Haunted Hearts (27 page)

“Hello, Mrs. Diamond,” McGuire said.

“Do I know you?” One hand rose self-consciously to the top of the shirt, pulling it closed near her neck.

“Well, we've met.” McGuire heard a television set in the background, an all-news channel reporting the tragedies of the day. “I came looking for Ross Myers, and you told me he was sailing to South Carolina, remember?”

He sensed her reaction, and shot his foot forward to prevent the door from closing. She screamed, “Get away from me!” and tried to close the door against him.

“Take it easy,” McGuire said.

“I've got a gun!” She was forcing her weight against the door, a losing battle.

“Well, I haven't,” McGuire said. “I just want to talk to you.”

She released the door and ran for the stairs, stumbling and falling halfway up, then rising again, scurrying in panic to an upper hall. McGuire heard one dresser drawer open and close, then another. He stepped into the foyer and closed the door behind him. To his left, above an enormous brick fireplace, hung a large oil painting of a sailboat crashing through blue-green waves in what appeared to be a typhoon, except the mood was not of danger but of romance and heroism. McGuire wondered again about people who worshipped toys of wood and canvas and brass, toys that cost more than the average home, toys whose only function was to amuse, to divert, to relieve boredom.

He heard quick, short footsteps approaching down the upstairs hall, and even before he turned to look, he raised his hands in surrender.

Christine Diamond stood at the top of the stairs, her quick spastic breathing and her nervousness making the gun in her hands jump as though pulled by strings. Doggone, McGuire thought to himself, when did every woman in the United States of America get herself a weapon?

“I told you I'm not armed,” McGuire said.

“Get out of my house.” The gun wandered in one direction, then the other, and McGuire decided the safest location for him was exactly where he was, because it seemed to be the only place where the gun wasn't pointing.

“I just came to tell you something.”

“I'll call the police.”

“That's fine, but you'll have to put the gun down to do it, so I'll just keep talking.”

“I don't want to hear . . .” she began. Her head went back, her eyes closed for a moment, and she took a deep breath.

McGuire lowered his hands and placed them in his pockets.

When she opened her eyes and saw him standing there, she relaxed a little, and leaned against the stair railing. “Please go,” she said.

“I want to see Myers.”

“I don't know where he is.”

“When did you see him last?”

“Three days ago.”

“Can you call him? Can you reach him by telephone?”

Her face crumbled and her shoulders sagged. McGuire took a step to climb the stairs, but she stiffened and raised the gun in his direction again. “Go away,” she said through her tears.

“What has he done?” McGuire asked.

She shook her head.

“Did a lawyer named Flanigan call you?” McGuire asked. “Did he come to see you? Did Flanigan warn you about anything? About not trusting Myers?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she said between sobs.

“Flanigan's dead. They found his body in the Charles River, a mile from the ocean. His lungs contained salt water. Myers drove his car to Weymouth and left it there. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

“No,” she said. Then: “Yes.”

“Don't trust him,” McGuire said. “Whatever you do. Don't believe anything Myers tells you, okay? Especially if it has anything to do with money.” McGuire turned for the door, then looked back. “If you can reach him, or get a message to him somehow, tell him to meet me at the State House, in the little park that surrounds it. I'll be there this afternoon, from two o'clock on.”

The tears flowed freely, and her chest heaved with sobs.

“I'd like to help you,” McGuire said, his voice softening. “If you want me to stay or something. . . .”

“No,” she said. “Please go.”

“You thought I was from Baltimore, right?” McGuire said. “He's had people come here from Baltimore, threatening you, maybe? Threatening your kids too?”

“Please go away,” she said. She sank to the floor, the gun in her hand. “Please just go away.”

McGuire opened the door and stepped into the freshening air. The breeze chilled him, and he realized he had been perspiring. His hands were shaking and, as he walked to the car, he told himself they were shaking not from fright but from anger, from a helpless rage he needed to defuse.

He drove back into Annapolis and parked the car in the town square abutting the harbour. From a telephone booth near a seafood stall, he placed a collect call to Revere Beach, and heard Ollie's raspy voice accept the charges through his speakerphone.

“The hell you up to?” Ollie asked.

“Planting some seeds.” He asked if Susan were there.

“Sittin' here listenin' to me tell lies about you,” Ollie said. “'Course some of them ain't lies. I'm lettin' her guess which ones.”

