As I approached her, I thought how most people felt that snow on the ground made places more dreary. Sorry, but that was not possible here. Neither spring flowers nor winter storms improve a cemetery. It’s always the lost part of lost and found, even though labeled by marble markers.
I reached her, hunching my shoulders a little against an edge of wind from the harbor.
“It’s been a while, Beth,” I said.
She agreed.
“I saw Al’s family, out in Pittsburgh. Martha, his wife, is taking it reasonably well. His son, Al, Junior, is too young to realize yet. They’re really strapped, though, so he’ll realize it pretty soon. You see, Al let everything go. No insurance, no support from his company. Martha has some real close friends out there, a woman with a little boy just older than Al, Junior, and a gay guy across the street. With just a chunk of money, maybe twenty-five or thirty thousand, they’d be O.K. They could hold onto the house, at least long enough to sell it reasonably instead of at sacrifice. But that means finding somebody to pay, and in turn …”
Beth asked me about the “other woman” in Pittsburgh.
I winked and laughed. “Well, Carol was pretty cute. She hasn’t had it too easy, either, a bum for a husband, but that was years ago, the divorce, I mean, and now she’s fairly solid.”
I sighed and went on. “At least I hope she is. I had to tell someone out there what I thought about Al’s death being a cover-up for something else. Martha was in no shape, just coming out of the shock and all. Dale—that’s the gay guy—I think he’s in the process of losing his lover, and I think he knows it. That pretty much left Carol, Al’s boss being a schmuck on any list.”
I paused to let Beth get a word in edgewise. I heard a car door slam behind me. An elderly woman and a small boy left the car, the boy bounding ahead.
“Washington? Oh, I had a ball in Washington. First I got mugged, then I got set up by J.T. From the Army, remember? Then …”
I phrased my situation with Jacquie and rescue as delicately as I could. “You saved me, Beth. As usual. But I felt badly about having to deck the MP. I hope J.T. at least has the balls to own up and not use the kid as a scapegoat. I—”
The boy from the car pulled even with us and stared at me. Maybe I was talking a little loudly. It’s hard for me to tell sometimes. The boy, who was about seven years old, twisted around and darted off, stopping briefly at each gravestone before running to the next.
Then a voice from behind me. “Harleee! Harley. You come back now, you heah? Right now. Harley?” The woman was dressed in a light blue pantsuit and a heavy, ill-fitting outer coat.
“He must be over here, Gram,” Harley replied. The boy had none of the woman’s strong Southern accent.
“Harley, he can’t be over theah, boy! That’s the F’s and the G’s. He’s over theah. In the L’s, where he belongs. Harley!”
I was tempted to tell the woman that this cemetery wasn’t alphabetical, that the assignment of resting places was a function of price and chronology.
“I see an L over here, Gram! In fact, two of them.”
“Harley, Gramps is over theah. He has been over theah for seventeen months. To the left, Harley, to the left. By the L’s.”
“I see another L!” called Harley back, and continued his survey.
The elderly woman muttered none too sweetly under her breath. She began to stomp doggedly down the path to the left.
I looked down at Beth’s headstone. Elizabeth Mary Devlin Cuddy. Would she be in the C’s for Cuddy, or the D’s for Devlin, or even the B’s for Beth.…
You jerk! The B’s. “I had a lotta luck with the B’s, John-boy.” Al, who never expressed a liking for hockey, or betting on it, but who always loved looking through phone books for people he knew. Blowing half an R-and-R on the Honolulu directory. Now I knew how Al had found his killer.
And I knew I could find him, too.
I turned back to Beth. I started to tell her about Nancy, and the glow, but after a few sentences, she could tell my heart wasn’t in it, and she shooed me off.
I got back to Nancy’s place and realized I had no key to her building’s front door. I debated pushing the Lynches’ bell for about two minutes, shivering on the front steps and anxious to go through the telephone book. I was about to buzz them when I heard two quick honks from the street.
Nancy.
She got out with a grocery bag in the crook of her right arm. She strode up to me. She had the spring of an athlete, even with the bag.
