Flynn's In (2 page)

And at the table next to the drafty fireplace, many cups of tea were consumed, many games of chess were played.

So Cocky was waiting on the Craigie Lane curb when Flynn arrived in the car at three o’clock in the morning. Flynn smiled when he saw him. Cocky had never accepted an invitation for lunch outside the office, for dinner or the odd musicale at Flynn’s home. He had never even offered an excuse; just the simple, “No, thanks, Inspector.” And here he was waiting on the curb at three o’clock in the morning, his old Boston Police satchel, doubtlessly now carrying a few clean shirts, etc., razor, toothbrush, dangling from his right hand, a portable chess set tucked under his arm.

Together they drove in Flynn’s boxy Country Squire through the long course of directions to a rod-and-gun club. They spoke to each other hardly at all.

Cocky did not ask where they were going in the middle of the night, or why. Flynn wondered what Cocky had inferred from the strange invitation. He wondered why Cocky had accepted. Astutely, Cocky looked for the landmarks and read off the directions. Even in the fog and drizzle he seemed to enjoy the ride.

The light in the shed went off.

The guard, still carrying his rifle, sauntered back across the hard ground toward them.

Flynn rolled down the window again.

The guard handed Flynn’s library card and Cocky’s Social Security card back to Flynn. “You can go up,” he said. “Just follow the road. You can’t go wrong.”

He went in front of the car and swung open the right half of the fence gate.

“It seems you’ve been accepted, Cocky.” Flynn rolled the window up and started the engine. “You have an Irishman’s invitation. You haven’t been told to go away.”

The dirt road climbed into dawn light, fell into fog patches, twisted and turned among huge gray rocks and tall, dark, heavy, dripping pine trees. On the last knoll they saw a lake shimmering flat and gray ahead of them to their left.

They came to the lake and went kilometers along the curve of it.

And then before them, beside the lake, up from it half a kilometer, sprawled a large, dark-timbered lodge. Its original center was three stories high, its long wings two. Asymmetrically, graystone chimneys rose above the brown-green roofs. The windows were small and, except for four in the center, unlit. A deep veranda studded with rocking chairs ran along all sides of the building visible from the front. Between the building and the wooden docks on the lake sloped a yellowing lawn.

“My God,” Flynn said. “It’s a bonfire awaiting a match.”

To their right was an unpaved car-park. Two of the dozen cars in it were limousines, A third was a Rolls Royce sedan. A fourth was a Porsche. There were three Mercedes, two BMWs, and three Cadillacs. The license plates were of various surrounding states.

“Where are we?” asked Flynn. He parked his station wagon far from the herd of gleaming steel and chrome. “At a hairdressers’ convention, I wonder?”

He locked his car.

A dark Lincoln Continental, with driver, was waiting outside the front door.

As Flynn and Cocky were reaching the steps leading up to the veranda, a large distinguished-looking man in a gray suit came through the front door and headed for the car. He gave them a friendly nod.

After the man had gotten into the front passenger seat of the Lincoln and closed the door, Cocky said of him, “That’s Governor Caxton Wheeler.”

“Is it indeed?”

The Lincoln did move, but so slowly its forward progress was hardly noticeable. It was being driven over the slightly uneven dirt driveway surface as if it carried uncrated eggs.

Cocky said, “They say that one day Caxton Wheeler is going to run for The White House.”

On the front steps the two stared at the car. It was going around the grassy circle at a pace so slow as to make any turtle yawn before getting out of its way.

“Well,” commented Flynn. “He’ll never get there at that rate!”

“F
or God’s sake, Flynn.” Commissioner Eddy D’Esopo stood by the huge, lit fieldstone fireplace in the main hall of the Rod and Gun Clubhouse. His eyes flickered at Cocky Concannon, who had trailed Flynn through the door.

“Here we are,” said Flynn.

D’Esopo glanced at the white-coated butler who had let them in, then glared at Flynn. “There was to be no ‘we,’ Frank.”

“Would you like some coffee, sir?” the butler asked Flynn. “Before we settle you in?”

Flynn pulled a bag of herbal tea from his jacket pocket and dangled it in the air. “If you’d surround this with hot water, we’d be most grateful.”

The butler chuckled and took the tea bag. He was a short man, compactly built. Muscles bulged the shoulders and sleeves of his white jacket.

Flynn held up two fingers. “Two cups, please. One for me. One for my friend, who is known to favor the flavor of Red Zinger in dawn’s early light.”

