Cold Case

by Linda Barnes

  “I won’t go to the cops,” she wailed. “They’ll send me home.”

  I wanted to reassure her. Tell her there were worse places than home, but in this business I’ve learned that sometimes there aren’t.

  “We’re not going to the cops.”

  “You promise?”

  “We’ll look for Alonso.”

  “Yeah,” she said enthusiastically.

  It got her up and moving. If I found this Alonso on the way to the cab so much the better.

  I wanted off Marblehead Neck before the cops came.

  35

  Close up, I thought she might be even younger. Eleven. Scrawny. She didn’t question me when I had her lie on the floor of the cab while we made our way back over the causeway.

  We hadn’t found Alonso.

  He had no last name. Neither had “Pix”—a street name if I’d ever heard one. Short for Pixie, which would be an offhand reference to angel dust, or maybe she did pics, as in child porn, to earn her bread. She wasn’t parting with her straight name. I’d go through her backpack more carefully when I had time.

  I parked the cab near my car, left the keys under the floor mat. I’d call the dispatcher later and apologize for the irregularity, but I couldn’t leave Pix alone and I didn’t want anyone to see her.

  For now the stuff I wanted was spread on my dashboard. Manley’s wallet, loaded with cash and credit cards, removing casual robbery as a motive. Manley’s Coop book. Manley’s watch.

  “You gonna call the cops?”

  “I am the cops. Private.”

  “Shit.” She made a move to unlock her door. I slammed one arm across her.

  “No more running,” I said.

  “Whatcha gonna do with me?”

  “Good question.” It was one of a hundred rolling through my head.

  “This is complicated,” I said. “I need to hear about you and Alonso. Like did he send you away tonight because he had to meet a guy?”

  “I haven’t seen Alonso since Wednesday—”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re thinking drug deal?” she asked. “Forget it.”

  “I’m just asking questions. I don’t have answers.”

  She took her time thinking that over. “Alonso was takin’ care of me, like I said, up till a couple nights ago.” Her voice faltered.

  “Something go wrong?” I asked.

  “None of your fuckin’ business.”

  “I can make it my business, Pix.”

  She swallowed. “Look, he found another girl. ‘A real woman,’ is what he said, which, like, means she’s older than me. He was always on me about how young I am.”

  “And how young is that?”

  “None of your—Anyhow, before, when he was with me, I used up a lot of his bread, you know. So I thought I’d go out and earn a little back. Not trickin’. Boosting groceries and shit. I didn’t know where to find him so I thought I’d leave the stuff at the shack. I mean, I pay my fuckin’ debts, you know?”

  I like stories backed by facts. The bananas on the beach were accounted for. Crime scene with bananas. It sounded like one of Roz’s paintings. What a mess for the local cops.

  “Where did you meet Alonso? Did you go to school with him?”

  “Harvard Square,” she said, drop dead cool. “School is for fish.”

  “You know your way around Marblehead?”

  “Nah. Alonso never was here before either, but like, he had friends.”

  “Friends tell him about the shack?”

  “I guess. He knew it was there. It was like a really neat squat. I mean, some cities have good squats, and I was in this decent place in Cambridge, but the landlord found out, and then it was DSS, and they totally stink, you know?”

  Department of Social Services, and sad to say, they do stink. Underfunded. Overworked.

  “Alonso didn’t tell you he had a meet with anyone?”

  “Nope.” She squared her jaw and shut up. Like nobody ever believed her anyway.

  I turned on the engine.

  “Hey, where we goin’? I gotta find Alonso.”

  “Things have taken a turn for the worse,” I said. “I think you’d better stick with me.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Pix, or whatever the hell your name is, you’ve got two choices. Me, or the cops. And DSS is better than the place they stick kids involved with murderers.”

  “That guy was killed?”

  Did she think Manley’d fallen on his head? In the sand?

  “And your Alonso is prime suspect,” I said.

  “No way.” Pure hollow braggadocio. True as a tin whistle.

  “And you stole from a corpse. Not cool,” I said. It made me feel great to terrify an already terrified little girl.

