Murder in the Charlestown Bricks: A Dermot Sparhawk Crime Novel

by Tom MacDonald

“That’s it.”

  That’s it? “If that’s it, why do you feel responsible for Gert’s death?” I asked.

  “She was murdered the day before Bo got out of prison.”

  It began to sink in.

  “Thus eliminating Bo from the will,” I said while I thought. “You feel responsible because Gert was murdered before Bo got out.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you think Arnold killed her because you told him about the stipulation.”

  “Yes, I do,” he said, with his hand shaking. The whiskey must not have kicked in yet, but it will. It always did for me.

  I couldn’t picture Arnold killing his mother for a bigger piece of a tiny pie. But it’s not so tiny if you’re an addict, and Arnold was an addict. Remus Shonta drank the whiskey that had been aging in his mug.

  “You never told me your name,” he said.

  “Didn’t the receptionist tell you?” I was surprised she hadn’t. “My name is Sparhawk, Dermot Sparhawk.”

  “Sparhawk?” He gripped the edge of the desk with both hand and steadied himself.

  “Are you okay, Shonta?”

  “Fine, fine, I got dizzy,” he said in a pant. “It’s nothing.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “My blood pressure, it’s low, and sometimes I get lightheaded. Sometimes I even faint.” He refilled his cup, this time with two inches. “Will there be anything else?”

  “That’s all for now,” I said. Why did he get spooked when he heard my name? Maybe it was the alcohol. I wrote my phone number on a piece of scrap paper and handed it to him. “If the booze gets too much, call me.”

  “I suppose you’re a member of assole-holics anonymous.”

  “And proud of it,” I said. I let his comment pass.

  I was the same way when I was in my cups.

  From Shonta’s office I drove to the projects, still feeling like I was wasting my time, and parked in front of Bo Murray’s building. I climbed the stairs to the second floor and banged on his door. Bo greeted me in his usual manner.

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  “I’m looking for Arnold,” I said.

  “Arnold ain’t in.” He stepped into the hallway and flexed his bony arms. “What do you want with him?”

  “I need to talk to him about an important matter,” I said.

  “You’d better tell me what’s going on, Sparhawk.”

  “Tell Arnold to call me.”

  “I’m not tellin’ Arnold nothin’, asshole.”

  I drove from the projects to the lowly hellholes that attracted the outcasts of society. Flophouse lobbies, fleabag motels, abandoned buildings slated for demolition, anywhere the castaways might go. I parked on Southampton Street, aka Methadone Mile, a derogatory term I detested, and went into Samantha’s Tap, a refuge for addicts and alkies of every stripe. Samantha’s Tap made the Aces & Eights look like it deserved a rave review in the Improper Bostonian.

  I went inside.

  Junkies and dopers commiserated at tables, drinking sugary soda and bartering for butts. A glue sniffer cowered in a corner — I could smell the pungent fumes when I walked by him. Weather-beaten winos, who no longer occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder, thanks to the addicts, drank white port and muscatel from pint bottles they’d rustled in. I saw a Townie named Billy sitting dazed in a booth. Dozing next to him was a reedy woman zonked out on something that left her near catatonic. I sat across from them and loudly cleared my throat, which prompted no reaction.

  “Hey, Billy,” I said, hoping to roust him. “Billy, I’m looking for Arnold Murray.”

  He wouldn’t or couldn’t answer me, his drug-addled brain unable to respond. I countered his inertia with an unethical ploy. I laid a twenty and a ten on the table in front of him. He came to life like a concussed fighter after a whiff of smelling salts.

  “Huh?” Billy said. “Arnold?”

  “Arnold Murray,” I said. “I’m looking for him.”

  “He ain’t here today,” Billy slowly drawled. “Don’t know where he is. Maybe he’s at Forneau’s in Egleston.”

  “I checked Egleston Square.”

