Mission Flats (26 page)

‘You could but you won’t.’

‘Yeah? Why not?’

‘Because you don’t want to.’

‘You don’t know me.’

‘Yes, I do,’ Bobo assured me. ‘Yes, I do.’

He made a lethargic grab at the syringe, but I snatched it away. Bobo fell on his side and lay there, laughing. I took the syringe to the window to look at it in the light. It was a cheap plastic thing but surprisingly clean. It weighed almost nothing. I shook the little bit of fluid in the cartridge.

‘Just give that here.’

‘Bobo, I told you, I can’t do it. You don’t need it now, anyway’

‘Suppose you let me decide that.’

‘Suppose you tell me where Braxton is.’

‘Suppose I do? Then you help me out?’

I shook my head no.

‘Then we’ll see who he kills next.’

I walked over and handed the needle down to him.

‘I need that too.’ He nodded toward a belt on his own lap.

‘Just take it,’ I said.

‘I can’t, man, I’m fucked up. You help.’

I handed him the belt.

Bobo prepared the syringe with a few flicks of his finger, then he wrapped the belt around his upper arm, pulled it tight into a tourniquet, and clasped the free end in his teeth. He held the needle out to me.

I walked away, refusing it.

Bobo laid the needle down and took the belt out of his mouth. ‘You want me to tell you about Braxton or not?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well I can’t talk with this in my mouth. I only got two hands.’

I knelt beside him.

‘Hold this.’

I held the belt tight.

Bobo searched a long time for a vein. The needle pierced his arm four times. When he’d found one, he sighed and asked, ‘You want to do it?’

‘Bobo, just tell me where Braxton is. I gave you the dope.’

‘You want to do it?’

‘Where is he?’

‘You do it.’

‘No.’

He took the thumb of my free hand and placed it on the plunger, then put his own thumb over mine. ‘We’ll do it together. You want to be a cop, you should know how this works.’

I did not resist.

‘Let’s do it together.’ A lunatic smile.

‘Bobo, where’s Braxton?’

‘There’s a church on Mission Ave, Calvary Pentecostal. This priest there, Reverend Walker, he puts Braxton up sometimes when he’s in trouble. The Reverend’s known Braxton since Harold was in diapers. He helps him out. Maybe you’ll find Harold there.’

With that, Bobo’s thumb pressed down on my thumbnail, and the plunger, after a brief, virginal resistance, slid down the syringe. I allowed the belt to go slack. Bobo’s eyes squeezed shut as the heroin orgasm washed over him in a warm rush.

I told myself,
He would have done it anyway, whether I’d helped or not. I didn’t really do anything. Nothing Gittens wouldn’t have done.

I did not find Braxton at the Calvary Pentecostal Church that day. But I made it part of my routine to stop by the church when I wasn’t staring at the apartment building on Hewson Street. Soon enough, I conceived a hero fantasy in which I would capture Braxton single-handed at this church, effectively ending the case.

What I did not realize was that the Boston PD had already identified a new suspect – me.

25

‘Your name was in Danziger’s files.’

It was a startling moment, though the statement itself was not surprising. I was not shocked to hear that my name was in Danziger’s files: Danziger and I had spoken the day he arrived in Versailles. No, the startling thing was how suddenly and irrefutably this fact made me a pariah. How easy it was for Lowery and Gittens, based on this single datum, to imagine me rifle-blasting Bob Danziger’s head. You could hear it in their voices. I was out. It was the day before Halloween. Gittens, Andrew Lowery, and I had gathered in a windowless interrogation room inside the Area A-3 station.

Lowery, in a soigné double-breasted suit with peaked lapels, seemed comically out of place here. He stood at the furthest corner from me, looking small and doll-like.

Gittens’s fingers worked the skin on that elongated forehead, a gesture of benign puzzlement. ‘Mr Truman,’ he said, ‘do you want to explain what’s going on?’

‘‘‘Mr Truman”? Explain what exactly?’

‘Why you lied to us.’

‘I didn’t lie to you. I just did not think it was relevant.’

Lowery burst out, ‘Oh come on! You didn’t think it was relevant?’

