Valediction (15 page)

"I am a dandy," I said.

She reached her other hand across and patted the top of my hand.

"Yes," she said. "You are. You do what you say you'll do. You care about people. You aren't mean. You're strong. You're a very wonderful man."

"And I have a winsome smile," I said. "Don't forget that."

She kept patting my hand. "I pray for you each day," she said.

"It can't hurt," I said.

Looking for Tommy Banks didn't seem too complicated. I'd check his apartment and if he wasn't there I'd check the dance studio, and if he wasn't there I'd think about it. My heart wasn't in it. But if the rigid little bastard had in fact killed himself, Sherry was going to pull the guilt of it right up over her ears.

The phone rang. I answered. It was Devane, the statie.

"Somebody blew Mickey Paultz away," he said.

"Who?"

"Don't know."

"Why?"

"Same answer. He was sitting in his car on the third floor of the parking garage at Quincy Market. Somebody put two bullets in his head from the passenger side, probably sitting next to him. Twenty-two-automatic shell casings were on the ear floor. And that's all there is."

"A nice guy like that," I said. "Doesn't seem fair, does it?"

"Seems like you went to a lot of trouble to rig something that isn't going to happen."

Alone in my office I shrugged. "I got Winston out of the church," I said.

"And Broz has the heroin trade now, either way," Devane said.

"So who would scrag poor old Mickey?"

"Hell," Devane said. "Who wouldn't?"

"Anyway, it takes the heat off Winston," I said. "They still going to prosecute him?"

"I don't know," Devane said. "My guess is no. All they've got him for is laundering some money and I figure Rita's got better things to do than spend a week in court getting some guy two years suspended and a thousand-dollar fine."

"You mean a miscreant will be walking the streets of this commonwealth unpunished?" I said.

"I think so," Devane said, and hung up. I got up and went out of my office to check on Tommy Banks.

He wasn't in his apartment, and he wasn't at the studio, so I went back to my office. He wasn't there either. In fact, wherever I went for the rest of the day, Tommy Banks wasn't there. Where was Mr. Keen when I really needed him. I checked with Belson at Homicide. No unidentified bodies that resembled Banks had turned up.

Unrequited-love suicides usually wanted people to know they'd done it. It was a way to say,
See what you've done to me, you bitch.
So the fact that no one had found his body was a good sign. I wasn't sure I wanted to explain it to Sherry just that way. I called Sherry at 5:15 to tell her that as far as I could tell, Tommy Banks had not done himself in, and was probably off somewhere sulking. She thanked me. She said if I heard anything, I should let her know. I said I would, and hung up. No wasted conversation. Efficient, neat, economical of movement and gesture. And without a goddamned clue to where Tommy Banks was or where he would be. Some days I thought it might be better to be sloppy and successful. Maybe I should practice dogged determination. I stood and walked over to the window and looked down on Berkeley Street. Spot him from the air. No luck. The late afternoon commuter crowd was moving into the subway kiosk below me. Across the street Linda's office was empty. I called her office. She had left for the day. I called her home. No answer. I hung up and sat in my chair and clasped my hands behind my head and put my feet up. So it would be a quiet evening. Paige was up visiting Paul and they were going to a concert. Linda had left for the day. Susan was on the West Coast with a guy friend. That was the bad news. The good news was it would give me lots of time to think about Mickey Paultz getting wasted. I looked at my watch, 5:24. I thought about someone shooting Mickey Paultz in the head with a.22-caliber automatic at close range. I tried to wonder why. I tried to care. I looked at it from every angle I could conceive. And finally I gave it up. I looked at my watch again, 5:27. I looked at the phone. It didn't say anything. I looked out the window some more. People were still heading into the subway. Nobody looked up at my office. Nobody called. Nobody came in. I thought about going over to the Harbor Health Club and working out. I thought about going down to the Quincy Market and buying some finger food and walking around looking at tourists. I got my bottle of Old Bushmill out of my desk and had a small snort from the bottle. Decisive. Not a man to sit around and do nothing. I had another small tap from the bottle neck.