“You don’t look any better in that hat than I do.” Nancy laughed, more with her eyes than her voice.
I smiled and thought about offering to take the bag. I decided not to, chivalry yielding to feminism.
“Here,” she said, shoving the bag into my arms. “Hold this.”
Nancy keyed the lock. We went in and upstairs, me carrying the bag.
“Set it on the kitchen table.”
I did. She tossed off her coat and crossed to the table. She rummaged around in the bag, producing a packet of disposable Bic razors, some shaving cream, a toothbrush, and some Old Spice stick deodorant.
I scratched elaborately under my arms. “That bad, huh?”
Nancy laughed again. Music.
“It occurred to me this morning that I wasn’t too well stocked for male guests with no luggage.” She pulled out a package of nondescript briefs and two exceptionally cheap-looking dress shirts.
“I guessed on size but skimped on quality.” Nancy shrugged. “I didn’t want to buy good stuff that wouldn’t fit.”
I thanked her and pulled off the watch cap.
Reflexively she put her fist in her mouth to stifle a shriek. “Maybe I should have favored a hairbrush over the toothbrush.”
I popped in the bathroom. I looked like a punk rocker only halfway down the assembly line. I came back out and scooped up the things Nancy had bought for me.
“Maybe I should just shave my head while I’m at it.”
“Oh, do. That’ll certainly make you less conspicuous.”
We both laughed. Nancy gave me a quick, strong hug and asked if I’d had breakfast. I said no. She told me to shower and shave while she made it, and pointed to the narrow vertical shutter on the wall that hid the towels.
It was a simple, silly domestic scene. And maybe the best few minutes I’d had in a couple of years.
When I came out of the bathroom, we had bacon, eggs, orange juice, and English muffins with choice of jam or marmalade. The bacon was a bit overdone for my taste, but I wasn’t shy about seconds.
I insisted on clearing away and washing the dishes. I started getting itchy about the telephone book, but didn’t want Nancy to see it.
As I dried the last of them and turned around, Nancy reached into her purse and put an envelope on the table. She nudged it toward me. I dried my hands and opened it. Mostly twenties and tens.
I arched my eyebrows at her.
“There’s eight hundred dollars. In smaller bills, no higher than a twenty. And old ones. I told the teller I was going on a trip and didn’t want to risk giving away too new bills on some Caribbean island. She recommended travelers’ checks for safety, but I stood firm on cash and carry.”
“Just an old-fashioned girl, huh?”
Nancy blinked a few times. “In most ways,” she said, softly.
I felt dangerously close. Close to saying something and close to her. “Shouldn’t you be getting off to work?”
Nancy hid most of her disappointment with a good effort at a smile. She stood up and crossed to a cabinet drawer. “Yes, I should. I called the office and told them I had a doctor’s appointment I’d forgotten and absolutely couldn’t break again. I just drew bail appeal this morning, anyway.”
She turned and tossed something to me. “Catch.”
Two keys held together on a paper clip. “Big key, downstairs door. Little key, upstairs door.”
I hefted them in my palm. “What do I say to Mrs. Lynch?”
&n
bsp; Nancy disappeared into her bedroom to change. “Better tell her you’re my cousin.” She closed the door.
No, Nance, I don’t think I’ll be telling her that.
Nancy had said she’d be home about six. I told her not to wait for me. She had asked if there was anything else she could do for me. I thanked her and said no.
I watched her get into the Honda and drive off before grabbing the telephone book. I dialed Murphy’s special number as I traced down through the B’s to Ba, Be, Bea.…
“Lieutenant Detective Murphy, Homicide.”
Bee, Beg. “Hello. Just reporting in.”
Bek.
“Hold on a second.” I heard him yell at Cross to close the door.
Bel! “Listen, one of my people fouled up. You better hear about it.”
I looked away from the telephone book. “Fouled up? What do you mean?”
“A reporter was pressing Daley. Remember, the guy from the morgue?”
“I remember him.”
