Murder in the City of Liberty

by Rachel McMillan

  “It sounds suspiciously like you’re talking about yourself, Nate. But you must see what you do immediately. People are always crowding in to thank you and repay you in whatever way they can.”

  “You don’t see everything that happens in my world, Hamish.”

  Hamish took a deep breath. “What does that mean, Nate? Why are you so cryptic?” He scratched his neck, then used the same hand to emphatically slam the table. Nate being cryptic. Reggie unable to reciprocate what he was feeling. Kent sniffing around. Hamish’s nerves had always trumped everything, including anger. Now it was showing up.

  “Hey, what’s up with you?”

  “This.” He motioned to his friend. “All of this. There’s something so fatalistic in everything about you right now. You talk about Dallin but you won’t tell me about your day. Cathedrals? What, you think that whatever project you are working on right now—whatever it is—will outlive you?”

  “I don’t want to argue with you.” Nate disentangled himself from the surroundings of papers and files. “Want to play a game of battleship?” He rose and smoothed his trousers, stretched his shoulders, and made for the pencil and pad they kept on the kitchen table.

  They hadn’t played their usual chess in several days, Nate was so obsessed with this new game. Before Hamish could protest, Nate dragged him to the kitchen and motioned to a seat. Hamish watched his friend draw neat lines to create the graph. Lines that ran from 1–10 across and A–J on the side, little boxes wherein they would soon mark their strategies.

  “It’s not ships we’re sinking,” Nate announced on their first game. “It’s U-boats.”

  Hamish chuckled. Every news reel that week had been focused on U-boats: monstrous oblongs deep in the sea and deadly with their torpedoes and destruction.

  Every night they would play a few games, alternating who drew out the graph and who made the cocoa.

  Nate insisted they keep all played games.

  Hamish silently began to crumple a finished game.

  “Tsk-tsk. We can’t learn our strategy from the mistakes of the past if we throw those mistakes in the waste bin.” Nate smoothed the piece of paper and affixed it on the Frigidaire. “There. Now you can study.”

  Hamish rolled his eyes. “It’s waste.”

  “It’s a memory,” Nate said with a laugh.

  Chapter 8

  When Hamish arrived at the office the next morning, he unlocked the door and leaned his bicycle against the wall, only to see the sun catching the prisms like a dozen rainbow diamonds on the floor. He picked up the morning paper and flipped to the sports section. Errol didn’t always feature in the coverage of the Patriots. It largely depended on the reporter. But even during games where it was clear he was the catalyst for a win, not every writer was eager to mention him. As if the next morning he could be easily forgotten.

  Dirk Foster’s views were not rare and not new. Hamish had learned of similar views from entrepreneur Henry Ford. A publication called the Dearborn Independent was rife with ideas that crept under Hamish’s collar and drove his two forefingers beneath his braces.

  He scratched his neck and ripped a page from his legal pad so he had a blank slate. He swallowed and controlled his shaking hand with several circled scrawls from his pen: tracing words over and over with perfunctory precision. In school he was fascinated by Venn diagrams: a visual of a nineteenth-century mathematical principle that discovered the point of intersection. It didn’t make sense. The first event that spiraled them into the series of current investigations made no sense. It made no sense that the person who wanted Hamish and Reggie to ensure he was being treated fairly by these new developers would try to kill one of the investigators. But Hamish never saw who put Reggie in that precarious situation, and they both confirmed that Kent had been there.

  Kent. Hamish underlined the name within one of the oblongs of the diagram so tersely he finally broke through the paper.

  He shoved the paper away. Something stuck about this. Something that reminded him a lot of Luca. He wondered if the premonition was just his being paranoid, imagining he saw his cousin everywhere, fingering over the phantom pain in his chest. He’d make a rotten investigator if every possible mystery was colored by his obsession with his cousin.

  You’re too trusting. You get these ideas in your head and follow them through. That’s your good heart. Your propensity to see the best in everyone . . . Luca had said a version of this to Hamish time and time again.

  “Well, Luca,” Hamish thought aloud. “Now I don’t see the best in anyone. Something, maybe, finally, I inherited from you.”

