The Glendower Legacy (8 page)

God help us, he did look angry and insufferably arrogant and stuffy! It irked Chandler to see himself as a snotty prig, scowling and being nasty to this pretty, sincere woman who was not only doing her best but was guaranteed in the station’s advertising to be a “crime fighter.” Finally, unable to watch, wondering if Bill Davis’s murderer was watching and figuring that this wise-ass professor ought to get the big sleep, too … he turned to stare out the window into the rain dripping off the porch, dribbling sibilantly through the shrubs beyond the railing.

When she had finished he turned and addressed the set: “Lady, you’re the reason male chauvinism just won’t die …” He turned the set off, packed a pipe, lit it, and went out on his porch to air himself out in the clean moist chill.

Across the street two men were out for a stroll in the rain, hands in raincoat pockets, heads down. The shorter man wore a checked porkpie hat that matched his raincoat. Chandler squinted at them through the rain, smiling to himself. My God, there couldn’t be two men in one day with the same taste in haberdashery … He shook his head. New neighbors, maybe.

Then he went back inside, locked up for the night, threw a couple of logs onto the grate, lit them, and settled back down to read.

H
E WOKE UP THE NEXT
day thinking about Bill Davis and Polly Bishop and the cops. She’d been right: he had known something he hadn’t been telling her.
Authentication
… He sure as hell wasn’t going to call Polly Bishop but he’d better tell somebody. Namely, the cops who’d called on him two days before. Brookline cops.

Brennan dropped by Chandler’s office just past ten o’clock for coffee. The percolator on top of the bookcase was rattling, about to explode. Chandler leaned back in his swivel chair, put his feet on the desk, and stared out the window at what appeared to be sunshine. There had been a marked springiness in the air as he’d walked to work. It was bound to be a better day.

“Did you use yesterday’s grounds?” Brennan made a face at his coffee cup. “Admit it—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. This coffee was brewed from very special beans I ground at home this morning. Very expensive stuff—”

“Tastes funny. Special beans …”

“Kona Java Supreme, I believe. With a
soupçon
of cinnamon. Connoisseur’s delight and, therefore, entirely wasted on you. I’ve had very good comments, believe me.”

“Not from me,” Brennan sighed, settling down in the leather easy chair dating from the time of John Harvard himself. “Well, I caught the Polly and Colin show last night.” He sipped, frowned, sniffed at the cup like a wary dog.

“I did too—incredibly depressing. Woman’s a menace.”

“A knockout, she is. You’re the menace. What a prick! The kid’s just trying to do her job—”

“Kid? Ha! Job? Some job
…
”

“Did you tell her what you’d remembered about Davis?”

“You’re kidding, it’s none of her business—use your head.”

“Well, you can’t keep it to yourself. Cinnamon? This stuff tastes like oregano … or sage, or something not normally associated with coffee—”

“I’m about to call the Brookline cops, the guys who came down here to question me.” He yawned. “I was up until three reading—”

“You need a real live girl—”

“Did you a helluva lot of good.” He yawned again.

“Had its moments.”

“I’m sure—”

There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” Chandler called.

Two men entered, looked inquisitively about: the first blinked nearsightedly behind wire-rimmed spectacles. He had a fiftyish look and a face full of concern. “Professor Chandler,” he said. “Have you got a moment?”

“What is it?”

“Police,” he said. “Just a couple of questions, Professor.” He looked at Brennan: “If you’ll excuse us?”

“That’s all right, Hugh. Stay put. Look, you’re a little late if this is about Bill Davis. I talked to your people the other—”

“Ah, that’s it, that’s just it, Professor, if you don’t mind.” Both men were in the small office and the door was closed. It was tight. “We’re new people, don’t you see? Boston homicide.”

The other man sidled along the bookcase. He was chewing on an old black pipe. He was bald but for a fringe of grayish hair over his ears and around the base of his skull. There were freckles spattered over his dome and face. “You know how it is, Professor, the Brookline lads just aren’t used to this kind of thing—they asked us to come in, take over, give it our fine touch.” He smiled rather like a leprechaun left over from
Finian’s Rainbow.
He sucked his pipe, a hollow, damp sound. “You might say they’re playing it safe. They can blame us when everything goes wrong …” Both of them had a good chuckle over that. “What do they know about homicide, eh? Not damn all!” He leaned back against the bookcase, folded his arms across his chest, smiling benevolently.

