Flynn

by Mcdonald, Gregory, 1937-2008

  Flynn said, "How do you know us?"

  "I'm a criminologist," Sassie said. "I teach at the Law School. I'm also a consultant for the Boston Police, the State Police, and the New York City Police."

  "I see."

  "In fact," Sassie said, "I've worked you into one of my lectures, Flynn."

  "As an example of what—or shouldn't I ask?"

  "As a man of no known police experience or training, who suddenly appears with a unique rank on a city police department and in a short period achieves one of the most astounding arrest-and-conviction records in history. What's your secret, Flynn?"

  "I listen."

  "I've been through your dossiers several times. There are pages and pages missing."

  "Are there?"

  "Someday will you fill me in on your mysterious past?"

  "Possibly," said Flynn.

  Grover said, "Mrs. Fleming, if we could have a few facts ...?"

  "Of course. What do you want to know?" Abruptly, she sat down, palms flat on her thighs, eyes fixed on a particular section of the rug. "I arrived home at a little past six last night, riding the motorcycle from the train station. I had a glass of milk and some crackers. I packed Charlie's bag for him. Took a shower and changed. At about eight-thirty I drove into town in Charlie's Audi and picked him up at the courthouse. He was waiting on the sidewalk outside. He had had to stay in town while his secretary finished typing his speech."

  "Where was your husband going?" Grover asked.

  "More precisely," said Flynn, "why was he going to London?"

  "Oh," Sassie said. "I should have told you that. Charlie's a federal judge. Was a federal judge. We'd done this book together, on the American penal system. Not just prison reform. The nature of punishment itself. Charlie's terribly bright. I mean, when a person commits a crime against society, what, ideally, should society do with him? Why is prison necessarily an answer?" She looked warily at Flynn. "Under the circumstances, it sounds like I'm pleading my own brief, doesn't it?"

  "Go on," Flynn said.

  "The book was published months ago. In America, it caused not a ripple. Nobody read it in this country. Only the Law Journal reviewed it. In England, the book attracted much notice. Bless the British: They read. Anyway, one or both of us were invited on a ten-day speaking tour by an English law group interested in penology, and we decided Charlie should be the one to go. He was going to speak to the law group, lecture at Oxford, be on one of those television-panel things, you know. Something had been arranged for him in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Dublin."

  "Why did you decide he should be the one to go?" asked Flynn.

  "This is a busy time for me. No one could take over my classes at the University for me. I mean, a teacher does have times during the year to make such trips, and this isn't one of them. Yet this is the time the British law group had everything arranged. Besides that, Charlie needed a break in routine."

  "Do I understand," said Flynn, "you encouraged your husband to take the trip, knowing you were not going with him?"

  "I guess so."

  "And you packed his bag for him?"

  She said, "It looks bad, doesn't it? Obviously I put the dynamite, or the bomb, or whatever into his suitcase."

  "Obviously," said Flynn.

  "Oh, my."

  "Is that an admission of guilt?" asked Grover.

  "The lady made a pleasantry," said Flynn.

  She said, "It wasn't a pleasantry, Inspector."

  "An unpleasantry, then. What did you do after you picked up your husband?"

  "We drove to Pier Four. You can park there, easily. We had a lovely dinner. Baked stuffed lobster. We had a couple of drinks before dinner. We had plenty of time. Plenty of wine. Charlie was in the mood of a schoolboy let off from school. And I think we were both happy our book was getting some attention. Do you understand?"

  "I think so," said Flynn.

  "We were tiddily, Inspector."

  Grover said, "Tiddily?"

  Sassie said, "Even a federal judge gets tiddily."

  "I've often suspected it," said Flynn.

  "We got to the airport sometime after twelve. Charlie checked in, checked his baggage through. Going down the corridor we came across one of those insurance machines. Well, I don't know if you can understand the rest of it."

  "Try me," said Flynn.

