Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  Joe watched the oncoming traffic in his sideview mirror and waited. He didn’t think he’d missed her. Although she drove a sports car, she wasn’t a fast driver. Nor was Lorraine the kind of woman to go directly home. She was always stopping for coffee or to shoe-shop or to buy some flowers for the house. Joe couldn’t remember a time when Lorraine came back to the house empty-handed. She was always carrying something in with her that she didn’t have on the way out. He figured it was one of the ways she coped with growing up poor. He found himself wishing he’d found a better way to deal with his own rotten childhood.

  Just as he began to worry that this was the one time she would make an exception, Joe spotted Lorraine’s black Corvette Grand Sport turning onto the block and heading his way. He got out of his GTO only when there was no chance she could back up to avoid him. He stood in the middle of the street, waving his palms at the pavement for her to slow down. When she came to a stop, he walked around to her window. But Lorraine wasn’t happy about being ambushed this way and refused to roll down her darkly tinted window. He rapped his knuckles on the glass until she did.

  “All right, all right!” she said, relenting. “What the fuck do you want?”

  “To save your life.”

  “Get outta here!” She hit the switch to roll up the window.

  “I know about you and Vic,” he said, plenty loud enough for her to hear.

  The window stopped going up, then came down halfway.

  She put on a puzzled face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t you, now?”

  Joe pulled his cell phone from his pocket, scrolled to what he was looking for, tapped the screen, and turned it to face Lorraine. She watched herself coming out the front door of Vic’s hotel, hesitating, handing the valet her parking stub.

  She shoved the phone back at Breen. “Enough, enough. Mike had you follow me?” Her face was calm. Her voice was brittle and thick with fear.

  “Was Vic I was keeping an eye on, not you.”

  “That video is bullshit. It doesn’t prove anything.”

  Joe shook his head. “Proves you’re a liar. How’s your old, feeble aunt in Lowell doing?”

  “Vic called when I was heading to Lowell. He asked me to come visit. He was sick. His wife left him and he needed a friend.”

  “Easily enough checked out with phone records,” he said. “But I don’t think you’ll want to push back too hard on that, Lorraine. I’ve talked to the staff at the hotel. They described you as if they had known you their whole lives. And apparently you’ve got quite the singing voice when you’re properly inspired.”

  She sagged in her seat. “Okay, what do you want?”

  “For you to follow me. We can’t talk out here in the street much longer.”

  Twenty minutes later they were seated on a bench by the Frog Pond in Boston Common. Both of them feeling awkward as could be.

  “So,” she said, “how much do you want? I’ve got my own money that Mike’s given me to—”

  “Keep it. I’ve money enough.”

  “Then what? If you tell Mike, he’ll kill me. He’ll kill Vic.”

  “Maybe he would. I’m not at all sure. Was a time not long ago I would have done it with a smile on my face. For most of my life there were scarcely two people I disliked more than you two.”

  Lorraine said, “Something’s changed?”

  “It has.”

  “What?”

  “That’s my business alone, Lorraine. Be glad we’re having this talk instead of me having it with Mike.”

  “Okay, Joe.”

  “Vic’s going to take a runner, isn’t he?”

  The surprised look on Lorraine’s face was answer enough.

  She said, “How did you know?”

  “I don’t have use for the man, but he was always sharp. He could read the writing on the wall. Good athletes like Vic have the knack of slowing the world down and seeing what’s coming around the bend.”

  “You mean Mike was going to—”

  “No need for you to be concerned with what Mike was or wasn’t going to do,” Joe said. “What you need to do is to tell me what he told you. The truth.”

  She didn’t answer, clamping her lips tightly shut.

  Joe didn’t figure she would be eager to give Vic up, so he let her have a moment of bravery before explaining the facts of life.

  “The choice is yours, Lorraine. I’ve got to tell Mike something. Either I tell him about the both of you or of Vic. Odds are Vic’s already gone, so it’s unlikely we’d be able to get to him now in any case. But if you don’t give him up to me, I’ll give you up to Mike. I’ll have no choice. I’m saving your life here, but not at the cost of me own. Things between us have not changed that much.”

  “But how will you explain to Mike how you know about Vic leaving?” she said.

  “You let that be my worry. Just know that if you tell me the truth now, you’ll be safe. Mike will never hear a word of what I know of you and Vic,” Joe said, feeling the grass beneath the bench for a pebble to toss in the pond.

  “How can I be sure you won’t ever use the video against me?”

  He found a few pebbles between the blades of grass. He clicked them together, shaking them in his fist.

  He said, “You have my word.”

  Lorraine wasn’t buying. “What’s your word worth.”

  “To anyone but Mike, not much. Like I say, things have changed.” He lobbed a smooth pebble into the pond and watched the ripples. “The choice is yours.” He threw in a second pebble so that another set of ripples echoed along the surface.

  “He’s going down to Mexico and then to Belize. He said he would send for me when he was settled.”

  Joe Breen turned to Lorraine and gave her the familiar cold stare many of his victims had seen before dying. “Is that the truth?”

