She was already nodding. “Yeah, yeah. A real knothead. Big-mouth bad guy who was always standing behind somebody else when he sounded off.”
“Did you get any feel for how he and Bouch were connected?”
“He was just another of Norm’s rug rats.”
I resisted pointing out she had one year on Jasper Morgan. “How’s that work? What’s the attraction?”
“With Norm? He makes himself cool-a grown-up who talks their language. He doesn’t lecture them, doesn’t tell them what to do, gives them stuff to buy them off-you know, like things for their cars or a ghetto blaster… CDs-shit like that. And dope, too, of course, although we’ve never caught him at it.”
“Latour thinks the kids might be runners.”
Emily Doyle rolled her eyes at the mention of her chief. “Easy for him to say. We don’t have any proof, and he won’t let us hunt for any.”
“Is he right, though?”
Her cheeks colored. “Probably,” she admitted.
“You have any sense of how Norm’s organized, then?”
I knew before I asked that I’d hit a stone wall. Doyle wasn’t the bonehead she appeared-her posturing was mostly self-protective. But she had a lot to learn about the goals of her job and how to achieve them. Catching bad guys was an occasional activity-getting to know what made them tick and stopping others from becoming like them were more important aspects of what we did. For all the vitality in her eyes, she hadn’t taught herself to see much yet. “I guess they’re bought and paid for,” she guessed. “So they do what he tells them to.”
Sammie Martens wasn’t at her apartment this time. I found her still at the office, processing paperwork. As energized as Emily Doyle, Martens had developed into a smart, thoughtful student of human behavior. She also worked herself like a slave, candidly admitting that as a woman she had little choice, a tough point to argue since her drive had made her my second-in-command.
“Making progress?” I asked vaguely, settling into a plastic chair next to her open-ended cubicle. There were four such alcoves in the detective squad room, constructed of chin-high, sound-absorbent panels. During slow periods these were moved around regularly-feeble attempts to enliven a dull routine.
“Barely,” she sighed, sitting back and stretching. “I’m trying to put some old case files into order-mostly yours, I might add. Boring.”
“What’d you find out about Morgan?”
Her face brightened slightly. “He was a bad boy in Lawrence, but since he was a juvie, I couldn’t get particulars. That also made digging into known associates a little tough-through channels, that is.”
I smiled at her coyness. “Meaning outside of channels was slightly more productive.”
“Right,” she answered with a laugh. “I have an old Army buddy who works at the PD down there. He did a little digging for me and came up with Amy Sorvino-Jasper’s foster mother until she was found cheating on her husband with Norman Bouch, who was named in the divorce papers soon after.”
I shook my head, “Hold it. I thought Jasper lived with his parents.”
“He did after they moved up here, but Massachusetts split them up a couple of times when things got rough at home. Anyhow, Amy Sorvino’s at least one connection between Bouch and Jasper.”
“I don’t want to be dense here, but why would a woman’s illicit lover and her foster child necessarily know each other?”
I could tell from her smile that Sammie had set me up. “Because they all shared the same bed.”
She laughed at the look on my face. “That’s why the shit really hit the fan. Amy had turned Norm and little Jasper into a tag team. Guess the state goofed in their choice of foster mothers.”
I thought of the little ball player of that morning, and how I’d wondered how he and his siblings were faring in the Bouch household. I was getting a dose of bad news about child rearing in this case, and, given how Norm surrounded himself with teenage admirers, I didn’t doubt I’d see more.
“With all these wonderful adults in control,” Sammie added, reading my expression, “makes you wonder how anyone makes it past puberty.”
Good point, I thought, but said instead, “I’d like to have a chat with Amy Sorvino.”
Chapter 7
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING I PULLED into the Lawrence, Massachusetts, Police Department’s parking lot, and picked up a short, compact man with a thick head of hair and a bushy mustache.
He slid into my car’s passenger seat and stuck out a small, muscular hand. “Phil Marchese.”
“Joe Gunther. Thanks for riding shotgun on such short notice. Sammie says she’s sorry she couldn’t make it.”
“Good kid,” Marchese said. “Made half the guys in the unit look like wimps. Take a right out of the parking lot.”
Marchese was the old Army friend who had revealed Amy Sorvino as the link between Jasper Morgan and Norman Bouch. Protocol has it that whenever a police officer goes outside his bailiwick on business, he contacts the receiving PD out of courtesy and safety. It was a reflection of Sammie’s connection to this man that he’d volunteered to escort me personally rather than giving the job to some rookie. Sammie had told me that despite his youth, Marchese was in good position for a captaincy.
He guided me to a neighborhood of cookie-cutter wooden buildings, roughly World War Two vintage. Not quite down and out, it was teetering on the edge, utterly dependent on Lawrence’s rallying against hard times. This was a working-class section of town, and without work it would quickly lose the thin respectability it clung to.
We stopped in front of a house largely indistinguishable from its neighbors. “What’s her situation?” I asked my host.
“Single, living alone. After the shit hit the fan with Bouch, she and her husband both picked out lawyers and began circling each other. That’d been going on a few months when hubby suddenly kicked the bucket. Stupid bastard still hadn’t changed his will, so she got the inheritance, along with two life insurance payoffs, one personal, one from his job. Neither one was huge, but together they set her up pretty good, even after she settled with the state for the statutory rape of Jasper Morgan. Last five years or so, she’s been a party girl, more or less, I guess looking for Mr. Right.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Suspicion of prostitution. We got a file on her. Never caught her at it. I don’t think she’s a pro, to be honest-just an amazingly horny girl on the prowl who takes favors from men.”
Seeing that her car was in the driveway, we went up to the front door and knocked. The response was slow and noisy, punctuated by something heavy falling to the ground. Marchese looked at me and shrugged, and we both moved to opposite sides of the door, just in case something or someone came flying out.
There was nothing so dramatic, however. The door opened a crack and a bleary-eyed, blurry-faced woman peered out, squinting into the morning sun. “Who’re you? What d’ya want?”
Marchese showed his badge. “Police, ma’am. Are you Amy Sorvino?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. We’d just like to ask you some questions.”
“Do it later. I’m sleeping.”
“That’s not real convenient, Mrs. Sorvino,” I said. “I came from Vermont to talk to you. I’d appreciate if you could give me a few minutes. It won’t take long-I promise.”
She closed the one eye we could see through the crack and sighed. “All right. But wait a minute, okay? I’m a wreck. Don’t go away.”
She slammed the door. Marchese smiled at me. “Ah, that Vermont country charm.”
I pointed to his upper lip. “I say it’s the mustache.”
Ten minutes later she reappeared, this time opening the door wide. I had to admit, she looked good for having obviously come off an all-nighter. She was wearing a clingy, thin-fabric caftan, a quick touch of makeup, and had brushed her hair. I could smell the toothpaste on her breath as we crossed the threshold. I guessed her to be in her early thirties and figured she divided her time between living hard and keeping fit at the gym. I wondered how long the balance would tilt in her favor.