Haunted Hearts (11 page)

“You need a ride?” Lorna called.

At the sight of Lorna, the other woman smiled. It was part joy at recognition of a familiar face, part nervousness, but something in McGuire responded to the light it generated and the sense, once again, that Susan Schaeffer was an immensely attractive woman whose beauty was muted by the weight of despair.

“You sure?” Lorna called out.

The woman mouthed “Thank you,” then set out, her hands still in her pockets, her head down as though searching for crevices in the sidewalk that might swallow her from sight.

“I hear you had to ask her to leave today.” McGuire moved the car ahead another few feet.

“She's a mess. I've never seen a woman such a mess.” Lorna's left hand crept towards McGuire and rested on his thigh.

“What's the real story about her?”

“I really don't know. She first showed up five or six weeks ago. She had an appointment with Orin, a regular one. Then she started coming by every day that Orin was there. Usually, they would go out together for lunch. At first she was happy, a lot happier then now, that's for sure. You know, kind of a nervous happiness.”

“Flanigan ever say anything about her?”

“Just introduced us. Said she was a friend.”

“That's all?”

“A little more but . . . One day, he walked her down the corridor when she left, and when he came back he looked really sad. I said, ‘Anything wrong, Mr. Flanigan?' And he looked at me in a kind of funny way and said, ‘She's an innocent.'”

“She's
innocent
?”

“No, she's
an
innocent. That's how he put it. ‘She's an innocent.'”

“I don't know what that means.”

“Neither do I. But Orin likes her. I think she looks a little bit like his daughter. Did you see that picture of Orin's daughter on his side desk? Don't you think they look similar?”

“Now that you mention it,” McGuire said, swinging the car into an open lane, “she does.”

At Lorna's apartment she ordered Chinese food, and they ate from containers, watching the television news together in her cluttered living room. The hunt for Freeman Hayhurst rated only a passing mention; there was nothing new to report. McGuire declined a glass of wine and read the newspaper, while Lorna stretched out on the sofa to watch a game show. When he looked up half an hour later she was sleeping, her head resting against the arm of the sofa and her mouth slightly open, snoring gently with a sound that reminded McGuire of the heater fan in his car. He stared at her for several minutes, curious at his own reaction. No longer an object of lust and tenderness to him, she was simply another lonely middle-aged woman in his life.

“I'm a transfer stop,” a woman once told McGuire. She had been shrugging into her coat, avoiding his eyes as she spoke, “and you're riding to the end of the line, right?” She said goodbye without looking back at him and, while he would think of her fondly whenever she invaded his memory, he didn't miss her. He missed so few of them.

He carried Lorna to her bed, where he lay beside her. She smiled, her eyes still closed, and snuggled against him, touching her lips to his cheek. He thought about undressing her, but closed his eyes instead. When he woke it was after three o'clock. Rising in the darkness and covering her with a quilt from a rocking chair in the corner, he let himself out of the apartment, closing the door behind him and listening for the lock to click into place.

The Chrysler started easily, and he began driving into the night. He relaxed in the glow of the dashboard lights, feeling the steady throb of the engine and the way the car wallowed slightly beneath him.

The city belonged to him and anyone else prowling the streets before dawn. A southern breeze made the leaves dance on the tree branches, many of them flaring into shades of yellow and red, the colours shining in his headlights, and some of the leaves released themselves in the wind's frenzy and sailed to the ground. He drove north out of the city and followed back roads through Everett and Malden and Melrose, the engine transferring all of its mechanical workings back to him in a muted clatter from beneath the hood. The transmission thumped periodically, friendly, like a cat that walks through a room and brushes your leg on the way.

He thought of Lorna and wondered why there wasn't something more there, during his times with her, to make him happy and content, so that his mind wouldn't wander to other women and other places. She was sensuous, she cared for him, and the hard carapace she wore as protection wasn't nearly as scaly as those of other women her age he had encountered, women whose hopes were almost abandoned, buried beneath the wreckage of so many bad relationships.

Many of these women had shown McGuire their marriage photographs, displaying a frozen moment from a previous generation, with the women wearing lace and silly tiny hats, and the men in cummerbunds and bow ties. Stiff-necked parents gathered around the wedding party, and at the sight of these photographs he always felt a terrible sadness waft over him. It was his awareness of all the pain and betrayals awaiting the smiling faces in the photographs, all those unseen beasts in the jungle, that disturbed him. We start out so trusting, he would remind himself, so confident there is goodness in the world, that we cannot believe what it is already planning to do to us.

He had no idea where the photographs from either of his two marriages could be found now. He believed his first wife destroyed them all in a fury of anger and despair when they separated. His second wife had taken their photographs with her, like a bounty, when she fled to Florida, and he hadn't thought about them, hadn't missed them, in years.

