“Don’t!” She presses her face against his neck…. “Just a hug … please.”
He takes his hand off her face, his other hand off the gun. Wraps her in his arms.
So this is what they have left. This is the end for her, she thinks. A very long hug on a foggy Provincetown pier.
Afterwards, he tells her what she guessed this conversation was leading to all along. He says that he is ready to die. That he is going to drag himself off like a sick cat now.
What can she say to this man staring at her with blank, watery eyes? She gives him a little kiss. Then she turns her back. Leaves him standing in the fog on the pier, and makes the slow walk toward Commercial Street.
She does not feel the first flames of anger until a limo pulls up alongside her, stops, and a drunk college boy in the back offers her a hundred dollars for a blow job.
And yes. She was at Shangri-La too, that evening. If you must know.
The hurt and the anger are still rising in her when she hails a cab to take her back to Shangri-La. When she gets there, she tells the cabbie to wait and rushes down the path to Number Three. She has to hurry. Has to pick up some music, a costume. Has to get back to the Follies. She is running late. Forget the anger. It is showtime. She is not even noticing that the Lodge is lit up like Christmas—but nobody is around—when a shadow pops out of the trees in front of her.
She jumps about two meters.
“Tuki!”
A man’s big hairy hands are grabbing her wrists. These hands are not Prem’s. They are Alby’s.
“Let me go!” She tries to pull away. She smells the cough syrup scent of raspberry schnapps on his breath.
For a second he holds her like she is in handcuffs. Then, suddenly, his fingers spring open. He steps back. She is free … and out of here … running down the path.
“Tuki!’ he shouts. “Talk to me!”
“I have nothing to say,” she murmurs … and keeps on running. She was feeling a little dizzy before, but now things are even…. “Please!”
“No, YOU please. Please just leave me alone!”
She hears running behind her. The next thing she knows, he has caught up, pushed himself in front of her to block the path. His neck is bulging. She can see that his forearms are all pumped up like he has just been working out.
“I’m sorry. This can’t wait until tomorrow.”
“It can wait forever. PLEASE … just leave me alone!”
She tries to push past him … but he is not moving.
“I can’t do that,” he says. “I know you have plenty of reasons to never want to see me again, but you need to level with me. You need to tell me the truth about where Silver’s DVDs are. Really, I can help you with the Immigration people … and this Prem guy if….”
She thinks he is drunk or crazy. She does not yet know why he is asking her about Silver’s DVDs.
“Tuki. He’s just a weak little shit with a….”
“You don’t know anything!” she shouts.
He grabs her by the shoulders.
This is when she hauls back and swings. And leaves her hand print on his cheek … with a very loud smack.
Suddenly she is screaming at him. Terrible names in Thai—and some in Vietnamese—before she turns tail. She runs right down through the woods to her bungalow, grabs her music, her costume, and sprints back to the cab. She wishes she had taken a steak knife from her bungalow. She knows he is coming after her.
FORTY-TWO
Darkness is sinking over Cambridge when he buzzes Filipa’s apartment from the entrance to the building. These are the dog days of August and the city feels gross. The air is like a thick syrup of exhaust fumes and rotting garbage. Traffic crawls along Massachusetts Avenue. In Harvard Square a crowd surrounds a twelve-year-old blind kid with a keyboard and speakers powered by a car battery. He is singing Smokey Robinson’s, “Ooo Baby, Baby.” She answers.
“Hey, it’s me. Can we talk?”
She says nothing. But she buzzes open the door. He is in, climbing the steps to the third floor, the top, with a dozen roses in his hand.
She meets him in the hall, her arms folded across her chest. All she has on is a Boston Celtics jersey and panties. It is that hot. But a wind is blowing from the open door to her apartment.
Huge floor fans, he thinks. She is the queen of cool.
“Fil—”
“You suck.” She sweeps him into her apartment and slams the door. “You really suck, Michael. You know that?”
