27.

An hour after Alderson left, Epstein arrived.

“Alderson came to visit you,” he said.

“He did.”

“You made contact with him at the college yesterday,” Epstein said. “And this morning he was here for about forty minutes.”

“Your guys are pretty good,” I said. “I didn’t make them yesterday, and I was looking for them.”

“We have our moments,” Epstein said. “What’s the story?”

“Off the record,” I said.

“Off what record?” Epstein said. “You been watching television again. I didn’t send a couple agents down to bring you in. I came here alone. In your office.”

“I need your word,” I said, “that we’ll do it my way.”

“No,” Epstein said.

“Don’t equivocate,” I said.

“I can’t give you my word blind,” Epstein said. “I can’t let you decide what’s bureau business. Maybe I never could, but the rules have changed since nine-eleven.”

I nodded. Epstein didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. We had gotten to the bridge we were going to cross when we got to it. And we both knew it. The muffled sound of traffic drifted up from Boylston Street. The sound of someone in high heels walking briskly came from the corridor outside my office.

“You asked me to trust you,” Epstein said. “I can’t do that. But what I can do is ask you to trust me.”

I waited.

“Bureau business comes first,” Epstein said. “That stipulated, I’ll cut you as much slack as I can.”

My office refrigerator cycled on quietly. Susan had decided I needed a refrigerator. It was a small one, next to the file cabinet. I kept milk in it, for coffee, and beer, for emergencies. I opened my middle drawer and took out the tape recorder. I had rewound it to the beginning when Alderson left. Now I had only to punch the play button. Which I did. Epstein listened to the whole tape without saying anything. When it was through he said, “Got a dupe?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll take that one,” Epstein said.

I took the tape out of the recorder and handed it to him.

“Okay,” Epstein said. “Talk to me.”

I got us each some coffee, sat in my chair, put my feet up, and took a sip.

“I edited that tape down to the stuff Doherty had to hear to know she was cheating,” I said.

“Why not play the whole thing?”

“He was going to have enough trouble hearing her cheat,” I said. “I didn’t want to make him sit through it all.”

“And?” Epstein said.

“The next day she came here and begged me for the tape.”

“So Doherty confronted her.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Played her the tape.”

“I assume so.”

“That must have been pretty,” Epstein said. “So why’d she want it?”

“Wondered the same thing,” I said. “She offered money. She offered sex. A combination of both. Whatever I wanted. She said if she didn’t get the tapes it would ruin her life.”

“Doherty know there was more on the tape than you gave him?” Epstein said.

“Yes.”

“So she probably remembered that when they weren’t talking blow jobs,” Epstein said, “they were saying things that might draw attention to Alderson.”

“I would guess,” I said. “The day she came to see me, that evening she went to Alderson’s condo with an overnight bag. She was in there maybe an hour and came out with the bag and checked into the hotel next door.”

“She probably told him about the tapes,” Epstein said.

“Probably.”

Epstein drank a little of his coffee.

“And,” he said, “she probably expected to move in with him now that her husband had kicked her out.”

“Probably.”

“And he said no.”

“And they had a fi ght,” I said. “And he gave her the boot.”

Epstein got up, carrying his coffee, and began to walk around my offi ce.

“She may not have told him about you,” Epstein said.

“If she had,” I said, “someone would have come after me.”

“True,” Epstein said. “And no one has.”

“Once he got mad,” I said, “she probably didn’t want him to know that it was even worse than he thought.”

“Dennis was FBI,” Epstein said. “He’d know how. Alderson probably thought Dennis did the bugging.”

“Yes.”

“And the next morning after she told him this she was killed, and that same day, probably, her husband was killed.”

“Sounds like Alderson,” I said. “Doesn’t it?”

Epstein was nodding as he walked.

“And when they searched his house and found the tape they thought they’d got it all?”

“She probably minimized the damage when she told him about the tape,” I said.

“Seems a lot of trouble,” Epstein said, “kill two people just to avoid being mentioned in a divorce proceeding.”

“I guess he valued his privacy.”

“You have a tail on the woman the day she was killed?”

Epstein said.

“Yes.”

“And it was your guy plugged the shooter.”

“Yes.”

Epstein walked past my desk into the little bay behind me, and looked down at the street and sipped his coffee. Neither of us spoke.

Then Epstein said, “Lotta nice-looking women walk by here.”

“They do?” I said.

Epstein turned from the window and smiled.

“So,” he said. “You got a theory of the case?”

“I do,” I said.

“How ’bout that,” Epstein said.

“I think that Alderson believed that he could insulate himself from any investigation by killing the only two people who knew anything. Jordan, because they were lovers. Doherty, because he’d heard the tape.”

“Uh-huh,” Epstein said. “Except the tape Doherty heard didn’t have anything actually incriminating, unless we still prosecute for adultery.”

“But Alderson didn’t know that,” I said. “Until he listened, by which time both Jordan Richmond and Dennis Doherty were dead.”

Epstein nodded slowly, paused to drink some coffee, and nodded some more.

“So he tries to make it look like Doherty killed her when he learned of the affair,” Epstein said. “And then, crazed with grief, he killed himself.”

“But would the cops know of the affair?”

“We learned that she and Alderson were an item when we began investigating her death,” Epstein said. “Lotta people knew.”

“And,” I said, “when you got to him he could say, I’m sorry it turned out this way, but we are, after all, men of the world.”

“But your guy tailing Jordan ruins it by putting one into the shooter’s head. Nice shot, or a lucky one, hit him under the right eye.”

“It wasn’t luck,” I said. “Too bad, though. If he hadn’t been so good, the guy might not be dead and we might have an ID.”

Epstein fi nished his coffee.

“Too bad,” Epstein said.

“You knew who Alderson was before I ever came to see you,”

I said.

“He was a person of interest,” Epstein said. “But pretty low priority.”

“And his organization,” I said.

Epstein shrugged.

“Like you told us everything,” he said.

“You started it,” I said.

Epstein grinned.

“You got a plan?” he said.

“I want to bring him down,” I said. “For the murders.”

“And your FBI? He killed one of my agents. You want me to stand around and reload for you?”

“You get him for subversion or whatever you were looking at him for in the fi rst place,” I said.

“And if we overlap?”

“We’ll adjust,” I said.

“A race?” Epstein said.

“First one to bust him wins?” I said.

“He gets busted everybody wins,” Epstein said. “I don’t care who gets the credit.”

“J. Edgar must be doing ring-around-the-rosy in his grave,”

I said.

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