by Linda Barnes
And what about the timing? When exactly had Tina left JHHI?
A death and a departure. No reason for them to be related.
My fingers chose an old Robert Johnson tune:
I got a kindhearted woman, do anything in this world for me,
I got a kindhearted woman, do anything in this world for me,
But these evil-hearted women, man, they will not let me be.
17
I spent the next morning juggling phone books, checking out variants of Cee Co., riling secretaries with useless calls, and finding no trace of the company that employed Tina Sukhia, who, for her part, neither answered her phone nor responded to the messages I left on her answering machine.
When the doorbell rang just after two o’clock, I ran a hand through hair uncombed since volleyball practice and smoothed my ratty gray sweatshirt over black jeans that were ripped at both knees and faded from too many go-rounds in the washer.
I peered out the peephole and saw Mooney, his weight evenly balanced in classic traffic-cop stance. I figured he’d come about the license plate so I started unchaining chains and unbolting bolts. No quick dives into the powder room necessary; Mooney’s used to my come-as-you-are appearance.
He wore a beige cotton sweater, chinos, and sneakers. Loose comfy stuff he could run in if he had to. It was nice of him to come by with the plate rundown. He could have called. I grinned when I opened the door. He didn’t smile back. “Can I come in?” he said somberly. No sparkle in his eyes. No handshake, no mock-brotherly squeeze.
“Something happen to Paolina?”
“No. I must look pretty grim.”
I sighed. “You do. You want a beer?”
“Orange juice?”
“Okay.” That meant he was working. Not working, Mooney drinks beer. He followed me into the kitchen and scraped a chair across the linoleum as he pulled it away from the table.
“This guy Paolina’s seeing is a known child molester, right?”
“What guy? Sit down,” Mooney said. “It’s not about Paolina.”
I sat.
Mooney drank juice.
“You gonna break it to me gently?”
“You went to visit Tina Sukhia yesterday.”
I quickly cast my mind back to the street outside her apartment. Had I strolled into somebody’s surveillance? I remembered the stale marijuana smell in the tiny apartment, but I didn’t think cops cared about marijuana anymore, not with crack around. Not with heroin, crystal, speed, PCP, and an Uzi in every other high-school locker.
Mooney said, “Her boyfriend gave us your card.”
“Why?”
“I guess because of the coincidence—you showing up, her dying.”
Dying.
“No,” I heard myself say.
“That must mean no, it’s not a coincidence—because I just saw the body, and yes, she sure is dead.”
“Hell,” I said, and then “damn,” over and over. It sounded like my voice was coming from far away, working on its own, without the cooperation of my lips or larynx.
“So I need to know why you wanted to talk to her. And you’re gonna tell me because it’s part of an official police investigation.”
“Homicide?” I asked, stalling, knowing Mooney wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.
“A definite possibility.”
“But not a certainty?”
“Listen when I talk. I said possibility.”
“How likely?”
“Likely enough that you ought to answer me instead of playing games.”
“Shit.”
“So do we talk here?”
“Or what? You gonna haul me down to the station house, use a rubber hose?”
“I’m not in the mood, Carlotta.”
“Sorry. Me, I’m in a great mood.”
“I coulda sent somebody else. I come all the way over here and you’re gonna give me crap?”
“I work for a living, Moon. Same as you. My clients deserve a little discretion.”
“Any client who sent you to see Sukhia better not leave the jurisdiction.”
“Why don’t you tell me how Tina Sukhia—a lady I never met in my life—died? I haven’t read the papers yet.”
“That’s not how this song goes.”
“You want to keep the details from me because you think I killed her and then left my business card with the boyfriend—who told me yesterday, by the way, that he was the fiancé.”
“Boyfriend, fiancé. They were shacked up, is what.”
“You use phrases I haven’t heard in ten years. Shacked up.”
“You use phrases I don’t hear much either,” he said. “Except from hookers.” Mooney was brought up a strict Catholic. Women did not swear, not even a discreet hell or damn. They didn’t become cops, either.
