Part 17 (1/2)

”Then we wouldn't be able to have so much fun with you, would we?”

”Fun? That's what this is all about, f.u.c.king with me because I got manipulated by some paid-off prosecutor when I was a kid?”

”No. The fact is we're on a mission here, Georgie. f.u.c.king with you is just a side benefit.”

”Well, f.u.c.k all you want, Roland.” I practically spit out his name. ”But I don't know s.h.i.+t. I haven't learned s.h.i.+t. And I'm not going to do s.h.i.+t. Not anymore.”

”What did Patty Margolis tell you?”

”Nothing. She wouldn't tell me anything.”

”At least you found her,” he said calmly, using his voice to emphasize how out of control I was. ”Tell you the truth, we hadn't been able to do that.”

”So what? She's not talking.”

”Let me tell you what we've learned in the few days since you uncovered her. Patty Margolis, born Patricia Afantakis in Roslindale. Age thirty-three. Earned an accounting degree at Babson two years before Heidi Telford was killed. At the time of the murder, she was working for a Big Eight accounting firm as a.s.sistant to Nick Margolis, a CPA who she was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g after hours. Mr. Margolis was looking to get out, start up a firm of his own. Three months after the Telford murder, he did just that. Opened his own shop with Patty as his office manager. Within a year they were married. Now have two kids. Homely little suckers, but I'm sure their parents love them.”

Andrews sat forward, the better to hold me in his sight, the better to keep me from thras.h.i.+ng around and looking away from him. ”Most interesting thing we've learned is that the office lease is in Patty's name. Patty pays the extraordinary low rent of three hundred dollars a month to a company called Arrangement Property that is located in the Cayman Islands and seems to have no other property anywhere that we can find. We're still tracing Arrangement Property's owners.h.i.+p, but we have every confidence that it will lead, sooner or later, to the Gregorys. Now, why would the Gregorys do such a nice thing for a hunk of blubber like Patty? Could it have anything to do with where she was on Memorial Day night 1999?”

”I ... don't ... know.”

”Sure you do.” He slapped my knee. ”And it's the very reason why she wouldn't tell you anything.”

”Well, I'm done now. I led you to her. You can take it from there.”

”We want to know who she was with that night, Georgie.”

”She was with McFetridge.”

”I'm talking about girlfriends. A girl like Patty wasn't going to be McFetridge's date, and she didn't go off to the Gregorys' all by herself.” He paused long enough for me to catch up with him. ”We've narrowed down the people she could have been with to about ten in number. Girls from high school, college, work. What I need from you now is a name.”

”She didn't give me one.”

Andrews put on his hard eyes.

”Suppose she did. What do I get for telling you?”

”What do you want?”

”Tell me why Marion did what she did.”

Andrews actually looked away for a moment, a rather un-Andrews-like action. ”I think,” he said when he looked back, ”she was very unhappy, Georgie.”

”What's that supposed to mean?”

”It means she had a job she hated, working sixty hours a week, and you weren't making it any better, like she thought you would.”

”She was supposed to quit.”

”And she didn't, did she?” For a moment the man almost looked sad.

Roland Andrews, who hated me, whose job was to make my life miserable, felt sorry for me. What a poor, pathetic creature I was to have my enemy look at me the way he was.

”She was ... rather a free spirit, wasn't she?” he said, and I couldn't tell if he was speaking in solace or not.

”So.” I cleared my throat because the word did not come out clearly. ”What are you saying, you asked her to cheat on me?”

”No, didn't ask her to do that. Like I said before, we knew who she was. We saw what was happening, saw she was getting ready to leave you, and approached her. Told her she didn't have to do any more than what she'd been doing. Just keep her eyes and ears open for anything that had to do with the Gregorys.”

”And she agreed?” I was skeptical. Marion was a good liberal, and good liberals didn't do things to hurt the Gregorys.

”I think she liked the idea of being a mole, a spy.” Andrews flicked his fingers. ”And of course we made it worth her while.”

”How?”

The finger flick became something more, a sweep of the room in which we were sitting. ”This apartment, for one thing. We took over the lease, paid her a salary on top of what she was making at the law firm. She actually did quite well for herself. Too well, probably, because as soon as she had enough to buy a house in Chevy Chase we couldn't hold her anymore.”

Once again, I felt sapped of breath. A man thinks he's one person, he finds out he's somebody else altogether.

”And the ...” I struggled with the words. ”Buzzy thing?”

”All I can tell you about that is once we came up with the idea of using the Telford case to take on the district attorney we needed a candidate. Mike McBeth suggested Buzzy, and since we were paying Marion anyhow we asked her to find out a little about him, make sure he was worth our investment.”

He spread his hands as if I should understand what happened next.

I stared back, making him say it.

”That was all we expected, that she would do a little reconnoitering for us. I guess she liked what she saw.” Andrews gave a twitch of his shoulders. ”Actually, I can't even tell you that. We didn't tell her to start an affair with him. It just happened and we let it go. No telling when we might need something on Mr. Daizell.”

I wanted out of the room, out from under the humiliation his every word was inflicting on me. But Roland Andrews had inched even farther forward on his chair.

”You see where your actions have gotten you, buddy?” He was still looking sympathetic. ”You think you're in control of your life? You're not.”

The look wasn't sympathetic after all. It was mean and conniving, like everything else about Roland Andrews. ”Mr. Powell can make every aspect of your life miserable,” he said, ”make you suspicious of every good thing that happens to you, make you so afraid that you won't want to commit to anything, anywhere, anytime. You understand?”

I wanted to look out the window at the river, the boats, the cars going by on Storrow Drive, the people whose lives were their own to do with as they wished.

”This Marion thing is just an example, Georgie. He's rolling over you. Just like he's going to do to the Gregorys.” Andrews tapped my knee. In Philadelphia he had made my leg go numb. But this was just a tap.

”The only difference is,” he said, ”you can still get out.”

”Leanne,” I said. ”She didn't give me a last name.”