  “Try Chelsea, the place by the creek, I think it’s called Rosen’s Cafe,” he said, and with that the conversation ended. Billy’s head fell to the table, counted out. I put the twenty and ten in his shirt pocket and slid out of the booth. As I was getting to my feet, his female companion said with a wheeze, “Lemme catch my breath. I shouldn’t smoke, but I got asthma.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My asthma is bad today, very bad.” She shook loose a cigarette from a generic pack. “I think I can help you with Arnold Murray.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Try Joe Gun’s. Arnold’s drug dealer drinks at Joe’s.” She yawned and sniffled and started to fade. Her pupils constricted to two black dots, dots as tiny as typewriter periods. “Arnold meets him there sometimes, at Joe’s. But whatever you do, don’t tell Joe Gun about the dealer. He’d skin him.”

  “Thanks,” I said, handing her ten dollars, feeling guilty for giving her a downpayment toward her next jag.

  I thought about Arnold’s motive for murder, trying to analyze the whole picture, or as much of it as I could see. Did Arnold partner up with Avakian? It didn’t seem likely. I thought about the $20,000 life insurance policy. Divided by three, Arnold gets sixty-seven hundred, divided by two he gets ten grand, an increase of thirty-three hundred, which was more than enough incentive for a jonesing burner like Arnold to do something desperate — but murdering his own mother?

  I decided that Arnold’s wasn’t the killer. Addicts don’t take the long view. They look at the immediate, the moment in front of them, as they scheme for the next fix. They aren’t Wall Street investors, waiting for quarterly earnings. They’re slot-machine players, waiting for the clang of coins.

  And besides, the Murrays loved their mother. They might be screw-ups, and they might be stupid, and they might be murderers, at least in Bo’s case, but they wouldn’t kill Gert. No man kills his own mother. Although a friend of mine stepped over his dead mother to go out for a night of drinking. But he didn’t kill her. She was already dead when he walked past her. When the ambulance came the next day, she was as cold as the linoleum floor she lay on.

  That night at three in the morning I went back to Joe Gun’s, and the atmosphere was the same as the last time I was there, raucous with festive drinkers. I looked around for Arnold Murray and didn’t see him. The person I did see, however, was Joe Gun, who was sitting at the same table with Smitty, and I again sat between them.

  “How did it go with Remus Shonta?” Joe asked. “Did he own up to it?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. I told them about Gertrude Murray’s will and the will’s stipulation. Joe and Smitty’s reacted the way I had initially reacted: benignly.

  “So what, there was a stipulation,” Smitty said.

  I repeated it. “Remus Shonta told Arnold Murray about the stipulation, that if any of the Murray boys were in prison —”

  “Yeah, yeah, you already said that. What am I missing?” Joe Gun said.

  “Gertrude Murray was murdered the day before Bo got out of prison,” I said.

  “And you think Arnold killed Gert to cut Bo out of the will. Arnold gets half instead of a third.” Joe looked a Smitty, and Smitty said, “Arnold didn’t kill her.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Arnold was here the night Gert got murdered,” Smitty said. “The police called and told us about it. They called us because they knew Arnold comes here sometimes. The word got around the club, and everyone started buying Arnold drinks.”

  “Arnold was here?”

  “Sorry, Dermot,” Joe Gun said. “I’m afraid we sent you on wild goose chase. Smitty and I are Arnold’s alibi. He couldn’t have done i
t.”

  “Shonta must have assumed what you assumed,” Smitty concluded, “that Arnold rushed to kill Gert before Bo got sprung. That’s why Shonta felt responsible for her death.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I said.

  I had come full circle on the Shonta lead, and like a dog chasing its mangy tail, I was back where I started, having accomplished nothing. I knew the runaround with Shonta would prove to be a fiasco because of the fingerprints on the car, fingerprints that belonged to the killer, Mr. Avakian. The Murray murder had been solved, and the murderer was probably out of the country by now, never to be heard from again.

  But I had to follow-up on Joe Gun’s tip. And if I looked at it objectively, it wasn’t a complete waste of time. Shonta provided a piece of information I didn’t know before, the stipulation in Gert’s will. Maybe the information would come into play later, completing the picture of what really happened the night of Gert’s murder, or maybe I had wasted my time and was trying to rationalize it. I drove to the Cape and got a motel room in Dennis Port, just to do it, just to get out of the city for a night.

