Bad Business

48

I t was late when I left Cooper. I caught one of the last cars to leave Kenmore Square on the Green Line, got out of the nearempty train at Park Street, crossed to the Red Line, and got on another near-empty train to Porter Square. It was almost midnight when I walked up Linnaean Street toward Susan's house. I liked the aloneness of the empty street, and the way I could hear my own footsteps.

Y ears of big business and years of political aspiration was a lethal combination. My discussion with Cooper felt like it had lasted longer than my police career. But, finally, I was pretty sure I'd gotten all Cooper had. It was a long time for not so much. But I had a date for the audit. And I had some idea of how O'Mara was fitting in.

The streetlights were on, but nearly all the interior lights were out in the rondos and apartment buildings on either side of the street. Now and then there would be one room with a light on. Someone who couldn't sleep. Worried about money. Health. Love. Children. Someone excited. Frightened. Depressed. Bored. Someone doing homework. Someone having sex. Someone having a pastrami sandwich on light rye. Someone sitting by themselves drinking scotch whisky and watching Letterman.

The lights were on in Susan's living room. I walked up the stairs and rang the bell. In a moment the door clicked and I went in. I had just closed the front door behind me when Pearl came boiling down the stairs all long legs and flappy ears, and attempted to lap me to death. I could see Susan's legs on the top step, with the light behind her.

"You let anyone in who rings?" I said.

"I saw you coming up the street," she said.

"Sitting in the window all night hoping for me?" I said.

"You did call and say you were coming."

"Well, yes," I said. "If you want to think of it that way."

I got Pearl sufficiently under control to climb the stairs and kiss Susan. She got me a beer and herself a glass of wine and settled onto the couch beside me in her living room, wearing pink sweatpants and an oversized white tee shirt with The Bang Group printed on it in orange block lettering.

"Tell me about the love nest," she said. I did.

Two beers later she said, "So you were able to blackmail him."

"I was."

"You are sometimes a heartless bastard," she said.

"I am, but never with you."

"That's true."

"It's all that matters," I said.

"To you," she said.

"To me," I said. "Who the hell else are we calling heartless." She leaned over and kissed me lightly on the mouth.

"Tell me about Mr. Cooper," she said. "The lecherous bastard."

"Hard to find a place to start," I said.

"I have every confidence in you," Susan said.

"Okay," I said. "Cooper knew Gavin since they were both at Yale. After school Gavin joined the CIA and Cooper followed his destiny to the Harvard B School. They stayed friends. When he became CEO at Kinergy he felt the need of a loyal friend in a key position and hired Gavin to be chief of security."

"To be a CEO?" Susan said. "Of an energy company? In Waltham?"

"I asked him about that," I said. "He told me that he felt the whole team at Kinergy wasn't pulling together. He was getting threats from the no-dependence-on-imported-energy folks. He needed a tough guy, he said, that he could depend on, inside the company and in public. I had a sense he may have wanted some muscle behind him inside the company too, but he never quite said that."

"Was Gavin really a tough guy?" Susan said. "I mean a lot of those CIA people are simply information analysts. They never leave their desks."

"Quirk checked into him after he died. Nobody, of course, will exactly say anything, quite. Quirk says that he was probably a covert operations guy. Which would make him a legitimate toughie."

Susan smiled, and poured a little wine for herself. I still had beer left.

"Tougher than you?" she said.

"Unlikely."

"What did he think about the cash problem?" Susan said.

"He said he wasn't a micromanager. He said that was Trent Rowley's domain. After Trent bit the dust, Bernie Eisen was looking after the financial end in the interim."

"Did Cooper actually say bit the dust?"

"I'm paraphrasing," I said. "He also remarked that Adele, whom he liked personally, of course, was something of a man eater, and might not necessarily be reliable."

" Man eater was his term?"

"It was," I said. "Are you keeping a journal?"

"You can sometimes gain insight," Susan said, "listening to the way people speak."

"Have you done that with me over the years?"

"Of course."

"And your conclusions?"

"Sort of a big John Keats," Susan said.

"That would be me," I said. "Silence and slow time."

"And Cooper agreed to let your accountant in."

"And staff," I said. "Marty will need help."

"Did he know anything about the special whatsises, or the funny accounting?"

"He said he didn't."

"Do you believe him?"

"I think he was focused on being senator, and positioning himself for the presidency, and that Kinergy, having made him rich, was now merely a base. I think he had little interest as long as its profits kept growing and its stock kept soaring, which made him look good."

"So Adele is right," Susan said. "He let Rowley and Eisen run the company."

"I'd say so."

"How about the O'Mara stuff?"

"Cooper met O'Mara through Trent Rowley, he says. He, Cooper, is of course totally devoted to his lovely wife, Big Wilma . . ."

"He didn't call her Big Wilma," Susan said.

"I'm paraphrasing. He's totally devoted to Big Wilma. Their marriage has been, of course, blissful, but . . ."

"Any children?"

"One son. A career Marine."

"Really? Isn't that sort of odd. I mean from a family like that."

"Probably," I said. "But despite how swell Wilma is, and how happily married they are, Coop felt perhaps there was a way to enlarge his life experience and blah and blah and blah."

"So he decided to take a seminar with Darrin O'Mara."

"He did. The Eisens and the Rowleys brought him to one."

"Not him and Wilma."

I smiled.

"You should meet Big Wilma," I said.

"Out of place?" Susan said.

"Like a mongoose at a cobra festival."

"But isn't that O'Mara's rap? Freeing husbands and wives from the bondage of monogamy?"

I shrugged.

"In Coop's case it was hubbies only. Under pressure, he did allow that not only had he an eye for the ladies, but he had eyes for African American ladies in particular, which Big Wilma is not, by the way. And, because he's so decent a guy, and trying to preserve his wonderful marriage, and in order never to embarrass Wilma, or in any way imply a lack in her, he arranged for O'Mara to begin supplying him with the black women of his dreams."

"What a guy," Susan said. "Whose apartment is it?"

"Coop says it belonged to Gavin, who let him use it."

"You believe him?"

"No. I'm sure Gavin rented it for him. But I don't care if he I ies about stuff like that. If you let a guy like Cooper weasel on the small stuff, he thinks he's winning some of the battles, and it's easier to get the big stuff out of him."

"Did others at Kinergy use O'Mara?"

"We know Rowley did, and Eisen. Coop thinks that probably some other executives were involved, but he doesn't know who."

"You think that's a lie?"

"Probably."

"But you don't care."

"I'm not the sex police," I said. "I just want to know who killed Trent Rowley."

"God; I almost forgot that was what you were hired for."

"I try to keep track," I said.

"Did Cooper have anything to say about the longhaired man?"

"Not really. Said he was a friend of O'Mara's and because O'Mara asked, Cooper had his secretary call and get the guy into the dining club."

"Does he know the man's name?"

"Doesn't remember. Says his secretary might know."

"And when the man just sat there at the bar, you don't think Cooper wondered?"

"If you want to be president, and there's a guy who knows about you what O'Mara knew about Cooper ..."

"You don't ask," Susan said. I nodded.

"So why would this friend of O'Mara's be following you?"

"Worried about what I might find out about Kinergy?"

"Why would he care?"

"Well, he is the corporate pimp," I said.

"I suppose," Susan said. "Do you really think that's all it was?"

"No," I said. "I don't."

"Do you know what else it would be?"

"Not yet," I said.