“The boyfriend-fiancé a suspect?” I asked.
“Seeing as it happened in a hospital, and we can’t place him there, no more than anybody else.”
“JHHI?”
“Good old Helping Hand,” he said.
“She worked there.”
“You working for them?”
“Them?”
“The hospital?”
It’s not that I mind telling lies, it’s that I know it’s not smart to lie to Mooney. Withhold information, maybe. But he’s got an incredibly good mental lie detector.
“And why would the hospital hire me?” I asked.
“Nice try,” he said.
“Come on, Mooney.”
“It looks very much like the lady overdosed on barbiturates.”
“People OD on downers all the time. What’s against it being an accident?”
“No evidence she was a user at all.”
“When did she die?”
“Body found about six forty-five this morning. That’s all I’ve got till the M.E. talks.”
“That’s probably all you’ll ever get then,” I said sympathetically. M.E.’s are pretty useless when it comes to precise time of death. Oh, they can shove thermometers into orifices and plug numbers into equations, but there are too many variables. The more they learn, the less they know.
“It’s not even cast in concrete on the six forty-five. Doctors,” Mooney said, raising his eyebrows. “Deaths in hospitals—no matter what the circumstances—cops are considered the last resort. Doctors think there’s no such thing as a situation they can’t handle.”
“Doctor find her?”
“Nurse. Anne Reese, R.N. Didn’t know the victim. Didn’t care. Mainly irritated because she was at the end of her shift and wanted to go home.”
“Nice.”
“Like I didn’t want to go home, too. But a death’s a death. You don’t just walk off and leave it.”
“At hospitals they do.”
Mooney made a face.
“You didn’t like the nurse,” I said.
“Bingo. And she didn’t like me.”
“And you’re so charming, Moon. Tell me, the boyfriend see Tina last night?”
“Nope. So he got good and stewed, far as I can tell. Eyes bloodshot, but you can’t tell if it’s from crying or booze.”
“If Tina was a user, that could be why the hospital let her go,” I said.
“I already thought of that,” Mooney said.
“There could be money in this someplace. Fiancé had new stereo equipment up the wazoo.”
“So?”
I waited for him to mention Tina’s new job as a source of the windfall. He didn’t.
“The hospital been leaking drugs?” I asked.
“The question crossed my mind,” Mooney admitted.
“Anybody answered it yet?”
“I haven’t asked yet. I’ve got appointments with some docs: Chief of Staff. Chief of Medicine. Chief of Pharmacy. Chief troubleshooter. Probably Chief of PR.”
“But you decided to pick on me first? I’m not gonna give you headaches like some medical big-shot?”
“Carlotta, you know that’s not—”
“Mooney, it looks to me like you’ve got an accidental death, and I don’t think my client ought to be hassled about an accidental OD. I don’t think I ought to be hassled, either.” While my mouth was saying accidental, I have to admit I was thinking suicide. Maybe Tina had quit JHHI. But there was also the possibility that the woman had been dismissed. Maybe she’d done something wrong, screwed up so badly that Rebecca Woodrow had died as a result. What do you do for a comeback if your negligence causes the death of a child?
Maybe return to the scene of the crime and atone for it.
“What do you mean, hassled?” Mooney’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “This is hassling?”
“Yeah.”
“Hah.” He smacked his glass down so hard I thought it would break. “If you want that plate number, owner, you give up your client.”
“Unfair,” I said.
“So?”
Dammit. Mrs. Woodrow had insisted that a stranger, a doctor, a man in a white coat had been present when her daughter died. Keith Donovan had asserted that Emily was hallucinating the incident. Harold Woodrow had intimated that his wife was a liar. Pablo Peña, JHHI’s resident anesthesiologist, had denied shoving anyone out of a hospital room. And now I couldn’t ask Tina Sukhia which one, if any, had been telling the truth.
