Dead Heat

by Linda Barnes

  He helped her drape the jacket over her shoulders. The contact, the isolation, the windy chill made him draw her into the circle of his arms. She stepped back, turned away.

  “It wasn’t just desperation and just relief, you know,” he said. “I think there might be some basic chemistry involved, a little bit of attraction …”

  She kept her head down, stared at the brown, dead grass, slipped the arms of his windbreaker over those of her own borrowed jacket.

  “You’re freezing,” he said, when she failed to respond. “Goose bumps and all. Want to race me over to the Rodgers Running Center? Warm you up.”

  “Run in these shoes? I can barely walk. Mine—”

  He remembered. Abandoned on the second floor of the Cambridge house. Burned or drowned. Ruined. Delicate leather straps charred to black dust. Along with—He blocked the thoughts, but the rage must have translated itself into speed. Sharon tugged at his arm.

  “Could we go a little slower?”

  “Sorry.”

  They succeeded in crossing the complex intersection at Beacon Street and Chestnut Hill Avenue only by ignoring the traffic lights completely. Bill Rodgers Running Center boasted a blue and gold sign. They descended a few steps to the basement level doorway.

  One lanky, bearded man slouched behind the cash register to the left of the door. Another, this one with a blond beard in contrast to the cash register man’s dark beard, knelt on the wooden floor, busily lacing a shoe on a woman customer’s foot. Everyone in the place was uniformly thin. The WeightWatchers next door would go out of business if they had to depend on the clientele of the Running Center.

  “Can I help you?” the dark-bearded man asked. He had a voice as soft as his silky beard.

  Spraggue made sure his words were loud enough for all the runners in the store to hear. “I’m looking for anyone who was racing around here the Sunday before the marathon.”

  After thirty seconds of dead air, a blond teenager standing by a magazine rack muttered, “Jeez, there must have been millions of people out running.”

  “It’s important,” Spraggue said. “Did anyone here run around the reservoir the day before the marathon?”

  With a clatter of feet, a few other customers, intrigued by the loud voices, came down three steps from the small ground-level room that held, besides merchandise, many of Rodgers’ own trophies, as well as a glass case containing the running shoes he’d worn to win his first Boston championship in ’75.

  A woman with thick blonde hair stopped pushing hangers around a circular rack of colorful racing tops and said, “I did.”

  Spraggue asked the follow-up question quietly, so certain was he of the negative response.

  “Did you happen to see Senator Donagher? Running with a dark, curly haired man.”

  The blond-bearded sales clerk who’d been fitting shoes stood up. “Pete Collatos?” he asked.

  Spraggue nodded.

  “If you’re a reporter, nobody here wants to say anything for the papers. They’ve made a big enough hash of it as it is. You read them?” he said indignantly to the woman who’d agreed to buy a pair of blue Adidas. “You’d think running was a hazard to your health. Probably written by some guy with so much belly flab he can’t even see his feet.”

  “I’m not a reporter,” Spraggue said. “A friend of Pete’s. I was wondering if he came in here that day. That Sunday. Were you open?”

  “Not actually open. Not to the general public. But we weren’t actually closed either, if you know what I mean.”

  “Did Pete come to the party?”

  “He might have. I know he was in that week. Senator Donagher, no, I don’t think so.”

  Spraggue sighed. If Donagher hadn’t come in, then Pete hadn’t either. Me and my shadow travel together.

  “Do you have a typewriter here? In the office?”

  “Michael!” It was Sharon’s voice, quiet but electric. It sliced through the room like a surgeon’s scalpel and everyone turned to look at her.

  She was standing by the bulletin board to the right of the door, her left hand uplifted, pointing at a fragment of paper pinned to the upper right-hand corner of the crowded board.

  “Pete wrote that,” she said in a faraway voice. “I think.”

  In the midst of much folded newspaper articles, ads for running clinics, chiropractors, and practitioners of sports medicine, folders extolling races, some upcoming, some held months ago, was a scrap of paper, folded over and tacked shut. B.D. it said on the outside fold. Brian Donagher.

  Spraggue removed a blue pushpin, took the note down, unfolded it. The room was so still he could hear Sharon breathing.

