by Warren Adler
“If you lived here, you’d know. All night, he flaunts it with that woman. But you got to understand. Jack McGuire flaunts everything. Big cars. Big money. Big boats. Hell, even this new lady’s got big . . . you know.” He described what he meant with his hands. “Got her a fancy condo near the Common. Half his age, too. Gone on now for may be six, seven years. Has to be a real burden for Frankie.” She noted his sudden lapse into the present tense. “He shows up around election time, unfurls the marriage flag and he and their children parade around like a solid loving family. Like it was one of those Irish promises to the death. You know. Showing courage and crying on the inside but never ever reneging on a blood pledge. One thing about the old Jack of Diamonds. He keeps his word.”
Again, she swallowed her resentment and taped down any personal sentiments. Good old Jack of Diamonds, the Barnum of the rotunda, hadn’t kept his word at all, not to Frankie, who was, therefore, entitled to her secret lover, whoever he might be.
“Don’t think I’m condoning Jack’s conduct. Fact is that Frankie also can be faulted for what’s going on. Not natural for a woman to stay away from the marriage bed for long periods. Much as I loved her I think she could have done something to be with Jack more. Should have insisted that Jack go down to Washington with her, set up some business there to keep him busy. Maybe come up here two, three times a month.” He pursed his lips, shook his head, then took another deep drag on the mug. “People never know how good they had it until they lose it.”
“It was her husband who called on the night she died. He got worried and pushed the panic button. Does that square with this . . . this estrangement.”
“Oh, they talked. Had to. Lots beween them. Kids. Always a worry on that score I can tell you. And, yet, there was money between them. Things like that. But I can tell you this. He was caught between a rock and a hard place. He was getting pressure from that other woman. He told me himself. He came down to my office one day. Last July it was. Hot as a pistol. Pours it out. Claims he loves this woman, really loves her, needs her, all that jazz. He wants a divorce. The woman, Beatrice, I think her name is. An eyetie. Yeah. Beatrice Dellarotta. Sticks in your head. Wants to be an honest woman. Wants kids. Time running out. Usual stuff for an older guy with a younger woman. He begs me to talk to Frankie. Me? The guy is desperate. He tells me that he’s begging her for a divorce ever since he met the new lady.”
“You think it was all coming to a head?”
“First of all. Face facts. Politically speaking a divorce is no asset. Not in this neck of the woods. Also, by now, Frankie is a national figure, a real force. She’s the leader of the pro-life people in Congress. She’s a ball buster on prayer in the schools. That’s potent political stuff for our people. She divorces, she blows her credibility with the real die-hard Catholics, the ones that still support the Latin litany which nobody ever understood except the priests. You don’t fuck . . . sorry . . . you don’t mess with the committed Irish Catholics on these issues. Sure they talked, but I’ll bet most of it was about the divorce. Him nagging. She rejecting.”
Everything is politics to these people, Fiona sighed. Her people. Again Sully arrived with a refill and she could see the veins in Grady’s face begin to redden.
“And did you speak to her?”
“I sure did. When she came back to the district we talked. Cried like hell on my shoulder. Hysterical she was. Too late by then. Jack was committed to this new one and she knew it. Said all this fame and fortune wasn’t worth diddley squat. Values. Frankie had values.”
“But you said broken heart,” Fiona coaxed. “Over Jack McGuire?”
“She loved him, you see. Loved the old Jack of Diamonds.”
“She said that?”
“Her? Too much pride to tell it to me.”
“So how can you be sure?”
She was easing him along, her voice soft and coaxing. There was a sense of bizarre about it, hearing this middle-aged hard-bitten, booze-and-blarney-soaked Irish pol talk about love.
“Love like they had doesn’t die so easily. Jack told me himself on the phone, when was it, two, three weeks ago. It’s not just political, he says. It’s love, he confesses. Says maybe she loves him too much to give him up.” Again he leaned over the table. She could smell the booze and his eyes had that rheumy look. “He really took off on her that time. Said a lot of stuff I didn’t want to hear.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t like to be talking about things like this,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “And I don’t want this great lady’s name taken in vain.”