  “What are you going to do?”

  I said, “Look for a gas station that’s closed. That’s our best bet.”

  “Our best bet,” she echoed, looking at me for the first time like we might be a team, like I might be her guardian angel in disguise, her rescuer.

  God, I try not to think about it: Where do all these throwaway kids come from with their made-up names and their made-up minds? Nothing’s going to get better. Live hard, die young. School is for fish.

  “There,” she said. “Arco on the left.”

  She had good eyes. I yanked the wheel. A phone. The number of pay phones I’d been using lately, I ought to get an award from NYNEX. I thought of dialing Vandenburg in Miami just for the hell of it. Instead I did the old 911, using a fold of my shirt to hold the receiver and my knuckles to punch buttons. Probably should have covered my knuckles. This DNA business is getting ridiculous, and I’m not in the forefront of forensic technology. Eventually the cops might trace the call to this phone. Somebody might say they saw us stop.

  I glanced over to make sure that Pix was in the car, eating the sandwich I’d bought from the vending machine. She was. Feed her, she’s yours. Like a dog.

  The phone rang and I thought of all the things I might tell the police. Body on Marblehead Neck behind 56 Ocean Avenue, the Cameron estate, is that of a white male, in his sixties. Name: Andrew Manley. Psychiatrist. Escort to Mrs. Tessa Cameron. Tessa’s lover.

  Instead I tightened every muscle in my throat, muttered in a cranky crone’s voice, “Just ’cause them brats live on Ocean Ave., you never send anybody to shut ’em up! Noise! Drugs, I wouldn’t be surprised. You go on and get somebody down there or I’ll be writing to the papers, you see if I don’t!”

  I didn’t wait for a reply.

  It wouldn’t get the quick response a homicide report would bring. Give me a chance to get Pix out of town, talk to a cop who might know how to help.

  I started driving too quickly, stomped the brake, cruising slowly and gulping air. In, out, in out. Count to ten. Count to twenty. What the hell did it help? What had I done since Andrew Manley had first stumbled into my life with his precious manuscript in his monogrammed briefcase? What was my role in this mess? Reporting kidnappings? Reporting murders?

  If Pix hadn’t been watching, I might have tried to punch the safety glass out of the side window. I might have rested my head on the steering wheel and cried. I hadn’t found Thea, I hadn’t saved Manley.

  At the end of the rainbow, a dead man with shattered bifocals. Not an ounce, not a speck of gold.

  36

  Pix was a talker. I could have her opinion of the goddamn government—thank you very much—the last fifteen terrific movies she’d seen, the last four guys she’d screwed, the AIDS epidemic, which she personally considered a scare tactic to keep kids off the street. She was getting on my nerves. I’d have knocked her clear into the backseat, except that her chatter was studded with useful gems.

  Alonso had deep brown “bedroom” eyes, and she thought he was, like, different than anybody she’d ever known in her whole entire life. He had a killer tan or maybe he was Hispanic, but he didn’t speak Spanish so maybe he wasn’t, and his eyes were so terrific anyway, and she had no i
dea why he called himself the Alien, which was cool. Yeah, and he was really thin, but not like the sick kind of thin you get when you have AIDS. Pix could tell. He had muscles, not like some stupid beach bum prick, regular-guy muscles, and that way cool Honda motorbike and she was pretty sure it wasn’t stolen, but he had trouble getting enough bread to keep gas in the tank. He was totally uptight about money.

  When I asked if the motorbike had a Mass. license, Miss Chatterbox looked at me as if I were crazy. She wasn’t about to betray Alonso to an almost-cop. Took her almost two minutes to start blabbling again.

  Yeah, and did I know Alonso was like an artist? Yeah, I said, she’d mentioned that. Well, not really an artist, she said, but a writer.

  I kept silent. It’s the best way to question a talky witness.

