by Linda Barnes
Parking was allowed on one side of Sparhawk Street, which left one-and-a-half lanes for two-way traffic, less if you counted the half lane devoted to the propagation of potholes. Spraggue was driving cautiously, scanning the houses for addresses, when he noticed the plain dark car parked halfway down the street. Two men dozed in the front seat, one with a newspaper spread partially over his face.
Spraggue kept his foot pressed firmly on the accelerator and breezed right past the house that must have been Donagher’s, a neatly painted blue Victorian. About twenty feet before Sparhawk came to an end at Cambridge Street, a narrow road opened on the left: Murdock Street. Spraggue took the turn, then the next left: Mapleton. He checked for other unmarked cars, maybe a stationary utility van. The street seemed clear, so he pulled sharply to the right and parked.
He strolled back along Mapleton, hands shoved in his pockets, until he could plainly see, through the carefully tended back garden of a white colonial, the light blue paint he’d noted on 55 Sparhawk. A house the size of Donagher’s would have more than one entrance, that was certain. How vigilant the police? How nosy the neighbors?
As if in response to his question, a woman walked swiftly down the narrow concrete-slab walkway that led into the yard of the white colonial. She matched the pale sunshine. Her long, fine golden hair was brushed tight to her skull. Her beige raincoat was cinched at her waist with a matching belt. She wore dark stockings and tiny high-heeled shoes. Stopping for a moment to shove a wide-brimmed khaki rainhat over her hair, she shot one careful glance to her right, one to her left. She seemed not to notice Spraggue. He caught only a glimpse of a delicate pastel face, like the face of a Dresden China shepherdess after the painter had set a final wash of gray over all his brighter tones.
The woman turned abruptly and sped off toward Market Street, leaving Spraggue to wonder how she could move so quickly on her tiny tap-tapping heels.
He waited until she was out of sight, then hurried up the walkway. It took a surprising turn behind a stand of budding trees and led, not to the presumed garage of number whatever Mapleton, but directly to the back porch of Donagher’s blue Victorian. Spraggue stared speculatively after the pastel woman. Had she come from Donagher’s house?
Collatos was at the back door before he could push the buzzer, a broad grin splitting his swarthy face. “Cops out front,” he said casually as they shook hands.
“You could have mentioned them when you called.”
“I knew you’d spot them. Even had a bet on it with Murray. You just won me five bucks.”
“Murray?”
“Come on in, Spraggue. I feel well-disposed toward you.”
“Nice place” was all Spraggue said as they moved down a hallway with a glistening wooden floor into a lace-curtained front room furnished in stolid New England unimaginativeness accented with a few not inexpensive antiques.
“Donagher lived here long?” he asked, taking Collatos up on his invitation to sit on the chintz sofa.
“Maybe twelve, fifteen years. I think ever since he got married.”
“Big place.”
“It’s more than just his house. It’s staff headquarters, campaign headquarters. They’ve got rooms fixed up for people to stay over and they’re always full. I moved in when I took the bodyguard job. Donagher’s campaign manager lives here. One of his speech writers.”
“Is the senator here much?”
“Oh, yeah. Especially lately, with the marathon coming up and the election. Brian’s a real home and family man so he’s a regular commuter between Washington and Boston.”
“Odd that the whole family hasn’t packed up and moved to Washington.”
“Coffee?” Collatos asked.
“Black.”
Spraggue left the uncomfortable couch as soon as Collatos went off in search of refreshment. He circled the room, pulled back one edge of a curtain cautiously. The unmarked car was in place. An envelope on the polished wooden mantel caught his eye, a packet full of amateur photographs. He shook them out in his hand: Donagher; two towheaded boys, maybe ten and fourteen years old; the pastel woman. The perfect political family. Except that the smile on the pastel woman looked tight, forced.
