Next of Kin

by David Hosp

  ‘Then why did you call?’

  ‘You misunderstand, Mr Finn. It would be illegal for me to actually give them to you. And if I give the actual records to you, people will know I was the one who handed them over. I’m not going to risk that. I will let you look at them, though. Only up here, and just you.’

  Finn’s heart beat a little faster. ‘Okay,’ he agreed. ‘I can’t make it tomorrow, but how about Tuesday night?’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  ‘Should I meet you at your office?’

  ‘No,’ Tesco said. ‘I don’t want anyone seeing you here again. I’ll pick a place and I’ll call to let you know where.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I should warn you, Mr Finn, there are some irregularities in your file.’

  ‘What sort of irregularities?’ Finn asked.

  ‘I don’t want to discus it over the phone. You should just know that it may not have all the answers you’re looking for. There may just be more questions. I’m still doing some checking, but it’s one of the more unusual cases I’ve come across.’

  ‘You can’t tell me about it now?’

  ‘No,’ Tesco said. ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘Tuesday, then,’ Finn said.

  When Coale slept, which wasn’t often, it was in a small loft in a converted warehouse in the leather district, sandwiched between Chinatown and the business district, on the edge of what had once been known as the combat zone. He could have afforded a much larger place; in fact, he could have afforded several larger places, but he had no interest in ostentation. His needs were minimal, and his desires virtually non-existent. His was a wholly purpose-driven life, the purpose changing with the whims of his clients and the demands of his current employment.

  He was in the loft on Sunday night to shower and sleep for a few hours. He would need the sleep now; he had work to do the next day. He’d been listening to the conversation between Finn and Shelly Tesco through the bug he’d placed in Finn’s phone while the lawyer was meeting with McDougal two days earlier. There was no question about what had to be done. First he had to drive out to western Massachusetts, then up to New Hampshire. It would be a long day, and he wasn’t looking forward to it, but it was part of the job.

  He’d spent the weekend tailing the lawyer, watching him as he spent time with the detective and his wife and kid. He’d watched the way Finn interacted with the Malley girl. A quick search of state records on the Internet had revealed her history. It was a miracle she wasn’t curled up in an alley somewhere with a needle sticking out of her arm.

  Watching them for a few days, it had struck him how foreign their lives were to any reality he’d ever known. He wondered what it would have been like for him if he’d been allowed such a life. Not that it mattered; that had ended for him long ago.

  He sat on the edge of his bed, the only piece of furniture in the loft, and let the water from the shower drip off his hair into the towel wrapped around his waist. A few hours’ sleep would be good.

  He looked over at the large suitcase in the corner that held most of his worldly possessions, wrestling with his impulses. It was pointless, he knew; the past was gone, and it wasn’t coming back. And yet he couldn’t fight the compulsion to pick at the ancient scabs, to peel them back and let the wounds bleed again, if only so that he could feel something – anything.

  The pictures were tucked away in an interior pocket of the suitcase, wrapped in plastic to protect them. They were all that was left of his past. Even the memories had faded to the point where they were only fleeting impressions.

  He pulled the photographs out. His breathing quickened. There were only two, but they’d been cared for well, and the images had only yellowed slightly. The first was a picture of his father, standing in front of one of the cars – the black Rolls with the maroon trim. It had been his favorite. He’d worked tirelessly to keep it in immaculate shape. Even after he’d been fired, he went over it one last time: cleaning the exterior with soft soap and drying it with a chamois; rubbing on two layers of wax and buffing it to a brilliant shine; wiping down the tires and treating the interior leather. When he’d finished, he’d hung the keys on a nail at the entrance of the garage, walked up to the garage apartment he and his son had shared for seven years, thrown a rope over a rafter and hanged himself.

  Coale had found him an hour later, and he’d screamed as he tried to lift the weight of the body off the rope, crying desperately as he tried to cut his father down without letting the body sag back onto the noose. Finally the gardener heard the screams and came running. He’d cut the rope with his shears, and the boy had collapsed from exhaustion and grief.

