by David Hosp
He picked up the ancient composite sketch from the bulletin board, looked at the face closely. The Ghost. That’s what Townsend had called the man.
He opened the bottom drawer to his desk; the top of a flask bottle was leering at him. He looked at it twice, trying to decide. If he got caught drinking at the station house, his career would be over. It would be the excuse everyone was looking for to let him go. Still, a drink would take away the pain, and with the pain gone he might actually be able to think again.
He reached down, leaning with his entire body to obstruct the line of vision of anyone who might be nearby. As he was over the drawer, he pulled out the bottle and tucked it into his jacket pocket. He closed the drawer, stood, and headed to the men’s room.
Once there, he stepped into a stall. Hanging his jacket on the back of the door, he reached in and took out the bottle. He unbuttoned his pants and dropped them to his ankles – he had to keep up the pretense, at least – and sat on the toilet.
He hadn’t looked closely at the bottle before he put it in his jacket. It was rye – not his favorite. Also not a great choice for drinking on the job. Like most dark liquors, the rye would smell. He wished he had some vodka. Vodka would be better.
He twisted the top off the bottle, held it under his nose, inhaled deeply. He’d always enjoyed a drink, but he couldn’t remember exactly when he’d crossed the line. It was recently, since he went out on leave. He raised the bottle to his lips, tipped it back. It felt good. He didn’t need much more; just another taste would be fine. He could already feel the pain receding.
He put the top back on the bottle and stood up, tucking it back into his jacket pocket. After pulling up his pants and tucking his shirt in, he opened the door to the stall.
He half expected Captain Townsend to be waiting for him outside the stall, holding out his hand, ready to accept Long’s badge and gun from him. It would serve Long right, he knew.
The captain wasn’t there, though. The bathroom was empty.
He walked over to the sink and washed his hands, continuing his pantomime for an empty room. The water was cold, and he cupped his hands, lowered his head and splashed it on his face. When he looked up, he caught his reflection in the stainless steel mirror. He looked old and tired.
Taking a handful of paper towels, he dried his face. He looked back in the mirror and straightened his tie. The pain in his head was gone. Once it had subsided, the thoughts came quickly, and he knew what he was going to do.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Finn and Kozlowski sat at a tiny bar called High Life, around the corner from Rescue Finance. The uneven stools rocked back and forth unsteadily with every shift of their weight. It was lunchtime, and the place was half full. The menu was limited and cheap: two types of sandwiches – ham and cheese, and roast beef – neither of which could entice Finn or Kozlowski. From the look of those at the bar, the clientele was far more interested in the beverage service.
Four televisions mounted over the bar blinked out at the patrons. Three of them showed Keno, and many of those gathered around the bar were playing. The fourth television had the local midday news, the volume down low.
‘You believe this fuckin’ guy?’ the man sitting next to Finn said. He looked to be in his forties, with a well fed build. A yellow construction helmet sat on the bar in front of him next to his beer. Finn looked up at the television. They were interviewing James Buchanan, one of two Massachusetts senators. ‘He’s talkin’ ’bout fighting terrorism. You think this guy served in the fuckin’ military?’ Finn wasn’t sure to whom the question was addressed, but after a moment the man turned to him. ‘I served in the fuckin’ military,’ he said. ‘First Gulf War. Two tours in Iraq in the second with the reserves.’ The man nodded toward the television. ‘This guy up here? I guaran-fuckin’-tee he’s never seen action. You think someone pointed a gun at him at Hah-vahd? I don’t fuckin’ think so. Not with his family’s money.’
‘Probably not,’ Finn agreed. He glanced over at Kozlowski, who shook his head.
‘You like this guy?’ the construction worker demanded. He looked Finn up and down, taking note of his suit. ‘You like him?’
‘I don’t follow politics very closely,’ Finn said. He was desperate to extricate himself from the conversation. The only person he wanted to talk to at the moment was the bartender. If anyone at the bar was likely to have information about Elizabeth Connor, it was the man who poured the drinks.
