by Warren Adler
There was a smaller colored picture of the Virgin Mother hung randomly on the wall in a cluster of celebrity pics, the deceased with Reagan, the deceased with Carter. That meant at least ten years in office, five terms at least. There was also a picture of Frankie with the pope. She with her head covered, obviously a private audience shot. Greg had called her the pro-life lady. Was there another stand for an Irish lady in an Irish Catholic district in South Boston? Was the pope Catholic?
She soaked up other details, until the uniformed policeman stationed at the door came in, a young black man with an Eddie Murphy moustache.
“Fat guy’s still here.”
She had forgotten, her mind absorbed in assembling the scene’s bits and pieces. She made copious notes in her notebook, drew pictures as well. Perhaps tomorrow a note would surface, a letter to the husband or the kids, making all her speculations about murder irrelevant.
The fat man sat slouched in a heavy upholstered couch, his body looking as puffy as the large throw pillows that adorned it. Above the couch was a nest of plaques. Knights of Columbus for Distinguished Service, The Royal Order of Hibernians, Honorary Member. A Kentucky Colonel certificate, a plaque from the Boston chapter of B’nai B’rith, an elaborate certificate from the Pro-Life National Coalition and others. A typical politician’s trumpeting wall. This was merely a fraction of the collection. Her office would be lined with them. Her home in Boston as well.
“This is a big shock,” the fat man said. He looked exhausted and his eyes were shiny and moist in their deep pockets of fat.
“I assume her husband has been notified.”
“I called him immediately.”
“Before or after you called the police?” Cates asked. They had settled themselves in upholstered chairs facing him on the couch.
“Is that significant?” the man asked.
“Everything is significant,” Cates responded. He looked toward Fiona. His thoughts were transparent. If it’s showbiz, then I’ll play my role. But it’s only for the money.
The fat man pursed his lips and scratched his thinning pate.
“I called him first. After all, he is her husband.” There was something awry in the way he said it, resentful.
“Then you called the police,” Cates said pleasantly. They were sliding him into it, taking it easy.
“And you saw her at seven when she left the office?” Cates asked. They had worked out a system. Whoever chose the easy ones, the other took the hard ones. Cates was on easy.
“Yes. We had gone over the speech points for Monday. She was going up to the District. Catholic Charities. A good group for us. Large and supportive. She could hold a crowd, Frankie could. Everyone called her Frankie. A natural politician. She was only thirty-six when they sent her up.”
Made her maybe forty-six, forty-seven, Fiona calculated, remembering now that the Washington Post had put her on the cover of Style years ago. Pert and feisty, they had called her. She looked a good ten years younger.
“As far as I could see,” Foy said. “She wasn’t depressed, showed no signs of, you know, anything that might suggest that she would take her own life.”
The fat man looked at his hands which were remarkably thin, not pudgy, but small and tapered, white and clean. Without the fat, he would appear fastidious. There was an air of the effeminate about him. The self-study of his hands suggested that he was masking hesitation.
“She could have slipped into a sudden depression. Many people can keep their real feelings to themselves. Maybe something hit her, a dark thought, some terrible mental blow?” Cates coaxed, exchanging glances with Fiona.
The fat man moistened his lips. However gentle the interrogation, it was making him uneasy.
“The Irish are a moody people,” he sighed. “Frankie was no exception. She could be tough. She hated to lose and losing made her moody.” He looked up from his hands and gathered his thoughts. “She was up last night I can tell you. Happy. She had got the President’s men to push once again on the prayer amendment. Good stuff for our district. No. She was really up, back to her old self.” Poor choice of words and he was the first to notice. He was running on inertia now, still protecting the lady’s political image, doing his job. A congressman’s principal chore, above all else, was to run his or her reelection campaign. This took priority over everything. Two years rolled around like lightning. Image making had to be done on the run.
“Back to her old self, you said,” Fiona intervened. Instinct and practice could pick out the hard ones, like fruit graders working a conveyer belt.
“I hadn’t meant . . .” the fat man began, chins rippling. She could see a palpitating beat in the skin puddle.