‘What does it have to do with Danziger’s getting killed?’

‘Motive!’ Lowery said.

‘Ben,’ Gittens soothed, ‘do you want a lawyer in here with you?’

‘No! Jesus, Martin! Where’s Kelly? Why didn’t you call him in here too?’

‘We don’t think he belongs here right now. We don’t think either of the Kellys should be present for this, frankly. Do you need me to read you your rights?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then you understand your rights and you waive them?’

‘Martin, what are you talking about?’

‘Do you understand your rights and waive them?’

‘No! Yes! What the hell are you talking about?’

Lowery quick-stepped in from the corner on little dancer’s feet. ‘What are we talking about? Why didn’t you tell us your mother killed herself? Why didn’t you tell us Danziger was investigating
you
?’

‘I didn’t tell you my mother killed herself because it’s none of your damn business. And I didn’t tell you Danziger was investigating me because there’s nothing to investigate.’

‘Nothing to investigate?’ Lowery snapped open a file. ‘August 16, 1997, Anne Wilmot Truman found dead in Room 412 of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston. Cause of death: suicide by barbiturate overdose.’

‘My mother committed suicide. So what?’

‘Ben,’ Gittens explained, ‘assisted suicide is illegal in Massachusetts. It’s murder.’

‘I didn’t say it was assisted. I said my mother committed suicide.’

‘Danziger apparently thought differently.’

I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling tiles with an incredulous grin. I said, ‘Danziger came up to speak to me, to check it out. In his shoes, I’d probably do the same. We talked, he asked what happened, I explained the whole thing to him. He was satisfied. That was the last we ever heard of Robert Danziger until the body turned up.’

‘
We?
’

‘Me.’

‘What did you explain to him?’

‘You must already know.’

‘Tell me again.’

‘I told him my mother had an incurable disease. I told him she knew the Alzheimer’s was eating her up and she did not want to ride it out to the bitter end. I told him she made a horribly painful decision and I supported her. But
she
made the decision. She did what she had to do and that was all. There was no case, certainly not a murder.’

‘Then why did you lie about it?’ Lowery insisted.

‘I told you, I did not lie about it.’

‘You just didn’t volunteer that you had a motive to kill Danziger.’

‘I did not have a motive to – Jesus! Are you listening to me?’

Lowery cross-examined me for the benefit of an imaginary jury. ‘Chief Truman, your mother’s illness trapped you in Maine. It disrupted your life, all your grand plans for the future. Wasn’t it enormously convenient for you when she died?’

‘No!’

‘Her death set you free, didn’t it?’

‘That’s not how it was.’

‘Why did she do it in Boston? Why not at home?’

‘This was home. She wanted to die here. She was never really at home in Versailles.’

‘And when Danziger showed up?’

‘I told you. We spoke very briefly. I told him it was a suicide. He said he was sorry for my mother’s death. I thanked him for his condolences. End of story. My bad luck that Braxton found him while he was still in Maine.’

‘Your fingerprints are all over the murder scene.’

‘Of course my fingerprints are all over the murder scene: I discovered it. That’s why I submitted my prints – so they could be excluded as evidence, same as any cop’s would be. Braxton’s prints were all over the murder scene too.’

Lowery paced, arms folded. His cuff pulled back to reveal an elegant gold watch the size and thickness of a quarter. ‘Is this why you insisted on coming here? Because it never quite made sense to me until now. I mean, why come so far to stay informed about a case when you could just as easily keep tabs with a few phone calls? But now I see. Your interest wasn’t professional at all, was it? You had a personal reason for coming. What did you hope to accomplish here? Were you going to steer us toward someone else? Braxton maybe? Or was it that you just couldn’t stand to be kept in the dark, knowing the trail would inevitably lead back to you?’

‘That’s ridiculous. Every word of it. Martin, are you going along with this? Do you really believe I could have done this?’

‘You should have told us up front, Ben.’ Gittens seemed at a loss.

I shook my head. ‘This is surreal.’

‘Oh, it’s very real,’ Lowery intoned, ‘I assure you. Let me give you a word of advice. Go back home. Hire a lawyer. There’s more evidence against you than you know.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Ben, did you think Danziger was just guessing when he went all the way to Maine to talk to you? Did you think there was no evidence?’

