The Revenge of Liam McGrew: A Dermot Sparhawk Mystery

by Tom MacDonald

  I undressed and took a long, hot shower and slept well that night. In the morning I put on the courtesy bathrobe with a snappy logo on the breast and ordered room service. Fifteen minutes later an efficient Hispanic woman delivered a pot of coffee and a hot breakfast. I was drowsing in my bed with a full belly and enjoying the rising sun when my cell phone rang. The caller ID told me it was Superintendent Hanson. I prepared for his brusqueness.

  “Hello, Superintendent.”

  “This is important, Sparhawk, so listen closely.”

  “Top of the morning to you, too,” I said.

  “I got a call from the commissioner, who got a call from the mayor, who probably got a call from some muckety-muck in Washington. They want you at headquarters today at four o’clock. Some big shot wants to talk to you.”

  Hanson didn’t need to qualify the importance of his phone call by mentioning the commissioner and mayor and muckety-mucks. A call from a police superintendent is by definition important.

  “What’s it about?” I asked.

  “Just be here at four.”

  He hung up.

  §

  At three-fifteen I went down to the lobby and told the desk clerk that I needed my car. A parking attendant retrieved it, I tipped him twenty, and twenty minutes later I arrived at police headquarters, where I ran into Captain Pruitt. He was standing outside the building smoking a Winchester cigar.

  “Did Hanson summon you here?” he asked.

  “Yup. Any idea what it’s about?”

  “Some honcho from D.C. wants to talk to you.” Pruitt took a puff. “Anyone take a shot at you today?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  Pruitt chuckled and walked toward the parking lot. I stepped into police headquarters and an officer named Partridge, who sometimes served as Hanson’s attaché, walked up to me.

  “Follow me, Mr. Sparhawk.” As we walked down a tiled corridor, Partridge said, “How are the legs?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My partner and I answered the call the night you got shot,” he said. “You were bleeding pretty badly.”

  “The legs are fine,” I said. “Thanks for the help.”

  “All part of the job.”

  Partridge led me into a conference room, said good luck and left. Moments later Hanson came in, accompanied by a big man with a flawlessly shaven head, which shined as if it had been simonized. He had a reddish complexion and a prominent nose. The big man stared at me a little longer than he should have and said, “Are you part Indian?”

  “Half Micmac,” I answered.

  “I’m half Lakota-Cherokee. My name is Kenny Bowen.” He extended a sizable mitt and we shook hands. He looked at Hanson and said, “Thank you, Superintendent. That will be all.”

  Hanson wasn’t used to being dismissed, and it showed in his awkward exit from the room. I smiled broadly as he slunk out, hoping he’d look my way, but he didn’t. An opportunity lost. Bowen sat in a chair and invited me to join him across the table.

  “I’m a private insurance investigator,” he said. “I specialize in the recovery of big-ticket items. The companies I work for do not care how I get the stolen goods back, as long as I get them back. If I’m successful, which I usually am, I get twenty percent of the market value.”

  “Twenty percent sounds lucrative,” I said.

  “It is very lucrative.” He crossed his brawny arms across his thick chest and leaned back. “A well-known insurance company has hired me to recover the four sheets of $100,000 bills that were stolen from the World’s Fair of Money, a total of 128 bills.”

  “Hanson told me about the Hynes heist,” I said.

  “You killed a man who was holding a $5,000 bill, a bill stolen from the money fair. Do you have anything to say about that?” Bowen asked.

  “Where’s my twenty percent?”

  “Right.” Kenny Bowen slapped his big mitt on the table. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “I killed him in self-defense,” I said. “You can ask Hanson.”

  “I already asked him,” Bowen said. “You killed another man, too.”

  “Also in self-defense, and only after he shot me twice in the chest,” I said, sounding defensive.