  He shook his head, returning to Errol Parker’s case. He had written a list of people to telephone for information. One was the announcer for the farm leagues. Len Blaney. The games were carried on a staticky station that he was told picked up a stronger signal in the Town.

  According to Errol, Blaney was often the first to arrive and the last to leave, keeping watch over his space and making sure his papers full of stats were at the ready for quick reference. “He spends the days reading all of the national papers and clipping things out,” Errol had explained.

  He picked up before the first full ring. “Mr. Blaney?”

  “Blaney.” His voice was eager. He had a strong Massachusetts accent—stronger than what Hamish remembered from the radio—but his voice had a rich resonance and sat in the right octave and pace for gearing up excitement for a game in progress.

  “My name is Hamish DeLuca, and I have a few questions about some of the pranks happening to one of the Patriots players.”

  “You mean Parker? Boys will be boys. What did you say your name was? Are you a reporter?”

  “No, sir, private investigator. Mr. Parker employed me and my associate.”

  “Kid has to have a tougher skin than that if he’s gonna hang with the big leagues. You know how it is. I don’t say there hasn’t been progress in these matters . . . but you can’t expect things to change overnight.”

  “With all those euphemisms, you could have been a diplomat, Mr. Blaney.”

  “Listen, what did you say your name was? Luca something.”

  “Something like that . . .”

  “I don’t pay attention to the players except when they are on that field. My only focus.”

  “But I heard you’re the first at the diamond and the last to leave.”

  “You think I wanna waste my voice on the minor leagues forever? This job is a stepping-stone, and I need to bring my A-game until someone scouts me for one of the bigger stations.”

  “That’s what Mr. Parker wants.”

  “What?”

  “To be scouted and make it to the big leagues. You have the same ambitions. Surely you want to help him. See, it’s not just harmless pranks. It was an animal heart and they beat up his nephew and—”

  A broad, delayed laugh filled the receiver. “Errol Parker make the big leagues? Are you kidding? Listen—”

  “No, you listen. I know it sounds preposterous to you, but Parker told me about this guy—this Moses Walker—and I think—”

  “Moses Walker, huh?”

  “Don’t you want to help him? Can you tell me if you have seen anything unusual, at least? You’re doing your job, I’m doing mine.”

  Blaney was silent for so long, Hamish wondered if he had disappeared.

  “You might want to talk to Quinn.”

  “Quinn?”

  “Quinn runs the corn dog stand. The one that always has those long lines. He’s been peddling there for years. You think I’m the first person to come and go? Ask Quinn. Better yet, take him for a pint.”

  Hamish wrote the name down. He’d be easy to find. He just had to go to the snack stand. Preferably before the crowds arrived. “Thanks. And can you please take my number? In case you think of anything at all?”

  “Sure, but I ain’t promising that my memory is that long.”

  Hamish didn’t believe him. Not the way he was renowned for pulling stats out o
f the blue from decades ago. “Thanks, Mr. Blaney. I always love listening to you.”

  Blaney clicked off.

  Hamish exhaled and checked off Blaney’s name on his notepad. He yawned and tried a few of the team members with numbers the coach had given him. With little luck and three hang-ups, he decided he needed a stretch and an espresso if he was going to be able to make it through the rest of the morning, and then the inevitable uncomfortableness with Reggie.

  He locked the office door and put a sign above the Van Buren and DeLuca letters on the frosted window saying he would return in ten, then stopped by Nate’s slightly open door. Nate had been gone long before Hamish woke up that morning, and Hamish didn’t want to disturb him but also wanted to be available to run any errands.

  He rapped gently. “Hey, Nate?”

  “What is it?”

  Hamish frowned. That was a tone he wasn’t used to hearing from his friend. He creaked the door open slowly. The phone was off the hook and dangling over the side of the desk. The disorganized desk. Something wasn’t right.

  Nate ran his hand over his face. “Rather busy here, Hamish. Can it wait?”

  “I was just going to go for coffee. I wanted to see if you wanted anything.”

