by Peter Manus
“Not really,” McD says. "Might have talked with an accent. Maybe French."
"Might have?"
"She was kind of a low talker. Low key all around."
“But Johnnie Walker noticed something.”
“Seemed to. I go to serve him, he says no, then a minute later he’s down the bar, ordering for himself and trying to buy her one. She don’t want any, though. Then he comes back for an Irish, and I’m thinking it’s for her. Could be wrong.”
“Could be right, though,” Harry says.
“Could be.” McD pulls another tap. Harry makes a face at me.
“Sounds like a classic hook-up,” I try. “So what was wrong with it, in your eyes?”
“I didn’t say nothin’ was wrong with it.”
“But you’re thinking it,” I push him.
He hesitates. “Tell you the truth, she didn’t seem like his type.”
Harry circles a hand. “What type was she?”
McD sighs heavily. “I already said. Just some woman.”
I get it. Becker had dressed stylishly and kept himself in shape. “She was dumpy?”
McD squints at the ceiling. “That’d be harsh. Lady wasn’t bad. Foxy, actually, you take the time to look twice. Just saying…”
We wait, so he sighs and finishes his thought.
“I’m just saying that this Johnnie Walker was the kind of guy who, when he’s hookin’ up, he’s looking to…” He fades out.
“…get something tight on his dick?” I finish for him.
He looks at Harry. "Some mouth this one’s got on her, huh?" he says.
Harry smirks, like, all day.
FOUR
Marina Papanikitas’s Personal Journal
Yo, Zoey,
So I bust ass to get home at a civilized hour, thinking maybe we do our daily catch-up the old-fashioned way—like over wine, maybe a candle. Not to be, not to be. You, I learn via kitchen table scribbles, are out shilling chanterelles and prawns till 2 a.m. In retaliation, m’luv, I am having myself a footbath and a huge glass of pinot noir before bed, laptop ablaze. Bunions at my tender age—believe it?
This afternoon was Elliot Becker’s wake—or the law firm facsimile thereof, tossed by the partnership of Brown & Richardson, LLP. H.P. and I were there to sniff the air—got the personal invite from managing partner Roger Coburn, along with a warning that we were to “be discreet,” which I took to mean no bulging holsters, dangling cuffs, or gum. Harry’s read on Coburn was that the firm is kind of interested in having Becker’s death pegged as a murder. Far better for a partner to be offed by a lunatic he creamed in court than go down as a jumper. Guess I’m enough of a cynic to catch why. Whether that means we’ll get the cooperation we need from Coburn is a completely different matter.
Figured I could camouflage at a corporate do reasonably well, but whoever says women have fully infiltrated the field of law isn’t talking about the places where serious money’s being collected. Circulating, I count maybe thirty-five females over the age of forty in a room of about two hundred, and most of those gals I peg as clients, judging from the liver spots and north shore drawls. Aiming to blend, I’d thrown on my midnight blue with the side pleats and rolled shawl collar—you know, Zoey, “the suit.” Strung the freshwaters round my neck and aimed some concentrated heat at the mop. Turns out I’m way off. Today it’s trim pants, fitted cotton shirts with the cropped tails flapping, and flats. Pearls are as yesterday as blue serge. The women around me I’m taking for lawyers are dangling solitaires at clavicle level and flashing selfies of At-Home-Dad with the Clomid twins. Gotta say, if I could have seen what was coming way back when, might have done the law school thing. I could use a dangling solitaire and some flapping shirttails. Not quite ready for the twins.
Space is big—must be three conference rooms long—and encased in plate glass on both exterior and interior walls. Stuffy, though. Too many people breathing one another’s CO2. Or maybe too much steam from the chafing dishes. People are actually eating and generally don’t seem altogether somber in spite of the shindig’s theme.
I poke my nose here and there with the idea of buttonholing Coburn, not for a real conversation but more to get an idea of how good a liar he is. Can’t tell over the phone—not with a Brit, anyway. Everything’s kind of going nowhere until I go eye-to-eye with a edgy type—one of those girls who stares at you with the whites of her eyes showing all around her irises. Probably rips through a hundred words a minute at a keyboard. Turns her back abruptly, but there’s a tête-à-tête in our future.
