Rough Weather (14 page)

“Don’t feel bad,” I said. “Epstein and Healy don’t know, either.”

Quirk finished his sandwich and carefully wiped his mouth on a paper napkin.

“The funny thing is,” he said, “we know who did the original crime. But we don’t know why, and we can’t find him.”

“Yet,” I said.

“Hawk walking around with you?”

“Most of the time,” I said.

“I was you,” Quirk said, “I’d make it all the time.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Nobody in this deal seems to mind killing people.”

“And you are probably a sentimental favorite to be next,” Quirk said.

“Would you miss me?” I said.

“No,” Quirk said.

The guy in the morgue
had in fact been killed with a bullet from my gun. So we sort of knew who he was. Of course, we still didn’t have a name for him. Every time we learned something, it wasn’t enough. According to Rule 4 in
Spenser’s Detecting for Dummies
, if you aren’t getting anywhere and you don’t know what to do, go annoy somebody. So Hawk and I went off to annoy Tony Marcus.

Ty-Bop and Junior were in evidence. Ty-Bop was the shooter, a skinny kid wearing a watch cap pulled way down over his ears. He seemed to be listening to something the rest of us couldn’t hear, and moving to its beat. Junior was the muscle, vast and thick and stolid.

Hawk lounged at the bar near Ty-Bop. Ty-Bop would kill anything that Tony pointed him toward. But that aside, he always seemed to admire Hawk. He never said anything, but he watched him all the time, the way a schoolyard player would watch Michael Jordan.

Junior brought me into Tony’s office and patted me down.

“Got a gun, Tony,” Junior said.

“Let him keep it,” Tony said. “I just want to know he’s not wearing a wire.”

“Nope,” Junior said. “No wire.”

Tony gestured him out, and Junior closed the door behind him as he left.

“Gives us a little more room,” I said.

Tony smiled.

“He’s a big one,” Tony said.

“Sorry about Leonard,” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

“How’s your daughter,” I said.

“No worse,” Tony said.

“Still with . . .”

“No,” Tony said.

I nodded. Tony waited.

“We’ve known each other for a while,” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

Tony was beautifully dressed in a brown tweed jacket with a light-blue windowpane pattern. He had on a blue shirt and a brown silk tie.

“We’ve done each other some favors,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” Tony said. “’Specially the time you got me sent to jail.”

“We were much younger,” I said.

“Everyone was,” Tony said. “You helped me out with my kid, couple years ago.”

“I did,” I said.

“You know I’m not wired. Anything we say in here is off the record and doesn’t leave this office,” I said. “I’m not after you.”

Tony smiled faintly.

“Oh, good,” he said.

“You remember Rugar,” I said.

“He was with you in Marshport,” Tony said.

“As was Leonard,” I said.

Tony took out a slim cigar and snipped the end and lit it carefully with a silver desk lighter.

“Rugar was involved in a big-deal kidnapping on Tashtego Island a while back,” I said. “I was there.”

“Heard about that,” Tony said.

“So here’s a theory I’m working on,” I said. “I’ve been pecking away at the Tashtego thing since it went down. Somewhere along the way I got too close; I wish I knew where. And Rugar decides I have to go. But for whatever reason, he doesn’t want to do it himself, so he remembers Leonard from Marshport, and he asks Leonard to take care of it for him. Probably for a good price.”

Tony took the cigar from his mouth and looked at the lit end, seemed satisfied with the way it was burning, and put the cigar back in his mouth.

“But Leonard doesn’t do it himself,” I said. “Instead, he hires these guys from Far Goofystan, and they botch it.”

Tony let out a soft puff of smoke. I always like the smell of a good cigar.

“And Leonard panics,” I said. “He knows he shouldn’t have gone around you and he doesn’t know what else to do, so he tells you. You know that the trail will eventually lead back to you unless you take action. So you send Lamar down to see what these guys are likely to do, and get them out if he can. And you kill Leonard to underscore his fecklessness. Lamar can’t get these guys out, but he explains their language limitations, and that so far he’s the only one can talk with them. So you got a couple days. You use the time to make arrangements, and when Quirk and Epstein schedule an interview with their own interpreter, Lamar gives you the news and you have the two goons killed.”

