Void in Hearts (18 page)

“Which would blemish your otherwise pristine record.”

Another chuckle. “Exactly. Take care of yourself, Brady.”

“Believe me, I intend to.”

T
WO DAYS PASSED WITH
no word from Arthur Concannon. I used a pay phone each evening to report to Sharon Bell. She did not seem concerned. “He’s checking you out,” she said. “He’s a cautious, careful man. He knows how to play these games. We’ve got to play better, that’s all. Patience.”

“What’s he looking for?”

“A connection to me. He found out Hayden was meeting me, we assume. That’s why we’ve got to be careful.”

“Supposing he learned that you and I are in cahoots?”

“In cahoots!” she fairly roared. “Oh, my God. In cahoots, he says. You been watching
Gunsmoke
or
Bonanza
or something?”

“What’s wrong with ‘in cahoots’?”

“Nothing. It sounds just like something you’d say, actually. Okay, so what if Concannon figured we were in, as you say, cahoots? I don’t know. He still needs the film. It would certainly make him even more careful. And—”

“And more dangerous,” I finished for her.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “That’s what I was going to say.”

What I didn’t tell Sharon Bell was that it contradicted my nature to sit around waiting for the other guy’s moves. It’s what makes me a lousy chess player. The longer my opponent takes before he moves, the quicker I want to go. It’s why I’m better at physical games than cerebral ones.

So the longer I had to wait for Concannon, the more I itched to do something.

I temporized by making a couple of phone calls. The first was to Kerrigan, the Somerville cop, whom I caught at the station just as he was going off duty.

“Do you remember me telling you about that Audi that was parked in the garage at the Alewife T station?” I said to him. “The one belonging to Derek Hayden?”

“Sure I remember.”

“Whatever happened to it, do you know?”

“It’s still right there. We ran it through the registry computer, verified it belongs to Hayden. Had the lab boys go over it inside and out. They found nothing special. Been hoping Hayden was going to show up, but so far no go. I tried to get the chief to stake it out, but he didn’t feel we could swing it manpowerwise, given the thinness of our evidence that it was connected to a crime. I talked with the guys in the booths who take the money when you drive out, Promised them an easy twenty bucks if the Audi with the license plate TARZ pulled up to the window and they stalled him and called me within two minutes. They work eight-hour shifts, different guys on weekends, one spare for sick-outs—seven contacts I made. None of ’em has called me yet. At this point, I figure Hayden’s Audi is a dead end. I was back there a few days ago, matter of fact. It was still there, collecting dust and a big fee.”

“It’s still there because Hayden is probably dead,” I said, and I proceeded to tell him how Sharon Bell and the Securities and Exchange Commission figured into the picture, and that Les Katz had probably been killed because he witnessed Hayden’s murder.

“I just had this awful thought,” said Kerrigan.

“I’ve been having my share recently.”

“I wonder if the lab guys prybarred open the trunk of that Audi.”

“You said you were there recently.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you get out of your cruiser?”

“Sure. Wanted to see if there were any smudges on the dust.”

“Smell anything?”

He laughed thinly. “No. And we’ve had some warm days lately, too. Okay. Scratch that idea. It’s a relief, I admit.”

“You going to continue to spy on the Audi?”

“Not much sense, I guess. Assuming Hayden is dead.”

“I assume he is.”

“I suppose I ought to call his wife, then, tell her she can come and pick it up,” said Kerrigan.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to take care of that. I want to talk to her anyway.”

“You’re kind of a nosy son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

“Les Katz was a friend of mine,” I said. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Nah. Good luck to you. I’m going home, get my supper.”

The other phone call I made was to a state cop named Horowitz, who owed me a minor favor. When his switchboard put me through to him, he growled, “Yeah, Horowitz.”

“Dear, dear,” I said. “Did we arise from the wrong side of the bed this morning? Do we have a hair across our ass?”

“Who the hell is this?”

“Coyne.”

I heard him pop his ever-present bubble gum. “Okay. So hello, all that shit. Whaddya want?”

“Come on, Horowitz. Be nice. You owe me.”

He sighed. “I beg your humble pardon, sir. In what way may I be of service?”

“Better. That is much better.”

“Don’t push it, Coyne.”

“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I’d like to give you a chance to discharge your debt.”

