Scar Tissue (18 page)

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Authors: William G. Tapply

Tags: #Mystery

BOOK: Scar Tissue
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“Like hell I am,” I said.
He cocked his head and frowned at me. “Whaddya mean, like hell?”
I shrugged. “I'm not showing those pictures to anybody.”
“You better not get all moral and honorable on us here, Coyne,” he said. “You just killed a guy, don't forget.”
“No one sees those pictures,” I said. “It's the least I can do.”
“Show'em to me, at least.”
I shook my head. “Nope. Not even you.”
“Just lemme see them,” he said.
I hesitated. “You'll give them back?”
“If you insist.”
“And you won't mention them to anybody?”
“If I can see them,” he said, “maybe I'll recognize something. I can do some checking. I won't have to tell anybody where I saw em.
I considered it for a minute, then went to the safe, took out the envelope, and handed it to Horowitz. “I'm trusting you on this, Roger,” I said.
He thumbed through the photos, peering hard at each one, then gave them back to me. I returned them to the safe.
“So?” I said.
“Vile,” he said.
I nodded.
“There's only two identifiable people in them. The Gold boy's one of'em, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Who's the girl?”
“Jenny Rolando,” I said.
“That accident?”
I nodded.
He looked at me. “Maybe it wasn't an accident,” he said. “Maybe Sprague intended to kill them.”
“I've been thinking the same thing.”
“Well,” he said, “it's a start. I'll pursue it. What're you gonna do?”
“I'm not going to tell anybody about the photos.”
“You're gonna lie about it?”
“I didn't lie to you,” I said.
He nodded. “That's because I'm not on the case. What about Nash?”
“I'm not telling Gus Nash. My story is that it was a robbery. The guy said he was after money and jewelry. What the hell do I know? Probably some cokehead. Scared the shit out of me. He was very rough with Julie. Took a shot at me, so I shot him. Self defense. If I have to talk to Gus, yes, I'll have no problem lying to him.”
“Nash ain't stupid,” said Horowitz. “He'll recognize Klemm, know it was no robbery. He'll connect it to the Sprague thing.”
“I assume he will,” I said. “That's fine. But I'll play dumb. Let him think what he wants. I'm not telling Gus Nash or anybody else about those pictures. Those photos are between you and me.”
Horowitz shook his head. “You're puttin' me in a tough spot. You realize that, don't you?”
“You're a tough guy, Roger.”
He nodded. “True.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “So you got this figured out?”
“Not really,” I said. “But for starters, I assume Bobby Klemm's pistol is the one that killed Jake Gold and Ed Sprague, and if it is, I don't think I'm in trouble for this.”
“Well, let's hope so.” He looked toward my door. There were voices out there. “Sounds like the Boston cops're here,” he said. “This one—” he nodded toward Klemm's body “—is their case. Tell'em whatever the hell you want. I'll verify it was what you told me. You and me need to talk some more.”
“I thought they took you off the Sprague case,” I said.
“They did,” he said. “Fuck'em.”
He stood up, started toward the door, then stopped and turned back to me. “You okay, Coyne?”
“Sure. Why?”
He shrugged. “You just killed a man.”
“I'm fine,” I said.
He looked at me for a minute, then shrugged and left my office.
I
was
fine. I felt calm and clear-headed and under control.
It would probably hit me later.
After Horowitz left, two men came in. Both wore dark suits and dark mustaches and had shields pinned on their jackets. The taller of the two had streaks of gray in his hair. He introduced himself as Lt. Dominic Gillotte, Boston homicide. The other guy was Sergeant Michaelson. I shook hands with both of them.
They took me out into the reception area. Julie was sitting at her desk talking to a uniformed female officer. Several other people who were standing around out there, including Horowitz, went back into my office.
Gillotte and Michaelson sat me down in one of the waitingroom chairs on the opposite side of the room from Julie's desk and asked me to tell my story, which I did, the way I'd told Horowitz I intended to tell it. Gillotte asked a few perfunctory questions, which I answered, then he repeated them in such a way that I understood they weren't perfunctory at all.