  57

  When I got home the next evening I found a note on the kitchen counter from Harraseeket Kid, telling me to go to the basement. When I got there I saw Kid with Ester Diaz, and sitting next to Ester was Bianca Sanchez, the clerk I got fired. They looked at me.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Juan Rico will testify,” Ester said, referring to Victor’s accomplice. “He will tell the judge that Gertrude Murray was already dead when they broke in.”

  “What changed his mind?” I asked.

  “Bianca called a friend,” Ester nodded at Bianca. “Her friend convinced Juan to do the right thing.”

  “That’s good news for Victor,” I said.

  “Rico will do time for this,” Kid added.

  “Which makes his testimony that much more impressive,” I said.

  We talked about Juan Rico’s loyalty to Victor, and after we praised him for five or ten minutes, Kid said, “Ester is definitely moving in with me. We’re getting her things tomorrow.”

  “I can’t wait.” Ester smiled. “I appreciate all you’ve done, Dermot.”

  “Glad to help.”

  Bianca told us that she needed to get going, and I said I had things to do, and the two of us left the basement together. She went up the stairs in front of me, and when we hit the first landing, she lost her footing and fell backwards into me. My hands slid up to her armpits, brushing her breasts along the way. She sighed and turned and we kissed. A pang of remorse surged through me. The loss of Cheyenne, I couldn’t shake it. I’ve never been so blue in my life, never so lost, and I guess I didn’t give a damn anymore, because Bianca and I were still kissing. I felt no guilt — guilt requires a conscience, and mine was gone. We went up to the moon crater I called home, took off our clothes without saying a word, crawled under the dusty covers, and stayed under them all night.

  In the morning she made coffee and carried two cups to the so-called bedroom, the coffee giving us an excuse not to talk.

  “I’d better get going,” she said. “I have a busy day.”

  I asked her if she needed a ride. She joked, saying I had already given her one she would never forget. We laughed, but it was a hollow laugh.

  “I parked near the monument,” she said.

  “Way up there?”

  “No one will know I stayed the night.” If she parked at the monument, blocks from the house, she must have planned the tryst. I had assumed it was an impulsive act, an irresistible urge on her part, but it seems I was merely a stop-gap to fill the void left by Victor. Worse things have happened to me. Bianca said, “It’s not you, it’s Ester.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Victor’s sister, Ester,” she said. “I don’t want her knowing my business. That’s why I parked near the monument. I thought maybe we’d, you know, and we did.”

  “Now I understand.” It became clear that this was a one-off, which was probably for the best. “I’m sorry about your job.”

  “I loved working there.” She got out of bed and dressed. “They treated me like family. Mr. Avakian trusted me to drive him home at night.”

  I drank the last of my coffee, and when I placed the cup on the end table, a weird feeling came over me. “You drove him home at night?”

  “Every night,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “He has night blindness. Mr. Avakian can’t see so good after dark, so I was his nighttime driver. He called me his personal teamster.”

  “He doesn’t drive at night?”

  “He has a restricted license. I think they call it a daytime license, but even in the daytime he’s a terrible driver. And at night, forget it. He couldn’t steer out of the alley behind the store without bumping a wall or a pole. One time he hit a fire hydrant.”

  “At night,” I said.

  “Yes, at night.”

  I was on my feet putting on my own clothes. Avakian couldn’t have run over Cheyenne, not if he couldn’t see her.

  “I wonder why he didn’t update the chart,” I muttered to myself.

  “What chart?”

  “The lottery chart,” I said. “Why didn’t Mr. Avakian put a red star next to Gert Murray’s winning number?”

  “Mr. Avakian doesn’t update the chart, Nick does.”

  “Who’s Nick?”