  "We had gotten into this teenage moony sort of mood. It had started by my saying I would miss him, and he said he'd miss me more than I missed him, and I said, Oh, no, I'd miss him more than he missed me. It was all rather silly. And then we came across this flight insurance machine. I said, Til show you how much I'm going to miss you,' and paid for a five-thousand-dollar policy. He put on looking hurt, and took out twenty-five thousand dollars on himself. I took out fifty thousand dollars on him. It became competitive. I suppose it had something to do with the fact that we each have our own incomes. It's sort of a standing gag between us. You know, who pays for the petunias and who pays for the daffodils. We always end up with much more than we need of everything. Noisy people were shoving down the corridor behind us. And here we were, quietly playing this silly game in the corner. At this moment, I have no idea how much insurance we took out."

  "Half a million," said Flynn.

  "Half a million dollars?"

  "Five hundred thousand dollars."

  "My God. I didn't even remember we did this crazy thing until I was coming home on the train an hour ago. Oh, my God."

  "Puts you in a difficult spot," said Flynn.

  "That's why I wasn't all that surprised when I saw you at my front door when I got home just now."

  "What time did you leave the airport?"

  "Sometime after one. One-fifteen. One-thirty. Today was to be a workday for me, and Charlie had his mystery novel to read."

  "The Judge read mystery novels?" asked Grover.

  "He was an addict."

  "Them things," said Grover.

  "I came home in the car, had a glass of milk, went to bed. I was a little slow moving this morning. I slept late, gave myself breakfast, gathered up my things, rode the bike to the station, took the train into town. I planned to meet with my twelve o'clock class. I didn't know anything had happened. I said 'Hi' to Jim Burton in the corridor. He looked perplexed, turned around and came after me. He said, 'What are you doing here?' I said, 'Why?' He took me into the lounge and gave me a cup of coffee. I thought I'd had a reality separation. He told me about the air crash. Then he called the nurse over from the day clinic. She sat with me for a while. She didn't give me anything. I had to drive the bike home from the railway station, you see—"

  Her voice faded away.

  She took a tissue from her pocket.

  "Poor old Charlie." She blew her nose. "Such a nice bag of bones."

  Grover flipped his notebook back a few pages.

  "Let's go over this—"

  "Not now, Grover," interrupted Flynn. "Tell me, Mrs. Fleming, do you and your husband have children?"

  "Charlie has a son, by his first wife. Charles Junior. Chicky. He's nearly as old as I am. He's twenty-six. Charlie's a good deal older than I am. His first wife died.

  "Of leukemia." She put the tissue in her pocket. "I'm going to take this," Sassie said. "If Charlie could take widowhood gracefully, I'm just going to have to."

  "Did your husband have any other insurance you know of?" Flynn asked.

  "I don't know. Yes. He had the sort of insurance that pays off your house mortgage if you die. Besides that, I guess he had some insurance as a federal employee. Whatever that would be. Not much. Charlie didn't need insurance. His son was grown up. We both had good incomes. That's why that game we were playing with the insurance machine last night was so stupid. So meaningless."

  "I expect you'll get the policies in the mail," Flynn said. "In a day or two."

  "I'll throw them away," she said.

  Grover said, "Yeah."

  "As far as you know, was your husband in good health, Mrs. Fleming?"
Flynn asked.

  "Yes. Perfect. In fact, he had his annual checkup a month ago. It was his joke that he always had a complete physical exam before doing anything about his income taxes. I saw the reports. He was in splendid condition for a man of fifty-three."

  Flynn wondered if the hand he had found in his backyard that morning could possibly have been the hand of Judge Charles Fleming.

  "Had he been depressed about anything lately?"

  Grover scowled at this wrong question by Flynn.

  "No. He was a little low Sunday, after Chicky left."

  "His son?"

  "Yes. Chicky came out Sunday. They took a walk in the woods together."

  "What was your husband depressed about?"

  "He didn't say."

  "Where does Chicky live?"

  "North side of Beacon Hill. Forster Street. Messy bachelor apartment."

