Deep Pockets by Linda Barnes Page B

doing the time.
    That’s how I used to feel. Then I worked the city, and damn if the same guys didn’t keep pulling the same shit over and over again. It pissed me off, the way they refused to learn from their mistakes.
    What I’d learned on the streets told me Chaney hadn’t a prayer of convincing Dowling that he hadn’t struck gold with those love letters. If little Jeannie or one of her university pals had shown last night, the story might have been different. But Dowling was it, and I didn’t see him as an easy nut to crack.
    If Chaney couldn’t reason with him, could I scare him? Did Dowling’s landlord know he was renting to an ex-con? If not, I could threaten to tell the landlord, dangle it over Dowling’s head. Then he, in turn, could threaten to reveal Chaney’s secret. Standoff.
    I fingered the pages of my case notebook. J. Garnowski, parole officer, was probably Jake Garnowski, former Boston cop. I could phone him and find out whether Dowling was still on the hook. If Dowling were still on parole, I could threaten to get him sent back to the slammer. And then Dowling could tell me to fuck off or he’d spill Chaney’s story. Standoff again.
    Ditto with his employer, his girl, his parents. I kept playing with it, retooling the scenario, hitting the same damn wall. Chaney had appreciated the symmetry of blackmailing the blackmailer, but the plan had one serious drawback: It would work only if the blackmailer were a citizen, not a con.
    I contemplated plan B: retrieving Chaney’s love letters.
     
Chapter 12
     
    Daylight did nothing to improve the Claremont Street triple-decker I’d watched Dowling enter in the early hours of the morning. The gray clapboard siding and weathered white shutters needed paint. The parched scrap of lawn cried out for water, and gray dirt bloomed in the flower beds. The houses on either side had the same faded paint job, the same semiabandoned air, which made sense, since all three buildings were owned by Jimmy Flaherty, a small-time Somerville property owner with a bad rep for not maintaining his overpriced units.
    I knew Flaherty owned the place, because I’d made a brief but necessary stop at my friend Gloria’s cab company. It used to be called Green and White. Now it’s Marvin’s Magnificent Cabs, but all the drivers call it Black and Blue, because of the unfortunate color of the cars, and as a tribute to Gloria’s deceased brother, Marvin, who was quite a bruiser. Gloria, dispatcher, owner, and queen, lives behind the garage in a specially adapted apartment. She is at Black and Blue the way prisoners are in their cells. I hadn’t had to call ahead to know she’d be available.
    It had taken her about three seconds to make 157 Claremont as a Flaherty property. Then she’d really gone to work. I knew the name of each tenant in the three buildings. I knew that Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Hooper on the ground floor of 157 served as building managers for the complex. Dowling rented the top floor flat.
    I wanted Chaney’s letters, and given Dowling’s record, I didn’t think he’d return them even if I said “Pretty please.” So I’d decided not to ask. If the man had lived in some isolated suburban house, I’d have handled the break-in solo. A triple-decker in a crowded neighborhood required a different strategy, something devious, like Gloria’s youngest brother, Leroy.
    Leroy used to be all sorts of things. He used to be in the NFL, till he bit somebody’s ear off. He used to be a bar bouncer, till the bar’s clientele started going elsewhere. Now he’s Black and Blue’s garage guy, the one who keeps the old Fords tuned and shepherds them through the Hackney Carriage Bureau inspections.
    Leroy owns a truck. At various times, it’s been known to say Highlights Interior Decoration, O’Casey Plumbing, and Vanderbilt Electrical. He keeps a set of ready-to-paint interchangeable panels behind a wall in the garage. Leroy and I had debated the proper wording while