“We just need to wrap it up, Grady. Just wrap it up.”
“She needs to lie in peace. We owe her that much.”
“Problem is, she was in Congress. We can’t have a lot of smoke hanging around her death. You understand. It’s something that can’t be swept under the rug. The important thing for you to know, though, is that everything you’re telling me will be strictly confidential. That I can promise you.”
She couldn’t really. In Washington nothing ever remained secret for long. Nothing. But, instinctively, she knew that this was the time for reinforcement if he was to give her more. Responding, he lowered his voice.
“He said he wished she’d fall out of a window or get hit by car.”
“He said that. In those words.”
“I couldn’t say for sure. But he was some kind of pissed off. Said she went back on her word.”
“What word?”
“He didn’t say.”
She paused, watching him. He was hunched over the mug, lugubriously inspecting its contents.
“You think he killed her?”
Slowly, he lifted his eyes from the mug.
“Jack? You crazy.” He pointed a stubby finger at her nose. “You get that one right out of your head, lady. People wish people dead all the time. It was a figure of speech. Typical of Jack McGuire. Man has a fierce temper. Fact is, under it all, there was genuine love there.”
That again. She couldn’t resist.
“Some love,” she said, then retreated, waiting for more. He took another deep sip on his mug.
“Needs nourishment. Like anything,” he sighed.
Goes for girls, too, she told herself, keeping her silence.
“He told me he hadn’t touched her in six and a half years. Didn’t tell me whose choice it was, but then that was none of my business, was it? One thing he did say was that he was committed to his wop lady.” He laughed. “He didn’t say it that way. His beautiful Beatrice he called her. Said Frankie was ruining his life. I hated to hear it. I tell you the Lord is unfair, FitzGerald. Me, I would have been loyal and true to Frankie till the bitter end. To the bitter end.”
“When did he tell you that? The part about not touching her for six and a half years.”
“What did I say? Two, three weeks ago.” He closed his eyes calculating. “Day after St. Paddy’s day, actually. Four weeks. He called me to apologize for not showing up at the party. We have this party every St. Paddy’s day at the house. Wife goes all out. Big bash. Can’t remember when Jack McGuire didn’t show. He had just come back from a month in the Islands.”
“With Beatrice?” Fiona asked.
“Who else? Said he and Beatrice had a bad flight. Too pooped out to come.”
He continued, but she listened with half an ear. She was doing her own calculations. Dr. Benton had estimated the fetus as about six weeks old. If Grady was right, that would eliminate Jack McGuire as a fathering possibility.
“When did you see Frankie last?”
“Me?”
He shrugged and raised his eyes to the ceiling.
“Coupla months. We were always on the dais together or some such. Royal Order of Hibernians. That’s what it was. We both spoke. Patsy and I drove her back to the house. She still kept the old house where she grew up. She’s got these two maiden aunts that keep up the place. We spoke two, three times a month. Politics. You know, she needed something from
the State House or I needed something from the feds. One hand washes the other. You know the drill.”
Be delicate, she cautioned herself.
“You two were, as you said, platonic buddies.”
She watched his reaction, which was not to react at all. Possible, she thought. He was a charmer. Probably had scores of ladies dancing around him. And a couple of favorites that serviced whatever needs the booze had spared. After a long silence, he raised his eyes and looked at her.
“You’re flattering me, FitzGerald. It was her choice. Not mine. I told you. I loved the woman.”
He grew deeply contemplative. He was clever. Candor was always a good defense. He could be blowing smoke, but she could not rule him out as Frankie’s lover. At the very least, she could imagine them together in that way. Not like with Foy.
“Any others putting in for Frankie’s seat?”
“Not yet. But anything is possible in politics. Always is. Even Frankie had opponents, but nothing serious.”
