Flynn

by Mcdonald, Gregory, 1937-2008

  "I did, Baird. In Toledo, Davenport, Butte. But that was last spring. Almost a year ago!"

  "He has to get back into it, Baird," Tony said. "It will take a few days. You should close the show."

  "I can't close the show. Closing it a few days means closing it forever! If you guys want to work, that curtain opens tonight. And that, that, that 'wretched, rash, intruding fool' hasn't even got the words right!"

  The star muttered, "No, but I sure can sing 'Seventy-six Trombones.'"

  "Give us a chance, will you, Baird? Go away and let us work."

  "Hamlet wasn't written yesterday."

  "Please, Baird. Let us work. We're doing the best we can."

  When Baird Hastings marched out of the theater, the ghost of all Elsinore behind him, Flynn followed.

  He followed him to the corner table in a small, dark bar-restaurant next door.

  "Give me a double anything," Hastings snarled at the waiter. "Gin. Give me a martini."

  "Will you be having lunch, Mister Hastings?"

  "Fuck off," Hastings said. "Unless you can play Hamlet."

  "Of course I can play Hamlet," the waiter said.

  Flynn was standing in the darkness over Hastings* table.

  "Good God." Hastings looked at him. "It's the King of Denmark. Come to haunt me."

  "Actually, I'm Inspector Flynn. Come to question you. Regarding the death of Daryl Conover."

  "Oh. You're the ghost of Daryl Conover."

  "In a manner of speaking," said Flynn. "I am a spook."

  With effort, Flynn fitted himself to the minute bar table and chair.

  "What's to question? The son of a bitch died in an air crash. Served the bastard right. Blew him to bits. I'd have paid top dollar to see it. Have a drink? Do you happen to know the words to Hamlet?"

  "No," drawled Flynn. "But I sure can sing 'Seventy-six Trombones.'"

  Baird Hastings looked closely at Flynn across the gloom.

  "Were you in the theater?" he asked. "That was funny, wasn't it? 'No, but I sure can sing "Seventy-six Trombones." * When I'm trying to open him in Hamlet! Tonight! Jeez. I'm gonna cry!"

  To laugh better, the two big men pushed the little vinyl-topped table away from both of them.

  Still laughing, Flynn said, "So you blew up a hundred and eighteen people Monday night?"

  "The next line is—" Roaring with laughter, Hastings put his hands under his tweed jacket onto his vest. "The next line is, 'So what did you do Tuesday'?"

  "Actually, it was Tuesday morning. What are you doing today?"

  "No, no. The next line is, I say, Tuesday I rested.* Is that funny?"

  "It is, if you're near a nervous breakdown."

  The waiter put the drink on the table and Hastings grabbed it, soberly.

  "I'm near a nervous breakdown."

  "Second one I've seen today," said Flynn. "Ah, well," he said, "anything for a laugh."

  Quietly, firmly, Hastings said, "Monday we opened Hamlet. At the Colonial Theater. In Boston."

  "And you and Conover had an argument."

  "What did you say your name is?"

  "Flynn. Inspector Flynn."

  "The night a big production like this opens, everybody's uptight and exhausted at the same time. We've been through hell with each other—physically, intellectually, emotionally. Everybody hates everybody on opening night. Understand? That's why everybody's so phony—huggy and kissy. Understand?"

  "Understood."

  "Which is why nobody should be drinking. It makes the cauldron boil over."

  "That's Macbeth" said Flynn. "Shouldn't mix semaphores."

  "Which is why I blew my wig when I found Conover having an after-dinner drink in his dressing room, with friends. I just didn't expect it. Usually, you know, the really great British actors are better trained than that. It was his right, I guess. He's an old pro. I just didn't expect it. Of course, I was uptight."

  "Understood."

  "The first act went beautifully. My life's dream come true. Daryl Conover playing Hamlet in a Baird Hastings production. Really, he was wonderful. Between acts I tried to explain to him. You know, apologize.

  I said there were kids, less professional actors, uptight kids, seeing him drinking before curtain. I told him how much his playing Hamlet meant to me. I made the mistake of telling him I had my own life's savings in the production."