  Coale looked at the picture for a long time, rubbing his thumb over the image as he allowed himself to remember.

  After a while he flipped the picture and looked at the second. This one held the image of a young girl, smiling at the camera. The sun was in her eyes, and she squinted slightly, but there was no mistaking her intimate joy. He only glanced at this picture for a few seconds. Some memories were too painful to dwell upon.

  He wrapped the pictures back up in the plastic and put them away in the suitcase. Then he lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. He only had a few hours to sleep. Then he had to get back to work.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Assistant District Attorney Peter Mitchell was a man of the people. He’d grown up in Dorchester, the son of a pipe fitter with Jamaican roots and a nurse whose parents had emigrated from Ecuador. At the local public school where more than two thirds of the students were failing, he was exceptional. In his valedictory speech on graduation day he’d attributed his success to his parents’ determination. After attending UMass Boston on a full scholarship and again graduating at the top of his class, he was accepted at Harvard Law School. The competition there was more rigorous, but he still managed to graduate in the top quarter of his class, and to be named an editor of the Law Review. When it came time for him to pick from any number of jobs that were waiting for a new lawyer of his academic achievement and cultural background, he chose to join the District Attorney’s Office.

  To some it seemed like a bizarre choice. In private practice he could have made five times his thirty-thousand-dollar salary as an ADA. He knew, though, that he would never survive in the rarified air of one of the city’s old-line, white-shoe firms. It wasn’t that he lacked the intelligence. He had as much book smarts as anyone coming out of the Ivy League, and he’d put his common sense well above that of any of his silver-spoon contemporaries. Most of them had never experienced real life.

  But he would never have survived because he was, at his core, an angry young man. He’d spent his entire life doing what people expected of him. He’d studied and smiled and worked his ass off to live up to the standards that others set for him. The very idea that he would spend the next seven years buttering the buns of a bunch of middle-aged white assholes who would inevitably assume him to be a product of affirmative action was enough to make him consider a trip to one of the local gun shows out in western Massachusetts to make a purchase. He knew he would have lasted all of a month before he punched someone in the face.

  And so, rather than put himself in a position to fail, he put himself in a position where he could exploit all of his natural gifts. The DA’s office was perfect for him. He was smart and motivated and political. It didn’t hurt that he was black, and he could talk to jurors in a way that made sense. He was marked for greatness the moment he stepped into the office, and three years later it was only a matter of what he wanted to do now.

  He’d been given the Kevin McDougal file as a reward for all the hard work he’d put in. Kevin was a bit player of little importance in the grand scheme of things. His father, though, was a star in Boston’s shadowy mob world. Putting his son in jail for a significant time would be a coup.

  Both Peter Mitchell and Scott Finn knew all this as they sat across the table from each other at the Capital Grille on Newbury Street out near Massachusetts Avenu
e. The restaurant had been chosen carefully. It was far enough out that it was reasonably close to the courthouse in Roxbury. It was nice, but not too nice, with thick steaks and dark wood that bespoke a male-dominated world where deals were expected.

  They had engaged in the obligatory small talk throughout the lunch as they dug into their porterhouses, trading tidbits about judges and politicians and other lawyers, establishing their bona fides and setting the boundaries of male camaraderie, if not quite trust. It wasn’t until the plates were cleared away that the real conversation began.

  ‘I’m representing Kevin McDougal,’ Finn said as the coffee was served.

  Mitchell nodded as he stirred his cup. ‘I saw that on the docket. Lissa Krantz talked to my assistant.’

  ‘Any idea what you’re thinking on plea bargain?’

  Mitchell smiled. ‘I wasn’t thinking about any plea bargain,’ he said. ‘I was thinking about taking it to trial.’

  ‘You serious?’ Finn said, shaking his head. ‘Your witness is for shit. She’s, what, six months out of the academy? It was entrapment.’

  Mitchell laughed. ‘Your boy walked up to her next to a school playground and offered her a couple rocks. You think the jury’s gonna buy into an entrapment defense?’

