by Linda Barnes
I tapped my chin on the spot corresponding to his powdered sugar. He picked up on it immediately, rubbing his jaw. Mooney and I communicate well, part gesture, part mind reading. It helped a lot when I worked for him.
Mooney’s got a good face, sleepy or not. Maybe a little too round, on the big-nosed side, definitely Irish. He used to be my boss when I was a cop. He’s still my friend, although it’s a complicated relationship. I’m getting so I hate the word relationship. There are romantic overtones and undertones, mostly coming from his side. On my side there’s a lot of warmth. Not heat. Warmth.
Mooney says I don’t know how to love a guy who attracts me as a friend. You know, a guy I enjoy, a guy I like to talk to. And considering my history with men, he may have a workable theory. Who knows? A relationship with Mooney might be okay, in a warm kind of way. But the wild and crazy chemistry’s not there. Mooney, who’s eight years older than me, nudging forty, says someday I’ll grow out of the wild-and-crazy-chemistry stage.
I say, who wants to?
Amid the jumble of printed forms, plastic coffee cups, crumpled papers, pens, and pencils on Mooney’s desk sat a newspaper. The Herald. I picked it up, although it’s not my paper of choice, wondering how they’d handled the Manuela Estefan story.
I found it on page seventeen, well after the important stuff like Norma Nathan’s gossip column.
While the Herald didn’t have anything the Globe hadn’t run, the tone of the piece was of the breathless, breaking-news variety. There were hints at “sexual mutilation” and a coy reference to a key discovery. The name Manuela Estefan was there.
Sexual mutilation would make it murder.
I wondered if Manuela Estefan was a common name, like Jane Smith.
Mooney grunted at the phone, sandwiching it between chin and shoulder while his hands frisked the desk and finally came up with a full cup of coffee. He must have been hiding it in a drawer. He raised his eyebrows at me, and I helped him wrestle the plastic cover off the cup. I wondered who was on the phone. The police commissioner? The mayor? A city councillor? Mooney didn’t suffer long telephone conversations as a rule.
His office didn’t offer much in the way of entertainment beyond the single wooden chair I was sitting on, and its hard seat didn’t encourage long visits. I knew where the coffee machine was, but the smell from Mooney’s cup was not tempting enough to draw me into the hall. I figured if there were any remaining doughnuts, Mooney would have pointed me in their direction. So I was left with the contemplation of either the Herald or Mooney’s ugly office, which didn’t sport so much as a poster on the cinder-block walls. Maybe he hadn’t had a chance to decorate since they’d moved him back to Homicide from his liaison position down at headquarters.
Come to think of it, he didn’t have a poster at his place on Berkeley Street either. Not even a plant. Bare desk. Bare walls.
I did a complete one-eighty and discovered a map tacked on the wooden door behind me. A close-up of the Back Bay with three pushpins stuck in fairly close together—red, white, and yellow. I stood up to take a look.
“I’ll get on it right away,” Mooney promised the telephone, and hung up so quickly that I got the feeling the guy on the other end was still talking.
“Carlotta,” Mooney said, shoving back his chair. “Sorry. I can’t talk. I’ve got a meeting downtown. I was trying to convince the bastards I’d be more use here, but—”
“I’ll drive you,” I said.
“Got the cab?”
“Nah, my car. You can make some flunky cruise you back in a unit.”
He studied his watch. I don’t think Mooney likes my driving.
“Hell,” he said. “Sure, why not?”
When we were settled in my red Toyota, seat-belted in and trying to wedge ourselves into an endless stream of traffic, I said, “I hear you got an ID on this Fens corpse.”
“That’s what they tell me,” Mooney said.
“You sure of it?”
“Why should I be sure of it yet, just because the papers are printing it?”
“You working it?” I asked.
“I didn’t exactly catch the squeal, but I’m involved.”
Like most cops, Mooney doesn’t give information away freely.
“Do you know if they have a picture ID,” I said casually, “or what?”
