Swan Dive

alibi four feet thick.”
    ”Second,” said Dawkins, ”ain’t no crimes committed in those other towns linked up with these here.”
    ”How do you figure that?”
    ”Take Peabody . Nothing happen there except a little animal abuse. The guy done the kitty dead now. Case closed. Swampscott, shit, only action there was you breaking in on Marsh and threatening him.”
    ”I wasn’t there, and if I was, I didn’t break in.”
    ”And if you did break in, it didn’t count, ‘cause you had your fingers crossed, right?”
    I stopped for a minute and closed my eyes. Holt said, ”What do you know? We’re boring him as much as he’s boring us.”
    I thought for a moment more, then opened my eyes and looked at him and Dawkins. ”You all are going to a hell of a lot of trouble to play keep away with me.”
    They didn’t say anything.
    ”Long as I have the blindfold on, indulge me a little, okay? I get asked to bodyguard the wife in a divorce case. The husband acts nasty, so I call Murphy, and he calls Dawkins here. Boston Narcotics already knows about Marsh’s connection to Braxley, and Murphy passes that on to me, with the warning to stay away from Braxley. Then Marsh dives off the high board, and I get blamed. The case against me has so many holes, you could water the garden with it, but I’m still frozen out of the case, even out of contact with Murphy. Then Braxley and his killer whale come to see me, and maybe thirty minutes after I get away from them, the department’s aware of it without my having to file a complaint or anything. Know what I think?”
    No response from Holt or even Dawkins, who’d told me to keep quiet about his visit to me that night.
    ”I think that Narcotics has had Braxley under surveillance for a while. I think that’s how come Dawkins knows about Marsh, and Braxley has his solid alibi, and the new centurions all know about me getting worked on before the wounds are closing. And that must mean that Narcotics has a hell of a case it could bring against Braxley. But it’s laying back. How come?”
    Holt made a sour face; Dawkins smiled.
    ”Because Braxley is posting up for Narcotics? Not likely. He seems too damned interested in his current business affairs and their continuing vitality to be planning to parachute via some witness protection program. That leaves one other alternative I can see. Narcotics has its sights set on Braxley’s supplier, maybe even the supplier’s supplier. And the murder of two less-than-model citizens and the potential threat to the family of one of them can be tolerated, at least temporarily, as a cost of the larger drug investigation.”
    Holt still looked as if indigestion was his main worry. Dawkins brightened his smile a little.
    ”Well, how am I doing?”
    ”Brass ring,” said Dawkins.
    Holt swiveled in his chair. ”Goddamn it, Dawkins, who the fuck told you to confirm—”
    ”Who he gonna tell, Lieutenant? Just the three of us here, and we back each other when we say we deny it. If we ever got to deny it. And chances are we won’t.”
    ”Why not?” said Holt.
    Dawkins looked over at me and resumed the brighter smile. ”‘Cause hard charger here gonna find J.J.’s snow and make things all better for the widow and orphan.”

    ”So what do I do?”
    Murphy?
    ”Can’t. His hands were tied by me when I asked him to check on a guy just before the guy’s killed. Besides, whoever’s sitting on Holt would have the juice to sit on Murphy, too. They’re peer officers in the chain of command.”
    Nancy ?
    ”I tied her up, too, as part of my quasi-alibi for the murders. And this surveillance has the smell of something planned and coordinated by people her level never even gets to talk to.”
    There was a lobster boat, long with the small upright cabin disproportionately forward, plying the harbor below us. I thought the harbor was too polluted to produce edible bottom dwellers, and I made a mental note to lay off seafood for a while.
    Does that leave Chris?
    ”Kind of. He’s her attorney. But he won’t return my calls.”
    Can’t you see him in person?
    ”Yeah, but he didn’t exactly take the bit in his teeth when Marsh tortured the cat. And J.J. makes Marsh look like an altar boy.”
    So what are you going to do?
    ”Go rattle some more cages. If I can find the shooter, I’ll find the drugs.”
    But the only way to help Hanna and Vickie is to give the drugs back to J.J.
    ”That’s the way it shapes up.”
    Yes, but John, you