by Linda Barnes
“And if she ran out of money …” I checked my words, continued slowly. It was a hard question to ask a father. “I mean, the police found her in the Zone last time. Was she into prostitution?”
He finished his drink and stared at the empty glass regretfully. “No,” he said very softly. “I don’t think so. I don’t think so.” He kept on shaking his head, denying the possibility over and over.
“I’ll do my best to find her,” I said softly.
“Keep me informed, okay? And let me know if I can do something. Anything. Besides pay you. Is five hundred okay?”
I went through my usual spiel. I charge a daily rate, but missing persons stuff is so dicey that I take something up front, charge expenses, and then it’s cash on delivery. A lot.
Haslam passed over the check.
I pulled Valerie’s picture out of my wallet. “Is this a good likeness?” I asked.
He looked at it for a long time. “Yes and no,” he said. “The last time, when I went to get her, she had gunk all over her face, lipstick, eye stuff.” He tapped his finger on the photo’s surface. “But most of the time, she looks like this. She was such a beautiful child.” He stared hard at the picture, like he might be able to see beneath its surface, read something in his daughter’s unresponsive eyes.
He glanced at his watch and hurriedly called for the check. He handed me a business card from a downtown brokerage firm with a familiar name and, apologizing, left before me.
I stayed to drink tea, collect the leftovers in their white goldfish boxes, and investigate the fortune cookies.
One said: “You’ll be rich and famous in a far-out profession.” The other: “A sense of humor is your greatest asset.”
I got to take my choice.
CHAPTER 12
If you think parking in Chinatown is impossible, try the streets around 40 New Sudbury Street, home of the Area A cops, patrolling Downtown, Chinatown, Charlestown, and East Boston. After cruising a few blocks, competing with the Faneuil Hall tourist brigade, I decided to risk a spot marked POLICE BUSINESS ONLY, FIFTEEN MINUTES MAXIMUM. There is nothing you can get done at the Area A station in less than fifteen minutes.
Up the steps, turn right, turn left. I could have walked the pattern in my sleep, did sleepwalk it often enough during my two-year stint at Area A. The smell—a blend of bad coffee and fear that seems to have soaked into the beige walls and checkered linoleum—brought the memories back, made my shoulders stiffen as though I was wearing the uniform again.
I don’t miss it, most of the time.
I didn’t recognize the desk sergeant. I almost said “Lieutenant Mooney” when he asked me who I wanted to see. That’s how far I’d repressed his suspension. I caught myself and asked for Joanne Triola instead. Joanne came up with me from the Academy. She’s better at putting up with guff than I ever was or will be, and as a result she is still a cop, a rising star. The desk sergeant said Detective Bureau, Second Floor.
He gave me a clip-on visitor’s pass, and I headed up the stairs. The fifth step was still missing its rubber retread, and the eighth step still creaked if you hit it dead center.
The rookies who’d responded to last night’s accident had been strangers from Area D, and matter-of-fact to the point of boredom. The gist of their chat was: What the hell did I expect driving at night in Franklin Park? And couldn’t I keep my damn cab on the road?
I don’t take kindly to aspersions cast on my driving skills. The three of us did not hit it off.
They’d listened to my forced-off-the-road story with such undisguised skepticism that I’d gone no further. If they didn’t believe in the car that shoved me into the tree, how were they going to grasp the news that I’d been tailing yet another car complete with missing witness inside?
I should have told them, I suppose, should have demanded they call in an accident team to check my rear bumper for paint chips, but just as I opened my mouth, the two of them exchanged The Look. You know, the why-do-they-let-these-crazy-broads-out-at-night look. And I’d decided to save my breath.
Joanne, I could talk to.
She was slouched in a chair in the bullpen, a warren of desks that serves as combination typing pool and doughnut dispensary. Every once in a while somebody shrieks about privacy and efficiency and tries to install dividers, but most of the time there aren’t that many cops around. They’re on the beat, or talking to snitches, or tracking down leads, or growing old in courtrooms waiting to testify about crimes that occurred three and a half years ago.