Comments about marriage from men like Wally Sleeman disturbed him, for although McGuire had dated many women in his years alone, he always did so with the expectation that the relationship could lead to something permanent. It was why he never visited singles bars, why in recent years he preferred being alone—and admittedly lonely—over sharing his time with someone whose presence embarrassed him, or someone he was using as a transfer stop.

Marriage remained, and always would remain for McGuire, the most natural and logical goal of a relationship. I enjoy being married, he assured himself once, and, like someone at his shoulder whispering the truth in his ear, he admitted, I'm just not very
good
at it.

He thought about it with as much honesty as he could gather, driving alone towards the dawn. He thought about himself and about women in his life and how he had failed, in so many small measures, everyone who loved him, and that was the root of his sadness now.

He speculated on the fate of Orin Flanigan. The obvious answers didn't work. He didn't believe Flanigan was having a fling with the mysterious Schaeffer woman, nor had he apparently embezzled client funds. His actions were totally at odds with everything the man had stood for all his life. Where was he? McGuire wondered. Chasing Myers across the ocean to South Carolina? McGuire didn't know. And I'm not being paid to know any more, he told himself. It's somebody else's job now, not mine.

He switched on the radio, tuning it to all-night talk shows hosted by gravel-voiced men who spoke calmly to near-hysterical callers who were concerned about space exploration, the power of the federal government, and the Red Sox infield.

He punched the scan button on the radio over and over until he heard a voice that sang with a level of passion and pain unmatched for fifty years, and he lost himself in almost an hour of uninterrupted Billie Holiday, broadcast from some distant New England station. Her voice rose and fell with the strength of the station's signal, singing sad songs with titles like “There Is No Greater Love” and “You're My Thrill.” As ancient and unfashionable as the music might be, the emotions it generated were as real and as fresh as the coffee he purchased from an all-night drive-in in Saugus.

At Swampscott the horizon began to bleed, and Billie Holiday's voice was replaced by a young announcer, whose words suggested he had been born at least twenty years after Billie Holiday died, chained to a hospital bed by narcotics officers. The man began to chatter about rising and shining and forgetting all the blues sung by, who was that again? Oh yes, Billie Holiday. Because it was time for the six o'clock news, followed by Jumpin' Jack Happy and the rest of the gang here at good old W-something-or-other. McGuire cursed, turned the radio off, and parked near King's Beach, closing his eyes and facing east, where the sun was beginning its silent explosion up from the sea.

His bladder woke him an hour later. He stepped outside the car to relieve himself before driving south to Revere Beach, feeling clear-headed about some things, as confused as ever about others.

He arrived just after eight o'clock. Ronnie was seated at the kitchen table, a cup of black coffee in front of her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she wore a frayed cotton robe. She looked up at him when he entered the room, and her mouth attempted an imitation of a smile.

“You okay?” McGuire said from the doorway.

She closed her eyes and nodded slowly. “I ended it,” she said, looking away. “Last night.”

“Tough?”

She nodded again.

“Need a hug?”

She shook her head. He thought about going to her anyway, but he knew she would resist him, that she would tell him this was something she had to deal with alone. “Sorry if I lectured,” he said.

She brought her hands to her eyes. “You got a phone call,” she said when McGuire turned to leave. “About an hour ago.”

“Who?”

“Woman named Lorna. Wanted to know what happened to you. What'd you do, love 'em and leave 'em again?” This time her smile was more genuine.

“I'm gonna grab an hour's sleep,” he said. “Ollie okay?”

“Ollie's fine,” Ronnie said, staring back into her coffee cup. “Ollie's just fine. Don't worry about Ollie. Don't worry about good old Ollie.”

He slept fully clothed, waking two hours later with his head filled with cotton. He showered, dressed, and came downstairs to find Ronnie cleaning the brushes from her paint kit, working with the intense concentration of someone attempting to save their own life.

“You know what we haven't had in a hell of a while?” he said.

“What?” Keeping her eyes on her work.

“Dinner together. You, me, Ollie, and the TV news. How about it, some night this week?”

“Sure.” Stroking the back of her hand with a camel-hair brush, the motion imitating the application of colour, or the caress of a lover.

He bent to kiss her forehead. “We'll talk about it tonight. I'll pick up some steaks, stuff like that.”

Still stroking her hand with the brush, she spread her fingers wide and the soft hairs entered the spaces between them, one by one, over and over. McGuire watched the motions and sensed the barrier that locked him out and sealed her pain in. Then he left.

He spent the morning drafting his report to Cassidy, collecting all the data from the sources he employed—a forensic accountant who examined the balance sheets and profit-and-loss statements, a background search on the few people whose names Cassidy provided, a review of bankruptcy claims and civil-court actions. Everything came up clean. McGuire handed it to one of the stenographers. An hour later he climbed the stairs with his report in hand.