  “No.” Nate shook his head and ruffled a few papers. “And shut the door, please. Don’t know why it was open in the first place.”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “Mad at you! Why would I . . .” Nate composed himself. Took a deep breath. Said, in a kinder tone, “Listen, it’s very nice of you to check in, but I’m a bit over my head and—”

  “You’re never over your head, Nate. Your world is a perfectly precise chessboard. I need you to tell me if I can—”

  Nate raised a restraining hand. “Thanks for the offer.”

  Hamish slumped down the stairs and into the square. Great. Some part of him deep down hoped that Nate would take a break with him. Now he was on poor terms with his two closest friends. Nate was acting very strange and he had made no progress on his open case.

  His feet instinctively took the familiar path to Leoni’s, but he figured with the way his day was going he might jinx something with Mrs. Leoni and there would go another relationship he couldn’t afford to lose. Instead, he made it to Café Vittoria on Hanover Street. He ordered two double espressos and sat in one of the prim white chairs listening to the bustle of midmorning orders and patrons. Somewhat fortified, with caffeine buzzing through his veins, he made his way back to the office, stopping at the delicatessen to pick up almond cookies for Nate. The man couldn’t keep him from barging in and setting food down on his desk. While at the counter, he also picked up a copy of the Jewish Advocate by the register. He turned to the page of editorial letters looking for the near daily and inevitable exchange between Nate and his nemesis, Aaron Leibowitz. It was an offhand remark by Reggie that the paper being entirely in Hebrew kept it from finding a wider readership that had inspired Nate to talk to the editor. Now, half of the journal was in English. But English or no, there was no Nate in the paper today.

  Hamish frowned.

  Back at the office, he silently opened Nate’s door and found his friend chewing the end of a pen, hair askew and eyes wild.

  “I know, I know!” he said in response to Nate’s glare. “You don’t want to be disturbed. But I brought you almond cookies.” He set the package on top of an askew pile of papers. “Because you have to eat at some point, Nate.”

  “Heaping coals of fire, young DeLuca,” Nate said tiredly.

  “I also brought you this.” He untucked the Jewish Advocate from under his arm and put it on the desk. “I leafed through it in the delicatessen line. Looks like Aaron Leibowitz has no contender today.” He smiled sadly. “Whatever is going on, Nate, fix it soon. Don’t make me go detective on you.”

  “I know you care. And someday . . .” Nate spread his hands out. “But for now, I am thinking about Cyrus Dallin on his fourth try of the Revere sculpture. But . . .” And here Nate’s eyes alighted with just a spark of their usual brightness as he went on about the sculpture. It was an easy way to change the subject: a cover for what was actually preoccupying Nate.

  * * *

  When Reggie opened the office door just after half past noon, she assumed Hamish would shift in his chair and they would navigate a complicated waltz of avoiding each other.

  Instead, Hamish looked up from his desk and the legal document spread across it and seemed halfway glad to see her.

  “We need to talk about Nate. I got the Jewish Advocate today and it was just Leibowitz. No response.” He frowned. “For all the years we’ve known Nate, he has never not countered that Leibowitz fellow.”

  “Maybe he just needed a break.” Reggie hung the coat draped over her arm onto their coat stand and put her hat atop it.

  “Nate Reis taking a break from Aaron Leibowitz is not a Nate Reis I particularly care to know.” Hamish rolled his pencil over the desk blotter. “He’s gone before I leave in the morning. Our living room is just piles of paper. His desk looks like a tornado blew through it. Something is seriously wrong.”

  Reggie frowned. “Well, my news won’t make you feel any better.” Rather than take her seat behind the adjacent desk and fiddle with the wireless dial as was her custom each day before unwrapping the wax paper of her packed sandwich, she hopped onto the side of Hamish’s desk just as the phone rang.

  “Van Buren and DeLuca. This is Reggie speaking. What? Wait. Slow down.” Reggie felt her heart slope in her chest. She closed her eyes a moment, disbelieving what she was hearing on the other end. “And you’re sure that it’s . . . We’ll be there shortly. Thank you.”