He heard Collatos’ footsteps and shoved the prints back in their packet, placed the envelope back on the mantel. He wondered if Donagher’s wife made a practice of leaving the house by the back door, scurrying down a neighbor’s driveway, wearing a concealing hat. Maybe she was avoiding the patrol car out front. Spraggue kicked himself for not heeding his first impulse and following her. Then he kicked himself again for the thought. Follow Donagher’s wife. What the hell for? He clenched his teeth and warned himself off.
When Collatos returned with the coffee, Spraggue was seated decorously on the couch, tapping his foot against a square of drab, but expensive rug.
“Want a doughnut?” Collatos asked. “Did you know that politicians live on doughnuts? We got glazed, plain, jelly, sugarcoated—”
“Who spotted me at the reservoir last night?” Spraggue asked, refusing the doughnut with a shake of his head.
Collatos took his time selecting a particularly gooey lump of dough that oozed red jam when bitten. “Want to meet him?” he asked.
“Why not?”
The man with the wire-rimmed glasses started talking as soon as Collatos ushered him into the room. He was last night’s apparition all right, wearing a gray suit, instead of a dark one. His tall, skinny silhouette, his stick-out Adam’s apple, left no doubt about it.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said, offering a gawky handshake. “You scared the hell out of me last night. I almost called the cops right then. If Pete hadn’t been awake when I got home, if he hadn’t realized who you were—”
“And how did you manage that?” Spraggue asked Collatos.
“Murray saw your car. A goddam silver Porsche, and I’m not supposed to know who it is?”
Spraggue turned to the man called Murray. “Just what game were you playing at the reservoir last night?”
“He sounds like a cop,” Murray said, and Spraggue remembered how many times Menlo had asked him similar questions during their unfriendly session downtown.
“Murray is Senator Donagher’s campaign manager,” Collatos said hurriedly, as if his title explained the man’s presence at the reservoir. “Murray Eichenhorn—Michael Spraggue. Sit down and drink some coffee, Murray, and don’t antagonize the man, please.”
“Hey,” Eichenhorn sent Spraggue a disarming smile that would have worked better if it hadn’t been practiced as much. “Look, I don’t mean to be difficult. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I was tied up all day in meetings. The Donagher campaign’s really starting to rev up. And then I got word that some nutcase tried to shoot my man. I almost had a heart attack myself. But I was booked solid; I couldn’t get over to the reservoir. Insomnia and curiosity sent me out on a wild-goose chase in the middle of the night, that’s all.”
“What were you looking for?”
“Sure you’re not a cop?” Eichenhorn’s smile faded, reasserted itself. “Sorry. I just wanted to see the place. Brian had described it to me. I wanted to see how close I’d come to looking for a new job.”
“Campaign manager … You coordinate Donagher’s publicity?”
“No crime in that. I handle all his media contacts, hire and fire his speech writers, make sure he wears a tie at the Ritz-Carlton and a hard hat on a construction site—”
“Faking incidents for publicity purposes may not be on the statute books but—”
Eichenhorn’s face reddened like an embarrassed adolescent’s. “Forget it,” he said. “I want Donagher to blitz this election. I want a landslide. He takes over sixty-five percent of the vote here in Massachusetts and Donagher’s on his way to the White House. I’d do just about anything to ensure that he wins big. That’s my job. But I’m no dope. I’m no prankster. I’m not about to try some absolutely harebrained stunt like shooting bullets into a crowd—”
“You wanted to see if they were real bullets, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Because you suspected somebody of pulling a stunt. Who?”
The campaign manager pressed his thin lips together, stared blankly at the window as if he could see beyond the closed curtains. “I don’t suspect anyone,” he said. “I went because I’m having a hard time convincing myself that this business is real, that whoever wrote those letters means what he says. I thought maybe if I saw it for myself, saw real bulletholes, I might be able to believe it.”
“Believe it. They’re real.”
“Donagher’s leading in all the preelection polls. He doesn’t need any cheap stupid stunts. This is the worst kind of thing that could happen, especially now, before the race. Kooks encourage each other. Some misfit reads about somebody taking a potshot at a senator and heads over to his local gun shop. It makes me sick.…”
Spraggue studied the campaign manager’s face, let his eyes fall to the man’s lap, noticed his white-knuckled hands, nails bitten to the quick.
