Immaculate Deception (3 page)

"Grandstanding," Cates said after the Eggplant
had left. "No mystery to me. Just wants more time in the limelight."

"That's showbiz."

She was already focusing her attention elsewhere. Her gaze
drifted around the bedroom. The bed. The night table. The knickknacks. The pictures.
There was a forest of photographs on the bureau. The obligatory happy family
tableau, Frankie and her husband, four mick-faced freckled kids, all teenagers.
Three boys and a girl. So she had punched them out back to back in, say, a
six-year span.

Speculating, she constructed a life for Frances McGuire.
Married young, a girl child brainwashed by the nuns, a good Catholic who made
all the shots count. Husband, puffed up and dead serious, a real Irish rooster
proud of his dick's work. The photo looked, from the clothing and hairstyles,
five, maybe six years old. The other photographs were older. Mom and Dad over
in the corner in their silver frame. Old fashioned folks, upwardly mobile
shanty Irish, Ma stiff in a corset, Da tight-suited smiling toothily into the
lens.

There was a smaller colored picture of the Virgin Mother
hung randomly on the wall in a cluster of celebrity pics, the deceased with
Reagan, the deceased with Carter. That meant at least ten years in office, five
terms at least. There was also a picture of Frankie with the pope. She with her
head covered, obviously a private audience shot. Greg had called her the
pro-life lady. Was there another stand for an Irish lady in an Irish Catholic
district in South Boston? Was the pope Catholic?

She soaked up other details, until the uniformed policeman
stationed at the door came in, a young black man with an Eddie Murphy
moustache.

"Fat guy's still here."

She had forgotten, her mind absorbed in assembling the
scene's bits and pieces. She made copious notes in her notebook, drew pictures
as well. Perhaps tomorrow a note would surface, a letter to the husband or the
kids, making all her speculations about murder irrelevant.

The fat man sat slouched in a heavy upholstered couch, his
body looking as puffy as the large throw pillows that adorned it. Above the
couch was a nest of plaques. Knights of Columbus for Distinguished Service, The
Royal Order of Hibernians, Honorary Member. A Kentucky Colonel certificate, a
plaque from the Boston chapter of B'nai B'rith, an elaborate certificate from
the Pro-Life National Coalition and others. A typical politician's trumpeting
wall. This was merely a fraction of the collection. Her office would be lined
with them. Her home in Boston as well.

"This is a big shock," the fat man said. He
looked exhausted and his eyes were shiny and moist in their deep pockets of
fat.

"I assume her husband has been notified."

"I called him immediately."

"Before or after you called the police?" Cates
asked. They had settled themselves in upholstered chairs facing him on the
couch.

"Is that significant?" the man asked.

"Everything is significant," Cates responded. He
looked toward Fiona. His thoughts were transparent. If it's showbiz, then I'll
play my role. But it's only for the money.

The fat man pursed his lips and scratched his thinning
pate.

"I called him first. After all, he is her
husband." There was something awry in the way he said it, resentful.

"Then you called the police," Cates said
pleasantly. They were sliding him into it, taking it easy.

"And you saw her at seven when she left the
office?" Cates asked. They had worked out a system. Whoever chose the easy
ones, the other took the hard ones. Cates was on easy.

"Yes. We had gone over the speech points for Monday.
She was going up to the District. Catholic Charities. A good group for us.
Large and supportive. She could hold a crowd, Frankie could. Everyone called
her Frankie. A natural politician. She was only thirty-six when they sent her
up."

Made her maybe forty-six, forty-seven, Fiona calculated,
remembering now that the
Washington Post
had put her on the cover of
Style
years ago. Pert and feisty, they had called her. She looked a good ten years
younger.

"As far as I could see," Foy said. "She
wasn't depressed, showed no signs of, you know, anything that might suggest
that she would take her own life."

The fat man looked at his hands which were remarkably thin,
not pudgy, but small and tapered, white and clean. Without the fat, he would
appear fastidious. There was an air of the effeminate about him. The self-study
of his hands suggested that he was masking hesitation.