The construction worker snorted. He grabbed his beer and finished the last half of it in one swig. ‘It’s people like you make me wonder what the fuck I was fightin’ for,’ he said. He threw a few bills on the bar, stood up, and walked away.
Finn looked back at Kozlowski. ‘Making friends, I see,’ Kozlowski said.
‘I love all mankind,’ Finn replied.
‘Mankind doesn’t love you back,’ Kozlowski pointed out.
The bartender moved toward them, eyeing them warily. ‘Can I get you guys something?’ he asked.
Finn and Kozlowski both ordered a beer. When the bartender put the glasses down in front of them, Finn said, ‘I’m also looking for some information about a woman. Elizabeth Connor. You know who she is?’
The bartender cleared the used glasses from in front of the empty stools next to Finn and Kozlowski. He was thin and wiry, with veins bulging out along his wrists. His long brown hair was tied back into a ponytail, and he had a thick beard covering most of his face. He wore a T-shirt that hadn’t been washed any time recently. He looked like a roadie for a seventies rock band. He glanced sideways at Kozlowski. ‘You drinkin’ on the job?’
Kozlowski shook his head. ‘We’re not cops.’
‘I’ve seen you around before, a long time ago,’ the bartender said. ‘You’re from the station house around the corner.’
‘I used to be a cop,’ Kozlowski admitted. ‘Not for a few years.’
The bartender nodded. ‘Okay, you say so. Who’s this?’
‘I’m Elizabeth Connor’s son,’ Finn said.
The bartender evaluated him. ‘Name doesn’t ring a bell,’ he said.
Finn reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the Polaroid he’d taken from Long. He put it on the bar, facing the bartender, who looked at it briefly – too briefly not to have already known what he’d be looking at. ‘She was my mother,’ Finn repeated.
‘I’ve seen her,’ the bartender admitted. ‘She’s looked better. Didn’t know her name.’
‘Now you do.’ Finn leveled a hard stare at the bartender.
‘Yeah,’ the bartender said without irony. ‘I guess now I do.’
‘What do you know about her?’ Finn asked.
The bartender fidgeted uncomfortably. ‘Not much,’ he said with a shrug. ‘She was in here, I don’t know, two, maybe three times a week. Sometimes for lunch. The liquid variety, usually. Sometimes after work.’
‘What else?’ Finn demanded.
‘She liked Scotch. Cheap stuff when she was alone. Single malt when someone else was buying.’
‘Who else was buying?’
The bartender gave a cruel laugh. ‘Not that many people recently,’ he said. He recognized that neither Finn nor Kozlowski appreciated his humor, and he shifted in his stance. ‘Hey, c’mon, guys,’ he said. ‘The bloom was off that rose a while ago, y’know?’ He looked apologetically at Finn. ‘Not that she wasn’t once attractive, I’m sure. It’s not the years anyways, it’s the mileage. They say she had a lot of mileage on her.’
‘Who says?’ Finn asked.
‘They,’ the bartender responded. ‘You know, people. Look, I know she was your mother, but she was bad news. I don’t mean no disrespect, but it’s true.’
Finn considered this for a moment. ‘When’s the last time she drank single malt?’
The bartender sighed as he searched his memory. ‘A few weeks ago. She was in here, and a guy comes in. Older guy, nice suit.’ He took a finger and bent his nose so that it was askew. ‘Looked connected. D
idn’t look like a happy conversation.’ He pointed over to a corner table. ‘They sat over there, talked for a little while, and he calls over for the drink. Single malt. He paid, then he left.’
‘You ever seen him before?’
The bartender nodded, looking around to see whether anyone was eavesdropping. ‘Once or twice. Don’t know his name.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘He looked like the kind of a guy who’d cut my nuts off and stuff ’em down my throat if he knew I was talkin’ about his business.’
‘Anyone else ever buy her drinks you can recall?’
