Yesterday's News

by Jeremiah Healy

  “I’m fine. Nasharbor, on the other hand, can use some work.”

  “Dreary?”

  “And then some. You pressed?”

  “A little,” she said. “How’s the case going?”

  “It seems that my late client was more than met the eye.”

  “Meaning you won’t be back in Boston for a while?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “I’d invite myself down for the weekend, but this rape trial looks like it’s going into next week.”

  “I’m hoping to wrap things up by Friday, anyway.”

  “Listen, John, I’ve got to go. Can I call you tomorrow night?”

  “My motel doesn’t have phones.”

  “What?”

  “It’d take more time than you’ve got to explain it. I’ll try to let you know when I’ll be back.”

  “Good. Take care of yourself, huh?”

  “Think about me.”

  Nancy dropped her voice a notch. “Always.”

  I drove back to the Crestview, centering the Prelude carefully between the lines in front of Unit 18. As soon as I opened my car door, two men exited the driver and passenger sides of a beige four-door Ford with a whipped-down antenna three spaces away. Approaching me, they couldn’t have looked more like cops if shield numbers had been branded on their foreheads.

  The first one, younger and balding, flipped open his ID anyway. The second one, older, with a crew cut, was beefy with huge hands and the jacket to a gray suit worn over baggy khaki pants.

  The first one said, “Police. Inside.”

  “You’re Mark Schonstein, right?”

  The second one said, “The man said inside, pal. Now.”

  “And that makes you Cronan.”

  Schonstein said, “You can walk in, or we can carry you.”

  “It’s a nice day. Why don’t we just sit on the grass? Kind of like senior seminar in the spring?”

  Cronan said, “What’s the hardest you ever been hit?”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I know the hardest was a linebacker, or some guy with a baseball bat, then I know how hard I gotta hit you, make you realize that when we say something, we mean it.”

  “I remember bumping into a hall monitor at the drinking fountain. Must have been third grade. Wanna see my scar?”

  A crusty but familiar voice said, “What the hell’s going on here.”

  Schonstein and Cronan turned to look at Jones. Schonstein said, “Police business. Butt out.”

  I said, “Mr. Jones, could you call Captain Hagan at the station and ask him if he sent Jan and Dean here to sing to me?”

  Cronan said, “Just one more word, pal.”

  Jones said, “What the hell do they want with you?”

  “We haven’t gotten around to it yet, but if they had a warrant they would have shown it to me. If you don’t give them permission to come into my room and I don’t either, we can have their asses if they try something.”

  Jones said, “Oh, they ain’t gonna try anything. Are you, boys?”

  Schonstein began to hyperventilate.

  Cronan boiled potatoes between his ears. “I don’t forget this kind of shit, pal.”

  “Looks like a nice grassy patch right over there.”

  They followed me to the one tree throwing any shade and stayed standing while I sat and aligned my back against the trunk. Jones watched us from the doorway to his office, smoothing down the fangs of his mustache.

  Schonstein said, “You’re playing with fire, Cuddy.”

  “How about you hear me out, then ask any follow-up questions you’ve got?”

  “Say it.”

  “Hagan didn’t send you guys, and I’m told your dad was a hell of a cop, so I doubt he sent you either. Think this through. If you’re mixed up in something like this, even innocently, you’re just making it look worse by rousting someone who probably can’t lay a glove on you.”

  Cronan said, “You got a big mouth.”

  “Look, Cronan, I’ve heard you were home sick the nights that matter. If that’s true, you’ve got nothing to worry about. If it’s not, you do. Either way, banging away at me doesn’t help the situation.”

  Schonstein said, “Coyne was a hustler.”

  Cronan cut in. “The kinda guy would queer a priest, he got the chance.”

  Schonstein said, “You think I’m gonna let you try to tie me up with him?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think. I think it’s damn peculiar the way people die down here. Things happened in Boston that happened here, just a whiff of police involvement and they’d be counting the shingles on your roof, just to be sure you didn’t have any you couldn’t account for.”