  Sorry, was all it said. Back soon. If you need me, call 555-8945.

  Spraggue read the number twice.

  It was one he knew well.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  In the next six hours, Spraggue learned many things. He learned that the dun-colored metal chairs in the barren Channel 4 conference room were not designed to be sat in for six hours at a stretch. He discovered that the hitherto viceless Ed Heineman chain-smoked cigarettes that smelled like old worn socks, and kept a bottle of cheap bourbon in the locked desk drawer of his second floor office. He couldn’t be sure that Sharon always liked to work with her shoes off; the shoes given her by Aunt Mary were so uncomfortable she couldn’t stand them. He didn’t have much left to learn about Mary’s working habits. He knew that she had a habit of humming soft tuneless mumbles under her breath. Nothing could cure her of it as she was totally unconscious of doing it. After a while her humming blurred into the background, like the spurting radiator and the clicking, heeltapping, typing office sounds outside the conference room’s closed door.

  He learned that none of the thirty-eight typewriters at Channel 4 had been the one Pete Collatos sat down at that Sunday to type his sister’s address on an envelope.

  Heineman sat at one end of the long rectangular table, Mary at the other, separated by their likes and dislikes of cigarettes and humming. Spraggue and Sharon shared one of the long sides of the rectangle, leaving the window view of the Charles River unobscured except for Pierce’s balding egg-shaped head.

  At 7:30 P.M., Spraggue glanced at his watch and experienced a jolt of true panic before remembering that the opera was being performed that night. No play tonight. No applause.

  The objects of study had started in a pile at the center of the table, been distributed by a grab-bag method and, by general agreement, were passed, once studied, clockwise around the table. Every hour, on the hour, the assembled company took a five-minute break during which complaint was the main order of business.

  For the first hour, Spraggue pored over the files he’d discovered at Collatos’ apartment, old files, dating back twelve, fourteen years, that Pete had had access to as liaison to the Arson Squad. He read them the way he’d told the others to read, as if studying for a major exam. You weren’t sure what questions were going to be asked. Memorize all relevant facts, names, dates. Take notes.

  The second hour he read the medical examiner’s report on Collatos’ body, followed by the same doctor’s commentary on the remains of JoJo Stearns.

  The third hour, he studied the list of Donagher’s staff workers provided by Eichenhorn, read the biographies Pierce, Mary, and Heineman had researched during the day: Martin Emery né Murray Eichenhorn; JoJo Stearns; Arnold Gravier, the tan raincoat man; Lila Donagher née Lila Bennett; Senator Brian Donagher. Heineman had, on request, provided his own resume to round out the pile.

  The fourth hour, he spent deciphering Mary’s spidery scrawl concerning the drug Parnate.

  He learned that Parnate (tranylcypromine) is the most commonly used nonhydrazine monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitor and is not toxic to the liver. He read a lot of other multisyllabic mumbo jumbo. He scowled in Mary’s direction but she was busily reading and humming and not visibly affected by his glare. He suspected that she had cribbed her entire report on the drug straight from some medical textbook,
or worse, that she had not, and understood clearly the entire complex mechanism of the drug. You could never be sure with Aunt Mary.

  He learned that Parnate is structurally related to amphetamine. That MAO inhibitors are not specific for MAO but inhibit many normal enzymatic functions and therefore patients taking Parnate should not be given other drugs affecting the central nervous system. That such patients should be warned against the use of alcohol.

  He remembered that he had entertained uncharitable thoughts about Pete Collatos after that last late-night phone call. That one of those thoughts had been that Collatos was drunk.

  He learned that MAO inhibitors are readily absorbed by the intestinal tract. He knew that already. No needles. No needle marks. Pete had swallowed the substance that had killed him. But when? How? Why?

  He put his elbows on the table and cradled his forehead in his hands.

  “In 1964,” he read, “Parnate was withdrawn from the market because of its marked interaction with many drugs or foods. It subsequently was replaced on the market with the restriction that it be used only in hospitalized depressed patients.