The bartender’s eyes darted toward a man at the end of the bar. Finn looked over and frowned. The guy looked to be in his eighties. He had disheveled white hair, and he was hunched over his ham and cheese. Two empty shot glasses were next to the paper plate, and his gnarled hand was wrapped around a twenty-ounce beer. As Finn looked at him, the old man snorted loudly, cleared his throat and swallowed hard.
‘Him?’ Finn asked.
‘You didn’t hear it from me,’ the bartender said. He smiled greasily and made an obscene gesture with his fist. ‘Years ago, from what I hear.’
‘Seriously? Him?’ Finn asked again.
‘That’s nine-fifty for the beers,’ the bartender said.
Kozlowski took out a twenty and threw it on the bar.
‘Thanks,’ the bartender said. He didn’t offer any change.
Finn looked at Kozlowski, then back at the fossil at the end of the bar.
Kozlowski shrugged. ‘There’s no accounting for taste,’ he said.
The offices for 355 Water Street Corp. were located, appropriately enough, at 355 Water Street in Chelsea. Long crossed the bridge from downtown Boston in the off-blue unmarked sedan, ducked under the elevated highway, and followed a broken maze of streets down to the waterfront.
It was a strange place for corporate offices. The building was a long, one-story cinderblock structure near the harbor. There were no windows and a nondescript front door, which Long approached with caution. Part of the building was sided in corrugated steel, rusted at the edges, and there was a heavy lock and alarm system at the front door, neither of which was engaged at the moment. The surrounding area was deserted except for three men in coveralls working across the street, breaking down wooden palettes and feeding them into an oil drum fire. They looked up and watched Long as he approached the building.
Long reached into his jacket and unsnapped the restraint on his shoulder holster. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The reception area surprised him; it actually resembled an office. It wasn’t opulent, but it could pass. The floor was covered with gray industrial carpeting, and the stains were reasonably contained. A small table with outdated magazines was surrounded by metal chairs in a waiting area. A young woman sat at a desk at the far end of the reception room, in front of a door that led to the back. She looked up at Long and snapped the gum she was chewing. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
‘I hope so,’ Long replied. ‘I’m looking for some information about a woman.’
The girl at the desk took an extended, evaluative look at Long, leaned forward seductively and smiled. ‘Any particular woman?’ She had tinsel blond hair and dark eyes. The top three buttons on her blouse were undone, revealing the bridge between the cups of her bra. From the size and angle of her breasts, it appeared that the bra was a marvel worthy of engineering accolades.
Long smiled back. ‘Elizabeth Connor,’ he replied.
The smile vanished from the girl’s face. ‘So sad,’ she said. She sat back in her chair and pulled her arms forward, reducing the cleavage.
‘You knew her?’ Long asked.
‘No. I never met her. Never even spoke to her. Still, it’s awful what happened.’
‘If you never met her, how do you know what happened to her?’
The girl looked confused. ‘I handle the books. I deal with payroll. It’d be hard for me not to know who she was.’
‘She worked here?’
‘Well, not here, exactly,’ the girl said. ‘She worked in Roxbury at Rescue, but it’s a related company, and we do all the back office for them.’ She frowned, as though she’d said too much. ‘What kind of information are you looking for?’
Long pulled out his wallet and flashed his badge. ‘Any information I can get,’ he said. ‘Boston Police Department; I’m investigating her murder.’
‘Shit,’ the girl said. ‘You need to talk to my boss.’
‘I’d like to keep talking to you,’ Long said.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t need that kind of trouble,’ she said. ‘And I don’t know nothing about nothing. You need to talk to my boss.’
‘Who is your boss? Joey Slade?’
‘Who?’
‘Joey Slade. He owns the company, doesn’t he?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said. ‘I never heard of him. I’m going to get my boss. You wait here.’ She stood up and walked to the door behind her. Long couldn’t help but notice how tight the girl’s pants were. They made it difficult for her to walk, and instead she shimmied, swaying her hips from side to side to generate enough swing in her legs to propel her forward.
While the girl was gone, Long wandered around the reception area. There wasn’t much to it. The walls were a gray two shades lighter than the carpet, and there were two framed prints hanging on one wall. They were standard, innocuous office fare; outside scenes of boats for one, a farm landscape for the other. Neither gave any hint as to what the business was really all about.
