by Warren Adler
“Did you speak to her that night?” Fiona pressed.
He shook his head, his eyes staring into space.
“Tried to, but never reached her. It was me that called Foy, remember.”
“Because you were worried about Frankie?”
“Worried about Frankie?” He mulled over the idea for a moment, then said: “I wanted to speak with her.”
“About the divorce?”
“I told you.”
“Was it that urgent?”
“Yeah,” he drawled. “To me it was.”
She allowed another long pause to happen, then struck out again.
“Where were you on the night Frankie was killed, Mr. McGuire?”
She could see his nostrils widen. He seemed to be searching for something deep inside of himself. Whatever it was, it triggered a sudden alertness. He reached out, took the glass, contemplated its contents, then slapped it down on the table as if to say, as Grady had done that morning, “No more, got to keep my wits about me.”
“Builders’ meeting,” he said. “Greater Boston Builders’ Association. I was the principal speaker.”
“What time did it break up?”
“About ten-thirty, I think it was. I remember because I was back at the apartment at eleven. Turned on the eleven o’clock news.”
“The apartment you shared with Beatrice Dellarotta.”
He nodded. He had reached a point where he was almost volunteering answers as fast as she could think up the questions. It also had all the earmarks of a prepared script.
“Why did you call Frankie?”
“I was pushing her, you see. Asking for that divorce.”
“At that late hour?”
“She always worked late at her office. I told you. She worked her ass off, a regular workaholic. That’s what done her in. But the office wasn’t the place for serious conversation. Besides, I think Foy was on the phone, monitoring her calls. He was always there. You couldn’t have a real private talk. Not about what we had to talk about. No way.”
He was embellishing the script now, ad libbing, backfilling. She let it happen. He looked at her directly, his eyes pleading for understanding.
“She had ever reason to let me go,” he said. “Every reason.” At that he pulled up abruptly and studied his hands. After too long a silence she decided to coax him along.
“Because of you and Beatrice?” she asked gently.
“Not just that,” McGuire said. The booze had mellowed him.
“She knew about you and Beatrice?” Fiona asked.
“That she did. Found out two, three years ago. Not that it mattered. We hadn’t been man and wife for years before that. She had her life in Congress. I had mine back here in Boston. Common problem for politicians.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m the daughter of a senator.” Often in an interrogation, she had used something in her own background as a bonding mechanism. It relaxed the subject, made him more secure and open. People who hold deep dark disturbing secrets are dying to reveal them. Not entirely cricket, but it did the job.
“There you go,” he said finally picking up his glass, sipping sparingly then putting it down. “Pulls a family apart, it does. We’re only human. God’s flawed children. There was a bargain in it, of course. I showed up with her every election in the district. Many of them knew, of course. But it was the propriety of it that was important. I respected Frankie and couldn’t embarrass her. Even Beatrice understood that. Poor Beatrice. It’s been hell on Beatrice.” He took another deep drag on his drink. “It needn’t have happened this way, though.”
She wasn’t sure how to take that, waiting for him to explain. Again, he hesitated and she had to stoke the fires.
“So that night you decided to have it out again,” Fiona pressed, taking a relentless tack. “But you couldn’t reach her.”
“No. No one answered.”
“Did that often happen?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I was always leaving messages at the apartment desk.”
“But that night you didn’t.”
“Couldn’t. It wasn’t connected. You see she had to turn this switch so that the desk picks up the messages. When she left in the morning she would turn the switch, then switch it back when she got home later.”
“So you knew she had gotten home because the desk wasn’t picking up.”
“That’s it.”
“You called a number of times and when you got no answer you called Foy.”
“Right. That’s what I did. And he went over and found her.”
“So no one can say that it was your talk with her that was the immediate cause of her death.”
“How could it be? I never reached her. Not that night.”
“But you did call her frequently?”
“Yes I did. I wanted that divorce. I was pushing. It wasn’t fair. Not to me. Especially not to Beatrice.”
“Why especially?”
“She was, well younger. Also traditional. She wanted marriage, family. Frankie was being pigheaded. She would have ridden out the divorce politically. It was vindictive on Frankie’s part. I kept asking for a better reason. Politics. Always politics. But I kept at it. Why was it okay before and not now?”
“You were really madder than hell about her changing her mind?”
“She was being a real bitch. It was making me crazy.”
He could not conceal his vehemence. Enough to kill? she wondered.
“Why was it so urgent?” Fiona asked.
His eyes widened and his eyebrows lifted, crawling up his forehead to the grey hairline.
“Because of the baby, for chrissakes.”
“The baby?” She felt the inner bong as the blood rushed to her head.
“You knew?” she croaked.
“Of course, I knew. I’m the father. Beatrice is nearly four months pregnant.”
14
The Eggplant was always in a foul mood. It was an axiom of the squad room. Heaven help those who confront him first thing on Monday morning. There were various theories about why this condition existed, but one unassailable truth. His weekends were hell.
His wife Loreen had badgered, coerced, abused, and tormented him. On Monday morning he needed surrogates on whom to avenge himself. On this Monday this need was fulfilled by Fiona and Cates.