  See, she knew because, well, first she thought he was an artist artist, like a painter, because he had these artist’s, like, pads of paper—whatcha-callems?—sketchbooks and stuff. But when she took one, and she wasn’t like gonna steal it or anything, she was just interested, it was full of pretty weird writing, not pictures like she thought. And did he get pissed when he found her reading it. Wow, talk about ballistic! Talk about postal! He said the stuff was worth money, and she thought he was, like, pretty full of himself ’cause she could write big words, too, but nobody was gonna pay her diddly for it. And she didn’t know who’d pay for shit with one word here and another there and some of it not even like real sentences with verbs and stuff.

  “‘I have been here for an hour,’” she said, “‘watching rain beat melancholy, on panes and regrets, I can neither conquer nor break—’”

  “What?”

  “It’s Alonso’s. Would you pay for it?”

  It hadn’t been part of the chapter I’d read. I was certain of that.

  “Do you have it?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Depends.”

  “How many sketchbooks did Alonso have?”

  “Tons of ’em,” she said. “I don’t think he should of gotten pissed when I just read one.”

  For “read” one I substituted “took” one. Where was it? Did her knapsack have a hidey-hole, a zippered compartment I hadn’t searched?

  I took a good look at Pix, bottle-blond, short boy-cut hair. Sturdy kid’s body. Thin gawky legs.

  “You and Alonso went to visit a school.” A young man and a girl, Emerson had said. Street urchins.

  “So what?”

  “So why?”

  “Is my mom paying you to find me, or some kinda shit?”

  It wasn’t much as cries for help go, but Pix had imagined it, that her mother would try to get her back. I wished the damned woman had hired me.

  “Why did you go to the school?” I asked.

  “Alonso said he wanted to visit his alma mater. That’s like old school, right, like he went there, with uniforms and shit. This old fart almost threw us out. Alonso just laughed.”

  “He asked about a woman named Thea Janis.”

  “Yeah. Like he always talked about her. He was pissed the old fart didn’t have her picture. You know about her? ’Cause I don’t, and the way Alonso talked, it’s like she’s some movie star, somebody I oughta know, and, like, I’m not ignorant.”

  What the hell would I do with her? Lock her in a closet? Keep her on a leash?

  Roz. I could stick her with Roz. Or vice versa.

  Like Alonso was maybe not exactly right in the head, Pix was saying. Not wrapped real tight, maybe.

  I tuned back in. Fast.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked.

  “He was lookin’. for a shrink. Is that such a big deal?”

  Seemed like he’d found one. On the beach.

  “Was he looking for a particular shrink?” I asked. “Or just somebody to talk to?”

  “Guy who worked at that place for wacko rich kids.”

  “What place?” I asked.

  “Like, you know, rich suckers send their kids, the kids who aren’t quite right? You have to know it, it’s like famous, for chrissakes. It’s like Harvard for the messed-up, you know. Celebrity kids go there when they totally fuck up.”

  “In Weston?” I asked almost afraid to break the flow.

  “Yeah, right, Weston. Rich people live there, all right.” She couldn’t exactly remember, but the shrink had something to do with the place in Weston where all the bratty kids who couldn’t cut it go, you know, the ones fried their brains and took dope and didn’t want an Ivy League diploma.

  I was stopped at a red light. If I hadn’t been I’d have pulled off the road.

  Weston Psychiatric Institute. WPI had been initialed on Drew Manley’s calendar. Every single week, once or twice. WPI. WPI.

  My house is close to Harvard Square. Pix shut off the conversational flow and started to pay attention to her surroundings as soon as she clicked on the fact that we were now in friendly Cambridge, miles from the corpse on the beach, close to places she could negotiate, squats where she could disappear into the anonymity of street life.

  “Stay put,” I warned, draping my arm across the back of the seat, leaning to reach the passenger side door lock, keep it locked. And I could have held her, stopped her, if it hadn’t been for the three cop cars parked outside my house, flashing their cherry lamps. One look at them and she was in the backseat, out the door, and gone.

  My hand moved automatically to the dashboard, swept Manley’s belongings to the floor. I didn’t have time to stash them in the knapsack, and I sure wasn’t taking it out of the car for the police to admire. In the dark, I shoved it firmly under the passenger seat.