With a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach, I wondered exactly where Emily Woodrow had been when Tina died. I hadn’t yet received the day’s mail, but I found myself hoping it wouldn’t contain a confession.
“Mooney, let me get back to you.”
“Carlotta, the more time goes by, the less chance I’ve got.”
“Don’t quote the stats at me. There’s no pressure here, Moon. It’s not like you found a city councillor with a knife in his back. The press is gonna see a minority nurse dead in some drug scam. Inside page, Metro, under the fold.”
“Tomorrow,” Mooney said.
“What about the license plate?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Moon, please.”
“What is this crap? I can wait, but you can’t? If this plate has to do with Sukhia, the whole deal’s off.”
“Mooney, it’s Paolina. The plate belongs to a guy who’s hustling Paolina.”
He gave me a hard look, but then he sighed and yanked his notebook out of his pocket. “This loser’s twenty-eight years old,” he said.
“That’s why I want to stop him fast.”
He made a face. “Plate’s registered to Paco Lewis Sanchez. One five eight Peterborough, Boston.”
“What else?”
“Height: five-ten. Weight: one ninety-five.”
“What else?”
“That’s all I got.”
“You could run him through NCIC,” I suggested. “Keep the crime computer ticking.”
“It’ll cost,” Mooney said.
“Repayment in kind,” I replied.
“Like first thing tomorrow, everything you know about Tina Sukhia?”
“She’s dead,” I said. “And the only way I even know that is from you.”
“You can trust me on it,” he said.
“Trust has to go both ways,” I replied.
“Like love?” he asked after a pause. Mooney’s been trying to turn my attentions away from Sam for as long as I can remember. He might have succeeded, too, if we’d never worked in the same chain of command.
“Like lust,” I said. “I don’t know a lot about love.”
“Yeah?”
“And what I do know about love,” I said, “I don’t trust.”
18
She’d told me not to phone.
I punched her number as soon as Mooney’s footsteps cleared the porch.
I’ve never yet tossed a client to the cops, but there’s always a first time. I figured I’d use Tina’s death to throw a scare into Emily Woodrow, speed up the process, get her to level with me. About her promised packet of information. About Cee Co. About why she needed a person with firearms expertise to take charge of her mysterious paperwork. Or else.
As the phone rang, I doodled on my blotter and tried to envision Emily, in her elegant beige suit, plunging a loaded hypodermic into Tina Sukhia’s arm. Or, more likely, forcing her to swallow a quantity of pills.
Had Emily ever been a nurse?
If Patsy Ronetti had done her job, I’d already know. Why the hell hadn’t she gotten back to me?
“Hello?” The voice was harried, anxious. I’d reached Harold, the husband, which seemed odd in the middle of the day. When I gave my name and asked to speak to his wife, he erupted, but not in the way I’d expected.
“She’s not here,” he shouted. “She’s not with her mother. Her friends don’t know where she is!”
“Calm down.”
“She didn’t come home last night. Her asshole therapist, the jerk, doesn’t know where the hell she is.”
“She didn’t tell you where she was going?”
“Shopping, for Chrisake, something like that. What do I know? How do I know?”
“Have you, uh, called anyone?”
“The police, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Why on earth would I call the police? Bitch walks out on me. On me! What did you tell her about me?”
“Huh?”
“It’s not like she’s been a comfort lately, you know? A helpmate. If she ever spoke to me in a civil tone anymore … It’s not like … Well, things might be different with us, that’s all. Ever hear the one about how there are two sides to every story?”
“I’m not sure what story you’re trying to tell me,” I said.
His voice grew tight with suspicion. “Is she with you?”
“Yeah,” I said sarcastically, “that’s why I called to speak to her.”
He hung up. I bit my tongue and winced.
Roz came speeding by and homed in on the refrigerator. She wore black from her leggings to her bustier. On the side that wasn’t shaved, her white hair was developing greenish streaks. It looked like she was aging in a fashion usually reserved for plants.
