by Sydney Bauer
‘Well, the score is even now, my dear, and that alone deserves a toast. To Sara,’ said Nora, raising her glass in congratulations.
‘To Sara.’
‘Come on in, Detective,’ said FBI Washington Field Office Assistant Director Antonio Ramirez, leading Joe Mannix to the couch in his makeshift FBI Boston HQ office. A somewhat uncomfortable looking King was already seated in the chair opposite, and Ramirez seemed intent on standing.
‘Tell us how we can help,’ Ramirez went on. ‘Because that’s what we’re here for – to dispel your fears, ease your concerns, keep you informed.’
Mannix had made a mistake. There was no disguising the sarcasm in Ramirez’s voice and Joe was beginning to regret coming here without calling first.
He had wanted to front King on the absence of the Bible from evidence bag three knowing King, in the very least, would give him some form of straight answer. But he had not figured on Simba’s DC-based boss having set up shop in the local FBI digs. And now he was faced with a dilemma.
‘Thanks, Ramirez,’ said Mannix, forgoing the man’s title. It was an old trick to challenge an opponent’s sense of superiority, and the slight tick in Ramirez’s left eye showed him it had worked.
‘It’s about the evidence forwarded to our office,’ Joe made the split-second decision to push on. He wanted to see how Ramirez reacted to what he was about to say. ‘. . . evidence bag three to be exact. It appears to be . . .’
‘Really, there’s no need to thank us, Detective,’ interrupted Ramirez, moving behind the blue and red striped couch so that Joe would have to crane his neck at an odd angle to maintain eye contact.
Ramirez was playing a power game of his own, thought Joe, and he was not about to let him get the upper hand.
‘We are all for involving the local authorities,’ Ramirez went on. ‘In fact, every now and again, they actually help us crack a case.’
‘As I was saying,’ said Joe, still facing forward, his back to Ramirez, now looking directly at King. ‘Something is missing from evidence bag three, the seventh item on Bradshaw’s bedside table, or more specifically the Presidential Suite copy of the Good News Bible.’
Joe still didn’t turn around but sensed Ramirez’s displeasure as he heard his footfalls, which had been making a steady beat on the navy office-issue carpet, come to an immediate stop.
‘How observant of you,’ said Ramirez. ‘Naïve, but observant.’ And then the footfalls started up again as Ramirez made his way back around to the front of the couch.
‘You see, Detective, the bag was mislabelled. It only ever contained six items. The Bible in question was never bagged because it was never considered part of evidence. The Fairmont’s Good News Bibles are always placed on bedside tables as part of the hotel’s nightly turndown service. So in short, the so-called item number seven wasn’t an item at all. The numbering on the evidence bag was simple human error. No mystery, problem solved.’
Joe looked at Simba who, to his frustration, remained stony faced, and then glanced up at Ramirez before going on.
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Joe. ‘You see, Ramirez, the Bible wasn’t the only inconsistency in your evidence. What about the linear placement of the other items on the bedside table, and the lack of bed cover movement around the victim? I may be just the local “help” but there is no way the Vice President could have overdosed unassisted. I know it, Agent King here knows it, and you know it too.’
Ramirez said nothing, just stood there, staring at him, his image now framed against the backdrop of the draped American flag that stood next to his desk and the sixth floor view of Boston’s busy Government Center beyond.
‘Joe,’ said King at last, the first time he had opened his mouth since this impromptu meeting began. ‘There are things you don’t . . .’
‘It’s all right, Special Agent King,’ interrupted Ramirez. ‘You can tell him. He is part of the team after all.’
‘I . . . ,’ a confused King began.
‘What Agent King was trying to tell you, Detective, was that we agree. We know there was someone else in the room when Bradshaw was killed.’
‘What?’ Joe could not believe what he was hearing.
‘In fact,’ Ramirez went on, ‘all going to plan, I will be flying back to DC first thing tomorrow morning to arrest the man in question.’
‘And who might that be?’ asked Joe, relatively sure he already knew the answer.
