And Leave Her Lay Dying (22 page)

“You'll have to read the transcript,” Cummings replied. “Otherwise you'll never believe it, Jack.”

“Rosen's outside.” Kavander stood with his eyes still on the blood-soaked figure of Wilmer, who had begun cleaning his fingernails. “Send the son of a bitch in.”

“In here?” Cummings asked.

“No, damn it! In
there
! Show the slime-bucket what his client has done while it's still fresh and smelling up the room!” When Cummings left, Kavander turned to McGuire. “I didn't come down here to see this,” he said in a low voice. “I came down here to see you.”

“Figured that.” McGuire folded his arms. Neither man looked at the other.

“Detective Parsons asked for a few days off starting tomorrow,” Kavander said. “Now what do you make of that?”

“You take an infinite number of monkeys and give them an infinite choice of holidays over an infinite amount of time . . .”

Kavander turned to McGuire, his mouth agape. “What in
hell
are you babbling about?”

“The world is full of coincidences, Jack.”

“World's full of bedbugs like Wilmer, too. I still don't know what you're getting at.”

The door of the interrogation room opened and Marv Rosen entered, a camel-hair coat tossed over his shoulders like a cape. At the sight of Arthur Wilmer, he froze on the spot and brought a hand to his face.

“Frankenstein meets Jack the Ripper,” McGuire muttered.

Rosen's voice trembled through the speaker. “I want, want my client examined by . . . by a court-appointed psychiatrist.” Rosen's face grew pale.

“Looks like he got a whiff of his client,” Kavander said.

Rosen turned quickly away from Wilmer, who had stood up at the sight of his attorney. McGuire could see the lower portion of his shirt glistening with blood. “Hi, Mr. Rosen,” Wilmer said, a broad smile spreading across his face. He stepped towards the lawyer, extending a hand. “Thanks for coming. Soon as I got here I said ‘Call Mr. Rosen,' like you told me to if I ever . . .”

“
Stay there!
” Rosen shouted, backing away.

Sadowsky angled his head and smiled coldly.

“Sadowsky's stomach is built like a septic tank,” Kavander remarked.

“I do believe Rosen is about to see his breakfast again,” McGuire added.

Rosen had stumbled to a corner of the interrogation room. McGuire grunted as he watched the lawyer's shoulders heave and heard him retching through the sound system while Wilmer watched, mystified. Sadowsky glanced at the lawyer before turning to face the one-way glass, spreading his arms in a gesture of helplessness.

Leaving the observation room a moment later, McGuire stepped around Rosen, who stood in the corridor wiping his face with a handkerchief, his brow glistening with perspiration.

“Spilled something on your coat,” McGuire said without expression as he passed the lawyer before walking up the stairs and through the exit, anticipating the clean aroma of fresh air.

At his apartment McGuire changed into cotton slacks, sweater and light-weight jacket before tossing T-shirts, swimming trunks, faded jeans, shorts and sneakers into a battered suitcase.

Five minutes later he stood on Commonwealth Avenue, flagging a cab and trying to keep his teeth from chattering in the frigid air.

After a stop at a travel agency on Boylston, he directed the cab to Revere Beach. Passing Suffolk Downs, the driver glanced in his rearview mirror and grunted; he pulled to the curb as two police cruisers flew by, their sirens wailing and lights flashing, reminding McGuire of a pair of hysterical animals fleeing an unseen pursuer.

He watched them disappear in the traffic without interest. Risk your necks, cowboys, he thought. Keep the siren howling and the pedal to the floor. It will give you something to talk about tonight over your beer.

Seconds later an ambulance roared past, chasing the cruisers.

From North Shore Road, McGuire saw the lights of the cruisers and ambulance reflected from the sides of the small wooden houses along Ocean Boulevard. Domestic trouble, probably. Maybe a wife beating. Just after lunch, middle of the week, not a lot of things can happen—

He sat upright and cursed.

The three vehicles were angled in front of a familiar white frame house. Knots of curious neighbours gathered on the sidewalk while two figures in blue flanked the open front door.

“Move it!” McGuire shouted to the cab driver. “That's where we're going! Where the ambulance is!”

The two cops at the door, young and clean-shaven, barred the entrance to Ollie's house as McGuire leaped from the cab and bounded up the walk.

“Stay back,” one of them ordered. “Police investigation.”

McGuire flashed his badge at the rookie, who nodded and stepped aside.

In the hallway, McGuire elbowed between two ambulance attendants, who paused in their conversation to watch him rush by and stop abruptly at the open doorway to Ollie's room.

He recognized the two uniformed officers, both almost Ollie's age. One sat next to Ollie's bed, the chair reversed and his arms folded across its back. The other leaned against the wall looking down at Boston's most decorated homicide detective. Near Ollie's right hand, which made feeble gestures as he spoke, lay his Police Special revolver.

“So Jack takes another swig of the rye and throws up again,” Ollie Schantz was saying as McGuire entered. “And he does it a couple more times. Finally Hayhurst, he opens one eye lying there on the floor and he says ‘Hey, Jack,' he says, ‘if you're only practising, would you mind using the cheap stuff?'”