  By the time I exited, Pix was halfway down the block, a fleeing shadow. I was tempted to pursue, but curiosity dragged me home like a cat.

  37

  I admit my heart was pounding double-time. I know cops don’t deal in miracles. These couldn’t possibly have made a connection between the cab that left Marblehead Neck and my Toyota, couldn’t have known about my anonymous phone call or the corpse on the beach, much less the stash in my car. Still, I was vastly relieved when they didn’t take off after Pix. God knows what tale she’d have concocted.

  I was further reassured to find that all the troops were Cambridge cops, nothing fancy like FBI agents. Marissa Cameron’s kidnapping was not on the immediate agenda.

  The police made me flash my driver’s license and formally identify myself as the owner of the house.

  Attempted break-in, they said, reported by a neighbor.

  “Would the neighbor happen to be a doctor two doors down named Donovan?” I asked.

  “We don’t have that information, lady.”

  I viewed the damage to my back door, which was practically hanging off the hinges. Who? Mooney’s hot favorite—the contract killer hired by the Gianellis? Not poor Drew Manley, no matter how much he’d wanted “Thea’s” notebook back. Not the motorbiker, what with his aged Honda leaking oil in the Marblehead shack.

  Yanking doors off hinges didn’t seem like Tessa Cameron’s style.

  I wondered if Dr. Manley had deliberately lured me from home by invoking Thea’s name. For the first time, it occurred to me that he might have been speaking under duress, perhaps with a gun pointed at his head. What I’d taken for breathless excitement could have been barely controlled panic.

  The cops seemed to think I should be thankful they’d had patrol cars in the area, maybe grateful enough to invite them all in for a drink. Must have been a slow crime night. They had no physical description of the burglar or burglars. They were sure the perps were no longer on site.

  “Did you come in with sirens wailing?”

  No one answered, so I figured they had, giving the suspects plenty of time to run. It’s easier that way. Safer.

  Would I care to fill out a report?

  “Did they get in?” I asked.

  “Nope,” one of the boys in blue said. “I had to squeeze through the back door to check the premises. Do you live alone?”

  Since I didn’t reco
gnize any of the cops, I told them my husband was out of town and the two rottweilers were at the vet. Alas, one of the guys knew me, so the gag didn’t play. Detective Hummel had been fully briefed about the supposed mob contract. I suspected he knew Mooney, hoped he did. If he didn’t know Moon, then the story was general cop house gossip: Carlotta Carlyle has been elected body most likely to get splattered across town.

  Maybe the guy on my tail was a policeman, not a DEA agent or a crazed mobster.

  I asked Hummel point-blank: Did he have anybody shadowing me? He gave me the weary once-over, the glance of a cop who’s seen too much in one day. “Nope.”

  “Not enough manpower,” I said. “Right?” It’s pure bull. Threat on some Harvard-connected high life, they’d locate the essential personnel, and fast.

  “You got it,” Hummel said.

  I dealt with the front door locks, glanced around the foyer and down the single step into the living room. Nothing seemed out of place.

  “You want us to check inside again?” Hummel asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe you could spend the night with a friend,” he suggested. “Or call somebody to spend the night with you.”

  “You think my burglars are gonna come back?”

  “If they do, two’s better than one.”

  “You got any stats on that? Burglars preferring singles?”

  One of the other cops touched him on the shoulder.

  “I gotta go,” Hummel said.

  “Thanks for getting here so quickly,” I said. Then I did a thorough room-to-room, gun drawn. Nobody home but a hungry cat and a terrorized bird. Roz’s bedroom was a wreck, but that was normal. Mine wasn’t much better.

  I was checking to see that the manuscripts were in place, both the original—which meant digging through the kitty litter—and the copy, when the bell rang, once, sharply. I patted the small of my back to make sure I’d shoved the 40 in my waist clip, approached the door slowly.

  Keith Donovan stood on the front stoop, the porch light haloing his fair hair. I wouldn’t have to call a pal to spend the night.

  I yanked the door open.

  “Hi. Are you okay? You look—”