Haunted Hearts

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  “She a good saleswoman for you?”

  “Christine? She does all right. She’s overcome a few problems, as you know . . .”

  “Problems?” McGuire wrote Diamond on a sheet of paper and kept the pencil poised for more notes. “What kinds of problems?”

  He could hear the other man exhale noisily in exasperation. “Don’t y’all read your stuff up there? I mean, how many more times’ve I gotta do this?”

  “I must have missed it. What kinds of problems does Mrs. Diamond have?”

  “Well, losing her husband the way she did last year . . .”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was in the New York-Bermuda yacht race, skippering his own craft, and they ran into a bit of a stomach-churner, and he got himself overboard. Only member of the crew not tethered. Terrible thing. Two kiddies and all.”

  “What did her husband do? For a living?”

  “Bert Diamond was a damn fine dentist, orthodontics. And he had some investments around here, couple of strip malls up towards Glen Burnie . . .”

  “So he left Mrs. Diamond comfortably off . . .” McGuire wrote a “$” under Diamond.

  “I suppose . . .”

  “What’s to suppose?”

  “Look, I don’t go into detail with my employees, all right? I mean, their personal lives.”

  “Wait a minute.” McGuire frowned and scribbled “?” after the dollar sign. “You’re telling me Mrs. Diamond needed money?”

  “I’m saying Mrs. Diamond had to pay off a lot of Bert’s debts when he died, all those empty strip malls he had mortgaged to the hilt, hoping they’d turn to gold when the economy got going. They were worth practically nothing, and there was a whole lot of back taxes owin’ on them, plus Bert had a lot of other payables. She was left with the house and not much more,” Klees said. “But Bert looked after his kids. His kids are set up with a trust fund, but Christine, she had to go to work, and I offered her a job here.”

  “How old are the children?”

  “About eight and nine. Two nice little boys. Listen, I’ve got a barrel-load of paperwork here needs doing . . .”

  “Okay.” McGuire tossed the pencil aside. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Am I gonna get any more calls like this?” Klees asked.

  “There’s always that possibility in a murder investigation.”

  “Just in case I do, maybe I can save myself some time, ’cause I’m getting tired of singing this same song, you know? What’d y’all say your name was again?”

  “DeLisle,” McGuire replied. “Detective Frank DeLisle.”

  “Favours?” Libby Waxman coughed into the telephone with a noise that sounded like a ton of gravel falling down a flight of stairs. “What the hell do you think this is, a United Appeal agency?”

  “Come on, Libby.” McGuire smiled at her reply. Some people got older and more crotchety, but funnier too. Libby was one of them. “I’m not saying it’s a freebie, I’m just saying that one of them’s a personal thing and I don’t have a lot of money to play with. How about a two-fer?”

  “This new stuff or old?”

  “One’s new, the other’s more of the same.”

  “More of the same? That guy I told you about last time?”

  “Yeah, Myers.”

  “Lawyer from that law firm you’re with, somebody there got himself killed coupla days ago, right?”

  “Yeah, I heard.”

  “Newspapers’re sayin’ he was last seen down Washington way, that right?”

  “You’re right on top of things, Libby.”

  “Which is not much more than a hooker’s stroll from Annapolis. Where I told you Myers is.”

  “You’re getting the picture.”

  “So whattaya need?”

  “Just find out if Myers . . .”

  “The guy I tracked for you.”

  “Just find out if he’s been spreading fresh change around Pimlico, places like that. Or maybe if he’s golden with the bookies.”

  “Won’t take much. What else?”

  “This one’s easy for you. This one’s the favour I need.”

  “I don’t handle favours, McGuire.” Libby’s voice became clearer, and the edge grew honed. “You ever ask a bank to cash a friggin’ favour?”

  “I’m looking for a man named Thomas Schaeffer, used to live in Newton, moved out about two years ago. Guy works in telephones, telecommunication, stuff like that . . .”

