Sudden Mischief

"A person like you or me, an imperfect person, hence human, like you or me. I have nearly all my life tended to solve problems by whacking someone in the mouth. I contain that tendency better than I used to, but it hasn't gone away. I have killed people and may again. I haven't taken pleasure in it, but in most cases it hasn't bothered me all that much either. Mostly it seemed like the thing to do at the time. But the capacity to kill someone and not feel too bad is not one that is universally admired."

"Your point?"

"You said I was the finest man you ever knew. Probably am. Most of humanity isn't all that goddamned fine to begin with. I am flawed. You are flawed. But we are not flawed beyond the allowable limit. And our affection for each other is not flawed at all."

She had stopped looking at the distance and was looking, for the first time, at me.

"And every day I have loved you," I said, "has been a privilege."

She kept looking at me and then soundlessly and without warning she turned from the bridge railing and pressed her face against my chest. She didn't make a sound. Her hands hung by her side. I put my arms around her carefully. She didn't move. We stood that way for a time as the pedestrians on the bridge moved spectrally past us. After a while, Susan put her arms around my waist and tightened them. And we stood that way for a time. Finally she spoke into my chest, her voice muffled.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome."

And we stood some more and didn't say anything else.

chapter thirty-five

QUIRK CALLED ME and asked me to come in for a talk. The thing that was unusual about it was that he asked. My office was a two-block walk up Berkeley Street from Police Headquarters and I was there in Quirk's office at the back of the homicide squad room in about five minutes.

"Close the door," he said.

I did.

"Civil Streets is a dead end," Quirk said when I sat down. "We went up there last week with the Stoneham cops and tossed the office. There's nothing there. No books. No computer. No paper. Nothing at all."

"So they cleaned it out," I said.

"Maybe," Quirk said. "Or maybe there never was anything there. We talked to the building owner. He said it was rented for a year by Carla Quagliozzi, paid on time every month with her personal check. I think it was just an address."

"That's what it looked like the day I went there," I said.

"So we figured we better talk to the president, and day before yesterday Lee Farrell called Carla Quagliozzi and asked her to come down with her attorney," Quirk said. "She was due here at ten in the morning. She didn't show. Farrell called. No answer. He called couple more times. Nothing. This morning we called Somerville and asked them to send a cruiser by. The cruiser guy found the front door ajar. He yelled. Nobody answered, so he opened it and looked in. She was in the living room. Somebody had shot her in the head, and cut her tongue out."

"Jesus Christ."

"Medical examiner says it was probably done in that order."

"I hope so."

"ME was pretty sure," Quirk said. "No evidence that any of the kitchen knives were used, assumption is that he brought his knife with him."

"Hasn't this gotten ugly real quick," I said.

"It has."

"Did you, ah, find the tongue."

"No."

"So he took it with him," I said.

"That's our assumption," Quirk said. "He had to carry the tongue away in something. It would be kind of messy to stick it in your pocket. There's no sign that he got a Baggie or Saran Wrap or whatever from the kitchen, though it's possible. Assumption is he came prepared."

"He knew ahead of time he was going to cut out her tongue and take it away," I said.

"That's our guess."

"I hate talking about this," I said.

Quirk said, "I know."

"So, why would he take the tongue with him?" I said.

"Got a guess?"

"He was going to show it to somebody."

Quirk nodded. "As a warning," he said.

"Which is probably why she was killed."

"To shut her up," Quirk said.

"And to shut other people up," I said. "No need to cut her tongue out to keep her quiet."

"And they left the door open," Quirk said.

"Because they wanted her to be found soon."

"Before we got to anyone else," Quirk said.

We thought about it for a minute.

"But you'd figure the tongue"-Quirk made a face-"would work pretty well as a warning."

"If they could show it to everyone they wanted to shut up," I said.

"So maybe there's more than one," Quirk said. "Maybe they left the door open to be sure we'd find her and word would get out and people they couldn't show the tongue to would hear about it, and know what it meant."

"Somebody they couldn't find," I said.

"Somebody missing."

Quirk sat back in his chair, his thick hands folded in front of his chin, the thumbs resting in the hollow under his lower lip.

"Like your client," he said after a time.

"Just like my client," I said.

"Who is Susan's ex-husband," Quirk said.

"Well put," I said. "No wonder you made captain."

Quirk tapped his thumbs gently against his chin. He looked at me silently, shaking his head slowly.

"So you figure her death was at least partly to be a warning to Brad Sterling?"

"Maybe," I said.

"All because somebody might have scammed some money from a charity bash?"

"Maybe."

"And they might have cut out her tongue to drive the point home," Quirk said, "but there'd be no need to take it away to show it to Sterling if they didn't know where he was."

"This is true," I said.

"So it wasn't for Sterling."

"Maybe just the fact of it, when he heard about it," I said.

"Then why take it away?"

"Good point," I said.

"So who's the tongue for?" Quirk said.

"Here's what I know," I said. "Carla is formerly married to Brad Sterling. I'm not sure which wife, but after Susan, who was the first. She is co

"You're thinking out loud," Quirk said, "and it's not a pretty sight. Tell me something I don't know."

"Couple days ago Hawk and I saw Gavin having lunch with Haskell Wechsler."

Quirk's head lifted slightly and he let his chair come forward so that his feet touched the ground. For Quirk that was a reaction approaching hysteria.

"Haskell the rascal," he said. "He spot you?"

"I sat down with them," I said.

"You would," Quirk said.

"They weren't pleased."

"They wouldn't be."

"Haskell said I was going to be tended to later."

"Haskell would mean that," Quirk said.

"If he can," I said.

"Anyone can kill anyone," Quirk said.

"I know that's true," I said. "But if I'm going to do what I do, I have to act like it's not so."

"You've gotten this far," Quirk said. "What's the relationship?"