“Hi, Joe.” Susan's voice sounded hollow and distant. “Are you all right?”

McGuire assured her he was fine, and she made him promise to look after himself. Then he told Ollie and Susan about the waitress Eileen, about the bartender and the beer distributor, about Christine Diamond, and about using the Baltimore bookie's name as bait to draw Myers.

“You want a couple ideas?” Ollie asked.

McGuire said sure.

“One, if anybody's been puttin' pressure on those women, I'm bettin' it's Myers himself. He's gettin' somebody to do it for him, squeeze whatever he can. You know the drill, Joseph. Bookies and the muscle behind them, they don't mess with girlfriends and kids. Not their style. They go after the bettor, get
him
to mess with the girlfriends and kids. Am I right? Susan, am I right about that?”

“I think so,” he heard Susan say in a small voice.

“What else?” McGuire said.

“Susan and I've been talkin', see.” Ollie paused, waiting for a reaction from McGuire. “I figure, from what she's told me about the guy, he thinks he's invincible. He pisses away over a half million . . .” Ollie's voice sounded weaker, as though he had turned his head. “Sorry there, sweetheart,” McGuire heard him say to Susan. “Still got this thing about swearin' in front of a good-lookin' woman. Anyway, he gets to burn the money, and somebody else takes the fall for it. You catch him doin' elbow push-ups on one woman, and he slides you off to another one, who he calls when you leave and gets to cover his ass for him.”

“He's cocky.”

“In a manner of speakin', yeah. Thinks you're a bit of junk on the sidewalk he's gotta step around on the way to his Caddy, and he'll brush you off like dandruff.”

“So what's it mean?”

“Means you got the son of a bitch right where you want him.”

“He killed Flanigan.”

“'Course he did. Flanigan wouldn't go down to threaten Myers, even if he could find him any easier than you did. He went down to cut off Myers's supply of cash, warn off whatever woman the creep was usin' like he used Susan and some others. He figured this Diamond woman was the new patsy, and he was going to let her know what Myers is all about, tell her not to give him a penny.”

“I could have done that myself. Or he could have put the local cops onto him.”

“Not a chance. You didn't know what was up, and Flanigan wasn't ready to tell you, because it would have meant tellin' all the stuff Susan put up with. He was protectin' her, he promised not to let anybody else know about it. Susan told me that. And how'd he know what Myers was doin' with this Diamond woman? Here's a bet, Joseph. I'll bet that Flanigan did a little diggin' on his own, through business directories and stuff, and found out where the Diamond woman lived . . . what's that?”

Susan had said something to Ollie. Now she spoke louder, so McGuire could hear. “Who is this Diamond woman?”

“Flanigan never mentioned her name?” McGuire said.

“He just said he knew what Ross was up to now,” she said. “He never mentioned a woman's name.” Susan lowered her voice. “I think he felt it was better if I didn't know too much.”

“Maybe Flanigan found out she was a widow, which would start bells ringin' and lights goin' on,” Ollie said. “Flanigan shows up, ready to keep Myers away from his latest meal ticket, which is the widow Diamond. Maybe Flanigan wanted to play like you do, and come back with proof that he was scammin' somebody.”

“He wanted to see Ross in jail,” Susan said. “He told me that. ‘He should be locked up for what he did to you,' Orin said.”

“If Flanigan's going to cut off Myers's supply of cash to pay Myers's bookies, then either Myers gets rid of Flanigan or he's liable to find his kneecaps in a different place from the rest of him, right?” Ollie said. “For a guy like Myers, it was an easy choice. All he's got to do is get Flanigan alone somewhere, bop him on the head, and hold him under water.”

“He puts Flanigan in the trunk of the car, drives to Boston, dumps him in the Charles, and gets picked up in Weymouth by the waitress.” McGuire was thinking of the dock at the rear of Christine Diamond's house, and the salt water of Chesapeake Bay.

“Joe, be careful.” It was Susan's voice, closer to the speaker phone.

“I'm meeting him out in the open,” McGuire said. “On the grounds of the State House. He won't do anything there.”

“If he shows up,” Ollie said.