  “What’d he do?”

  “He left town. With two kids.”

  “Why?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It’s a custody jump, right? Took off with the kids, wife wants them back?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And the guy’s straight? Doesn’t gamble, doesn’t do drugs? No record?”

  “Except for a wife assault a few years ago, yeah.”

  “Where’s the wife now?”

  McGuire shifted the receiver to the other ear. “You need that stuff?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt.”

  “She’s in town.”

  “Custody stuff like this ain’t easy, McGuire. Nobody on the street knows anything. You got some other source, some clue?”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Someone at Zimmerman, Wheatley and Pratt must have Schaeffer’s new address, McGuire suspected. If Schaeffer instructed Flanigan not to reveal his whereabouts, especially to Susan, would Flanigan refuse to provide it, caring about her the way he had? Was that part of the client-privilege guideline? Had Flanigan planned to provide Susan with her former husband and children’s address? Or would he try to persuade her ex-husband to contact Susan himself?

  “You still there McGuire?”

  “Just a minute, Libby.”

  He remembered Cassidy, and the young lawyer’s concern about maintaining secrecy on his client’s case of suspected fraud. Something was off-balance with that guy, McGuire suspected. It was worth a shot—a long shot, but what the hell. He swiveled in his chair and yanked open a file drawer. “Listen, there’s one more thing,” he said. “Something else to look into.”

  “What, you think I’m a wholesaler today? Three traces on one call?”

  “This one’s not a person,” McGuire said, retrieving a file folder and opening it on his desk in front of him. “It’s a company.”

  When the telephone rang ten minutes later, McGuire half expected it to be Libby with a detailed response to his request. Instead he heard Susan’s voice.

  “I’m down at the market,” she said. “I lost my job.”

  “Because of yesterday? Being arrested?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wasn’t much of a job.”

  “No, but it’s a condition of my parole that I either have a job or some sort of support.”

  McGuire told her they would meet for lunch, and he named a restaurant near the market.

  “I miss you already,” she said.

  Next, McGuire called Berkeley Street to tell Wally Sleeman what he needed from him.

  “What the hell’re you up to now, McGuire?” Sleeman’s voice had an amused edge to it.

  “Just give me a rundown, verbal’s fine,” McGuire said. “And don’t tell DeLisle.”

  “Why? Was it his case?”

  “No, it wasn’t his case. He was just a witness.”

  “You’re not workin’ with Rudy Zelinka, are you?” Zelinka was the Internal Affairs investigator, the gatekeeper of the Boston Police Department’s moral standards, although he was never described in such glowing terms by officers or detectives.

  “No, it’s strictly for me,” McGuire assured Sleeman.

  McGuire went for a walk around the block, returned to make another pot of coffee, and had almost finished scanning the newspaper when the telephone rang.


  “You busy?” Richard Pinnington asked. The tone of his voice said it didn’t matter.

  On the way up the open stairway to Pinnington’s office, McGuire passed Lorna descending to the fourteenth floor. He smiled at her but she turned away and continued downstairs.

  Pinnington’s door was open, and the lawyer beckoned McGuire inside from behind his desk. “Close the door, will you?” he said as McGuire approached. The lawyer was in his shirtsleeves, his embroidered tie loosened and pulled away from his unbuttoned collar.

  McGuire swung the door shut and sat in one of the wing chairs, facing Pinnington’s desk.

  “Sometimes all you want to do is practice law and you get stuck with a pile of other people’s crap,” Pinnington said. He settled himself in his chair.

  “Whose?” McGuire asked. This is not going to go well, he warned himself.

  “Whose what?” Pinnington looked directly at him for the first time since McGuire entered his office.

  “Whose crap are you having to deal with?”

  “Jesus, it seems like everybody’s. Orin’s, his widow’s, Barry Cassidy’s . . .”

  “Any of it mine?”

