by Warren Adler
16
Harlan Foy was a forlorn figure of despair as he sat among the wreckage of Frankie McGuire’s Congressional office. Packed cartons were everywhere. Pictures, framed citations and plaques were piled high on dusty desks, along with unused computers, coffee mugs and wastebaskets. The walls were barren, except for the outlines where the pictures and plaques were hung. It had, Fiona decided, the appropriate look of devastation and defeat.
Foy was sitting in what apparently was Frankie’s desk chair which had been rolled in front of the standard issue leather couch where Fiona and Cates sat facing him. He was pale and haggard with deep black circles under his eyes. Their visit had caught him unawares, a good thing in their line. He was not, of course, overjoyed to see them.
“A bad dream,” he sighed, waving his hand. Cates and she exchanged glances. The wave was a decidedly effeminate limp wrist gesture. “So much to do. The congresswoman was very active. There should be a rule. Do not die in office. It’s hell on the survivors.”
“You still think she was murdered?” Fiona asked. No sense being oblique on that point. Besides, she wanted to set the stage for some tough questions.
“I don’t know what to think anymore,” he said, folding chubby little hands on his lap and shaking his head, which was disconcerting, since it made his puddled chins shiver like half-frozen gelatin.
“It certainly is not the work of any ordinary hot-entry prowler,” Fiona said. “If it was murder this one was well-planned by somebody with a big reason.” She watched his eyes as she spoke. There was fright in them. She was sure of it.
“I can’t see the forest for the trees anymore,” Foy sighed. “All I know is I lost a friend, a colleague, an employer. And the world lost a beautiful person.”
“You were close?” Fiona asked. “More than just an AA?”
“Very,” he said. “Life won’t ever be the same for me.”
“I thought maybe you were going to run for her seat?” Cates asked gently.
“That took all of five minutes to decide,” he said. “A silly little fantasy. It’s already been decided, you see. The powers that be have anointed the great Jack Grady.”
“And May Carter?” Fiona asked. “Where does she stand?”
“In the end, she’ll support old Jack. He’s a professional charmer, you know. May likes a boot licker, especially if it’s of the male variety. Frankie wouldn’t take too much from May. And I got the full brunt of the lady’s wrath. No love lost between me and that big bitch.”
He wasn’t being the least guarded. He must have felt that it was no longer necessary for him to hide his feelings.
“Whatever we did, it was never enough for May. She kept us frantic, I can tell you. If she thinks Jack Grady will do better than Frankie on fighting abortion, then she has another guess coming, I can tell you. That lush will spend most of his time here sucking whiskey bottles.”
He was obviously bitter, starting to spew venom. Perfect for their purposes.
“For me, I guess it’s all downhill from here,” Foy continued. “Naturally, Jack wouldn’t think of hiring me. I was Frankie’s person, you see. Proud of it, too. Their loss. I know where all the bodies are buried around here. All of them. I did it all for Frankie.”
“Private business as well?” Fiona interjected.
“Part of the job, you see. An AA is more like a Man Friday. An everything. I did everything for Frankie. Took care of all her personal things, too. I scheduled her whole life. Made sure she made her appointments, took her meals, arranged for the cleaning woman. I even made sure her clothes went to the dry cleaners.” His gaze locked into Fiona’s. “And I loved every minute of it.”
“Then you knew about Jack McGuire and his lady friend?” Fiona asked. His upper lip trembled and he took his time answering. “It’s alright, Harlan,” Fiona said soothingly. “She’s gone.” He could not, even now, let go of his kneejerk protection of her political image, portraying her as the loving wife of the loving husband.
“I knew. Of course, I knew. It just wasn’t something one flaunted. Not that it mattered to that turd.”
“McGuire?”
“He is a miserable callous son of a bitch. Cruel. I hated that man.”
“Did Frankie?” Fiona asked.