‘His physician – Professor Stuart Montgomery. But don’t worry, Detective, I’m sure Agent King will fill you in.’ Ramirez paused then as if to stress he knew about the pair’s friendship. ‘Just so long as you remember who is running this investigation. Who is in charge, so to speak. Who is directing the God-damned fucking show.’ Ramirez was right in front of him now, as if challenging him to respond.
‘A word of warning, Detective,’ Ramirez went on. ‘Overstepping your mark is a dangerous move to make. Any clandestine queries you make could well come back to bite you, especially when it is a case of your word against ours.’
Joe said nothing, just shook his head and then, suddenly, got to his feet so that he was face to face with the dark-eyed agent.
‘You know, Ramirez, we have a saying up here in Boston that you might as well get used to, especially if you’re gonna be taking advantage of our hospitality for some time.’
‘And what is that, Detective?’ asked Ramirez, his breath unusually cool. ‘Some witty revolutionary anecdote no doubt. “No taxation without representation” or the like.’
‘Close,’ said Joe. ‘But this one is a little less poetic. It goes something like this: “Think before you speak, look before you shoot and . . . ”’
‘Oh, I can guess this one,’ interrupted Ramirez, his words dripping with derision. ‘“Wait before you criticise”. Am I right, Detective?’
‘Wrong, Ramirez,’ said Joe, maintaining eye contact as he took a slight step closer to the arrogant FBI Agent. ‘It’s “Be careful who you fuck with”.’
Minutes later, Special Agent Leo King left his office and made for the fire stairs of the FBI’s Boston Field Office at the semi-circular One Center Plaza building. He wanted to catch his detective friend before he managed to hail a cab and head back to Roxbury.
He saw him, at the top of the incline, turning right off Somerset into Beacon. King picked up the pace.
‘Joe. Wait up,’ he called, and Mannix turned, the look on his face saying it all.
‘Forget it, Leo. I’ve heard all I wanted to hear this afternoon – and none of it came from you.’
‘Come on, Joe,’ he was next to him now, shading his face from the early evening sun that crept in between the high rise of a shady Downtown jungle. ‘You’re the one who set the cat amongst the pigeons. Ramirez is an asshole but he’s also very good at his job.’
‘What?’ said Joe. ‘You cannot be serious, Simba. The guy is a prize dickhead with a serious God complex. Believe me, I know the type. Give them a badge and they think they’re invincible.’
‘I think so too, but he was the one who . . . well . . . I have a lot to tell you,’ said King.
‘Oh really? Could have fooled me.’
‘Okay, so I decided to lay low in that meeting, but it’s only because I know Ramirez is on top of this one. He nailed it, Joe. Montgomery is guilty. And we have the evidence to prove it.’
‘Ramirez tell you that?’
‘Ramirez found the proof.’
‘Which is . . . ?’
‘Look,’ said Leo, instinctively looking around for fear of being overheard. ‘Now is not the time or the place. We have to arrest Montgomery first. I’ll call you tomorrow, after it’s done. And then, I promise, you’re in 100 per cent.’
‘Lucky me,’ said Joe, hailing a taxi.
‘Can’t hurt your career,’ said King.
‘Like I said, lucky me.’
‘There’s one other thing,’ said King, just as Mannix hailed a metro cab, which slowed in the one-way traffic on B
eacon to pull up alongside the pair.
‘You better warn your friend. The media are gonna go ape over this one, and like it or not, he’s involved.’
‘What? Who?’
‘Cavanaugh, he used to be married to Montgomery’s wife.’
‘That was years ago. He’s in Boston, she’s in DC.’
‘Since when do little details like time and distance get in the way of a good story? Cavanaugh’s a local identity. He’s easy fodder.’
That night David took Sara out to celebrate her joining the firm. They chose a cosy Italian restaurant in the North End’s famous Hanover Street, not far from the brownstone Sara shared with her best friend, Cindy Alverez.
Ristorante Fiore was known for its authentic Mediterranean cuisine and for a colourful violinist named Roberto who made you believe you were sipping your Barolo on a hillside in Tuscany.
‘You know,’ said Sara, ‘on nights like this you feel like anything is possible. Like right now I’m thinking why don’t you and I drive to Logan and hop a plane for Venice. Have dessert on a gondola and kiss under the Bridge of Sighs.’
