All Our Yesterdays

by Robert B. Parker

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  Conn shook his head.

  “So what I’m wondering,” Conn said, “is where she got so good at something she almost never does.”

  Knocko chewed on his second doughnut.

  “Maybe she was stepping out on the old man, before you come along,” Knocko said.

  Conn drank some coffee and looked out the car window.

  “Maybe.”

  Knocko finished his doughnut and started the car. He let the clutch pedal out and pulled away into the traffic.

  “Anything on that kid got killed in Charlestown?”

  “Dead end,” Conn said. “Only had a couple suspects. They both had alibis. No physical evidence. I got nowhere to go.”

  “Get him next time,” Knocko said. They were driving on Columbus Avenue. “He’ll show up again. Fucking perverts never settle for once.”

  “Yeah.”

  Knocko turned onto Massachusetts Avenue past the Savoy Ballroom. A light rain had started to fall. Knocko slowed the car. The huddle of black men standing outside the Savoy had retreated from the rain into the doorway. They were careful not to look up as Knocko surveyed them. He fed a little gas, shifted up into second, and drove on. At Huntington Avenue, Knocko turned right toward Copley Square. Conn looked blankly across the intersection at Symphony Hall, red brick, ivory columns. They passed Pierce’s in Copley Square, across from the Public Library. Hadley probably shopped there, Conn thought.

  “You ever been in S. S. Pierce?” Conn said.

  “Do I look like a guy eats fucking snails, for Crissake? No, I never been in there. You?”

  “No,” Conn said.

  They idled at the stoplight by Trinity Church.

  “You wanna do me a favor?” Conn said.

  “Sure.”

  “Look into a guy named Thomas J. Winslow,” Conn said. “Rich guy. Lives on Beacon Hill. I’d do it but I don’t want anyone to connect us.”

  Knocko’s face was expressionless, his eyes automatically cataloging the intersection.

  “Whaddya want to know?”

  “Whatever there is,” Conn said.

  “What do I tell people when they ask me why I’m looking?”

  “You do it so they don’t ask.”

  Knocko tilted his hat forward and turned up one edge of his collar. He narrowed his eyes and looked at Conn over the upraised collar.

  “Knocko Kiernan,” he said. “Secret agent.”

  “This is not what you might call line of duty,” Conn said. “Whatever you find out you tell me, then you forget it. This is personal.”

  “He the husband?” Knocko said.

  Conn looked out the rain-streaked side window of the car and didn’t answer.

  1994

  Voice-Over

  “Nineteen forty-six,” I said. “My father was fourteen.”

  “And my father was eighteen, and your grandfather arrested him,” Grace said.

  “Well, actually he didn’t exactly arrest him.”

  “Been better if he had,” Grace said.

  “Been better if Adam didn’t eat the apple,” I said. “If he had arrested him there’d never have been you.”

  “And maybe that wouldn’t have been such a great loss either,” Grace said.

  “To me,” I said.

  “God,” she said, “I hope we can get past this.”

  “This isn’t what’s in our way,” I said. “We were estranged before last fall.”

  “It does not help,” Grace said.

  “It’s part of who we are,” I said. “Help or hurt.”

  “I’m going to make some tea,” she said. “You want some?”

  “Sure,” I said, and followed her into the kitchen and sat on the stool across the counter from her while she moved about in her kitchen (not ours). From this angle I could see, through the living room window, one of the streetlights at the far end of the parking lot. It was blurred by the fat snowflakes and haloed the way light sometimes is in snow. Looked pretty, for a streetlight.

  “I knew Daddy went to school in Switzerland,” Grace said. “I never knew why.”

  She shivered as if she were cold and hugged herself, rubbing her hands along her upper arms.

  “He went with your grandmother,” I said, “in late May 1946 in a first-class compartment on board the Queen Elizabeth. Hadley stayed with him a week near Zurich and returned without him to Boston in the middle of June.”

  “And there wasn’t a big ruckus about the little girl’s death.”