  Crying now, she said, “I don’t know if it’s the truth. I wanted it to be. But it is what he told me. I swear on my mother’s life.”

  Joe scrolled down to the video of Lorraine once again, he tapped the screen until the option menu came up, and handed her the phone.

  “All you need do is tap erase.”

  She didn’t hesitate, then handed him back the phone.

  “Go home to Mike, Lorraine, and don’t say a word of any of this. Not of Vic and not of our talk. Not ever.”

  She stood and looked down at the man who just spared her, the man she had spent most of her life hating.

  “Why, Joe?” she said, confusion and curiosity compelling her to ask.

  Thinking of Moira and Martina Penworth, he tossed a third pebble in the pond and ignored Lorraine’s question. It wasn’t important for her to know the answer. It was only important for him to know.

  67

  Jesse was seated at the head of a conference table. Connor Cavanaugh was seated to his immediate right, and Warren Stroby, the hotel’s assistant manager, was to his immediate left. Also seated at the table were Rosa the housekeeper; her translator, Maricela; Miguel the waiter; and Dave Stockton, the doorman. They’d been there for almost an hour and had gone over their stories three or four times. Of course, only Stroby, Cavanaugh, and Stockton had told the full truth. The others weighed the truth against losing their jobs. Taking money to divulge guest information wasn’t exactly encouraged by management.

  “Chief Stone, do you mind if I ask you a question?” Stroby said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’m not a cop, but this all seems pretty straightforward to me. We’ve been here going over this again and again.”

  Jesse said, “You mentioned a question. Is there one in there?”

  “Sorry.” Stroby bowed his head. “To what end are we repeating ourselves?”

  “Because I’m looking for something.”

  “What
?” Stroby said.

  “If I knew, I’d tell you. Part of police work is teasing information out of people. Often it’s information they don’t know they have. There are times it’s information we don’t even know we’re looking for. That’s what we’re doing here.”

  Stroby didn’t seem any more pleased than he was when he broached the subject.

  “I’m sorry, Chief, but I can’t afford to have all these employees away from their stations any longer. I’ll have to ask you to let these folks return to their duties.”

  Jesse wanted to argue the point, but he knew the assistant manager was right. This wasn’t a homicide investigation. He couldn’t justify keeping all these people here indefinitely because he had a hunch. It wasn’t even a hunch. It was more of a feeling, a feeling that all the things that had happened in Paradise lately were somehow connected.

  “Okay, I’m going to speak to each one of you individually for a few minutes.” Jesse spoke slowly so that Maricela could relay the information to Rosa. “After I’m done speaking to you, you can head back to your jobs.”

  Stroby still wasn’t pleased, but he knew it was the best he was going to do.

  About a half-hour later, Jesse still hadn’t found what he was looking for. What he had found out from the doorman was that Vic Prado had left the hotel in a Paradise Taxi driven by a guy named Al Gleason. The last two people left in the conference room were Jesse and Connor Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh looked the part of a linebacker gone slightly to seed. He hadn’t been very talkative in front of the others. It wasn’t hard to figure. Ex-jocks, especially tough guys like Cavanaugh, don’t respond well to getting taken down in public. Jesse knew the feeling, so he came at Cavanaugh sideways.

  “Heard you played ball with Luther Simpson,” Jesse said. “Suit’s a good man.”

  “Yep. We had a helluva high school team. Luther was tougher than he looked. If he wanted to work harder at it, I bet he could’ve made a pretty decent D-two program.”

  “Don’t have to tell me. He’s one of my best men. Rumor is you played for the Pats.”

  Cavanaugh’s chest puffed out a little, his back straightened. He rode higher in his chair.

  “Made it all the way through training camp to last cut,” he said, suddenly very animated. “I got some tape of me from a nationally televised game against the Chargers. Made three special teams tackles. One . . . bang!” He punched his right fist into his left palm. “Took the punt returner five minutes to get up, I hit him so hard. After I got cut and no one picked me up, I went to one of those indie police academies down in the Carolinas and got my certification. I did some small-town policing for a few years and wound up back here.”

  “So, Connor, this asshole that sucker-punched you . . . can you tell me anything about him that you haven’t already told me or the others haven’t said?”

  Unlike earlier, when the security man quickly blurted out one-word answers, he quietly considered Jesse’s question.

  Then he said, “I don’t know if this means anything . . . I mean, it’s kind of stupid.”

  “Let me worry about if it’s stupid or not.”

  “The guy that coldcocked me is a big Celtics fan.”

  “Not exactly shocking around these parts,” Jesse said.

  Cavanaugh flushed red. “See, I told you it was stupid.”

  “No. No. How do you know he’s a Celtics fan?” Jesse checked his notes and Suit’s preliminary report. “Says here the guy that got you in the throat was wearing a black leather jacket over faded Levi’s. So how do you know he was a—”

  “Sneakers.”

  Jesse said, “What about his sneakers?”

  “Celtic green with white stripes.”

  “Stripes?”

  “Yeah,” Cavanaugh said. “Three stripes. They were Adidas b-ball high-tops, old school–style.”

