“I waited till dark so nobody could see me,” she said. “I have to talk to you about something important.”
Looking over her shoulder and back at the street, she moved away from the porch light, apparently afraid someone might see her. I invited her into the foyer and closed the door behind her. It was eighty degrees out, and she was shaking.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I saw the car hit your girlfriend.”
“What?”
“It was parked on Monument Street,” she said. “When your girlfriend came out, the car hit her on purpose. I thought it was you.”
“On purpose?” I said.
“The car headed right for her.”
I thought it was an accident and so did the police.
“Were young kids driving?” I asked. “Was it the loopers?”
“No, not them,” she said. “One man drove. He aimed at her.”
“One man, not a group of teens?”
“One man,” she said.
“What did he look like?”
“A white man,” she said. “I couldn’t see him that good.”
Something she said earlier threw me, a small thing that didn’t fit. “You said you thought it was me getting run over. Why did you think it was me?”
“I’m not sure why.”
“Try, it’s important.”
She looked at the floor, looked outside, looked at me. “When she got hit I watched it from right there.” She pointed across the street. “That’s where I was standing.”
“A perfect view,” I said.
“I thought it was you that got hit. It was rainy. All I saw was the BC shirt, and I thought it was you getting out of the car.”
“I can see why,” I said. “Forgive me for asking, but I forget your name.”
“Carmen Cardosa, but don’t tell anybody I talked to you.”
Carmen left, and I started to shake. Fuck, this is my fault. Cheyenne got hit because of me. I was the target. This was no accident. George’s words came back to me, that I’d be no good to Cheyenne drunk. I needed a meeting, and I knew where to go to get to one.
45
I walked to the Teamsters building in Sullivan Square for an AA meeting, and when I got there I saw Skinny Atlas standing at the door, handing out raffle tickets for the Big Book. Skinny had grown up in a section of the South End called the New York Streets, an established community that got bulldozed in the name of urban renewal, destroying a vibrant Boston neighborhood. His knowledge of the New York Streets helped me solve a lucrative case, my first big moneymaker.
I was talking to Skinny about the Red Sox and their lack of power hitting when my sponsor, Mickey Pappas, came in. Mickey added his own thoughts on the subject, harkening back to the twilight years of Ted Williams, when he batted .388 at age thirty-nine — no steroids, no juiced-up baseballs. The Mick and I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat up front. There are always seats up front.
An old codger chairing the meeting identified himself as a low-bottom drunk who had spent most of his life living on the streets of Boston. And then everything changed.
“The grace of God came into my life,” he said. “Today I have an apartment and a job, and my self-esteem is skyrocketing, all because I surrendered. My friends call me FHG, former homeless guy. I’m proud of that name.”
Mickey and I hung around after the meeting, and that’s when I told him about Cheyenne getting run over. Mickey had been out of town and hadn’t heard about it. I told him about the loopers, and the scuzzy cashier in the scuzzy store, and my encounter with Gina Molony.
“Why didn’t you call me as soon as this happened?” he said.
Before I had a chance to answer, Skinny Atlas interrupted us and told us to lock up when we left, leaving us alone in the hall.
“A woman in the projects saw the car hit Cheyenne,” I said. “She said there was a man driving the car. The loopers work in teams. I saw them in Hayes Square, bumping a police cruiser. Five or six of them were hanging out the windows, taunting a cop.”
“Brazen little bastards,” Mickey said.
“The witness thought Cheyenne was me.” I said. “Carmen Cardosa had mistaken Cheyenne for me. If Carmen mistook Cheyenne for me, maybe the driver did, too.”
“If that’s true, you’re in danger,” he said.
“I know I am.” I thought about the kidnapping at the hands of Bo Murray and his brother Arnold. “On the other hand, Bo Murray made a threat against Cheyenne, so maybe Cheyenne was the intended target.”
“Jesus, Dermot, I hope you’re not fuckin’ with Bo Murray. He is flat crazy, out of his goddamn mind. Bo killed a young girl and got away with it.”
“I heard.”
“You heard? You say that like you heard it might rain tomorrow. We’re talking about a mindless killer who just got out of the can.” Mickey studied my face. “It could have been Bo Murray or one of Bo’s dimwitted brothers. Or it might have been somebody else altogether driving that car, somebody you’re not thinking of.”
I told Mickey that I wanted to be alone for a while, that I needed a few minutes to clear my head. “I’ll call you later,” I told him.
Mickey gave me a hug and left.
A few minutes later I locked the door and went to the parking lot. Storm clouds blocked the moon and stars, and a dense fog shrouded the street lamps, rendering the lot nearly unnavigable. In Sullivan Square, beyond the fenced lot, traffic thundered around the rotary, and up on I-93 horns blared, adding background ruckus to the din below.
I shuffled across the asphalt square, feeling my way to the car. A noise got my attention, enough so that I stopped and listened. A cat or a rat or some four-legged thing scurried away. I felt relieved, but it would be short-lived. An SUV bounced into the lot and skidded to a stop in front on me. A horde of teenagers, armed with guns and hockey sticks, jumped out and surrounded me.
