Haunted Hearts

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  “Rosen gave the Internal Revenue an income-tax-evasion conviction, and the DA’s office dropped the larceny charge.”

  “Because Ross’s signature was not on any of the bank documents, it wasn’t a strong case. He spent the money, but I was the one who took it.” She was toying with her fingers. “They tried us separately. Frank DeLisle was a prosecution witness against me.”

  “Did your lawyer describe your relationship with DeLisle?”

  She shook her head. “The prosecuting attorney said he would ask for a lighter sentence if it never came up. They wouldn’t sacrifice a good police officer’s career for such an indiscretion. That’s what they called it. Instead of ten years, he would only ask for five. My lawyer said it was a good deal. They wanted to protect the reputation of a good cop, and they would take five years off my sentence to do it.”

  “Didn’t anybody believe you?”

  “Not really. I had a court-appointed lawyer, a young kid, really. They had my confession. I never told anyone that I was being beaten, I was too embarrassed. So the prosecution claimed I really had fallen or been hit with a tennis ball. Those are the excuses I had used. They said no one had beaten me. They said I had bought all these nice clothes and jewelry for myself, and that I had given money to Ross because I was afraid of losing him to other women. He testified against me, told them I had boasted about coming from a wealthy family in Connecticut, and that’s where he believed the money had come from. My God he lied, he lied so much, he destroyed me there. My lawyer . . . he tried but he couldn’t do very much. I had a good pre-sentence report and the judge agreed to the five years, just five years, that’s all, my lawyer kept saying, telling me I’d probably be out in two but I kept thinking five years, five years, five years . . .

  “After my trial, they brought me to the court as a prosecution witness against Ross,” she said in a dull flat voice. “His lawyer, Mr. Rosen, tore me apart there on the stand, calling me all kinds of names, asking me what date I had done this, and why I had done that on another day, and of course I couldn’t remember. In those last few months I had been like a robot. He showed pictures of me wearing fur coats and jewelry Ross had bought me. He said I had bought them with the money I stole, and asked where they were, and when I told him I didn’t know, he said I had destroyed them because they were evidence that I was the criminal. I knew Ross had sold I everything to pay Rosen’s legal fees, but I had no proof. They had vanished. I couldn’t afford to hire anyone to trace them.”

  “Myers got off easy,” McGuire said.

  She nodded. “Ross got one year in minimum security. He sent me a letter once, telling me he was spending his days playing ping pong and basketball. I was in a federal prison . . .”

  “Cedar Hill?” McGuire knew the place, a gray stone fortress on the edge of the Berkshires, with the oldest wing set aside for women prisoners.

  “Yes.” She swallowed. “This morning in jail, it all came back again, the humiliation, the loneliness, all of it. The prison psychiatrist kept telling me to adjust, but how could I ever adjust to that? While I was in Cedar Hill, I received a letter telling me my husband had obtained full custody of my children. At my trial, they didn’t believe my testimony about Ross making me do those things, using my children the way he did. The lawyer who acted for my husband submitted the transcripts from my trial, and he used them to take my children from me.”

  “Orin Flanigan,” McGuire said. Things were beginning to fit.

  “Yes.”

  “And you couldn’t locate your husband or children when you came out of jail, so you went to Orin Flanigan.”

  “He wouldn’t talk to me at first. He said it was client privilege, a conflict of interest, and so on. But one day when I was pleading with him, nearly hysterical, his wife came in and saw me. It was after office hours, everyone else had gone home. I left, and I guess Orin’s wife wanted to know what was going on. The next day Orin left a message at the halfway house, inviting me to come and meet with him. He told me I reminded his wife of their daughter, and we began to talk. He began to believe me. He searched court records, he talked to people, he sympathized with me . . .”

  “Did he tell you where your husband and children were?”