The butler held Flynn’s attention. “Lemon, sugar, cream?”

“Naked,” said Flynn. “As naked a cup of tea as you ever set to steep.”

“Red Zinger,” Commissioner Eddy D’Esopo muttered into the fireplace.

“My name is Taylor, sir,” the butler said. “If there is anything I can do for you and your friend to help make you comfortable, please let me know. Unfortunately, breakfast is not prepared until eight o’clock.”

“Taylor, is it?” said Flynn. “Butlers are named Taylor, and tailors are named Vanderbilt. Who says the world doesn’t progress?”

Still grinning, the butler left through a small door at the side of the fireplace.

“Well, Cocky,” Flynn said. “At least the butler named Taylor doesn’t mind seeing you.”

Against the wall the other side of the fireplace was a large bar table. Bottles of all the best brands of liquor were standing free. There was a tray of various-sized glasses on the table, as well as a large silver ice bucket. Condensation on the bucket indicated it was filled with ice even at that hour.

Flynn looked around the cavernous room, at the Native American woven rugs on the dark gleaming, wide-board floors, the red leather chairs and couches, the massive mahogany tables, the deer and moose heads, trout and bass plaqued and mounted on the walls. He rubbed his hands together. “Just like home,” he said in his soft voice. “Except most of the heads in my living room are still breathing.”

He dropped himself into a massive leather chair near the fireplace.

“What’s what’s-his-name doing here?” D’Esopo said quietly, tightly into the fireplace.

The Commissioner was almost as big a man as Flynn, which was very big indeed. Whereas Flynn’s head was peculiarly small for his body, D’Esopo’s double chin and increasing baldness made his head seem almost too large. Too many administrative lunches and politic dinners had caused the Commissioner’s waist to swell below his huge chest.

Softly, Flynn said, “Commissioner, you do remember Detective Lieutenant Walter Concannon, don’t you? Been retired for some time now.”

The retired Detective Lieutenant stood in the middle of the room looking like a very small island far out in a very big sea.

“Of course.” The Commissioner sighed. He turned from the fire and approached Cocky with his hand out. “How are you, Walter?”

“Fine, thank you, Commissioner.”

“I hear you’ve been a great friend to our unorthodox Inspector Flynn. Solve all his cases for him without moving a muscle.”

Then the Commissioner glanced at Cocky’s left side and winced at his own tactlessness. “Forgive me. It’s early in the morning. I haven’t slept much.”

Cocky smiled as much as he could. “Without moving half my muscles, Commissioner. You have me on half pay.”

“He uses all his very considerable brain,” said Flynn. “For which he’s not paid at all.”

D’Esopo looked from Cocky to Flynn.

“Cocky’s enforced retirement,” Flynn continued quietly, “is a discouraging testament to the value the Boston Police Department places on brains.”

After digesting this apparent digression, D’Esopo said to Cocky: “Frank was supposed to come alone, Walter. He couldn’t have heard me.”

“Sure I heard you,” Flynn said from his chair. “Have I ever not heard anything, to my infernal regret? Now, charitably, I am giving you a chance to see. Whatever it is I’m to do here, I mean to let you see up close that I’ll do it the better with the able assistance of Detective Lieutenant Walter Concannon.” Then Flynn added: “Retired.”

“Always the personal angle, Frank,” D’Esopo muttered. “Always reforming the world.”

“Sure,” said Flynn. “It’s part of my charm, it is. Can’t have part of me, you know, without acceptin’ the whole man. That’s what needs say in’ here.”

“Walter,” D’Esopo said. “I don’t blame you for coming. I’m sure you’re an innocent victim of Flynn’s relentless idealism.”

“Well said,” said Flynn. “And true.”

D’Esopo returned to the fireplace. “But, Frank, I’m not sure you and I are going to survive this intact. That’s what needs sayin’ here. No matter what your motives, I doubt you’ve done Walter a favor by bringing him along.”

“That bad, is it?”

Taylor entered with two cups of tea on a tray. D’Esopo fell silent.

“Some sort of a private club, is this?” asked Flynn.

“Yes,” D’Esopo said.

“For hunting and fishing? Bringing to halt the beasts that run and swim?”

“Hunting and fishing,” D’Esopo said.

Cocky took his cup without the saucer.

“And does it have a name,” asked Flynn, “other than The Rod and Gun Club?”