“Well, it was a woman reporter and the damn fool sort of confirmed that the corpse in the building was you.”
“So?”
“So you’re on page fucking four of the morning Globe.”
“Photograph?”
“No, just a short three-inch follow-up, ID’ing you as the dead man. I’m gonna chew his ass good.”
“You know, Lieutenant, he may have helped rather than hurt. I’ve got no family in the area to be upset, and I should be through before any friends volunteer to shepherd my remains through the formalities.”
“I can hold that up, anyway. Glad it’s no trouble for you.” Murphy grunted. “Course, I’m still gonna chew his ass.”
“I’ll call you tonight.”
“You got anything?”
“Not yet. I’ll still call tonight.”
“Sooner if you get something.”
“I will.”
He rang off.
I went back to the Bels. Beldow, Belgrade, Bell, dozens of Bells, then Belson, then … wait a minute. K before L. I went back. No Belk’s. No Belker. I threw the white pages across the room.
I went through the Yellow Pages. Nothing. They landed just to the left of the white pages. Some guest I was.
Guest? Al was a guest in a hotel. Probably just Boston white and yellow pages in the rooms, but the lobby?
I closed my eyes and could picture a bank of pay phones I’d used just outside the bar entrance at Al’s hotel. With a library of phone books below them. Al, just killing time, thumbing through them.
I took Nancy’s money and hopped a Summer Street bus to South Station. I cabbed it from there to my rent-a-car place. Luck was with me. The guy behind the counter had dealt with me before and didn’t look like he read comic books much less newspapers. A ten persuaded him that I’d left my wallet in my other coat and that the license number I gave him was accurate.
I got into the late model Chrysler and drove to the hotel.
The clerk at the desk was the striking blonde the uniformed Keller had tried to pick up. I dodged her glance successfully and went to the phone bank out of her field of vision. Hanging under them were eight or ten phone books in those black, metallic, swivel looseleafs. I levered up one suburban directory after another. Nothing.
’Til I got to West Suburban. And there he was.
Belker, C. Bus. 73 Main Street, Weston Hills Res. 149 Willow Drive, Weston Hills
I pictured him in that swank suburb. Tall, gawky, Alabama. Obnoxious.
And a murderer.
Bingo. If he lived in Weston Hills, he was no pauper. Martha and Al, Junior had won. Now I just had to collect their prize money.
Twenty-Two
I REACHED INTO MY pocket for the leftover change from Arnie’s stake to me. I fed a dime, dialed Belker’s business line, and was told by an atonal voice to deposit another forty-five. I barely made it.
“Weston Hills Realty, may I help you?” A nicely modulated voice.
“Yes,” I said, “may I speak to Mr. Belker, please?”
“Certainly, sir. May I say who is calling?”
“Certainly,” I replied, “it’s—” I scratched my last coin against the mouthpiece and clicked down the cradle in the middle of her second, concerned, “Hello?”
I beat it to the car and drove to Weston Hills as moderately as a man without a license should.
I wanted a look at Belker before I spoke with him. After everything else that had happened, I wanted to be sure it was him so I wouldn’t scare the daylights out of some innocent citizen.
I passed slowly by 73 Main, a two-story, brick-front building, newish and typically suburban, Weston Hills Realty was painted on the windows, and an apparently classy woman was seated at what seemed a reception desk. I parked a half-block past the building and adjusted the passenger-side mirror to focus on the front door of the building. A real estate broker should walk out and around often enough so I wouldn’t be there all day. The clock outside the bank said it was nearly 12:30. Lunchtime. I hoped Belker was hungry, because a good cop or nervous operative would spot me after about fifteen minutes.
Of course, Belker had no reason to be nervous anymore, now that I was dead. Also, he never was a good cop.
A little voice in my head whispered, “But he was good enough to take Al.”
“Al was away from it and out of shape,” I replied.
“He was in good enough shape to bounce some Steeler fans around a sidewalk a few months ago,” said the little voice. “And he would have been on his guard.”
