The Union Oyster House is down near Haymarket Square. It’s more than a hundred years old, and it has managed to retain its somewhat down-at-the-heels mystique, which tourists and natives alike continue to find charming. The narrow warren of burnished wood-paneled rooms, the uneven plank floors, and the general aura of earthy good nature are features that, I’m certain, the management nurtures.
I like the food. The seafood is always fresh, well prepared, and priced right. And I confess, I like the ambience, too.
Mickey and I inquired after each other’s health and sex lives. She was a good deal more forthcoming than I on both subjects. When I finished my drink, I said, “Want to eat?”
She nodded, so we found the hostess, who led us upstairs into one of the dining rooms. We ordered more drinks from the waitress. After she left, I said, “What’d you find?”
“Get right down to business, eh, Counselor?”
“It’s important to me, Mickey.”
She nodded. “I suppose it is. Okay. You want to know about Wayne Churchill. Sorry to report, I didn’t learn who killed him. Man in his business, of course, was bound to have enemies. I oughta know. Unfortunately, so far none of them has stepped forward to take credit for it. He had a girlfriend—”
“Gretchen Warde.”
“Right.” She nodded. “The one who found his body. She appears to be the cops’ number one suspect.”
“Where’s that put me?”
“Number two.”
“What’s supposed to be the girl’s motive?”
Mickey shrugged. “The usual, I suppose. Jealousy, whatnot. Rumors I hear are that there were probably other women.”
“Rumors?”
“You know. Things people say. Nothing you can print. I also hear the cops found some coke in his apartment. The man evidently was your average yuppie cokehead. They’re keeping that out of the papers.”
“But you heard it.”
She grinned.
“Isn’t that significant?”
Mickey rolled her eyes. “This day and age, Brady, it’d be more significant if they didn’t find that little Baggie with white stuff in it.”
I sighed. “I guess I’m naive.”
“You said it, pal.”
I shook my head. “And you found out all this overnight?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“How?”
“It’s my business to know how to find out stuff like that.”
Our waitress arrived with our drinks. “May I take your order?” she said.
Mickey ordered the scrod. I settled for a big bowl of lobster stew and a tossed salad.
When the waitress left, I said, “So far you haven’t really helped me.”
“Eliminating possibilities helps, doesn’t it?”
“I guess it does. Why do you think they’re keeping the drug angle out of the papers?”
“Usually it means they’ve got their eye on somebody and don’t want to alert them. It could also be stupidity. With cops you never know.”
I nodded. I hadn’t figured out Sylvestro and Finnigan yet. I was reluctant to consider them stupid. “Was there anything else?” I said.
She smiled. “Of course there’s something else. There always is, isn’t there?”
I shrugged.
“Before he came to Boston, Wayne Churchill was anchorman for the evening news on Channel Eleven in Cleveland. Very popular there. Young, photogenic, sincere, with a history of being a solid reporter. He won a couple awards, even.”
“I read that in the paper, Mickey.”
“Sure. Then he came to Channel Eight here in Boston as a news reporter.”
“Right.”
“Well, that struck me a little funny.”
“Why?”
“Think about it. Why would a guy with the best job on television give it up to go back to wearing out shoe leather?”
“Obviously you’re going to tell me,” I said.
“Eventually,” she said. “Anyhow, that’s what struck me. Okay, so Boston is a better market than Cleveland.”
“By a long shot.”
“Not only that, but Channel Eight doubled his Cleveland salary. Not bad, moving from anchorman to reporter. See, Brady, Channel Eight’s in very dire straits. Competition’s tough in Beantown. So they decided to take this flier on Churchill. Gave him this huge salary, plenty of incentives, expecting him to do for them what he’d done in his previous jobs.”
“Which is what?”
“Get dirt. Channel Eight’s committed itself to becoming the tabloid of television. Sex, violence, scandal. Tell the stories the more responsible stations wouldn’t touch. Baby born with a wooden leg, Elvis spotted in drag in a Vegas nightclub, Florida woman impregnated by green two-headed alien.”