  "That was a mistake?"

  "Right away he got suspicious. He thought I was running the show out of receipts."

  "I don't understand that."

  "It means the producer puts up whatever collateral he has to guarantee the craft unions' bonds. He pays for everything else out of loans and box-office receipts. He even pays off the interest on the loans out of box-office receipts. Get it?"

  "No."

  "It means that every dollar that comes into the box office immediately goes out the back door to keep the show running. The production isn't capitalized. Even salaries come out of the box office. Immediately."

  "So?"

  "Well, Inspector, this is the way a producer finances a new, off-Broadway play with one set and three characters. It's not the way you produce Daryl Conover playing Hamlet."

  "He accused you of this?"

  "Yes."

  "Well?"

  "He was right." Hastings swallowed the rest of his drink. "It's true."

  "I see. You weren't properly financed to do what you were doing."

  "I could have been. But I wasn't. Something crazy. I wanted to make this production entirely my own. So I made the producer's basic mistake. I provided no financial backup. Of course, I was very sure of myself. And of Daryl Conover."

  "And, I expect you had a certain confidence in Mister Shakespeare?"

  "He blew his wig. Did he ever! He exploded! Why didn't he know this before? If he had, he would never have agreed. He'd been taken, raped, fucked. He couldn't pay British taxes as it was. He couldn't afford ta work, he couldn't afford not to work; he certainly couldn't afford to come to America to work for nothing. I didn't think he was going back onstage for Act Two."

  "But he did."

  "He was magnificent. Daryl Conover was a real great actor. Bless his bits. However, Inspector, between the second and third acts he made a plane reservation for London."

  "You knew it?"

  "He left his door open while he made the phone call. He declaimed his reservation. All backstage was buzzing with it. I knew it."

  Hastings waved at the waiter for a second drink.

  "The third act was magnificent. Just magnificent. He had to stop the curtain calls. Backstage, I tried to reason with him, telling him he was ruining me, okay, but he was also ruining everyone else in the cast, everyone who had anything to do with the production. I told him opening night had gone so well we had nothing to worry about, financially or any other way. We'd move into New York in three weeks, on schedule. He reverted to himself, once off the stage. So angry his face was blue. He couldn't even speak. By actual count, he slammed three doors in my face."

  "You couldn't keep him off the plane, so you blew the plane up, is that it?"

  "I knew he was going on a plane, Inspector, but I didn't know which one."

  "Easy enough to find out. Also, how many planes are there leaving for London from Boston at three o'clock in the morning?"

  Hastings put his hand around his fresh drink.

  "Funny. Until this moment I never thought of myself as a what-do-you-call-it, a defendant, possibly."

  "As a prime suspect."

  "Inspector, let me ask you this: How would I, Baird Hastings, blow up an airplane?"

  "Let me answer you, Baird Hastings. First, your real name is Robert Cullen Hastings. That's the name under which you served in the United States Army. And, I hasten to remind you, the U.S. Army trained you as a demolition expert."

  "Oh, my God."

  " 'Oh, my Cocky* would be a better epithet, under the circumstances."

  "You know I was trained as a demolition expert.
"

  "I do. Drink up. There's more to come."

  "Still, how could I blow up an airplane?"

  "By jumping into your car as soon as all your arguments had failed against Conover, driving to your home in Beverly Farms, there picking up the dynamite you had bought to blow up a rock ledge on your property—"

  "Oh, my God!"

  "Oh, my Cocky. Manufacturing a bomb, driving it to Logan Airport—there was plenty of time, for all this —and rigging it aboard Flight 80 to London."

  "Inspector, come on! Security at airports is a hell of a lot better than it used to be. You can't tell me—"

  "I can tell you that somebody put a bomb aboard that airplane. And you can't tell me that Baird Hast-

  ings, the theater producer, couldn't rig himself some kind of an innocent-looking airport workman's costume, and find his way out to the rear, right cargo hatch of that plane!"

  "Jesus!"

  "Cocky!"

  "I'm not that cocky, Inspector. I wouldn't have the balls to carry off such a thing. Are you kidding? Kill a hundred people?"