“Let me see,” he said, and I wondered if the pause was for recall or to stare at me out of the corner of his eye. “I think it’s a green card. The victim was an immigrant.”
“A green card,” I started to protest, “but—”
“But what?” Mooney said when I stopped abruptly.
“So that’s a picture, right?” I said.
“Yeah, but from what I understand, once the guy finished with the victim, she didn’t look so much like her picture.”
“I thought it was—how did the Herald put it?—sexual mutilation.”
“The brain is the ultimate sexual organ, Carlotta. I keep telling you that.”
“Not funny.”
“You haven’t been doing Homicide for a while, kiddo,” he said. “Everything’s funny on Homicide.”
A green card. That I didn’t understand at all. A green card is a permanent resident card, a ticket that entitles the holder to live and work in the U.S. for an unlimited time, a prized possession that can be used to apply for citizenship. Not a privilege granted to illegals.
I have had clients lie to me before.
“Where did the lady come from?” I asked. “You know yet?”
“We got her point of entry. Texas. Probably from someplace in Central America,” he said, gripping the door handle while I zoomed by a Buick that seemed afraid to take a tight curve. “Guatemala, El Salvador, maybe. I mean, think of the crap she must have gone through—all that shit down there—and then she goes for a walk through the Fens, and bingo, she’s a crime stat.”
Mooney winced as I made a sharp right to avoid a Volvo wagon that thought it owned the road. I could have just taken Dorchester Avenue to East Berkeley Street, but I was trying to avoid the late commuter traffic, taking cabbie shortcuts. Mooney didn’t seem impressed. Of course I had to cross the Fort Point Channel somewhere, and bridges always get backed up. While we were sitting still, breathing exhaust from a heating-oil truck, I brought up the reason for my visit.
“Mooney,” I said. “Something funny happened yesterday.”
“Yeah?”
“It makes me think your green card ID may be wrong.”
“This I need to hear,” he said. “Watch out for that car.” It was well worth watching out for, a rust-eaten Plymouth Volare, hogging two lanes.
I gave him Manuela’s story, not word for word but pretty complete.
“And she just walked away,” he said with a deep sigh.
“Ran is more like it,” I said.
“I’m going to need a description.”
“I’m going to give you one,” I promised. “I already wrote it up. I’m cooperating.”
“Yeah. How come?”
I ignored that.
“Carlotta, am I going to have to remind you to stay out of homicide investigations?”
A Town Taxi tried to cut me off at the bridge. I refused to make eye contact, kept going, and he backed down. Mooney had his hand on the door handle—ready to jump, I suppose.
“Mooney,” I said gently, “you’ve got a homicide investigation. I don’t.”
“You’re just going to forget about this woman?” he said. “I believe that like I believe in Tinker Bell.”
“I didn’t say I was gonna forget about her. She hired me to do something. Something maybe you can help me with.”
“Aha,” Mooney said.
“Oho,” I responded. The Town Taxi was sitting on my rear bumper.
“You didn’t just drop by to give me indigestion driving like a lunatic?”
“That’s an extra,” I said. “And I’ve been driving conservatively, Mooney. If you’re in a hurry—”
&
nbsp; “Forget it,” he said.
“Where do we stand on favors?” I asked.
That wasn’t quite fair. He owed me a big one and he knew it.
“What do you think I could help you with?” he said finally. “And watch out for that damn BMW.”
“Bimmers can take care of themselves,” I shot back. “You think he wants to crease that fancy paint? I thought you might be able to help retrieve my client’s green card. She needs it.”
“Carlotta, you lose a green card, you go to Immigration and fill out forty-seven forms in triplicate and they give you another one.”
“I have a feeling my client doesn’t want to go through the process again.”
“Shit,” Mooney said.
I followed a long line of cars that went through a yellow light at Park Square. I actually thought about stopping, but the Town Taxi behind me didn’t. He probably would have driven over me if I had.
“So?” I said. Mooney was looking around for a traffic cop. He could have looked for a long time.
“This meeting shouldn’t take too long.”
“Where have I heard that before?” I said.