  “I’d have done the same in your position.” He shifted in his seat. “In my line of work I look for patterns that lead to recovery, and the only pattern I have is you.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “You don’t know anything?” Bowen scoffed. “You killed a man who had a $5,000 bill from the money fair. You killed another man who might have been involved in the same heist. Nobody in law enforcement can identify either of these men.”

  “I’m going to save you some time, Kenny,” I said. “I can’t identify them, either.”

  He inhaled deeply and let a windy stream of air out his nostrils. He tugged his tie and pulled cufflinks. “I want to work with you, Dermot, the two of us together.” He extended arms outward in a gesture of openness. “I’ll give you half of my take, half the reward money if we recover the loot. We each get ten percent.”

  “That’s serious money,” I said. “What’s your angle?”

  “No angle.” He rubbed his gleaming head. “You’re the only person who knows anything about the robbery, besides the police, and they don’t know much.”

  “I told you, I don’t know anything.”

  “Yes, you do.” He rolled his meaty neck. “I’m a businessman, Dermot. I look at the big picture, and the big picture is this: I need your help and I’m willing to pay for it. My offer has nothing to do with generosity or altruism. It has to do with money. I’d rather get ten percent of something, than twenty percent of nothing.”

  “You’re looking at ten percent of nothing, because I can’t help you.” I got up from the table. “Besides, I work better alone.”

  “That’s your answer?” Kenny said. “You work better alone?”

  “That’s my answer.” I started for the door.

  “I’m not a man who gives up easily,” he said, squeezing the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger. “I’m not going away, Dermot. You’re the only lead I’ve got.”

  “Then I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”

  “You can count on it.” Kenny stood up. “You’re staying at the Boston Harbor Hotel, is that correct?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “See how easy it was to track you down? And I’m not trying to kill you.”

  III.

  Back in the hotel room I called Buck Louis at Glooscap’s house and asked him about Sleddog the giant malamute, another displaced Townie.

  “Sleddog loves trains,” Buck said. “The house is up against the tracks, and he howls every time a train goes by. He is doing just fine, but I can tell that’s not why you called. What’s going on?”

  “I need information on a guy named Kenny Bowen,” I said.

  “I’m logging on as we speak,” Buck said.

  “Bowen is about my age. He says he’s half Indian, as in Native American. He works in the insurance field as a private investigator. Bowen seems aboveboard, but I want to make sure. Is that enough to get you started?”

  “More than enough,” Buck said. “Give me an hour.”

  I hung up.

  I turned on ESPN Classic and watched a championship fight from 1962, between Emile Griffith and Benny “Kid” Paret. It was their third meeting, according to legendary boxing announcer Don Dunphy. At stake, the world welterweight title. The bell rang and the action began, with both fighters feeling each other out. The momentum went back and forth in the early rounds, neither man taking control of the match, a contest with plenty of action but not much excitement. Then in the twelfth round the intensity picked up. Griffith battered Paret into the corner, nailing him with power punches to the jaw and head. Paret got hung up in the r
opes and Griffith loosed the missiles. The ref stopped the fight and the grainy footage changed to color. The analysts in the studio said that there was no return bout, because Benny Paret died that night at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan.

  Buck called back and told me what he had learned.

  “Kenneth Bowen graduated from Dartmouth College, summa cum laude, with a double major in economics and political science. He was an All-American shot putter on the track team and won the Ivy League title in both his junior and senior years. He then competed in the Olympics, representing the United Sates, but didn’t medal. After the Olympics he spent three years at Oxford. Bowen is a Rhodes Scholar.”

  “Impressive resume,” I said.

  “From Oxford he went to Washington as an insurance lobbyist, where he lobbied for five years. Then he started a firm called The Bowen Group, whose chief client is the federal government.” Buck paused. “This guy is plugged in, Dermot. I found pictures of him with senators. He attended a presidential ball.”

  “Great stuff, Buck. Anything else?”

  “I don’t know if this is important or not, but Bowen received a full scholarship to Dartmouth.”

  “Athletic? Academic?”