I hadn't seen Linda Thomas since the shootout in the weeds. Broad had no sense of adventure. She'd liked Darth Vader okay. What was wrong with me.

I had some more whiskey.

Nice date.
We'll go to the movies and after, I'll shoot four guys.
Linda probably wanted to get a snack afterward. No imagination. Sit around, eat and drink. Get logy. Probably take in too much salt and saturated fats. Movies and a shootout, now that was different. If you skipped butter on the popcorn, it was cholesterol-free, non-fattening, and low sodium.

I drank some more, and swiveled around and put my feet up on the windowsill, and watched the sky get slowly dark over Linda's empty building.

I found Tommy Banks through a combination of luck and good detective work. The luck part was that I was in my office thinking about coffee when Banks walked in the door. The good detective work involved saying, "Ah-ha, Tommy Banks."

He looked awful. He was hollow-eyed and gray-faced and there wasn't much verve in his step. There was about him a kind of exhausted rigidity that kept him unlimber, but slow, as he moved.

"She's still seeing that fucker Winston," he said.

I knew who "she" was. I did the same thing.

When I said "she" it was always Susan. When he said it he meant Sherry.

"I've been looking for you," I said.

"Me? What for?"

"She asked me to," I said.

He shook his head. "Shit," he said. "She's worried what I'd find out."

"Yeah?" I nodded toward my guest chair.

"Yeah." He sat.

"Why shouldn't she see Winston?" I said. "There's probably stuff he knows about running the church that she needs help with."

"She don't need to stay all night," Banks said.

I raised my eyebrows. It was what I did when I didn't know what to say. This summer they'd been up a lot.

"Did she?" Banks was insistent that I respond. He leaned stiffly toward me. "Did she?"

"No," I said. "I wouldn't think she'd have to stay all night."

"Now do you believe me?" Banks said.

"Believe you about what," I said.

"That something's going on there. That there's been something going on for a long time and they're fooling all of you."

"Tommy," I said. "The woman you love is sleeping with another guy, maybe. That's awful for you. But it happens. It's not something I can prevent."

"They're doing something," Banks said. "They been doing something since I first talked to you and you never found it out. You think she's a little gingham sweetie that likes to pray. That's not her. She's been jerking you around just like she did me."

"What do you think they're doing," I said.

"I don't know, but she is not a Holy Roller. I know her. I know her better than anyone. That's why at first I figured they'd kidnapped her. She wouldn't go Jesus freak on her own."

"That's why you made up the kidnap stuff?"

"Yeah, I figured it was true but I figured you wouldn't look all that hard for her if I just said I thought so."

"And you still don't think she's there 'cause she wants to be?"

"She wants to be there okay. Like she wants to fuck Winston. But not for God."

"Love?" I said.

He shrugged. "I don't know how much she's willing to sacrifice for love. I never saw much sign of it."

"So you think there's something else."

"Smart," Banks said. "You are really smart." I sighed.

"But you don't know what the something else is," I said.

"Aren't you supposed to be able to find out stuff like that?"

I felt tired. I thought about coffee, maybe add a little Bushmill to it, an ethnic pick-me-up. I didn't want to work on this case anymore. I was tired of Banks, and of his obsession, and of Sherry and Winston and the Reorganized Church. I was tired of me too.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm supposed to find out stuff like that. It's just that I thought I already had."

"You found out shit," Banks said.

"I find a lot of that," I said.

Banks looked like he might break. He radiated tenseness and hurt.

"You been following her," I said. He nodded.

"And she went to Winston's and didn't come out all night."

He nodded again.

"You watched all night."

"Yes."

I swung my chair around toward my window and stood up and looked out. The sun reflected off Linda's window and I couldn't see if she was there or not. The sun coming in my window was hot and there was a wind off the river. I could see the pedestrians lean slightly into it as they walked. The summer skirts on the women were pressed between their legs and people with hats kept a hand on them. An empty paper cup with golden arches on it- skittered along the gutter up Berkeley Street toward police headquarters. I envied it. It had direction.

I turned back to Banks. "I'll look into it," I said.

"You took all my money last time and found shit," Banks said. "You cleaned me out."