‘What’s this? My cynical girlfriend allowing herself to dream? It wasn’t that long ago you’d pull me up for being unrealistic. What was it you once called me, the President of the United States of Idealism.’
‘Amongst other things,’ she smiled. ‘Besides, that was before I got to know you better, and before all that optimism rubbed off on me.’
Sara had been born in Atlanta, Georgia, to a single African-American teenage mother who gave her up for adoption immediately after her birth. Her adoptive parents, Alec and Dorothy Davis, were white, as was her brother Jake, six years her junior and now an economics major at MIT.
She grew up in Cambridge, and while David knew her dentist dad and dental technician mom provided their kids with equal amounts of love and discipline, he also knew that much of Sara’s youth had been played out against a backdrop of uncertainty, a confusion as to where she fit in.
Of course, now that she had found her birth mother – a forty-seven-year-old postal worker named Annie Hobbs who had two boys of her own – David sensed she was also finding her own ‘place’ in the world, a place in which he hoped he would be a permanent fixture.
David on the other hand had grown up in Newark, the middle of three kids in a blue collar, Irish-American clan – his school teacher mom Patty a green-eyed, gentle, fair-haired optimist, and his late father Sean, a dark-haired, dark-eyed container ship worker.
David drew inspiration from them both; his mother’s positive encouragement and his father’s strength and determination – the one comfort in his father’s passing almost six years ago being the knowledge he would always live on in his older brother Sean Jnr who was all dark, gruff and serious.
His sister Lisa was the other extreme, all wind-blown dark hair and bright green eyes and enough energy to light up a city. She had followed David to Boston, studying nursing at BC before taking up a job at Massachusetts General’s busy ER department.
‘A penny for . . .’ said Sara, breaking his train of thought.
‘I was just thinking about Lisa and how she . . . well, you know . . . she’s a good kid.’
‘She is,’ said Sara. ‘You may be the big brother, but I get the feeling she spends a lot of her time looking out for you.’
And she did. In fact it was Lisa who helped him pick up the pieces after Karin had left him all those years ago. She would turn up each night with pizza and sodas and make him greasy breakfasts on the all too frequent morning-afters during his phase of alcohol-induced pain relief. She helped him with all the practical stuff like selling the house in Fenway, and moving him temporarily into her much loved bungalow in Southie. And while part of him suspected she felt ‘responsible’ for introducing him to Karin in the first place, he knew her actions had nothing to do with guilt and everything to do with understanding. After all, when Karin walked out on their marriage, she also walked out on her friendship with Lisa – and neither of them had spoken to her since.
‘David,’ said Sara at last. ‘Are you okay? I mean, you seem a little preoccupied and seriously, if you think my working with you will be too much then I . . .’
‘What?’ he said realising she had misinterpreted his quiet contemplation. ‘No, it’s gonna be great. There is no way it will be too much. In fact . . . ,’ all these thoughts of home and family had finally given David the courage to raise the other issue he wanted to broach tonight. He wanted to ask Sara to move in with him.
‘David,’ she said, reaching across the table, placing her long slender hands on top of his own. ‘I want to ask you something. We’re going to be working together, right? Long hours, weekends at the office . . .’
‘Right,’ said David, knowing where this was going. It was Sara who was thinking the long days at work could be over-exposure. She had no intention of putting up with him 24/7 and who could blame her?
‘And your place is a five-minute walk to the office. So I figure if you get that extra twenty minutes to sleep in, then so should I.’
‘What?’ he said, not believing what he was hearing.
‘I want to move in with you, David, if that’s okay.’ She looked at him then, her pale aqua eyes full of uncertainty, anticipation.
‘Okay?’ he said, a smile of relief spreading across his face. ‘It’s . . . it’s . . .’ He leaned across the table to kiss her only to be interrupted by the ring of his cell.
‘Damn,’ he said, pulling it out of his pocket to check the number. It was Joe Mannix.
‘Hey Joe,’ he said, as he answered and smiled at Sara.
‘Hey. We need to talk,’ said Mannix.
‘What is it?’