Laughter erupted from the police officers, ending at the sound of McGuire's angry voice.

“What the hell is this?” McGuire demanded. “A meeting of the goddamned benevolent society?”

The three men looked at him, their smiles fading. “False alarm, Joe,” said the cop seated in the chair. “Almost broke our necks getting here and . . .” He shrugged and stood up. “Take it easy, big guy. You need anything, give us a holler!”

“Won't use the nine-eleven though,” Ollie said.

“Yeah, maybe not,” agreed the second cop. “Barker here almost took out a fire hydrant turning off Shore Road.”

Barker's smile flashed briefly. “Just warming up for the time trials at Indy,” he said, rising and touching the peak of his cap at Ollie. “Hell, Ollie. All I've had lately's been cats in trees and lonely women in hair curlers.”

The two officers nodded at McGuire as they left the room.

“You were going to kiss the old .38 crucifix, weren't you?” McGuire spat the words out angrily. “You made a nine-eleven. You hit the buttons on your speaker-phone and told them to get the hell out here. What'd you say it was? Suicide? Accident? Murder? Or just an old cop, gets hungry, decides to chew on the end of a Smith and Wesson?”

“Fuck you,” Ollie said softly, looking out his window at the sea.

“Those guys, they know what it's like, don't they?” McGuire jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the departing police officers. “That's why they're so forgiving when they get here. They probably thought about gnawing on a muzzle a couple of times themselves. I'll bet you were going to spare Ronnie, right? What'd you do, send her out to buy some more tennis balls? She gets home and the ambulance attendants are washing your brains off the wall while the cops hold her back and ask who they can call for her. That the way you planned it?”

Ollie's head swivelled slowly until it faced McGuire. “You're one bright bastard, aren't you?” he sneered. “Keep it up, you might make top cop someday.”

“No, I won't,” McGuire sighed. He sat heavily on the chair next to the bed. “No, I won't,” he repeated. “Kavander's right. The best brains in the department sleep in this room. Me, I'm just a pair of legs for you.”

The two men stared at each other in silence. Slowly, painfully, Ollie's right hand twitched its way across the bedsheets where McGuire grasped it in his own.

“I've been working up to it all week,” Ollie said, his eyes shining. “Ronnie's out at a bake sale somewhere. Took me ten minutes to get the drawer open and the gun out. Told nine-eleven to haul their asses out here, there'd been a shooting.” He squeezed McGuire's hand. “Feel that?”

“Like a vice,” McGuire nodded. “How many tennis balls you go through?”

“Four. Five. I don't know. Only half the muscles are working but they're strong enough. Would have been easier on an automatic though. Damn Smith and Wesson takes a ten­pound trigger pull.”

“So what happened?”

The other man's eyes closed. “It seemed like such an easy way out. Remember what I said about leaving ugly? Maybe that's how I should go. Bitching and scratching and being as big an asshole as ever to the world. Instead of making it fast and clean. I'm lying here, Joe, just ticking over and going nowhere. I'm like a clock in an empty house. What the hell is there to do?”

“
Do?
Look what we've done together in the last two weeks. More than that herd of hyenas over on Berkeley have accomplished since you . . . since you left. You know why? Because nobody's setting the pace. Nobody's up front giving a damn anymore. Two kinds of guys over there, Ollie. Just two kinds. One kind is holding on to their pension like a life raft, not giving a damn where they're drifting to. The other is too busy shafting their buddies just to get a shot at making lieutenant or captain or, Christ knows why, maybe even commissioner. And nobody's doing the day-to-day slogging work, a cop's work. Nobody's got an Ollie Schantz to look at and say ‘That's the way it's gotta be done. That's the way you do it, like Ollie does it.' Not anymore. These days, they all act like two-bit politicians trying to board the last bus to the White House.”

Ollie had listened with his eyes closed. Now he opened them and stared out the window as he spoke. “You blaming Kavander for all the mess?”

“Why not?”

“Whatever you think of Kavander, he cares. Trouble with Jack is, he's too busy keeping the dogs off his own ass to kick anyone else's. What Kavander needs . . .”

“What Kavander needs is an Ollie Schantz to get the goddamn job done like it should be.”

“Maybe that's you.”

“No,” McGuire said, almost wistfully. “Two, maybe three years ago, it might have been. But not now. He needs somebody more dedicated than me. Somebody who could just take the load off the backs of Fat Eddie and Bernie and Sadowsky, all those guys. Maybe then they'd be able to get into the bones of some of these . . .” McGuire stopped, frowned, looked at the floor.

“What's the matter?” Ollie Schantz asked. His head turned from the window in a series of short twitching motions.

“Nothing,” McGuire replied. “Just an idea . . .”

“On what? Our case? What'd Norm Cooper say? Did we get a match?”

McGuire snapped his fingers and reached for the telephone, switching it from speaker to receiver operation. He dialled Berkeley Street, asked for Norm Cooper's office, and uttered a few monosyllables. “Thanks, Norm. And I'll ask him,” he added before hanging up.

He turned back to Ollie. “They're hers. And Norm likes the picture but he wants to know what happened to all your hair.”

“Pulled it out waiting for that horseball to match prints,” Ollie grinned.