“Well, I’d like to see some identification,” Chandler said. “No offense …”

“Of course not,” the first man said, withdrawing a wallet. He flicked it open and held it out.

Chandler leaned forward, inspected the ID. “Fennerty? Andrew Fennerty …” He nodded. “And you …” The leprechaun offered his wallet. “McGonigle? You guys are kidding—two Boston cops, both Irish? Fennerty and McGonigle?”

“Look at it this way,” McGonigle suggested. “It’s too bloody absurd to be a fake. You can imagine, we take a lot of ribbing, Fennerty and me.” He had another good laugh. Everyone was having a wonderful time. Brennan grinned: “Hey, would you guys like some special cinnamon coffee?”

“Are you satisfied, Professor?” Fennerty pocketed his ID. “Sure, I’m game for some coffee, Mr. …”

“Brennan.” He blew dust out of two cups and poured.

“Sure, sure, I’m satisfied.” Chandler leaned back again, watching. “What can I do for you?”

“Just run through this last visit you had from Bill Davis,” McGonigle said, taking his coffee from Brennan. He sniffed it suspiciously and set it down on a bookshelf.

“Oh, God,” Chandler moaned and began the recital. Fennerty and McGonigle listened intently, nodding solemnly. Chandler worked his way toward the end: “Contrary to the implications made by that woman on television last night, I did not see Bill Davis that last day. Got it?
Did not …
However, I did remember something.” He told them about the authentication business, explained the possibilities.

“Well, well, well,” Fennerty said, bobbing his head, making a tiny O with his mouth.

“That could be very important,” McGonigle said. “Or it might be meaningless … Say, would you mind if I filled my pipe?”

Chandler pushed the tobacco tin toward him.

“It’s our job to find out,” Fennerty said.

“Okay, now are you guys going to keep pestering me? I don’t know anything else. Nothing.” McGonigle got his pipe going and smoke wreathed his head. “You people, that damnable TV woman, cops from Brookline, cops from Boston … I’m not an idiot, y’know, there’s got to be an end—”

“Now, now, Professor, nobody said you were an idiot—”

“I saw you guys yesterday, both of you, you were standing over at Matthews watching me make an ass of myself on television … spying on me, damn it!” Fennerty suddenly looked into his coffee cup as if he’d discovered a snake. He put it down on Chandler’s desk. “It’s got to stop!”

“We’re only doing our job, sir,” McGonigle said soothingly. “We’re only asking you a few questions. We’re not spying on you.”

“We don’t want to cause trouble,” Fennerty said.

“Well, it looks like hell, cops all over my office. I’m drawing attention to the college and I don’t like to do that, not this kind of attention … This institution is one of the good things left and I don’t like to drag it in the mud—”

Brennan smiled: “Fight fiercely, Harvard.”

“I’d hardly say you were doing anything like that, Professor,” Fennerty remarked softly. “Why, no one loves Harvard more than I … I went through Harvard myself—”

“You did?” Chandler felt himself drawn up short.

“Sure, every morning on the way to grammar school …”

Brennan laughed loudly.

“Brennan likes lousy jokes,” Chandler said brusquely.

“Well, a sense of humor is the greatest gift,” Fennerty said. “You should develop yours, Professor.”

“I have a wonderful sense of humor,” Chandler said. McGonigle was filling an oilskin tobacco pouch with Chandler’s Balkan Sobranie mixture. “Patience is what I’m short of, dammit.” The stubby freckled fingers dug down into the black and brown tobacco. “Help yourself,” Chandler muttered.

“Don’t mind if I do, lad. Fine tobacco. My wife buys me awful gunk at the supermarket, Cherry Blend … Now, Professor, one last time—are you sure that Davis never
gave
you whatever it was he wanted authenticated … maybe he posted it to you, maybe he left it with your housekeeper—”

“Maybe,” Fennerty said heavily, “maybe you don’t know you have it …”

“Nonsense. He gave me nothing, left nothing, mailed nothing … to me.”

McGonigle and Fennerty made ready to go.

“Honest to God, you guys are worse than Polly Bishop!” Chandler stood up.

“Please, Professor, we can find our own way out.” Fennerty blinked rapidly behind the thick circles of glass, pursed his tiny lips: his hand was on the doorknob.

“By the way, Professor,” McGonigle said, puffing on the old black pipe, “you might watch Miss Bishop this evening. We’re not at liberty to discuss it but I believe you’ll find her report interesting … And, if anything pops up in your memory about Bill Davis, be sure to let us know—or better yet, sit tight on it. We’ll be in touch. We don’t want information about this case floating around—we’ll definitely be in touch.”