“At first, when she heard about his little affair with that . . .” He shivered with disgust. “. . . that little rat, that’s what we called her. Beatrice Dellarotta. McGuire and his little rat. Frankie was devastated. Of course, he always fooled around. But this was just too much to bear. And yet, she was a great soldier, Frankie was. She rose above it. Never let it destroy her dignity. Even when the children blamed her, she stood up to it. Her life, you see, was politics. She believed that God put her there to work for what she believed in.”
“Why wouldn’t she give him a divorce?” Fiona asked.
“The reality of politics. A man might get away with it. But a divorced woman in Catholic Boston. Well, that’s another matter. Especially if she wanted to get to the Senate. Maybe she could have gotten away with it. Who knows?”
“According to McGuire, she had consented, then changed her mind.”
He shook his head, vibrating his chins. His face had flushed. He reminded Fiona of a circus clown.
“I see there are no little secrets anymore,” he said, waving his hand again.
“Oh, there still are a few,” Cates said with a touch of sarcasm. Foy cut him a quick glance of contempt and turned back to Fiona.
“Why did she do that?” Fiona asked. “Change her mind?”
She saw him hesitate, thinking it through.
“A dispute about the financial settlement,” he said quickly. “Not for her, of course. Frankie was not very interested in money. It was about the children. Yes . . .” He seemed to be convincing himself. But Fiona was already unconvinced. It was, she decided, the first real hollow ring to his words. She exchanged glances with Cates, who nodded. He also had caught the lie.
“McGuire says that such things were not the issue, that the kids were well provided for.”
“Well, you’re not going to believe him, are you?” Foy said, his cadences prissy. In fact, they seemed to get prissier as the interrogation progressed.
“I’m not sure who to believe,” Fiona said, deliberately showing her own vacillation, urging him to convince her of his own position. He was not reluctant to do so.
“If there was any other reason, I would have known. I was her friend and confidante. I knew everything about her. Everything.”
“Every little thing?” Cates asked pointedly, again with a touch of sarcasm.
“Absolutely,” Foy said with an air of finality.
It seemed time, Fiona thought. She fixed her eyes on Foy. He was, indeed, a poor bastard.
“Did she have any lovers?”
He did not blanch, responding swiftly.
“That’s absurd.”
“Why absurd? She was attractive. Hardly over the hill. Still desirable. Her husband admittedly hadn’t had relations with her for years. Woman have been known to need the blandishments of a man.”
“I would have known,” he said flatly, retreating from any further engagement on that subject. “There was no way I could not have known. We spent so much time together. No.” He shook his head. “It would have been impossible.”
“Were you her lover?” Fiona asked.
Not only did his chins vibrate, he seemed to bend by the sheer force of the questions. His body actually seemed to collapse, as if he were a puppet whose operator had suddenly let go of its strings.
“I’ve asked you a question, Harlan. Were you her lover?”
“My God,” he gulped.
“You were, by your own admission, her friend and confidante. You had the keys to her apartment. She was dependent on you.” Fiona raised her voice. “Were you also her lover?”
His nostrils twitched and, with effort, he sucked in short gasping gulps of breath. Finally, gathering his wits, he found words.
Suddenly his eyes moistened and tears ran down his cheeks. He was overcome and collapsed with emotion, covering his face with his hands. His shoulders shook. The reaction seemed genuine enough, although she could not draw true pity out of herself. She had seen many a similiar breakdown, some authentic, some pure acting.
“It’s important, Harlan,” she said gently. “It could explain a great deal.”
If he heard, he made no sign. She looked at Cates who also seemed unmoved by Foy’s emotional display. She detected a certain vagueness in him, as if his attention was diverted elsewhere. It surprised her that he did not jump into the interrogation.
“Are you saying it’s not possible?” Fiona asked Foy. She paused, waiting expectantly, letting Foy gather his wits. She was, after all, approaching the climax of this interrogation, the moment of truth.
Foy reached into his pocket and pulled out a tissue, wiping his nose and eyes. Finally, he took a deep breath and looked at them again. He rose in the chair, squared his shoulders.
“Did you know she was pregnant?” Fiona asked bluntly.
