25
SO far as I could tell no one had conspired to keep Dwayne in school, although Dr. Roth kept bothering me. If Wagner had told her, and he didn't seem to be lying, she had not only her own knowledge, but the testimony of a professor. Why would she run the risk of covering it up at that stage? For herself, the help-out-the-poor-little-darkie attitude might explain it. But once someone else knew, would she jeopardize herself? Not the Madelaine that I knew.
I swiveled my office chair around and pulled my phone closer and dialed information in Washington, D.C. In maybe two minutes I had tracked down the registrar's office at Georgetown University. They had no Madelaine Roth. I called the alumni office. They had a Madelaine Reilly who had married Simon Roth in 1984. She was a member of the class of '82. They did not know the status of the marriage; but Simon Roth lived currently in Fullerton, California, and Mrs. Roth lived in Newton, Massachusetts. I hung up and went to my file cabinet in the corner so when the door opened it was concealed. Susan said it was the single ugliest piece of furniture she had ever personally seen, though a friend of hers who worked for Bedford Travel claimed to have seen an uglier piece in Paraguay in 1981. I got out my file on Meade Alexander and thumbed through it. Ah ha! Gerry Broz graduated from Georgetown in 1983. So they could easily have been acquainted. Pays to do business with a professional detective.
While I was on a hot streak I called a New York City cop I'd met a couple of years ago when I had worked for Patricia Utley. He wasn't in. He'd call me back.
The office felt stuffy. I opened the window a crack and then went and opened my office door to get some cross ventilation. Hawk was leaning on the door jamb across the hall talking with the paralegal. I left the door open and went back and sat at my desk and thought about what I was doing. After about fifteen minutes of running it back and forth it was clear that I didn't know what I was doing. What I had accomplished so far was to make people want to kill me. I'd gotten Dwayne in trouble with his coach. I had already found out what I'd been hired to find out, and I wasn't telling the people who'd hired me. I knew Dwayne was shaving points. I knew Deegan and others had put him up to it. I knew Deegan was connected to Gerry Broz, and I knew that Dwayne's academic adviser could be connected to Gerry Broz. And I could find that out in time, if she was, or if she wasn't. And I knew that the faculty at Taft, by and large, didn't much care if Dwayne could read. What I didn't know was what good any of this did me, and how to get Dwayne out of the mess he was in without destroying his life.
I looked across the hall. Hawk had moved into the office and taken a seat next to the paralegal's desk. Easy for him. All he had to do was follow me around and keep people from shooting me in the back. I heard the paralegal laugh. What's so goddamned funny? Probably be moving in with her Monday. She laughed again, and the liquid hint of a giggle lurked in the laugh. Probably wants me to be best man.
The phone rang. I answered. A voice said, "This is Corsetti."
I said, "Remember me? The killing on Seventy-Seventh Street, guy named Rambeau?"
"Body'd been there about a week," Corsetti said.
"Yeah, that's it."
"What do you need," Corsetti said.
"I need to know about a guy named Bobby Deegan," I said. "Probably from Brooklyn."
"Why?"
I told him without naming any names but Deegan's.
"I don't know him," Corsetti said. "I'll check with Brooklyn and get back to you."
Across the hall Hawk's success continued. In about forty-five minutes the phone rang. I answered.
"This is Detective Kevin Maguire," a voice said. "Detective Corsetti from Manhattan says you're looking for information on Bobby Deegan."
"I am."
"Okay. Deegan's been in twice. Once for grand theft auto when he was about nineteen. Once for hijacking a cigarette truck ten years later. He hasn't worked a day in his life. Been hustling since he got out of Queens College."
"Queens College?" I said.
"Yeah. Educated. Did a year of grad work there, too. Don't make no difference. He's a wiseguy. Grew up on the fringes of the Brooklyn mob. We can't prove it, but we're pretty sure he's one of the guys hit Joey Gallo."
"He married?"
"Yeah, lives in Far Rockaway, got a couple kids. But he fucks around. We're looking to get him for a cash room stickup at an OTB parlor in Manhattan."
"Who's he run with?" I said.
"Got a pencil?" he said.
"Yeah."
"Okay," he said, "known associates," and read a list of maybe a dozen names. None of them meant anything to me.
"You know any connections he has in Boston?" I said.
"No."
"What else you got to say about him?" I said.
"Bad news," Maguire said. "Got sort of college manners, you know, a breezy yuppie. Guy's crazy. Keep talking to you nice and shoot you in midsentence. You'd never know he didn't like you."
"He does his own work?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes contracts out. Doesn't mind doing it himself. Mostly it's what's convenient."
"Tell me about the betting parlor," I said.
"Last December. Four guys, went in with a key after closing. Tied up a couple cashiers, got seven hundred thousand or so in cash, small bills, no serials. Everybody in Brooklyn knows it was Deegan and his outfit, but nobody can tie it to him."
"Had somebody inside," I said.
"Everybody figures that, but we don't have anyone for that either. We talked to both cashiers until they turned gray, they don't have nothing to say. Two dozen people could have got a key legitimately, two thousand could have scooped it and made a dupe. Things ain't buttoned up really tight over there."
"Nobody's flashing money," I said.
"Deegan's been flashing money all his life. Story is he's made some heavy scores betting sports."
"That's the connection up here," I said. "He's rigging basketball games."
"Point shaving?"
"Yes."
"Can you get him on it?" Maguire said.
"Well, yes and no."
"What the hell's that mean?"
"Means I probably can take him down on the point shaving deal, but not without taking down some people I don't want to take down."
"They're involved with Deegan," Maguire said, "they deserve to go down too."
"All you need out of this is Deegan," I said.
"Any way we can," Maguire said. "Any other name, too, on that list I gave you."
"Name Madelaine Roth or Madelaine Reilly mean anything to you?" I said.
"Not right off," Maguire said. "She got something to do with Deegan?"
"I don't know. She was at Queens College, too, in grad school."
"Hey, there's a hot lead," Maguire said.
"She went to Georgetown same time as a local hood that Deegan's connected with."
"Jesus Christ," Maguire said. "You a campus cop?"
"She works at the school where the points are getting shaved."
Maguire was silent for a moment at the other end.
"Okay," he said. "I'll see if anybody knows her. Maybe she'll turn up on the computer. Goddamn thing must be good for something."
"Find something, let me know," I said.
"Yeah," Maguire said. "You too." We hung up.
I observed Hawk's technique for a few moments, then I got out the phone book and looked up the paralegal's number and dialed. In a moment I heard the phone ring across the hall. She answered.
I said, "This is Spenser across the hall. There's an escaped sex fiend loose in the building. He's masquerading as a big good-looking black guy and I wondered if you'd seen him." There was a pause.
"He's drawn obsessively to paralegals," I said.
"Does he rip off their clothes and do unspeakably kinky stuff?" she said.
"Often," I said.
"My God, he's here," she said.
"Want me to come over?"
"Hell no," she said. "Leave us alone."
She giggled again, blatantly now, into the phone.
"Oh hell," I said, "let me speak to him."
In a moment Hawk said, "Hello."
"I'm going down to Henry's and set new records on the Nautilus," I said. "If you're not at the moment of climax perhaps you'd care to stroll along and learn something."
I heard Hawk speak off the phone. "He worried," Hawk said, "that we at the moment of climax."
I hung up and headed out to the gym. The sex fiend joined me in the hall. "Jealousy an ugly thing," he said.