his eyes and tilted his head back, but said nothing. He was exhausted. ‘You didn’t even know her,’ Sally said. ‘And from the way everything looks, she didn’t want to know you. I say good riddance.’

  Finn opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘Is that what you’d say if it was your mother?’

  ‘My mother?’ Sally looked down, and for a moment Finn was sorry he’d asked the question. ‘I knew my mother, so I could say a lot worse than that about her.’

  ‘Would you?’ Finn asked. ‘Say worse?’

  Her expression was serious. ‘No. I probably wouldn’t. My mother’s such a fuckup, I’m not even really mad at her anymore, I don’t think. We’ve all got our problems; she’s got hers. The world turns. At least your mother sounds normal.’

  ‘A normal mother who gives up her child?’ Finn said. ‘Doesn’t seem possible to me.’ He rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘You should go to bed,’ he said. ‘It’s a school night.’

  ‘What’d you say in the letter?’ she asked. She had a way of asking the most personal questions directly and somehow making them sound reasonable. Finn admired that skill except when she directed it at him.

  ‘I don’t even remember,’ Finn lied.

  ‘Yes, you do.’ He had to admit she was smart, and she could read people. She didn’t take people at their word. It was probably one of the things that had kept her alive. ‘What’d you say?’

  Finn leaned forward. ‘I told her she was going to hell,’ he said. ‘I told her about every bad thing I could remember that happened to me when I was growing up, and I blamed it all on her. I told her about the beatings; about the fights; about the gangs I used to run with and the terrible things I used to do.’ He stood up and walked to the same window where Long had stood, taking in the view from the top of the hill. It was impressive. Sometimes it amazed him how far he’d come. ‘I told her I hoped whatever she’d gone through was at least as bad, and that whatever was going to happen to her in hell would be even worse still.’

  ‘Huh,’ Sally said. He could feel her looking at him. ‘So … not exactly a Hallmark card?’

  He snorted an involuntary laugh. Tha
nk God she had a sense of humor. ‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘I called her every awful name I could think of. I was immature.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘I was in law school at the time, and still dealing with some of the things I had to do to pull myself out of the street life. I wasn’t entirely happy back then.’

  ‘How about now? You happy now?’ Looking at her, Finn could tell it was an honest question. He wasn’t sure how to answer it honestly.

  ‘I’m better now,’ he said. That much, at least, was true.

  ‘Law school,’ she said, marveling. ‘Isn’t that, like, in your twenties?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘About there.’

  She shook her head incredulously. ‘You mean my childhood is gonna keep me fucked up for another decade?’

  He smiled sadly. ‘If you’re lucky. If you’re like the rest of us, it’ll mess with you a lot longer than that.’ He walked back over to the couch and sat down. He frowned at her as he spoke. ‘You shouldn’t have to deal with all of this. I’ll be fine, you don’t need to worry.’

  ‘I’m not worried,’ she said. ‘I’d just like to help.’

  ‘How?’

  She shrugged. ‘How about a yogurt?’

  ‘You think that’ll help?’

  ‘It’s got active cultures. Couldn’t hurt.’

  Finn shrugged. ‘I’ll give it a shot.’

  She brought over two containers with two spoons, handed one of each to him. She pulled the tin foil top off hers, licked it, and began stirring the contents with the spoon, bringing the fruit to the surface. ‘You ever find out anything about your father?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Finn watched her as she stirred her yogurt, her eyebrows crossed in thought like dueling swords. She was looking intently at her yogurt, and she didn’t look up when she spoke next. ‘This isn’t over for you.’ It wasn’t a question, it was an observation.

  ‘What isn’t over?’ he asked. It was foolish; they both knew what she was talking about. He kept forgetting that she’d crammed a lifetime of tragedy into her sixteen years. It gave her better insight than most people in their sixties.

  ‘Your mother. Her murder,’ she said. ‘You’re not gonna let it drop.’

  ‘You don’t need to worry about it,’ Finn said.

  ‘Like I said, I’m not worried; I want to help. But I also want to know why.’

  Finn considered the question for a moment, and realized he had no good answer. ‘She was my mother,’ he said at last. ‘I never knew who she was. I never knew where I came from.’

  ‘So what?’ she asked. ‘Who cares who your parents were or where you came from? The only thing that matters is where you are now. Look at my parents: a murdered thief for a father, and a crack whore for a mother. If people think I’m gonna let them define who I am, they got another goddamned think coming.’

  Finn believed her. ‘Not knowing is different. I’ve lived my entire life with this question mark, and now there’s a chance I can get some answers.’

  ‘What if they aren’t the answers you’re looking for?’

  ‘I’d still rather know,’ he said. ‘Besides, you heard the detective. No one’s gonna lift a finger to find her murderer. He was right, I know how this works; they’ll do some poking around, but unless something obvious pops up, this case will die before the weekend. She was my mother. I’m going to find out what happened.’

  Sally scraped the last of the yogurt from the bottom of the container and licked the spoon clean. ‘I understand,’ she said.

  He laughed ruefully. ‘That makes one of us.’

  ‘It’s pretty simple,’ she said. ‘You’re a decent guy. You think it’s the right thing to do. End of story.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m not a decent guy,’ he said.