“Even if he doesn't, I've got enough pieces to put the story together. I know where he got the name he gave me, calling himself Rollie Wade. That's who I asked for when I came back that night, and the bar owner said he's a good guy. Myers read the name off the beer distributor's receipt, standing right in front of me. He's doing something with Christine Diamond. She's frightened out of her mind. And I know he's around here, not down in Florida where Donovan's looking. Although it sounds like he's getting ready to move on. Whether he shows or not, I'm coming home tonight. I'll turn everything over to Donovan and hope he'll have sense to follow up on it. If he interviews the waitress, she'll put Myers in Weymouth. That may be enough.”

“You still haven't said whether he'll show,” Ollie said.

“I'm betting he'll come by to see what the offer's about. He's got nothing to fear from me. If he convinces himself there's no trap, and he thinks I've got something that can help him, he might show. Maybe he'll feed me something. Maybe not.”

“You just want to look the guy in the eye, is what you want to do,” Ollie said. “You're not as upset about poor Flanigan as you are about the scumbag makin' you look like a dummy, sendin' you off to his lay of the day, who brushes you off.”

“Maybe,” McGuire said. Then: “You sure you're okay?”

“Hell, yes. I got a marine sergeant to change my diaper and a good-lookin' woman to laugh at my jokes. What the hell else does a man like me need?”

McGuire spent the balance of the morning wandering through the old town, among the restored Colonial houses and window-shopping in stores on Maryland Avenue. He returned to the harbour area at noon, ate oyster stew and sourdough bread at a dockside restaurant, retrieved his rental car, and drove back to State House Circle.

The Maryland State House sits on a hillock well back from the harbour, the proud old building perched like a red brick monument, surrounded by winding paths and small gardens extending down to the road, perhaps fifty feet below. Streets radiate out from State House Circle, leading to the harbour area, to the Naval Academy, and to upper-class residential areas.

McGuire circled the State House several times, following the paths, his hands in his pockets but his eyes alert. From one side of the hillock he could look down Maryland Avenue towards the Academy Bar, and he watched the building from afar for several minutes before returning to the highest point of the hillock. He chose a bench with a clear view to both sides and down the slope to the street.

He watched students from nearby St. John's College wander past in their grungy attire, and naval cadets parade by in crisp whites with close-cropped hair like peach fuzz.

At two-thirty he stiffened at the sight of a maroon De Ville cruising slowly along State House Circle. It disappeared towards Maryland Avenue, and when the Cadillac didn't immediately return, McGuire swung his attention to a blonde woman who walked past, looking too carefully at McGuire. He sent her, McGuire told himself. She's checking me out.

Ten minutes later the De Ville was back, cruising from the direction of Maryland Avenue. It pulled to the curb in a no-stopping zone on State House Circle below McGuire.

After a moment or two, the driver's door opened and a clean-shaven man emerged, his fairish hair little more than a coating of fuzz on his scalp. He wore a black-and-white-checked jacket and black trousers over a white shirt open at the neck, the collar outside his jacket. McGuire felt his pulse quicken and spiders explore the back of his neck.

Ross Myers closed the car door and looked around before circling the front of the car and smiling through the windshield at someone in the passenger seat. He looked up at McGuire and the smile grew broader as he began to ascend the path, his head constantly in motion, surveying everything and everyone around him.

Ten feet from McGuire, Myers stopped and slipped a hand into his jacket. McGuire swung his weight forward onto his feet, prepared to move if Myers were armed. Myers withdrew not a weapon, but a gold cigarette case. Still gazing everywhere but at McGuire, he removed a cigarette from the case and placed it in his mouth, dropped the case back into his jacket, slid his hand to an inside pocket, and pulled out a gold Dunhill lighter. He brought the lighter to the cigarette, inhaled deeply, threw his head back, and exhaled. Then his eyes met McGuire's.

“What, you love this crummy town?” he said. “Can't stay away?'

“You got it,” McGuire said.

“What's this crap about Wachtman?” Myers's eyes were moving again, here and there. When they settled for a moment on the Cadillac parked below them at the curb, McGuire followed their gaze to see the blonde woman smiling up at the two men from inside the car, her lemon-coloured hair falling in waves to her shoulders. The woman waved and Myers returned her greeting with a gesture of his hand. “You working for Wachtman now?” he said over his shoulder.

“What're you afraid of?” McGuire asked.