  Cronan said, “You ain’t in Boston now, pal.”

  “That’s right. But I was when Jane Rust hired me, and I’ll be back there only after I’m finished here.”

  Schonstein said, “You’ll be finished here soon enough, we yank your license.”

  I shook my head. “First, you haven’t got the juice. You can start the process rolling back at the Department of Public Safety, but you can’t just reach out and grab it. Second, you’re a little shy of grounds. Hagan himself told me the files on both Coyne and Rust were closed. That means there’s no ongoing investigation I’m interfering with. Unless you can enlighten me there?”

  Schonstein thought it over. “Let’s go, Dan.”

  Cronan said to me, “Maybe sometime I catch you in an alley someplace. No badge, no bullshit. Just you and me. Then we’ll find out if your balls are as big as your mouth.”

  They turned and strode back to their unmarked sedan. Schonstein wheeled out, peeling some rubber in front of Jones.

  I raised my voice. “Thanks for backing my play, Mr. Jones.”

  He said, “First name’s Emil. What’re you doing for dinner?”

  “John, now that’s a good name. Strong, but common enough, you don’t start folks laughing when they hear it. Ever known anybody named Emil?”

  “Not till now.”

  “Didn’t think so. Growing up, other kids gave me hell to pay on it. One squirt, thought he was tough, called me Emily in front of a couple of girls.”

  “And?”

  “And he found two of his teeth right off. Probably swallowed the third one.”

  I laughed politely and reached for another Killian’s Irish Red ale on the kitchen counter. Jones had bought some barbecued chicken from a local place that did a terrific job on the sauce and the skin. While he heated it up, I drove to the liquor store for a couple of six packs. His dinette set just about filled the floor space between refrigerator and stove.

  Emil said, “This Killian’s is pretty good stuff. Come out of Boston?”

  “No. I think it’s part of Coors. Our breweries are trying to make a comeback, but they’re kind of boutique operations so far.”

  “Back in the service, I got a taste for the stronger beers. German, mostly.”

  “That where you were stationed?”

  “Right. Air Defense Artillery. Near transferred to Field Artillery once I found out not many of us were going to Nam.”

  “You didn’t miss much.”

  Jones said, “Figured you were there.”

  “That why you stood up against Schonstein and Cronan?”

  “Nah. Them two shits, the one’s a jerk and the other a bully boy. I just liked the way you didn’t let them push you. You don’t stand against them every time, there’s ten more like them next week, like they multiplied or something.”

  “Still, you piss them off, they could let you down when you need them.”

  “Not really, least not in this business. It’s not the detectives ever do you any good. The uniforms, they’re the ones you gotta keep happy, ’cause they’re the ones put it on the line if twelve bikers all of a sudden decide to homestead in one of your units.”

  I picked up a wing. “You know Schonsy? The father, I mean.”

  “Yeah. He was a uniform, and a good cop. T
ried not to crack any heads less he had to, but the best I ever seen once he got started. More chicken?”

  “Please.”

  Jones carved the second leg off and said, “White meat or dark?”

  “Whichever you like less.”

  “Married?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not for a while,” I said. “Why?”

  “You seem to have awful good manners for a husband. Usually the wife wears it out of you.”

  “You ever married, Emil?”

  “Once. Bad idea.” He set the platter back on the table. “Didn’t really want a wife. Really wanted somebody just to be thinking about me when I wasn’t around. No kinda reason for getting hitched.”

  “I’ve heard worse.”

  “Maybe. But my case, it soured me. You know, you give a hundred orders a day to troopers denser than the ammo they’re loading, it’s kind of hard to break that when you go home to the missus. She wants to get her two words in, and they ain’t always ‘Yes, dear.’”

  “Kids?”