H.P. gives me a poke. He’s wearing a muted plaid sports jacket, like tweed, and a tie—bright green with old-fashioned bicycles on it. Got small, rimless glasses on his face. Weren’t for the twenty-inch neck, he’d fit right in.
He smirks, aware that I’m pissed that my suit’s gotten a little snug since last time I needed it. “They got those fancy fiddlehead things you and Zoey like so much,” he says to be nice. “Don’t be shy. Everyone’s chowing.”
“So I noticed,” I say. “Any sad people down that way, or is it too much to hope for?”
“You kidding, Pop? Look at the size of this crowd. Gauge its net worth. Smell the slick sweat of Becker’s rivals homing in on his trade. Good times, baby, good times.”
“So you’re saying it’s nice to be missed, even if it’s just because you made rain?”
“Best reason of all. Becker wasn’t out to score a humanitarian award. Guy thrived on one-upmanship and not much else. He’s grinning right now.” Harry points downward to indicate the place where Becker’s doing his grinning.
“Is that Coburn?” I say. “The thin one?”
We watch a tall, nondescript man with wet-combed hair and magnified eyes as he gooses his neck forward so as to appear to be giving his undivided attention to a small woman talking up at him. His suit’s pale grey, his teeth bunched and yellow, just like a Brit’s supposed to have. My eye wanders to the woman, following her long silver-brown braid, held in place with a decorative leather thong, then on down the drapey pants that don’t quite mask the plump of her tush. The heels of her shoes are covered in some sort of raw hemp. When she turns a bit I see that she has thick bangs cut straight across, rag doll style. Her earrings are wood.
“Ten to one that’s the ex,” I say.
“Think so?” Harry is skeptical. “Kind of ‘earth mom’ for a guy who wore custom cashmere blends, wouldn’t you say?”
“Just one reason they didn’t last,” I point out. “She’s been out of town, at least according to her significant other. Foreign rights convention. Calls herself Bonnie McCloud now.”
“Huh. Guess she wanted a name to go with her look.”
“SO’s name is Westerly, making McCloud her birth name. This is the real her.”
“How’d Westerly come across?”
“Worried about how she’d take the news. Kept saying that he hoped she wouldn’t find out while she was away from him.”
“Very lovey-dovey.”
“Seemed genuine, though.”
“Well, she knows now. Want to mosey over, do a little girl-on-girl action?”
“Thought maybe you’d take her. She’s in publishing—she’ll love you in the specs.”
“What’s up?”
“Got someone else to talk to.”
I catch the skinny woman hanging out in a crowd of secretaries. Most of them balance plates with swimmy bits of food on them, but she isn’t eating and doesn’t appear to be listening to the talk around her. I catch her eye, and she’s instantly attentive. I raise two fingers to my lips and blow, then nudge my head at the exit. She blinks, then turns back to her friends.
The reception area is done up in a gaudy cherry burl as if to defy its modest proportions. Noise from the wake is audible but muted. A plump receptionist with molded too-black hair and a generous hand with the foundation stares blankly ahead, her lips moving faintly, and only when I’m right up to the desk do I catch that the soft grunts and
chirps are her side of a chat she’s having into her barely-there headset. Ignores me while she finishes her conversation, so I amuse myself by evaluating her cleavage, which could have been a wonder to behold maybe a quarter century back, but now resembles a heavily powdered old man’s ass in a sling.
When she’s ready, she greets me with more frost than I’d have figured I rated. London accent—hey, just like the boss man—but I don’t have the ear to detect whether it’s real. Ask about smoking, and she sends me down to the lobby.
Skinny Girl is there, arms crossed, not quite leaning against one of the pillars between the twenty-foot windows. It’s bright and gusty out. Trash flitters about. Several anonymous people stand smoking, silent, staring at the harbor gulls. Almost makes you want to take it up, just for the excuse to steal a contemplative moment, couple of times a day. The girl hasn’t bothered with her coat, and looks even thinner in the wind. Wearing a jumper over a black turtleneck, matching hose. Bunch of bright bangles up her arm. Cheap styling—just like the mags tell you.