I stuck to my story, and after about half an hour, Gillotte
went back into my office. Michaelson stayed with me. He didn't ask any more questions, and I didn't say anything to him.
I lit a cigarette, and about the time I was stubbing it out, Gillotte and Horowitz came out. Gillotte had my .38 in a plastic bag.
“This is yours, right?” he said.
“Yes. It'll have my fingerprints on it, and you'll find that it's the gun that killed that person in there.”
“You got a license for it?”
“Of course.”
He nodded. “Assuming everything checks out, we'll get it back to you in a couple days.” He looked at Horowitz. “Anything else, sir?”
Horowitz shrugged. “It's your case. Seems pretty straightforward to me.”
Gillotte nodded, and he and Michaelson went back into my office again.
Horowitz sat beside me. “They'll put two and two together pretty soon,” he said quietly. “Soon as they ID Bobby Klemm and do their ballistics on that twenty-two, they'll connect this with Sprague and Gold. You should expect to hear from Nash and Stone before long, and I doubt they'll be as gullible as Gillotte. I covered for you here, but I can't do anything for you with Nash.”
“I can handle it,” I said.
Horowitz grinned. “That was a good shot you made.”
“He was all of five feet from me. Hard to miss.”
“You'd be surprised. I've seen experienced police officers miss from five feet.”
“Go for the body mass. That's what Doc Adams always told me.”
“Well,” he said, “you done good, Coyne. He woulda killed you and Julie. He let you see his face. That means he was planning to kill you.”
I nodded. “That's what I figured.”
He patted my leg. “If this was my case, I'd grill you like a Fenway hot dog, you know.”
“Last time I was at Fenway, they steamed the dogs.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Good point.” He stood up. “I'll be in touch,” he said. “We'll have to put our heads together on this.”
I looked up at him. “Thanks, Roger,” I said. “I know you're putting yourself on the line here.”
“I ain't doing it for you, Coyne,” he said. “This is the first time I ever got taken off a case, and it stinks.”
A
fter Horowitz left, I sat there in my reception area while various official people moved in and out. Sergeant Michaelson sat stolidly beside me. He didn't say anything, but I understood that I was supposed to stay put. I was his prisoner, and I didn't like the feeling.
After a while, two men pushed a gurney into my office, and they came back out a few minutes later with a zipped-up body bag on it. Julie had been sitting behind her desk the whole time with the same female officer baby-sitting her. She kept glancing my way, and whenever she did, I smiled and nodded at her. She nodded back to me. She was sticking to our story.
Finally Lieutenant Gillotte came back. “You can go home now, Mr. Coyne,” he said.
“About time.”
He frowned at me. “You okay?”
I nodded. “I guess so. I don't shoot people every day.”
He cocked his head. “Back in eighty-seven you shot a guy. You were in your apartment. Used that same gun, if I'm not mistaken.”
“Yes,” I said. “Same gun. They called that guy Rat. He was
some kind of small-time mobster. He'd already killed a few people, and he was going to kill me and my girlfriend.”
Gillotte nodded. “Most people don't shoot anybody in their whole life. I'm a fucking homicide cop, and I never shot a guy. You've shot two.”
“I'm a lawyer,” I said. “That probably explains it.”
He smiled. “Anyway, why don't you get the hell out of here. We'll be in touch with you. And you better plan on taking the day off tomorrow. Your office is a crime scene.”
“Okay,” I said. I got up and went over to Julie. “They told me I can leave.”
She nodded. “Me, too. I called Edward. He's coming to pick me up.”
“Hey,” I said, “you might as well take the day off tomorrow.”
“Since they won't let us in here anyway?” She smiled. “Just so it doesn't count against my vacation time.” She cocked her head and frowned at me. “Are you all right, Brady?”
“Sure. You?”
“I'm okay.”
I hugged her, then left.
A uniformed officer was standing stiffly outside my office door. I nodded to him, and he nodded back. Then I went down to the end of the corridor and got into the elevator. I'd walked to work, so I'd have to walk home.