“You're absolutely certain of this? There is no apparent evidence of criminal intent?” Barry Cassidy held the half-dozen sheets of papers a few inches above the surface of his desk as though hefting their weight.

“You want a guarantee, forget it,” McGuire said. “I don't give guarantees.” He slouched in the chair opposite the younger lawyer. “Just opinions.”

Cassidy's blue eyes narrowed slightly in his face, a face, McGuire noted again, that was boyish and pouting, would always be boyish and pouting, and a little snobbish. He probably went to one of those expensive prep schools in Vermont or New Hampshire, where they wear blazers and English haircuts, and their mothers send them cookies baked by a Filipino maid, and they talk half through their snobby god damn turned-up noses. McGuire prided himself on his limited prejudices. The limits did not extend to privileged snobs barely half his age.

“I was not looking for a court document,” Cassidy said. “I just need to know if it was complete.”

“Well, it's as complete as I can make it. There are some things missing, and a lot of names blacked out. Letters, documents, invoices, other stuff I saw mentioned but weren't in the file you gave me.”

“I gave you only what you needed.” Cassidy watched him, his eyes unblinking. “I gave you
more
than you needed. Some confidential things, irrelevant to the matter, you didn't need so I . . .”

“Where'd you go to school?”

“I beg your pardon?” Cassidy looked annoyed.

“School. Where'd you go?” McGuire angled his head towards Cassidy's law degree hanging prominently behind his desk. “Before good old Yale. You a Yale man? You look like a Yale man.”

Cassidy gave his familiar head jerk, chin up as though his tab collar was too tight—which it appeared to be, squeezing the flesh of his neck into a soft roll—then tilting his head to one side. “You mean my prep school? It was Rutland. In New Hampshire. Why do you ask?”

“You wear blazers there? Short pants?”

“Why is this of any importance?”

“Was your mother called Muffie?”

“My mother's name is of no concern to you.”

McGuire exhaled slowly, sensing what he was doing, searching for an outlet for his anger, knowing he was bullying Cassidy. Hell, Cassidy wasn't responsible for the circumstances of his birth any more than McGuire could help being born to sullen working-class parents, a father who carried his abiding rage home every evening on his coveralls, and a mother who focused more attention on the whiteness of her bed sheets than on the happiness of her only child. He stood up. “There it is, the best I can do.”

Cassidy smiled tightly. “I suppose we can ask for no more than that, can we?” As McGuire turned to leave, Cassidy added: “I would like all your notes on this matter.”

“My what?”

“Your notes.” Cassidy had turned to open his briefcase on the credenza behind his desk. “And any relevant documents. Please seal them in an envelope with my name attached and call my secretary when you've done so. I'll send her to obtain them from you.”

McGuire began to speak, then looked away. “Sure,” he said. “I'll get right to it, Hopalong.”

Cassidy lifted his head slowly, a pained expression on his face.

They called him that all through prep school, McGuire thought, as he turned to leave. Bet they made the little jerk miserable with a name like that.

He was at the copying machine when Lorna approached and said hello as though she were ordering him to leave her alone.

McGuire looked up and grunted. Another sheet of his notes on Cassidy's investigation glided into the output tray.

A young lawyer walked by, a woman in a tweed suit, who smiled at Lorna as she passed. “Did you have a nice time last night?” Lorna asked McGuire, smiling back at the lawyer.

“Not bad,” McGuire said. “Quiet evening. You?” The last sheet of notes slid from the machine.

“It was okay,” Lorna said, glancing at the copies. “But I misplaced something.”

“What was that?”

She stepped closer as though to use the machine. “You, you bastard,” she said, barely moving her lips.

“Well, you found it now.” McGuire carried both sets of the notes back to his office, listening to Lorna's heels clip-clopping after him.

“What the hell do you think I am?” she spat at him after closing the door behind her. “Some little bimbo, screwing her way through the office?”

McGuire sat in his chair, avoiding her eyes. “You're overreacting.”

“Overreacting, hell.” Her eyes grew wet, but the force of her anger trampled any other emotion she might have been feeling. “You just leave like that? You didn't even go home. You don't say goodbye, you don't go home, you walk out like I'm some kind of baggage you can leave anywhere.”

“You want an apology?” McGuire looked back at her. Jesus, he had seen this movie before. He had been
in
this movie before.

“You're damn right I want an apology,” she said.

“You got one.” McGuire forced a smile. “I'm sorry.”

Her expression relaxed. She folded her arms, looked away, then back at him. “Where'd you go?”

“For a drive. All night long. Wound up at Swampscott, watching the sun come up.”

“Yeah?” She forced a smile. “I used to do that. Just before I got married. I had a car, a little Volkswagen, and I'd drive to some place near the ocean and sit there listening to the radio, thinking, wondering if I was doing the right thing, sometimes crying about nothing, just enjoying the loneliness. You do that a lot?”

“Sometimes.”