Today, the bullpen was graced by one old cop named Foley, a desk jockey who’d retired in all but name a couple years back, and a young Hispanic guy who looked eighteen max, but was acting like a cop, pounding away on his typewriter and shooting questions at a young woman in his guest chair. The lady wore black—blouse, skirt, tights, and boots—and handcuffs. I don’t know much Spanish but I recognized several words Paolina would not have used in polite conversation.
Joanne was gabbing on the phone, speaking loudly, gesturing freely. She must be almost fifty and she’s energetic enough for three normal people. She has a round, gentle face, a puff of graying hair, a ready smile, and one of those laughs that makes people turn around in a restaurant.
She can outscore me on the target range, either hand.
She hung up, glared at the phone, and started dialing again. I cleared my throat and she looked up, a smile breaking across her face.
“Why, it can’t be,” she said. “Why yes, the height is right. Didn’t you used to be a cop?”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’d love to sit and chat a while.” I slid into her visitor’s chair, thankful to get the weight off my knee. It felt stiff and swollen, and I hoped I wasn’t going to have to cut off my very best pair of jeans. What I needed was a long soak in a hot tub.
“I’d ask you to join me in a cup of coffee,” she said, “but I seem to recall—”
“Still that bad?” I said. The woman in black jumped off her chair and swore in good old Anglo-Saxon. The cop who was booking her chuckled and said her English was getting much better.
“Honest to God, Carlotta,” Joanne said, taking no notice of the outburst from across the room, “you stir it with one of those plastic gizmos from McDonald’s, and the little spoon dissolves.”
“Coke machine work?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
Her phone rang, so I went over to investigate the vending machine, trying not to favor my left leg. The machine blazed with red warning lights that declared it gave no change and was out of every beverage it was supposed to stock. I gave it a gentle kick for the old days. I’d forgotten the crazy rhythm of the bullpen, the counterpoint of bells and questions and typewriters, entrances and exists, long calm afternoons broken by sudden, brutal emergencies.
Joanne was signing off when I came back.
“Jo,” I said, “I got run off the road last night.”
“Yeah?” she said. “Where?”
“Franklin Park.”
Her eyebrows shot up and she grinned. “Way to go,” she said. “And lived to tell about it.” Then she held up a hand like a traffic cop, requesting silence while she shuffled through a stack of paper.
“Here it is,” she said finally. “Area D. You got a big two sentences in the occurrence book.”
“The jerks wrote it up,” I said. “I’m flattered.”
“It’s no big deal,” she said. “Two sentences.”
“Where’re they getting the rookies these days?” I asked.
“Well,” said Joanne, “with our incredible benefit package and high starting salary we have to fight off those Harvard MBAs.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I see.”
The woman in black rattled her handcuffs and called the Hispanic cop a son of a mangy yellow dog, in both Spanish and English. It was more effective in Spanish.
“You wanna come back?” Joanne asked.
“No, thanks,” I said.
She smiled. “So wh
o’s after your ass?” she said. “You working a case?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“And this is just a social visit, right?” she said.
“I got a license plate,” I said. “I was wondering if you could run it.” A phone rang somewhere, ten times, twelve times, stopped.
“You give it to the boys last night?” she asked.
“No.”
“Carlotta, they may be jerks, but they can run a plate.”
“I’ve got a plate, but it’s not the car that rammed me,” I said. The phone started up again. Six, eight, ten rings before someone mercifully plucked it off the hook.
She said, “Let me get this straight. You just wrote down a license for the hell of it?”
“Hey, it’s connected,” I said. The Hispanic cop finished his paperwork and escorted the woman in black to a holding cell. Close up, under her eye makeup, she was a teenager. The right sleeve of her blouse was ripped, and her skinny yellow arm showed needle tracks.
“How?” Joanne asked.
“I’ll know once you run it, Jo. Maybe.”
“This have to do with Mooney?” she asked, leaning over her desk and getting all quiet and confidential.