I said, “Busy?”
“No more cleaning,” she pleaded. “C’mon. My hands stink. Something in Marta’s refrigerator went right through the rubber gloves.”
“Soak them in turpentine,” I suggested.
Instead she displayed them five inches from my nose, full of odd rings and chartreuse nail polish. “Smell.” Her toenails were the same chartreuse.
“No, thanks.” I described the guy who’d escorted Paolina to her aunt’s house. Then I scribbled Paco Sanchez’s address on a scrap of paper. “See where this guy lives, what he does, who he sees. Drives a blue Firebird.” I wrote down the plate number as well.
“Maybe I can borrow Lemon’s van.”
“Good idea. See if you can borrow it without borrowing him.”
“Two’s better.” Lemon is her karate instructor and sometime lover. They share a penchant for slogans: hers on Tshirts; his plastered on the bumpers of his van—everything from friendly whales spouting SAVE THE HUMANS to travelers’ warnings such as NEW YORK CITY—WHERE THE WEAK ARE KILLED AND EATEN.
“Two’s better for what?” I asked.
“Surveillance.”
“One’s cheaper,” I responded. The Woodrow riches weren’t going to pay for this investigation.
“If it doesn’t cost, you got any objection to him coming along for the ride?” she asked.
“Just don’t miss the Sanchez guy ’cause you’re busy screwing in the back of the van, okay?”
“Would I do a thing like that?”
“Oh, Roz,” I said. “Yes. You have and you would. But why rake up the past?”
19
When I dialed the Foley-Sukhia number, I got the recording again. Tina must have made the tape, and it was disconcerting to hear the cheerful voice of a dead woman over the line. While I listened, I recalled her photograph, white cap perched on glossy hair, smiling unlined face. I left no message.
After a glance at my
watch, I quickly changed from torn jeans to black slacks. The grubby sweatshirt hit the laundry basket. I yanked a pea-green cowl-neck over my head, a sweater I’ve had since my Detroit high-school days, made of some indestructible acrylic fiber that never balls and never rips. I’m sure the clothing industry outlawed it years ago.
I combed my hair with my fingers as I dashed down the stairs.
My house has a stoop. Keith Donovan’s house, two doors down, has a porch big enough to call a veranda. I rang the bell and paced, hoping I’d timed it right. Five minutes before the hour to five minutes after the hour, a psychiatrist ought to answer his bell.
He came to the door wearing a gray oxford-cloth shirt and charcoal slacks, his unknotted tie draped around his neck.
“Hey,” he said. “Caught me off guard. This patient’s always late.”
“Spare a minute?” I asked.
“Have you seen Emily? Spoken with her?”
“My questions exactly.”
“She’s not at your house?”
“She’s not at yours?” I returned.
He pulled at one end of his tie and glanced hastily up and down the street. “Why don’t you come in?”
His floor plan wasn’t much different from mine. Foyer with staircase. Single step down to the living room. Dining room straight through the foyer. There the resemblance ended. If he did his own decorating, he was wasted as a therapist. A job at House and Garden beckoned. The foyer had been set up as a waiting room with a hunter-green loveseat and two inviting chairs. The wallpaper picked up the green of the loveseat. The area rug was a plushy Oriental.
He peered into a gilt-framed mirror, executed a flawless Windsor knot. If my foyer looked like his, I could raise my rates.
He’d taken the entire living room for his office, not just a corner of it like I had. It made me wonder about him. Where did he do his entertaining? Where did his friends hang out? Was he the workaholic the room suggested?
His inlaid mahogany desk probably cost more than every stick of furniture in my house. He couldn’t have been a practicing, high-earning shrink for long. Cambridge is full of trust-fund babies. I wondered if he was one of them. Maybe he had an exceptionally wealthy practice. Or an extremely rich wife.
If he had a wife, there was no evidence of her existence. No ring on the man’s hand. No framed photo on the desk.
