“Estelle Gallagher,” I said. “Never knew her last name.”
“Don’t look Irish,” Quirk said.
“No disgrace to it,” I said.
“Not now,” Quirk said.
He turned and walked to where a uniformed guy was standing with Gary and Beth. I followed him. Beth was holding on to Gary’s arm with both of hers. She was crying.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Quirk said.
“It’s terrible,” Beth said.
Gary looked dazed.
“Do you have any thoughts on who or why?” Quirk said.
“No,” Beth said, and cried some more.
“You, sir?” Quirk said to Gary.
He shook his head slowly.
“No one had any reason to do this to Estelle,” he said.
His voice was flat and not very loud. He looked as if Beth’s clutch on his arm was weighing him down.
“She lived with you two,” Quirk said pleasantly.
“Yes,” Beth said. “She was a friend.”
“She was my girlfriend,” Gary said in the same affectless voice. “Been my girlfriend a long time.”
Quirk didn’t say anything.
“When’s the last time you saw her?” he said. “Either of you?”
They looked at each other as if to compare notes.
“This morning,” Gary said. Beth nodded. “Before she went to the club. I was having some breakfast with her. Beth was still in, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, still sniffling. “But I heard you talking. I actually last saw her last night before I went to bed.”
Quirk nodded and looked at Belson.
“Frank,” he said. “We got a time of death yet?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, get a statement from these folks, and when the time of death is established, see if they got an alibi.”
“Alibi?” Beth said. “You think one of us would do this?”
“Course not,” Quirk said. “But it would be comforting to know you couldn’t have.”
He jerked his head at me and walked away.
When we were far enough away to talk, he said, “What’s this fucking threesome?”
“You may have nailed it,” I said.
“A fucking threesome?”
“Yeah.”
“And they all knew about each other?”
“I think so,” I said.
“I’m not sure any of the nuns at Saint Anthony’s told me about this,” he said.
“Probably not,” I said.
“First her husband, now her, ah, roommate. I was this Eisenhower guy, I’d be a little careful walking around with old Beth.”
“Or she with him,” I said.
“Or she with him,” Quirk said. “Tell me what you know.”
Which I did.
Chapter 56
WE IN A MARRIOTT HOTEL,” Hawk said. “In Burlington fucking Massachusetts.”
We were in a new restaurant called Summer Winter.
“Susan says it’s great,” I said.
Susan smiled at him and nodded. Hawk looked around the room.
“Don’t see no brothers,” Hawk said.
“I know,” Susan said.
They grinned at each other. Sometimes they communicated on levels even I didn’t quite get. Hawk looked at me.
“What you know from the po-lice,” he said.
“Gun killed Estelle was the same as the gun that killed Jackson,” I said.
“Thing keeps getting more incestuous,” Hawk said. “Don’t it.”
“It do,” I said.
The waitress brought our drink order. She was pleasant to all of us. Though she was, perhaps, a little extra-pleasant to Hawk.
Hawk sipped from his margarita.
“Beth and Eisenhower got an alibi?” he said.
I nodded.
“They were together at some sort of fund-raiser cocktail party at The Langham Hotel,” I said. “Twenty people saw them.”
“Too bad,” Hawk said.
“You think they’re involved?” Susan said.
“Ah is just a poor simple bad guy,” Hawk said, “trying to get along. Ask the dee-tective.”
“Who else is there?” I said.
“Couldn’t it be a party or parties unknown?” Susan said.
“Sure,” I said. “But on the assumption of same gun, same shooter, they would need to be connected to both Estelle and Jackson.”
“They have alibis for both,” Susan said.
“Rock-solid,” I said. “For both.”
Susan guzzled nearly a full gram of her martini.
“Suppose,” I said, “that someone you knew was murdered yesterday evening, and the cops asked you for an alibi.”
“I washed my hair,” Susan said. “Took a bath, put on some night cream, and got in bed with Pearl and watched a movie on HBO.”
“And if they asked what movie, and could you remember the plot?”
“I could tell them that, but the movie has been running all month on my cable system,” Susan said.
“So Pearl is basically your alibi,” I said.
“Hawk?” I said.
“There be a young woman…” Hawk said.
“Of course there was,” I said.
I drank some of my short scotch and soda.
“Last night I had a couple of cocktails,” I said. “Made supper, ate it, and watched the first half of the Celtics game before I fell asleep.”
“So you don’t even have Pearl,” Susan said.
“I don’t,” I said.
“So you’re saying that people often don’t have any way to prove where they were of an evening, and these people have two ironclad alibis.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Most people,” Susan said. She looked at Hawk. “Except maybe for the man with the golden lance, here…”
“Black opal,” Hawk said.
Susan nodded.
“Except for the man with the black-opal lance,” she said.
“Most people could go days at a time with no alibi except for whomever they live with.”
“And,” Hawk said. “If they both under suspicion…”
“The alibi is suspect,” Susan said.
“Sorta,” I said.
“You think they hired a third party?” Susan said.
“Yes.”
“Both of them?” Susan said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Beth surely could not have escaped such a childhood unscathed,” Susan said.
“Nobody do,” Hawk said.
“She had somebody do Jackson,” I said. “She’d get his money.”
“She have somebody do Estelle,” Susan said. “Beth would get Eisenhower.”
“She don’t get Jackson’s money until somebody kills him,” Hawk said. “How’d she pay.”
I looked at him for a moment.
“Oh,” Hawk said. “Yeah.”
“What?” Susan said.
“She started out broke,” I said. “How’d she pay her way this far?”
Susan was silent for a moment.
Then she said, “Oh. The, ah, barter system.”
Our food came, and we ate some. Susan looked at Hawk.
“Well,” she said.
Hawk nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “You’re right.”
“Thank you,” Susan said.
She looked at me.
“So if it were Beth, and if she were hiring somebody to kill her husband, and Estelle, and taking it out in trade, who would she hire? Who does she know that she could hire?”
“Eisenhower’s been in jail,” I said. “Husband was on both sides of legitimate. She might know a lot of people, or she might know one who could broker the deal.”
“She know Zel and Boo,” Hawk said. “She know Tony Marcus.”
“Ty-Bop?” I said.
“He don’t freelance,” Hawk said.
“Not even for love?” Susan said.
Hawk smiled at her.
“Ty-Bop don’t know nothing ’bout love.”
“Junior?” I said.
“Ain’t a shooter,” Hawk said.
“Probably knows how,” I said.
“Maybe. You looking in that direction, I think you got to look at Tony. He tell Ty-Bop to shoot you. Ty-Bop will shoot you. He tell Junior to break your back. Junior will break your back. But gun work is Ty-Bop. And strong-arm is Junior. He don’t ask one to do the other man specialty. And they don’t do anything unless Tony tells them to. It’s a matter of respect.”