  “A small ruckus,” I said. “But her family wasn’t prominent, and there was no money, and the investigating officer couldn’t find a suspect.”

  “Do you think it bothered Conn,” Grace said, “to turn loose a man who had murdered a child?”

  “His deal included putting the kid where he could do no harm,” I said. “He knew the kid wouldn’t stay in that school forever. Maybe they’d cure the kid before he left. Maybe the kid would outgrow it. Maybe the kid wouldn’t outgrow it. But every Thursday while the kid was in school in Switzerland, Hadley would, ah, rendezvous with my grandfather. And that’s what he knew most of all. Everything else he forgot.”

  “Yes,” Grace said. “Of course.”

  “Conn would make breakfast for Gus while Mellen was at early Mass, which she went to every morning.”

  “A bride of Christ,” Grace said.

  I shrugged.

  “Bride of somebody … and when Gus was in school, Conn would meet Hadley in a hotel. He knew all the house detectives, and a room for a couple of hours was easy to arrange. Hadley liked variety. During the first year, they used the Parker House, the Somerset, the Kenmore, the Lincolnshire, the Manger, the Buckminster, the Copley Plaza, the Ritz, the Lennox, the Statler, the Avery, the Bradford.”

  “But who counts?” Grace said.

  I smiled at her.

  “Always alone,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Never went out together, never saw friends, never planned to marry, or have children, or build a house, or try a new restaurant.”

  “No.”

  “Just fuck for an hour once a week.”

  “Yeah.”

  Grace shook her head.

  “My God,” she said. “What could anyone expect from that, after they’d tried all the new positions?”

  “Your grandmother probably expected to save her child.”

  “Only that?”

  “It’s a big only.”

  “Of course it is,” Grace said. “But you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I do…. I don’t know if there was more. Maybe. Maybe she liked coercion. Maybe she hated herself. Maybe she loved Conn in some disfigured way.”

  “And what did he get?” Grace said.

  “Conn? Pussy, revenge, ownership. Sex and anger get sort of tangled up. Especially in men.”

  “Which Sheridan are we talking about now?” Grace said.

  “All of us.”

  1947

  Conn

  In March, on the anniversary of her death, there was a memorial Mass for Maureen Burns. Conn attended, stood in the back of the huge, half-empty church, listening to the echoing Latin ritual. He did not genuflect when he entered. He made no move to kneel during the Mass.

  Catholic churches always felt the same, and sounded the same, and smelled the same, to Conn. He thought of his childhood. His childhood, before Hadley, seemed foolish to him, and fraudulent. He thought about his son. Too bad, he thought. I could have been a hell of a father. His life, when it did not discomfort him, seemed more like someone else’s. Only the Thursday afternoons with Hadley seemed his life, what the rest of him did the rest of the time seemed apart from him. If I can keep Mellen from fucking him up beyond hope, maybe that would be something. The priest continued his singsong in a language Conn had never understood. I probably can’t…. I can try…. I owe him something. The priest explained in English that the innocent martyrdom of little Maureen Burns was a signification
of redemption. Conn didn’t listen. Unfortunately, I owe him more than I’ve got, Conn thought.

  When the Mass ended he left the church. He did not touch the holy water. He did not bless himself.

  Conn

  On a clear evening in October, Conn sat with Knocko at a back table in Steuben’s Restaurant on Boylston Street, near Tremont, eating bratwurst and drinking German beer.

  “Thomas J. Winslow, Sr.,” Knocko said.

  “Took you long enough.”

  “You wanted it quiet, right?”

  Conn smiled and nodded. He had not mentioned his request for information since he’d asked for it more than a year ago.

  “Okay then,” Knocko said. “There’s a Thomas Winslow, Jr., nineteen years old, goes to school in Switzerland. I figured senior was the one you were interested in.”

  Conn nodded. The German beer was dark and more bitter than he liked.

  “Born in Boston, May 21, 1884, which makes him sixty-three, now. Married Hadley Rogerson in 1918. He was thirty-six, she was eighteen. One child, the aforesaid, Junior.”