“Yeah. I do, Fil. I mean I REALLY do. I’d do anything not to have messed things up like this. It isn’t fair to you or the wedding.”
He is standing there like a statue in the middle of her tiny, very yellow living room. She is glaring at him. Not even a foot away. Big black eyes radiating heat. The sweat is pouring out of him faster than the gale from the floor fans can blow it away.
“What am I suppose to tell my mother? You don’t think your little adventure with the police will make the Standard Times tomorrow in New Bedford? By this time tomorrow night, it will be all over southern Massachusetts and half of Portugal. Filipa Aguiar’s fiancé was busted in a federal raid on a cat house full of transvestites. Perfect. Just perfect. Are you on some kind of drugs?!”
He rubs his eyes.
“Can we sit down? I’m kind of beat.”
“You’re beat? I just got off thirty-six hours in a pscyh ward. But you know what? In all that time I didn’t see anybody who is as whacked as you. You know that, Michael? You’re not just clinically interesting. You’re certifiable. What the hell has happened to the man I love?” She waves at the couch. “Sure, sit down, make yourself at home. Want me to put the Red Sox on the TV for you? Anything else? How about some popcorn and a beer?!”
A door to one of the bedrooms creaks open just as she says “beer.” Her roommate Callie makes a pained face, gives a little wave, and nearly sprints for the door to the stairwell.
“Gotta do the laundry,” she says, then vanishes. No detergent or laundry bag in sight.
He sits. Stares at the boat moccasins on his sockless feet.
“Fil, I am so, so sorry. I admit it. I’ve gotten way too caught up in this case. I know it’s stupid, but I feel like a whole lot depends on making a good showing here, covering all the bases. I want you to be proud of me. But I’ve been so afraid of mucking this up, I’ve lost all sense of what’s important. You. You are my—” He almost says “shining star.” Catches himself before the cliché pops out. What the hell is wrong with him?
She sits down beside him, still smoking him with those unblinking eyes.
“Your what, Michael? What am I?”
He digs deep. “My joy.” Not eloquent by any means. But honest. He wants to wrap her in his arms, but he can tell this is not the moment.
She lets out a little sigh. The heat from her eyes drops a few degrees.
“Show don’t tell.”
This is one of her favorites lines. She picked it up in a seminar somewhere. He hates it. The words come at him with some irrefutable superiority, stealing every ounce of his energy.
“You’re right. You’re so right. I haven’t been very good about showing you lately. But just give me a chance to make it up to you.”
“How?”
“All I need is a few more days, Fil. A week or so at the most. Things are starting to break wide open in the case. Just a little more time. I swear. You won’t have to worry about it interfering with the wedding. It won’t go to trial. I won’t let it. I’ll put the whole thing behind us. I’ve got some new leads on—”
She jumps up, exhales with a deep chuff.
“Let’s get out of here.”
They’ve been walking for twenty minutes in silence on the bike path along the Charles River when she finally speaks. “Am I being a bitch?”
He wants to say that there is a new toughness, a determination about her in the last couple of weeks. She does not exactly seem like the carefree girl he has known for almost five
years. But what is the point? Weddings stress everybody. And he has been no help. Worse. “Does your silence mean yes? Am I the girlfriend from hell?” He looks at the lights of Boston twinkling across the river. “You’re fine. It’s me.”
She stops walking, turns to him. They are in the shadow of the Harvard boathouse. So close he could touch the wooden walls.
“Are you gay? Is that what this is all about?” Her voice has lost its edge. It sounds softer, almost intimate.
Still, the question stops him in his tracks. “Look, I’m a psychologist. I know these things happen. Guys who have been straight all their lives come up against some life-changing event like marriage … and suddenly they start to short circuit. Come out of the closet with a bang.”
He starts to walk again, takes her hand. Feels its warmth and its strength.
“Please. Just be honest.”
