The Sisterhood - Michael Palmer [108]
Dockerty slipped inside, closing the heavy metal door quickly behind him. “Christ, Ted,” he said. “I spend twenty fucking minutes sneaking around to be sure I’m not followed, and you bellow at me louder than the foghorn out there.”
“Just goes to show what confidence I have in you, Dock. Come on over and park your duff.” Ulansky pumped Dockerty’s hand, then motioned him to a high-backed oak chair beside his desk. He was an expansive man with a physique that bore only a faint resemblance to the All-American linebacker he had been at Boston College two and a half decades before.
“Nice place,” Dockerty said sarcastically, looking around the large, poorly lit office. “Is this it?”
“This is it,” answered Ulansky with mock pride. “The fabled Massachusetts Drug Investigation Force headquarters. Want a tour?”
“No, thanks. I think I can manage to take it all in from here.”
In fact, the MDIF, while not publicized, had gained an almost fabled reputation for quiet efficiency and airtight arrests. Ulansky, as head of the unit, was gradually acquiring a superhuman reputation of his own. The office, however, was hardly the stuff of which legends are made. It was stark and cold. Bare cement walls were lined with filing cabinets—more than two dozen of them—all olive-green standard government issue. Inside the metal drawers, Dockerty knew, was virtually every piece of information available on illegal drug traffic in the state.
In one corner of the room, partially covered by Ulansky’s carelessly thrown suit coat, was a computer terminal connected through Washington with drug-investigation and -enforcement agencies throughout the country.
Ulansky lowered himself into his desk chair. “A drink? Some coffee?” Dockerty shook his head. “Must be serious business for you to come out here in this rat’s-ass weather, then refuse a drink.”
“I guess,” Dockerty said distractedly, reopening his battle with some obstinate strands of hair. “I appreciate your coming out.”
Ulansky buried a shot glass of Old Grand-Dad in a single gulp. “Believe me, with the Czernewicz fight on live from the coast tonight, you’re about the only one of the precinct boys who could have gotten me out of the house. Jackie Czernewicz, the Pummeling Pole. You follow the fights?”
Dockerty shook his head again. “Too much like a day at the office for me.”
Ulansky smiled. “Tell me, then,” he said, “what prompts a visit from you to this Hyatt Regency of law enforcement?”
“I’m involved in a really weird case, Ted.” Dockerty scratched the tip of his nose. “An old lady got murdered while she was a patient at Boston Doctors Hospital. Morphine. So far I’ve narrowed the field of suspects down to about three dozen. Even made one arrest.”
“Yeah, I read about that,” Ulansky said. “A doctor, right?”
“Right. A ton of circumstantial stuff against him, but way too neat, if you know what I mean. The captain, that pillar of justice, got pressure from some fat cat at the hospital and insisted that I bust the doctor. I did it, but I’ve never been convinced. Now the guy’s lawyer has been murdered. Ben Glass. You know him?” Ulansky grimaced and nodded. “Well, he was knifed. Outside the doc’s apartment door, no less. There are bullet holes all over, and the apartment door’s smashed in. There’s blood in the hallway and even on the wall.
“A little while ago the doctor gets brought to the emergency ward at the hospital soaked and freezing and half crazy. Then, before he can get any treatment, he splits with another guy. By the time I hear about it and get to the hospital, there’s no record he was ever even there. For all I know he may be dead by now. I’ve got the usual lines out for him, but I’m at a stone wall with the rest of the case. I feel like the whole fucked-up mess is partly my fault for letting the captain talk me into arresting him.”
“How can we help?”
“My only hope of breaking something open is a pharmacist named Quigg. Marcus Quigg. Owns a little drugstore in West Roxbury. He swears that this Dr. Shelton filled a big prescription for morphine the day this