“Fecklessness,” Tony said.

“It is also my theory that you got nothing to do with Tashtego except that Leonard dragged your name in.”

Tony blew some more cigar smoke around.

“Fecklessness,” he said. “I like it. Fecklessness.”

I waited.

“The theory makes sense,” Tony said after a while.

“Anything I might have missed,” I said.

“Nothing that matters,” Tony said.

“And I shouldn’t anticipate any problems from your, ah, organization,” I said.

“Not if you are discreet,” Tony said.

“Any idea where Leonard got these guys?”

“Might have been a guy he met up in Marshport,” Tony said. “There was some Afghani influence, wasn’t there?”

“Boots Podolak was in business with an Afghani warlord named Haji Haroon,” I said.

“It wouldn’t be feckless,” Tony said, “to think there could be a connection with Leonard.”

“Worth looking into?” I said.

“Dead end,” Tony said. “Somebody aced Leonard’s only contact up there.”

“Could that someone be Ty-Bop?” I said.

“The boy gets restless,” Tony said. “Trust me, there’s no loose ends up there.”

“So,” I said, “you got this buttoned up pretty tight.”

“I didn’t initiate this. I wouldn’t have permitted it. I don’t need any of this. It interferes with business.”

“So you closed it down.”

Tony nodded.

“Except for Lamar,” I said. “That’s how I got to you.”

“Lamar is my attorney,” Tony said.

“And,” I said, “being your attorney, he can invoke privilege whenever he needs to.”

“And will,” Tony said.

It was the way it was
supposed to be in Boston in November. Gray and kind of chilly and a steady rain falling. Cars had their headlights on at ten in the morning when Hawk and I drove to Epstein’s office in Government Center.

“I be out here by the elevators,” Hawk said. “I not going in any FBI office.”

“J. Edgar’s ghost will be grateful,” I said.

“You think it wearing a dress?” Hawk said.

I went in. Epstein pushed a folder across the desk at me as I sat down.

“Been working with our forensic accounting folks,” Epstein said.

“The excitement never stops,” I said.

“You can learn a lot from accountants,” Epstein said.

“I have no doubt,” I said. “What’d you learn?”

“Van Meer and Bradshaw are both nearly broke,” Epstein said.

“Can Heidi take credit for that?”

“She costs both of them a sickening amount of money,” Epstein said. “Van Meer didn’t help himself much by being a drunk and slopping through most of his inheritance. Bradshaw pays a huge alimony, and he still maintains that private island. Essentially, since they’ve split, for her.”

“Tashtego,” I said.

“Yep. He was never as rich as Van Meer in the first place, though from the looks of what he spent, he tried to pretend he was. If it was to impress her, then she pretty well cleaned him out.”

“That college professor was lucky to escape with his life,” I said.

“Her first husband, yeah. Other than sort of a modest income from what investments he still has working for him,” Epstein said, “Bradshaw’s biggest asset is a very large life insurance policy with Heidi as beneficiary.”

“I were Bradshaw,” I said, “that might make me nervous. How about Van Meer.”

“He cashed his in for the surrender value,” Epstein said.

“So he’s not worth much to them dead or alive,” I said.

“The bank is moving to foreclose on his condo,” Epstein said.

“When you talk with him, he seems to have not a care in the world,” I said. “Except maybe he still misses Heidi.”

“He’s a drunk,” Epstein said. “Drunks are good at denial.”

“Have to be, I suppose,” I said. “How about the pre-nup and stuff.”

“Pre-nup, Lessard’s will,” Epstein said. “It’s all in there in more detail than you’d ever want. From the moment of marriage, Adelaide and Maurice became each other’s primary heir. And no matter what the family does later, each is entitled to the estate as it existed at the time of marriage.”

“And the Lessard lawyers bought that?” I said.

“Lawyers can only do what the client will agree to,” Epstein said. “Far as I can see, the Lessards thought they were marrying up. They probably thought the arrangement was in their favor.”

I picked up the folder. It was thick. I put it down.