  “Cheese, natural or aged, has been implicated as a cause of hypertensive crises in patients treated with these drugs. An average serving of such cheese contains enough tyramine to cause a marked rise in blood pressure. Other foods high in tyramine that have produced this toxic syndrome are red wine, chicken liver, yeast, coffee, pickled herring, bean pods, and canned figs. Deaths have been reported in patients who have ingested moderate amounts of these foods. Symptoms include increased body temperature, marked rise in blood pressure, severe headache, and in those cases in which death resulted, intracranial bleeding. In addition to tyramine, other sympathomimetic amines, such as amphetamine, should not be taken by patients receiving MAO inhibitors.”

  He reread the list of foods. “Pickled herring, bean pods, canned figs …” He suspected Mary of adding those three items in a vain effort to interject some humor into her dry text.

  “God.” Sharon gave out a sigh that startled the rest of the group. “I’m not even seeing this stuff anymore. It’s all starting to blur together. Meaningless figures, names I never heard of …”

  “I haven’t got a clue yet,” Mary admitted sadly. “Or, if I do, I haven’t yet recognized it as such.”

  “I wish we could just dump all this stuff in some computer,” Heineman said, “and pull out the right answers.”

  “Wouldn’t work.” Spraggue yawned and stretched his arms out over his head. Something in his neck gave an audible popping sound. “To use a computer, you have to program it. To program it, you have to know the questions. You have to know the questions to find the answers.”

  “So what are the questions? What are we looking for?”

  “Oddities. Coincidences. Repetitions. Anything that strikes you as unusual.”

  After a pause, Mary said hesitantly, “Well, I think the only oddity is Lila Donagher. She seems to disappear from time to time, just take off for New York. Her children don’t go with her, and that’s the only time she seems to be separated from them. The gossip is that she’s being treated for alcholism—”

  “Lila’s no alcoholic,” Heineman interrupted.

  “She doesn’t drink like one,” Spraggue agreed, thinking back to their lunch at the Harvest.

  “Exactly my point,” Mary said. “She may have been receiving treatments for depression. Possibly alcoholism is more forgivable in a politician’s wife than depression. Remember the fuss over poor Senator Eagleton? I vote for Lila as the person most likely to have access to Parnate.”

  Spraggue said. “It’s not enough though.”

  “Damn right, it’s not enough,” Heineman said defensively. “She’s a damned fine woman. She liked Pete Collatos—”

  “Better than she likes her husband? She was supposed to hand Donagher his water bottle. She never showed up. If she had access to Parnate—”

  “Who kills a spouse like that?” Sharon interrupted. “Today? With divorce so simple? No-fault divorce?”

  “Husbands kill wives; wives kill husbands,” Mary said. “Read the newspapers.”

  “Yes,” Sharon countered. “But in crimes of passion. Not coldbloodedly. With the gun in the nightstand drawer. With a kitchen knife. Not with fancy drugs and devious schemes.”

  Heineman gave a vigorous nod as if he’d personally scored the point and Spraggue said, “I think we’d better get back to work.”

  “How much longer—” Sharon began.

  “Until everybody’s seen everything.”

  Pierce bent unblinkingly back to his task. He hadn’t uttered a word in several hours.

  “Or until we go blind,” Mary said cheerfully.

  They toiled on. The radiator droned regularly now. Mary had found a tune and was humming variations. Heineman went out twice for cigarettes. Sharon slid her feet in and out of her shoes, wincing. Pierce took to rocking backwards on the legs of his chair until Mary reprimanded him for making her nervous. Her remarks almost opened the way for a free-for-all. Tempers were wearing thin.

  “Oh,” Heineman said. It burst out of him like a muffled explosion. He stared at his reading, ignoring the fact that it had happened.

  “What?” Spraggue said.

  The reporter started, looked quickly at his wristwatch. “I didn’t realize it was so late,” he said. “I’ve got a story I have to finish up for tomorrow night. My secretary should have reminded me. I told her where to reach me—”

  His unsteady hands tried to shuffle the piece of paper he was reading under one of its fellows.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “This shouldn’t take more than ten minutes. Just checking a source.”

  Spraggue’s eyes met Mary’s across the table. His eyebrows went up and, quietly, he pushed back his chair.

  He opened the door cautiously. The hallway was clear. Spraggue closed his eyes and heard faint footsteps. To the left or right? He chose the left, guided by memory. Heineman’s office had been to the left. He remembered the name plaque on the door.

