by Sydney Bauer
‘Not from the mom?’
‘There’s no record of it.’
There was another pause until, ‘How’d you do on the Matt Dillon thing?’ asked Carla, guessing McNally had been up to more than painting garages.
He gave her a look of gratitude. ‘I called the Airport Hilton – even got them to fax me their entire guest list. There was no Matt Dillon registered on the night of Saturday, January 12. But I figured my chances on that front were pretty slim in any case, given the Dillon thing is probably an alias.’
‘I’d say so,’ said Carla, before meeting his eye once again. ‘So why now, McNally? Why’d you come back?’
‘I’m not back, Carla. I’m on indefinite compassionate leave, remember?’
‘You know what I mean, Harry.’
He nodded. ‘I got a call.’
‘From who?’
‘David Cavanaugh.’
‘The attorney who quit?’
‘That’s him. I wasn’t home at the time, so he left me a message.’
‘And?’
‘And, maybe he’s regretting it – the quitting, I mean.’
‘You call him back?’
‘Not yet. Not sure I should.’
Carla nodded. ‘It doesn’t matter, Harry. Word around the traps is that Kincaid’s new lawyer is about to plea.’
McNally met Carla’s eye; the implication of her words not lost on him. He had a decision to make, and he needed to make it quickly. ‘I might need your help,’ he said after a pause.
‘Harry, you had me—’
‘Okay,’ he said, hating himself for asking. ‘I’m sorry, Carla.’
‘Shut up, you idiot, I was about to say “You had me at hello”.’
McNally smiled and got to his feet. ‘Give my regards to the kids then.’
‘You can do that yourself,’ she replied.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ he added as he turned to leave.
‘Well, it’s about fucking time – and no problem.’
50
Gloria Kincaid’s $750 Gucci pumps were covered in little blades of grass. She hated grass, the way that a little water made it stick to your shoes like glue. But the lawn was the least of her worries considering the call she had received from her incarcerated son mere moments earlier – and the fact that she’d almost run into that wretched midget of a prosecutor as he was leaving her daughter-in-law’s house.
I told her not to talk to him? she thought, as she extricated herself from the rose bushes that divided their two homes. He is the enemy, for Christ’s sake – and Lord knows, while Rebecca was normally smart enough to follow a strategy outlined by Gloria herself, she had a tendency to crumble when the anxiety got the better of her.
‘Where is she?’ she demanded when the vacant-looking maid named Dimilda, Dumbella or something equally as ridiculous opened the door.
The maid began to speak, but Gloria was already pushing past her, heading directly for the sunroom where she knew Rebecca liked to waste her day.
‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ Gloria asked as she approached her daughter-in-law. Rebecca was sitting at her white-legged, glass-topped table, nervously sticking pictures of her twin daughters in a pale pink scrapbook.
A taken-aback Rebecca looked up at her mother-in-law. ‘I am making a scrapbook of the children to take to Chris. He has been particularly down of late, and I thought it might—’
‘Not that,’ dismissed Gloria. ‘I’m talking about Marshall, the prosecutor. I told you never to allow him back into your house.’
‘Perhaps I didn’t want to appear ungracious,’ said Rebecca.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Rebecca, you wouldn’t know grace if you fell over it. What did he want?’
‘I suspect he . . . he wanted me to rat out my husband.’
Gloria took a breath.
‘Oh, Gloria,’ Rebecca went on then, the words rushing out of her. ‘I don’t mean to sound conceited, but I really was quite brilliant. You need to start trusting me, Gloria. This experience, it has – well, I’m a different person because of it. My husband needs me and there is no way I am going to let him down.’
‘For God’s sake, Rebecca, you sound like a guest on Oprah.’
Rebecca flinched, and Gloria realised she would have to play this one a little softer. ‘Look, I don’t mean to sound harsh, my dear, but that Marshall cannot be trusted.’
‘I understand that, which is why I told him nothing. I simply reiterated my trust in Chris and reinforced my belief that somebody was trying to frame him with that blessed shoe.’