  Knocko picked up a fat white bratwurst in his fingers and wiped it in some brown-flecked yellow mustard and bit off a third of it. He chewed slowly. Then he put down the bratwurst and took a bite of rye bread and chewed it and drank some of the dark heavy beer, and wiped his fingers and mouth carefully with his napkin.

  Conn smiled.

  “You’re so fastidious, Knocko.”

  “Fucking A,” Knocko said. “Winslow comes from old Yankee money. Worked in the family bank in Boston until he got married—Suffolk Savings and Loan. Then in 1920 he was over there with you—Dublin, Ireland, running some kind of soap factory that Suffolk foreclosed on. Went over there with his wife, right after he married her. Some sort of a honeymoon, I guess.” Knocko’s face was without expression. “Combine business and pleasure.”

  Conn sipped the dark beer.

  “They come back in 1922. Probably to get away from the troubles. And they been here ever since. He took over the bank in 1941. Bank’s very successful. They were conservative before the crash, Winslow’s got a bundle.”

  Knocko ate some more bratwurst.

  “What else?” Conn said.

  “There’s gotta be something else?”

  “How long you been a cop, Knocko? There’s always something else.”

  “Well,” Knocko said, “those are the facts. The rest is hearsay.”

  “I got nothing against hearsay.”

  “The kid has been bothersome, I hear. Can’t put a finger on it. Never been arrested. But he went to a series of private schools, the kinds of schools where they send problem kids. Left Harvard after his freshman year.”

  “Know what his problem is?” Conn said.

  Knocko shrugged.

  “Dunno,” he said. He looked at Conn silently for a moment. His face was empty. “Winslow has problems with his wife.”

  Conn waited, both hands holding the half-drunk stein of dark beer. His face was as blank as Knocko’s.

  “Like what?” he said.

  “Like she fucks around,” Knocko said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Often.”

  “Un-huh.”

  “Know a guy,” Knocko said, “used to work with me, got fired for fucking up a homicide case in Allston. Runs a big private agency now, in town. ’Bout twenty times richer than we are.”

  “Sherman Lane,” Conn said.

  “Right,” Knocko said. “Dumb fucker, but he talks good. Anyway, maybe fifteen years ago, one of Winslow’s lawyers comes to Sherm, asks him to keep tabs on the Missus, very confidential.”

  “And?”

  “And”—Knocko shrugged, and spread his hands—“she was sleeping with a lot of guys. Once, twice a week. Different guys.”

  Knocko emptied his beer stein and waved it at a waiter.

  “Hey, Heinie,” Knocko said. “I need another beer.”

  “And?” Conn said.

  “And nothing,” Knocko said. “Sherm got paid, never heard nothing more. She and Winslow are still together.”

  “Maybe she stopped,” Conn said.

  “Maybe,” Knocko said. “Or maybe he decided it wasn’t worth the publicity or maybe she would have taken him for too much dough. Or maybe he don’t give a shit, long as he gets his.”

  “Or maybe he loved her,” Conn said, “and couldn’t give her up.”

  “Sure,” Knocko said. “Maybe that.”

  Conn

  That October the Brooklyn Dodgers played the New York Yankees in the World Series. As Conn walked on Boylston Street, there were people gathered in front of a store window watching the game on television. The game was on the radio in the ornate lobby of the Copley Plaza Hotel. The announcer was Red Barber. Bill Bevens, the Yankee pitcher, had a no-hitter in the sixth inning.

  Hadley came in wearing a blue-and-white polka-dot dress, and a wide-brimmed blue hat. The dress had a wide white belt. The hat had a wide white hatband. Conn watched her cross the lobby toward him. She always walks into a place like visiting royalty.

  Their hotel room was in the front, facing St. James Avenue, overlooking Copley Square, with Boylston Street beyond, and Trinity Church to the right. As soon as she entered the room, Hadley took off the white belt and began to unbutton her dress.