The loopers.
One of the boys stepped forward, a scrawny kid wearing a Boston Bruins cap, and aimed a pistol at my chest.
“You scared the fuck outta my mother,” he said.
“You must be Jimmy Molony,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare her.”
“You gawked at her, too, ya’ fuckin’ pervert.”
“I didn’t gawk at anyone.”
A kid wearing a Dropkick Murphys T-shirt yelled, “She has a pissa body, Jimmy. I stare at her, too.” They all laughed, except for Jimmy, who said, “Shut your yap, Sully.”
“I wanted to talk to you,” I said, “but your mother answered the door.”
Jimmy raised the gun, which looked too big for his adolescent hand, and pointed it at my recoiling head. “I heard your woman got run down, but it wasn’t us. We didn’t do it.”
“I believe you,” I said.
“Shoot him anyway,” a boy yelled, prompting more laughter.
“Kneecap the prick,” came from the back.
For the Irish, kneecap is a verb, not a noun.
Jimmy came closer. “If you go near my mother again, I’ll blow your brains out.” He tucked the pistol into his belt. “And keep the fuck outta Mishawum. Understand?”
“Yeah, sure, I understand.”
They piled back into the SUV and sped toward Rutherford Avenue. I stood in darkness and waited until they were gone. I was never scared during the skirmish, because I knew it was a warning. When the threat is real, you never see it coming.
46
I visited Cheyenne in the hospital and watched her from the foot of the bed. Lying motionless under a blanket with her head propped on a pillow, she seemed at peace, not suffering, but not conscious, either. Her father wasn’t there and I was glad for that. I reclined in a chair and nodded off to the beeping monitors.
A flash of sunlight roused me from a restless sleep. I stretched my arms overhead, leaned left and l
eaned right. My neck cracked and my back popped, but it felt good, like a chiropractic adjustment. Cheyenne was in the same state, with her head on a pillow and comatose to her surroundings. I stayed for an hour. After a good cry, I kissed her cheek and left the hospital.
It was time to face Bo Murray, a dangerous man with erratic judgment, a man who has killed but was never convicted. Bo had leveled a threat against Cheyenne, and he delivered on it, or so it seemed. But then I had wrongly assumed that the loopers ran down Cheyenne. Being wrong about the loopers was one thing. Being wrong about Bo Murray was something else altogether. The loopers wouldn’t chop you up and use you for lobster bait.
I parked in the projects and knocked on their door. Albert Murray — the name Albert was stitched on his bowling shirt — opened it and stared at me the way he stared at everything, with confusion on his face.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Sparhawk?”
“I’d like to talk to Bo.”
Bo was sitting on a couch with an oxygen tank at his side, showing neither surprise nor anger at my visit. He told Albert to let me in, and as I stepped into the room, Arnold Murray, Albert’s twin brother, came out of the kitchen aiming an Uzi submachine gun at me.
“Don’t do nothin’ stupid,” Arnold said, with his finger shaking on the trigger. If he had a flashback, he’d shred me.
“I won’t, Arnold,” I said, nice and slow.
Arnold and Albert were identical twins, the dueling banjos of Boston, and they were dangerous as hell. The drugs didn’t help matters, dulling the minimal neurotransmitters they were born with. Bo leaned forward on the couch.
“You better be here to tell you found my mother’s killer,” he said.
“Did you run down my girlfriend?”
Arnold raised the Uzi. Bo pointed a finger at me.
“You got balls, Sparhawk. I didn’t run her down, so you fucked-up coming here. But I’m a tolerant guy, so I’m gonna give you a Mulligan on this one. I could have Arnold strafe you dead right now, but I want you alive. I want you to find my mother’s killer, so I can kill him myself.”
Arnold lowered the Uzi, Bo sat back, and I said, “If you hear anything about the driver, I’d like to know about it.”
“You’re asking me for help?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Don’t ever come here again.”
I went to the door, hoping I wouldn’t hear the burping of an Uzi, and when I got outside I damn near fainted.
47
I went back to my apartment and reviewed the last thirty-six hours. The loopers didn’t run over Cheyenne, because they work in teams. Bo Murray didn’t do it, because he would have gloated. Most importantly, whoever ran her down, thought he was running me down — or so the theory goes. But what if Cheyenne was the target after all?
The confusion was too much.
I clicked on the Red Sox game. They were playing San Francisco tonight at Fenway in an inter-league contest, which meant the Giants could use a designated hitter. I was hoping to enjoy an evening of meaningless escape when the doorbell rang. I went down to the foyer and saw Harry from Housing on the porch. I let him in.
“Sorry to bother you at home,” Harry said, “but Skeeter just went into his apartment.”
“When?”
“Two minutes ago. I heard his air conditioner go on, so he’s probably in for a while.”
“Thanks, Harry. Was anyone with him?”
“He was alone,” Harry said. “Don’t tell him I told you.”
“I won’t.”
I went to Skeeter’s apartment and knocked. The door opened and standing in front of me wearing a Las Vegas T-shirt was Skeeter Gruskowski. His mouth opened and closed, not saying a word. I stepped inside.