Despite Gloria’s relief that Rebecca may not have ruined things after all, the issue of the shoe raised another problem. It was an ongoing seed of doubt in Rebecca’s mind.
‘The shoe doesn’t mean anything,’ said Gloria as she took a seat in the white wicker sun chair across from her.
‘Of course it doesn’t.’ Rebecca was shaking her head. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking of late Gloria, and I’ve decided that I don’t want to know what happened with Marilyn. I trust my husband and that should be enough.’
‘Of course it should be enough. The woman was a whore. She took the money, didn’t she?’
Gloria studied her round-shouldered daughter-in-law.
‘I’m trying desperately not to pass judgment on others, Gloria.’
‘Oh don’t be ridiculous, Rebecca. The woman was screwing your husband.’
‘Which means effectively she was also screwing you.’
And there it was, the very first time Rebecca Kincaid had openly defied her mother-in-law. Gloria truly believed that Chris’s incarceration would have had Rebecca climbing the walls – not in concern for her husband, but for fear her gravy train had finally reached the station. But the woman looked positively liberated by the recent turn of events, so much so that Gloria felt more than just a little concerned.
‘Be careful, Rebecca,’ she said. ‘I believe this is a classic case of less is more. You must not speak to Marshall again. You have made your point, now you must leave well enough alone.’
Rebecca looked away, leaving Gloria to wonder if she had pushed too hard after all.
‘Look, my dear,’ said Gloria, as she peeled a sticker of a crimson rose from a sheet of similarly hued flowers and stuck it strategically in the left-hand corner of the scrapbook page before her. ‘This is what you’re best at – scrapbooking and quiet support and being a mother to your children. There’s really nothing else that you can . . .’
But then she hesitated, remembering her son’s phone call and realising that there might be a way that Rebecca could be used to their advantage after all. Gloria was about to undertake the task herself, but Lord knows she was not one of Cavanaugh’s favourite people, and Rebecca might stand a better chance of . . . ‘There might be one other thing you can do,’ she said then.
Rebecca said nothing, obviously wary of what her mother-in-law was about to propose.
‘I need you to make contact with your old friend in Boston – and convince him to speak to Chris.’
‘You want me to call David?’ she asked.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I still haven’t forgiven that fraud for abandoning my son, but for some reason Chris listens to him and I need Cavanaugh to convince him that under no circumstances should he negotiate a plea.’
‘Chris has decided to plea?’
‘He called this morning and said that Fisk was urging him to seriously consider it. Fisk believes he can negotiate the charge down to reckless manslaughter. Chris also said he deeply regretted lying to Cavanaugh, and that he would give anything to get his take on what he should do. But he understood that he’d burnt his bridges there, and he didn’t want me to make contact with him.’
But Rebecca had obviously heard little past the word ‘plea’. ‘Reckless manslaughter carries a sentence of five to ten years,’ she gasped.
Gloria could hear the panic in her daughter-in-law’s voice.
‘Chris didn
’t say anything to me,’ Rebecca continued.
‘Perhaps he didn’t think you could handle the disappointment,’ returned Gloria, a little dig.
‘Gloria, as much as I would like to help, I fear I have no control over David Cavanaugh,’ said Rebecca, her cheeks now flushed. ‘In fact, I am not even sure he likes me.’
‘But you did like him once, didn’t you, my dear?’ returned Gloria. ‘In fact, years ago Chris told me you made a pass at him. Turned up at his door half-naked and offered to sleep with him – an offer he refused, or so I was told.’
Rebecca went scarlet, no doubt hating Gloria for knowing, and her husband for sharing such a hurtful memory with his mother of all people.
‘One thing is for sure, my dear. Cavanaugh has no regard for me,’ Gloria went on, ‘never has. But I am banking on the fact that he may still have a soft spot for you given you were once part of that destructive little group – he probably feels somewhat responsible for the embarrassment you must have felt all those years ago, when you offered yourself to him, only to be sent home packing.’
Rebecca winced.
