3 Quarters (28 page)

I
n the brisk morning, Bobby tried to keep pace with the smaller but fleeter Max Roth as they circled the Central Park reservoir.

“ . . . So: Moira Farrell, your former lawyer, is now lunching with Mr. Barnicle, who you think framed you,” Roth said, still breathing easily enough to hold a conversation. Bobby was holding his own, but it would take time to get his wind back. “I'm not one bit surprised . . . .”

‘You're not?” Bobby asked.

“Or that she's transporting swag with a bagman from Tuzio's office, which prosecuted you,” Roth continued. “There really is no such thing as a free lunch, Bobby.”

“Yeah, but Moira Farrell was always this big liberal idealist,” Bobby said. “How does she wind up in cahoots with a law-and-order, family-values conservative like Stone?”

“Money,” Roth said.

“What do you mean?”

“After we met, I kept digging, like you asked,” Roth said, turning to run backward for twenty yards, facing Bobby, who was beginning to get his wind back. “I checked with Albany, the New York Department of State. Moira Farrell is now the lawyer of record for Gibraltar Security.”

“You're kidding me,” Bobby said. “Since when?”

“Since right after you went into the can. A few months later, Gibraltar got a contract to do security work for the Stone for Governor Campaign.”

“Then she became the chief Brooklyn fund-raiser?”

“Yeah,” Roth said. “You go to jail. She gets a big client. Then a major political job. Who knows what patronage job she'll get if Stone gets elected. Moira Farrell might be beautiful, but she isn't getting any younger. She's had plenty of bedfellows, but none as secure as politics.”

“You can smash these bastards with this whole three-quarters scam, right?” Bobby asked.

“Wrong. I hate to say it,” Roth said, “but I think Gleason is right. I can't touch this story without absolute proof. It could backfire on both of us. I'll find out on my end what I can. You still have some doors to knock on.”

When Bobby got back to his Jeep, he checked the answering machine in Gleason's office. Patrick had called to say that he had learned Franz, the assistant medical examiner, was a registered Democrat. That he'd clashed in the past with Cis Tuzio's office. She once even labeled him a hostile witness. Perhaps this was why Tuzio never called Franz to the stand, Bobby thought. It didn't explain why Moira Farrell never called him, or did it?

The next message was from Maggie, saying she'd searched the DMV database as he'd asked and found out that both Cis Tuzio and Moira Farrell lived in different apartments in the same Brooklyn Heights condo brownstone. The former college roommates from the same hometown were still very close neighbors.

Tom Larkin had left a message saying, “Bobby, I've discovered something very disturbing in the police archives about a seventeen-year-old kidnapping case involving a young woman named Kate Clementine. I need to check out another piece of information in the current missing-persons files about an architect who vanished. I'll get back to you later about getting together to discuss it. I'll explain about how your girlfriend being Ukrainian fits into all this.”

John Shine had also left a message, saying he needed to see him about some ugly rumors he'd picked up in The Winning Ticket.

Finally, Connie had left a message saying she needed to see him ASAP about Maggie. She wanted to take him to lunch, somewhere private. They arranged to meet at the boat basin.

A few minutes before eleven, Connie climbed out of a yellow taxi, dressed in snug jeans and sneakers and a white tank top, her hair piled high, her face shielded behind a pair of big dark sunglasses.

“I'm glad you called,” Connie said, attempting to kiss Bobby on the lips. He turned his face and caught the kiss on his cheek as her braless left breast pressed against his right arm. It sent a shock to the center of his body.

“I'm glad you came,” Bobby said.

“You sure don't act it,” Connie said, wiping lipstick from his cheek.

Under overcast skies, Connie climbed on board
The Fifth Amendment,
and Bobby took her over to Arthur's Landing, a waterside bar-restaurant in Weehawken, New Jersey, where he tied up, telling the kid at the fuel dock to fill the tank. Gas for boats was thirty-cents-agallon cheaper one mile across the Hudson River than it was in Manhattan.

“You always took me to the hippest places,” Connie said with disdain. “Brooklyn. Jersey. S'matter, couldn't you get a reservation in the Bronx?”

“Screw you,” Bobby said.

“I wish . . .”

“Don't get angry,” Connie said after ordering drinks from a college-aged waitress. “As soon as summer school ends next week, I'm taking Maggie away until this is over. You can see her this weekend, and that's it until after the trial.”

“Please, Con . . .”

“I've had the tabloid press outside my goddamn building for the last week,” Connie said. “I'm afraid some sicko will try swiping Maggie for ransom. I don't want her exposed to questions like the one the great intellect from
Front Page TV
asked last night: ‘Are you ever afraid your daddy will cut your throat, Maggie?' ”

“Oh, Jesus,” Bobby said.

“I want her to see you, Bobby,” she said, putting her hand on top of his, her ring finger displaying the big stone Trevor Sawyer had given to her. She quickly changed hands, putting the ringed one under the table.

“Where are you planning to go?” Bobby asked, his eyes drifting to a Japanese tourist with a video camera shooting tape of the Manhattan cityscape. The tourist turned, and his camera panned amateurishly around the restaurant.