“Where does May Carter stand in all this?”
The question confused him. She could see his guard go up.
“How do you know May?”
“Hell, I’m investigating a death. They were very close, I’m told.
“Old one-note May. Never could do enough to satisfy her. Not even Frankie. She’s a powerhouse. No question about it.” She could see him growing progressively cautious.
“Think she might decide to run?” She felt snakelike, slithering silently toward her prey, struggling to quiet the rattle.
“May doesn’t run. May endorses.”
“Will she endorse you?”
“Always has.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Then it’s uphill all the way,” he said with some reluctance. “I mean we’re all committed to the cause, but May packs a wallop nationally as well.”
“And she always supported Frankie?”
“Always.”
“Would it hurt if she stopped supporting Frankie?”
His cup was still half-full, the coffee cooling, which she took as another clue to his caution. He wanted to keep his wits about him. Harlan Foy had hinted that May always kept them anxious about her endorsement and was not very happy about Frankie’s willingness to consort with the enemy, like Charles Rome.
“Depends,” Grady said.
“On what?”
“On how actively she campaigned against her. The thing about May is that she commands an army of loyal troops. This business of abortion is powerful stuff. Powerful. If she thought that Frankie was losing her effectiveness, then she wouldn’t hesitate to fight her. I mean really fight her.”
“The question then is, Did she?”
“Did she what?”
“Plan to dump Frankie. Put her support and her troops at the service of someone else, someone more malleable. Someone who she could control more effectively.”
“I get the message,” Grady said and Fiona remembered that it was an attentive Grady who had sat next to May Carter at the Capitol service.
“Way out of your depth, FitzGerald. You’re a cop, not a politician, and I can see the gears grinding.”
She tried to second-guess him. Was he thinking that she was concocting a scenario in which Frankie takes poison because May Carter has decided to dump her and she sees her life going up in smoke? Her husband gone. Her kids blaming her. The potential loss of her place in Congress. Could have lighted a fuse inside of her. Set off a massive suicidal depression.
Seeing those gears grinding was nothing compared to still another scenario. In this one, Frankie discovers she is pregnant by a lover, whoever he may be. May knows her husband is no longer sleeping with her. No secret that, not in South Boston. Can’t admit that she’s pregnant by a lover. Can’t have an abortion. Too tough a moral burden to carry. Hard to keep secret in any event. Can’t hide her pregnancy. May pulls her endorsement. Her constituents abandon her. A triple bind. Juicy grist for the media mill. Her career, her life, going downhill in a handbasket. Only one way out for Frankie.
She could almost buy that, she decided. But would the Eggplant?
She looked at Jack Grady, the Jack of Clubs, and contemplated the swirling mass of hidden agendas, secret ambitions and invisible motives that moved people to desperate acts. The human mind could justify almost anything. For the greater good, could May Clark commit murder? Weren’t wars fought for the greater good? Would Jack McGuire kill for the love of another woman? A story as old as time itself. Remember Helen of Troy, who triggered a devastating war. Could festering ambition drive Jack Grady to murder, despite his protestations of love? And Harlan Foy? What turmoil and agitation lies in the eye of repression?
Call it suicide and be done with it. She urged the logic on herself. There was still no physical evidence or anything to suggest foul play. Yet the Eggplant had persisted.
“You can read anything into anything,” Grady said, with remarkable insight into her thoughts. “The woman is dead by her own hand for chrissakes. If you weren’t a woman, I’d tell you what you remind me of.”
“I’m a cop. Not a woman.” Fiona snapped. She no longer felt like ingratiating herself. She had gotten from him all she was able to absorb and it irritated her to know she wasn’t any closer to an airtight conclusion, at least one that would satisfy the Eggplant, than when she had left Washington.
“Alright then,” Grady said. “The African weejee bird.” His lips formed a smug grin.
“The what?”