  Pinnington stared at McGuire, as though thinking about it for the first time, which McGuire knew was a ruse. “As a matter of fact,” Pinnington said. He looked down at his desk, then back at McGuire. “Cassidy’s upset with you.”

  “So what? You said you could handle him. He got what he needed from me.”

  “Have you made any unauthorized copies of his documents?” Pinnington stared at McGuire, direct and unwavering, and McGuire felt like a hostile witness being cross-examined in a courtroom.

  “Like what?”

  “Client records, correspondence, whatever.”

  McGuire nodded. “Cassidy’s client. The electronics outfit.”

  “So you did.”

  “Lorna told him, right?” She had been at the copying machine, watching McGuire.

  “I don’t know what Lorna might have told him,” Pinnington was saying to the floor. “All I know is that Cassidy’s accused you of unacceptable conduct, and I told him I doubted it very much. But it appears he was correct.”

  “I did it because he’s hiding something.”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that he didn’t give me all the files, and I’ve had this gut feel . . .”

  “Gut feel?” Pinnington looked at McGuire as though he had heard something amusing. “McGuire, I’m talking facts, and you’re defending yourself by saying you had a gut fee!?”

  “Instinct, Dick. Intuition. That’s what you brought me in for, remember?”

  “Yes, to use on behalf of our clients, damn it. Not against one of our own staff members, a guy in line for a partnership.”

  “Why didn’t he give me all the information?”

  “It’s his prerogative not to.” Pinnington rose from his chair and jammed his hands in his pockets. “Who are you to judge a lawyer’s decision in these matters?”

  “I’m sure he’s hiding something . . .”

  “Barry Cassidy has an exemplary record in everything he’s done for this firm and our clients.” The lawyer withdrew a fist and hit the desk. “He’s a Yale graduate cum laude, he’s married into one of the best families in New England, and I will not hear unsubstantiated rumours of unethical behavior. Not in this office, not from your mouth, not anywhere.”

  McGuire rose from his chair. “Sounds like we may have reached the end of our contract,” he said.

  “It’s crossed my mind.” Pinnington stared out the windows towards the airport.

  McGuire turned to leave.

  “You’ve been seen with that Schaeffer woman,” Pinnington said. “The two of you, you were out playing vigilantes last night, I hear. I thought you were finished with all that cowboys-and-Indians stuff. I thought you were content to be associated with us and leave all the rough stuff to your friend Donovan and his cronies.”

  “It’s tough to stop being a cop. Besides, I had a score to settle with that guy. He’s a murderer. He would have killed more people if he hadn’t been brought down.”

  “Brought down?” Pinnington swung his eyes to McGuire and grinned. “I hear you ran him over with your car.” He turned to face McGuire. “Look, I still like you, and you’ve got your own gang of fans around here, too. Although I wouldn’t count Lorna Robbins among them. I’m just asking you to kind of rein yourself in a little bit, okay? I saw Marv Rosen last night. He says you’re still acting like a cop instead of like a counselor. You know the difference, don’t you?”

  “Whatever it is,” McGuire said, turning for the door, “it got Orin Flanigan killed.”

  His message light was flashing when he returned to his office. He punched his phone code and listened to Libby Waxman’s washboard voice speak to him as though she were reading a shopping list.

  “You there? You gonna pick this thing up or you want me to talk, give you what I got?” After a pause, she said, “Okay, this is what I got. First, your friend Myers, this one’s easy, one phone call and I had what I needed two minutes after you hung up. Your buddy paid off a big-time gambling debt last week and it’s a good thing, too, because the bookie he owed it to, the guy’s got connections from here to Palermo, and Myers was only a couple a days from walkin’ the streets without no feet on the ends of his legs. Whatever he tapped into looks like a gusher, because he’s layin’ down long green on short odds every day, but he doesn’t show his mug around Pimlico any more, just does business with this bookie, phone calls and money drops. He’s got the scratch but he doesn’t have the smarts, which means he’s the bookie’s pension plan right now.”