They nodded to Brennan, went through the doorway. Fennerty stuck his head back in: “You be sure to watch the news tonight, Professor.” The door was pulled gently to.

Brennan stood up, poured more coffee: “Abbott and Costello live.” He fished around in the pocket of his jacket, came up with the stub of a pipe. “Do you mind? Maybe the tobacco will take the taste of the coffee out of my mouth …” He reached for the tobacco jar, a plaster of paris copy of Houdon’s Washington, small and gleaming white, which a long-ago girl friend had given him. The top of the skull lifted off.

“What a waste of time that was,” Chandler said.

Brennan stopped digging in the tobacco, looked up with a curious expression on his wide, fleshy face, hand still inserted in Washington’s head. “What the hell?” he muttered, rummaging. Spraying bits of tobacco across the desk he extricated his hand and held up a small black disk between thumb and forefinger. “This is not,” he said, “tobacco!”

“Then why is it in Washington’s head?”

Brennan peered closely at it, balancing it on his fingertip. “Plastic.” He placed it on a sheet of white paper.

Chandler squinted at it. It was flat, about the size of a dime, even smaller.

“It’s a bug,” Brennan said at last. “An electronic listening device.”

“You’re not serious—”

“Indeed I am. I saw a picture of one in a magazine not long ago … this exact device. Cost a thousand dollars …”

“McGonigle,” Chandler said, not quite believing it.

“McGonigle.” Brennan slapped his hands together. “Hot damn! Right here in real life, this nut puts a bug in your Washington head! Jeeesus, I don’t believe it …”

“This is going too goddamn far,” Chandler said softly. He picked up the bug and whispered directly into it: “Too far, you stupid clumsy dumb bastards.” He frowned at Brennan: “What in the name of God do they think they’re doing?”

Brennan shrugged, went to the window, tugged it upwards. He pointed at the window box of dead, weedy debris. The walls of the old building were thick with ample ledges. Chandler leaned across the radiator and burrowed a hole into the dirt which was still damp from melting snow and the recent rains. When he’d reached the middle of the window box he dropped the tiny microphone into the hole and packed the dirt back in on top of it. Brennan eased the window shut.

Chandler whispered: “Do you think that’ll keep it from working?”

“Who knows? But it won’t do it any good. We could have flushed it …”

“But then the evidence would have been gone. And what do I care, I haven’t got anything incriminating to say about Bill Davis … it’s the principle of the thing. God, I feel like I’m going nuts—” He grinned at the window box, then at Brennan. “What are we whispering for? It doesn’t make any difference.”

“Well, you should be out of it by now. You told them about the authentication thingy. Finis …” He shrugged the massive, burly shoulders. “Looks to me like you’re squeezed dry.” He went back to filling his pipe. “Why would they go on spying on you?”

“That’s another funny thing. They weren’t spying on me yesterday … it occurred to me right after I accused them of it. They were spying on, watching, observing, whatever, the other two guys … the guy in the funny hat and his big friend …”

“What are you talking about?”

Chandler told him about the two men. “Then,” he concluded, “last night I saw them, the funny hat guy and company, outside my house. Walking in the rain.”

Brennan raised his eyebrows, looking at Chandler across his coffee mug.

The morning’s interview jostled around in Chandler’s brain through the lunch hour and on into the afternoon. How remarkably clumsy to leave the bug in a depth of tobacco so shallow. How obvious and unconstitutional … Yet, he might not have found it at all: the tobacco was dry, he seldom smoked in his office: it had been found by sheerest chance. But more bothersome than the planting of the bug was the question it raised: what could they possibly imagine that he knew and was keeping from them? And was it customary for homicide detectives to have such costly devices for everyday use, the matter of legality aside?

And, further, what kind of Boston cops would use words like
posted
for mailed,
lads
for guys or boys or men, or would be moved to say that the Brookline police didn’t know
damn all
about homicide? Chandler couldn’t say where an expression like
damn all
could have come from. Acting on a vague hunch, late in the afternoon, he called Boston Homicide and without so much as a flicker of hesitation a central switchboard operator confirmed the existence of Fennerty and McGonigle. Well, McGonigle had said it was too bloody absurd to be a fake … and there you had another oddity for a Boston cop …
bloody absurd.