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Authors: John Lawrence Reynolds
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stepped back to study it as though never having seen it before. âDo you like it?â she asked. âI know Iâm fishing for compliments. But I never thought I could
do
anything this good.â She turned to McGuire. âDo you like it? Really?â
McGuire said he did.
She shrugged out of her coat and glanced at the clock. âIâd better tend to Ollie.â She turned and began walking down the hall. At the mirror she paused to study her reflection and tuck an errant lock of hair into place.
McGuire watched her, glanced at the picture, looked up to see Ronnie entering Ollieâs room, and turned back to the picture again.
Chapter Six
McGuire never knew how they did it, how they located people who could elude FBI computers, Internal Revenue bloodhounds, and neighbourhood police precincts. But the handful of skip tracers working in any big city have their means, and most share a contempt for police procedures and computers.
He remembered Shoelace OâSullivan, a gaunt Irishman who operated out of a former barbershop in Chelsea, and who traded tips with the cops in return for access to data, the same kind of information McGuire obtained from Sleeman. McGuire and Ollie Schantz visited OâSullivan in his office one morning more than ten years ago. The Irishman looked twenty years older than his age and reclined in an old barberâs chair, making notes on scraps of paper and nodding while they spoke. When the previous tenant died, OâSullivan had taken over the lease on the barbershop, and the landlord assumed OâSullivan was a barber himself. OâSullivan set up an office without removing any of the previous tenantâs implements. He arranged his library of ancient telephone books, city directories, and other sources in stacks on the floor and on glass shelves that once held clippers and shaving equipment, everywhere at hand. He changed nothing except the window glass, which he painted in opaque white. OâSullivan even left the bottles of hair tonic, coloured red and green like fruit drinks, on the shelves beneath the mirrors, and the Swedish straight razors in the drawers.
âIâll be callinâ you on the weekend if Iâm findinâ anythinâ,â OâSullivan told McGuire and Schantz when they requested information on a drug dealer who had dropped from sight three years earlier, and whose wifeâs skeletal remains had been located in a woods near Braintree.
The telephone rang that Friday afternoon.
âYouâll be lookinâ at twenty-three hundred Beverly Boulevard in Braintree,â OâSullivan told Schantz. âRow M, room nineteen.â Then he hung up. Shoelace never said a word more than necessary, and seemed to enjoy adding an element of mystery to his comments. McGuire called it Gaelic poetics. Ollie dismissed it as Irish bullshit.
âWhat is it, an institution?â McGuire asked as he and Schantz drove to Braintree.
It was a cemetery. Row M, plot 19 held the remains of the man Schantz and McGuire had been searching for, buried by his family beneath a stone with his actual name carved into the granite, not the pseudonym he had used as a drug dealer in Boston.
âHow the hellâd he do that?â McGuire wondered after they obtained positive identification. âHowâs OâSullivan find this stuff out?â
But Shoelace OâSullivan performed his magic for the wrong client somewhere along the way. A year later he was discovered slumped in his barberâs chair, his throat slit from ear to ear with one of the straight razors he acquired with the business along with the barberâs chair, mirrors, and hair tonic.
Which left Libby Waxman among the few remaining of her profession, living among Bostonâs most densely populated gay community.
McGuire climbed the stairs to Libbyâs apartment above Darling Decadence, a store specializing in old examples of nostalgic bad taste sold at
do
anything this good.â She turned to McGuire. âDo you like it? Really?â
McGuire said he did.
She shrugged out of her coat and glanced at the clock. âIâd better tend to Ollie.â She turned and began walking down the hall. At the mirror she paused to study her reflection and tuck an errant lock of hair into place.
McGuire watched her, glanced at the picture, looked up to see Ronnie entering Ollieâs room, and turned back to the picture again.
Chapter Six
McGuire never knew how they did it, how they located people who could elude FBI computers, Internal Revenue bloodhounds, and neighbourhood police precincts. But the handful of skip tracers working in any big city have their means, and most share a contempt for police procedures and computers.
He remembered Shoelace OâSullivan, a gaunt Irishman who operated out of a former barbershop in Chelsea, and who traded tips with the cops in return for access to data, the same kind of information McGuire obtained from Sleeman. McGuire and Ollie Schantz visited OâSullivan in his office one morning more than ten years ago. The Irishman looked twenty years older than his age and reclined in an old barberâs chair, making notes on scraps of paper and nodding while they spoke. When the previous tenant died, OâSullivan had taken over the lease on the barbershop, and the landlord assumed OâSullivan was a barber himself. OâSullivan set up an office without removing any of the previous tenantâs implements. He arranged his library of ancient telephone books, city directories, and other sources in stacks on the floor and on glass shelves that once held clippers and shaving equipment, everywhere at hand. He changed nothing except the window glass, which he painted in opaque white. OâSullivan even left the bottles of hair tonic, coloured red and green like fruit drinks, on the shelves beneath the mirrors, and the Swedish straight razors in the drawers.
âIâll be callinâ you on the weekend if Iâm findinâ anythinâ,â OâSullivan told McGuire and Schantz when they requested information on a drug dealer who had dropped from sight three years earlier, and whose wifeâs skeletal remains had been located in a woods near Braintree.
The telephone rang that Friday afternoon.
âYouâll be lookinâ at twenty-three hundred Beverly Boulevard in Braintree,â OâSullivan told Schantz. âRow M, room nineteen.â Then he hung up. Shoelace never said a word more than necessary, and seemed to enjoy adding an element of mystery to his comments. McGuire called it Gaelic poetics. Ollie dismissed it as Irish bullshit.
âWhat is it, an institution?â McGuire asked as he and Schantz drove to Braintree.
It was a cemetery. Row M, plot 19 held the remains of the man Schantz and McGuire had been searching for, buried by his family beneath a stone with his actual name carved into the granite, not the pseudonym he had used as a drug dealer in Boston.
âHow the hellâd he do that?â McGuire wondered after they obtained positive identification. âHowâs OâSullivan find this stuff out?â
But Shoelace OâSullivan performed his magic for the wrong client somewhere along the way. A year later he was discovered slumped in his barberâs chair, his throat slit from ear to ear with one of the straight razors he acquired with the business along with the barberâs chair, mirrors, and hair tonic.
Which left Libby Waxman among the few remaining of her profession, living among Bostonâs most densely populated gay community.
McGuire climbed the stairs to Libbyâs apartment above Darling Decadence, a store specializing in old examples of nostalgic bad taste sold at
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