  She shook her head. “Orin said he was bound by law to reveal nothing about them without my husband’s consent. All he said was that Thomas had moved west. He said he would try to find a way, a legal way, to put me in touch with them. But I think he was mostly angry at Ross Myers. He kept saying, ‘These are the things that make the law such an ass at times,’ meaning the way Ross was treated, compared with me.” She looked up at McGuire. “I really think Orin loved me,” she said. “Maybe like he loved his own daughter. He knew Ross had cheated the system, and he said it was unfair, that somebody should make him pay somehow. He wanted to see that Myers paid one way or the other, or to make sure that he didn’t ruin the lives of other women. Then he told me about you. He said you were somebody who might be able to find Ross and do something, and maybe find Thomas and my children too.”

  “What did he mean, ‘do something’ about Myers? Do what?”

  “I don’t know. He told me that you had found Ross, that he was working as a yacht salesman in Annapolis, but he had gone sailing for a week or more. I said it had to be a joke.”

  “Why did it have to be a joke?”

  “Because Ross could never stand being on a boat for more than five minutes, even sitting at the dock. He made friends with some high-rollers in Florida. We went to a party on a boat in Lauderdale one day, and we weren’t even out of the harbour before Ross was sick to his stomach. He was green. He was so sick that the man who owned the boat turned back to shore and let us off. So Ross isn’t a yacht salesman. He just isn’t.”

  McGuire worked on that for a minute, remembering the aloof attitude of the woman at the yacht brokerage. “So why did Orin go?”

  “Because he said he might have found a way to get back at Ross. Orin said he had seen his share of unfairness, he had even done his share of unfair things. He said he wished he was like you, somebody who could act on the spot. Somebody who could do things besides argue in court and shuffle papers.” She smiled. “He would have loved to hear what you did tonight with that Hayhurst thug. He might dislike brutality, but I think he would secretly approve. Anyway, he said he was thinking of asking you to do what he was planning to do, except that it would mean revealing too many things about me. And he didn’t want to.”

  “You told him Myers wasn’t on that yacht.”

  She nodded.

  “Where did he think Myers was? And how did Orin Flanigan expect to deal with him?”

  “I don’t think he expected to meet Ross. I think he knew something about Ross, about what he was doing in Annapolis or wherever he is, and he went down to stop it.”

  “Not by contacting the police. As far as I know, the cops knew nothing about Myers, and had no reason to pick him up. What was Flanigan like when you saw him last?”

  “Determined. A little excited. He said, ‘I’m going to blow the lid off Myers.’ I asked him how, and he told me to just watch him.” She looked at the clock again, and began to stand up. “I’ve got to be back there in fifteen minutes,” she said. “Can we get a cab?”

  Saying goodbye was awkward. When she left the cab, he watched her enter the halfway house, watched the door close, then told the cabbie to take him to Revere Beach.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ollie’s house was dark when the cab pulled into the driveway. He paid the cabbie, unlocked the door, took three steps into the hall, and froze at a voice from the top of the stairs.

  “Stay where you are or I’ll shoot.”

  The hall light above his head was on, and he shielded his eyes from the glare.

  “Who the hell are you?” the woman’s voice said.

  “I live here,” McGuire answered, squinting up the stairs. �
�Who the hell are you?”

  She was perhaps thirty-five or forty years old, tall and big-boned, with blond hair crew-cut on top, and long at the sides and back. She wore a Boston College sweatshirt over shapeless black slacks and high-cut basketball shoes, and she was holding an ugly black automatic. “Put your hands on top of your head.”

  McGuire raised his hands. “You got a license for that thing?”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ve got for it,” the woman said. “I’ve got an NRA marksmanship award for hitting a target half your size at twice this distance. How’s that make you feel?”

  “Look,” McGuire began, “Whoever you are . . .”

  A buzzer sounded in the upstairs hallway. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” the woman said.

  “How you doing, Ollie?” McGuire called down the hall.

  He could barely hear Ollie’s response through the closed bedroom door. “What’s going on?”

  “What’d he say?” the woman asked.

  “He wants to know what’s going on,” McGuire said. “Look, I really live here . . .”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Hey lady, I live here,” McGuire said.

  The woman began descending the stairs, the gun aimed at McGuire, and he recognized it as a Hi-Standard .22. Loaded with Remington Fireball cartridges it would do almost as much damage as a .38. “My name is McGuire,” he said. “You mind telling me yours?”