“It’s called The Rod and Gun Club,” said D’Esopo.

“Not a name designed to attract much attention.” Flynn took his own cup of tea. “Sure, you wouldn’t see the signs leading to it unless you knew they were there. Very big, is it?”

“Two thousand acres,” said D’Esopo.

“Two thousand acres!” marveled Flynn, settling back with his tea. “Some spots on this earth calling themselves countries aren’t as big as that!” He sipped tea. “And tell me: does the chain-link fence, four meters high, with barbed wire on top run around the whole two thousand acres?”

“It does,” said D’Esopo.

“And is it for keeping the beasts of prey inside, or those who would pry outside?”

Across the room, Taylor had stopped to straighten some magazines on a table. Under the tall table lamp he was taking a long look at Flynn.

“I guess it does both,” said D’Esopo.

“Many members?” enquired Flynn.

“I don’t know how many members, Frank. Do you?” he asked the butler.

“No, sir.”

“I’m not a member,” D’Esopo said. “I was invited here for the weekend.”

Cocky had replaced his empty cup on the tray Taylor had left on a reading table. Dragging his left foot behind him, he was floating around the room with apparent aimlessness.

“Cocky,” Flynn said. “You’re a guest of a guest of a guest. Delicate standing indeed. We’d better plan to make our own beds.”

Picking up the tray, Taylor laughed out loud.

“Cocky identified Governor Caxton Wheeler leavin’ as we were arrivin’,” said Flynn.

“Did he?” asked D’Esopo indifferently.

“Cocky tells me the man is being mentioned as a possible presidential candidate.”

D’Esopo shrugged. “Anything’s possible—as you love to say.”

Taylor left the room.

Flynn finished his tea.

“Eddy,” he asked. “Why am I here?”

“There’s been an accident, Frank.”

“Ach!” said Flynn. “Almost thirty years on the police force, and the man uses a euphemism like that! Why don’t you just tell me, man, who did what to whom?”

D’Esopo hesitated. “It’s possible someone shot himself while cleaning his shotgun.”

Flynn put on a surprised face. “A shotgun! What a mistake! Even someone who’s never seen a shotgun before knows instantly whether it’s loaded.”

D’Esopo said nothing.

“For that matter, Eddy,” Flynn asked gently, “after almost thirty years on the police yourself, if an investigation is needed, why aren’t you investigating it yourself?”

“I wouldn’t.” D’Esopo took a moment to organize his thoughts. “Twenty-seven years on the police force. Right, Frank. But I started as a rookie on the beat. Came up through the ranks. I have a Ph.D. I got it at Northeastern University night school. Frankly, I, uh…. My wife has a large family. Spread throughout the city. With some political enthusiasm. They’ve been able to do the right things, over the years, without my, uh—”

“—having to commit or compromise yourself,” Flynn finished for him.

“I know cops, Frank. I know crooks. I know a certain level of politicians. I’ve been invited to The Harvard Club and the Algonquin Club a few times…”

“Nothing like this place, you’re saying.”

“I don’t know these people, Frank.”

“They intimidate you.”

“I’ve never been given your full dossier, Frank. Sergeant Whelan has passed around scuttlebutt about your mysterious meetings at Hanscom Airbase, and other places.”

“Ah, Grover,” mourned Flynn. “If that man had a brain instead of a mouth, the world would be better served.”

“How many times is it now I’ve given permission to have
you pulled off everything while you disappeared God-knows-where to do God-knows-what for God-knows-who? It always goes in the record that you’re off with an attack of appendicitis or colitis, and I always sign it. How many times have you had your appendix removed, Frank?”

“Let me count the scars.”

“My suspicion is you’re not off hosing down the ordinary, garden-variety crook.”

“Eddy,” said Flynn. “Your speech is becoming colorful.”

“Exactly,” said the Commissioner. “Mostly what I do these days is sign personnel excuses and give after-dinner speeches about our fully dedicated men in blue.”

There was a rattle and stomping from the front hall. A man’s voice said, “Never saw such perfect light. Full creels an hour before breakfast. I wonder if it’s some sort of record?”

“I doubt it,” said another voice.

D’Esopo stopped talking.

Two men in fishing gear and stockinged feet entered the room. They looked surprised in seeing men in the room they did not know.

Cocky glanced at Flynn in surprise.

One of the men Flynn faintly recognized. He had seen pictures of him in the newspaper, on the television.