God knows what the station house grapevine says about Mooney and me, but I’m sure it’s juicier than reality. “Would that make you run the plate any faster?” I asked.
“I’m just curious, you know,” she said.
“Seen Mooney?” I asked.
“He’s not allowed in. It might be catching.”
“I thought he had to come by and testify about something.”
“Oh, that,” she said, elaborately casual. “That’s over at county courthouse.”
“What’s it about?”
“Confidential?” She shot a careful glance around the bullpen. The old cop, Foley, was learning how to type with two fingers.
“Sure,” I said easily.
“Cheating on paid detail,” she said.
“Mooney?” I said quietly. The Hispanic cop wandered back to his desk. He propped his feet on his blotter, dialed his phone. Joanne waited until he started talking before she answered, very softly.
“The way I heard it, is somebody offered him five bills to alter records, right after the probe started. It wasn’t that obvious. Oblique as hell, really, but Mooney, well, you can imagine.”
I felt my stomach muscles unknot. “I knew it,” I said. “He frothed at the mouth, right? He’s cooperating with Internal Affairs.” I smiled and issued a silent apology for my thoughts over the morning Herald.
“Keep it down,” Joanne said. “He’s a perfect witness. These cops are gonna get strung by their thumbs.” She walked over to the bullpen’s central table, picked up a pink-and-white box, and came back. “Want a doughnut?” she asked.
The box was half-full. Cinnamon and chocolate. I liked glazed and jelly.
“No, thanks,” I said. “But there is something else you can do for me, besides running the plate, I mean. I’m looking for a runaway.”
“Good luck,” she said, her voice back to full volume now.
“A repeater. There ought to be paper,” I said. Two cops, one black, one white, came through the swinging doors, supporting a man between them. He could have been drunk or doped or dead. They passed by and the smell made me glad I hadn’t taken the doughnut.
“Juvie?” Joanne asked. Nothing seemed to sway her, not the noise, not the smells. I must have been like that once, before I got rid of the badge.
“Yep,” I said.
“Probably sealed.”
“I don’t think it went to court. It’s just paper lying around someplace.”
“Look, are you helping Mooney?” she asked.
“I’m trying,” I said.
She pushed a sheet of paper across the desk. “Write down the plate, and give me the girl’s name while you’re at it.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I owe you.”
“Say something nice about your local police department,” she said with a heartfelt sigh. “We can use it.”
CHAPTER 13
My car sported a parking ticket under the windshield wiper. I swear they find me everywhere, those meter maids. I hated the idea of one of them making such an easy score, right in front of the damn station.
A Boston ticket used to be a laugh. You bisected it on the spot, end of crisis. Recently, the traffic cops and the registry have sharpened up their act. You can still rip the tickets, but when you try to renew your driver’s license, boy, will you be sorry. Better yet, if you rip five tickets, you can get acquainted with the Denver Boot, a yellow eyesore that instantly converts your car from a means of transportation to a hunk of modern sculpture.
The ticket was a five-buck job. If I’d parked in a lot it would have cost me four easy, so I didn’t feel so bad. I’d slip it on Haslam’s bill under parking fees.
I checked my watch: 2:05. School in session. Just letting out by the time I motored to Lincoln. Maybe a good time to talk to Mr. Geoffrey Reardon. Not that I put a lot of stock in Haslam’s theory. I couldn’t see the staid Emerson putting up with a “cult” drama club. On the other hand, there were those photo albums with the girls in leotards.
I tuned the radio to WUMB, 91.9 FM, and came in on Chris Smither singing that the sun was gonna shine in my back door someday.
I patted my knee cautiously and wondered who I could call who owned a functional bathtub and wouldn’t misunderstand a request to use it. God, I ought to belong to some whoop-de-do health spa instead of the Y. I could waltz into, say, La Pli in Harvard Square, and get my aches pampered and petted and Jacuzzied. Sure thing, girl, I told myself. Membership at La Pli probably cost more than my rent. And in my jeans, with my hair wild, I looked more like a candidate for Madame Floozey’s message parlor.