  ‘After I get done with her?’ Finn let out a slow whistle. ‘She’ll be lucky if the jury doesn’t convict her. She’s never been on the stand before, has she?’

  Mitchell shook his head. ‘Nope. Doesn’t matter; she looks like she’s fourteen. The jury’ll take one look at her, and they’ll be so pissed off at your client, they won’t even listen to your cross. Either that or they’ll get pissed at you for attacking her.’

  ‘You’ve never seen me work, have you?’ Finn said.

  ‘I have. It’s impressive, but it won’t be enough. Not in this case.’

  ‘You sound so sure, but I can see a little doubt in your eyes. You’ve got a great career ahead of you; you can practically write your own ticket if you don’t screw things up. The only sort of thing that could derail you is an acquittal in a case like this.’ Finn sipped his coffee as he let that sink in. ‘I don’t tend to lose.’

  Mitchell stirred his coffee quietly. ‘What did you have in mind?’ he asked after a moment.

  ‘I can probably get my guy to cop to a possession charge, B-class misdemeanor, eighteen months probation.’ Finn said the words as though he were offering the ADA a gift.

  Mitchell dropped his spoon, and it made a loud ringing sound off the china. ‘Thanks for the lunch, Finn,’ he said, ‘but if you were just bringing me out to fuck with me, we could have gone someplace closer to the courthouse.’ He started to stand.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ Finn pleaded. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘Why? So you can insult my intelligence some more? Your boy’s facing fifteen-to-thirty hard time with a two and a half year minimum on a case a first year law student could win, and you think you can get it bumped by buying me a nice lunch? Don’t call me again.’

  ‘Please,’ Finn said. He motioned to the chair.

  Mitchell shook his head as though he were crazy to even consider sitting down with Finn again, but he pulled out the chair and took a seat anyway. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘You gonna buy me dessert now?’

  ‘I need this case to go away,’ Finn said quietly. It was almost a whisper. His tone was desperate, and the words made him wince. It seemed hard to believe they’d even made it past his lips. ‘I need you to make this case go away.’

  The young ADA looked at Finn quizzically. ‘You’re putting me on, chief, right?’ He looked around the restaurant. ‘Where’s Ashton Kutcher, because I know I’m getting punked here.’

  Finn shook his head. ‘I’m not joking. I need your help.’

  Mitchell frowned. ‘I can’t give you this kind of help, you know that.’ He leaned in close. ‘We’re off the record, okay?’

  Finn nodded.

  ‘I don’t like what you do,’ Mitchell said. ‘You should know that. Defense lawyers get rich by getting their clients off even when they’re guilty. And don’t give me the “everybody has a right to a defense” bullshit. I’ve heard this rationalization; it doesn’t fly. To me, that’s all a bunch of soul-soothing crap meant to justify the money your kind makes.’ It might have been a campaign speech were it not for the fact that the words came out with real venom. He checked himself and continued more calmly. ‘But as defense lawyers go, I’ve always thought of you as one of the good guys. One of the guys who wouldn’t break the rules. So I’m sitting here wondering why the hell you’re asking me to throw a case. Is it for money?’

  Finn shook his head again. ‘It’s got nothing to do with money.’

  ‘No, I didn’t think so. So what is it, then?’

  ‘All I can tell you is that I’ve got a good reason.’

  ‘That’s supposed to move me somehow? Sorry, but you’re gonna have to do a lot better than that.’

  ‘Fine. My mother was murdered last week.’

  ‘Jesus, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay, I never knew her. But I still need to know what happened.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And the only way I may be able to find out what happened is if Kevin McDougal walks.’

  Mitchell rubbed his forehead in confusion. ‘You’re gonna have to explain the connection to me.’

  ‘I can’t. All I can say is that this is a hell of a lot more important than some punk selling a little crack. I’m not excusing Kevin McDougal, he’s a slimy little shit, but if it wasn’t him out there, it would’ve been someone else – you and I both know that.’