“I have motives and scenarios,” he shouted, his palm a human gavel as he rapped the desk. “No clues. No dosers. This is not a high-school psychology class. Worse, it is not police work.”
This was a familiar script, but she detected a difference in the delivery, an undercurrent not only of anger but of fear. He had smoked down two panatelas and had lit a third.
Unable to sit behind the desk and suffer his real or imagined frustration, he got up and badgered them without any obstacles between. This was particularly offensive to Fiona who had to suffer through eye-level confrontation with the Eggplant’s crotch as she sat on his battered leather couch crunched by years of abuse by overweight cops.
Eventually, she knew, he would work it out, find his manhood again, repress the weekend pussywhipping until the following Monday. Unfortunately, this was taking longer than usual to happen. The reason for this did not emerge until he had raved and ranted for nearly half an hour.
“As you know,” he said, showing the first clear signs of spent ire, “we are a churchgoing family. We consult the Lord on his day of rest for comfort and insight. Loreen insists on such a cleansing. Good for the soul. We go as a family. It is a ritual of high order, of enormous priority. For me to miss this experience creates a needless trauma in my household.”
He waved his panatela, wet end up in Fiona’s face. She allowed it, avoiding the stink by not breathing through her nose. She could tell he was on the verge of revelation. No point in deflecting his attention by flouncy rebellion.
Besides, she was not taking his rebuke seriously and she and Cates had already exchanged numerous winks whenever the Eggplant looked the other way
. Nor did this long-winded outburst try their tolerance. It went with the territory. Everyone in Homicide knew that suffering through one of these explosions was an essential ingredient of the boss’s therapy.
“Instead of this exercise in spiritual renewal, my sacrosanct Sunday morning was spent at the mayor’s breakfast table. He took his morning coffee and I took his shit.”
Serious stuff, she agreed. In the Eggplant’s life the mayor was Mr. Everything. By statute, position and inclination, he controlled the police department. It was he who picked the chief, manipulated promotions and generally, by whatever political intimidation he employed, ruled the cop roost absolutely. Normally, the mayor exercised this control through his police chief, but as they soon discovered, the Eggplant’s meeting with the mayor was one on one, an event that portended ill for the Eggplant’s career plans.
“He wanted to know about the McGuire case. He made it perfectly clear that he did not wish this to be an open case for too much longer, that I had to stop feeding the press tantalizing bullshit. Then he asked me what I had.” He shook his head, then turned his eyes away from them. “I gave him smoke. I blew it in a steady stream right up his kazoo.”
His ire shifted now as he telegraphed to them his chief animus, his enormous contempt for the dark machinations of the bureaucracy. He forgot to puff life back into his panatela and he walked to the window and spit out his anger through the unwashed clouded window to the sun-dappled, sharply shadowed streets.
“Lady and gentleman, our asses are sitting on a heavy keg of political dynamite. His Honor, you see, is being leaned on by those high powered dudes in the House of fucking Representatives, those stalwarts who give us their monetary largesse in exchange for our toadying to their whims and caprices.” He shrugged and turned to face them again. “This is strictly top-secret. I mean top—TOP. Got it?” He waited until they had nodded, then lowered his voice and gave a paranoid roll to his eyes. “My black ass is on the line, folks. He got the word direct from Rep. Charles Rome who brought it down from the Mount of the Speaker himself.” Rome’s image, as he appeared at the Capitol service, rose in her mind. She remembered his regal bearing, the deep authoritative voice, the doting Dresden doll perfect wife following in his wake.
“This is real heavy-duty stuff. It seems that the Speaker has gotten wind of a scheme afoot to make the McGuire demise appear to be the work of a hit man paid for by the pro-choice people.” He stuck the cigar in his mouth and waved his hands. “I know. This is a poisoning. Not a hit man M.O. None of that is relevant. The idea, as I hear it from the mayor, is to make it look like an ideological killing, give it a political spin to further the cause of the pro-lifers. Make hay for their cause. The reasoning goes like this. It’s the pro-lifers who are always getting stung by those fanatics burning down abortion clinics. Now they got a chance to show that the real crazies are on the other side. You get my drift?”
The early blind anger had spent itself. The logic of the professional was taking over.
“May Carter stirring things up,” Cates said.
He had, of course, been “apprahzed” of their interview with her.
“That’s of the ‘how’. As I understand it, it’s the ‘why’ that scares the big boys. Political nastiness is bad for both sides. Makes them all look like assholes.” He lowered his voice. “As if they need more grist for that mill. Anyway, they say that as long as this investigation drags on without a conclusion, then this other thing, the hit man theory, stirs the political pot unnecessarily.”
“Circling the wagons,” Fiona said. “To protect their vaunted image. That’s always number one with the boys on the Hill.” She looked up at him. “Now give us the real hidden agenda.”
“The mayor explains it this way. And he ain’t no dummy. The majority is holding the line on abortion rights. The issue for hizzoner is Congressional funding for poor girls to get an abortion. That’s a powerful goal for the pro-choicers. And there’s political currency in it for him. Hizzoner and the congressman sees this ploy, making it look like this was an ideological killer, reinforcing the image that the pro-choice team are murderers. The public opinion factor at work. In politics such pressure bubbles upward. The pro-choice politicians see themselves caught in the middle and when a politician is caught in the middle, watch out.”