“I’ve been looking for you,” I said.
“Is something wrong?”
“I’ll ask the questions. Where have you been?”
“Vacation,” he said.
“You stayed at the Henshaw Hotel in Santa Monica.”
“What’s going on here?” He swallowed hard. “Were you in Santa Monica or something?”
“Yes, I was. I stayed at the Henshaw, too.”
“Why didn’t you call me? We could’ve had a few drinks.” He waited a second and said, “The place is tops, isn’t it? Santa Monica is out of this world.”
“My girlfriend got run down on Bunker Hill Street.”
“That was your girlfriend?” he said. “I heard about it.”
“She’s in a coma.”
“You’re talking like I did it. I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that. And you’re in my face.” Skeeter stepped back. “I didn’t even know you had a girlfriend.”
“The driver probably didn’t know either, because the driver thought he was hitting me. I was the intended target.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, not a clue.”
I had birddogged this man across the country, never quite catching up, and I felt my anger rising. “Where did you get the money?”
“It’s none of your goddamn business where I got it.”
“I think you stole Gert’s coins,” I said. “I think you went into her apartment, whacked her on the head, and robbed her.”
“Fuck you, Sparhawk, I never —”
“Even at face value, the coins must have been worth twenty thousand dollars, but a coin dealer would give you five times that amount.”
Skeeter clutched his heart but said nothing. I continued.
“And then you went to Foxwoods, just like you told Gage Lauria, and gambled the twenty into a pile of money.”
“You talked to Gage?” Skeeter muttered.
“You robbed and murdered Gert Murray for the silver coins.”
“Wait a second,” he inched forward. “I didn’t kill Gert. She was my friend. And I didn’t rob her, not really.”
“Not really, Skeeter?” I stepped closer to him, hoping to sniff a lie. “You either robbed her or you didn’t.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“You’d better explain.”
Skeeter walked around the room and gestured with his hands, as if preparing a defense, and then he stopped in front of me, ready to make his case.
“Gert and I were neighbors, more than neighbors, we were practically family,” he said. “We watched out for each other, you know, kept tabs on each other. She was getting forgetful, dementia I think. For two or three years now she’d forget what she was doing, so she asked me to take care of certain things for her.”
“What things?”
“She lost her keys a couple of times, so she gave me a spare set. Things like that.”
“What else?”
“The coin collection you mentioned, she asked me to look after it for her, in case she got robbed. I was looking out for her.”
“Sure you were.”
“I wanna show you something.” He led me to a closet and opened the door. “Look for yourself. There’s her collection.”
I looked inside the closet. There must have been fifty glass containers filled with coins. Mason jars, pickle jars, milk bottles, a Pickwick Ale bottle, every type of bottle, jug, or jar you could imagine, all brimming with silver. There were stacks of cardboard coin holders filled with coins. Gert Murray’s collection appeared to be intact.
“If you didn’t steal the coins, where did you get the money?” I asked.
“I was getting to that part,” Skeeter said. “There was this lottery ticket.”
“You’d better elaborate.”
“Like I said, Gert was getting forgetful, so she gave me things to hold. The night she got killed, she gave me a lottery ticket. Damned if it wasn’t a winner.”
“She gave you a winning lottery ticket?”
“I didn’t know it was a winner ’til a couple of days a
fter she died, swear to God. The first time you came here asking me all those questions, I had no idea the ticket hit. I didn’t know ’til days later. What was I supposed to do at that point, give it to the state?”
“So you cashed it in.”
“Yes and no, I sort of cashed it in.”
“Sort of?”
“There’s this guy I know, he cashes lottery tickets for people who want to be private about it, guys like me who don’t want the world to know they won money. What he does, he goes to the lottery in Braintree and cashes the tickets down there. It’s on the up and up, but he charges a fee.”
“Why didn’t you cash it yourself and save the fee?”
“I wanted to keep it confidential,” he said. “On account of Gertrude Murray, I wanted to show a little respect.”
“Cut the shit, Skeeter. Why the secrecy?”
“To tell you the truth I was worried about Bo Murray. What if Bo found out it was Gert’s ticket? I know he’s away, but he has a long reach, even from jail.”
“Tell me more about the lottery go-between.”
“His name is Cawley, lives in Jamaica Plain.”
“Cawley’s the guy that went to Braintree to cash the ticket for you.”
“Yeah, he’s the guy.”
“What’s his first name and where can I find him?”
“Michael Cawley, he’s a lawyer and a finance guy, but he’s semi-retired. You can find him at Franklin Park Golf Course. He’s the pro there.”
For some reason I believed him.
“I talked to Bo Murray earlier today,” I said.
“You went to Fort Devens?”
“Not Devens, I talked to him in Charlestown. He’s out and he’s itching to get his hands on the man who killed Gert.”
“Jesus, you can’t tell him about the lottery ticket. Bo’s crazy. He’ll kill me if he finds out. Promise me you won’t tell him, Sparhawk.”
“I’m not too good with promises these days.” I thought about the winnings. “Did you blow the whole thing?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I wanted to lose it.”
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