This time the blow seemed to strike him in the seat of his pants. He shot up.
“You people are monstrous,” he sputtered, waving a fat finger in Fiona’s face. “I will not talk to you anymore. I demand my rights. As for that last remark, I demand proof positive. Proof positive.” Bubbles of perspiration rose on his upper lip.
“We have it,” Fiona said. “It’s a fact. And all this anger and histrionics will not change it.”
“I want you people out of here,” he screamed, stamping his foot. “Out of here.”
“She was pregnant,” Fiona said coolly when his tantrum had run out of steam. “It is highly unlikely that it was in vitro. Copulation, Harlan. Fornication, Harlan. Stop all this dramatic bullshit. Somebody impregnated her.” She stood, working up her own head of steam. She came close and grabbed his lapels, her face up against his. “Do we have to do this at headquarters? Who impregnated her? Was it you?”
He shook his head.
“No. It wasn’t.”
“You had no physical relations with her?”
“No.”
“Are you gay?” Deliberately, she had shot him the question before he had time to see it coming. Cruel work, she thought.
“No, I’m not. I can sue you for that. I have never . . . I am not gay. You should be ashamed. Ashamed to make such an accusation. You people do that to all single men. Make an assumption of gayness. I am not gay. Not on your life. I am a man, a man all the way.” His overreaction told the story. Still in the closet. Not bi. Totally gay. Deeply repressed. You didn’t have to be a psychiatrist to figure that one out, she thought. A painstaking investigation might have picked up evidence. No, she decided. Time to end it for the poor bastard.
“All right then, Harlan,” Fiona said. “Accept our apologies.” He calmed down, then slumped into the chair, looking like a large piece of pudding. “So you see. She was in a double bind. She couldn’t have an abortion and she couldn’t really say it was her husband’s. Which could explain her suicide.”
“I don’t believe any of this,” he muttered.
“I’m afraid it’s true.”
“Harlan,” Cates asked. “Who the hell is the father?”
“Oh God,” he stammered, then looked at them squarely. “You must believe this. I haven’t the remotest idea.”
They stood up. He seemed genuinely stunned. Fiona put out her hand. Foy ignored it, turning his face away. She wondered if he had begun to cry again.
“If you have any ideas we’d appreciate hearing from you,” Fiona said.
He did not reply.
They left the office and walked through the corridors of the Rayburn Building. Cates was inordinately silent. At this point he would have been chirping away, offering comments and conclusions.
“What’s with you?” she asked as they walked into the bright sunlight.
“I’m not sure,” he replied, continuing his silence all the way back to their office. Assessing the interrogation herself, she was absolutely convinced that Foy was out of the picture. His shock had been genuine. Nor had she calculated on the stunning impact her revelation about Frankie’s pregnancy would make on him. A clever lady, Frankie. She knew the womanly art of keeping things to herself. Fiona could relate to that.
When they reached the office, Cates startled her by making a beeline for his desk. He pulled out a sheaf of shiny papers, obviously FAX copies, then studied them for a few moments.
“God damn,” he shouted. The office was deserted and the sound reverberated in the empty room. “It was bugging the hell out of me.”
“What was?”
“This,” he said. He shoved one of the papers in front of her nose and pointed to a name.
“B. Dellarotta,” he said.
She looked at him.
“When?”
“The evening Frankie died,” Cates said. “Near as I can figure she spent two hours in Washington. More than enough time to do the job.”
“Well,” Fiona said. “Do we have a believer on our hands?”
“Not in miracles,” Cates smiled. “Could blow your theory. One thing is certain. She couldn’t be the father.”
17
The deal between the Boston and Washington Police Departments was for Fiona to meet with Jack McGuire and Beatrice Dellarotta. Beatrice Dellarotta was nowhere to be seen.
“This is not what we agreed on,” Fiona said.