  McGuire heard a wispy intake that he recognized as a deep drag on a cigarette, then a long, slow exhalation before Libby’s drone began again.

  “So that’s that, and on the company you were askin’ about, Amherst Electronics, it’s owned by an outfit called TriTech Incorporated, which is what they call a shell. It spreads money around, but it hasn’t been spreadin’ it around with much luck lately, because three of its outfits’ve gone tits-up in the last two years. But there’s this rumour, see, that has somethin’ to do with one of the three families in this TriTech Company. This one lives in the Caymans where, like you already know, you can slide the odd boxcar-load of cash in and out, and there’s no questions asked. Anyway, I got three names for this TriTech thing, so you might want to scribble ’em down. One’s named Stoller, he’s the guy lives in the Caymans, and he’s got a rap sheet for fraud. Got a mouth looser’n panties on a bean pole. Found somebody on the street who knows him. Stoller used to be a fifty-buck-a-week punk in Southie. Now he’s a million-a-year punk in the Caymans, frontin’ other people and gettin’ paid not to talk about it. But punks talk, McGuire, you know that, and Stoller’s talked to some people he shouldn’t, about some things he shouldn’t. Guy still smells like cold piss and warm beer.

  “He’s got partners up here, and they don’t smell of nothin’ except old money and maybe Chanel. One a them’s named van der Kramer and the other’s De Coursey, that’s a big D, small e, big C and course, with a y on the end, okay? They both got Beacon Hill addresses, the van der Kramers and De Courseys, when they’re in town, which probably isn’t a hell of a lot, because they also got places in Palm Beach and Kennebunkport and Squaw Valley, and for all I know on the moon, so there you are.”

  Another wispy inhalation and this time there was a longer pause before she spoke, her voice coloured a little from the smoke that was escaping her lungs with the words.

  “Now I gotta tell you, McGuire, don’t hold out a lotta hope for this Schaeffer fella, the guy with the kids, ’cause he’s been gone two years and all I know is he’s west, Arizona or someplace where the air’s dry. You know that if there’s nothin’ on a record somewhere, or the guy isn’t doin’ deals here and there,
that he’s tough to find, and besides I can’t do a hell of a lot with somebody dumb enough to go to Arizona to live, either in the suburbs or in the desert, but then what the hell’s the difference in Arizona, right? Either way you’re just cuttin’ cactus, or whatever there is to do out there. So that’s a blank, McGuire, but it’s okay, I’m not chargin’ you for that, and the Myers thing is free, because you already paid me and it was easy. Maybe you owe me a hundred on the Amherst deal, okay? So you keep your hair curly and your shoes shined, and you can come around and see me any time, okay?”

  McGuire smiled as he replaced the receiver. He had written four names, Stoller, van der Kramer, De Coursey, and Schaeffer, on a sheet of paper, and he crossed the last name out.

  He sat staring at the three remaining names while random thoughts formed in his head, ideas muscling their way to the front of his consciousness, until one of them dominated the view. Why not? he asked himself. He rose from his chair and walked through the office area and back up the stairs to the fifteenth floor, where he found the two secretaries for King and Pratt sitting at their desks. One of them, a red-haired woman in her forties, who wore her hair in a modified beehive style, looked up and smiled when he paused in front of her desk.

  “Is there a file on our law staff somewhere that lists where they were educated, what kinds of awards they might have won, what their specialty is, that kind of thing?” McGuire asked her.

  She looked across at the other secretary, a small woman with dark, badly permed hair, who was watching McGuire carefully. “Marie?” the secretary said. “Do you have a copy of that?”

  Marie nodded, opened a drawer in her desk, and withdrew a file folder. “It’s my only copy,” she said, handing it to the red-haired woman.

  “I just need a glance at it.” McGuire walked to her desk and reached for the file, but she began to withdraw it. “Just a quick look,” he said, and this time his hand shot out to seize it from her.