  “Nah. Just as well. Had a puppy once when I was little, really got a kick out of watching him grow up. Then once he hit a year or so, I kind of lost interest. Always figured the same would happen with a kid. Plus, the Big Green Machine ain’t no place to raise kids right, even if you love the hell out of them.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well …” Jones put his fork down and took a swig of ale. “The military’s a good life for somebody like me. No skills, no college or nothing, enlisted right out of high school. You grow up beginning at age eighteen, but you already had another life. Things get tough, you can look back on it. Kind of, I don’t know, draw strength from it or something. You get raised on an army base, though, you lose that. … I don’t know what you’d call it.”

  “Perspective?”

  “Yeah. Perspective’s a good word for it. You lose that, or I guess you don’t have it to start with, your whole world’s been the army, you don’t ever appreciate there’s another one out there, maybe’s got some good ideas going for it you oughta know about.”

  “How’d you end up here?”

  “Wife’s family was from Nasharbor, and we spent some holidays here. They’re mostly dead now, but I kind of liked this part of the country. They aren’t quite as crazy around here as other places I’ve been.”

  “Why the motel business?”

  “Saw the Crestview was for sale the last time I was back here burying one of the wife’s relatives. She’d bugged out on me by then, but the funeral was a good excuse for an emergency leave. Day before I had to head back, I come out and talked to the owner. He’d been navy, and he was dying, fixing to go into a VA hospital his last couple of months. He gave me the feeling this sort of job would be interesting.”

  “Was he right, Emil?”

  “Depends on whether you find bankruptcy interesting.”

  “That bad?”

  “No, but it depends. Everybody thinks these little places are gold mines, you know? They count the units, let’s say it’s twenty like I got here, and they do the figures in their heads and come out to twenty rooms times twenty or so bucks which is four hundred a day times seven days is near three thousand a week. That’s a hundred fifty thousand a year, and they figure to pay the place off in two, maybe three years, then roll in the gravy.”

  “But what’s your occupancy rate?”

  “That’s where you gotta start, alright. I think nationwide the average is something like 65 percent per night, but that includes all those resorts run 90, even 95 percent in season. Place like this, no tourists staying reliably for weeks at a time, 25 or 30 percent’s more like it. So, right away, your intake’s way less than the max.”

  “And expenses?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it. Insurance? Off the scale since that singer won the case saying the motel should have kept that guy from attacking her. Then there’s air conditioners, mattresses and springs, new TV’s, you name it. Every year something major needs replacing. And that’s with me doing all the electrical and plumbing and the building inspector doing some winking.”

  “Think you’ll stay with it?”

  “Hard to say. The really tough part’s you never get a day off. You’re here twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and boy, that gets tiresome.” He crossed his knife and fork on the plate. “I got some cherry vanilla in the freezer, and the Red Sox are going to be on the cable.”

  “Thanks, but I’m stuffed, and I’ve still got work to do tonight.”

  “Work? Where?”

  “Couple of places called the Strand and Bun’s. Know them?”

  Jones winched the Fu Manchu up over his front teeth. “Work, huh?”

  Ten

  THE DIRECTIONS JONES gave me were excellent, but even without them I wouldn’t have had any trouble finding The Strip. I joined four other cars cruising it north to south, then made a U-turn and came back south to north. The movie theaters had old-fashioned marquees showing as many bulbs dead or missing as lit. The windows of the strip joints had publicity photographs of women even a feminist would call bimbos, the hairdos dating from the mid-sixties. The bookstores advertised peep shows and prices in hand-printed signs.

  The Strand was in the second block, Bun’s diagonally across the street in the third. Parking spaces were plentiful, most of the patrons seeming to be pedestrians. I left the Prelude in front of the Strand and approached the ticket window.

  A faded, fat woman obliterated all of what must have been a cocktail stool under and behind her. She looked at me through a streaked and scratched glass window thick enough to be bulletproof. She said, “Three features, seven bucks, no repeats.”

  “I want to see Mr. Gotbaum.”

  “Can’t help you.”

