Widow’s Walk

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

“I didn’t kill anybody,” Conroy said.

“You just had it done,” I said.

“No. That was Shawcross.”

“He had it done?”

“Yeah.”

The gloss of Conroy’s CEO manner was sloughing off rapidly.

“You were just the middleman,” I said.

Conroy shrugged. “I worked for Felton Shawcross,” he said.

He was sitting on the edge of the hard chair, his forearms on his thighs, his hands clasped between his knees. Ann Kiley, still in the hotel bathrobe, sat on the bed. Bobby Kiley sat beside her.

“We were working a loan-to-value scam on Pequod,” Conroy said. “You need me to explain that?”

I looked at Bobby Kiley.

“I know what a loan-to-value scam is,” Kiley said.

“Later,” I said.

“Good,” Conroy said. “Smith didn’t like it, but we knew he was gay, and we knew he was hiding it. So we squeezed him.”

“Which is how you got to be president of Pequod,” I said.

“Yeah. Smith was chairman, but that was just for show. He did what we told him.”

“And?” I said.

“And we were making a fucking fortune,” Conroy said.

“But?”

“But Smith wouldn’t stay squeezed. He finally said if we didn’t move on and let go of his bank he’d go to the cops.”

“So?”

“So Shawcross had him killed, and rigged it to look like a suicide. But somebody fucked it up.”

“Mrs. Smith,” I said. “She thought it was suicide and didn’t want to forfeit her insurance and decided to make it look like a murder.”

“Which it was,” Bobby Kiley said.

Conroy shook his head, thinking about it.

“Ain’t that great,” he said. “And we didn’t know why the suicide setup went wrong, but it did and we had to go to plan B.”

“Which was to frame Mary Smith for the murder.”

“Yeah.”

Conroy looked at Ann Kiley again. She looked back at him. Something went on between them for a moment. I waited for it to stop.

Then I said, “What about Amy Peters?”

“That was bad,” he said. “She told me she’d talked to you, asked if there was anything going on she should know about. Said she could serve the bank better if she knew what was up so she wouldn’t be blsided.”

“Good employee,” I said.

“Yeah. She was very career-driven,” Conroy said. “I mentioned it to Felton and that was it for her.”

“Just for asking?” Ann said.

Conroy looked at her again for a moment.

“Felton is a really smart guy,” Conroy said. “But he’s… he’s like Stalin or somebody. Any suspicion, you’re dead.”

“Must have been fun to work for,” I said. “What happened to Brink Tyler.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I know Felton had him zipped, but I never knew what for. Maybe Smith talked to him about his situation-you know, had a problem related to money, so he talked with his broker? Guys like Smith sometimes don’t have anyone else to talk to.”

“How about guys like you?” I said.

“I had Ann,” he said. “Maybe Tyler decided to cut himself in, whatever. He knew something, so Felton had him killed.”

“Who’s doing all this killing?” Bobby Kiley said.

“We recruited local guys.”

“How?” I said.

“Through DeRosa. They never knew who they were working for.”

“Would Shawcross kill someone himself if he had to?” I said.

“Sure.”

“DeRosa was a valuable man,” I said. “Why waste him on the Mary Smith frame?”

“He was in jail anyway,” Conroy said. “Small-time street thing, the asshole. We got it fixed. But meanwhile, it gave him a reason to make a deal with the DA for ratting out Mary Smith.”

“Credibility,” I said. “Who were the stumblebums that followed me around and tried to brace me in the parking garage?”

“They were from Felton. He had some people on, ah, staff.”

“But he didn’t use them for heavy lifting?”

“No,” Conroy said. “Not usually. He wanted to keep that separate. Anybody who did any killing only knew DeRosa.”

“That true of the guys that tried me in Fort Point?”

“Yes.”

“Who pulled the trigger on DeRosa?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Felton.”

“Because I was getting too close?”

“I don’t know how close you were getting,” Conroy said, “but you wouldn’t go away. Killing you hadn’t worked, so he had DeRosa killed to cut you off, and he told me to disappear.”

“Which you did.”

“Yeah.”

“Except.” I looked at Ann.

Conroy nodded. His voice was heavy. “Yeah,” he said. “And you figured it out.”

“Why were you checking Smith out at the gay clubs?” I said.

“You know about that, too,” Conroy said wearily.

“We never sleep,” I said.

“I was trying to figure out what Shawcross had on him. I got some sort of gay hit off him in the bank. All those boys… I don’t know. I just had a suspicion.”

“How did Shawcross know?”

“I don’t know.”

“The name Roy Levesque mean anything?” I said.

“No.”

“Larson Graff?”

“No.”

“How about Joey Bucci?” I said.

Conroy frowned. “Bucci?”

“Yeah.”

“When I was at the bank we lent him some money.”

“You remember all the bank loans?” I said.

“No. This one was no interest, open-ended, you know? A gift. Felton told us to do it.”

“You know why?”

Conroy shook his head.

“You know where Shawcross is now?”

“No idea.”

“Is that his real name.”

“No idea.”

“Will he come after you when he knows you’re talking like this?” Ann said.

“What fucking difference does it make, Annie?” Conroy said.

Tears formed in Ann Kiley’s eyes. Beside her Bobby Kiley’s face was pale and bony. He put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder. She didn’t appear to notice.

“Shawcross has disappeared,” I said. “We don’t know where he is. We don’t even know who he is. He’s safe. Reaching back here for Conroy is a risk that doesn’t make any sense.”

Conroy shrugged.

“We can keep Ann out of it,” Kiley said. “He makes a couple of minor adjustments, which we can help him with, Annie’s name never has to come up.”

“You okay with that?” I said to Conroy.

He nodded.

“You?” Bobby Kiley said to me.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m all right with that.”