“There’ll be a guy from INS there. Afterward we could talk, the three of us.”
“How long?”
“An hour, no longer.”
I screeched to a halt in front of headquarters. “I’ll pick the two of you up here in an hour,” I said.
“Absolutely not,” Mooney yelled, jumping out at the curb. “Ditch the car. Go buy yourself coffee and a doughnut across the street. We finish early, we’ll pick you up there. Otherwise be here, near the steps. Wherever we’re going, we’ll walk.”
“Absolutely not.” That’s the kind of thing Mooney usually says to me: “Absolutely not.”
3
Two hours later I was cooling my butt on the stone front steps of headquarters, watching cops come out, felons go in, and vice versa. I took note of a few undercover narcs and carefully refrained from greeting them even though all the handcuffed punks entering the station seemed to know who they were. I also moved my car in what I was sure would be a vain attempt to fool the downtown meter maids, infamous women who not only ticket you for overrunning your meter but actually nail you for refilling the damn thing. These zealous guardians of the public purse make note of every license plate en route, honest to God, and even if you stick in your extortionate quarter per fifteen lousy minutes, if you stay in one space for over the hour limit, it’s a traffic ticket for sure.
I scorn downtown parking lots. They’re barely cheaper than tickets. And I guess I enjoy the challenge, the thrill of the chase, the contest between me and the meter maids. I wonder if they get a charge out of ticketing my poor Toyota, wonder if they recognize the car and say: “Aha! Gotcha again!”
Lately the thrill-of-the-chase aspect has come into question, what with fewer legal spaces and more cars competing for each one. Instead of a duel between equals, the traffic-ticket game is starting to feel more like the fox versus the hounds and the hunters. The fox, I think, gets considerably less enjoyment from the chase.
But then he doesn’t always get caught. And I like to imagine him back in his den, tail and ears intact, giggling at all those stuffed-shirt red coats and riding breeches.
I’d just made up my mind to stick my car in the cop lot with a scrawled sign declaring it an undercover unit when Mooney saved me from a felony by coming down the steps.
He was followed by a scrawny guy wearing a three-piece suit, dark blue Sears model, and a red tie that might have been described as a power tie on somebody else. On this guy it just drew attention to his bobbing Adam’s apple. He had thin brown hair, parted low on the side and scraped across his skull in an attempt to cover his baldness. He clutched a briefcase like he was scared somebody was going to snatch it.
The scrawny guy looked me over when I stood up. I was maybe six inches taller than he was.
“This your source?” he said to Mooney with ill-disguised skepticism. Or definite intent to demean.
“This your INS agent?” I said to Mooney in the same tone.
“Children, children,” Mooney said mildly, “let’s go have a drink before we start insulting each other. If you’d been at that meeting, you’d need one, too, Carlotta.”
So we tagged together through the crowded streets, down Stanhope to a Red Coach Grill that stopped being a Red Coach years ago. I still think of it as the Red Coach, no matter what the neon over the door says.
We grabbed a table near the bar and I got introduced to the Immigration and Naturalization man. He didn’t say his name. He didn’t offer a handshake. He slid a brown leather folder across the table. I opened it a bit too ostentatiously to suit him. His photo had been taken when he’d had a bit more hair. His name was Walter Jamieson.
“It’s Jameson,” he murmured from across the table. “You don’t pronounce the i.”
I slid my card across the table, placing it facedown, imitating his routine with the folder. He stared at it for a while, and we were spared more hostilities by the waiter, who took our drink orders. I passed, it being slightly before noon. The other two ordered Scotch, Mooney’s a double.
“Must have been some meeting,” I commented.
“We’re not here to talk about that,” Jamieson snapped. Then he turned his charm on the waiter. “Bring me a corned beef on rye and hop it. I’m in a hurry here.”
Mooney and I exchanged glances. If ever there was a white-bread-and-mayo place, we were in it. I smothered a grin in anticipation of the culinary delights awaiting Jamieson, then I ordered a chicken club; Mooney, a salad.