  Jesse had just found what he didn’t know he was looking for. He sat in stunned silence as he went over the crime scene report of Martina Penworth’s murder in his head.

  “Connor, this is going to sound like a dumb question, but please try to concentrate. Only answer it if you’re sure. No guessing, okay?”

  “Sure, Chief.”

  “This Celtic fan, he have big feet or little feet?”

  Cavanaugh didn’t have to think about it. “Big, size twelve or thirteen.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  Connor Cavanaugh smiled. “Remember Mr. P’s Shoes on Skiff Street off Main, closed a few years ago?”

  “Sure,” Jesse said.

  “Mr. P is my dad. Him and Mom retired to Sarasota. I worked in the store since I was a kid and all through college, too. I tell you he was a size twelve or thirteen, you can take it to the bank.”

  Jesse excused himself, got out his cell phone, and punched in Molly’s number.

  “I think we might finally have something on the Penworth homicide. I think the guy that attacked Connor Cavanaugh at the hotel today might be our man. Use the description in Suit’s report.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He wears size-twelve or -thirteen Celtic green Adidas basketball shoes just like the imprint forensics found at the Salter house. Call it in to Healy. I’m going to have Cavanaugh come down to look at mug shots.”

  “Which database?”

  “All of them, but start him off with the Mass Department of Corrections and Boston.”

  “Connor will be here for a week, Jesse.”

  “Look, the guy we’re looking for is Caucasian, blue-eyed, six-three, with brown hair, in his late thirties or early forties. That’s got to eliminate a lot of candidates.”

  “This state’s second-biggest crop is tough white boys.”

  “What can I say, Crane? Make a big pot of coffee and get a comfortable chair ready for him. We don’t have much choice at this point.”

  He clicked off.

  Jesse found Connor Cavanaugh again. “You have a passkey?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Come on. I need a favor.”

  They found their way to the elevator. Jesse pressed the button for the sixth floor.

  68

  Cavanaugh wasn’t pleased about having to go down to the station to look at mug shots after his shift. He was even less pleased about letting Jesse into Vic Prado’s room even if Jesse was police chief. He had tried unsuccessfully to convince Jesse to get a warrant. Jesse wasn’t completely unsympathetic, but he sensed he didn’t have time to do things by the book. He suggested Cavanaugh simply give him the passkey.

  “I’ll let myself in,” Jesse said. “This way, you’re protected.”

  “Thanks, Chief, but I’d feel better if I was with you. Besides, we got cameras in every hallway. You’ll be on video going in and out of the room with a key that’ll get traced back to me no matter what.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Cavanaugh needn’t have worried. The bed was newly made, the floors vacuumed, the towels fresh—some still warm. All they found in Vic’s room was a few days’ worth of Vic’s clothes, a designer suitcase, some jewelry—including a World Series ring—and toiletries. Jesse held the World Series ring in his hand, slipped it on his ring finger. He had seen them on TV, met some coaches and guys in the minors who had them, but he’d never actually tried one on. Jesse lost himself for a moment, first rushing on fantasy, then crashing on the reality that but for a stupid exhibition game in Pueblo, he might have had one of these rings of his own. He couldn’t imagine anyone ever walking away from a World Series ring as if it were a plastic toy from a Cracker Jack box. Yet Jesse sensed his old double-play partner was gone with the wind. He turned to Connor Cavanaugh.

  Jesse said, “You’ve got video on all the movements in the hallway?”

  “Lobby, bar, valet parking lot . . . elevators, too. You’d be amazed at what some guests get up to in the elevators
.” Cavanaugh winked at Jesse.

  “I was a cop in L.A. for ten years. Trust me, I wouldn’t be amazed.”

  “I guess not.”

  “You mind me having a look at your video from today?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  They were down in the bowels of the hotel in a dank, windowless room about as welcoming as a bed of nails. The concrete-block walls were painted pistachio green. Two fluorescent light fixtures hung from the ceiling, one of the tubes displaying an irregular tic. There was a long metal table and a taped-up office chair. In contrast to the setting, there was a slick-looking bank of black-and-white monitors covering the entire wall directly before the table. Each monitor had a plastic black-and-white plaque at its base that indicated the area covered by the camera feeding that particular monitor. On the table itself was the computer that controlled the system. The odor of burnt coffee cut against the earthy mildew scent of the place. Jesse turned, noticing a coffeemaker on a beat-up hotel nightstand. The orange warming plate light was lit, but the liquid in the pot was black and thick as caulk.

  “Help yourself,” Cavanaugh said.

  “No, thanks. I’ve had enough of that kind of coffee.”

  “We put in some long hours down here.”

  Jesse turned back to the monitors. “Pretty sophisticated.”

  “My idea. Before I got here, they used to have an old videotape system without much coverage. Now we cover almost everything. All the feeds are time- and date-stamped and compressed. It’s digital, so we can access individual monitors or any combination if we need to. We can speed right through sections without having to slog through hours of tape.”

  “Any video on the guy with the green sneakers?”

  Cavanaugh shrugged. “Not anything worth looking at. He didn’t walk through the hotel. He was either very smart or very lucky.”