Haunted Hearts (23 page)

There was a pause while each of the others absorbed McGuire's news.

King was the first to act. “Doesn't mean a thing,” he said, waving his hand in McGuire's direction.

“Sure,” McGuire said. “Look it up. There are a dozen De Courseys in the telephone book. I mean, what can the odds be, right?”

“Where'd you discover this?” Pratt said.

Pinnington lowered himself into his chair.

“TriTech is the name Cassidy blacked out on all the documents,” McGuire said. “I didn't know TriTech owned Amherst, or that they were headquartered in the Caymans, either. I didn't get that information from Cassidy. As a matter of fact, he did everything he could to keep me from knowing about it. Which is why he also was worried that I might make copies of the stuff he gave me.”

“A bit of
prima facie
,” Pratt said.

“Three of TriTech's investments have gone broke in the last two years, just like Amherst did.” McGuire looked at each man as he spoke. “Amherst was bought a couple of years ago. All its assets were liquidated and it didn't pay any suppliers for the last six months. I'm not an accountant, but it sure as hell looked to me as though ten million dollars disappeared from Amherst after it was bought.” His eyes hung on Pinnington. “I'll bet everything I own against your ass that it's somewhere in the Caymans, along with ten or twenty million from the other two companies. These guys are running scams and your man Cassidy's making sure their tracks are covered.”

Pinnington's face was a pale mask.

Only Pratt spoke. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Here's what I'm
not
going to do.” McGuire placed his palms on Pinnington's desk and leaned forward, looking into Pinnington's eyes. “I'm not going to let anybody, especially Thomas Schaeffer, know where I obtained his address. If I had a week and a thousand dollars to spare, somebody I know might locate him anyway. But I don't want to waste the money or the time. The second thing I'm not going to do is, I'm not going to pass copies of my notes along to the Law Society, or to a buddy on the Fraud squad, or to one of the hairball reporters at
Eyewitness News
,
who keep wanting to interview me about last night. I'm not going to tell anybody that, when Amherst Electronics folded, it left a two-million-dollar debt after paying a five-million-dollar dividend to its partner in the Caymans, who just happens to be in bed with a family connected with your heir apparent, Barry Cassidy, B.A., LL.D., Yale alumni, good Republican, future general partner, and all-round dickhead. And who, instead of blowing a whistle or bowing gracefully out of the picture, appears to have used me to confirm that everybody's nose was clean.” McGuire took a long, slow breath. “That's what I'm not going to do,” he said. “What I'm going to do now is go to lunch, come back in an hour, clean out my office, pick up my check, and look inside it for Thomas Schaeffer's address, which I am told is somewhere in Arizona.”

Susan was waiting for him in a booth, the
Globe
open in front of her, a half-filled cup of black coffee sitting to one side. McGuire bent to kiss her on the cheek.

“You're big news,” she said. The front page of the newspaper showed McGuire's car being towed from the alley, along with a mug shot of Hayhurst and an old police-file photo of McGuire.

He shrugged out of his sports jacket, tossed it on the seat, and sat across from her. “What are the terms of your parole? Can you leave the state?”

“If I have permission, and if I report back when they tell me to.”

“Permission from whom?”

“The police.”

“You might be going to Arizona this weekend.”

“Why?”

“To find your ex-husband. To see your kids.”

When she finished crying, he squeezed her hand, ordered soup and salad for her, a beer and sandwich for himself.

“You'll come with me, I assume.”

“I hope,” McGuire said. “I never assume.”

When they finished eating, he left her to use the pay telephone and call Frank DeLisle.

Facing Pinnington and the other lawyers had been almost a joy, a retribution of sorts. Dealing with DeLisle, he knew, would not be so easy.

DeLisle was waiting for him in the marble foyer on Berkeley Street, the detective tossing peanuts into his mouth from a crumpled paper sack, making small talk with uniformed officers and staff people as they passed.

“What's up?” he said when McGuire led him towards an empty corner.

“You owe somebody a favour,” McGuire said.