“You suppose,” I said, “all this, helicopters, and shoot-outs, and assassination attempts, and kidnapping, and FBI and state cops, and Boston cops, and a lot of people dying . . . you suppose it’s all about fund-raising?”

Epstein shrugged.

“What is it usually about?” Epstein said. “Any crime?”

“Love or money,” I said.

“Or both,” Epstein said.

I met Ives on the little bridge
over the Swan Boat Pond in the Public Garden. It was rainy again, and Ives was under a colorful golf umbrella. I was wearing my leather jacket and my Boston Braves cap (circa 1948). Umbrellas are for sissies.

“You called?” I said.

Even though there was no one within twenty yards of us, Ives softened his voice when he answered. Maybe you had to have a heightened sense of drama to be a spook.

“The Gray Man,” Ives said, “was in our employ in Bucharest in the early 1980s.”

It was too late in the year for swan boats. They were put away. But the ducks were still here, and they cruised the pond hopefully.

“He was probably fun-loving and carefree in those days,” I said.

“Mr. Bradshaw was, at that time, at the American embassy in Bucharest.”

“Small world,” I said.

“It gets smaller,” Ives said. “In 1984 Mrs. Van Meer visited Bradshaw in Bucharest.”

“Heidi Van Meer?” I said. “Now Heidi Bradshaw?”

“Yes.”

“In 1984 she was married to Peter Van Meer,” I said.

Ives shrugged. We were silent as two very dressed-up women strolled past us. We both watched them as they passed and for a time afterward.

“You think they might be enemy agents?” I said, as Ives stared after them.

“No,” Ives said. “The woman on the right, I was admiring her ass.”

“Discriminating,” I said. “I was admiring both.”

“My dear Lochinvar,” Ives said. “I went to Yale.”

“And never recovered,” I said. “So we have Heidi, Bradshaw, and Rugar all in Bucharest in 1984. Rugar and Bradshaw both working for the Yankee dollar.”

“And Mrs. Van Meer, involved romantically with Bradshaw.”

“Any concrete connection,” I said, “between Rugar and Bradshaw?”

“They worked out of the same building,” Ives said. “Beyond that I don’t know, and can’t find out.”

“Even though you went to Yale?” I said.

Ives smiled.

“All of us,” he said, “went to Yale, Lochinvar.”

“I know,” I said. “Why aren’t there any spooks from, say, Gonzaga, or Florida State?”

“Imponderable,” Ives said.

“How long was Heidi in Bucharest?” I said.

“Don’t know,” Ives said. “Mr. Bradshaw was there through 1986.”

“Rugar?”

“Don’t know.”

“Is he working for you now?” I said.

“No.”

“You know who he is working for?” I said.

“To my knowledge Mr. Rugar is not currently working for anyone.”

Below us a small vee of ducks paddled industriously under the bridge in the fond possibility that there’d be peanuts.

“Anything else?” I said.

“No, I appear to have emptied the purse,” Ives said.

“I appreciate it.”

Ives nodded his head to accept my thanks.

“We both live in worlds where the cynicism is age-old and millennium-deep,” Ives said. “We are both cynical, and with good reason. But you are not just cynical, Lochinvar. I find it refreshing.”

“How about you,” I said. “Are you just cynical?”

“Yes,” Ives said.

We both smiled and were quiet, and watched the ducks for a while before Ives went his way and I went mine.

Hawk joined us
for Thanksgiving dinner at my place.

“Have we had Thanksgiving together before?” Susan said.

“Can’t recall it,” Hawk said.

“Why on earth not,” Susan said.

“Most holidays nobody trying to shoot him,” Hawk said. “Which seem kinda strange to me, too.”

“Does that mean that you are often alone on Thanksgiving?” Susan said.

Hawk smiled.

“No, Missy,” he said. “It don’t.”

Hawk and Susan were drinking vintage Krug champagne, which Hawk had contributed, at the kitchen counter. Pearl was deeply into the couch in front of the fire. There was a football game on the tube, with the sound off, in deference to Susan, and I was cooking.

“What’s for dinner?” Hawk said.

“I thought I’d experiment with roast turkey this year,” I said.

“Nice choice,” Susan said.

“Stuffing?” Hawk said.

“Yep, and cranberry sauce.”