“Nevertheless you must have meant . . . ,” Fiona said drawing out the sentence, staring into his fatigued eyes. She waited until she could tell the long pause was unnerving him. “. . . that sometime in the near past she was off her feed.”
The expression confused him. Getting it finally, he made an effort to retrieve his confidence.
“She was under the weather last week. Probably a bug going around.”
“Making her mopey,” Fiona pressed. “Sort of out of it. Something like that.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Not all there? Not her usual bouncy self? Like . . .” Fiona paused and fixed her eyes on his. “. . . her monthlies.” Fiona smiled benignly, wondering suddenly if the lady was still menstruating normally.
“Something like that, yeah,” Foy nodded, obviously hoping this would end it.
“So that when things happen, things go wrong as they always do, her reaction was more touchy than usual.”
“Fair to say,” he nodded.
“So what went wrong last week that made her more touchy?” Fiona snapped, cracking the whip. Foy blanched. Fatigue had obviously slowed down his obfuscation. Tremors were rippling his chins. She watched him for a long moment, letting his uncertainty work itself out. “She’s dead, Harlan,” Fiona said, soothingly. “We have no desire to soil her memory. Two choices here. Suicide or murder. Sometimes people just snap. Happens all the time. But murder implies enemies at work, hate and vicious acts.”
“I just want her to rest in peace,” he muttered, ever the loyal retainer, although it must have occurred to him that suicide meant she’d left him in the lurch, betrayed him.
“Can she?” Fiona prodded gently, invoking the Catholic hereafter, always a sure-fire way to get a good Catholic’s attention, stir up the supernatural. Think of her as watching you now, she told him silently. Judging your performance. Only the truth will set you free. And her.
“We were working on a speech for Monday,” he mumbled, but with less conviction than before.
“But she wasn’t her usual self?” Cates interjected.
Foy shrugged, rippling his chins.
“Something was bugging her?” Fiona coaxed.
“Not easy in the trenches,” he sighed. “Getting beat on the head by both sides. Sometimes they don’t think we’re doing enough. And fighting off the damned liberals . . .” His voice cracked, then faded away.
“You’re talking politics not personal?” Cates asked.
“Hell,” Foy said regaining his voice, looking at Cates with contempt for his ignorance. “It’s all politics. Nothing is personal. We had two issues. They dominated everything. Abortion and prayer in the schools. For us, that was it. Frankie was the Right-to-Life lady. Everybody knows that. And one day we’re going to beat those murdering sons of bitches . . .” His face had flushed a deep scarlet. No question about the depths of his commitment. “Sometimes they would actually accuse her of not doing enough. Not enough? Shit.”
“Who are they?”
“May Carter, for one.”
“Who is May Carter?” Fiona asked.
“You don’t know?” Foy looked at her then took in a deep breath of exasperation. “She’s on the National Board of Right to Life for chrissakes and she lives in our district. May is a key player. But
she never let up on Frankie. Not for a minute. Called every day. You could set your watch by her.”
“Frankie didn’t like her?” Cates asked.
“Not easy to like, I can tell you,” Foy said.
“She like Frankie?”
Foy thought about that and took his time over the answer. It wasn’t simple for him anymore.
“May Carter is the living embodiment of a sacred cause.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Cates asked, growing testy, stretching his nice guy role.
“It means,” Fiona said, drawing from her father’s experience. “That she judged people only by their level of commitment to the cause.”
Foy nodded, obviously thankful for the help.
“Also by the level of results. I can also tell you it wasn’t easy in a Congress dominated by abortionists and Godless liberals. No matter what Frankie did it was never enough for May.” He was silent for a moment, mulling something, straining against the repression of years.
“She’s gone,” Fiona said softly.
Foy shrugged, the decision made. He sucked in a deep breath. You got it Foy, Fiona thought. Dead is dead.
“We were just as committed as that bitch,” Foy hissed, biting his underlip, then raising his eyes, showing his long endured pain. He was the buffer between the hostile world and his charge, the congresswoman, his queen and master.
