The Banker, page 7
‘As long as you don’t look at her too closely,’ she said probing the lump again with her nail.
‘Ouch, she’s not my type.’
‘Oh, you don’t get involved with women you meet on cases?’
‘Other than you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not since we met.’ Which was true, but I had also learned the hard way that meeting women in the course of cases didn’t always work out.
‘Good, I’m not sure I want the competition.’ She slid round to sit on my lap and reminded me why she had nothing to worry about by kissing me. After a while she stood up. ‘I have to go back to work.’
‘The trial must go on.’
‘Exactly.’
‘It was nice of you to stop by.’
‘I wanted to make sure you were OK. You seem like the type to not go to the hospital when you should.’
‘Depends on what’s wrong with me.’
‘Probably a lot, but I am glad that none of it is serious.’
We walked to the office door and stopped.
‘You might try taking better care of yourself.’ She said it gently and kissed me, leaving me no room to argue. Then she walked out, making me wonder if our relationship had shifted from casual to kind of serious. I’m usually the last to know.
I went back to my desk and pulled out my old case notes from the original time spent in Amesbury, along with a fresh legal pad and a couple of felt tip pens. I had slept late this morning. I’d stayed up last night watching The Thin Man on TV 38, holding an ice pack on my head and drinking whiskey. The whiskey was purely medicinal for the pain caused by my bruised ego. I got caught worse than a gang of cartoon teenage investigators.
I pulled out my pipe and packed it with one of Peretti’s special blends of pipe tobacco. This one had a nice balance of Latakia and Virginia. It was more mellow than strong but still had plenty of flavor. It lit easily, and when I had it drawing nicely, I opened the office window a few more inches to let out the smoke. The day had started with plenty of May sunshine and mild breezes, but now the sky had turned the color of pewter. The rain would be along shortly.
I sat and wrote down the names of everyone involved, now adding Captain Muscles. I jotted down all the recent events starting with Cosgrove’s murder and the bank robbery. It might have seemed like I was going over old ground doing all this, but writing it out helped me see it more clearly. Written out, it was a series of events on a timeline. I could make connections or see where events stood out.
The problem was that Cosgrove’s murder overshadowed everything else. The original embezzlement case was obscured by the murder. The bank robbery itself was just so much noise compared to the murder. The fact that someone had broken into Cosgrove’s apartment and torn it apart looking for something, that was also obscured by the murder. Even getting cold-cocked somehow didn’t seem to rate in comparison.
I sat hunched over my desk, puffing away and writing on the legal pad, drawing lines, connecting ideas and feeling more and more frustrated for the better part of two hours. By the time I sat up straight, my back hurt, the pipe had gone out and the rain had arrived in big, heavy drops beating against the window. I stood up and closed the window in an effort to keep the place from getting flooded.
The sky lit up in bright jagged flashes, and I watched as the cars in the street plowed through the sudden torrents of water. Only the most desperate of people were moving around on the sidewalks. Most people had taken shelter in stores or doorways in a vain effort not to get drenched.
I watched the storm until the lightning flashes and downpour faded into a mild drizzle. Then I went back over my notes hoping that something would leap out at me. Nothing did. By the time I locked the office up to head home, the rain had given way to sunshine. That was New England for you.
I stepped out of the doorway of my building with the intention of walking. That had been the idea but the big man who stood up from the car he was leaning against had other ideas. My hand was already snaking for the .38 holstered under my shirt. I didn’t like it when people are waiting for me unexpectedly. History has taught me that they usually have ill intent.
‘Say, pal, sport a brother a smoke?’
‘Jesus, you gave me a start.’
Chris was one of my few surviving friends from Vietnam. He looked a lot different than when I had seen him last. Last spring, he had long hair and dressed like a biker. Now he was dressed in loafers, khaki pants, a blue polo shirt and a denim jacket. His hair was cut shorter so that he looked like he belonged on Miami Vice. That and his hair was dyed almost black.