DeLisle tilted his head back and emptied the remaining peanuts into his mouth. He chewed on them while squeezing the empty bag into a tight paper ball. “I owe half of Dorchester Street favours,” he said. He waved and smiled at a woman staff member walking towards an elevator.

“This one doesn't live in Dorchester,” McGuire said. “She lived for two years in Cedar Hill.”

DeLisle looked at McGuire, then down at the crumpled paper in his hand. “Susan Schaeffer. I heard you were seeing her.” He looked up at McGuire. “How's she doing?”

“What the hell do you care?”

DeLisle looked around for a place to dispose of the paper. “I discovered evidence of grand larceny, so I did what I'm supposed to do.”

“You ever thought about acting as a defense witness for her?”

“I was prosecution, for Christ's sake.”

“Yeah, and you were married, too.”

“What the hell's that supposed to mean?”

“Bit of a problem up there on the stand, right, Frank? Maybe being asked just how you got to know her so well, then going home to the wife, who starts asking questions about those nights you spent on some case, those nights when you were in a bar or somewhere else? Did you ever tell her, your wife, that you went to New York one weekend on an investigation? Is that what you told her?”

“I don't need lectures from you, McGuire.”

“You could have saved her, Frank.”

DeLisle discovered something interesting about the toes of his shoes.

“You could have crossed over before sentencing,” McGuire said. “You could have made a difference of two, three years in the sentence, which would have kept her out of Cedar Hill. Maybe you could have got her probation by testifying about the pressure she was under, what Myers was doing. I think it's called being a friend of the court.”

“Now you're talking like a lawyer.”

“You owe her, you bastard.”

“I owe her what?”

“She needs approval to leave the state for a few days. Terms of her parole. You vouch for her, talk to Higgins and his friends, fill out the form, she can go and not worry about getting shafted by the parole board. Can you do that?”

“Why should I?”

“Because if you do, maybe I'll forget your wife's name and telephone number. Carol Ann, right? Isn't that your wife's name?”

DeLisle tilted his head at McGuire. “You plan on taking her someplace, the Schaeffer woman?”

“Arizona.”

“What's in Arizona?”

“The Grand fucking Canyon.”

Upstairs, McGuire waited while DeLisle obtained a travel approval, took it from the detective without a word, and bounded up another flight of stairs to the next floor, where he found Donovan and Burnell bent over a computer terminal. The red-haired detective looked up briefly as McGuire approached from across the open office area.

“You found Myers yet?” McGuire said when he reached Donovan's desk.

“Who?” Donovan's eyes returned to the computer screen. Burnell looked up and nodded at McGuire.

“Myers. The guy who killed Orin Flanigan.”

Donovan glanced over at McGuire and grinned. “Thank the man, Carl. Looks like he's solved another case for us, and he's not even drawing salary anymore.”

“Have you talked to him yet?” McGuire said. “Myers?”

“Don't know where he is,” Donovan said. “He moved out of his apartment couple of months ago, said he was going to Florida. Florida doesn't know about him, but they're still looking. How's that?”

“And you talked to the yacht broker and Christine Diamond.”

“Both say they don't know about Myers. They signed sworn statements, so what can I tell you?” Donovan turned back to the computer and began striking keys.

“You check Flanigan's telephone records?”

“None of your damn business.”

“Anybody see Flanigan in Annapolis?”

“Nobody we can find. Told the car-rental agency that he was staying in Washington.”

“You got the autopsy report?”

“Whose?” Donovan popped a stick of gum into his mouth.

“Flanigan's. You got Doitch's report on him?”

“It's here,” Donovan said. “Why? You want to look at it? Some nice pictures in there, if you like looking at bald dead lawyers.”

“Let me see it.”

“What's this, you're givin' the city a freebie?”

“How'd he die?”

“He drowned, which is what happens if your lungs suck more water than air, right?”

“Doitch measure the water in Flanigan's lungs?”

“To the c.c.,” Donovan said.

“How much was there?”

“Look it up in the goddamn file,” Donovan said to the other detective. “Get him out of our hair.”