“Take a look at the letters?” Collatos said to break the uncomfortable silence.
“That was the deal. A look. Anything I find, I give you. Gratis.”
Collatos grinned. “And that should keep Menlo away from your door.”
EIGHT
Donagher’s death threats were no hastily scribbled scratches penciled on the backs of discarded envelopes; they were works of craftsmanship.
Collatos presented him with a battered shoebox containing the poison pen’s collected works. Murray hadn’t lingered; he had appointments booked on top of appointments, for himself and for the senator, coordinating the loyal troops with the election looming near. He’d shaken Spraggue’s hand in parting and floored him by asking whether he had any intention of ever running for political office.
“You’d be great,” he’d said earnestly. “That old New England background. The money wouldn’t hurt. Good image. Be sure to contact me if you—”
“It wouldn’t bother you if I were a fascist?”
“Are you?”
“A communist? A Democrat? A Republican?”
“The only labels I care about are winner and loser,” Donagher’s campaign manager had said with no hint of a smile to soften the brutal formula into a joke. Then he’d glanced at his watch, frowned, and left the room, slamming the door with unnecessary force behind him.
“Fingerprints?” Spraggue asked, setting the shoe-box down on the desk in the small alcove near the fireplace.
“I checked them,” Collatos said. “The cops checked them. Negative.”
“The cops? I thought—”
“Yesterday. We had to show them yesterday, after the sniping. I insisted on it. Donagher’s practically not speaking to me. Says I scared his wife.”
Scared. The pastel woman hadn’t looked frightened of anything beyond discovery of her clandestine exit, Spraggue thought.
“The police made copies,” Collatos said.
“Okay. Now leave me alone with them.”
Collatos had obediently disappeared, and Spraggue had enjoyed his absence.
Each note had been constructed by cutting separate words out of newspapers, lining them up precisely across the diagonal of an eight by eleven sheet of heavy cream-colored bond, fastening them in place with liberal dollops of rubber cement. None was signed, but the method itself was a signature of sorts. All had been created by the same hand.
The choicer obscenities were inked in; the Globe and the Herald declined to print such words, generally substituting a welter of dots, dashes, and exclamation points. Here, the anonymous correspondent had shown a curious blend of careful planning and lack of foresight. He’d printed his obscenities in squared-off block letters, using a ruled line to keep his remarks straight, painstakingly erasing the line afterward. But he’d obviously cemented his newsprint words into place before adding the obscenities; the last few letters of motherfucker were jammed into their allotted space. The rest of the document was meticulously neat, if not overwhelmingly original.
Words cut out of newspapers … untraceable. A million papers sold daily in the metro Boston area. Of course, a real nut might just keep the paper as a souvenir; if the cops happened to ring the right doorbell, the one-in-a-million doorbell, there the evidence would sit, in plain sight. Fat chance. Spraggue concentrated on the printing.
Printing was harder to identify than typing. If the messages had been typed, he could have come up with the make of the machine, with some guess about the proficiency of the typist. But printing, especially this squared-off block printing … Hell, nobody wrote like that normally. It wasn’t the elongated style of a draftsman’s hand. It was similar in all the notes, so identical that Spraggue wondered if all six notes had been prepared at one time, mailed separately.
No misspelling. No fingerprints. No return address.
Moreover, no personal knowledge of Donagher. The notes screamed about political issues, the tired battles fought in the newspapers for years: abortion, busing, school funding, property taxes. They pushed the ordinary buttons, sang the usual songs. They were unique only in their vehemence, their obscenity, their ultimate threat.
“So?” Collatos said hopefully when he reentered the room half an hour later.
“Written by a retired schoolteacher with a slight limp and a passion for chocolate-covered raisins.”
“Come on.”