“Thanks for coming down,” I say. “Marina Papanikitas.”
“Penny Dupris,” she says.
“Penny, I’m a detective with the Boston Police.” I go for my badge.
She waves it off. “I don’t need to see it.”
I smile, just to warm it up. “Shows that clearly, huh?”
Shakes her head, not smiling. “Not so much. I just got a couple in my family.” She crinkles her eyes against a gust. “Not here in town, though. Up the Shore.”
I tuck my badge away. “I’d offer you a cigarette, but…”
“That’s okay, I don’t smoke either. My mother died from emphysema.”
“Sorry.”
She shrugs it off. “We kept telling her to quit, but she didn’t want to.”
I let it drop. “So, Penny, I got the feeling upstairs that you might have something to tell me about Elliot Becker. Was I off?”
She lifts a hand to push back a veil of gossamer hairs that have escaped her ponytail to stream across her face. “Look, I don’t want to start a thing about this,” she says, “but I’m hearing a lot of junk. He wasn’t drunk the other night. There’s no way.”
I nod. “How do you know, Penny?”
“Because I was with him.”
I pause. “Okay.”
She rolls her eyes and turns to look out at the distant harbor. “Not ‘with him’ with him. I just was there at The Underground, and we talked.”
I notice how her fingers dig into her sleeves. More than the chill. “Were you Mr. Becker’s secretary, Penny?”
She shakes her head. “I’m in the trust department. We monitor the firm’s funds, make distributions, stuff like that.”
“Sounds like a lot of responsibility.”
Shakes her head. “It’s just accounting. The lawyers oversee everything.”
“Meaning Mr. Becker?”
“He was administrator for a bunch of trusts, so that’s how I knew him. But only a little.”
“I see.” I decide to prod her and do it clumsily. “There haven’t been any irregularities in Mr. Becker’s handling of any trust funds, have there?”
She looks at me with her wide-open eyes, then away. “Look, all I’m trying to tell you that he wasn’t drunk. I talked to him when he got there, and he barely stayed ten minutes. To tell you the truth, I think that the girls who spread around that he was drunk at the Christmas party last year were full of it. I’ve seen a lot of drunk, and I know drunk when I see it.”
Not sure where to take it, I go along. “You know, there was nothing in the autopsy report about his blood alcohol level, but I’ll be sure to make a note in the file about your having seen Becker shortly before his death, in case we get wind of this rumor you’ve been hearing.”
She nods. “Well, that’s all I got,” she says. “It just bugs me that a dead man might go down with a bunch of gossip.”
“Thanks,” I say, then prod a little more. “Say, Penny, I’m wondering something.”
She squints at me, holding her pesky hair back.
“This rumor about Mr. Becker getting drunk at Christmas. If it’s not true, then where do you think that came from?”
She rolls her eyes. “Mr. Becker was the kind of guy who came on to women. Like he’d hold up mistletoe, or try to talk one of us into going into the pool with him at the summer outing. So people would say he was drunk when really he was just…” She lets it go.
“Being friendly?”
She snorts a dry laugh. “I was going to say ‘hitting on you.’”
“You think he could get aggressive with women?”
She nods. “I do, actually. But I don’t think he meant any harm. I think he honestly thought it was flattering for him to show interest.”
“Lot of guys think they’re hot. Most don’t try to bully the women at work into bed.”
She shrugs. “I’m not saying he was a great guy. I’m just saying he didn’t get drunk and topple off some terrace the other night.”
“Did he try to pick you up the night he died, Penny?”
“I was with my fiancé, so he couldn’t have been serious.” She displays a diamond chip on a silver ring. “But, yeah, he came on to me. That’s just the way he talked to women.”
“Did it bother your fiancé?” I wonder momentarily if she’ll think I’m going somewhere ridiculous with this, but she doesn’t get defensive—must be the cops in the family.
“Todd thought it was hilarious.”