  "You were a ruined, devastated man, Robert Cullen Hastings. A man who grabbed himself up from nowhere into the magnificent tweed jacket of theater producer Baird Hastings, capping his career with a presentation of Daryl Conover playing Hamlet, and you blew it! Is that the right expression, or am I making a pun? You said yourself you were in a terrible state of nerves. You said yourself you'd pay top dollar to see Daryl Conover blown to bits. You did see him, Robert Hastings! You stood by a window at Logan Airport and watched!"

  Hastings glanced around the bar-restaurant. For all its force, Flynn's voice had remained very low.

  "You can't be serious, Inspector."

  "You had the reason to do it. The man had ruined you."

  "But not to kill a hundred other people."

  "Ach, well, that! If you weren't of a dramatic temperament, you wouldn't be in the business you're in."

  "Everyone associated with theater is crazy, right?"

  "You're apt to think in the large."

  "Inspector, you're talking about murder. Mass murder."

  "Next, you had the material. Dynamite."

  "I don't. I've used it."

  "I thought you'd say that. And I'm sure no expert in the world, including yourself, can prove you've used all of it. Is that right? You could have had a stick or two in your old lunch pail."

  Hastings' face was becoming clearer in the dim bar. He was growing white.

  "Next, you have the education to use it."

  "Inspector, that was twenty years ago. Twenty-five. I haven't used explosives in twenty-five years."

  "You have enough confidence left in yourself to go out and buy the dynamite to blow up a ridge in your yard."

  Hastings exhaled, deeply. "Right."

  "You had the time, you had the opportunity. I do believe a theater producer could figure out how to give himself access to that plane."

  Hastings said, "Are you arresting me?"

  Flynn said, "Are you confessing?"

  Hastings said, "I'm not confessing."

  Flynn said, "I'm not arresting you."

  Hastings, white-faced, slump-shouldered, looked up at Flynn standing in the gloom.

  "Why not?" Hastings asked.

  "There are one or two other leads to follow.'*

  "But I am a prime suspect?"

  "You're as prime as the beef the Australians themselves eat. All I wanted to know from this little exercise was whether you and Conover had a fight that night—if it was you Conover was furious with. It surely was."

  Hastings' head lowered.

  "May I say one thing, Inspector?"

  "In your defense?"

  Softly, to his drink, Baird Hastings said, "It was the best production of Hamlet —ever!"

  Sixteen

  It was a raw, cold morning in Dorchester, the east wind blowing in off the harbor a block away.

  Flynn turned up his coat collar while waiting for someone to answer the door of the white, wooden, two-family duplex house.

  "Mrs. Wiggers?"

  Flynn touched the brim of his tweed hat to the middle-aged woman in an apron the other side of the glass storm door.

  She opened it enough to hear him.

  "I'm Inspector Flynn. The Boston Police. By any chance is your husband at home?"

  "He's asleep," she said,

  "He's at home?"

  "Sleeping."

  "I need to speak to him.'*

  "Is it important?"

  "It's about the airplane that exploded."

  "All right." Flynn helped her open the door against the wind.

  "It's not a pleasant day, Ma'am."

  "It's a Boston day." Her arm suggested he turn to the left, into a small living room. "I'll wake him up."

  The parlor was small, furnished with a two-seater divan, a pine coffee table, two easy chairs, a rug, a television, but as clean as a bride's linen. Jesus Christ was on one wall, pointing to his exposed heart, halo around his head; on the other wall was a framed print of a schooner in a rough sea. On the coffee table were copies of the Catholic Digest.

  "A long-suffering woman," Flynn muttered to himself. "Her man's out at three in the morning and asleep at almost noon. Not a witness, I think, from whom I can expect much."

  The step coming down the stairs was even.

  The man turned into the living room,

  "Richard Wiggers?"

  "Yes."

  Richard Wiggers was tall, broad-shouldered, slim, tight-skinned, and perfectly clear-eyed.

  "I'm Inspector Flynn. How are you?"

  "Sit down, Inspector."