I looked forward to it. The wintry air would clear my head, and the long stroll down Boylston Street, across the Public Garden and the Common, through the financial district and Quincy Market and along Atlantic Avenue to my apartment overlooking the harbor—it would give me time to do some thinking. Maybe I'd stop off at Skeeter's on the way, have a burger and a beer, watch a basketball game on the TV over his bar. It would be fun to watch a good college basketball game, have a beer or two, talk sports with Skeeter, think about something else besides dead people and pornographic photographs of a
boy I'd known since he was a baby, a boy who still called me Uncle Brady.
The elevator stopped at the lobby and the doors slid open. I stepped out … and lights started flashing and a mob of people with cameras and microphones closed in on me. They were shoving and elbowing each other and yelling all at once.
“How'd it feel to kill a man?”
“Was he a client?”
“A few questions, Mr. Coyne.”
“Who was he?”
“Got a license for that gun?”
“Did he rape your secretary?”
“Was he on drugs?”
“ … Reddington?”
“ … Professor Gold?”
Somebody grabbed my arm. I tried to shake him off, but he didn't let go. “Come with me,” he growled.
It was Horowitz. He held up his shield so the mob could see it and yelled, “Move out of the way or I'll arrest every goddamn one of you.”
Surprisingly, they stepped back. Horowitz shouldered his way through them. I followed along behind him, out of my office building and onto Boylston Street.
We stopped on the sidewalk and looked back. The mob of reporters had followed a short distance behind us. They stood there uncertainly, and Horowitz glared at them.
“Hey, thanks,” I said.
“You got a car?”
“No. I was going to walk.”
“They'll follow you. Come on.”
He led me to his Taurus, which was parked in the loading zone around the corner. We got in. He slapped his magnetic portable blue flasher onto the roof, and we pulled away and entered the flow of evening traffic on Boylston Street, heading east.
I smoked a cigarette as Horowitz maneuvered through the traffic, and we didn't talk all the way to my apartment on Lewis Wharf.
When he pulled up in front, he leaned toward me. “I wouldn't say a damn thing to the media if I were you.”
I nodded. “I wasn't going to. Advice of counsel.”
He grinned. “I was gonna tell you to get yourself a lawyer, too.”
“I already got one.”
“Any lawyer who tries to defend himself has a fool for an attorney, don't forget,” said Horowitz.
“So I've heard.” I opened the door, slid out, then leaned in. “Thanks again. Thanks for everything.”
He waved me away. “Ah, you're a pain in the ass, Coyne.”
“I try.”
“I got some things I need to do,” he said. “I'll get in touch with you. I ain't done with this.”
“Neither am I.”
The first thing I did when I got up to my apartment was go into the kitchen, take down my jug of Rebel Yell, and pour myself a double shot. I thought maybe I'd get myself blitzed again. Two nights in the same week. That would be a personal best, if you didn't count college.
I took my drink into the bedroom, shucked off my office clothes, and climbed into jeans and a sweatshirt.
The red message light on my answering machine was blinking like a toddler with a cinder in her eye. I pressed the button. The machine whirred for a long time as the tape rewound through a dozen or more messages. Then it clicked, beeped several times, and a voice said, “Mr. Coyne, this is Melissa DuPont at Channel Seven news, and—”
I hit the button. The next voice belonged to Dan Hutchins at the
Globe,
and the one after that was the eleven o'clock news anchor from Channel Four.
I turned the machine off, sat on my bed, lit a cigarette, and took a long gulp of Rebel Yell.
And then it finally hit me.
Both of my hands started trembling, my stomach lurched, and I couldn't catch my breath. I put my drink on the bedside table, stubbed out my cigarette, and lay back. I took several deep breaths. The booze burned in my stomach.
I closed my eyes. Pictures began flashing and whirling in my head.
Bobby Klemm's cruel eyes.
The black hole of his gun's muzzle.
The look of pain and fear in Julie's eyes.
The patch of dark, shiny blood on Klemm's powder-blue turtleneck.
Lieutenant Gillotte's skeptical smile.
The shrunken, lifeless lump inside that black body bag.
Brian Gold's naked childlike body in those grainy black-and-white photographs—
The phone beside my head bleated. I started to pick it up, then pulled my hand back.