“It’s been keeping me awake nights. You have no idea.” He paused. “You mean, then I wouldn’t have to be polite to you?”

“Absolutely. You could be your normal unpleasant self.”

“And we’d be even?”

“Right.”

“So what is it?”

“I just want to know if a certain person has been reported missing.”

“State?”

“Huh?”

“Jesus,” he muttered. “Where’s this person from, for Christ’s sake?”

“Oh. Harvard. The town. Harvard, Massachusetts.”

“And that’s it?”

“You need his Social Security number?”

“No. I mean, if I tell you this person’s on my missing list, we’re even?”

“Right.”

“Okay. Good. What’s his name?”

“Hayden. First name of Derek.” I spelled it for him.

“Hang on. Lemme punch it up on my little computer here…”

In the time it took me to fish a Winston out of a pack, light it, and take one drag, Horowitz was back on the phone. “Yep. Hayden, Derek. Reported missing by his wife, Brenda Hayden, on January fifteen. Last seen January six. There’s some other stuff here. Want it?”

“Like what?”

“What he was wearing, physical description, automobile registration, presumed destination, like that.”

“I don’t need any of that. Thanks. The slate is hereby wiped clean. Tabula rasa, my friend.”

“What do you want this for?” said Horowitz.

“You don’t want to know.”

“And why the hell not?”

“Because if I told you, then you’d owe me again.”

He suggested I perform a maneuver that sounded uncomfortable. Then he hung up.

Still no call from Concannon. I waited at my office well past my normal closing time, growing itchier by the minute. Julie poked her head in at five-thirty. “I’m out of here,” she announced.

“I think I’ll hang around for a while,” I said. “Lots of heavy legal matters to attend to.”

“Ho, ho.”

“Don’t bother with the answering machine,” I called after her. “I’ll turn it on when I go.”

I took the ceremonial bottle of Jack Daniel’s from its hiding place in the file cabinet and poured myself three fingers. Three adult male fingers. I lit a cigarette and swiveled around to study the night lights of my city. Many people find elevated views of cities at night beautiful. I’m a moon and stars man, myself. You can’t see moon and stars very well from the city. You can see them very well from the wilderness, though, and if God’s natural lights are doubled by their reflection in a placid Maine lake, so much the better. And the hoot of an owl, the wail of a loon, or the pinkletink of a spring peeper will elevate my soul infinitely quicker and higher than the honks and curses of congested city traffic.

I’ve come to recognize that I’m an anachronism, a country boy doing the work of a city lawyer.

I’m an anachronism in several other ways, too. Becca Katz and Gloria Coyne could attest to that.

I stubbed out the cigarette half smoked, drained the glass, and grabbed my coat. I had to do something.

I took only one wrong turn before I found the Hayden place in Harvard. I pulled in behind Brenda Hayden’s Volvo and sat there for a minute, regretting my impulsiveness. It was downright rude to drop in without at least phoning first.

On the other hand, my intentions were pure.

Warm orange light seeped from the back windows of the farmhouse into trapezoid-shaped puddles on the snow-covered lawn. Frozen slush crackled under my feet as I mounted the back steps onto the open porch. I rapped on the door and waited, blowing open-mouthed into my hands and rubbing them together. Overhead the sky was an inverted black bowl studded with a million beautiful points of light. My breath came in foggy puffs. Radiational cooling, the meteorologists called it. It was a cold night, and it would get colder.

I waited three or four minutes before the door opened. Brenda Hayden stood there frowning. She was wearing baggy bibbed overalls over a flannel shirt. She was taller than I remembered.

“Brady Coyne,” I said loudly through the storm door. “Remember?”

She nodded vigorously and opened the door.

“Hi,” she said. “A surprise. Come on in. Crawl up to the woodstove. It’s beastly out there.”

I entered, stomped my feet on the mat inside the door, and shook my jacket off. She took it from me and draped it over the back of a chair.

“Have a seat. Let me clear off the table.”

She removed the dirty dishes from the kitchen table and stacked them beside the sink. “Nice to see you again,” she said casually, as if I visited her regularly. “How’ve you been?”

“I’m fine. I’m sorry to drop in like this—”

“But you just happened to be in the neighborhood.” She laughed. “Hey. Nobody just happens to be in this neighborhood. Look, want some coffee or something? A drink?”