“And this is what Churchill did?”
“The political stuff. What I hear, Cleveland was happy to let him go. Oh, he was zealous as hell. Had a blockbuster for them. Corruption in the mayor’s office. Churchill had it figured the mayor himself was in on it. He broke the story before he got corroboration. Turned out he was wrong. Tried like hell to back and fill, only got in deeper. The mayor threatened him and the station with a lawsuit. He retracted on the air. As I hear it, they were delighted to let him out of his contract to come to Boston.”
“Well, I didn’t even recognize him when I saw him.”
“He’s been a grave disappointment. This guy Rodney Dennis—he’s the station manager over there—”
“I’ve talked to him,” I said. “He came up with my name.”
“Oh-oh,” she said.
“I didn’t tell him anything.”
“They’re not all that responsible at Channel Eight, Brady. Little lawsuit, they might be willing to buy the publicity. You be careful.”
“I’m trying,” I said glumly.
“Anyhow,” said Mickey, “Rodney Dennis went way out to the end of a thin limb, hiring Churchill. I understand Dennis’s job’s in jeopardy. Largely because they were stuck with this huge contract and Churchill hadn’t come up with anything for them and the station’s slowly going down the ratings tubes.”
“No babies with wooden legs.”
“No scandals, Brady. Your political equivalent.” She smiled at me. “Funny thing here is, Wayne Churchill’s murder is the best story they’ve had in a long time. You can expect them to milk it dry. And they’ve managed to divest themselves of a dead-weight reporter and a monster salary at the same time.”
“Food for thought,” I mused.
She looked up. Our waitress had arrived. “Better yet,” said Mickey, “food for our bodies.”
The waitress placed our salads in front of us. We munched them in silence. When I was done, I lit a cigarette and said, “This is interesting, Mickey. But I’m not sure how it helps.”
She reached across the table and patted my cheek. “Think about it.”
The waitress came and took away our salad bowls. In a minute she was back with Mickey’s scrod and my stew. Mickey didn’t like to talk while she ate. She ate fast and enthusiastically. She finished her vegetables, even. So I slurped the rich stew and waited for her. And thought about it.
When we finished eating, I said, “I’ve been thinking about it.”
She wiped her mouth on her napkin, sipped her water, and said, “And?”
“Why don’t you tell me what I should’ve been thinking.”
“Okay,” she said. She lit one of her skinny cigars, dragged heavily, and exhaled. “Churchill’s getting pressure from Dennis. Go earn your salary. So he digs. Doesn’t have to be a legitimate story. Or if it is, he doesn’t have to get it all. Something to keep Dennis off his ass. So he does what he’s so good at. He gets something on somebody, and that somebody finds out about it, and whatever it is is so bad that this somebody wastes our intrepid reporter to keep it off the air. How’s that sound?”
I nodded. It’s what I had been thinking. It was possible that Pops had killed Churchill. Except for the abso
lute fact that Pops could not possibly murder a man, it fit together neatly.
Motive. Churchill had learned about Karen Lavoie. Probably, somehow, from the woman herself, what he had called when we met at Skeeters an “impeccable source.” Pops killed him to keep him quiet.
Opportunity? Hell, it was elegant. He set me up. He arranged the meeting with me and Churchill. I was seen publicly with him. I’d even inadvertently cooperated by exchanging angry words with the man. Then Pops could’ve simply followed Churchill home and shot him. I’d be the logical suspect. And, as Pops well knew, I couldn’t implicate him. Client privilege, or at least my own stubbornly rigid interpretation of it, forbade it. Pops knew me well enough to know that I would never violate our confidence.
Mickey was frowning at me. “Brady, you okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I know what you’re thinking. It sounds good. But it’s wrong.”
She shrugged. “You’re in a better position to know that than me, I guess. Anyhow, keep the other thing in mind.”
“What’s that?”
