"You mean a miscreant will be walking the streets of this commonwealth unpunished?" I said.
"I think so," Devane said, and hung up. I got up and went out of my office to check on Tommy Banks.
He wasn't in his apartment, and he wasn't at the studio, so I went back to my office. He wasn't there either. In fact, wherever I went for the rest of the day, Tommy Banks wasn't there. Where was Mr. Keen when I really needed him. I checked with Belson at Homicide. No unidentified bodies that resembled Banks had turned up.
Unrequited-love suicides usually wanted people to know they'd done it. It was a way to say, See what you've done to me, you bitch. So the fact that no one had found his body was a good sign. I wasn't sure I wanted to explain it to Sherry just that way. I called Sherry at 5:15 to tell her that as far as I could tell, Tommy Banks had not done himself in, and was probably off somewhere sulking. She thanked me. She said if I heard anything, I should let her know. I said I would, and hung up. No wasted conversation. Efficient, neat, economical of movement and gesture. And without a goddamned clue to where Tommy Banks was or where he would be. Some days I thought it might be better to be sloppy and successful. Maybe I should practice dogged determination. I stood and walked over to the window and looked down on Berkeley Street. Spot him from the air. No luck. The late afternoon commuter crowd was moving into the subway kiosk below me. Across the street Linda's office was empty. I called her office. She had left for the day. I called her home. No answer. I hung up and sat in my chair and clasped my hands behind my head and put my feet up. So it would be a quiet evening. Paige was up visiting Paul and they were going to a concert. Linda had left for the day. Susan was on the West Coast with a guy friend. That was the bad news. The good news was it would give me lots of time to think about Mickey Paultz getting wasted. I looked at my watch, 5:24. I thought about someone shooting Mickey Paultz in the head with a.22-caliber automatic at close range. I tried to wonder why. I tried to care. I looked at it from every angle I could conceive. And finally I gave it up. I looked at my watch again, 5:27. I looked at the phone. It didn't say anything. I looked out the window some more. People were still heading into the subway. Nobody looked up at my office. Nobody called. Nobody came in. I thought about going over to the Harbor Health Club and working out. I thought about going down to the Quincy Market and buying some finger food and walking around looking at tourists. I got my bottle of Old Bushmill out of my desk and had a small snort from the bottle. Decisive. Not a man to sit around and do nothing. I had another small tap from the bottle neck.
I hadn't seen Linda Thomas since the shootout in the weeds. Broad had no sense of adventure. She'd liked Darth Vader okay. What was wrong with me.
I had some more whiskey.
Nice date. We'll go to the movies and after, I'll shoot four guys. Linda probably wanted to get a snack afterward. No imagination. Sit around, eat and drink. Get logy. Probably take in too much salt and saturated fats. Movies and a shootout, now that was different. If you skipped butter on the popcorn, it was cholesterol-free, non-fattening, and low sodium.
I drank some more, and swiveled around and put my feet up on the windowsill, and watched the sky get slowly dark over Linda's empty building.
CHAPTER 39
I found Tommy Banks through a combination of luck and good detective work. The luck part was that I was in my office thinking about coffee when Banks walked in the door. The good detective work involved saying, "Ah-ha, Tommy Banks."
He looked awful. He was hollow-eyed and gray-faced and there wasn't much verve in his step. There was about him a kind of exhausted rigidity that kept him unlimber, but slow, as he moved.
"She's still seeing that fucker Winston," he said.
I knew who "she" was. I did the same thing.
When I said "she" it was always Susan. When he said it he meant Sherry.
"I've been looking for you," I said.
"Me? What for?"
"She asked me to," I said.
He shook his head. "Shit," he said. "She's worried what I'd find out."
"Yeah?" I nodded toward my guest chair.
"Yeah." He sat.
"Why shouldn't she see Winston?" I said. "There's probably stuff he knows about running the church that she needs help with."
"She don't need to stay all night," Banks said.
I raised my eyebrows. It was what I did when I didn't know what to say. This summer they'd been up a lot.
"Did she?" Banks was insistent that I respond. He leaned stiffly toward me. "Did she?"
"No," I said. "I wouldn't think she'd have to stay all night."
"Now do you believe me?" Banks said.
"Believe you about what," I said.
"That something's going on there. That there's been something going on for a long time and they're fooling all of you."
"Tommy," I said. "The woman you love is sleeping with another guy, maybe. That's awful for you. But it happens. It's not something I can prevent."
"They're doing something," Banks said. "They been doing something since I first talked to you and you never found it out. You think she's a little gingham sweetie that likes to pray. That's not her. She's been jerking you around just like she did me."
"What do you think they're doing," I said.
"I don't know, but she is not a Holy Roller. I know her. I know her better than anyone. That's why at first I figured they'd kidnapped her. She wouldn't go Jesus freak on her own."
"That's why you made up the kidnap stuff?"
"Yeah, I figured it was true but I figured you wouldn't look all that hard for her if I just said I thought so."
"And you still don't think she's there 'cause she wants to be?"
"She wants to be there okay. Like she wants to fuck Winston. But not for God."
"Love?" I said.
He shrugged. "I don't know how much she's willing to sacrifice for love. I never saw much sign of it."
"So you think there's something else."
"Smart," Banks said. "You are really smart." I sighed.
"But you don't know what the something else is," I said.
"Aren't you supposed to be able to find out stuff like that?"
I felt tired. I thought about coffee, maybe add a little Bushmill to it, an ethnic pick-me-up. I didn't want to work on this case anymore. I was tired of Banks, and of his obsession, and of Sherry and Winston and the Reorganized Church. I was tired of me too.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm supposed to find out stuff like that. It's just that I thought I already had."
"You found out shit," Banks said.
"I find a lot of that," I said.
Banks looked like he might break. He radiated tenseness and hurt.
"You been following her," I said. He nodded.
"And she went to Winston's and didn't come out all night."
He nodded again.
"You watched all night."
"Yes."
I swung my chair around toward my window and stood up and looked out. The sun reflected off Linda's window and I couldn't see if she was there or not. The sun coming in my window was hot and there was a wind off the river. I could see the pedestrians lean slightly into it as they walked. The summer skirts on the women were pressed between their legs and people with hats kept a hand on them. An empty paper cup with golden arches on it- skittered along the gutter up Berkeley Street toward police headquarters. I envied it. It had direction.
I turned back to Banks. "I'll look into it," I said.
"You took all my money last time and found shit," Banks said. "You cleaned me out."
"No charge, this time," I said. "You're still under warranty."
CHAPTER 40
Martin Quirk met me after work at Harvard Gardens for a couple of beers. From the way he looked you wouldn't know if he was finishing the day or starting. His short black hair was perfectly in place. His white shirt was full of starch. He came into the bar the way cops do, like it was his bar, in his city. Despite the name, Harvard Gardens was a neighborhood bar in Boston and better than most. It was across from Mass General Hospital and the parking lot for the Charles Street Jail. The mix of nurses, interns, jail guards, and people from Beacon Hill made for a nice texture. And if you wanted, you could eat. I didn't want to. I was sipping Irish whiskey and chasing it with beer. Quirk had the same.