Tommy Bresnahan. The number-one name on Tek’s witness roster. Tek neglected to indicate Bresnahan was the bartender-thanks for nothing-but now I can see if DeCenzo confirms it. And then, maybe he’ll help me find his former employee. I shake my head, picturing the bar on the night of the murder three years ago. If Bresnahan identified the person in the bar as Dorinda, that’s just bull. It was Gaylen, I know that now. She remembers Bresnahan served her margaritas and her father tequila shots. And a twenty-one-year-old is not a forty-year-old. To the liquored-up strangers minding their own business in a dingy bar, maybe. But Bresnahan? That’s hard to believe. Either he’s got serious vision problems or an ulterior motive. Or the police were so convinced it was Dorinda he figured he should just agree.
And then, after all, she confessed. So it didn’t matter if the cops strong-armed anyone.
I hear DeCenzo click his cordless back into the wall-mounted holder. As I look up, he’s coming toward me, taking a long slug from a tall thin can of some energy drink. I’m wondering if he also owns tanning salons, since every inch of visible skin is baked an unlikely copper. He towers intimidatingly over the bar, brush-cut graying hair and military bearing, his Reefs T-shirt straining across a hypermuscled chest, a white canvas apron tied around his waist. Maybe owns a couple of gyms, too. Probably serves as his own bouncer.
“Assholes,” he says. He crushes the can and tosses it into a wastebasket, then gestures to the phone. “They’re raising the price of ice, now. Ice. It’s just some damn cold water, for cripes’ sake. How much can ice cost? This place is a frickin’ Alcatraz around my neck.” Del grabs a thin white towel and wipes it across the bar, back and forth, apparently contemplating the escalating price of ice. Franklin described this guy perfectly. A real poet.
“So, young lady,” he says, tucking the damp towel into the waistband of his apron. He hands me an envelope. “This what you want? I thought I was done with you TV types. Talked to your-” he shrugs “-conductor?”
“Producer,” I say, keeping a straight face. I shift position on my too-high chair and fight a losing battle with my suddenly too-short black skirt. “Thanks so much for digging this out. It’s his job application, right? The one for the bartender who worked here the night of the murder…” I pause, hoping he’ll fill in the name.
“Jerk,” he says. DeCenzo leans back against the stainless steel sink, crossing his arms over his T-shirt. He’s wearing more jewelry than I ever would, a couple of shiny necklaces, one dangling a massively curlicued D. A rock of a diamond ring flashes on one hand and a chunky gold ID bracelet glints on the other wrist.
“Jerk Bresnahan.” He shakes his head. “I move to town from Detroit, what, three years ago? I must have hired, what, a million guys to tend bar? How hard can it be? But no, this guy’s spooked because someone who was in the bar dies, for cripes’ sake. Ray Frickin’ Sweeney. Who had it coming, if you’re asking me.” He pauses, narrowing his eyes. “Don’t mean anything by that,” he says. “Don’t write that down. Anyway, like I told your…”
“Producer,” I say.
“…I gotta keep records,” he finishes. “That’s how I know this guy didn’t even pick up his last paycheck.”
I open the white envelope, which has a coffee stain on one end. I pull out a copy of a prefab employment application. Place of birth: Salt Lake City. And then, there’s the brass ring. Tommy Bresnahan’s social security number. Which someone has circled. Bingo. Now I can find him.
DeCenzo is still talking. “Came all the way from someplace like Wyoming, he’s telling me. Utah. He’s all about how he’s born out there, skis, bartends all the resorts. I say, fine, one margarita’s pretty much like another. Police arrive. He bolts.”
“And you haven’t heard from him since then?”
“Rains it pours,” DeCenzo says. “You call, and he calls. Couple days ago. Said he might ‘stop by.’ Get his paycheck. You kidding me? Not in this lifetime, I told him. Nobody does that to-”
“Did he leave a number?” I interrupt. Things are looking up. “Say when he would stop by? Where he was?”
“Negatory,” DeCenzo says.
Things are looking down. I open my folder on the bar and pull out the list of witness names. “How about the other witnesses that night? Do you know a-” I glance at the list. “Joe Perry?”
“The guy in Aerosmith?”
“Was the guy in Aerosmith here that night?”
“No.”
“Then, no,” I say, forcing a smile. “How about a George Kindell?”
“It was summer,” DeCenzo says. “Tourists out the wazoo. Coulda been anyone.”
“One more question, maybe two,” I say. I measure his bulked-up arms and daunting chest. I remember how Ray “Frickin’” Sweeney was launched down the basement stairs. And I wonder how I can casually ask a muscle-bound monolith where he was the night of a murder without getting launched someplace unpleasant myself. Maybe I’ll just find that out later.
I flip through my folder for the copies of the photo lineup pictures. “How many photographs did the cops show witnesses that morning?”
“How many?” he says. He pushes his lips to one side, then the other, his face straining with the effort to remember. Or maybe with the effort to count. “They didn’t show them to me. Like I said, I wasn’t here the night it happened. Anyway, what’s this about? She confessed.”
I select the photo of Dorinda and turn my folder around so DeCenzo can see it. “This person look familiar to you? Is this a photo they showed?”
“Like I said, I didn’t-” The bar owner pauses, puts his hands on his hips. “What are you trying to pull here?” His voice is suddenly stony, suspicious. “You trying to pull the wood over my eyes or something?”
“Pull?” I’m baffled and look down at my open folder. Paper-clipped pages of my notes are tucked into one clear plastic pocket. The other research we’ve collected is spread out underneath. The eight-by-ten of Dorinda is facing him, but that’s not what DeCenzo is looking at. He plops one tanned finger on the prom photo, the one of Queen Dorinda and her court, the image Dr. Garth morphed into middle age. “That’s who was here that night,” he says.
I get it now. “Oh right, I know,” I say. “But that’s just a computer-altered photo of her.” I tuck the computer illustration away and tap the picture from the police files. “But this is a real photo. Do you remember if this was the one they showed witnesses?”
“What I remember? Is nothing. But, hey. She confessed.” He nods, as if he’s making a momentous decision. “You find Jerk Bresnahan? You say I’m not giving him his paycheck, even if he does show back up. We done?”
“We done,” I say. I put the photos away and close my folder, trying to keep my face pleasant and pokerfaced. It’s a little tough, because a new theory is now quickly coalescing. This one features Del DeCenzo as murderer. He’s a thuggish pitbull who hated Ray. He wasn’t in the bar that night. That’s motive and opportunity. And as a result, Del would be delighted for Dorinda to stay right where she is. I hand him my business card, standard reporter practice, and smile politely as I back out of the bar. “We done.”
THE VIEW FROM THE WINDOW in Tek Mattheissen’s thirtieth-floor outer office is spectacular. A flotilla of sailboats navigates the Charles River, all sun and white sails against the redbrick facades of MIT across the water in Cambridge. I’ve been waiting, theme of the day, for the chief of staff about twenty minutes now, and I’ll bet it’s time down the drain. A fool’s errand, Mom would say. And she may be right. Either Tek Mattheissen is a conniving, manipulative and violent criminal who’s trying to corrupt the justice system to make his boss a big shot or he’s a hapless dupe who’s been tricked or convinced or bribed into doctoring evidence to make his boss a big shot. Either way, it’s unlikely the attorney general’s chief of staff is going to divulge the truth.