  “His son.” She got out her keys. “Nick hates the market, but he’s the only heir. Mr. Avakian is leaving everything to him. But instead of being glad about it, Nick complains about it. He complains like a baby, a big baby.”

  “I remember him now — he is big.” And he probably has big feet and blood-stained shoes. “I forgot how big he was.”

  “Nick is a loser,” Bianca said. “The old man is the brains of the place. Nick is nothing but a deadbeat looking to cash in.”

  I had kidnapped the wrong man. Mr. Avakian was taking a dive for his son.

  58

  I drove to the auto-body shop to talk to Glooscap about the Avakian matter. When I got there he was sitting inside his office smoking his trademark bulldog pipe. His Native American profile remained stoic while he puffed. The pungent smell of burning tobacco filled the air with a strong vanilla scent. I sniffed hard to get some into my nostrils.

  “I can tell something is weighing on your mind,” he said. “Am I right in saying that?”

  “You’re right.”

  “Please tell me about it.”

  I told him about Stellwagen Bank and Rod Liveliner and Mr. Avakian’s attempted suicide and Superintendent Hanson and Captain Pruitt and Bianca Sanchez and Nick Avakian. I told him about the impending threat of Bo Murray and his moronic twin brothers, Arnold and Albert. I told him about Joe Gun and Smitty and Remus Shonta and the stipulation in Gert’s will.

  Glooscap, who never utters a vulgarity or an off-color remark, never turns a slang phrase or a wisecrack, and never cuts corners with contractions, deliberately puffed his pipe and said, “Rod used extremely poor judgment in bringing you to Stellwagen Bank. He should never have done that. Rod is partly to blame for the mess you are in.”

  “It’s my fault,” I said. “Rod told me he owed my father a favor from Vietnam, and I talked him into taking me out there. I took advantage of him.”

  “You most certainly did.” Glooscap rested the pipe in an ashtray, as lingering smoke drifted from his nose. “Kidnapping, Dermot? I cannot believe it.”

  “I know.”

  “I can only surmise that your love for Cheyenne blinded you to the insanity of your actions. What were you thinking? What are you going to do now?”

  “I toyed with the idea of telling Bo Murray about Nick Avakian,” I said. “After all, Nick murdered Gert. But that would be akin to putting a hit on Nick. I thought about strangling Nick with
my bare fucking hands — sorry for the language — but I’m beyond that now, even though he nearly killed Cheyenne.”

  “You do not sound beyond it to me.”

  A clattering noise came from the garage area, a can tipped over, a tool skittered across the floor. The office door opened and Cheyenne’s father, George, came in. He walked to the middle of the small room. I got up and stood in front of him, searching his eyes for a sign, an indication, trying to read him. I took a chance and embraced him and said, “George, I am sorry.”

  “I know you are.”

  “I never meant for Cheyenne to get hurt.” I turned and extended my hand. “This is my uncle, Glooscap.”

  George looked at Glooscap and said, “Which tribe?”

  “Micmac, from Antigonish, Nova Scotia,” Glooscap answered. “You?”

  “Cherokee, from New Echota, Georgia, the last Capital of the Cherokees,” George said, and then looked at me. “I know this is hard for you, Dermot. Cheyenne loves you very much. She has been crying for days. She wants you to know that she loves you, but she cannot be with you right now.”

  “But maybe some day?”

  “Maybe, but you have to let her go for now.” He held my shoulders in a fatherly way and said, “What I’m about to tell you is most difficult.” He handed me an envelope. “These are Cheyenne’s ultrasound results. The night she was run over she was going to the car to get these pictures.”

  “She’s pregnant?”

  “Cheyenne was pregnant. She lost the baby,” George said. “I am sorry to be the one to give you the horrible news. Cheyenne asked me to tell you, because she couldn’t bring herself to tell you in person.”

  “She lost the baby?”

  “Yes, she lost the baby.”

  “I have to see her.”

  “Cheyenne left for Arizona this morning,” George said.

  “I’m on the next plane.”

  “No,” he said with force. “She loves you, but she is asking you to leave her alone. Please don’t contact her.”