"She could have slipped into a sudden depression. Many
people can keep their real feelings to themselves. Maybe something hit her, a
dark thought, some terrible mental blow?" Cates coaxed, exchanging glances
with Fiona.

The fat man moistened his lips. However gentle the
interrogation, it was making him uneasy.

"The Irish are a moody people," he sighed.
"Frankie was no exception. She could be tough. She hated to lose and
losing made her moody." He looked up from his hands and gathered his
thoughts. "She was up last night I can tell you. Happy. She had got the
President's men to push once again on the prayer amendment. Good stuff for our
district. No. She was really up, back to her old self." Poor choice of
words and he was the first to notice. He was running on inertia now, still
protecting the lady's political image, doing his job. A congressman's principal
chore, above all else, was to run his or her reelection campaign. This took
priority over everything. Two years rolled around like lightning. Image making
had to be done on the run.

"Back to her old self, you said," Fiona
intervened. Instinct and practice could pick out the hard ones, like fruit
graders working a conveyer belt.

"I hadn't meant..." the fat man began, chins
rippling. She could see a palpitating beat in the skin puddle.

"Nevertheless you must have meant..." Fiona said
drawing out the sentence, staring into his fatigued eyes. She waited until she
could tell the long pause was unnerving him. "...that sometime in the near
past she was off her feed."

The expression confused him. Getting it finally, he made an
effort to retrieve his confidence.

"She was under the weather last week. Probably a bug
going around."

"Making her mopey," Fiona pressed. "Sort of
out of it. Something like that."

"Yeah, something like that."

"Not all there? Not her usual bouncy self?
Like..." Fiona paused and fixed her eyes on his. "...her
monthlies." Fiona smiled benignly, wondering suddenly if the lady was
still menstruating normally.

"Something like that, yeah," Foy nodded,
obviously hoping this would end it.

"So that when things happen, things go wrong as they
always do, her reaction was more touchy than usual."

"Fair to say," he nodded.

"So what went wrong last week that made her more
touchy?" Fiona snapped, cracking the whip. Foy blanched. Fatigue had
obviously slowed down his obfuscation. Tremors were rippling his chins. She
watched him for a long moment, letting his uncertainty work itself out.
"She's dead, Harlan," Fiona said, soothingly. "We have no desire
to soil her memory. Two choices here. Suicide or murder. Sometimes people just
snap. Happens all the time. But murder implies enemies at work, hate and
vicious acts."

"I just want her to rest in peace," he muttered,
ever the loyal retainer, although it must have occurred to him that suicide
meant she'd left him in the lurch, betrayed him.

"Can she?" Fiona prodded gently, invoking the
Catholic hereafter, always a sure-fire way to get a good Catholic's attention,
stir up the supernatural. Think of her as watching you now, she told him
silently. Judging your performance. Only the truth will set you free. And her.

"We were working on a speech for Monday," he
mumbled, but with less conviction than before.

"But she wasn't her usual self?" Cates
interjected.

Foy shrugged, rippling his chins.

"Something was bugging her?" Fiona coaxed.

"Not easy in the trenches," he sighed.
"Getting beat on the head by both sides. Sometimes they don't think we're
doing enough. And fighting off the damned liberals..." His voice cracked,
then faded away.

"You're talking politics not personal?" Cates
asked.

"Hell," Foy said regaining his voice, looking at
Cates with contempt for his ignorance. "It's all politics. Nothing is
personal. We had two issues. They dominated everything. Abortion and prayer in
the schools. For us, that was it. Frankie was the Right-to-Life lady. Everybody
knows that. And one day we're going to beat those murdering sons of bitches..."
His face had flushed a deep scarlet. No question about the depths of his
commitment. "Sometimes they would actually accuse her of not doing enough.
Not enough? Shit."

"Who are they?"

"May Carter, for one."

"Who is May Carter?" Fiona asked.

"You don't know?" Foy looked at her then took in
a deep breath of exasperation. "She's on the National Board of Right to
Life for chrissakes and she lives in our district. May is a key player. But she
never let up on Frankie. Not for a minute. Called every day. You could set your
watch by her."

"Frankie didn't like her?" Cates asked.