‘Not on the phone. I need to see you. Tonight.’
‘Come on, Joe. Sara and I are at dinner, she’s agreed to join the firm and . . .’
‘Oh, that’s great,’ Joe said, at the same time sensing that given what was about to go down in DC, it may not end up being so great after all. ‘Tomorrow then, but it has to be early. Meet me at Long Wharf, 8am.’
‘Long Wharf? Why in the hell would I . . . ? Anyway, I can’t do eight. I have an early meeting with a client and it’ll probably go for . . .’
‘Ten then. No later. I’ll see you there.’ And then Mannix hung up.
David shut off his cell, having no idea what to make of his detective friend’s request. He looked across at Sara and decided now was not the time to dwell on the short but confusing exchange. After all, Sara was moving in with him and the overwhelming happiness somehow made him feel invincible.
15
Washington Memorial Hospital Cardiac Unit medical secretary Coral Kapetas was a very loyal employee and passionately protective of the man she was proud to call ‘boss’. Of course, there were those at the hospital who assumed it was more than that, and in truth, it had been . . . although briefly. Secretly she enjoyed the lingering looks of suspicion, the whispers that asked ‘Are they or aren’t they? Was she or wasn’t she?’ Well, she had been and now she wasn’t, but if asked, she probably would again.
Still, she had understood when the Professor had needed to end their little tryst and admired him for what he referred to as his ‘determination to fight the power of their mutual attraction out of respect for their brilliant working relationship and his desire to keep Coral as a dear, dear friend for life’.
A true gentleman was Stuart Montgomery, and let anyone suggest otherwise. That was probably why these two heinous excuses for public servants had infuriated her so much. These agents with their short hair and manicured nails and egos so huge they thought themselves beyond any semblance of decorum. She hated the dark one, Ramirez, the most, for he was arrogant and abrupt and downright disrespectful. This was the third time in the past month that they had interrupted the Professor during his private patient clinics. On the previous two occasions they had demanded Coral buzz the good Professor in the middle of a consultation, which was bad enough. But this
time they did not even acknowledge her presence, just stormed on in like a pair of hard-nosed militants on a mission.
This could not be good, thought Coral, as Ramirez entered the Professor’s room without knocking, kicking the back of the door to prevent Coral from following, and pulling out his badge as if it gave him the power to intrude on whoever he pleased, whenever he chose to do so.
‘Professor Stuart Ignatius Montgomery,’ she heard Ramirez say as the door eased back on its air-controlled hinges. ‘You are under arrest for the murder of Thomas Wills Bradshaw. You have the right to remain silent . . .’
‘Oh dear,’ said Coral, turning to look at the three stunned patients who had discarded their surprisingly current waiting room magazines for the real life drama occurring before them.
‘Oh dear.’
Joe Mannix was sitting in front of the forty-two-inch TV in their small but comfortable West Roxbury living room watching a re-run of a recent Red Sox victory.
It was the usual morning chaos: bowls of Cheerios, half-drunk glasses of milk, backpacks, baseball bats and uncombed hair.
His three oldest boys – Joe Jnr, Stephen and Gabriel – were attending a week long baseball camp and wanted their dad to watch an old play they were practising, before their mom dragged them out of the house and into the family SUV.
‘Oh man, Ortiz rocks,’ said Joe Jnr, the oldest at twelve, and with a career in baseball set firmly in his sights.
‘Yeah, he rocks,’ repeated Michael, the youngest at five.
‘You don’t even know what “rocks” means, geek,’ accused eight-year-old Gabriel.
‘Yes I do,’ said Michael. ‘It means he’s cool.’
‘Yes it does, Mike,’ said Joe, swallowing a laugh. ‘Leave your brother alone, Gabe, or you can rock all the way to the kitchen to help mom clean up.’
‘Ten minutes, boys,’ called Marie Mannix from the kitchen as if on cue.
Joe heard the phone ring and Marie pick it up.
‘It’s Special Agent King,’ said Marie, poking her head around the living room annexe. Joe looked up at his wife, her dark blonde hair, blue eyes and rich olive skin still glowing with a youthfulness those of Northern Italian descent seemed blessed with.