  Reggie didn’t bother hanging up the phone. Just left it dangling from her hand as the caller clicked on the other end. “That was Reid. They found a corpse at the diamond.”

  Hamish felt as if a rug had been pulled out from under him, and though he was seated, the room around him spun. “Wh-who?”

  “He thinks it is Parker.”

  Reggie blanched. “The jersey. Some sort of altercation.” She retrieved a handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed at her nose.

  Hamish rose sadly as if he was rising through cement. “We’d better get down there.”

  Chapter 9

  While every murder-themed investigation of Winchester Molloy inspired Reggie to hope for a murder investigation of their own, she knew upon approaching the police cars and reporters outside the Patriots’ clubhouse, Hamish silent beside her, that there was nothing exciting about this murder. It devastated her. He’d been so talented and young and so full of ambition.

  She conjured his face and voice and smile in her mind’s eye as they made the mournful trek, Hamish’s right hand under his suspender, counting his breaths with each step nearer the commotion.

  Reporters’ bulbs flashed as they adjusted their fedoras and flipped their notepads to a fresh page.

  Reggie and Hamish’s arrival caught their interest and they watched closely.

  “Hold up!” A police officer with a thick Irish brogue waylaid them. “What’s your business here?”

  “Mr. Parker was our client,” Hamish said, his voice a slight stutter.

  “Was?”

  “Reid called and said—”

  “Then you didn’t hear. Mr. Parker is alive and well.”

  Hamish met Reggie’s eyes. “What?” she said. “I got a phone call that said otherwise.”

  “Someone’s dead, kids. But it wasn’t Mr. Parker.”

  “I’m very confused,” Hamish said unevenly.

  “It was his nephew.”

  Reggie gasped. “He was just a kid! How . . . Why would . . . What happened?”

  The officer turned, leaving Hamish and Reggie to blink stupidly at each other. “Hamish, the man said it was Parker. That it was his jersey that . . . How could he not tell?”

  Hamish’s fingers picked up speed in their count. “I guess a passing look and—”

  “Hamish!” They both
turned at Parker’s voice. Errol’s shoulders sagged and his eyes wildly looked around without settling on anything. “You came.”

  “We got word that it was you,” Reggie said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

  Errol nodded. “He was with Joe. Or waiting for Joe. I was just replacing my glove. I was in the dugout for five minutes. There was no one around, so Joe said it would be all right if he hung out in the locker room. I had let him wear my spare jersey. He . . .” Errol’s voice broke and Hamish put up a stalling hand.

  Hamish took a moment. His hand was no longer occupied over his heart but rather trembling by his side. It accelerated and Reggie started to worry. Especially when coupled with the mounting rise and fall of his breathing.

  “Hamish,” she whispered. “Why don’t you go make sure that fiend from the Herald knows how to spell our names?”

  He looked at her appreciatively and took the opportunity to disappear from their sight line.

  Hamish barely made it past the line of police cars before folding over, hands on knees, gulping every bit of air that his flurried heartbeat and blocked airway would allow. Two invisible walls bordered him and crushed closer and closer. He blinked the spots from his eyes and tried to count. To steady his breathing before the uncontrollable tremor in his right hand signaled complete loss of control. He blinked through his frustration. Why did these attacks happen at the most inopportune times? Sometimes he was fine. Gun to his chest at the Flamingo—fine. Other times, like now—when he realized that Errol was still alive—not fine.

  Hamish spat a curse in Italian—a word his mother always chastised his father for using in his presence. It came out ragged and shaky like his breath. He reined himself in for a moment and studied the grass: a million blades curving in a million unmowed directions, blurring as his eyes adjusted from blinking at a rapid pace to finally settling as his chest pains subsided and he slowly stilled. He focused on one of the police cars and counted. Slowly. He straightened his spine and erected his shoulders. In Boston, somehow, he could overcome his panic. Before, the fear of being noticed or of never coming out of the pool of dread would have crippled him. Something about the liberty he found in the North End with his new friends and his new life proved the best medicine. He wiped the beads of perspiration from his forehead and collected himself. It was going to be fine. He was going to be fine.