The Best American Mystery Stories 3

by Edited by James Ellroy

  I thought I’d misheard him. “What?” I asked, too sharply.

  Tony had caught it. He swiveled around.

  Stanley was in a reverie. “That’s what we used to call it, the Adriatic,” he said, so softly I had to bend over the bed.

  “The blue mirror. On bombing runs into Rumania. Before you had to worry about the fighters. It looked beautiful, but it was hard as iron if your plane went down. I used to write letters to my son in my head, but I always forgot them by the time we got back.”

  I glanced at Tony.

  “I always forgot,” Stanley whispered, sinking back into the pillows, exhausted.

  I straightened up.

  Tony caught my attention, and belatedly I went over to pay my respects to Maria. I always feel awkward in situations where I have to pretend everything’s swell. I get claustrophobic and look for an early avenue of escape. Tony smoothed us out of it, covering our retreat.

  We were just ducking out the door when Stanley revived long enough to say something else. “Bees,” he said, and fell back.

  “Bees?” I asked Tony. I was driving him home, and he was sunk in his own thoughts. I figured he was brooding about the transience of human endeavor and Stanley in particular, but I’d missed a turn in the road while Tony had taken it.

  “Guy name of Creek Fortier, you remember him?” Tony asked.

  That was going back a ways. “Big guy with a beard, kind of rough around the edges but basically shy?”

  Tony nodded. “Rode a thousand-CC Vincent,” he said.

  “Right,” I said as the details started coming back to me. “Used to pull into Stanley’s shop once in a while, looking to cannibalize scrap. I remember the bike, a Shadow or a Lightning he’d restored. Why, what about him?”

  “He was in Vietnam with Stanley’s son Stosh.”

  I didn’t know where Tony was going, but I was willing to hitch a ride.

  “Fortier came back, but Stan junior didn’t,” I said. “You’re thinking what?”

  “I’m wondering if Creek Fortier weren’t a kind of surrogate son,” Tony said. “A way for Stanley to hang on to Stosh.”

  “It’s a reach, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yeah,” Tony said, “but I knew there was something floating around in my head that I couldn’t put a name to. The kid, Andy, he would have been four or five years old at the outside, so you and me, we were too grown up to pay him any mind, right? He was underfoot, we probably treated him like the measles.”

  I’d thought the same thing when I saw Andy in his office. When you’re in third or fourth grade, you don’t want some “baby” dragging on your coattails.

  “Here’s how I remember it, though,” Tony went on. “Creek Fortier always had the time to humor Andy whenever he came by Stanley’s. It was like he was more comfortable on a kid’s level than he was with adults.”

  “You see something unhealthy there?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m getting at,” Tony said. “There was something simple about him, in the old-fashioned sense, like he was a case of arrested development.”

  “Post-traumatic stress disorder?” I suggested.

  Tony nodded. “Yeah, shell-shock, battle fatigue, whatever you want to call it. Stanley was always very protective, looked out for him, treated him gently.”

  “Walking wounded,” I said.

  “More than that,” Tony said. “I mean, not just being a good Christian. We both know Stanley’s a decent guy. I’m thinking he appointed himself Creek’s guardian angel, ran interference for him, paid off his bad debts. Basically assumed the burden, in other words.”

  “Stanley lost a son, and Creek Fortier stood in for him.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it for years,” Tony said. “Fortier had a place out in the sticks, up by Pepperell or Townsend, near the New Hampshire line. Worked on bikes, raised his own vegetables. Stanley used to say he was a pioneer, born in the wrong century.”

  “You’ve got a better memory than I do,” I told him.

  “It’s what Stanley said that brought it back.”

  “Which?” I asked him.

  “Creek Fortier cultivated bees,” Tony said.

  ~ * ~

  I called Andy Ravenant’s office with a couple of questions, but Andy wasn’t there and Max Quinn hadn’t clocked in at all. I wanted to talk to Max, not least to thank him, although I wanted my ducks in a row first because I wasn’t certain just where he stood. Then the receptionist put me on hold, and when the phone was picked up again, it was Kitty Dwyer on the line.

  “How’d you make out?” she asked me.

  I didn’t know that I was any more ready to talk to Kitty than Max, but you can’t script every encounter. “Well, there’s good news and bad news,” I told her, shifting mental gears. “I got my tail caught in a crack but maybe I pushed some buttons. I don’t know for sure. Max bailed me out of a jam anyway.”

  “Max? How so?”

  “One of those things,” I said. “You needed to be there.”

  “You mean more background than you want to go into over the phone?”

  “I mean I’m not ready to confide in you, frankly,” I said.

  “Meet you for a drink after work?”

  I hesitated and then took the plunge. “Sure,” I said.

  “Sun’s already past the yard-arm,” Kitty said.

  That was true. I hadn’t gotten back to town until three in the afternoon. “I think I take your meaning,” I told her.

  “Let’s close up shop, then,” she said.