“One more call,” McGuire said. He was still speaking to Janet Parsons when the front door opened and Ronnie's footsteps clattered frantically down the hall. “Everything's all right,” McGuire was saying as the door opened. “See you in half an hour.”

He replaced the receiver and turned to see Ronnie Schantz standing in the doorway, her eyes brimming with tears.

McGuire stood and hugged her. “It's okay,” he said. “Nothing happened.”

She brushed past him to throw herself on the bed next to her husband.

This time Ollie Schantz didn't tum from her to stare out the window at the distant light. This time he smiled up at her tear-streaked face.

“Hiya, sport,” he said.

The thought nagged at him as the taxi headed south from Revere Beach. The more he considered the idea the stronger it grew, flourishing with new offshoots, new benefits, new rewards.

In Winthrop, he instructed the cabbie to park near a telephone booth where he deposited a coin and dialled Berkeley Street Police Headquarters.

Jack the Bear answered his direct line in a tired, resigned voice, like a man who had just lost an argument with his wife.

“It's me, Joe,” McGuire announced, and waited for at least a short eruption of obscenities.

Instead, Kavander asked: “What's up? Lipson and Fox left here saying they're meeting you somewhere . . .”

“Wrapping up one of your grey file cases. Which is why I'm calling. I've got an idea that can help two tough old cops, you and Ollie Schantz.”

“I'm listening.”

“Remember you talked about being overloaded? How Fat Eddie and the rest can get the details down but don't have time to do the feet-up thinking?” Without waiting for a reply, he continued: “Who's the best feet-up thinker you and I ever worked with? And don't take too long to guess.”

“Gotta be Ollie Schantz. Only cop you ever showed any respect for,” Kavander said.

“Jack, he needs something to keep a muzzle out of his mouth. You hear about a call to Revere Beach today on a nine-eleven?”

“What about it?”

“That was Ollie, Jack . . .”

“Jesus, he didn't . . .”

“No, but it was close.” McGuire lowered his voice and tried to speak slowly, keeping his excitement under control. “Jack, just think about this. Promise you'll think about this, okay? You take some of your grey files, the stuff with good background material, and you send them over to Ollie. Ronnie, his wife, can pick them up, handle the organizing, take the notes. Ollie reviews them, looks for the stuff Fat Eddie and Ralph and the rest are all spinning their wheels over. Says ‘Talk to this guy again,' ‘Get a make on that guy,' ‘Match the bank records to the travel schedule,' all those things Ollie used to think of with his feet up, not even moving out of his chair.”

“And how are my guys going to feel, having their work second-guessed all the time?”

“Same way I felt working with Ollie for ten years. Like I'm getting something done. Like I'm learning from the best in the business. Like I'm a rookie on the Celtics and Larry Bird is showing me his layup shot over and over, telling me I can do it too.” McGuire took a deep breath, forcing himself to relax. “Just call him, Jack,” he said, calmer now. “Call him, then come out and see him. Tell him it's your idea. Bitch about how slack the guys have become on Berkeley Street. Bitch about
me
if you want, I don't care.”

“McGuire,” Kavander said slowly, “if I
didn't
bitch about you, Ollie would ask what I've been smoking.” A pause. Then: “I'll call him now.”

McGuire slapped the side of the booth with glee. “Jack,” he laughed, “I take back at least half of those lousy names I called you over the years.” Still laughing, he hung up in the middle of an insult which had something to do with gorilla shit.

The taxi rolled through Cottage Hill in the late afternoon sun, pausing only long enough for McGuire to ring the doorbell of the chocolate-brown house on the narrow winding street several times before driving slowly around the curve of the shore to a low stone wall, where a solitary woman sat with her eyes on the city skyline and tears coursing down her cheeks.

She looked around as McGuire stepped from the cab and spoke some instructions to the driver. Then she looked quickly away.

McGuire watched the cab disappear around the next curve. He walked to the low wall and sat beside the woman, who was staring at the city skyline.

“Hello, Frances.”

“Finally,” she replied, looking down at her hands folded on her lap. “You finally start calling me Frances.”

“Do you know why I'm here?”

She avoided his eyes. “Yes, I know. God, I'm so dumb. Mona knew. She realized you didn't want me to identify that man in the picture. You just wanted my fingerprints, didn't you?” She began blinking back tears and withdrew a damp handkerchief from her pocket. “Who was he? The man in the picture? Not that it matters. I'm just curious.”

“My partner, Ollie Schantz,” McGuire said. “It was taken on his honeymoon. He's the one who figured out what happened.”

She looked directly at him for the first time since he had sat down. “Everything?”

“Enough. We know you killed Jennifer. Out of anger or frustration.”

“Try humiliation.”

“Whatever. I'm no lawyer, but I would say the charge is more likely to be manslaughter than murder.”

She shook her head sadly. “Do you know, I actually persuaded myself that I had gotten away with it? Me, this little mouse.” She laughed dryly. “There were times I wanted to tell the world about it. Look at me, Frances O'Neil. Ex­school teacher, ex-librarian, ex-waitress. I killed a woman in the Fens and fooled the entire Boston Police Force.”