‘You’re setting me up.’

‘Nobody is setting you up,’ Lowery said.

‘I’m being set up.’

‘Just stay away from this investigation. Better yet, stay away from this city, for your own sake. If it comes out that you’re a cop killer—’

‘Mr Lowery, are you threatening me?’

‘I’m just telling you, this is how it is.’

26

My first instinct was to reject the whole thing as a mistake, a Kafkaesque fantasy of opaque charges, hidden evidence, a false trial. Of course I was no murderer. Martin Gittens at least must have known that. There was also an absurd reaction: It crossed my mind that I was miscast in the role of the homicidal baddie, that I could never make a convincing show of it. Who would believe it? But before long the reality of the situation won out. On the street outside the stationhouse, I looked about with the smeary, frantic paranoia of a fugitive – quickened to the environment yet removed from it somehow.

I tried without success to reach John Kelly, then rushed downtown to the SIU office to see Caroline – to explain. Or, perhaps, to get an explanation.

Caroline at first refused to see me. Franny Boyle made several thick-necked attempts to move me out of the lobby, and when I refused to leave he threatened to call the cops himself. It was not until I began to push my way past Franny with a lineman’s swim move that Caroline finally appeared in the waiting area and agreed to hear me out, albeit with the condition that a cop be present too, to witness the conversation.

‘Caroline, you need a witness just to talk to me?’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘How about that you believe me.’

‘Ben, I don’t even know you.’

She called Edmund Kurth, and for the next twenty minutes or so we waited in silence while he rushed over. Caroline was being careful. Kurth’s eyes and ears would save her from being called to the stand as an essential witness, lest I blurt out a confession. In theory, his presence would preserve the possibility that Caroline might someday prosecute me personally for Danziger’s murder.

When he arrived, Kurth stood scowling at me, his coiled presence more ominous now that I was the object of his attention.

‘Alright,’ Caroline said, ‘what is it you want to say?’

‘Do you know what’s going on?’

‘Yes, of course I do.’

‘Then tell me.’

‘You lied.’

‘To who?’

‘To me, to my father, to everyone.’

‘No. I don’t accept that.’

‘Did your mother kill herself?’

‘Yes.’

‘And did Danziger question you about it?’

‘Yes.’

Caroline shrugged.
There it is. QED.

‘Don’t you want to hear my side?’

‘Not really. If you want to give a statement to Detective Kurth, I’ll wait outside.’

‘No. I want you to hear it. Caroline – just listen for one minute.’

She sat down at the conference table, her face blank. She seemed to have receded entirely. I got the sense the real Caroline – her essential self – was observing me from some hidden place, while this other Caroline – the mediate Caroline, the stand-in – sat at the table in this room.

‘I can’t do it like this.’

‘Like what?’

‘Does he have to be here?’

‘Kurth? Yes.’

‘I don’t know where to start.’

‘Tell me why she did it.’

‘She had Alzheimer’s disease.’

‘You can’t die of that.’

‘You can! Not directly, but you can – you do. You didn’t know my mother. She was not going to let it happen to her. She was a smart, sophisticated woman, and then this thing just came along and – you can’t imagine.’

She stared.

‘It began to chew through her mind bit by bit, like a caterpillar on a leaf. She couldn’t just watch herself be erased. She made the decision while she still could.’

‘The decision to kill herself.’

‘The decision to die in a way that was acceptable to her.’

‘And you helped?’

‘I listened, I talked to her, yes.’

‘How did she do it?’

‘Seconal. Her doctor prescribed them to help her sleep. She hoarded them until she had ninety of these little red capsules. She’d researched it. She knew precisely how much she needed for a fatal dose.’

‘Why the Ritz-Carlton?’

‘She loved it there. She remembered going there for afternoon tea when she was a kid. Her father used to take her. They had a falling-out later on, when she got married. After that they barely spoke. She could tell you just where they’d sit, she and her dad, always by a window looking over the Public Garden. She could describe the blue drapes, the cobalt-blue glasses, the whole room. It was their special place.’