“It’s like you were the African weejee bird,” he repeated, his smile broadening. His speech had thickened. With his middle finger he drew circles in the air. “The African weejee bird flies in ever decreasing concentric circles until it loses itself up its own asshole.”
He studied her face for a reaction.
“Then what happens?” Fiona asked.
He shrugged and emptied his mug.
13
The room was filled with flowers and her first kneejerk thought was that somebody had died. There were three kinds of roses, white, red and pink placed on surfaces all around the room. A silver bucket in a fresh load of ice was on a stand near the couch. There was a card propped against a rose-filled vase.
“To the girl of my dreams,” it read.
“I don’t believe this,” she said aloud. Then she heard his voice responding. He had sneaked up on her.
“Believe it,” Greg said, encircling her from behind, kissing her neck. She was glad that he could not see her misty eyes. His sudden attack of romanticism had stunned her. Athletically sexual, passionate, physically affectionate. He had been all of that. But a roomful of roses, a cute card and a surprise hello, this was a side of him that he had kept hidden.
Then it occurred to her.
He knows. The idea frightened her.
“I missed you,” he whispered in her ear.
Her eyes had dried and she dissolved in his arms.
“Thought you had enough of me last night,” she said.
“Never enough.”
“I catch your drift.”
“Champagne now or after?” he whispered.
“I’d prefer a clear head,” she sighed, letting him undress her as she embraced him.
It was late afternoon before they got to the Champagne. After the first sip, she realized that they had forgotten to eat lunch and said so.
“Man does not live by bread alone,” Greg said. They wore matching terry cloth robes provided by the hotel. She rested her head against his shoulder and sipped her Champagne. It was perfect, she thought, absolutely perfect. She lifted an arm and caressed his face in gratitude. He took her hand and kissed her fingers.
“It’s true you know,” he said.
“What’s true?”
“You are the girl of my dreams,” he said.
“This is getting out of hand,” she said, putting a spin of humor on the remark, mostly to hide a nagging emotional discomfort. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
; “I know,” he said, kissing her hair.
“Snap out of it,” she joked.
There was a long silence as they sipped their Champagne. She watched the reddish tint of the setting sun against the windowpanes.
“Getting any closer?” he asked. She had discussed the case with him perfunctorily, satisfying his curiosity within strict bounds of ethics and professionalism.
“Can of worms,” she said.
As a lawyer, he knew the constrictions, but he was also a clever manipulator, shifty, with hair-trigger insight and the ability, as they say, to put two and two together. Also, he probably thought he had a vested interest in the case on two counts, his experience with his ex-wife and his intimacy with Fiona.
Giving him any information was a bit of a tease on her part. She could not truly trust him to keep his mouth sealed and it was quite possible he might find use for the information, especially if he needed to dazzle a potential client with his insider clout.
“Well, was it suicide or political assassination?” he asked.
“Political assassination? Now there’s a heavy hypothesis.”
He simulated a gun with his fingers.
“Bang. Bang. I could have done it without a pang of conscience.”
The Bernard Goetz syndrome. He shoots three black toughs who hassled him in a New York subway and many of us secretly applaud. He is our surrogate.”
Many murders, she knew, were surrogate murders, prompted by deep psychological hatreds of mothers, fathers, siblings, wives, husbands, whatever.
“Apt comparison, sarge. Goetz had no cause, no ideology. His victims were also surrogates. For all those black toughs whom he perceived as hassling his life.”
She detected a persuasive passion in his tone, a growing vehemence. It seemed odd for postcoital conversation which should have been low key, lazy, laid back.
“And poor Frankie?” she asked, her question still easy, off hand, although she found herself growing edgy. “Would she have been a surrogate?”
“For me she would,” he snapped. She could sense his rising anger, which surprised her.
“Why?”
“Religious fanaticism. As if our bodies didn’t belong to us. Hell, that fetus doesn’t get there by accident. Hiding behind the idea of God to mortgage us body and soul to the State. I hate them all.”