“Haven’t you been listening to me?”
I smiled. “I always listen to you, Mickey.”
“Wayne Churchill dying? Channel Eight’s gained a story and lost an albatross. Only better thing, they break the case before the cops.”
NINE
ONE SUMMER MORNING IN 1973 Pops and I were having a Coke in the clubhouse at Stow Acres, waiting to tee off. The television in the corner showed a man striding across the lawn toward a waiting helicopter. The man mounted the steps, turned, and lifted his arms into the air. He was making vees with his fingers on both hands. His smile, which was intended to convey courage and confidence, looked like a death rictus.
“That rotten sonofabitch,” muttered Pops. “I refused to believe it. All this time, I couldn’t allow myself to consider that he had done those things. Christ! I voted for that prick.”
“Well, I always knew he was a crook,” I said.
Pops turned to me. He wasn’t smiling. “Laugh if you will. But that man had a sacred trust. I can’t tell you how betrayed I feel.”
“Aw, hell. He’s just a man.”
“Bullshit!” Pops shouted the word. The other golfers turned their attention from the television to look at us.
“That’s bullshit,” he repeated to me, his voice lower. “That’s no man. That’s a president. We cannot tolerate anything less than perfection.”
“Come on, Pops. Lighten up. The system works. That’s enough.”
He shook his head. “The system failed. People will never trust lawyers again. Things’ll never be the same. That bastard has taught the cruel lesson of cynicism to every American boy and girl, and I pity us all.”
That was Pops. And as far as I knew, he conducted his life according to the same standards he imposed on presidents. I had never doubted that as an assistant district attorney, and then as a judge, he was carrying out a one-man crusade to restore the faith of the public in lawyers and public officials.
He had a firm, even rigid, concept of justice. He could sometimes be self-righteous. I remembered the fury in his bleeding face that time in New Haven, when I had to pull him off the bully who had been beating up the black teenager. Could Pops kill a man? Perhaps. Could he kill a man to protect his own reputation? I doubted it.
But, I had to admit to myself, it was possible.
I pondered this as I walked back to my office from the Oyster House. It was a long walk, and I paid little attention to the grimy slush that lined the sidewalks, or the dingy gray clouds that hung low over the city, or the grimy, dingy, gray people who hunched along the sidewalks.
I was thinking of Pops.
Once, when we were in New Haven, he and I and Charlie McDevitt were sitting on the rickety wraparound back porch of the run-down Victorian by the water that Charlie and I rented. Our feet were propped up on the railing and we were sipping beer while in the kitchen Gloria and Marilee and Charlie’s date were laughing and drinking wine and steaming a bushel of clams. It was in the fall, I recall. We were wearing sweaters. A breeze was stripping the yellow leaves from the big maple beside the house and spinning them around the yard like miniature tornadoes.
We were discussing the war, which was then still raging in Vietnam. Pops had been there. Charlie and I hadn’t.
“Before I went in, I marched,” Pops said, gazing thoughtfully out over the water. “I sat in and I taught in and I loved in. I hated that war. I thought it was evil. I cast my first ballot for L.B.J. because I thought Goldwater would take us to war.”
“But you enlisted,” said Charlie.
“Damn right I enlisted. I thought it was wrong for ghetto kids and poor people to go over there to die while I went to law school because my old man had enough money to send me there. I couldn’t have lived with that.”
Charlie and I said nothing. We had escaped the lottery. We had not enlisted. And yet it was clear that Pops was not judging us. He only judged himself. And he judged himself rigorously.
“I expected to die over there,” he continued, running his fingers through his thick thatch of prematurely white hair. “I absolutely knew that I was going to be killed. And I feared it, believe me. I was no kind of hero. My abiding thought all the time I was in Nam was that I didn’t want to miss it. My own death, I mean. All around me the boys were injecting heroin into their blood and sucking grass into their lungs and gulping alcohol into their stomachs, and all I could think was they’re going to die, the most important event of their lives, and they’re going to miss it. I wanted to be wearing clean underwear when the truck hit me.”