  Something between a shout and a gargle echoed from the direction of Ollie’s room.

  “What do you know about somebody named McGuire?” the woman shouted down the hall, her eyes and the gun unwavering.

  “He lives here, you stupid sack of tit,” Ollie shouted. “Send him in here.”

  McGuire tried to suppress a laugh.

  The woman breathed deeply and muttered something. “If you live here, where’s your room?” she said.

  “Up the stairs and on the right.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “One double bed, one dresser, a stereo system, and a bookcase.”

  “Any pictures?”

  “Yeah. A poster of a town in France called Vence. It’s over the bed. You starting to believe me now?”

  She shook her head and lowered the gun. “I don’t remember them saying anybody’d be coming in here tonight.”

  “You’re Ollie’s nurse,” McGuire said, lowering his hands.

  “First night.” She lifted her chin and angled it towards Ollie’s room. “He can be a real son of a bitch, you know that?”

  “You coming in here or you gonna stand out there blabbin’ all night?” Ollie shouted through the door.

  “Mind if I see my buddy?” McGuire said.

  “I’m sleeping in the other bedroom, his wife’s,” the nurse said. “My name’s Liz Worthington.”

  “I suppose I should say it was nice meeting you,” McGuire said. “But it wasn’t.”

  “Nobody at the Benevolent told me they had a roomer,” Liz Worthington said. “I saw the room upstairs and figured maybe it was their son’s or something. Why the hell wouldn’t they tell me that?”

  “I’ll be sure to ask them next time I see them,” McGuire said.

  The nurse began climbing the stairs. “I keep that door locked, the bedroom door,” she said. “Just for your information.”

  “I’ll sure as hell keep mine locked, too,” McGuire said. She gave him a sharp look over her shoulder and continued climbing the stairs.

  Ollie’s bed was raised to a sitting position. “That broad upstairs? She had balls, she’d be storm-trooper material.”

  “How do you know she hasn’t?” McGuire said, settling himself in a chair. “Balls, I mean. She pulled a gun on me, Ollie. And why didn’t you tell her about me?”

  “Thought I’d surprise you a little, that’s all. Didn’t know she’d cover your ass with that nasty little Hi-Standard, even if she was braggin’ about her marksmanship scores,” Ollie said. “If the damn thing’d gone off, at least you’d know it wasn’t an accident. Jesus, Joseph, you’re back on the hit parade. Been watchin’ all the channels, tellin’ how you turned that Hayhurst squirrel into roadkill. Didn’t anybody interview you? They’re sayin’ you’re like the Lone Ranger, doin’ your good deed and then vanishing. They’re after you like a belch after a beer. You really try to erase him against a brick wall? How’s your car? They said, on channel eight, they said it took two slugs from the kid. And they said you were with some mysterious blonde woman. They love mysterious blondes, don’t they? I mean, they’re either famous or mysterious. This one’s mysterious. So tell me about her.”

  “I’ll explain later . . .”

  “Explain it now. You think I’m going anywhere?”

  McGuire looked away, then back at Ollie. “What’d you settle?” he asked. “You and Ronnie? I thought it would kill you, when you found out.”

  “It didn’t kill me. Does it look like it killed me? Just wounded me in a different place. She packed some of her clothes, a bunch of other things she wanted. She’d already applied to the Benevolent for a nurse, did it last week. By the time they sent over Norman Schwarzkopf in drag, she was gone.”

  “How’re you taking it?”

  “The only way I can take it. By telling myself there’s other stuff to hang onto.” His voice softened. “So who the hell’s Susan Schaeffer? And gimme the details on runnin’ down that punk.”

  “Maybe I’d better make some coffee,” McGuire said.

  “Hey, it’s that good?”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  It was an hour later. McGuire poured the remains of the coffee from the carafe into his cup.