“The lieutenant said you had some information concerning the identification card found on the deceased,” Jamieson said as soon as the waiter was out of earshot.
“You mean, the dead woman?” I said, giving Mooney the eye, as if to say, how could you have brought me this unbelievable clod. The deceased, my ass.
“Carlotta,” Mooney said softly while kicking me gently under the table, “why not just tell him what you told me?”
Because he’s an obvious idiot is what I felt like saying. Instead I gave him the story, slightly abbreviated. I’d skimped a bit on the tale, even with Mooney, not mentioning the part about my Manuela saying she was illegal. With Mooney, put it down to my normal disinclination to share a client’s confidences with a cop. With Jamieson, I figured it would just confuse him.
“We’ll have to pick up this woman,” Jamieson said. “Pronto.”
Pronto. He really said that.
“Any chance of getting her green card back?” I asked. “I mean, why should she suffer, just because somebody lifted her card?”
“She can come down to the Federal Building. Here’s my number. Have her call, and my secretary will make an appointment.”
“Somehow I don’t think she’ll like the idea of the Federal Building,” I said.
“That’s the way it’s done,” he said stiffly. “Of course, she can file a lost card report and go through the usual formalities. I’m offering a shortcut.”
“Then there’s no way for me, acting as her agent, or for, say, a lawyer in her employ, to get the card back?”
The drinks came. Jamieson checked his watch and demanded his sandwich, which the cowed waiter brought, along with Mooney’s salad, even though my order wasn’t ready yet. Mooney sipped his Scotch. Jamieson bit deeply into one of the driest-looking bread-and-meat concoctions I ever hope to see and came up talking.
“Are you aware,” he said, eyes narrow, tone low, mouth full of stringy corned beef, “of what this sounds like? It sounds to me like some sort of scam to get hold of a green card.”
“The murder?” I said incredulously.
He wiggled his index finger in my face. “I mean, your woman reads the story in the newspaper—”
“Never mind that she barely reads English. Neither paper mentions a green card. They say something about an identifying document found on the body. What did she do? Take a lucky gues
s?”
“You have no idea what these people will do for legal documents.”
The man had a shred of something green caught between his two front teeth. I hoped it was lettuce, although why anybody would stick lettuce in a corned beef on rye, I have no idea. I tried another tack. “Can you tell me this? The document you found on the, uh, deceased, is it the genuine article?”
Jamieson glanced at Mooney to see whether I could be trusted with such valuable information. Mooney must have stopped downing his Scotch long enough to give me the okay, because Jamieson nodded his head. He didn’t actually say yes. Secret agents might have overheard him.
“So it’s genuine and it doesn’t belong to the dead woman,” I said.
“We’re not a hundred percent clear on that,” Mooney said slowly. “The way she was cut up, we’ll have a hell of a time identifying her.”
Jamieson removed a probing index finger from his mouth where he’d been using it instead of a toothpick. “Unless your mystery woman knows who she is.”
“My client said she didn’t know the dead woman.”
“I’d like to ask her myself. Make sure she contacts me before five o’clock today.”
“Maybe you weren’t listening,” I said slowly and distinctly. “I have no idea where my client might be.”
“Sure,” Jamieson said, gobbling down sandwich moistened by Scotch. “Yeah, but when she calls you, make sure she gets in touch. Otherwise you can get in some pretty serious trouble yourself.”
“Mooney,” I said, “I am so shaken by this man’s threats that I’m going to have a beer. How about you?”
“I’ll pass,” he said. I called over the waiter and ordered. He assured me my sandwich was on the way. He didn’t ask Mr. INS if he wanted anything else.
“Can I see the green card?” I asked.
Mooney opened his mouth, but Jamieson beat him to it. “That would be police property now, Ms. Carlyle. I’d doubt it very much.” He had a nasty way of saying Ms.
He was going to go on, but the digital watch on his wrist gave a feeble squawk. He shook it and looked perfectly appalled by the time he’d wasted interviewing me. I hope I looked just as appalled. He was exactly the type of guy who’d wear a cheap digital watch with an alarm.