‘Despite my earlier reservations, Rebecca, I believe Cavanaugh is perhaps the only one who can talk some sense into Chris – at least at this juncture.’
‘And what makes you so sure I can convince him?’ Rebecca asked.
‘Oh my dear,’ said Gloria then, picking up another sticker to place it on the opposite corner of Rebecca’s almost completed page. ‘You give yourself too little credit. History shows you have always had a way of trapping people. Just promise me that this time you will be wearing underwear when you approach him. For some things are best left covered up.’
51
Newark, New Jersey; 1984
‘What the hell is up with you?’ asked Mike Murphy as he followed Chris and David into David’s kitchen. It was the Saturday before Christmas and the cold had really set in. David’s dad was shovelling snow from their front drive while his mom was out getting some groceries with a disgruntled thirteen-year-old Lisa.
‘I told you,’ said David, sick and tired of Mike’s ragging. ‘I just didn’t want to see it.’ He took off his wet denim jacket and threw it at the coat rack in the corner.
‘Bullshit,’ said Mike, moving to David’s fridge to grab three cokes. ‘You’ve been dying to see it for weeks – we all have.’
Mike was talking about Beverly Hills Cop – the new Eddie Murphy movie that had been getting rave reviews across the country. It had opened a few weeks ago but this was the first time they had managed to get the whole gang together to see it, given Marilyn had been working at Dunkin’ Donuts on weekends, and Chris had been conscripted by his mother to get involved in his dad’s gubernatorial duties.
‘I just wasn’t in the mood,’ said David, snatching the soda from Mike and downing it in a series of bubbly swallows.
‘Stuff your mood, DC,’ said Chris. ‘Now Marilyn and Rebecca are seeing the movie on their own, and Marilyn will come out bursting to blab everything about the plot, which means she’ll give away the ending long before we get the chance to see it.’
‘You could have gone with them,’ said David. ‘Both of you,’ he pointed at Mike who was now sitting backwards on one of the red kitchen chairs while he skulled his soda without stopping for a breath.
Mike shot a look at Chris. ‘You’ve been acting like an ass all week, DC,’ he said. ‘Something’s up, man – and you need to tell us what it is.’
David shook his head, knowing that there was probably no avoiding telling them in the end, given how close they all were. And besides, he wanted to hear their advice on how the hell he should handle things, the next time they all got together.
‘It’s just . . .’ he began.
‘Just what?’ asked Chris, grabbing a chair and turning it around so he could mimic Mike’s position. ‘We’re buds, DC. No secrets, remember?’
David nodded, finally grabbing his own chair and collapsing into it as he looked at his two now curious friends.
‘It’s Rebecca.’
‘What about her?’ asked an eager Mike.
‘Shit,’ said Chris, his expression half fascinated, half freaked out. ‘You like her?’ Rebecca was an odd addition to their little group, and as much as they accepted her as part of the bargain, none of them had ever expressed any sexual interest in her – it just wasn’t like that with Rebecca, she was more like a little cousin who stuck to them like glue.
‘No,’ said David emphatically. ‘Jesus, no. I mean, I like her okay, but I don’t, you know . . .’ He was struggling to find the words.
Mike raised his arm to devour the dregs of his drink, but he stopped mid lift, instead banging the can on the table so the sticky fizzy liquid shot out of the top. ‘Rebecca likes you,’ he said. ‘She came on to you!’
Chris just about choked as his soda entered his windpipe and ended up dribbling down his chin. ‘Get the fuck out of here,’ he said.
But David nodded. ‘She came around here. Last Friday night. Luckily my mom and dad were out, and Sean was upstairs with his new girlfriend Teresa, and Lisa was in her room listening to the Top 40, so you know, it was kind of like we were alone.’
‘So, what did she say?’ asked a now captivated Mike. He enjoyed living vicariously through other people’s love lives – probably because anyone’s was more interesting than his own.
‘She didn’t say anything. She just came in the back door wearing this overcoat and then . . . I had no idea why she was here on her own so I offered her a drink and went to the fridge and when I turned around she’d taken off the overcoat, and she had nothing on underneath.’