  Mitchell scratched his head. ‘Let’s assume I believe you. Let’s assume you might actually learn something about your mother’s murder. You’re forgetting how people on my side of the courtroom feel about this kid’s father. People are looking for him to go away, and for real time. They haven’t been able to nail his father, but now that they’ve got his kid by the balls, they’re not gonna let go until he’s singing alto in the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Even if I wanted to do you a favor on this, I wouldn’t get sign-off from anyone in my office. Not without something in return.’

  ‘Like what?’ Finn asked.

  ‘Like Eamonn McDougal,’ Mitchell said. He sat back in his chair. ‘Fair’s fair. You want me to cut the son loose, I gotta have the father.’

  ‘He’s a client. I can’t.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Mitchell said. ‘It’s okay for me to compromise my principles, but not for you? Fuck you.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Finn said. ‘But anything I give you would be excluded. It would all be protected by the attorney-client privilege. Even if I was willing to do it, it wouldn’t get you anywhere.’

  Mitchell used the linen napkin to wipe his mouth. ‘Then I guess we’ve got nothing more to talk about,’ he said.

  ‘No?’ Finn asked.

  ‘Not unless you’ve got something else to offer.’

  ‘Nothing that you can use. There’s no other way?’

  Mitchell stood up. ‘Without something to trade, there’s nothing I could do for you even if I wanted to. You figure something out, though. You find a way to give me the big fish and I’ll be all ears, I’ll take it as high as I have to in the office.’ He took out his wallet and tossed two twenties onto the table.

  ‘I’ve got the bill,’ Finn said. ‘It was my dime.’

  ‘Nah, I don’t think so,’ Mitchell said. ‘I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea, thinking that you were buying me a lunch for some illegal purpose here. You understand me?’

  Finn nodded. ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘Good. You let me know if we’ve got something to talk about when you’ve had a chance to think about it.’ Mitchell turned and walked out of the restaurant without looking back.

  The place was in a sagging brownstone in a run-down area north of Springfield. Everything about it was depressing. Coale sat in his car outside on the street, watching. A few of the passers-by had slowed to admire his car, but a
sharp look had been enough to warn them off.

  The man stepped out of the building shortly after noon. He looked younger than Coale would have expected. Coale knew from the records that he was in his forties, but Coale was expecting a weathered forties – someone with a pot belly and a receding hairline in a moth-bitten sweater. It would have fit the area better. Instead, the man looked young and vibrant, with thick brown hair and a thin, athletic frame. Coale got out of his car and approached him.

  ‘Mr Altby?’ Coale said.

  The man was headed up the street. He looked around.

  ‘Mr James Altby?’ Coale said again.

  ‘Yes,’ the man replied.

  ‘You’re the director of the Springfield Adoption Center?’

  The man smiled uneasily, looked up at the building. ‘I am.’

  Coale put his hand out. ‘I’m Joe Wilson. I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes, if you can spare the time.’

  Altby shook the hand. ‘I’m actually heading out to lunch,’ he said.

  Coale motioned toward his car. ‘I can drive you,’ he said. ‘It will only take a few moments. It’s important.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Shelly Tesco,’ Coale responded.

  Altby nodded sympathetically. ‘I’m familiar with Ms Tesco,’ he said. ‘Is this about her adoption records?’

  ‘It is.’

  Altby shook his head. ‘As I’ve told her, there’s really no information I can give her. I wish things were different, but the law is the law. I was under the impression that she understood that now.’

  ‘I’m sure she does,’ Coale said. ‘I’d still like to talk to you. Where are you going to lunch?’

  ‘Down at Martingano’s, over on Main Street.’

  ‘I can give you a ride. Please, get in my car.’

  Altby looked doubtful, but moved toward the Mercedes. ‘I’ll take the ride,’ he said, ‘but I can assure you, there’s nothing you can say that Ms Tesco hasn’t already said before. There really is no information I can give you.’

  Coale smiled at Altby. ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll find that I am far more persuasive than Ms Tesco.’