"No charge, this time," I said. "You're still under warranty."

Martin Quirk met me after work at Harvard Gardens for a couple of beers. From the way he looked you wouldn't know if he was finishing the day or starting. His short black hair was perfectly in place. His white shirt was full of starch. He came into the bar the way cops do, like it was his bar, in his city. Despite the name, Harvard Gardens was a neighborhood bar in Boston and better than most. It was across from Mass General Hospital and the parking lot for the Charles Street Jail. The mix of nurses, interns, jail guards, and people from Beacon Hill made for a nice texture. And if you wanted, you could eat. I didn't want to. I was sipping Irish whiskey and chasing it with beer. Quirk had the same.

"How are you," he said.

"I'm as restless as a willow in a windstorm," I said.

"You in touch with Susan at all?" Quirk said.

He took a delicate sip of Irish whiskey and swallowed and put the whiskey glass down and drank some beer. His hands were thick. He was very exact in his movements.

"Yes," I said. "We talk on the phone."

"Give her my love," Quirk said.

I nodded.

Quirk drank again, he extended the little finger slightly as he sipped the whiskey. "You want to know about Mickey, right?"

"How did you know?" I said.

"You want to know about everything you've had anything to do with in the last ten years," Quirk said.

"And I adore hearing you talk," I said. Your voice is so musical."

"You talk with Devane?" Quirk said.

"Yes. He told me Mickey was shot sitting in his car in the Quincy Market parking garage. He said whoever shot him probably was sitting beside him. The murder weapon was a twenty-two automatic, and the brass was on the floor of the car."

Quirk smiled and sipped another very small sip of whiskey. "Hell," he said, "you know what I know."

"Nothing else?" I said. Quirk shook his head. "How about speculation."

"It had to be someone Mickey wasn't scared of," Quirk said. "No bodyguards. Mickey didn't usually travel without backup."

"Unless the back-up was who did it."

"But why would they do it there, with a twenty-two automatic?"

"Twenty-twos are chic these days," I said. "Like flavored popcorn."

Quirk shrugged.

"We're assuming it had something to do with the drug business. And the deal you and Devane rigged to put him away might have triggered something."

"Broz?" I said.

"I don't think so," Quirk said.

"No," I said. "I don't either. Joe went to some trouble so he wouldn't have to waste Mickey. Why would he do that and then when it was set have Mickey buzzed?"

Quirk signaled to a waitress for two more beers. "So who would want Mickey dead?" Quirk said.

"His supplier," I said.

"For fear Mickey would rat on him," Quirk said. "But how would the supplier know we were going to bust Mickey?"

The waitress brought two drafts and left. Quirk and I were looking at each other. "Could be a leak inside," Quirk said. "Of course it may just be something we don't know anything about. A jealous girlfriend, a mob deal that hasn't surfaced."

I nodded. "But," I said, "if you assume that, it gives you nothing to think about and nowhere to go."

"That's right," Quirk said. "So maybe somebody knew that Mickey was going to fall, and figured he'd talk out of turn."

I nodded. "So they got him to meet them alone in the parking garage and killed him."

"It had to be someone who had reason to meet him alone, and someone he wasn't afraid of."

"And someone who would use a twenty-two automatic," I said.

Quirk nodded. He was looking at the half empty shot glass in front of him. He put a forefinger into the whiskey and took it out and put it into his mouth and sucked on it absently.

"A broad," he said.

"Fills the criteria," I said.

"Say it is the supplier," Quirk said. "Is she part of the deal or do they hire someone?"

"Even a woman," I said. "Unless he knew her or something, Mickey wouldn't go without a couple of sluggos, even if it was a woman." I finished my whiskey and drank some beer. "Do we call her a hit person?" I said.

"A gunette," Quirk said.

"So we figure that a woman Mickey knows gets him to meet her in the Quincy Market parking garage. Or to meet her somewhere else and drive there. . . . "

"Meet her and drive there," Quirk said. "If it's full, she goes someplace else."

"Right," I said, "so he meets her someplace. They go to the garage. He parks and she blasts him."