Bill Curran, Chief of the Boston PD, unsmiling and arrogantly pompous, looked at her with disgust. He was a spare man with thin skin as white as snow, a longish bony nose and little eyes that hid deeply behind high cheekbones. His lips were also thin, with a purple bloodless tint. He was one of those healthy men that look sick. Probably a jogger, she speculated. There was no attempt on his part to be ingratiating. His carefully cultivated deadpan expression made him one intimidating son of a bitch.
They were sitting in the living room of Jack McGuire’s apartment overlooking the Boston Common, a spacious place, filled with wooden Colonial furniture that seemed, even to her unpracticed eye, to be authentic antiques. Except for tacky pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mother scattered around the apartment, it might have passed muster as the residence of an old moneyed Brahmin.
It irritated her to think in such bigoted terms, but these Boston Irish invited the comparison. Her father would have clucked his tongue. An old story, he had told her time and again. Shanty Irish imitating the Protestant establishment without paying lace curtain Irish dues.
But her primary irritation was the way these old boy shanty types stuck together. Jack McGuire, sitting smugly in the leather wing chair opposite the forbidding and dour Chief Curran who sat stiffly, legs crossed, in a high-backed wooden chair, a match of the one in which Fiona sat. It was exceedingly uncomfortable. A metaphor floated into her thoughts. The room stank of collusion.
It had taken two days of contorted machinations to get this far. The Eggplant had greeted the revelation about Beatrice Dellarotta with a resounding slap on his desk.
“Now that is police work,” he said pointing his panatela at Fiona.
“So what happens now?” Fiona had asked, reminding him that they hadn’t a stitch of evidence that Beatrice Dellarotta had ever set foot in Frankie McGuire’s apartment. No prints. No technical evidence of her presence.
“Juicy stuff,” the Eggplant said, still smiling but obviously avoiding Fiona’s question. “The pregnant other woman confronts the pregnant congresswoman. The stuff of soap opera.”
“A field day for the media,” Cates said, a note of caution in his tone.
The Eggplant looked at them and shook his head. His smile faded.
“Looks like we got
us here a P.R. problem,” he sighed.
She knew what he meant. He would have to talk to the mayor. The mayor would talk to Rome. It could wind up as the kind of story, once loose, that would slop over everyone, pro-lifers and pro-choicers, the cops, the Congress. Everybody would be made to look like assholes.
Ridicule was the media’s most dangerous weapon. It would stick like molasses to everyone that came within spitting distance. Naturally, such a fiasco would require a prize goat, someone in the middle rung to be kicked and pummelled by those above and below. Someone like the Eggplant and his minions. A quick verdict of suicide would now be everybody’s ideal solution, especially present company.
“So far, all we have is a red-hot lead,” the Eggplant said, proclaiming the obvious. “And we’re still in the area of the circumstantial.”
Credit the bastard with stubbornness and pride, Fiona thought with grudging admiration.
“But it does explain a great deal about Jack McGuire’s attitude,” Fiona pointed out, deliberately refocusing the discussion. P.R. was one thing, saving one’s ass was another, but the heart of it was: What really happened to Frankie McGuire? The fact was that none of them, she, Cates or the Eggplant would ever be able to live comfortably under the cloud of cover-up. And Beatrice Dellarotta did not come to Washington for her health.
“So what’s your theory?” the Eggplant asked.
Fiona and Cates exchanged glances, Cates signaling his approval of her proceeding.
“McGuire came home from a meeting the night of Frankie’s death,” Fiona began, knowing that their joint theory was still far from conclusive. “He found the little lady gone, got nervous. Undoubtedly, she had threatened confrontation with Mrs. McGuire. When he discovered that Beatrice was not at home at that hour, he assumed the worst, meaning that she had gone to Washington loaded for bear. He immediately called Frankie, maybe to put his two cents in or somehow defuse the situation. He got no answer. Imagine what might have gone through his mind. Probably called again and again. Since Frankie had switched the calls from the desk to her apartment, indicating that she could be inside the apartment, he was doubly nervous. Finally, in desperation, he called Foy and persuaded him that there was enough at stake for him to go see what was going on in Frankie’s apartment. He went.”