  “The Occom Scholars Program for Indians,” Buck said. “If an applicant is at least one-eighth Native American and smart enough to get into the school, said applicant goes for free. Bowen qualified.”

  “This guy’s a modern-day Jim Thorpe.”

  IV.

  I took a nap and awoke at nine o’clock. The night skies were gray with clouds, but even in darkness you could feel a front coming in. I got out of bed and stretched my arms to the ceiling. My spine went snap-crackle-pop, my head cleared, and my stomach growled for food. I called the front desk and they recommended the hotel restaurant, the Rowes Wharf Sea Grille, saying it had a four-star rating. I booked a reservation, showered, and went down to eat.

  The dining room was almost empty at this later hour. The hostess seated me at a choice window table and handed me a menu. A waitress came and I ordered swordfish with asparagus and mashed potatoes. After the main course, I asked for coffee. The waitress was refilling my coffee cup just as the rain started to fall. It was a light rain, not much more than a Scotch mist. I listened to the droplets spatter the glass.

  I initialed the bill and went out to Rowes Wharf to walk off the meal. The whitecaps were becoming choppier as the winds grew stronger, and the drizzle intensified to a heavy downpour. The deluge deadened the sounds of the city, and for some strange reason I felt secure, untouchable. I strolled on the boardwalk, anonymous in the squall, hidden amid the raindrops pelting the pavement. I came to the Northern Avenue Bridge, now a pedestrian bridge, and crossed it to the Seaport District as torrents of water drenched my clothes.

  I was halfway across when a man came toward me at a fast pace, and it was apparent from his stride that he was focused and serious. I slowed down, and when I did, he unzipped his soaked windbreaker. Something was wrong. I ran for the railing to jump off the bridge, but I ran too late. He took out a gun and fired twice.

  I was still on my feet.

  He ran past me, bumping my shoulder. Another man who had been standing behind me fell to the pavement. Two bullet holes were bored into his head. The back of his skull was blown off. Shards of bone and chunks of brain stuck to the grating, glued by blood, and blood dripped between the grilles to Fort Point Channel below. A revolver rested in the dead man’s hand, the hammer cocked. The man who shot him turned around and came back toward me.

  I ran like hell, ducking and zigzagging so I’d be tougher to hit. The man caught up to me. I might as well have been running in the Dorchester mud flats wearing flippers. He sprinted in front of me and waved his hands. He said something I couldn’t understand and then he said Kenny Bowen’s name. He said that he was on my side, that he was hired to protect me. He raced ahead again and laid his gun on the ground. If this greyhound wanted to shoot me, he would have done so by now. I stopped running and panted for air. The man walked up to me.

  “My name is Rat T. Kennedy,” he said, showing no signs of exertion. “Kenny Bowen sent me to watch over you.” He pointed back to the lifeless lump on the bridge. “That man was contracted to kill you. I pegged him in the hotel lobby earlier today.”

  “You pegged him in the lobby?” I was still catching my breath. “How did he find me there?”

  “I don’t know, but you better check out fast,” said Rat T., a fit man with a red crew cut. “Another thing, you’d better get out of here before the police come.”

  “Why? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Explaining another dead body?” He picked up his gun and holstered it. “That’s the last thing you need, Sparhawk.”

  He had a point. I could picture the interrogation, sandwiched between Hanson and Pruitt, with Partridge in the wings.

  “Maybe you’re right about that,” I admitted.

  I took Rat T’s suggestion and got out of there, but I didn’t like it. I was postponing the inevitable. Cops always get to the truth, even if they have to make it up.

  §

  I went back to the hotel, packed my stuff, checked out, and headed south for Glooscap’s house in Dorchester. It was a five-mile jaunt that seemed like a Magellan journey, each mile a marathon, each exit a new time zone. With my nerves on tenterhooks and my mind on corpses, I slogged ahead on the Expressway, hydroplaning through sheets of water, and pulling up at Glooscap’s without remembering driving there. Harraseeket Kid opened the front door.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “Someone tried to kill me,” I said. “I was staying at a hotel and a hit man found me there. How did he know I was there?”