  "What does he do for a living?"

  Her voice had slowed considerably.

  "He's a pharmacist."

  Again, Grover flipped back a few pages in his notebook.

  "Let's go over this," he said firmly. "You encouraged your husband to fly alone to London last night. At six o'clock or thereabouts you came home and packed his suitcase for him. Did he ever open that suitcase?"

  "No."

  "You picked him up at his office, drove him to a restaurant, and got him drunk." Flynn winced. "You drove to the airport?"

  "Yes."

  "You waited at the airport with him until after you saw his luggage had been accepted for being put aboard the airplane."

  "Yes."

  "Then, either by yourself, or, in accordance with the story you told us, as some kind of a game you initiated with your inebriated husband, the Judge, you think you took out five hundred thousand dollars in flight insurance on his life."

  She said, "So I understand."

  "Immediately after doing this, you left him at the airport where he still had an hour or two to wait for his plane."

  "That's right."

  "Then you say you came home, went to bed by yourself—nobody can prove this—and got up this morning and went into town to act all innocent-pie. You didn't listen to the radio, or television, or see a newspaper, or nothing?"

  "No."

  A pointed question was burning in Grover's brain.

  "And your husband was twenty-two years older than you are?"

  "Yes."

  Grover was leaning forward like a goalie who spotted the puck ten feet away.

  "Mrs. Fleming, who's your boyfriend?"

  Her eyes grew wide as she stared at him.

  Color appeared over her cheekbones.

  She said nothing.

  "More to the point," said Flynn, "your being a criminologist, I suspect you know the elements that go into the making of a bomb, and how to put them together?"

  "It's not one of my specialties, Inspector."

  "But you could do it, if you were pressed?"

  "I suppose so."

  "And in your work as a police consultant, you have easy access to the police laboratories where the makings of a bomb probably are available?"

  "Yes. I suppose so." She looked up at him, sharply. "Shall I get my toothbrush?"

  Flynn stood up.

  "No."

  "Inspector," Grover said.

  "What is it now, Grover?"

  "We have a perfectly good arrest here. She had motive, opportunity, method, access to the materials—"

  "I'm sure you're right, Grover."

  Her smile was sardonic. " 'Reluctant' Flynn."

  "Inspector, I'm going to arrest her."

  "We shall have no such firmness on your part, Grover."

  "I am."

  "You are not. You are going to drive me back to the Old Records Building."

  Grover slapped his pen down hard on the cover of his notebook.

  "Why?"

  "Because," said Flynn, "Cocky moved his Bishop. I just figured out what to do about it."

  Ten

  He moved his Knight to King Bishop Three.

  On his desk, along with several notes, each typed on its own piece of paper, was a map of Boston with red dots carefully marked on it, concentrated in the northeast of Boston. A half-dozen dots had blue circles around them.

  That was Cocky's doing.

  "You'd better get over to Harvard Square now," Flynn said to Grover, "to arrest my sons."

  "I don't want to do that," Grover said.

  "Any time you wish to request a transfer," Flynn said, "I will sign the application happily. Several times. In a large hand."

  "I request a transfer five times a week. Six, if I work on Saturdays."

  "Pity none of them take hold. By the way, what did you tell the Air Police out at Hanscom Field?"

  The trip from there to Kendall Green had been in stony silence.

  "I told them you were a Boston Police Inspector, and they could ask you what the hell you were doing there themselves."

  "They never did. Are you sure that's all you said?"

  "What were we doing there, anyway?"

  "Picking up some tea. Papaya Mint." Flynn took it from his pocket. "Must tell Cocky I have it. A cup wouldn't be bad now."

  Flynn picked up the receiver of the ringing phone.

  "Off with you now, Sergeant Whelan. Go do what you like best. Try to arrest someone."

  Into the phone, he said, "Hello?"

  "Flynn?"

  "Flynn it is," said Flynn, settling into his deep desk chair. "Francis Xavier, as my mother would have it."