“Okay. There have been times during the last week or so when I’ve wondered about myself. Wondered why this case has sort of taken over my life. I don’t know the answer. At first, maybe my attraction to the case was the puzzle. A very strange puzzle. Tuki’s world was so foreign to me that I found myself fascinated by everything about it. I felt like an explorer.”
“So you’re experimenting?” Her hand is suddenly sweating. He can tell that she is starting to freak.
“No. Jesus!”
“Then this is all about Tuki, isn’t it?” She drops his hand, stands in front of him, searching his eyes.
“Look, Fil, I love you. I am going to marry you in two weeks. This case has me all tied in knots. Just give me a week to put this madness behind us.”
“That’s not what I asked. Are you falling in love with your client?”
“I don’t think it’s love,” he says. The words just rush out of his mouth before he can stop them.
Her hands fly to her face. “Oh my god!”
He puts his arms around her neck and pulls her up against him. She feels soft and warm. Better than that. There is a kind of an elastic tension in her muscles that surrounds him. A hot, moist web. He wishes he could talk to her more about his attraction to Tuki, to this case. She is really smart about things like this, human relations. And right now he does not have a clue. But fat chance. The whole thing has gotten way too personal for everyone involved. “I love you!” he whispers.
She pulls back out of his arms. “I need to be alone right now. Go do what you have to do.”
“Just give me a week.”
She runs the palms of her hands over her temples as if trying to hold in something that is bleeding from inside her head. “I don’t know.”
FORTY-THREE
He is feeling shaky. He has been waiting at the prosecutor’s office for most of Wednesday morning, hoping for a chance to see the D. A. When he was out with his father and Tio Tommy on the Rosa Lee, he could go for a week on almost no sleep when the cod were piling up on deck like cord wood. But now the fight with Filipa and two days without much shut-eye is killing him.
“You look like hell, Mr. Decastro.” The D. A. is squinting across his desk at him with a skeptical look. He is a large, impatient man. “And you have ten minutes to tell me what’s on your mind. Your client want to cop a plea?”
“Not exactly, sir. I’ve come across some new information that I think could break this case wide open. But I need your help. The state police have two queens named Ruby and Silver in custody at the moment for prostitution and imm—”
“I know all about it, counselor. I also know that we nabbed you and your client in the same sting. Get to your point.”
“Both Silver and Ruby had pretty strong reasons to want the victim dead and—”
“If you are trying to deflect the heat off your client just because we picked up her fellow hookers, save it for court.”
“I understand. But I think one or both of these queens knows more than she has said, is holding back on us.”
“Us, Mr. Decastro? We are not on the same team here.”
He feels his back starting to sweat under his suit coat.
“I just mean we are both trying to find justice in this case. The truth.”
The D. A. rolls his eyes. “The truth is, counselor, we have your client on a surveillance tape stealing the murder weapon from the victim’s bedroom just hours before the murder.”
“It could have been faked!” He knows he’s out of line here. But to hell with it. He suddenly feels a surge of adrenaline jolt his arms.
The D. A. looks astonished. Now he is rising from his chair. “I think we’re done.”
“No. Really, sir. Please. I don’t mean to be belligerent—”
“Then don’t. Calm down, man. You come in here looking half-cocked, full of piss and vinegar, like some actor on Law and Order. I won’t have it!”
“It’s just … just that in my investigations over the last ten days or so, I’ve learned a lot about drag queens. They are the consummate actors. Female impersonation is their stock-in-trade. They have trunks full of costumes and wigs and makeup. If a queen can make herself look like Madonna, then why can’t she make herself look like my client, too? Especially on a dimly lit, grainy security tape.”
The D. A. settles back in his seat. He lets out a hoot. “You are really reaching, counselor, if this is your defense. Try this in court and the jury will be laughing at you before I’m done.”
Michael feels his cheeks burning.