‘Shit!’ said Mike.
‘Double shit!’ said Chris.
‘So then she said not to say anything, but that she was a virgin and she was sick of waiting and that everyone was doing it – including you and Marilyn.’ David pointed toward Chris. ‘And that there was no way she was going to do it with Mike, so . . .’
‘Jesus, what a bitch,’ said Mike. ‘Why the fuck wouldn’t she want to do it with me?’
‘I have no idea,’ said David. ‘It’s not like I gave her any encouragement. She just decided her options were limited and that I was available and . . .’
He tailed off into silence, as each of the three pairs of eyes sought some sort of reaction from the other. Eventually, Chris started to smile.
‘It’s not funny,’ said David, as a second stream of brown soda shot from Chris’s mouth.
‘The fuck it’s not,’ said Chris.
Mike, not one to be left out, proceeded to piss himself laughing as well.
‘You guys suck,’ said David.
‘We’re sorry,’ said Chris, his eyes now watering. ‘DC, seriously, we’re not laughing at you. It’s just that . . . Go on, please, tell us what happened next.’
‘Nothing happened,’ said David. ‘I just said that I was sorry but that I think of her like a sister or something. So then she gets all embarrassed and says something like, “Oh, right, sure.” And then she starts panicking, like she’s just noticed that she’s naked and she bends over to get her coat and . . .’
‘She bends over?’ repeated Mike.
‘She was embarrassed, okay,’ said David. ‘I felt like – really horrible, and she felt worse and then she grabs her coat and says something about seeing me at the movie and that everything is cool. And then she just turns around and runs out the kitchen door and I’m left wondering how I’m meant to act around her the next time I see her, which was meant to be tonight, which was why I bailed on the movie and . . .’
‘Fuck,’ said Chris.
‘Yeah,’ said David, and the three of them sat in silence again, the visuals of David’s tale now playing out in cine-screen in their sixteen-year-old minds.
‘Don’t worry, DC,’ said Chris eventually. ‘She’ll get over it. Rebecca looks like a mouse but Marilyn reckons she’s a tough little bitch.’
‘Bitch is right,’ said Mike, obviously st
ill not over his sexual snub.
‘Just act normal,’ said Chris. ‘You know, like you always do.’
David nodded.
‘So are you doing it with Marilyn?’ asked Mike of Chris then, David knowing he would get around to it – considering the nature of the conversation at hand.
‘Yes,’ said Chris, just like that, and David could have sworn he saw the slightest trace of sadness in Mike’s wide blue eyes.
‘Another soda?’ asked David after a while, sensing this conversation was over, at least for the time being.
‘Sure,’ said Chris, before three-pointing his empty can into the trash.
‘This is boring,’ said Mike.
‘You got any better suggestions?’ asked David.
Mike said nothing until, ‘I think it’s time we called it in.’ And the other two met his eye, the prospect of finally going back to retrieve what they had hidden exciting them and scaring them all at the very same time.
‘I thought we all agreed we’d wait until after Christmas – when Father Patrick has gone away,’ said Chris.
‘Fuck that,’ said Mike. ‘We could go down to the church, pull it from the confessional and spend the night listening to the sins of the whole fucking parish.’
‘But doesn’t Father Patrick have Saturday evening mass?’ asked David, looking at his watch.
‘It’s only five. Mass doesn’t start for another hour,’ said Mike.
Chris smiled. ‘I’m in,’ he said, before starting to rise from the table. ‘And we are so going to hell.’
‘Then I suggest we pull the tape,’ said a now smiling Mike. ‘And figure out who is going with us.’
52
Boston, Massachusetts
‘The ID was a no-go,’ said Joe.
It was a little more than forty-eight hours since their last meeting with Joe, and David had to admit he had thought of pretty much nothing else in the past two days. It was now late on Friday night and the five of them were seated in Arthur’s office, four cold beers and one sweet sherry resting gratefully in their hands.