Fiona imagined she could see more in him than just a lackey’s level of devotion. Encased in that mass of frontal flesh was, quite obviously, the beating heart of a sensitive and vulnerable man. Mentally undressing him, she shuddered, then shrugged. In her game, attraction was always a mystery and she had seen her share of mismatches. It was a consideration, a base to be touched. Conventional wisdom and popular images had little relevance when probing the dark side of human motivation. Only free ranging speculation was relevant to the detective’s art. Lackey or lover? Grist for the mill.
“We were as committed as May, although it was never enough. Never.” Guard down, Foy was letting the pus squirt from the long-festering wound. “Problem was, Frankie never could attain May’s level of hate and confrontation. She hated all those who were against the cause and would piss and moan whenever Frankie was seen with the enemy like her colleagues on the subcommittee who didn’t share her view. That’s the Subcommittee on Health and Labor of which she was a member. She wanted Frankie to be in a perpetual state of war. No intercourse with the enemy. Explaining to May that you had to get along, especially with the leadership, most of whom were the opposition, was like talking into a cloud.”
“What enemy?” Fiona asked, picking up on the word.
“Not enemy in the sense of raw hatred. Not that kind of enemy. Let’s say political enemy, which did not rule out human friendship.”
“Like who?” Fiona pressed.
“I don’t know. Bob Preston, the Minority Whip. Charlie Rome, chairman of the subcommittee. That really set May off. Hell, Charlie opposed everything that Frankie stood for, a real bleeding heart that one. But Charlie and Barbara, his wife, were buddies with Frankie. Hell, they live in this building. In fact, lots of important people live in this building. May Carter didn’t even like Frankie living in the same building with the . . . the so-called enemy. I tried to explain to the bitch. That’s not the way the system works.”
Apparently this May Carter had been a thorn in their side and had triggered an avalanche of animosities, which, once the pus boil was lanced, kept him running at the mouth until finally Fiona interposed the essential question.
“Does May want Frankie’s seat?”
Wheels within wheels, Fiona knew. A powerful constituency was one thing but wanting to take one’s job was quite another.
“Maybe. There’s always takers.”
“Does she have a chance?”
“She’ll be a disaster if she does get it. They’ll box her in a corner and let her rave.”
“I asked about her chances?” Fiona persisted.
“She’d have to knock off Jack Grady. Been in line for years. Good old party boy. State senator. The idea was for Frankie to eventually go for the Senate with Grady running for her seat.” He smirked. “Considering Massachusetts politics we’d all have beards down to here when that could happen. Him and May going at it for Frankie’s seat could be Northern Ireland in South Boston. No war like an Irish war.”
“So Grady gains from Frankie’s death.”
“I’m sure he’ll think so,” Foy shrugged. He paused for a moment. Beads of perspiration had begun to sprout on his upper lip and the ashen skin carried two circles of red flush on either cheekbone. With one finger, he squeegeed off the sweat, wiping it on his jacket. “Problem is Jack’s got lots of skeletons. Things you can do in the State House you can’t do in Congress. Opponent like May would go for the jugular.”
“Did Frankie and Jack get alone?” Cates asked. He was, as always, traveling in her wake, building theories out of this latest cast of characters. He may have believed in Frankie’s suicide, but he was determined, as always, to look under every rock.
“You might say Jack was family.” A strange gurgle bubbled up from the jelly of his chins. Fiona caught the unmistakable whiff of sarcasm. “He was a buddy of Jack McGuire. Choir boys together sort of thing. Known as the two Jacks. McGuire was the Jack of Diamonds. Grady the Jack of Clubs.”
“How come?”
Foy shot her a gaze of incredulity as if she was supposed to know all this Congressional District lore.
“McGuire is loaded. Road construction. Need I say more. Who gives out the contracts? And Grady’s committee is Highways. Also appropriation. The two Jacks. Name fits. Grady has one helluva club. Got it?”
“Power boys,” Cates said, a statement without a purpose.
“Yeah,” Foy nodded.