My response to the little voice’s troubling logic was thrown off-track by the short, red-headed, and bespectacled man who exited the realty door. He smiled and waved to someone. The someone said, “Hi, Mr. Belker.” He said “Hi” back and walked away from me.
Mr. Belker. Shit. Five-foot-six and red hair was not the Clay Belker that I knew. But the coincidence. Belker’s name in the phone book where Al—
“But there are dozens of names that you wrote down in Washington that appear in hundreds of phone books,” said the voice. “Besides, you don’t even know that ‘C. Belker’ stands for ‘Clay Belker.’ ”
Neither had Al, of course, unless Al had called the office. Or the residence. But then, so what? Even if it is “C” for Clay, it still isn’t the right Clay Belker. The man I’m looking for is well over six feet and big-boned.
Wait a minute. The man who came to the clerk at Al’s hotel. He was described as short. But, still, where’s the tie-in? When Al talked to or saw this little guy, Al would have realized he wasn’t the right Clay Belker. Besides, what would Al have had to blackmail Belker about? The only time Belker and Al were in the files was …
The little man was back in mirror-view again, politely walking around an older woman and saying something to her. He was carrying a take-out bag, and his smile was phony, a real salesman smile. Familiar, somehow, like an older …
Damn! I nearly hit my horn, slamming my hand against the wheel. The little man disappeared into the building.
So that was it. I could see how Al would have been taken and why he was killed. Had to be killed. And why Ricker wanted information first from me, too.
I started up and pulled out. I drove slowly as a plan I’d been mulling over took more definite shape.
The Button. Not his real name, of course. He was one of the first blacks to arrive (and therefore one of the last to be welcomed) in a predominantly Irish neighborhood in Dorchester, a working-class section of wooden three-deckers and family-owned stores south of Back Bay and the South End. The Button had spent twenty years in the Navy and was known to almost every cop, private investigator, and industrial spy in eastern Massachusetts. If he’d located ten years later in a classier part of town, he’d be a consultant, not a parts supplier.
The Button, you see, is in e-lectronics, accent on the first “e.” He sells nothing that is per se illegal, only components that a knowledgeable pair of hands can assemble into just about anything. Occasionally, the Butt
on can be cajoled into giving even a professional a little advice. He also has a brother who runs a gunshop in predominantly black Roxbury down the road. While the brother is competent, however, the Button is a genius.
I pushed open the door, and the wind chimes attached to it tinkled and sang. A few steps later, the Button appeared through a dark red curtain across a doorway behind his main counter. The chimes were a little masquerade the Button played for the rest of the world. Behind his drapes was the control board of a sensor and closed-circuit TV system that had picked me up as soon as I left my car half a block away.
The Button nevertheless feigned surprise and delight at seeing me. Perhaps he’d forgotten he once had shown me the control board. Or maybe somebody finally had ripped it off.
“Why, John Francis. It is so good to see you.” His face was deep coal in color and cracked with his wide smile. A fringe of short-cropped white hair rode up in front of his ears, then slid down as he dropped the smile. “I just realized I haven’t laid eyes on you since your wife’s passing.”
“I got your card. It was good of you to think of me, and poor form for me not to acknowledge it.”
The Button smiled again, more mellow than bright. He dismissed my confession, like an admiral forgiving an aide’s blunder. “Please, no apologies are necessary. Perhaps, though, an explanation?” The Button put an index finger to his chin, creasing and raising his eyes thoughtfully. “I could have sworn I read something quite disquieting about you in the Globe this morning.”
I shrugged. “Surely you don’t believe all that you read.”
The Button dropped his hands and fussed with the arrangement of a few small gizmos on the counter top. “No, but it is good to see that Mark Twain’s response is applicable to an old and valued customer as well.”
I smiled at the “Reports of my death …” allusion and began to explain what I wanted. He stopped me at one point and brought a clipboard with graph paper out from under the counter. The Button diagramed and labeled a bit as I talked. He was like a secretary taking a visual form of dictation.
I pointed to one part of the diagram. “I need this to be mountable inside the engine compartment of a car.”
The Staked Goat Page 19