  She stood up and walked over to the kitchen and threw her yogurt cup into the trash. ‘Yeah, you are,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t mean you’re perfect. But a bad guy wouldn’t take care of a pain-in-the-ass daughter of a dead client just because it’s the right thing to do.’ He looked up, but she was already headed out of the room, back toward the hallway. ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ she called back over her shoulder.

  ‘Yeah,’ Finn called. ‘See you in the morning.’

  Coale sat in the dark on the street outside the lawyer’s apartment. He’d watched Long pull away after taking a pull from the empty bottle. That, at least, was a good sign. The more the detective unraveled, the less dangerous he became. Coale knew from his contacts that Long was barely hanging on in the department. If they discovered he was drinking, the BPD would have the legitimate grounds they needed to dismiss him. It was what everyone wanted.

  It would solve some of Coale’s problems, too. Drunk or not, Long had put Elizabeth Connor together with the lawyer. It looked as though his skills as an investigator were not as impaired as Coale might have hoped.

  He frowned. The lawyer added additional challenges to the equation. He knew about Scott T. Finn, Esquire. The lawyer had a colorful past. He had a reputation for being stubborn. That wasn’t what Coale needed at the moment.

  He reached for his phone and dialed the number. Eamonn McDougal picked up on the second ring. ‘It’s me,’ Coale said. ‘I’m in Charlestown. Long just left the lawyer’s apartment.’

  ‘That was fast,’ McDougal said. ‘Not surprising, though. I can use it to my advantage.’

  ‘How?’ Coale asked.

  ‘It’s not your concern.’

  ‘You hired me to do a job,’ he said. ‘Everything is my concern.’

  ‘Just stick with Finn. Let me know what he does.’

  Coale bristled. ‘I don’t take orders. If you don’t like it, hire someone else.’

  ‘You know that’s not an option,’ McDougal said. ‘I’ll double your rate.’

  Coale considered the offer. ‘I’ll keep an eye on the lawyer,’ he said. Realistically he didn’t have a choice.

  He closed his phone, opened it again. He had another call to make.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Long stared at the paperwork on his desk, trying to rub the pain between his eyes away with his thumb and index finger. It wasn’t working. If anything, the pain seemed to grow and spread out from the bridge of his nose to the rest of his skull like an oil spill. Mornings were the worst, he was finding.

  Elizabeth Connor’s life was spread out before him. Bank records, utility bills, phone records, credit reports. Even when the interview notes from her neighbors and co-workers were added, it painted a thin, watery picture. From all appearances, the woman had lived on the edge, constantly in debt and falling further behind. She worked at a place called Rescue Finance, which was little more than a legal loan-sharking business that advanced cash on future paychecks for those in trouble at a twenty-one percent interest rate. Probably a money laundering racket for the mob, as well. It was a three-person office operation, the actual ownership of which was obscured in a corporate gopher warren. Her fellow workers seemed to know little about her; they described her as distant. Her neighbors described her as unpleasant. No one described her as a friend.

  Digging through the woman’s life depressed Long. It all seemed too familiar. Few would mourn the passing of Elizabeth Conner, and it struck Long that that probably put her in a solid majority of the population. Nobody really cared about anyone else in the end. You were born alone, and you died alone. At least that was how Long saw it through the lens of Elizabeth Connor’s existence. All she’d left behind was a broken trail of paperwork.

  He glanced at the yellowed sketch artist’s drawing on the corner of his desk. He’d taken it from the bulletin board downstairs earlier in the morning. It had been hanging there for years, and he had passed by it every day without taking conscious note of it. And yet it must have penetrated his brain at some level, because there on the sheet was the image of a middle-aged man with gray hair pulled back from his forehead, revealing a light v-shaped scar. The man’s eyes were bright, and his expression in
the image was cold. It was probably a coincidence, but the man in the picture looked exactly like the man he’d seen in the crowd outside Elizabeth Connor’s apartment.

  ‘That the Mass Avenue job?’ a voice behind him asked.

  Long looked up. Captain Townsend was looking over his shoulder. He was short enough that he had to stretch his spine to see the desk. His interest seemed feigned. ‘Yeah,’ Long said. ‘Not much, is it?’

  ‘Anything worth following up on?’

  Long shook his head. ‘Probably not. Lab came back – no fingerprints, not even any from the murdered woman. Departed had a kid. Gave him up for adoption. He’s a lawyer now in Charlestown. I went over there last night to check him out, but I don’t think there’s anything to it. He said he didn’t know who his mother was, and I believe him. He wrote an angry letter back in the nineties, but there’s no indication she ever responded. I can’t find anything that ties them together other than the birth itself.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Not really. There’s a bar nearby where she worked, she used to go there a lot. Not the happy-go-lucky drinking type. More hardcore. Word is she had a little bit of a rep when she was younger, but that was a long time ago.’

  ‘Explains how she ended up with a kid.’

  ‘It does,’ Long agreed. ‘I’ve run her records and I haven’t come up with anything solid to suggest she was a pro, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she was a hell of an amateur for a while when she was young. There are a few phone numbers that I have to chase down, but I don’t expect to find much. Chances are it’s just a random robbery.’

  ‘What’s with the picture?’ Townsend asked, looking at the sketch.

  ‘Probably nothing,’ Long replied. ‘When I was outside Connor’s apartment the other day I saw a man in the crowd who looked like this guy. Same hair, same eyes, same scar. I pulled this off the board this morning just to look at it more closely.’