That was the Pops I knew. If ever a man deserved the word Honorable before his name, it was Chester Y. Popowski.
Until my lunch with Mickey Gillis, I had never doubted it.
I got back to the office a few minutes before three. Julie was at her desk, pecking at her word processor. A man I did not recognize was sitting on the sofa, a magazine spread over his knees. I pegged him for a salesman. He was not a client. Both of them looked up when I shut the door behind me. I hung up my coat. Julie said, “Oh, Brady—”
“Not now,” I said. I went into my office.
I called the courthouse, and the switchboard put me through to Pops’ office. A young man’s voice answered the phone. “The Honorable Chester Popowski’s office,” he said.
“This Robert?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is Brady Coyne. I’m the judge’s lawyer.”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“I must speak to His Honor.”
“I’m sorry, but—”
“When he gets out of court, tell him he must call me immediately. It’s extremely important.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Coyne. The judge isn’t in today.”
“Is he sick?”
“Actually, sir, he’s on vacation.”
“Vacation?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He never mentioned any vacation to me.”
“He flew down this morning. He’s joining his wife for a few days in Florida.”
“Oh,” I said. “Do you have a phone where he can be reached?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. They chartered a boat. I expect him back at the beginning of the week. I’ll have him call you then. Will that be all right?”
“I guess it’ll have to be. Leave him a message to call me instantly when he gets back.”
“Certainly, Mr. Coyne. I’ll do that.”
I hung up and muttered, “Damn!”
Doubt was gnawing at my mind. I wanted Pops to reassure me. I needed answers. Pops had them. And now he was gone, incommunicado. Damn convenient.
With the police and Channel Eight both at my heels, I couldn’t sit around waiting for Pops to decide to come home.
I lit a cigarette and tried to think it out. Churchill had told me he had what he called an “impeccable source.” Since it wasn’t Pops, it had to be Karen Lavoie herself. She was the key.
I guessed that s
he, like I, had read of Pops’ nomination to the federal seat. Still bitter from having been jilted, even after all these years, she saw a chance to get even with her former lover. She knew Wayne Churchill’s reputation. She approached him, told him about herself and Pops. Maybe she lied a little. Exaggerated. Made it sound even juicier than it already was.
Churchill liked her story. Maybe he paid her for it.
Maybe Karen Lavoie changed her mind. Tried to back out of it. And Churchill laughed at her.
Or maybe they were in it all the way together.
Maybe Wayne Churchill and Karen Lavoie were lovers.
Maybe she had even killed him.
Too many maybe’s. I needed some answers.
I found the big Greater Boston telephone directory in the bottom drawer of my desk. I looked up Lavoie. There was nearly a full column of them. No Lavoie, Karen. No Lavoie, K.
I closed the directory. There was no reason to assume Karen Lavoie lived in or around Boston.
I thought about it. Pops had known her. He had known her in several ways. Perhaps Karen had been a defendant who had come before him. Or a witness. It was a long shot. But no longer than finding her by telephoning every Lavoie in the phone book. It was something Zerk could help me with.
My console buzzed. I picked up the phone. “Yes, Julie?”
“I saw your light go off.”
“Okay. What’s up?”
“You came storming in here like a bear.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s a man here to see you.”
“What’s he selling?”
“He’s not selling anything. His name is Rodney Dennis. He’s the station manager at Channel Eight?” Julie made it a question.
“Right,” I said.
“He’d like to talk to you.”
I sighed. “Okay. Send him in.”
He had a high forehead, plastic-rimmed glasses, and a bushy sand-colored mustache. He was short and solidly built. When Julie let him in, he strode to my desk. I stood up and held my hand to him.
“Mr. Dennis,” I said. “You are persistent.”
“Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Coyne.”
I gestured to one of the chairs beside my desk, and he sat down.
“No interview,” I said.
Client Privilege Page 8