Free Sweetheart by Andrew Coburn

commissioner himself? Old FBI man.”
    “What do you want, Wade?”
    “Back in Greenwood there’s a trooper named Denton — big, lumbering kid — who should be promoted to corporal. Deserves it. Why don’t we see he gets it?”
    “Did I hear you right?”
    “It’s a legitimate request.”
    “The hell it is.”
    “It’s important to the kid, and I owe him.”
    Thurston sighed with annoyance. “What you’re asking is petty. It doesn’t make you look good, and it doesn’t make me look good, laying something like that on the commissioner.”
    “Are you telling me you can’t do it?”
    “Sure I can do it, but I’m not going to.”
    “Do it, Thurston. Make me happy.”
    Thurston was quiet for a moment. “I hope you’re not going to make this a habit.”
    “You have my word.” Wade cleared his throat. “As long as I’ve got you on the line, let me ask you something. Should I keep a list of my expenses or just give you a round figure each week?”
    “Each month. Yes, you list them. Wade, you trying to get my ass?”
    “Yes,” Wade said. “I find it a challenge. See you.”
    “Wait a minute.” There was the sound of Thurston shifting the receiver from one hand to the other. “I might as well tell you something I was saving for later. A rumble one of my people picked up, might not be anything to it.”
    “Go ahead,” Wade said. “I’m all ears.”
    “There may be a contract on Gardella.”
    Wade pressed a finger to his lips and then slowly let it fall away. “They’ll never hit him,” he said.
    Thurston said, “I’m betting on it.”

6
    A GENT BLUE lived with his wife on the Cambridge Street side of Beacon Hill, a mere three-minute walk to the Kennedy Building. Massachusetts General Hospital, where his wife worked, was a minute closer. At the breakfast table he dawdled over his coffee, and she leafed through the
Globe
. Her eye passed over a half-column mug shot of a man and then swept back to the name under it. Pushing the paper to Blue, she said, “Isn’t this the guy you were telling me about?”
    The photo was of Lieutenant Christopher Wade, accompanied by a brief report of his reassignment from the detective division at the Lee barracks to the Suffolk County office of the district attorney, where “the twenty-year veteran of the state police will take up the duties of a special investigator, particularly in the area of organized crime.”
    Blue said, “I pity the bastard. Thurston will chew him up.”
    His wife took the paper back and studied the picture. “Not a bad face. I like the eyes.”
    Blue said, “Be better if they were in the back of his head.”
    “You going to help him?”
    “I don’t know if he’s worth it.”
    • • •
    The same report caught the notice of a mildly good-looking man at the offices of Benson Tours in Wellesley. He carried the newspaper into Susan Wade’s office and, with a vaguely apologetic air, waited until she got off the phone. Then, folding the paper to the article, he slid it across her desk. “Did you know about this?”
    “Yes,” she admitted, dropping back in her chair. He hovered.
    “What does it mean to us?”
    “Absolutely nothing.”
    He brightened and, stepping around the desk, thrust forward a long Yankee face with comfortable creases. He prided himself on a devotion to the finer things in life, intelligent and attractive women being among them. “What’s your schedule?” he asked, pronouncing “schedule” in the British way.
    “If you’re asking if I’m free for lunch, the answer’s yes.”
    • • •
    Anthony Gardella and Victor Scandura were also interested in the announcement of Christopher Wade’s reassignment. They were seated in the rear room of Gardella’s real estate office on Hanover Street, a block down from St. Leonard’s Church. Gardella read the item twice, the second time aloud to Scandura, who said, “I’m not all that surprised. The time I saw him he hinted he was working something. He