  We met at a bar in the financial district, busy enough with suits stopping on their way home that we didn’t attract any attention and just loud enough for personal conversations not to be overheard. It was a good choice. Too many people think a meeting should be held in a deserted place; it’s actually the reverse. Kitty knew a crowd gave better cover, and the ambient noise made a wire unreliable.

  “So?” she asked as we put our drinks on a corner table.

  I shrugged. “You guys gave me the bait, and I took it,” I said. “I don’t know how deep Ravenant and Dwyer is in, but you’re in deep enough to be worried about it.”

  She didn’t fence. “I don’t want to be disbarred,” she told me, “but I don’t want to put Andy in the hot seat.”

  “Is it that narrow a choice?”

  “Most of our choices come down to self-interest,” she said.

  “That’s open to definition,” I said. “What about Max?”

  “What about him?”

  “How’d you recruit his services, for openers?”

  “He came to us from the states. Max had good connections.”

  “Inside, you mean.”

  “He’s got a lot of markers to call in.”

  “Cops and private dicks don’t get on that well as a rule,” I said. “Then again, a lot of private dicks used to be cops.”

  “The old blue network,” she said.

  “Did he leave the state police under a cloud?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean, Kitty,” I said. “Did he take early retirement? Was he being investigated by Internal Affairs? Did he cut corners? What?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Max is sui generis,” she said. “He worked a lot of undercover, drug stings, bribery, payoffs, you name it. He made enemies. But he made good busts, arrests that stuck. Andy was a PD, remember, but he respected Max.”

  I understood what she meant. A public defender would smell out a dirty cop. “Andy knew Max from before?” I asked her.

  “Sure,” she said.

  I was trying to make something compute and couldn’t do the math.

  “What exactly is bothering you, Jack?” Kitty asked.

  “Max steered me in the direction of the bikers, and then he was there to save my bacon when I ran into grief.”

  She didn’t wonder what kind of grief I’d run into. “What’s the problem with that?” she asked. “He’s using you as a blind? We’re defending a cou
ple of kids on a trafficking rap. If we can make a case for intimidation, witness tampering, the whole nine yards, maybe we can buy them a little less time. Max Quinn is just doing his job.”

  “Who are you trying to convince?” I asked her. “This isn’t a summation in front of a jury.”

  She hadn’t touched her drink. She fiddled with the stem of her glass.

  “I don’t feature it, either,” she admitted.

  “What’s his game, then?”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake, Jack, stop jerking me around,” she said, fiercely. “You know goddamn well what he’s up to, and he doesn’t give a rat’s ass if he takes us down, too.”

  I was startled by her vehemence and realized there were tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. I didn’t think she was acting, either.

  She swallowed, gulping down her sorrow. “Max is using you? How do you think I feel?” she demanded.

  Probably like crap, I thought. “Confused,” I said.

  “You are not a lot of help,” Kitty said, scrubbing her eyes angrily on her sleeve.

  Up until then I hadn’t wanted to be.

  “This isn’t going the way I’d hoped,” she muttered.

  “Me, either,” I told her.

  “Well, that’s a small relief,” she said.

  I didn’t know what to make of that remark.

  “You want me to put it into words, don’t you? Okay,” she said. “You think Max Quinn is using his job at Ravenant and Dwyer as leverage. So do I. He’s collecting proprietary client information to make a case against Chip McGill for the states. It’ll never stand up in court, if it comes out, because the evidence would be tainted and none of it admissible, but he can set them up, all of them, McGill and the bikers, and the state police can tell a judge we have a confidential source, somebody inside, and the judge will go along with it.”

  “But how much does Max know?”

  “Not enough, obviously. That’s where you come in.”

  “Working under attorney privilege for Ravenant and Dwyer. “

  “Which could put me and Andy both in the toilet.”

  I saw that. How could you claim to be oblivious? You were either unscrupulous or incompetent.

  Kitty sighed. “This is a no-win situation,” she said.

  “Looks that way,” I said. “Max is working from a stacked deck. But even if all of this is true, what’s his handle on Andy? Or are you saying that Andy could have been in on it from the get-go, that he’s a party to it?”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Don’t believe it or can’t bring yourself to?”

  She gave that a moment’s thought. “No, it’s not wishful thinking,” she said finally. “I don’t believe it because it’s not in Andy’s character. It runs counter to what he believes in. The practice of law may he adversarial, but you hope it all balances out, on average.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I must have sounded unconvinced. “Jack,” she explained, “Andy Ravenant is a straight arrow. Not a Boy Scout, but a guy who honors the law, even if it’s an imperfect instrument. And that’s as much a weakness as it is a strength in this trade. The point is, he wouldn’t countenance unlawful means even if they led to a desirable end.”

  “Okay,” I said again, smiling this time. “Let’s make sure we’re reading off the same page, here. We both figure Max Quinn sees Chip McGill as a target of opportunity, and helping Major Crimes take him out would put Max in solid with the AG’s office and the old blues. The fact that you guys are defending a couple of kids who might be persuaded to rat McGill out gives Max an angle, and the fact that Andy’s grandfather is involved makes for a strong pressure point, although you don’t think Andy will fold.”