She walked towards him. “Next time, take me with you?”

“Sure.”

She rubbed her knee against his leg. “You wanta make up?”

He agreed to see her for dinner that evening, and later he was angry at his own weakness, angry at deceiving both Lorna and himself. But it was better than spending an entire evening at Zoot's, or returning to the charged atmosphere of Ollie and Ronnie's.

Ronnie's broken it off, he reminded himself. It's over. They need to be alone, the two of them, her and Ollie. If I stay with Lorna tonight, it will be good for everybody.

He sent the original copies of his notes to Cassidy, hid the second set in his files, and spent the rest of the day reading memos and reports directed to his attention, searching for any that might require his services, and feeling relieved at finding none.

Around three o'clock Lorna phoned him. “The police were just here,” she whispered into the receiver. “Asking about Orin.”

“What're they looking for?”

“Just what he did, where we thought he might be. Missing-persons stuff.”

“They have any ideas?”

“Nothing. They said they're checking his credit cards, car rentals, airline records.” She lowered her voice even further. “Joe, do you think he's dead?”

“Why ask me?”

“Wasn't this your line of work?”

“Not missing persons. By the time I got involved, they were dead beyond a doubt.”

“You won't be annoyed if I'm not a hundred percent tonight, will you? This is really upsetting.”

McGuire assured her he wouldn't let it bother him, and promised to meet her at seven.

“I need time to get things ready,” she said.

“Get what ready?”

“You'll see. I'm going to make something to cheer us up. Both of us.”

Half an hour later he shrugged into his coat and walked out of his office, thinking of nursing a beer at Zoot's and eavesdropping on police gossip before going to Lorna's. He owed Lorna that much. Their expectations for this affair couldn't be different, McGuire knew. Somewhere in the back of their minds, they might have both started with hopes of a long-term attraction. Now, only Lorna believed in it. Or wanted to. Any port in a storm, McGuire thought. Any woman on a lonely night. Sometimes, he added, walking through the corridor towards the reception area, you can't be both honest and proud.

He would see Lorna tonight. He would make her laugh again. They would sleep in each other's arms.

In the office foyer he saw Susan Schaeffer wringing a handkerchief in her hands and staring at the receptionist. “You can't,” the receptionist was saying. “I'm not authorized to permit you to go down there anymore . . .”

Susan Schaeffer forced a smile. “It's all right,” she said. “I'm sorry I bothered you.”

McGuire stepped to the elevator, pushed the button, and stared at his shoes.

“Hello.”

He turned to see Susan Schaeffer beside him, smiling in that strange, sad manner. He grunted and dipped his head. The elevator arrived, empty, and he stepped aside to permit her to enter.

“Where is Mr. Flanigan?” she said to him when the doors closed and the elevator began descending. Her eyes were brimming with tears.

“I have no idea.” McGuire tried to maintain a cool, detached attitude.

“You were doing work for him. You went to find somebody.”

“That's right.”

“He's gone away. Did he tell you where he might be going?”

“I thought you might know.”

“Me?” She stepped back as though she had been slapped, or was about to be.

“You two are more than good friends.”

“Yes . . .”

“You're a client?”

“Not exactly.”

“So maybe you do other kinds of business.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

The elevator stopped at the foyer and the doors opened, revealing a knot of people waiting to enter. Among them was Richard Pinnington, who started at the sight of McGuire and the woman, looking back and forth between them.

McGuire smiled at Pinnington. The lawyer watched McGuire leave, Susan Schaeffer trotting quickly behind him.

“Please tell me what you found out for Mr. Flanigan,” she said when she caught up with McGuire at the door to State Street.

McGuire pushed his way outside. He remembered Thoreau's three rules for a happy life. Simplify, simplify, simplify. He was seeing Lorna tonight. He would make her laugh. She would make him feel good. Don't screw things up.

It was raining again, the drops falling gray and greasy to the pavement. He turned up the collar of his topcoat, scanned the sky, and jammed his hands in his pockets. Susan Schaeffer was next to him, waiting for an answer. “Strictly between me and him,” he said. Too much rain to walk to Zoot's. He set out towards Quincy Market.

“It had something to do with me, didn't it?” She walked quickly beside him, trying to match his pace.

“Probably. Maybe.”

“Have you talked to the police? About Mr. Flanigan?”

“Not yet.” McGuire crossed State Street, hearing the woman behind him.

“If you will, are you going . . .”

McGuire stepped under an awning out of the rain, and turned to face her. He snapped his words at her, biting off the ends. “I don't know what kind of trouble you're in, but it's none of my business and there's no way I'm going to
make
it my business. If Orin's disappeared, leave it to the police, and whoever else wants to get involved, to find him. It's not my job, it's not
your
job, and if Orin broke a promise or stood you up, well, that's too bad and you probably didn't deserve it, but nobody ever does, do they?”