‘Hey, Red.’ He wrapped me in his customary bear hug.
Chris and I had gone through Special Forces selection and training together with our friend Tony. Tony had been killed in Vietnam when NVA sappers had attacked our base at Nha Trang. Chris and I had survived the attack, the war and a whole lot of other violence since.
‘Hey, man, what are you doing here?’ I asked.
‘I told you I was coming to town.’
‘Shit, let’s get a drink.’
‘That sounds like a plan.’
‘Do you have any bags?’ I asked.
‘They’re in a locker at the bus station.’
‘Cool, let’s go get that drink. You hungry?’
‘I could eat. What happened to your ear?’ he asked.
‘When I came home from San Francisco, I was in a gunfight with some Vietnamese gangsters in a Chinese restaurant. One of them, a former ARVN colonel, clipped my ear.’
Chris grimaced. ‘Ouch.’
‘It could have been worse.’
‘Sure, he could have had better aim.’
‘At least he didn’t try to talk me to death. You’d be surprised at how many villains love to brag.’
‘I can see that,’ Chris said.
We walked and talked, catching up, as we did, about guys we knew from Special Forces in general and especially those from Vietnam. It was the same unwritten ritual that all veterans fell into when seeing each other again. By the time we were sitting in a booth in a dimly-lit pub I knew, we had not only caught up with our informal roll call but had ordered a couple of Reubens and beers.
‘Chris, why are you in town and dressed like the New England version of Miami Vice?’
‘I had to leave San Francisco in a hurry.’ Chris used his training as a Special Forces medic patching up biker gang types who couldn’t go to the hospital or a doctor for legal reasons. He wasn’t affiliated with any one gang, but he hung around.
‘What happened?’
‘Guy I knew was the head of a crew that was part of a larger MC. He thought it was a good idea to offer an opinion about Vietnam.’
‘I take it was negative.’
‘It was. He opined that we lost because GIs didn’t have any balls. He then opined that Green Berets were nothing more than overrated pussies.’
‘Ohhhh. That couldn’t have gone well for him.’ There were some things that couldn’t be tolerated.
‘No, it didn’t. I’m told that in a few months he’ll be able to move from eating with a straw to Jell-O.’
‘You broke his jaw?’ I asked, surprised.
‘And a few other bits and bobs.’
‘How’d his guys react?’
‘That was the problem.’
‘Oh?’
‘A few of them felt they had to get involved. I didn’t mind when we were all throwing hands, but someone pulled a piece. And naturally I pulled mine.’
‘Dead?’
‘Not sure. I wasn’t going to stick around and find out. Between the bikers and the cops, it seemed like a good time to visit Boston.’ Chris was smart and tough. He also didn’t scare easily, so if he felt he had to leave town that meant someone had put a contract out on him.
‘Well, you can crash with me until you figure out what you want to do.’
‘Thank you, bro.’
‘Least I can do.’ Chris had saved my life when I was in San Francisco, but I would have put him up even if I didn’t owe him. There weren’t a lot of guys left who had been in SOG. We were part of a small, tight-knit brotherhood within a small, tight-knit group of elite soldiers. There was almost nothing I wouldn’t do for him and vice versa.
After we finished our sandwiches and beer, we made our way to the Greyhound Station on St James Avenue. I spent some time there last summer looking for the missing daughter of an old Army buddy. Chris went to one of the lockers. Opening it, he took out an Army issue duffle bag and gym bag. I took the duffle, and we made our way back to my apartment by way of my local package store. I had a sneaking suspicion that with Chris around, my supplies of Irish Whiskey wouldn’t last long.
The effects of the beers had worn off by the time we made it upstairs to my apartment, and I resolved to reverse that unpleasant turn of events as soon as possible. I unlocked the door and Sir Leominster ran over, mewing loudly to remind me that he was on the brink of starvation even though he had a can of food this morning. He stopped for a second when he caught sight of Chris. He edged over and sniffed the hem of Chris’s pants.