  “Take a minute,” Conn said. “Maybe we could have a drink together. Talk a little.”

  Hadley stopped, with the top two buttons of her dress unbuttoned. She smiled an odd half-smile.

  “What would you like to talk about?” Hadley said.

  “You, me, the Hit Parade, us, the Russians, romance, the World Series, love.”

  Her odd half smile became fixed.

  “I’m required to talk too?” she said as if to herself.

  He moved to the table and made them drinks. She took hers, still standing, and drank some.

  “It just seemed to be getting too wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am,” Conn said.

  “Oh?”

  “Come to the hotel, undress, do it, get dressed, go home. Not much of a relationship,” Conn said.

  “A relationship?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Isn’t fucking enough?”

  Conn felt again the feeling he’d had the first time, in the Parker House, as if he were about to step blindly off a cliff. He took a breath and stepped.

  “Making love might be nice?”

  “What’s the difference?” Hadley said.

  Conn shook his head. She stared at him and drank from her glass.

  “You want me to love you?” she said.

  “Might be nice,” Conn said.

  She drank again. They were never together long enough for Conn to be sure, but he always suspected that she drank too much when she got the chance.

  “Well, of course, I do,” Hadley said. “I always have.”

  Conn was watching her.

  “Even all those years with Thomas Winslow.”

  “Yes,” Hadley said. She moved closer to him. “All those years, I remembered, and I was sorry about Dublin, but … I didn’t know where you were. You might have been dead.”

  “Yeah,” Conn said. “I might have been.”

  “Oh, Conn, damn you, we’ve been all through this. Life has played with us. But we’re together again. Why not take what we can?”

  “And there was no one else, all that time,” Conn said. “Just Hubby and me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Faithful to your husband. Loyal to my memory.”

  She raised her glass to drink. It was empty. She handed it to Conn.

  “What’s wrong?” Hadley said. “Why are you talking to me like this?”

  Conn mixed her a fresh drink.

  “There’s got to be more than you lie down and I jump on top of you.”

  “We do a little more than that,” Hadley said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, Conn, I don’t.” Hadley took her glass from him and drank. “What the hell do you me
an?”

  Conn walked to the window and stared out it. Copley Square was out there, but he didn’t see it. He didn’t see anything.

  “My information is you have regularly cheated on your husband since you’ve been married.”

  Behind him was silence. Conn didn’t turn around. He waited, his sightless gaze fixed on the bright window. He heard the ice click in her glass, heard her swallow. Finally she spoke.

  “Where would you get such information?”

  “I’m a cop,” Conn said. “I find stuff out.”

  “And you believe it?”

  “It’s good information.”

  He heard the ice click again. He turned slowly.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” Conn said.

  She finished her second drink, and took a big breath.

  “Would it have helped anything if I’d told you?”

  “It might have.”

  He mixed her a drink. And one for himself.

  “Do you feel better knowing?”

  “No.”

  Hadley smiled faintly and shrugged.

  “What happened to ‘There could never be anyone after you’?” Conn said.

  “It was what you wanted to hear,” Hadley said. She drank some of her new drink.

  “And that’s what you do, tell me what you think I want to hear?”

  “I told you something you didn’t want to hear,” Hadley said, “by the canal, in Dublin, twenty-seven years ago.”

  “At least it was the truth, Hadley.”

  “And you wouldn’t hear it,” Hadley said.

  “No,” Conn said softly, “I wouldn’t.”

  “I’m not a whole woman, Conn. I love my son. But I don’t think I can ever love anyone the way you mean. I came as close as I could get with you in Dublin.”

  “Not close enough,” Conn said.

  “I know. But as close as I could. I need security, Conn. Tom provides that.”

  “But that’s all?”

  “No. Tom and I have a perfectly normal sex life.”

  “You lied about that too.”

  “I thought you’d like to hear it.”

  “And you need more than a perfectly normal sex life.”

  “Yes,” Hadley said. “Very badly.”

  “So you sleep around.”

  “Often.”