“The only remarkable thing about these masterpieces is the amount of time they represent. You ever sit down with the morning paper and try to compose a note out of the front page? Look how meticulously the damn words have been snipped out: careful little cuts with a sharp scissors. Whoever it is has a good eye. He, or she, left a similar border around all the words, except where he, or she, had to amputate a large word to make a smaller one.”
“Huh?”
Spraggue’s finger jabbed at the sample he held up. “Look at the word die in this one. Chopped off right after the e. It’s the first part of diet or dietician or diethylbarbituric for all I know. It’s about the only shortcut our correspondent took.”
“A crazy shut-in with nothing better to do?”
“Got me. The thing is that the time taken doesn’t square with the message delivered. If somebody out there is really gunning for Donagher—and this kind of note says serious—you’d think there would be a personal grudge. But there’s nothing like that. None of the ‘I know what you did with my wife’ stuff that ought to be here.”
“What about political assassination? It could be some jerk who’s aching to off somebody in the public eye. Get his name in the papers like John Hinckley or what’s-his-name Chapman.”
“Did they write notes?”
“No,” Collatos said reluctantly.
“Right. They left journals, but they gave no warning. If these were written by somebody seeking publicity, why didn’t he send them to the newspapers, especially after Donagher ignored the first ones?”
“I don’t know.”
“These letters have nothing to do with the shooting at the reservoir. That’s my gut reaction, Collatos. The two don’t mix. Look at these things; they’re political documents. They could have been put together just because the right words happened to be available in the morning paper. Look at this one on abortion:
THE KILLING OF THE UNBORN IS MURDER!
DEATH TO THE GODDAM SENATOR WHO SUPPORTS THE GODDAM ABORTIONISTS WITH TAX DOLLARS!
All the words could have come from one article. The goddams were added later. Somebody stuck in nasty words to make the notes seem fierce. Well, they’d have to be a whole lot fiercer to alarm me. Nobody’s going to shoot Donagher because property taxes are too high. Or they happen to disagree with his position on capital punishment—”
“That doesn’t get me very far.”
“What did you expect? Let me see the envelopes.”
Spraggue said this last bit as if he were relenting, giving in to Collatos’ urging. That wa
s acting. He wanted to see the envelopes. He was hooked.
They broke the pattern. They were typewritten. Each one on a different typewriter.
“Whoever it is,” Spraggue said, eyebrow arched, “works in an office large enough to have five typewriters.”
“Six,” said Collatos. “Six notes, six envelopes. And all different.”
“You only gave me five.”
“Dammit.” Collatos counted the sheaf of envelopes twice, searched the floor, peered under chairs and sofa. “There were six of them when I gave them to the police to copy—”
“All with the same address. The cops probably thought they wouldn’t do any harm by helping themselves—”
“They never do,” Collatos muttered.
“So speaks an ex-member of the force.”
“Who’ll deny it if he’s ever quoted,” finished Collatos. “What do you think of the envelopes?”
“More of the same. Too clever, too complicated. Who’s going to bother to use five typewriters?”
“Six.”
“Six. And your phantom letter writer is either an indifferent typist or a bad typist trying hard or a good typist faking it. That covers the population, doesn’t it?”
“Helpful.”
“When did they first start coming?”
“About a month, five weeks back. One a week, always on Wednesday. Two this week.”
“So whose typewriter have you checked?” Spraggue asked. “Donagher’s? That guy, Murray, probably has one. What about Donagher’s wife? And he’s got a teenaged kid—”
“Come on—”
“Come on, yourself. You’re not dim. Who’d you check?”
“Everybody in the house,” Collatos admitted sheepishly. “Murray, Lila—that’s Mrs. D—Donagher, both his Washington office and here, and I like the guy. I even tried to get into Bartolo’s headquarters, see if—”
“You try City Hall yet? The State House?”
“I’d like to.”
“Pete, I think it’s pretty hopeless from that angle. Too many typewriters in the hands of too many creeps.”