‘You’ve got a cat?’
‘Yeah, he’s all right. Pretty decent company but not much of a conversationalist.’
‘Haha, I just never pictured you with a cat.’
‘What’s wrong with cats?’
‘Nothing, nothing at all.’
We dropped Chris’s bags by the couch, and I set about opening up a can of Sir Leominster’s foul-smelling food and plating it up for him. His urgent cries increased in pitch until I put the dish in front of him and he buried his snout in it. While Chris was freshening up and Sir Leominster was gorging himself, I went over to check the blinking light on the answering machine.
‘It’s Watts. Your guy at the bank was shot with a .357 Magnum, one round in the forehead and it made a very messy exit wound, according to the coroner’s report.’
.357 Magnum rounds were the same diameter as a .38, which is actually .36 inches in diameter, but the early days of bullet development weren’t known for exacting standards. The .357 Magnum had a longer cartridge case, which meant more powder, which meant more velocity, or, in layman’s terms, more power. The entrance wounds would be similar in size, but the .357’s exit wound would be a lot bigger. Hence the messy exit wound comment.
‘They found a car matching the description of one seen leaving the bank parking lot in a rest area off Route 95. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it was stolen from the parking lot of the Braintree mall and wiped clean. Call me if anything turns up at your end.’
‘Working on a case?’ Chris asked.
‘Sort of.’
‘Tell me about it over a drink. I heard the lady on the machine mention someone getting shot with a .357.’
‘I was hired to follow some bank employees around. The bank is up north near the New Hampshire border. The client thinks that one of his employees was embezzling from the bank.’
‘He hired you to solve the case?’
‘Not exactly. He hired me to see if any of them were living above their means.’
‘Oh, that makes sense. I’m pretty sure you’re no accountant.’
‘Not by a long shot.’
‘So, did you find the guy?’
‘No, that was just it. I spent two weeks following people around and none of them seemed to be living above their means. Then the bank got robbed and one of the three caught a round in the head.’
‘Coincidence?’ He took the glass of whiskey I had poured him. ‘Thanks.’
We clinked glasses. ‘I was starting to think it was a coincidence,’ I said.
‘What changed your mind?’
‘I let myself into the dead guy’s apartment last night. Someone sapped me, and when I came to, the place had been ransacked.’
‘So not a coincidence, then.’
‘Doesn’t seem like it. No.’
‘No, it doesn’t. So, what are you going to do?’
‘That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn’t it?’
‘I can’t see you just letting this go.’
‘No, me neither. I’ll probably keep digging into it. What are you going to do?’
‘I’ll start looking for work and a place to stay. I can’t go back west anytime soon.’
‘OK, can I help?’
‘Yeah, you know that I am not looking for an office job or a nine-to-five. You know what I was doing in San Francisco.’
I knew what he had done, and, while it was illegal, it wasn’t exactly immoral. Chris had fought in our part of the secret war in Vietnam and then instead of settling down, he had ended up as soldier of fortune in Africa and then South America. His resume wasn’t the type that would get him a job in the normal world.
‘Sure, I know a guy. He’s a former paratrooper, Korean War vintage. He runs a garage, and he is on the fringe of the type of people you’re looking for. I’ll introduce you.’
Carney ran a garage and sold guns, clean cars and anything else someone might need for breaking the law. He had his rules and his own sense of honor, and it wasn’t my place to judge him. I had helped him out a few years before when his daughter got hooked on smack and he wanted help getting her out of the life. I had helped him find her and get her away from the asshole boyfriend who got her hooked so he could pimp her. He was later found floating in the harbor. The imprint from a craftsman’s wrench on his forehead was the type of clue that pointed to Carney, but no one was looking to arrest him. I was sure he was at a poker game with his ten best friends when it happened.
‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’
‘I’ll take you by tomorrow to meet the guy.’
‘Cool.’