Used to be I could call Mooney. Back when we worked together, he’d have loaned me his key, no questions. But now there’s his mom who probably wouldn’t understand, but would think she did.
I let my mind wander to Sam Gianelli. His place at Charles River Park has a great bathtub, a giant bathtub, a queen of bathtubs, a five-by-five blue-tiled sunken square. I tried to imagine my approach: “Sam, it’s me, Carlotta. Yeah. I know I screwed up your life and you never want to see me again—but could I use your tub?”
Maybe I could rent one of those hooker hotel rooms for an hour. “Just yourself, lady?” the sleazebag on the desk would inquire. The thought of the bathtub in a place like that made me itch. Oh, God, let the Twin Brothers put my tub back in.
There was always Gloria’s room at the back of the garage, but, shit, all those pulleys and bars and stuff. I’ve heard about these places where you can rent a hot tub for an hour, but it seems like something you ought to do with somebody else, a social occasion calling for a date and a bottle of wine. It also seems much too “California” for a Bostonian. Bostonians are more aware of social diseases than social occasions.
I parked the Toyota under a cherry tree just beginning to bud. It wasn’t green yet, but it had turned that fuzzy kind of gray that promises green. The wind was bitter, but the Emerson’s campus was calm, sheltered by pines. Kids chattered as they walked to class, yanking on mittens, tightening scarves.
I stuck my hands in the pockets of my coat and started off toward Reardon’s office.
I saw Elsie McLintock first, then Jerry Toland, both standing in the middle of the soccer field, waving their arms at each other. I couldn’t hear them clearly, but Jerry’s voice was raised and angry. I detoured.
The minute Elsie saw me, she practically ran. Jerry flicked a glance over his shoulder, called out to Elsie, then turned back to me. He strolled over, unhurried, feet shuffling through the damp grass, hands in his pockets. His mouth was slightly puffy, healing nicely. He wore khaki slacks and a white knit shirt with yellow stripes that looked expensive and warm. A yellow windbreaker was tied across his shoulders by the sleeves.
“Hi,” he said, leaning down to pick up a soccer ball someone ha
d abandoned in the grass. “That is you, isn’t it?”
This from a kid who’d seen me in my cab driver outfit and my bathrobe. “It’s me,” I reassured him. “What’s with Elsie?”
He shrugged, dismissing her. “Oh, you know. She doesn’t think I should have hired you, and everything.” He started kicking the ball around, standing in place, bouncing it off one knee then the other.
“Me in particular?” I said.
“Anybody.”
“Why?” I asked.
The ball got away. He retrieved it, started the game over. “She’s a pain in the ass, you know. That’s why. Hell, I don’t know.”
“You think she knows where Valerie is?”
“Elsie?” He flashed me a grin. He’d kneed the ball five times in a row. He had good balance. “No way.”
“Why? Elsie’s her best friend, right?”
“Right,” he said.
“Could you just hold on to the ball for a while?” I said.
He took a step toward me. “Elsie blabs, you know. If she had a line on anything, half her friends would know, and everybody’d be yapping about it. Valerie’s not dumb enough to tell Elsie.”
This kid on the soccer field had a lot more confidence than the one who’d hid in my cab and bled in my kitchen. From the way he talked about her, Elsie was not Jerry’s favorite person.
He said, “Elsie says I just hired you because you’re, uh, you’re a woman,” he said. It took me a minute but I finally caught on. This kid on the soccer field was flirting with me.
“You know,” Jerry said, looking me over from top to tail, “they don’t allow blue jeans.”
“Huh? Who? The Kremlin?”
“On campus. The Emerson doesn’t allow blue jeans.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but I don’t work for them.”
“You look great,” he said. He fired the soccer ball at me, hard. I caught it and fired it back. Reflex. I should have held it. The puppy wanted to play.
“Good toss,” he said. “How old are you, anyway?” He took another step forward. He was my height. I should have worn heels. My hair in a bun. A raging-hormone repellent spray.
