said.
“What you got on this TV killing?” he said.
“Babe Loftus?”
“Un huh.”
“Nothing directly. Jill is not an open book,” I said. “She sort of doesn’t get it that I’m working for her.”
“She doesn’t get that about us, either.”
“What have you got?” I said.
“I asked you first,” Quirk said.
“I know she’s had a relationship with a guy named Rojack, lives out in Dover.”
“Stanley,” Quirk said. “Got a big geek of a bodyguard named Randall.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Whom you knocked on his ass in front of the Charles one morning last week.”
“It seemed the right thing to do,” I said.
“It was,” Quirk said.
“Jill’s story is she doesn’t know him, and anyway he’s a creep.”
“Tell me about him,” Quirk said. “What you know.”
I did, everything except the detail about Wilfred Pomeroy.
“Don’t underestimate Randall,” Quirk said when I finished. “He’s bad news.”
“Me too,” I said.
Quirk nodded, a little tiredly. “Yeah,” he said. “Aren’t we all.” He scrubbed along his jawline with the palms of both hands. Across Boylston Street there were three or four guys in coveralls stringing Christmas lights around Louis‘.
“Rojack is not exactly a wise guy,” Quirk said, “and he’s not exactly Chamber of Commerce. He’s a developer and what he develops is money. He’s enough on the wild side to have a bodyguard. He gets to go to receptions at City Hall, and I’m sure he’s got Joe Broz’s unlisted number.”
I nodded.
“You want something fixed, he’s a good guy to see. People he does business with are shooters, but Rojack stays out in Dover and has lunch at Locke’s.”
“He’s dirty,” I said.
“Yeah, he’s dirty; but almost always it’s secondhand, under the table, behind the back. We usually bust somebody else and Rojack goes home to Dover.”
“Why would he shoot Babe Loftus?” I said. Quirk shrugged.
“What’s the autopsy say?”
“Shot once, at close range, in the back, with a three fifty-seven magnum, bullet entered her back below the left shoulder blade at an angle, penetrated her heart and lodged under her right rib cage. She was dead probably before she felt anything.”
“Think the killer’s left-handed?” I said.
“If he stood directly behind her,” Quirk said, “which he may or may not have done. Even if he is, it narrows the suspects down to maybe, what, five hundred thousand in the Commonwealth?”
“Or maybe he was right-handed and shot her that way so you’d think he was left-handed.”
“Or maybe he was ambidextrous, and a midget, and he stood on a box,” Quirk said. “You been reading Philo Vance again?”
“So young,” I said, “yet so cynical.”
“What else you got?” Quirk said.
“That’s it,” I said.
“You think it’s mistaken identity?”
“I don’t know.”
“You think Rojack did it, or had Randall do it?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Quirk said.
“Doesn’t seem his style,” I said.
Outside the light was gone. The early winter evening had settled and the artificial light in storefronts and on street corners had taken hold. Nothing like colored light to spruce up a city.
“Why do I think you know more than you’re telling?” Quirk said.
“Because you’ve been a copper too long. It’s made you suspicious and skeptical.”