  “I know so,” Kitty said.

  I didn’t have quite her confidence, but I let it go. “Does Andy have power of attorney for his grandfather?” I asked her.

  “I couldn’t tell you even if I knew,” she said. “Why?”

  “Stanley’s in intensive care,” I told her. “He might be on his way to the back exit.”

  “Oh my God,” she said, shocked. “That’s why Andy isn’t at the office. He should have said something.”

  It occurred to me why he hadn’t, and Kitty worked it out in the next heartbeat.

  “He didn’t want Max to know,” she said, staring up at me.

  I was already standing, fishing for my wallet. I dropped a ten on the table and put my glass on top of it.

  Kitty was right behind me as I made for the door. “What is it?” she demanded, catching up with me on the sidewalk.

  “I don’t think Andy’s at the hospital with Stanley,” I told her. “You have a cell phone?”

  She pulled it out of her handbag as we hoofed it down the block to my car. I unlocked the passenger door, and Kitty climbed in, reaching across the seat to unlock the driver’s door as I limped around.

  “I don’t know the number,” I said as I got behind the wheel. “It’s a listing in Ayer. See if you can get through to Admitting.”

  Kitty was already punching up directory assistance.

  I pulled out into the traffic, headed for the expressway. It was the wrong time of day and we’d be fighting rush-hour on the Mystic Bridge approaches, but I figured the McGrath & O’Brien was our best bet to get to Route 2. It was the same road I’d traveled that morning with Tony.

  “You want to know whether Andy’s there?” she asked me.

  “No harm in asking,” I said, jumping an intersection, “but I want to find out where the EMTs picked Stanley up. If you can get directions, that’s a plus.”

  The Central Artery was gridlocked. I inched along until I could take the Storrow Drive exit.

  “Stanley’s only visitor is his wife,” Kitty told me, her hand over the phone for a second. I heard her tell the nurse on duty she was an insurance adjuster looking for time and mileage on the emergency call. “Right,” she said, listening, and noting it all down on a legal pad. She disconnected with a thank you.

  Traffic along the river was moving faster. I could pick up Route 2 in Cambridge.

  “Pepperell,” Kitty said. That’s where Stanley was picked up. ‘“Volunteer fire department, ambulance on call. I’ve already got the number; you want me to give it a shot?”

  I should have known Stanley wasn’t just joyriding. He’d been on his way to see the beekeeper.

  “Try my brother first,” I said. I gave her Tony’s number.

  She started to explain who she was when he answered; I interrupted impatiently. “Ask him how the hell we’re going to find Creek Fortier,” I said. “Tell him I screwed up, and we’re behind the clock.”

  “He heard you,” Kitty told me, listening to Tony. Then she laughed. “You got that right,” she said into the phone.

  We were past the Magazine Street railroad trestle, closing on Soldiers Field Road and the Eliot Bridge. I was shifting back and forth between lanes, picking every gap I could, leaving some exasperated commuters behind me, giving me the finger.

  “He’ll have it for us,” Kitty said, speaking to me with exaggerated calm as if she were talking a kitten off a ledge. “Tony wants to know how soon you think we’re going to get there if we survive the ride?”

  “Forty-five minutes, an hour, if we’re lucky.” I let my foot off the gas incrementally. “Make that an hour and a half.” It was sort of an apology to Kitty for being so abrupt.

  “Okay,” she said to Tony and flipped the cell phone closed. “He says to be cool, Jack.”

  “I’m working on it,” I said, but I was stirred with unease and a sense of urgency.

  ~ * ~

  My brother used a livery service out of Lexington on a regular basis. They had handicapped-accessible vans, and a fleet of cabs to cover the suburban area beyond Route 128, and they bid on school bus contracts, filling in between assigned stops. If you were too far off the beaten track or had a special-needs child who wasn’t being mainstreamed, Tony’s taxi guys would carpool you, mile
age paid by the state. Their dispatchers knew every secondary road in Middlesex County, including this poverty pocket outside the 495 loop. Tony was passing us directions.

  “Stanley’s been helping Creek Fortier out ever since Vietnam,” I explained to Kitty. “He’s lent him money he never expected to be paid back, given him tools, kept him afloat. I don’t mean Fortier’s a user, but Stanley was a soft touch because Creek was a link to his dead son, something Stanley wouldn’t want to let go of. My guess is that Stanley cosigned a mortgage for this property Creek’s got, and when Creek didn’t keep up the payments, Stanley took title or something like that. Creek’s on the dim side, I hear. Or not of this world, anyway, which Stanley wouldn’t take as a handicap. And he wouldn’t want to see Creek lose the place. He must have told Andy to make sure the land got transferred to Creek’s name, but he didn’t tell Andy the punchline, which is that he was dying. Andy got curious.”