  “Come in out of the rain.”

  “I forgot the vest, figured I was dead.”

  “Come in, damn it.” Kid swung the door wide. “You’ll die of pneumonia and do the killer’s job for him.”

  “I thought I was going to die, Kid.” I stood in the rain. “A guy fired twice and killed the man behind me.”

  “You aren’t making sense.” Kid grabbed my shirt and pulled me inside. We went to the back room, where he threw me a towel. “Tell me what happened.”

  I told him.

  “Any people around?” he asked.

  “It was pouring out.”

  “Tell me more about Kenny Bowen,” Kid said.

  I told him about the meeting with Bowen at police headquarters. I told him about the background information that Buck dug up on him.

  “Bowen needs you alive to find the money,” Kid said.

  “I guess you’re right about that.” I had to agree with him. “He hired a man to watch over me.”

  “Bowen supposedly saved your life tonight, Dermot.”

  “Supposedly saved my life?” I would have laughed if I had the strength. “What are you getting at, Kid? What do you mean by supposedly?”

  “What if Bowen staged the shooting to get you on his side?”

  “The back of a man’s head was splattered all over the bridge,” I said. “That would be hard to stage.”

  “Hard, but not impossible. How close were you to the dead body?” Kid asked. “How well did you see it? Remember, it was pouring out.”

  “I saw it clearly, at least I think I saw it clearly.” I thought back to the bridge and my mind raced. “I don’t know, I’m not sure.”

  V.

  I slept until noon on a pullout couch in the three-season porch at the back of the house. A commuter train roared past and rattled the windows. Sleddog howled and moaned from the basement. In the kitchen I loaded the coffeemaker and started it brewing. Drops of coffee plunked in the pot and after a while the coffeemaker hissed and stopped dripping. I drank a cup and the caffeine cleared my head.

  I turned on the radio, listened to the news, and heard nothing about a shooting in B
oston. I saw the Herald on the counter and read the city section. Again, nothing about a shooting. Maybe Harraseeket Kid was on to something. Maybe Kenny Bowen had stage-managed the killing on the bridge.

  But my thinking had cleared up after a sound sleep. In computer lingo, my mind had defragged. The scattered pieces of memory had reassembled into a lucid account of the shooting, and the imagery of it was nasty. Skull fragments, brain chunks, blood spillage. I pictured the lifeless eyes, eyes that could only belong to a dead man.

  The killing was no hoax. Rat T. Kennedy blew the back of the man’s head off. So why was there nothing on the news? Why nothing in the paper? Boston loves a juicy murder story, especially a murder outside a federal courthouse.

  Chapter Eight

  I.

  That evening I parked in front of the Knights of Columbus and walked to Jackie Tracy’s house on Chappie Street. I went up the stairs to his back porch, out of the view of cars and pedestrians and would-be assassins. The doorbell was gummed up with old paint so I knocked. Jackie opened the door and blinked when he saw my face. Jackie Tracy blink?

  “Dermot?”

  “Hey, Jackie.”

  He welcomed me in, but it was a halfhearted welcome, the type you’d get from a man who owed you money. He led me into the parlor. The Red Sox were on the flat screen playing the Orioles in Baltimore, with Boston wearing their road grays. Jackie waved to a chair and told me to have a seat. He sat in a recliner, drank some beer from a tall can, and said, “Look at that slob on the mound tonight. He’s fat and lazy and doesn’t give a shit about the game. Not an ounce of muscle on him.”

  “He must have a strong neck to hold up all those chins,” I said.

  “All those chins!” Jackie roared. “You have your old man’s sense of humor, you know that?”

  “Thanks, Jackie. What I don’t have is a gun.”

  “A gun? What do you want with a gun?” He rested the beer can on his knee. “You’re a good kid, Dermot. Don’t go screwing with guns. You’ll get yourself nothing but trouble.”