Myers looked back at McGuire. “Afraid? Are you kidding me? Tell you one thing, I'm sure as hell not afraid of
you
.
I asked around after you left. I remembered you from Boston. Big hero up there, weren't you? Got your name in the papers, solving murders, playing the big shot. Then, when they kicked you off the force, you started popping pills, right? I got all the goods on you.” He brought the hand holding the cigarette to his mouth, speaking past it, and McGuire noticed a ruby ring on one pinkie finger.

“You're afraid, Myers,” McGuire said. “You came here because you thought there might be a chance of getting out from under the debt with your bookie, right? You saw me from the street, sent your newest woman friend up to check things out. You came damn close to having your kneecaps removed by your bookie's hired muscle. Is that why you're letting your hair grow back, shaved your little beard off?” McGuire sat against the bench, his arms extended along its top. “I'd say you're getting ready to get the hell out of town.”

Myers looked amused. “You gamble?”

“Never.”

“'Course you don't. I can tell. Yeah, I had a little bad luck. But you ride that stuff out, every gambler knows that. You get a bad horse one day, you get a good one the next. That's what it's all about.”

“Christine Diamond a good horse?”

Myers looked away, tapping ash from the cigarette. “Yeah, Chrissie's a good one. She sure fooled your ass, didn't she? I went back, you know. Me and Eileen, after I called Chrissie from the bar and told her that you were some flunky out to borrow money from me. She said she'd blow you off, and then Eileen and I went back and finished what you interrupted, right there on the cloakroom floor. How's that make you feel, jerk-off?”

“The blonde in your car, down there. Is she a good horse?”

“Go to hell.” Myers took a final drag on the cigarette and flicked the butt into the bushes.

“And Susan Schaeffer,” McGuire said, rising from the bench. “She a good horse?”

“Susan?” Myers examined the fingernails of one hand, sunlight catching small diamonds flanking the ruby of his pinkie ring. “How do you know Susan?”

“I knew Flanigan, too.”

“Never heard of him.” The response was too sudden. Myers dropped his hand and raised his head, finding something fascinating in the trees above and behind McGuire.

“Sure you have. You arrived to see if I could really help you settle with Wachtman. But you came up here to find out how much I know about Orin Flanigan's murder.”

“I came for another look at a loser, that's all.”

“Did Orin tell you about me? Before you killed him? Orin was here to get some revenge for Susan, maybe get enough on you to put your ass in jail. Maybe to do a favour for Christine Diamond too.”

“You seen her? Susan, you seen her around?”

“Yeah,” McGuire said.

“She must've just got out, right? How's she look?”

McGuire took a step towards the other man. “She was just another good horse to you, right?”

“Naw.” Myers looked almost vulnerable. “She was okay.”

“You son of a bitch,” McGuire said. “You better get a faster car than that piece of chrome down there on the street. And some track shoes and whatever else you need to run with, Myers. Because I'll stay on your ass until it's in jail, or until I take a hot iron and brand you right across the forehead with a big
A
for asshole.”

“That's why you're here?” Myers looked at McGuire with new interest. “Because you got the hots for Susan?” He waved a hand in the air as though intent on catching a fly. “You got the wrong idea about women. You think a woman can do what I do?” Myers thrust his hands in his trouser pockets and leaned against a tree trunk, his stomach spilling over the edge of the waistband. “How many pimps did you bust as a cop? How many of them had two, three, more women peddling their asses on the street for them? I was never a pimp, never had to be. I just had women who wanted to do things to make me happy. If they want to believe all the stuff I lay on them, whose fault is that, huh? Whose fault is that?”

He pushed himself from the tree as though to walk away, then stopped and looked back at McGuire.

“You used to take dope, right? Prescription pills? Am I right?”

Behind Myers, at the foot of the hill, a gray Volvo pulled to a stop behind the Cadillac.

“You think dope's an addiction?” Myers took a step towards McGuire, an index finger pointing like a weapon at McGuire. “You know what the biggest addiction of all is? I'll tell you. It's money. It's being rich.” He rubbed his index finger and thumb together. “It's having money, all the money you ever need. It's going to a casino and dropping more money in one night than jerks like you make in a year, sometimes
making
more money than you make in a year, and not giving a damn about it, either way.”

McGuire saw the door of the gray Volvo open. A dark-haired woman stepped out wearing a buff-coloured trench coat and sunglasses.

“You get a taste of it, and you never want to go back.” Myers was unaware of the arrival of the Volvo behind and below him. “You get on a plane, and once you turn left instead of right, once you go first class, up front with the champagne, maybe sitting with a good-looking broad wearing mink and diamonds, there's no way you fly economy, you know what I'm saying here?”