“Look, I know the victim was bullying your client in the dressing room at the Provincetown Follies. And I’m betting that he was using her status as an illegal to blackmail her into turning tricks. So here’s what I’m offering. We’ll forget about the videotape … and the arson. Murder Two. And deportation. That’s my offer. Take it or leave it. Some detective from Thailand has been calling me. Seems they want your client for arson back there, too. She’s got a thing for fire.”
He realizes he cannot fight this guy. Does not know how. And he is almost out of time here. He better try a different approach.
“Yes, sir, we’ll take this under consideration. But I still think Ruby and Silver are involved or know a lot more than they have told us.”
The D. A. is no dummy. He knows that what the public wants is swift justice. They want him to wrap up this case before summer ends. And they want to know that while life in P-town is not exactly mainstream America, it is safe from murderers, arsonists, and prostitutes. Maybe he can close this whole affair if he plays ball a little.
“Okay. What is it you want me to do, Mr. Decastro?”
“Keep Silver and Ruby in jail for a little longer. Just slow the paperwork when they try to make bail.”
“Why?”
“So you can interview them separately. Get them to talk about the night of the murder and fire again. They’ve got a pretty stormy relationship. Maybe one of them will rat out the other if they think you might drop some of the charges.”
The D. A. is trying to look like he is listening. But he is fidgeting with a ballpoint pen. Clicking it in and out.
“We’ve got hours of interviews with them from two weeks ago.”
“Yes sir, I’ve read the material. But, with all due respect, I think what they told police before about where they were and what they saw at the time of the fire and the murder sounds pretty vague. They claim they were at a party in the East End. Lots of people saw them. But there were more than fifty or sixty people there. One or both of them could have slipped out, stabbed Costelano, set the fire, come back to the party, and …”
The D. A. suddenly rises to his feet, extends his right hand across the desk to Michael. He has no choice but to stand and take the offered hand.
“I’ve got to hand it to you, counselor. You sure are giving this case the old college try.”
“Yes, sir. But—”
“But the guy from the Follies, Richard somebody, already sprung the suspects in question, whose real names, by the way, are Steven Simmers and Ronald Polvey. Quite a pair. Two real fine ambassadors from Great
Britain and Australia. That Richie fellow left here grinning like a pig in shit with the prospect of having them back at his little tent show.”
“He’s a thug.”
“We know. We’re watching him. But his sweethearts are clean. As far as the murder and arson go, we are way ahead of you. Our boys hammered at them all day yesterday. But they stuck by their alibi. And it holds up. We sent a couple of detectives to check it out. There is no chance either one of them could have stabbed Costelano or lit the fire.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ve got about thirty people who say when the first sirens went off for the fire, they were standing in a circle watching Polvey, the one called Ruby, down on his knees giving his buddy a smoothie under his skirt.”
“Again?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Never mind.”
“Freaks pay to watch. A hundred dollars a head … so to speak.” He shakes his head, disgusted. “Unbelievable. The crap people will do in public these days. Discuss my offer with your client. If I haven’t heard from you in two days, we go to trial. Think about that, counselor.”
FORTY-FOUR
He is not giving up on his theory about an imposter on the security tape. He wants to watch it with Tuki. If it is really her, maybe she will do something to show her guilt while she is watching … especially if he surprises her with it. If she seems like she has been caught in the act, then he will bring up the plea bargain. If she seems innocent, then … who the hell is the thief on the film?
And there is the other thing. Prem Kittikatchorn is lurking out there somewhere, just waiting to do mischief, or murder. Why would a man who has followed her all the way from Bangkok let her go so easily? Wouldn’t he feed his hunger for Tuki, like his craving for pung chao, right down to the end? Haven’t the two always been connected? He is still stalking her. You can bet on it. Unless there is someone to stop the bugger.
He figures it is too late to bring the cops in on this. Tuki has not filed a complaint. There has been no actual threat. And as far as the police are concerned, Prem is nothing more than Tuki’s fictitious alibi.
Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues (Cape Island Mystery) Page 16