"Not easy to like, I can tell you," Foy said.

"She like Frankie?"

Foy thought about that and took his time over the answer.
It wasn't simple for him anymore.

"May Carter is the living embodiment of a sacred
cause."

"What the hell does that mean?" Cates asked,
growing testy, stretching his nice guy role.

"It means," Fiona said, drawing from her father's
experience. "That she judged people only by their level of commitment to
the cause."

Foy nodded, obviously thankful for the help.

"Also by the level of results. I can also tell you it
wasn't easy in a Congress dominated by abortionists and Godless liberals. No
matter what Frankie did it was never enough for May." He was silent for a
moment, mulling something, straining against the repression of years.

"She's gone," Fiona said softly.

Foy shrugged, the decision made. He sucked in a deep
breath. You got it Foy, Fiona thought. Dead is dead.

"We were just as committed as that bitch," Foy
hissed, biting his underlip, then raising his eyes, showing his long endured
pain. He was the buffer between the hostile world and his charge, the
congresswoman, his queen and master.

Fiona imagined she could see more in him than just a
lackey's level of devotion. Encased in that mass of frontal flesh was, quite
obviously, the beating heart of a sensitive and vulnerable man. Mentally
undressing him, she shuddered, then shrugged. In her game, attraction was
always a mystery and she had seen her share of mismatches. It was a consideration,
a base to be touched. Conventional wisdom and popular images had little
relevance when probing the dark side of human motivation. Only free ranging
speculation was relevant to the detective's art. Lackey or lover? Grist for the
mill.

"We were as committed as May, although it was never
enough. Never." Guard down, Foy was letting the pus squirt from the
long-festering wound. "Problem was, Frankie never could attain May's level
of hate and confrontation. She hated all those who were against the cause and
would piss and moan whenever Frankie was seen with the enemy like her
colleagues on the subcommittee who didn't share her view. That's the
Subcommittee on Health and Labor of which she was a member. She wanted Frankie
to be in a perpetual state of war. No intercourse with the enemy. Explaining to
May that you had to get along, especially with the leadership, most of whom
were the opposition, was like talking into a cloud."

"What enemy?" Fiona asked, picking up on the
word.

"Not enemy in the sense of raw hatred. Not that kind
of enemy. Let's say political enemy, which did not rule out human
friendship."

"Like who?" Fiona pressed.

"I don't know. Bob Preston, the Minority Whip. Charlie
Rome, chairman of the subcommittee. That really set May off. Hell, Charlie
opposed everything that Frankie stood for, a real bleeding heart that one. But
Charlie and Barbara, his wife, were buddies with Frankie. Hell, they live in
this building. In fact, lots of important people live in this building. May
Carter didn't even like Frankie living in the same building with the ... the
so-called enemy. I tried to explain to the bitch. That's not the way the system
works."

Apparently this May Carter had been a thorn in their side
and had triggered an avalanche of animosities, which, once the pus boil was
lanced, kept him running at the mouth until finally Fiona interposed the
essential question.

"Does May want Frankie's seat?"

Wheels within wheels, Fiona knew. A powerful constituency
was one thing but wanting to take one's job was quite another.

"Maybe. There's always takers."

"Does she have a chance?"

"She'll be a disaster if she does get it. They'll box
her in a corner and let her rave."

"I asked about her chances?" Fiona persisted.

"She'd have to knock off Jack Grady. Been in line for
years. Good old party boy. State senator. The idea was for Frankie to
eventually go for the Senate with Grady running for her seat." He smirked.
"Considering Massachusetts politics we'd all have beards down to here when
that could happen. Him and May going at it for Frankie's seat could be Northern Ireland in South Boston. No war like an Irish war."

"So Grady gains from Frankie's death."

"I'm sure he'll think so," Foy shrugged. He
paused for a moment. Beads of perspiration had begun to sprout on his upper lip
and the ashen skin carried two circles of red flush on either cheekbone. With
one finger, he squeegeed off the sweat, wiping it on his jacket. "Problem
is Jack's got lots of skeletons. Things you can do in the State House you can't
do in Congress. Opponent like May would go for the jugular."