The woman in the trench coat looked up at McGuire and Myers, then walked past the Cadillac, glancing into the window as she passed.

“And you know something else, McGuire? Some of us, not you, you loser, but some of us, that's how we get to live. That's the
only
way we live, because there's no way none of us is ready to break our asses paying off a mortgage or driving some rusted piece of crap the rest of our lives, watching our wives gettin' older and uglier. No way.”

McGuire's eyes shifted away from the base of the path, where the woman in the trench coat was approaching, and back to Myers. “I can prove you were in Weymouth, driving Flanigan's car, a couple of days before his body was found. Not even Marv Rosen will save your ass from this one.”

“Bullshit.”

“The waitress at the bar told me. She picked you up and drove you back here, and she'll testify against you.”

“The hell she will. Broad's in love with me.”

“She'll do it, Myers. Or face a charge of accessory in a first-degree murder.”

“You're not even a cop any more. What do you care anyway?”

“I told you. The same reason Flanigan came here. Because of Susan. Because of what you did to her.”

“You schmuck.” Myers permitted himself a short laugh, and began to turn away, his eyes on McGuire. “You dumb schmuck.”

McGuire saw the reaction of Myers at the sight of the woman in the trench coat, her head up, her hands in her pockets, her attractive face creased with anger and moist with tears.

“One of your horses?” McGuire said. Christine Diamond had stopped a few feet below Myers, blocking his route back to the car. “Is this one of your good horses, Myers?”

The anger faded from Christine's face. Her shoulders sagged and her chest began to heave with sobs so heavy that her words were fluid, hardly intelligible. “How could you?” she said to Myers.

“Hey, come on . . .” Myers began.

“It's gone.” The woman's voice rose to a shriek. “It's gone, all of it. Everything Bert left for my babies, it's all
gone
!”

“It's not gone,” Myers said, but he was looking past her at the blonde woman who had stepped out of the Cadillac and stood watching from the base of the rise. “I gave you the papers, the certificates . . .”

“
They're forgeries!
Every one of them . . .”

“Who told you that?” Myers was looking for another path, one that would permit him to escape the woman's fury. He glanced behind him at McGuire, who had positioned himself to block his retreat in that direction. “Look, I got places to go,” Myers said. He turned back towards Christine Diamond.

“With that woman down there in your car? How much do you plan to get out of
her
?” She was trembling now, her sobs buried within her anger and rage.

McGuire moved to a location where he could read and memorize the license number of the Cadillac. Behind him, he heard Myers speak in a low voice, then Christine Diamond shout again, an explosion of rage and anger: “Don't you have any heart at all? Don't you?”

“What the hell are you doing?”

McGuire turned to see Christine Diamond holding the same small black automatic she had pointed at him back at her house. She was aiming it at Myers's stomach and crying. The gun wavered from side to side as sentences tumbled from her mouth in fragments: “Everything's gone . . . you lied and lied and lied . . . How could you?” and she fired.

Myers stepped back and watched the red stain on his white shirt grow and expand. He looked back at McGuire, an expression of fear on his face that transformed into something else, and McGuire pictured a small boy who had just been spanked.

Myers turned to flee, one hand at his stomach, the other flailing ahead of him as though pulling him forward and out of danger. From the bottom of the hill McGuire heard a wail, high and piercing, and he wondered for a moment as he scrambled back along the path how an ambulance could have arrived so quickly, until he recognized the sound not as a siren but as a woman's voice, screaming in fear from beside the Cadillac.

Christine Diamond fired again. The bullet exploded on the ground near the bench where McGuire had waited for Myers. Its impact forced Myers to scramble to his right, away from it, and as he did, he stumbled forward onto his stomach.

Another shot struck Myers in the back and a second scream, lower in pitch and even heavier in anguish, escaped from Myers's throat as McGuire reached Christine Diamond. He seized her wrist in his hand and pointed the gun at the ground, while her finger squeezed the trigger over and over until the little automatic was empty. She stared at McGuire, seeing him for the first time. “I don't care,” she said. “I don't care what happens to me now. Do you see?”

McGuire nodded and assured her that he saw.

Twenty feet away, Myers writhed on the ground, his body twisting like an impaled snake's, and his voice a guttural cry of agony.