The Fixer

17

City Archives was a half-hour drive away along the winding Riverway that went from the Fenway section of Boston past Jamaica Plain and ended in West Roxbury. He parked in the visitor lot, was buzzed into the main entrance, and followed the signs to the reading room.

Marie Gamache was behind the counter: short, plump, her short brown hair in a pixie cut. She was talking to a slim man with black curly hair and thick wire-rimmed glasses. She beamed when she saw Rick. “I’ve still got some more to bring out, but you can get started right now if you’re ready.”

He turned in the direction she was pointing and saw a long blond-wood library table covered with gray archival boxes.

“Oh, boy,” he said tonelessly. “Well, first things first.” He handed her the box of donuts. “For you.”

“From the Tastee? God, I haven’t had one of those for years! But I’m gluten-intolerant now. I can’t. Oh, this is torture!”

“I’m not,” her curly-haired colleague said, taking the box from her. He opened the box and pulled out a glazed donut.

“God, I miss bread,” Marie said. “And pizza. And donuts. But I do feel so much cleaner without wheat.”

It was mind-numbingly tedious work, going through the minutes of the Boston Licensing Board for 1996, scanning through hundreds of filings. His father had billed Club Fifty-One twenty-five thousand dollars for legal work connected to a “liquor license suspension.” It was probably pretty routine work. Maybe the place got caught serving minors or just serving after the legal hours. The club’s license would be revoked or suspended. A lawyer-in this case, Len-would go before the board and appeal to get the license reinstated.

But after an hour of combing through the records for 1996, he didn’t find a single mention of Club Fifty-One. He went back to the invoice. Sure enough, it was dated May 1996. But there was nothing about it in the files. Which was bizarre. He wondered whether something in the archives was missing.

He moved on to another invoice, this one made out to “Jugs DBA LaGrange Entertainment” in the amount of thirty thousand dollars for a “Board of Health matter.” Jugs was a strip bar, a popular place for bachelor parties, or it used to be. He had no idea if it was still in business. The city had all sorts of intricate laws regarding strip clubs, such as requiring there always be a three-foot gap between performer and customer. No touching allowed. Even if you paid extra for a private dance in the Champagne room. Sometimes undercover officers would go into the clubs, pretending to be customers, to make sure the laws were being followed. If not, they’d slap a fine on the club or suspend their license for a day or two, which meant closing down briefly.

Rick pored through the archives, looking for “LaGrange Entertainment” or “Jugs” or “Leonard Hoffman,” but there was nothing in April or May. This was beginning to bother him. He went back to the counter. “Can I get the Licensing Board records for all of 1995 and 1996?”

Marie groaned. “Really?”

“Really.”

Half an hour later she rolled a library cart stacked with twenty more archive boxes up to his table. “Go crazy,” she said.

Two hours later he’d gone through all the board of licensing records and still hadn’t found any mention of his father making an appearance or filing a plea. He’d billed eight separate clients a total of 295,000 dollars in May 1996. This was big money for a small-time lawyer. Yet nowhere was there a record of Len actually doing the work he’d billed his clients for. Board of Health appearances, zoning variances, liquor license suspensions… all those jobs billed for-but none of it, apparently, done.

Sherlock Holmes had once deduced the identity of a thief from the fact that a dog didn’t bark. Sometimes the thing that doesn’t happen is more important than the thing that does.

Leonard Hoffman had billed almost three hundred thousand dollars for work that he apparently didn’t do.

So what did that mean? Either his father had been a master scammer and his clients had been dupes-not likely-or something else was going on. Some kind of tricky arrangement involving large sums of money.

So did this mean that his father had not only billed for work he didn’t do-but he then hadn’t gotten paid for it?

It was time for some good old-fashioned gumshoe work. It was time to go to the old Combat Zone and find out which, if any, of his father’s clients, the strip clubs and adult bookstores and such, still existed.

And start asking questions.