  "I will." Flynn did so. "I take it no one official has been to see you about your report that you saw a rocket hit the airplane yesterday morning?"

  "Just the newspapers." Wiggers sat at complete ease in the other armchair. "That's rather surprised me."

  "Everything in its time," said Flynn. "The FBI are still working on their initial report. Were you just asleep? You don't look it."

  Wiggers needed a shave, but not badly.

  "I'm used to waking up."

  "Aren't we all, though?"

  "I mean, and being ready to move out."

  "Of course," said Flynn, gently. "Now, I guess my first question, however embarrassing it might be to you, is, what were you doing out at three o'clock yesterday morning? Having a bite at the old vine?"

  "What?"

  "Why were you out at three o'clock in the morning yesterday?"

  "I'm out at three o'clock every morning."

  "Oh, it's that way, is it?"

  "Inspector, I drive an ambulance. In fact, I own an ambulance company. Wiggers Ambulance Service."

  "You do?"

  "Only three wagons, but it's mine."

  "The Lord loves sardines. You weren't partying?"

  "Partying? No. I don't drink and none of the men who work for me drink. Can't drink and drive, Inspector."

  "I've heard it said."

  "Actually, I was on a run from Boston City Hospital to our garage. I had just delivered a coronary."

  "I see. And were you alone?"

  "No. Ray was with me. Ray Tuborg. Another old fire buddy."

  "I'm not with you."

  "We all used to work for the Fire Department Mostly the Rescue Squad. Dad left me this house, so even when our kids were little I was able to put money away. I bought an ambulance and moonlighted with it. It turned into a good business. So I quit altogether and bought a new ambulance. The first was secondhand. Then I bought another, and another."

  "The American success story."

  Wiggers shrugged. "I'm about where I would be if I had stayed in the Fire Department, except I own three ambulances, some equipment, and the garage over on Bernays Street. I just pay a different kind of taxes, is all. The reason I'm telling you all this," Wiggers said, "is because I'm puzzled."

  "About what?"

  "I was in the Fire Department eleven years. The Boston F
ire Department."

  "Yes?"

  "You said you are Inspector Flynn. There are no inspectors in the Boston Police Department. There's no such rank."

  "There's one," said Flynn. "Me."

  "I don't get it."

  "Well," said Flynn, "many don't. Truth is, the Commissioner gave me a special rank so if people said, 'The Inspector did this' or 'didn't do that,' he'd know just whom to blame."

  "Oh."

  "We were talking about the rocket. Would you care to describe it to me?"

  "It was a rocket."

  "Thank you."

  "I mean, what else could it have been?"

  "I didn't see it."

  "It came out of the water just beyond the mouth of the harbor. It shot up."

  "What color was it?"

  "I didn't see it. I mean, in the moonlight it was silver like one of those pencils, only chopped off at the stub. Mostly what I saw was the flame behind it."

  "Where were you when you saw it, Mister Wiggers?"

  "Morrissey Boulevard. On the bridge, there, you know, by Malibu Beach."

  "And you must have seen the rocket in the east, traveling west. Right?"

  "Yes. Somewhat northwest."

  "In other words, the rocket was coming more toward you than anything else?"

  "No, it was going into the northern side of the harbor. I did not have the sensation it was coming straight at me."

  *

  "I'm just wondering how you saw the flame behind it."

  "I didn't see the source of the flame, Inspector. I just saw the flame—what do you call it?—spurting out The back."

  "I see. And did this man Tuborg see it, too?"

  "No. I said, 'Look at that!' Ray was half asleep. I braked there, on the bridge. In the moonlight, I saw the vapor trail of the jet, of the airplane. The rocket intersected with it. Actually, it looked as if it were going above and behind the airplane."

  "And did the rocket leave a vapor trail?"

  "No. I don't know. It went too fast. Instantly, the sky was lit up by the plane exploding. So I wouldn't have seen it. When Ray heard the explosion he sat up and said, 'What in hell is that?' "

  "But he didn't see the rocket?"

  "No."

  "You mean, you said something to your partner, Ray Tuborg, about the rocket before the plane explosion? You said to him, 'Look at that'?"

  "Yes."