Her own political experience, through her father, gave her some understanding of the scenario. Like all political stews this one boiled and bubbled with trade-offs, deals, overblown rhetoric, fanaticism, chicanery and hypocrisy. She patted Cates’s knee which meant for him to accept the Eggplant’s view of it and that she would attempt to unravel it all later.
“And hizzoner wants it finished fast, before the idea of a political killing gets loose,” Fiona said.
“You got it. Lance the abscess before the pus spreads in the body politic,” the Eggplant said.
“Does that mean no more press?” Fiona asked.
“Can’t you see my muzzle, woman?”
“There’s one easy out,” Cates said, too late for Fiona to stop him. He could walk into fans faster than any cop she ever knew. It wasn’t exactly naïveté. Or being still wet behind the ears. Cates worshipped at the shrine of the blindfolded lady with the sword and the scale. On this issue he was without guile or subtlety. He had chosen this work to right wrongs. Nothing so pedestrian as earning a living or “getting ahead” interfered with that calling.
“Call it suicide, right?” the Eggplant smiled down at him benignly, setting the trap.
“Because that’s what it is,” Cates said. “We have no real evidence to the contrary. As you put it before. Only motives and scenarios.”
“That’s what they want, Cates,” the Eggplant said. “You got it.”
“So where’s the problem?” Cates asked.
“Explain it to the pussy, FitzGerald,” the Eggplant said, puffing smoke into the air.
“It’s not very complicated, Cates.” She was sure she had it down the way the Eggplant saw it. He had his foibles and eccentricities but he knew his turf, both the grit of the streets and the steamy underside of politics. The primary mission of the MPD, was to protect the politicians, the bureaucrats and diplomats in the nation’s capital, protect their lives and property and their ability to function. The system was politicized, top to bottom. Everything else was secondary, although keeping the peace was a given, an essential part of the equation. It was, of course, a two-way street. One hand, as they say, washed the other. The only common enemy was the media.
Such a primary mission required, above all, discretion, the keeping and use of secrets. Even the lowliest recruit knew that you didn’t mess with the big shots, that you kicked certain problems upstairs pronto. Sometimes it got out of hand and was inadvertently pushed into a floodlit media circle. Like that aide to President Johnson who got picked up for soliciting in the men’s room of the Y or the powerful drunken congressman who pushed his stripper girlfriend into the tidal basin. No way to hide things like that.
But there were lots of little crimes, silly illegal indiscretions that could have fatal political consequences. A gay pol found in flagrante delicto with his underage closet twinkie. A swinger diplomat caught in a cat house. A second-story job on a house owned by a pol, bought for his mistress. A bureaucrat caught buying a spot of coke. Lots of little crimes. Raids on high stake poker games. Closing down a raucous salt-and-pepper sex and liquor party. Even drunk driving. All political career killers.
An official wink could pile up lots of chits. It didn’t qualify as real corruption, like bribery or obstruction of justice. Washington was no place for Batman and Robin.
The trick was to circle the wagons before the Indians attacked. Keep stuff out of the computer. To the Eggplant and Fiona such things were baggage you carried, like your piece and your badge. She would have to explain it all to Cates. He would learn. To get anywhere in the MPD, he had to.
“Double-edged sword kind of thing,” Fiona said. “The woman was an icon for the pro-lif
ers.”
“So?”
“She was pregnant by a man other than her husband. She chose not to have her baby by taking poison. To pro-lifers that’s a double killing.”
“But it’s over. The woman has been buried. Who’s to know?”
“The cover-up fairy,” the Eggplant said.
Cates looked confused.
He was talking political shorthand, knowing she would pick it up. It was the way her father explained things. “I’m simplifying but you get the message.” Cates looked at her and shrugged. He was obviously concentrating, carefully following the Eggplant’s explanation. The Eggplant looked at Fiona, his signal for her to explain it further.
“When you have two violently opposed forces in politics there can be no secrets. The fact of Frankie’s pregnancy is already engraved in the medical examiner’s paperwork. The Boston connection is a can of worms, juicy stuff. We conclude suicide by decree, we open ourselves up to an avalanche of inquiries. Why our conclusion? Why did she do it?”
“You got those answers, Cates?” the Eggplant asked.
“So, we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” Fiona sighed.
“Unless we get down to the skinny,” the Eggplant said. He shook his head. “I know it. I feel it in my gut.”
“But they want you to end it,” Fiona said.
“We are looking here for an ending, FitzGerald,” the Eggplant said. “A truthful ending. A judgment of murder definitely sours the political stew, agitates the cooks. Some politicians could choke on it.”
“But suppose we come up with nothing definitive, a total absence of proof positive?” Cates said.
The Eggplant shrugged.
“My bones say murder,” the Eggplant whispered.
He was still being stubborn. At first glance it seemed out of character. She had seen the extent of his brown-nosing. But this was different. Admittedly, he was operating in a narrow sphere, but it was just wide enough to accommodate his instincts, at least for the moment.