Animal Appetite

exterminators used to be able to get it. Your friend Mr. Andrews had an uncle in the pest-control business.”
    “In Haverhill?”
    “Yeah. How’d you—?”
    “That’s where he grew up,” I said. “You’d think the uncle would’ve just come and poisoned the rats himself.” Kevin tapped a sausagelike finger against his mammoth head. “Early stages of Alzheimer’s. He’d quit the business. He just happened to have this stuff back on a shelf somewhere.”
    “I hope that no one around here gets any stupid ideas like that.”
    “You seen any of them around here yet?” Kevin didn’t say “rats.”
    Neither did I. “No. Thank God.”
    “Saw one last night. Big as Rowdy’s head.” Kevin sounded as proud and happy as if he’d spotted a purple gallinule among the house sparrows at his mother’s feeder.
    “It wasn’t,” I countered. “The Globe says that they’re sewer rats and that they practically never get bigger than a pound and a half.”
    “Five pounds if it weighed an ounce. Maybe ten. Big sucker.” He grinned. Civic pride certainly takes some peculiar forms.
    “Where?”
    “Corner of Appleton and Huron. Ran under a car parked right there.”
    My house is at the corner of Appleton and Concord. Kevin’s is on Appleton, right next to mine. Huron is the next major cross street.
    “Dear God,” I said.
    “Don’t hurt them, and they won’t hurt you,” Kevin proclaimed.
    “Kevin, please!”
    “You can catch a lot worse from a raccoon.”
    Rabies or no rabies, raccoons are cute. But rats? And somehow the knowledge that ours were mere sewer rats (as opposed to what?) was no comfort.
    “So tell me exactly why Shaun McGrath killed Jack,” I said.
    “No proof he did. Ever heard of the presumption of innocence?”
    ‘The people I talked to said that everyone knew McGrath did it. His family. His friends. They said the police knew. And apparently there’s a book with a chapter about Jack’s murder, and it says that Shaun McGrath killed him. I just haven’t been able to track it down yet.”
    Kevin shrugged.
    So, Kevin, if Shaun McGrath did it, what went on? I heard it was for insurance money—that Shaun was the beneficiary on a policy for Jack’s life.”
    “Thirty thousand dollars,” Kevin said.
    “So that was true.”
    “They tell you it was vice versa?”
    “What was?”
    “Two policies. These guys were business partners. Bought all this computer stuff. Took out policies on each other. Guy at the station who knows about this stuff says it’s common practice.”
    “I didn’t know that,” I said.
    “Yeah, well, strictly between us, neither did the asshole, pardon my French, who ran this investigation.”
    “Was that all there was to it? The insurance money— was that the only motive?”
    “Naw, there were personal disputes. About business,! but the thing turned personal. Jack was the good guy. Nice to everyone who worked there. Friendly. Gave everyone time off. Let ’em bring their kids to work. Brought his own. Brought his dog. Casual with the money. Transferred funds between the business account and his own, back and forth. Easygoing kind of a guy. Harvard grad: not safe out alone. McGrath was the bad guy. Wanted the business run like a business. Tight-assed nerd. Obvious suspect.”
    “But McGrath’s death really was an accident?”
    “No question. Happened right on Memorial Drive.”
    “I know. He swerved to avoid something and ran his car into a tree.”
    “Convertible. Dead on impact. They tell you what he swerved to avoid?” Kevin’s tone was infinitely smug. “No,” I admitted.
    “Siberian husky,” Kevin informed me. “Ran into a tree so’s he wouldn’t hit a loose dog.”
     

Seven

     
    Just west of Boston proper, downtown, sprawls Allston-Brighton, which is actually two separate sections of the city, Allston and Brighton. No one except the U.S. Postal Service knows where one ends and the other begins, and it won’t tell. Brighton Avenue is evidently an urban no-man’s-land claimed neither by Allston nor by Brighton, nor by the City of Boston, or so I assume. What I know for sure is that no one assumes responsibility for filling the potholes. Even at twenty miles an hour, my old Bronco jounced and rattled so violently that the empty metal dog crates in the back were compelled to take up the cries of the shocks and springs, and I almost wished I'd brought Rowdy and Kimi along for ballast. For obvious reasons, auto body shops thrive in the