  He walked quickly now, silently, staying close to the side of the corridor, his right shoulder an inch from the cinderblock wall. He took a right at an intersection, pausing and peering around the corner before committing his body to the turn. He saw a door swing shut: Heineman’s office door.

  He stood outside the door in the darkened hallway, pressed his ear against the smooth-grained wood and listened. First, a whoosh, as if another door had opened and closed, then nothing. He twisted the doorknob and walked into Heineman’s secretary’s domain. Empty.

  Applying his ear to the inner door, he heard the unmistakable sound of someone dialing a telephone. The noise was faint and far away. Heineman’s voice was a distant, undecipherable rumble.

  He glanced quickly at the secretary’s desk. A red light shone on a beige, touch-tone telephone. Line I was engaged. He slid along the beige carpeting, holding his breath, carefully lifted the receiver.

  “Listen,” Heineman was saying, his normally mellow voice as tense as Spraggue had ever heard it, “Put Mrs. Donagher on immediately. This is urgent, understand?”

  Spraggue thought it was Eichenhorn’s voice on the other end, wasn’t sure. Whoever it was didn’t want to bother Mrs. Donagher at this ungodly hour.

  Heineman said, “Goddammit, just get Mrs. Donagher. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”

  Spraggue’s eyebrow shot up. He heard reluctant acquiescence from the unidentified voice, followed by a click on the line. It took almost five minutes for Lila to come to the phone. Spraggue, crouched over the desk in the dark, hoped Heineman wouldn’t give up. If he heard the receiver slam, he’d have to bolt out the door. Or confront the reporter.

  “Lila,” Heineman said eagerly.

  “Ed, honey, is that you?” The voice was Lila’s, but different. It had a wildness about it. Spraggue wondered if she’d been drinking.

  “I have to know something fast. Answer me, tell me the truth, and we can find a
way out. I’ll protect you—”

  Her laugh rippled across miles of telephone company wire. “Do I need protecting?” she asked incredulously. “Is this really you, Eddie? Say the password.”

  “Lila—”

  “Come on, I was fooled once by that damned snoop and I’m not going to be fooled again.”

  Heineman cleared his throat and mumbled, “And now here’s Channel 4’s own Ed Heineman.”

  “Okay.” She giggled and the giggle almost got out of control. “Now what are you so upset about?”

  “Your name … It’s listed on everything as Lila Bennett.”

  “My maiden name. Yes.” She seemed puzzled, maybe wary.

  “Didn’t you tell me once that wasn’t the name you grew up with?”

  “I may have.”

  “Then it isn’t?”

  “What is this all about?”

  “Di Bennedetto.” Heineman said. “Not Bennett.”

  “I’m surprised you remembered,” she said. There was an icy stillness in her voice, as if she’d snapped abruptly out of an alcoholic haze. “Ed, I can’t stay on the phone chatting over old times in the middle of the night. I’ll call you later, okay?” She waited for a nonexistent reponse. Two clicks followed.

  Spraggue got ready to sprint for the door but before he put the receiver down he heard quite clearly, over the phone, not through the doorway, Heineman’s moan. “Oh, Lila,” he murmured. And again, “Oh, Lila.”

  Spraggue left him in his office, raced back to the conference room. Mary was shuffling through the file Heineman had abandoned in his hurried exit.

  “I think this is the sheet he shoved under the rest when he left,” she said in answer to her nephew’s inquisitive stare. “It’s from Collatos’ police files.” The piece of paper had been folded in thirds, creased, smoothed out. The top right-hand corner was missing, the result of a jagged tear. The paper was brittle, crackled as he touched it. It bore a smudged date: 3/14/68.

  “Di Bennedetto,” Spraggue said. “Does the name mean anything to you?”

  Aunt Mary repeated it twice, under her breath, hummed a few notes of her tune, snapped her fingers. “Of course it does. But not in conjunction with all this.” She waved her hands at the cluttered tabletop. “Someone named Di Bennedetto is one of the untraceable straw owners of that building I want to buy on Commonwealth Avenue, the one I’ve been after you to tell the police about.”