Long was looking at the print of the boats when he heard the door open behind him. ‘Can I help you, Officer?’ a male voice asked.
‘Detective,’ Long said as he turned. The man standing in front of him was dressed in a tailored English suit, polished cap-toed shoes, and an expensive silk tie. All the clothes in the world, though, couldn’t disguise the coarseness of the man’s physique and demeanor, and his face was familiar to every Boston cop. ‘Eamonn McDougal,’ Long said.
The man smiled humorlessly. ‘See, Janice,’ he said to the woman behind him. His girth nearly hid her from Long’s view. ‘I told you the cops know me.’ He turned back to Long. ‘What can I do for you, Detective?’
Something about the way the man carried himself lit the anger in Long. He stood there in his four-thousand-dollar suit, his hair swept back from his forehead, smiling as though there were nothing that anyone could do to touch him. Long instantly felt the desire to bring him down.
‘I’m here investigating the murder of Elizabeth Connor,’ Long said.
The smile never left McDougal’s face. ‘Seems like a pretty serious issue,’ he said. ‘You should probably come into my office to talk.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Finn leaned into the bar at the empty space next to the old man. ‘You mind if we talk?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know you,’ the old man said. He didn’t look at Finn.
‘No, you don’t,’ Finn said. ‘But you knew her.’ He took out the photograph of Elizabeth Connor at the morgue and laid it on the bar in front of the man.
‘Aw, shit,’ the man said. His hand went to his mouth, and his eyes went to the empty shot glasses in front of him. ‘Frank,’ he called out to the bartender. ‘I need another.’
The bartender raised his eyebrows, but took a shot glass off the shelf behind the bar and reached for a bottle.
‘You knew her,’ Finn repeated. Up close, the man looked younger than he had from across the bar. He was in his seventies, probably.
‘So you say.’ He looked at the Polaroid again. ‘Frank, you got that shot?’ he yelled.
The bartender walked over and put the shot down in front of the old man. ‘Four bucks, Jack,’ he said.
The old man looked up sharply, but Kozlowski threw a five on the bar before any harsh words could be exchanged. The old man turned and looked behind him. ‘Much obliged,’ he said. He hoisted the shot glass, paused a
nd tipped it slightly toward the picture.
‘It’s not a question,’ Finn said. ‘I want to hear you say it.’
The man put his head down and sighed. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I knew her. I didn’t do that to her, if that’s what you’re getting at. I didn’t even know she was …’ he paused. ‘I didn’t know until you put that in front of me.’
‘What’s your name?’
The man made a face, as though he wasn’t going to say, but another quick glance behind him at Kozlowski changed his mind. ‘Howland,’ he said. ‘Jack Howland.’
‘How long did you know her? How long were you two involved?’ Finn asked.
‘Who are you, and why do you give a shit?’ the man responded.
‘I’m her son.’
The old man turned and took a good look at Finn for the first time. ‘I wasn’t involved with her long enough to be your daddy,’ he said after a moment. He reached over to take a sip of his beer.
‘Imagine my relief,’ Finn said. ‘How long did you know her?’
The man shrugged. ‘Long time, that’s for sure. Most of my life.’
‘What was she like?’
‘She was a fuckin’ pistol,’ he said. ‘At least she was when she was younger, back the first time we got together. Like I said, that was a long time ago. Back then, I had some juice. Might not know it to look at me now. I had cars, I had women, I had anything I wanted.’
‘What happened?’ Finn asked.
‘Real estate. I made some bad plays even before things really hit the shits. Got overextended, and I was off balance when it all came down. I got out with enough to live on, if you call this living.’
‘How did you meet my mother?’ Finn asked.
‘We both grew up around Dorchester. Two kids from the neighborhood, but I was older, and I’d made it out. She was always lookin’ for some angle to get her where she thought she should be.’
‘Which was where?’
‘Anywhere but here.’ He looked around the bar and gave a subtle shudder.