“Whatever you’re having.”

“Coffee, then. It’s all fresh and hot.”

She turned to the coffeepot, grateful, it seemed to me, to have something to occupy her. Her movements were quick and nervous, which seemed natural enough given the suddenness of my appearance.

She slid a mug of coffee in front of me. “Black, right?”

“I’m flattered you remembered.”

She shrugged and sat across from me. She flicked a hank of hair away from her forehead with her forefinger. She stared into her mug for a minute, and then, without looking up, she said, “No, to answer your question, I have neither seen nor heard from Derek. I reported him missing the same day you suggested I should. It’s become—I’m not handling it as well as I thought I would.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have any news, either,” I said. “Except I located the Audi, and you can pick it up if you want.”

“Where is it?”

“In the Alewife parking garage.”

She nodded and sipped her coffee. “I suppose I’ll fetch it sometime. I keep thinking I should leave it there for when Derek comes back. Anyway, I’ve got my brother’s Volvo, so there’s no big rush. I bet the parking fee will be astronomical.”

“That’s not your car out there?”

“No. My brother Andy’s planning to sell it. Meanwhile he’s letting me use it. I suppose if I ask him he’ll drive in with me to get the Audi.” She hugged herself and frowned at me. “Mr. Coyne—”

“Brady.”

“Brady. Why did you come here?”

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

“If you have to smoke, that means you have bad news for me, right?”

I lit a Winston. “I told you. I don’t have news of any kind. But I have some suspicions, and I figured no one else would be telling you what’s going on. It occurred to me that you have a right to know.”

“I’m not sure I want to know.”

“Where are your children?”

She rolled her eyes and smiled. “With my mother. It’s just been too weird around here. I’ve been too weird, is what I mean. Mother lives in Ayer. That’s just the next town over. Where Andy lives. Good old Mom drives the girls to school. She’s been oh, so very understanding. She assumes Derek has run off with some busty young thing. She wants to tell me that she knew it would happen all the time, but she hasn’t quite screwed up her courage yet. So she just looks at me mournfully and says consoling things. Which only serve to upset me.” She arched her eyebrows at me. “Is that it? Is that what you came to tell me?”

“That he’s run off with some busty young thing?” I shook my head. “No. That’s what I originally thought. But now…” I let my voice trail off, reluctant to say it.

She leaned across the table to me. “Now you think he’s dead, don’t you.”

I nodded.

She stared at me for a moment. Then abruptly she stood up. She went to the sink and began to rinse off the dishes and stack them in the dishwasher, keeping her back to me. I remained sitting at the table, watching her. When she was finished, she poured some detergent into the machine, slammed it shut, poked a button, and it began to hum. Then she turned to face me. I somehow expected that she’d been weeping. But her eyes were dry and her face composed.

“Okay,” she said, a harsh edge to her voice. “Why don’t you tell me who you really are and why you’re really here.”

I lifted my palms and let them fall. “I’m Brady Coyne, I’m a lawyer, and I’m here because I’m involved in an investigation that, in part, includes trying to find your husband.”

She wiped her hands on the seat of her overalls and came back to the table. She sat across from me, laced her fingers together in front of her, and said, “After you left here the last time, I got to thinking. This tall man with gray eyes, who says he’s a lawyer but dresses like a lumberjack, he comes and starts pumping me for information about Derek, and, like a dummy, I cry and spill out my guts, and after he leaves I suddenly realize I don’t even know why he came here, unless it was to get me to spill out my guts. He tells me nothing except for some double-talk about me presumably hiring some private investigator. Then I said, what the hell, he’s a lawyer and that’s how lawyers do it, and he seemed nice enough, so I sort of forgot about it. Then he shows up again. Now I want to know. What the hell do you want out of me?”

I tried to smile ingratiatingly. It felt stiff. “For one thing, I wanted to tell you about the Audi.”

She nodded skeptically. “You could have called.”

“And I wanted to know if you’d heard from your husband.”

“And
I
want to know why you care.”

I nodded. “Okay. Fair enough. When I was here the first time, I thought your husband ran over a friend of mine and killed him. This friend had taken photos of him. I figured the photos were incriminating in some way, and that’s why Les was killed. My friend was a private investigator. I thought you hired him. I thought—”