No mistaking the obvious, Fiona thought. There was no love lost between Foy and both men. Went with the territory, Fiona decided, remembering Ronnie Schwartz, her father’s AA, the man in the middle, protector and liar for the great one. Daddy was the sun and the moon to Ronnie, the alter ego. It had clout, true, but the job, by definition, assumed an obliteration of persona in the service of the great one.
“I’m really bushed,” Foy said. His face had grown from pure ashen to grey and the little flush marks were fading.
“What about you, Foy?” Fiona asked.
“Me?”
“Not unheard of for an AA to make a run for the seat when a member leaves. Or dies.”
Foy, whose body had been immobile on the couch, like a sack of potatoes thrown carelessly, all bulgy in the wrong places, suddenly stirred, the fat quivering.
“Hadn’t thought about it,” he lied. It was, of course, presumptuous to think that, but she could sense that it was an ever looming option, perhaps just taking root, but quite a powerful urge. Besides, one could sense he would not be the first choice of either Grady or Carter for AA, despite his expertise.
“But it is possible,” Fiona pushed. “I mean if you decided after checking it out with the folks back home.” A long shot, perhaps. But one never knew. Lyndon Johnson, along with a number of those holding office in the present House and Senate, had once been an AA.
“Anything is possible,” Foy said.
“Even Jack McGuire,” Fiona interjected, like folding a dropped card back into the deck.
Foy’s lips stretched over his buck teeth in a smile of unmistakable sarcasm. Even a gurgle of a laugh rolled out of his throat.
“Jack McGuire in politics,” Foy snickered. “You’ve got to be kidding. Jack hates politics, hates it with a passion, hates it more than he hates the Brits.”
“I mention it because it’s not uncommon for a spouse to take over a seat upon the death of a member of Congress. Of course, it’s usually the other way around. The wives get the seat.”
“Not McGuire. He’s not one for kissing butts. Besides. . . .”
Despite Foy’s fatigue, he caught himself up short. Whatever was in his mind, it did
not exit by his tongue. Not this time. For all his candor, he was holding back, holding back hard.
“Besides nothing,” he sighed. “I forgot what I was going to say. It’s been a rough day.”
“Just trying to find out who benefits from Frankie’s death,” Fiona said. Only then did it dawn on Foy what all this interrogation was really about.
“You don’t think . . . Jesus. I didn’t mean . . .” He seemed to choke on the words, coughing suddenly, his white face growing red with the effort.
“But it was you who said she hadn’t killed herself,” Fiona said gently.
“I hadn’t meant them,” Foy sputtered.
“Who then, Foy? Who then?”
At that point, he groped for a handhold on the couch and lifted himself up.
“Really, I’m exhausted. I’m not making any sense.”
“Just remember, Mr. Foy,” Fiona said, taking careful figurative aim. “It was you that put the idea of murder in our minds.”
4
As much as she tried, Fiona could not fully agree with the Eggplant’s instincts. Cates was even more adamant in his assessment of suicide and as they drove along Massachusetts Avenue in the April sunshine, he continued to be vocal on his doubts.
“It strains all logical deduction,” Cates said in his melodic accent, but in a tone that did not mask his British education. Often when in the company of other cops, Fiona felt him straining to blunt the clipped lilt of his speech patterns, a process he still hadn’t completely mastered.
Cates knew his precise mannerisms made him seem “uppity” to his colleagues, mostly black men, the sons of postal clerks, janitors, social workers and low level bureaucrats who had been pushed upscale to the “Pole Ees” by tough and determined black mamas and by black fathers hungry for their sons to earn the respect never accorded to them.
The fact was that Randolph Winston Cates III, was a Trinidadian version of the same antecedents. His father, a fisherman, had died in a boating accident when he was five and, years later, while he was at school in England, a Trinidadian perk left over from British colonial rule, his mother married a Washington cab driver and made young Cates an American citizen. From the beginning of his American experience he had made it clear that he was henceforth to be addressed as Cates, never Randolph and, especially, never Randy, an eccentricity that encapsulated his character.