Burnell turned to a file drawer and pulled it open, while Donovan tapped at the computer keyboard. “Here it is,” Burnell said to McGuire.

“Don't show him the whole thing,” Donovan said. “Just tell him how many gallons Doitch found in Flanigan so he'll believe he wasn't cut up with a machete.”

Burnell flipped through the file to the autopsy report. “Point six three liters,” he said. He looked up at McGuire. “That's how much water was in the lungs.”

“What kind?” McGuire said.

“What?” Donovan stared at McGuire as though he were about to break into laughter. “What
kind
?
What, you expect maybe
soda
water?”

“Salt or fresh water?” McGuire said to Burnell.

“The guy was found in the Charles River, remember?” Donovan sneered. “At least a mile from the bay . . .”

“And he was last seen in Annapolis,” McGuire said. “Which is surrounded by salt water.” He looked at Burnell.

“Brackish,” Burnell said.

“Which means salt and fresh,” Donovan said. “Which tells you nothing, if the tide was in that night.”

“The tide wouldn't come that far up the river,” McGuire said.

“You sure about that?” Burnell said.

“Check it out. And call me here, would you?” McGuire withdrew a pen from his jacket, and scribbled Ollie's telephone number on a slip of paper from a wastebasket.

“Do as he says, Carl,” Donovan said. He turned back to the terminal. “I mean, this is the great Joseph P. McGuire, right? Hero of the Boston Police Department. Uses his car to run down hoods. Tracer of lost persons, saver of lost souls.” A grin appeared on Donovan's face, lit from the soft glow of the terminal. “Screwer of women jailbirds.”

Don't, McGuire thought. For once, he heeded his own advice.

A white envelope was on McGuire's desk, his name written on the front with a black felt pen, when he returned to his office. His file drawers were empty, and the coffeemaker was set in a brown cardboard box on the floor.

Inside the envelope was a certified check for $15,000, and a note on Pratt's personal letterhead that said “See me.”

Pratt's secretary told McGuire to go right in, and he entered the lawyer's office, which was furnished in Early American antiques. “Please close the door,” the birdlike man said. When McGuire did, Pratt gestured towards an oak Windsor chair fitted with a Colonial-print cushion, and McGuire settled himself into it.

“You might as well know that your departure from the firm isn't being greeted with unanimous . . .”—Pratt pursed his lips and stared down at his desk, searching for the word—“euphoria.”

“It seemed unanimous in Pinnington's office,” McGuire said. “Where's the address?”

“Right here.” Pratt handed a folded sheet of paper to McGuire. “I have your word as a gentleman that you will never reveal the source of this information.”

“You have it.” McGuire opened the paper and glanced at the address and telephone number. Green Valley, Arizona. “I would have found him sooner or later. I preferred sooner.”

“I often have this notion,” Pratt was saying, “this radical idea, that when a firm gets beyond a certain size, I don't know, maybe fifty, sixty people, and I don't mean just law firms, I mean companies of any kind. After they get to be a certain size, they should think of hiring a full-time disturber.” He looked at McGuire. “You know what I mean?”

“Somebody who raises hell,” McGuire said, placing the paper in an inside jacket pocket.

“I'm thinking of someone whose function is to ask ‘Why are we doing it this way?' ‘What's really going on over here?' ‘What if we tried this or that?' He would be exasperating, of course. Or she, I suppose.” Pratt paused as though pondering the idea. “The whole idea is that they couldn't be fired for asking embarrassing questions.”

“And you think I'd be good for the job.”

“I think you'd be perfect. And I wouldn't abandon any ideas of continuing your association with our firm. Good lawyers have an ability to separate their emotions from their interests, you know. Most of us, anyway.”

“Maybe Orin Flanigan didn't.”

“I've often felt that. I've often believed that same thing.” When Pratt extended his hand, McGuire shook it.

“By the way,” Pratt said as McGuire turned to leave, “Cassidy and Dick Pinnington are huddled together discussing Barry's future with the firm.”

“Does he have one?” McGuire asked, his hand on the doorknob. “Cassidy?”