“Southampton,” Connie said. “Where we have electrified fences and German shepherds who can eat tabloid TV reporters like Gravy Train.” She saw the disappointment in his face. “You can visit Maggie there. I've told Trevor. He said it was fine for you to stay in our guesthouse.”

“Very nineties of him,” Bobby said, then sighed. “I'm sorry. Tell him I said thanks, but if I do visit, I'll come on the boat and sleep on board.”

Connie looked him in the eyes. “Trevor has to go to London next week,” she said softly, stroking his hand. “I'll be there alone with Maggie. Maybe we could have dinner together . . .”

“Send the servants home for the night and all that?”

“Up yours,” Connie said, squeezing his callused hand as hard as she could to hurt him. “I was trying to be nice.”

Bobby noticed the Japanese with the video camera taking a seat and ordering a Coke and resting his camera on its side on the tabletop. The red light on his camera was on. Bobby made him for a dunce. But there was always the possibility he was working for Tuzio or Barnicle. Or tabloid TV. Paranoia was rampant in him. He looked around the restaurant, checking out the other customers. Three different couples sat at window tables looking out at the river.

Connie wove her fingers through his now, looking to make deeper contact. “Sometimes I do regret breaking up with you, Bobby,” Connie said.

“It wasn't a breakup,” he said. “It was a divorce, and it's still painful. At least Maggie seems to be getting over it.”

Connie looked off at the skyline of New York, and Bobby followed her eyes, realizing again that the best part of living in Jersey was the view of Manhattan. The Japanese tourist with the camera wasn't so dumb after all. But why was he taking footage of the restaurant? Looking to buy?

“I've been totally faithful to Trevor,” she said, toying with Bobby's thumb and then kneading his palm and tracing all his finger joints and the gullies between the fingers. Connie's hands were soft and smooth and skilled and familiar, and Bobby could feel himself getting hard. “As I was faithful to you. But I don't know what he does on these business trips.”

“I'm sure he takes care of business,” Bobby said, feeling his penis growing along his thigh.

“All kinds of business,” she said. “A man with his wealth attracts babes like flies to sugar. I've watched how some women look at men with money. Like hunters, killers.”

“He adores you,” Bobby said.

“And I'm free all afternoon,” Connie said. “Maybe you could show me the harbor. Looks like a storm's coming. I've never been on a boat in a storm with you, Bobby. Alone . . .”

He was hard as an oar handle now and staring at her lips, at the cleavage exposed when she leaned closer. The air-conditioning in the restaurant had hardened her bra-free nipples, and they pushed against the white tank top. Bobby squirmed in his chair, remembering her small, firm breasts, the flat belly, tight, soft behind, the smell of her hot sweaty skin when she was aroused. He had once loved this woman completely. John Shine was wrong. You could have more than one great love in your life. Just not at the same time.

“Did anyone get it yet?” she whispered.

“Get what?”

“That first post-jailhouse tumble?”

Her smile always made his heart leap, the perfect teeth, the moist full lips. “Just a couple of guys who came on board in an unfriendly kind of way.”

“No man has ever known how to take care of me the way you did,” she whispered. “And I know how to take care of you.”

Suddenly, after those eighteen months, looking at Connie made him very uneasy.

“You always did,” Bobby said, his groin throbbing.

“Then to hell with lunch,” she said. “Let's set sail.”

Bobby took a sip of his coffee and cleared his throat, shifting in his seat as guilt melted his boner.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I . . . I just can't, Con.”

“Because of Dorothea?” Connie asked.

He faked a cough, looked away, then met her eyes again.

“Maggie,” Bobby said.

“Maggie!” Other patrons glanced over.

“You look too much like Maggie now for me to make love to you, Con,” he said.

Connie withdrew her hand from his, her mouth open, her eyes narrowed. Aghast.

“You are one
sick
fuck, Robert Emmet,” she said.

The waitress came over to ask if they were going to eat.

“I think we'll skip lunch,” Connie said, and the disappointed waitress walked away.

Connie shook her head, took a sip of her soda. They sat in silence for another minute.

“I want you to see our daughter,” she finally said, after composing herself. “I just won't let you expose her to the media madness. Understood?”

“Understood,” Bobby said. “We better get going before the storm hits.”

Connie tried to pay the bill, but Bobby insisted, saying, “I owe a lot of back child support.” As they went down to the dock and climbed aboard
The Fifth Amendment
, Bobby noticed the Japanese guy with the video camera taking pictures of Manhattan again. Then he swung the camera down at them and waved. Bobby still didn't trust the man and cast off quickly from the restaurant dock.

“I guess I made a fool of myself,” Connie said as they moved across the river through snarling whitecaps.

“I'm the fool for saying no,” Bobby said.

“You don't think I'm slutty?”

“I think you're one of the classiest women I've ever known,” he said as he worked the helm, guiding the boat through the angry swells that were not much different from his short-circuited emotions.

“Do me a favor, will ya?” she said as Bobby docked at his slip in the boat basin less than ten minutes later.

“Sure,” he said.

“Go and get this nasty murder business over with,” she said. “Maggie needs you back in her life in a normal situation. If I can do anything, let me know. Be careful. Be smart. But close the deal, Bobby.”