We spent most of the night drinking whiskey and talking about our time in Vietnam. The downside of having been in SOG was that it was still classified. There weren’t a lot of people who we could talk to about it and fewer still who would understand our part of the war. When SOG guys ended up hanging out, we tended to talk about it, our missions, funny stories, reminiscing about friends who didn’t make it home or talking about legends like Bob Howard or Mad Dog Shriver.
At a certain point, my apartment was thick with cigarette smoke. The hour had grown late, and my brain was as fogged by whiskey as the apartment was by smoke. I dug my .45 Lightweight Commander out of the gun locker and slipped a magazine in it without chambering a round. I handed it to Chris.
‘Here, I know you won’t sleep well otherwise.’
‘Thanks … Jesus, did you buy this from a pimp?’ The gun was stainless steel with stag horn grips. It had been reworked by a smith after I had come back from the Colonel’s school out west. The Colonel had very specific thoughts about how to employ a pistol and what pistol that should be. He would be mortified to know I preferred my customized Browning Hi-Power in 9mm to the Commander. No one is perfect.
‘I had a friend who used to say the same thing.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He didn’t make it out of the gunfight that I lost my earlobe in.’
He didn’t say anything because there wasn’t anything to say. It wasn’t that we were used to it, losing friends. We had lost so many that there just wasn’t a lot left in the well of emotions.
The next morning, I woke up feeling a lot better than I had any right to feel. When he got up, Chris handed the pistol back to me and I locked it up. He wasn’t licensed in Massachusetts and didn’t want to jam me up if he got caught with a pistol registered in my name. I didn’t have anything off the books for him to walk around with. I, mostly, try to play by the rules.
We had breakfast at greasy spoon to help soak up some of the whiskey from last night. Chris tended to spend a lot of time in the gym pumping iron and he ate like it – whole wheat toast, a double order of scrambled eggs and a side of Canadian bacon. I opted for a cheese omelet, bacon and an English muffin. We both opted for black coffee.
‘Do you like it?’ Chris asked.
‘What, the omelet? It’s pretty good.’
‘No, being a PI. You were once part of the most elite fighting force our nation ever fielded.’
‘Don’t tell the Marines it wasn’t them,’ I said in a conspiratorial stage whisper.
‘Seriously.’
‘OK, do you like patching up bikers and criminal types?’
‘I like the freedom it affords me. No office. No suit and tie. No commanding officer or sergeant major telling me my shit needs to be Dress Right, Dress all the time.’
‘It’s the same for me. I’m my own boss. I have clients, and sometimes they’re demanding, but I can always tell them to pound sand. Once in a while, I run across someone who really needs my help, and that is a pretty good feeling.’
‘So, we’re both slumming so we can stay free?’
‘That and SOG is gone. Those days, the thing we were, it doesn’t exist anymore, and it never will again. I can’t imagine being in the Army and doing anything else. It was hard for me to accept that when I first got out. If that isn’t an option, being as free as I can is as good as it gets.’
‘You were a cop for a while, how was that?’
‘Like being in the Army but with worse looking uniforms. It was better and worse at the same time. It lacked the sense of purpose, but the chain of command was loose, and I could pretty much be my own man. I didn’t have to worry about a team or getting anyone, other than myself, killed.’
‘I can see that.’
We finished our breakfast, and our next stop was the nearby Old Stone Bank. I needed some walking around money now that I had turned into my own client. I drew two-hundred dollars out of my savings account. The teller was able to spread it out over some twenties, tens and fives without actually acting like I was asking her to push a boulder repeatedly up a hill. Chris turned a small stack of Amex traveler’s checks into a respectable pile of greenbacks. I was struck by how much better his form of personal freedom paid than mine.
Outside, each armed with our respective amounts of cash, we got into the Maverick. I navigated the car through the narrow one-way streets of Boston’s Back Bay as The Doors sang about the streets in New Haven. Carney’s garage wasn’t far from the Charles River, Mass General Hospital, the Charles Street Jail, and the red line, which by Boston crime standards made it pretty prime real estate.