  "Jesus Christ, don't you even know how to answer a phone?"

  "I think I do," said Flynn. "You pick up the lighter of the two parts of the instrument, the one on top, stick one end against the ear, bring the other end close to the mouth, and make an anticipatory noise into it, politely if possible. Have I got it right?"

  "You should identify yourself. Crisply."

  "You mean, I should answer saying, Inspector Flynn here'?"

  "Right!"

  "But if you don't know whom you're calling," Flynn said, "why should I give you the satisfaction of telling you to whom you're talking? Answer me that, now."

  "This is Hess."

  "Hess?"

  "FBI."

  "FBI?"

  "Federal Bureau of Investigation, Goddamn it!"

  "Ah, the Fibby. You should have said so."

  "Where the hell were you this afternoon?"

  "Taking a ride in the country. We don't get such clear weather so often in Boston we can afford to squander it frivolously."

  "Jesus, are you serious?"

  "In fact, I think it's turning nasty again at the moment. Fearful-looking clouds were coming in from the East—"

  "I didn't call you for a weather report!"

  "Too bad," said Flynn. "I'm rather good at it."

  "You've been assigned to work with us. Where's our ground transportation?"

  "Let me think now. On the ground, would it be?"

  "What hotel have you put us in?"

  "I haven't put you in any hotel, but I have a man at this very moment standing on line to get you some opera tickets. They're doing Wagner's Gotterdammerung tonight, and I knew that would pep you up—"

  Cocky had come in, spotted the package of Papaya Mint tea on the desk, and carried it away with him.

  "Jesus Christ, all you local yokels are alike. Can't get you out of the local bars."

  "Tell me," said Flynn, "what are you boyos doing about the HSL?"

  "The who?"

  "The Human Surplus League," said Flynn, "who, I still maintain, may have a point, if they let me do their selecting for them."

  "You know about them?"

  "I heard a rumor."

  The afternoon Star was on his desk, opened to their statement.

  "We've got a dozen men on their trail."

  "And how would they be going about it?"

  "Basic police work, Flynn! They're asking around."

  "Ah! Is that how i
t's done? May the moon shine on their efforts. Any other leads?"

  "No."

  "Is that the truth, now?"

  "As far as you're concerned."

  "What about the boyo in Dorchester who believes he saw the aircraft shot down by a rocket?"

  "That's in a class with the rest of you Boston drunks."

  "Not paying any heed to that one?"

  "Of course not. Flynn, you get your ass over here to Logan Airport as fast as you can travel. You hear me?"

  "A little cooperation is what you're asking for, is that it?"

  "Report in to me personally. Immediately. Or I'll have your ass in a sling!"

  "I expect it would be cumbersome, to say the least, toting about such a thing."

  "You heard me!"

  "This is Inspector Francis Xavier Flynn," Flynn said, "hanging up."

  Flynn sat at his desk, reading Cocky's notes.

  The first read: "Insp.—Three men got on that airplane this morning, together, named Abbott, Bartlett, & Carson. A-B-C. Susp.? U.S. passports."

  Flynn crumpled that note up and threw it in the wastebasket.

  The second read: "Insp.—Producer of show at Colonial, Hamlet, name of Baird Hastings, was trained by U.S. Army as a demolition expert. Trouble between him and star Daryl Conover unknown, but apparently Conover walked out on the show last night."

  "Hurumph," Flynn muttered. "No end of difficulties here."

  Then he read the statement in the afternoon Star issued by the Human Surplus League: "We, the people of the Human Surplus League, in order to reform a more perfect Union, reestablish Justice, reinsure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense of the World in the Universe, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do declare that we have commenced a campaign of mass murder, in the exploding of the passenger airplane to London this morning, killing one hundred and eighteen people.

  "We appeal to all right-thinking people to conjoin with us in a campaign of mass murder, seizing every opportunity available to the individual or the group to annihilate, by their own mechanical devices, as many of their fellow persons as is humanly possible.