“Say, Penny, you happen to see where Becker went after he talked with you?”
“To the bar.”
“And after?”
“Not really. I waved at him at some point. The place was really packed.”
“Was he with someone when you waved at him?”
“No, he was alone. I remember because I was a little concerned that he might come back, and Todd might start trying to be a comedian—like comparing how much they can each bench, that sort of thing. And whatever Mr. Becker was, he was also my boss, right?”
“I see. I ask because the bartender said that Becker bought a woman a drink.”
She shakes her head, then stops. “Yes,” she says. “He was holding two drinks. One was hot. I remember seeing the steam and being relieved because that wasn’t what either me or Todd was drinking, so it couldn’t have been a round for us.”
“But you didn’t see a woman near him?”
She squints her eyes, thinking.
I can’t resist leading her. “Maybe closer to Becker’s own age than his usual target?”
She tries, then sighs as she gives up. “All I remember is a lady in a wig. My mother wore a couple of wigs when she was going through chemo, so I notice them.”
“Remember anything about this lady?”
She shrugs. “I remember thinking ‘retro.’”
“Her clothes, you mean?”
“Look, I don’t have the foggiest idea if she was with Mr. Becker.”
I keep my eyes on hers. “I’ve found that people seem to have some sixth sense when details that seem random are going to turn out to be important.”
“What, now I’m psychic?”
“If you want to call it that. We all are, to some degree.” Not that I’m out to convince anyone, Zoey, but…
“If you say so,” she says. “She had a scarf, like this.” She mimes putting a scarf over her head and wrapping it tight around her neck. “See? Really dated.”
“Like me.” I glance down at my suit with a smile.
She takes me at face value. “No, not like you. You’re just not keeping up. This lady was doing something vintage, but it wasn’t a look anyone’s doing right now, so it looked a little costumey.” She sighs. “Does that make any sense?”
“Actually it does,” I say. “So if you had to pick a year…?”
“Talking way back.” Penny tilts her head. “Paris new wave?”
“Before my time,” I point out, trying not to sound relieved. �
��Look, gut reaction—you think she was the one Becker bought the drink for?”
Penny shrugs and makes wide eyes. “All I can tell you is that I didn’t see him again.”
H.P. catches up with me at the precinct, sliding onto my desk jauntily while I’m tapping out some notes.
“What took you?”
“Good wake,” he says. “Good conversation, good food, good people. Yourself?”
I give him the short version of my chat with Penny.
“I find that interesting,” Harry says. “From the bartender, we get Becker as a smoothie. From someone of the opposite sex and a generation younger, guy’s a lech.”
“But a harmless one,” I point out.
“That’s not the kind of lech any guy wants to be,” he points out. “You think he wouldn’t catch on that the girls he’s hitting on call him Becker the Pecker behind his back?”
I shrug, a tad guilty about my nickname for Harry. “Why keep it up, then?”
Harry takes off the gold-rimmed specs and tucks them in a pocket. “Every night when he gets home he looks in the mirror and can’t believe he’s swinging and missing. It’s got to be the girls he just happens to be meeting. They’re blind. So next time out, he does it again.”
“It’s a theory,” I admit. “This Penny also seems to be harboring some suspicions about Becker’s handling of his trusts, if you ask me, but she’s not quite in touch with her thoughts on that yet. What did you get upstairs? Something better, I hope.”
Harry pivots and makes his way to the coffee machine. “Tell you one thing,” he says. “Roger Coburn wasn’t crazy about Becker’s methods. Apparently our guy was lazy on the law and very adept at the backroom deal. Not Coburn’s style at all. Plus Becker would bring in whatever work he managed to corral, ignoring firm protocol, conflicts checks, all the red tape that Coburn assured me lawyers are not supposed to take lightly. I got the distinct sense that Coburn had been snooping around Becker’s files to make sure the firm wasn’t going to find itself liable for something the guy did. You want a cup of this?”
“I’m good,” I say.
He puts the pot down and sprinkles some non-dairy creamer into his mug, then thoughtfully watches it dissolve. Not a chance in hell he’s going to taste it.