I'd turned the answering machine off, so the phone just kept ringing.
After a minute, I reached over and unplugged it.
Then I let my head fall back on my pillow.
I
didn't really sleep, and it certainly wasn't restful, but when I opened my eyes and looked at my watch, I saw that it was after ten o'clock. I'd stopped shaking, and my stomach was no longer flip-flopping.
I took my unfinished glass of whiskey out to the kitchen and dumped it down the sink. Then I made myself a fried-egg sandwich. I ate it standing over the sink. I realized I was famished. I made another sandwich, ate that one, then had a banana. I found a bag of oatmeal-and-raisin cookies and ate half of them.
Then I got a Coke from the refrigerator and took it into my bedroom. I picked up the phone and started to dial Evie's number before I realized I had no dial tone.
I plugged the phone in and tried again.
She picked up on the second ring.
“It's me,” I said.
“Oh, God,” she said. “Where are you? What's going on? I've been trying to call you all night. Are you all right?”
“I'm okay,” I said.
“I saw it on the news. Is it true?”
“I killed a man today. Yes. What are they saying?”
“Nothing, really. They interviewed some police detective, and all he'd say was that you were not under arrest at this time, and that the victim was a known criminal. They showed a mug shot of him on the television, one of those head-on police pictures. He looked like a nasty man.”
“At this time?
Is that what they said?”
“Yes.” Evie hesitated. “Brady, about the weekend …”
“Don't worry about it.”
“I'm sorry,” she said softly. “I was—I don't know. Upset with you.”
“I figured you were.”
She was silent for a minute. Then she said, “Sometimes I don't think it's working.”
I didn't say anything.
“I didn't want to be with you,” she said.
“You were with me when I needed you.”
“Yes. Of course I was.”
“Then, in the morning, you couldn't get away from me fast enough.”
“I'm not sure I can explain it,” she said.
“That's okay. You don't have to.”
“I would if I could. It's just …” She laughed softly. “We do have some fun, don't we?”
“I know I do,” I said. “Sometimes I'm not so sure about you, though.”
“I had a date,” she said. “Both days.”
“Whatever,” I said. “We've got no commitment.”
She laughed quickly. “No, we don't, do we?” She hesitated. “Her name is Mary.”
“Mary,” I repeated. “Jesus. Don't tell me—”
“Oh, Brady. Not that.” She chuckled. “Mary's an old friend, for heaven's sake. She and I used to hang out a lot.”
“Before I came along.”
“Yes. Saturday we went to the MFA. We always used to go to the museum on Saturdays, then go treat ourselves to dinner in a fancy restaurant. We spent all day Sunday dumping quarters into the slots down at Foxwoods.” She hesitated. “Would you ever spend a Sunday at Foxwoods with me?”
“Not if I could help it.”
“See,” she said, “sometimes I like to do things like that.”
“I don't like casinos,” I said. “Crowds, noise, glitz. Everybody after your money. Such an intense, desperate quest for pleasure. It depresses me. I don't like shopping, either, or lying around on a beach, or ballet or opera or rock concerts. I don't like paying money to be entertained. I can entertain myself.”
“What about Red Sox games?”
“That's different,” I said.
She laughed. “Anyway,” she said, “I know how you are. So I went with Mary. I had to get away, that's all.”
“Away from me,” I said.
“I guess so. I like to go places sometimes, and it's no fun going with somebody who's miserable.”
I lit a cigarette. “I'm not very good at talking about this stuff.”
“Yes,” she said. “Don't I know it.”
“Relationships,” I said. “How I
feel.
I don't like to analyze those things. It doesn't seem to get me—us—anywhere.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, “I felt guilty the whole time I was away, you know.”
“That was dumb.”
“It felt like I was cheating on you.”
“I thought of that, actually,” I said.
“That I was cheating on you?”
“Like I said—”
At that instant somebody started banging on my door. It was loud and insistent, and a man's voice was calling my name.
“Someone's here,” I said to Evie. “It better not be more reporters. Hang on.”
I took the phone out to the door and peeked through the peephole. It was Horowitz.

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