  “Can’t you call him?”

  “Mister, I just sell tickets here. I look like an executive secretary to you?”

  “Somebody tried to stick you up, there a buzzer or something you can push?”

  She gave me a different kind of look. “I don’t want no trouble.”

  “I’m not trying to give you any. Just call somebody who can get me to Gotbaum.”

  After thinking it over, she put a hand under the ticket counter, pressed twice, and brought it back. We waited for thirty seconds. Then the blacked-over door to the theater opened and a tall, skinny kid came through it. He had dirty blond hair made to appear dirtier by being slicked back, and his double-breasted, chalk-stripe suit was a size too large for him. As he got closer, I put him nearer to thirty than twenty, but he still looked like his mother had been scared by an early Richard Widmark film.

  “This guy giving you trouble, Connie?”

  I said, “No trouble. I just want to see Mr. Gotbaum.”

  “Mr. Gotbaum, he don’t see many people.”

  “It’s about Charlie Coyne and Jane Rust.”

  He smirked. “What, you think you hit a magic button or something?”

  “I look like a cop to you?”

  He stopped smiling. “You got ID?”

  “Yeah.” I showed it to him. “But I’m not a cop.”

  “You’re not a cop.”

  “No.”

  “Then why the fuck you ask me whether I thought you was or not?”

  “I asked you if I looked like a cop. I think I do. I think your customers, probably all five of them, will think so too. Especially if I walk up and down the aisles a few times and stare them in the face a minute or so each. Then maybe I’ll stand out here, on the nice public sidewalk by the ticket office, and stare for a minute or so into each face that comes to Connie here. I think maybe I could do that for two or three days, and Mr. Gotbaum will want to talk to me.”

  He said, “That’s pretty good, you know?”

  “So, how about we save my time and Mr. Gotbaum’s money and see him now. Together.”

  “You carrying?”

  “I’d play it that way.”

  “You gotta leave it w
ith me.”

  “Not a chance.”

  He smirked again. “Even better.”

  Turning, he walked me to the door, holding it open for me. “My name’s Duckie. Duckie Teevens.”

  Bernard “Bunny” Gotbaum sat like a Buddha in a large judge’s chair behind a desk piled high with paperwork. Obese, his sausage-like fingers played with the collar of a long-point sports shirt that bulged at each vertical seam. Wearing a toupee the color of cream soda, overall he gave the impression of a man who hadn’t burned twelve calories since kindergarten. The teeth, however, earned him the nickname. The upper two front ones bucked out far enough to open beer cans.

  The office carpeting didn’t match the walls, and the walls didn’t match the furniture. A second man, timid and short, was sitting in a subservient chair reading from what looked like an invoice. From somewhere behind the rear wall, I could hear the projected sounds of a woman faking ecstatic and somewhat extended groans.

  Gotbaum glanced up at me and said to Duckie, “The Law?”

  Duckie said, “Uh-unh.”

  “Just a second then.” Gotbaum addressed the little guy in the chair. “So you figure we can get I Only Have Thighs for You and The Shape of Things to Come for the same rental?”

  The man said, “Yes, Mr. Gotbaum.”

  “I like that second title. Any lezzie shots?”

  “Just the one, ten minutes before the gang bang.”

  “Good. That’s where they should put all of them. The Shape of Things to Come. The guys who come up with these titles. You’d think somebody would have used it already.”

  Duckie said, “Somebody did, boss.”

  Gotbaum looked over at him. “They did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who? I don’t want no product confusion here.”

  “Old book, boss. Don’t worry, none of our customers read it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Gotbaum turned again to the guy in the chair. “Okay. That’s it then. Call me if the shitheads give you any problems.”

  The little guy said, “Right, Mr. Gotbaum,” and left the room.

  Gotbaum sized me up. “So, who are you?”

  “My name’s John Cuddy. I’m a private investigator looking into Jane Rust’s death.”

  “The tw … the one from the newspaper?”