  “I don’t know,” McGuire said softly. The adrenaline was used up, and his body ached. He held his head in one hand, the empty cup of coffee in the other. “Donovan’s running things like he’s a chainsaw in a rose garden. Shit’s flying everywhere, but not a hell of a lot’s getting done.”

  “And you want to do something.”

  “Why would I want to do anything?”

  “The same reason you want to breathe, McBoink. Go find Myers.” Ollie’s good hand reached for the bed control. With a muted hum the bed lowered him back to a horizontal position. “Check out Florida. Winter’s coming, and horse balls like him can’t wait to sit in the sun at Hialeah.”

  “And if I find him, what do I do next? Tell Donovan where he is?”

  “Donovan probably already knows. He just doesn’t have enough to work with.”

  “Wherever he is now, Myers killed Flanigan.”

  “Good luck doin’ anything about it. Nobody’s seen the guy. You didn’t see him in Annapolis, nobody’s seen him up here, there’s no proof he was ever in the rented car. If they do find and arrest him, based on what they’ve got now, Myers’ll hire his buddy Rosen again, and Marv’ll bust a gut laughin’ at a charge like that. Which you know will never come to court anyway.”

  “Why should I give a damn? I don’t know Myers, and I never knew Flanigan much.”

  “Because he got away with hurtin’ some woman who’s got your eyes dropping like cue-balls into a corner pocket, that’s why.” Ollie closed his eyes. “Turn off the light. Maybe we’ll all have breakfast together in the morning. You, me, and Door Number Three.”

  McGuire tripped the light switch and closed the door behind him.

  As he walked along the hall towards the staircase he heard Ollie’s voice again. “Find Myers.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The man who identified himself as the owner of Bay Ridge Yachts spoke with a faded Georgia drawl. McGuire called him as soon as he arrived at Zimmerman, Wheatley and Pratt the next morning, grabbing breakfast on the way in, avoiding both Ollie and the nurse. The man told McGuire his name was Harrison Klees, “with a K and no e on the end.”

  Klees said no one named Myers worke
d for his company, nor had anyone named Myers ever worked for him. He was getting tired of answering these questions, and he really would like to get on with doing business and stay off the telephone. McGuire must be the third Boston cop to call him about this guy, whoever he was.

  “Who asked?” McGuire sipped from his mug of coffee. Beyond his office door he heard the rustle of early-morning office activity—ringing phones, low conversation, and sudden brief volleys of laughter. “Who asked all the questions?”

  “Well, someone from your department . . .” the man in Annapolis began.

  “Who was it?” McGuire insisted. “Do you remember his name?”

  “Irish. It was an Irish name.”

  “Lieutenant Donovan. He’s been reassigned to another case. I’m on it now, and I need to hear your side.”

  “Well, like I told him when he called, and like I told the lawyer who was here, the one who was murdered, I don’t know who y’all are talkin’ about. I said I’d never heard of this Myers character before that lawyer showed up, and I don’t want to hear any more about him. Heard too damn much ’bout him already.”

  “What about Mrs. Diamond? Anybody talk to her?”

  “That lawyer did, and your man Donovan did, too. I told that Donovan fella about the lawyer coming here and asking for her. Christine wasn’t in that day, the day the lawyer showed up. I remember that. Anyway, the lawyer showed me his card and said it was an urgent legal matter, so I let him call her from here.”

  “You didn’t overhear the conversation?”

  “Nope. They didn’t talk long, and he was gone, the lawyer. Then I think the sheriff’s office down here was trying to reach her, but I’m not sure if they did or not.”

  “Apparently she told somebody that Myers worked for you. She said he was delivering a yacht to the Carolinas.”

  “Yeah, well. You gotta understand that some funny people get attracted to these big boats. They come over here, and it’s like somebody turns on a bullshit machine, they start acting like they just sold Rhode Island that morning, you know? She figured this guy for one of them. Plus, I remember a couple guys coming by here a week before that. They were looking for Myers too. Said they were told that Myers worked here, and they were the kind of fellas who found it hard to take no for an answer. Almost had to call the law myself to get rid of them. So she figured it was easier to say yeah, he works here, but he’s gone for a week or so.”