by Linda Barnes
South Station has been recently renovated. An interior designer crisscrossed the floor and walls with beige-and-raspberry tiles, put in a French bakery, and sold vendor permits to hawkers with cute green carts filled with ties, fudge, and sun hats, as well as toys to bring home to the kiddies. Huge fans did their best to circulate the cigarette smoke and train fumes. You can get your shoes shined, buy a bouquet of fresh flowers and a chocolate croissant. The hurrying footsteps, whooshing doors, groaning diesel engines, and clanging bells are all that remind you that you’re not in a shopping mall.
The oyster bar is tucked in a street-level corner.
I recognized a couple of veteran prostitutes right off, old friends I’d rousted years ago, no doubt rehabilitated through the wonders of our prison system and social service agencies. One was giving a brazenly outfitted hooker the unfriendly glare reserved for new talent on already-taken turf.
It took me a minute to realize that the woman of the hour, the one drawing hostile eyes, was Roz.
I guess she figured that with her clothes sense and general flair, there was no point in shooting for subtlety. But green hair, I thought, except on St. Patrick’s Day, is going a little far.
Her wig made the stuff they sew on the heads of Barbie dolls look real. Nor had she taken my advice about conservative clothing—not that I’m naïve enough to think Roz possesses a knee-length shirtwaist dress. Her low-cut green taffeta number looked like a fifties prom dress gone astray.
One thing you have to say for her: She didn’t look like the shaved-headed, black-clad karate warrior of the airport. No way would Sanchez link the two. Roz wore spike heels to change her height. Glasses completed the ensemble. Harlequins, with rhinestones in the corners.
She didn’t look like anyone I knew. Or wanted to know.
“Don’t worry, Yolanda,” I murmured to the tiny platinum-haired pro. “You are totally out of her league.”
“Hey. You back with the cops?”
“Relax.”
“No, sugar. You check that babe. She’s young and hot and she ain’t let go that dude all night. Man couldn’t even take a pee if he wanted one. And look at the bod on her. She’s messin’ up business is what.”
“Good,” I said. “She works for me.”
“You pimpin’ now? Hell.”
“Yolanda! I’m private heat, and she is, too. Go peddle it someplace else.”
“You gonna bring cops on me?”
“You’re hopeless,” I said. “Go home.”
“Spot me twenty?”
“Ten,” I said. “Home.”
“Later, babe.”
I caught Roz’s eye and she sagged with relief. I could see her point. Even after Paolina had sung his praises, I couldn’t ID the sterling qualities in Paco Sanchez.
Either he hadn’t changed clothes since the weekend or he had many identical Tshirts and bagged-out jeans. His five-o’clock shadow had turned into scruffy three-day growth. His eyes looked bloodshot under the fluorescents.
“Hey,” I said, approaching Sanchez and borrowing Yolanda’s all-purpose greeting.
His face changed when he saw me. He recognized me, no doubt about it.
“Don’t go anyplace till we’ve talked,” I said.
“And why the hell not?” he blustered.
“Cause this green-haired lady, the one you been boring to death with your sorry life story, will be glad to kick you where it hurts anytime I say. Right, Roz?”
“How about now?” she said. “What took you—”
“Hang on a minute.” I removed the doctored passport from my purse, held it well out of Sanchez’s reach. He grabbed for it anyway. “Something you want?” I asked, tucking it out of sight.
“Hey,” he said. “Maybe we can deal.”
“Exactly what I had in mind,” I said. “Roz, why don’t you take a walk?”
“Can I stay in sight? Just in case? I’d like to kick him.”
“The restroom, Roz. Lose the hair.”
“That’s a wig?” Paco said. He sounded disappointed.
“Let’s deal,” I said.
30
Roz disappeared.
“See, I want to understand something,” I said to Sanchez, sipping my assistant’s leftover Pepsi and thinking that for the day, I was probably well over the maximum daily caffeine intake for a small country.
“I’ll bet.” His moustache barely moved when he talked. It made me wonder what deformity he was hiding under its bushy growth. “Your friend have to leave?”
“I’ll give you her phone number later,” I promised, tongue in cheek. “Why’d you boost my garbage?”
He lit a cigarette and I inhaled fumes. “Guy I work for said to do it.”
We shared a small round table, the stand-up kind meant for rushed commuters. The bar was empty except for two serious drunks in a corner, a scattering of working pros. “Carl Griffith,” I said. “The investigator. He musta been ripped when you took the cans too. You know, stealing the cans makes it sort of obvious.”
Paco blew a puff of smoke my way. “He doesn’t tell me how to handle it. He kinda leaves stuff like that up to his ops.”
I don’t mind inhaling smoke. I used to do a pack a day myself, before my dad died. “You started working for him recently?” I inquired.
Sanchez opened his mouth, paused with his tongue sticking halfway out. “Nah,” he said.
“Come on,” I said. “This your first case?”
“Third,” he said, stung.
A miracle he’d lasted this long. “And what about Paolina?”
“Griffith told me to check her out.”
“He tell you to get her on a plane?”
“That was her idea,” he said. “Honest. I wanted to help the kid out. That wasn’t business, that was personal.”
Personal, bullshit. Now I wanted to kick him. “Who’s the client?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“Who’s Griffith working for?” I repeated impatiently.
“Lotsa people.”
“On the Paolina Fuentes thing.”
“He’d kill me.”
“He won’t know.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I don’t want to understand, Paco. I want to know why you gave Paolina money.”
“It was a personal loan. Nothing to do with Griffith.”
“It probably comes under corrupting a minor. You know what kind of prison time child molesters get?”
“I never touched her. I liked the kid is all. Felt sorry for her.”
“Who’s Griffith’s client?”
“He won’t tell me. He won’t tell you, either. Man, it’s all he talks about, how nobody can push him around.”
Sounded like a nice guy. The kind of guy who’d employ a creep like Sanchez. There was an ashtray on the table. Sanchez dropped his ciggie butt on the nicely tiled floor, ground it out with his heel.
“He keeps you in the dark?” I said.
“Hell, yeah, and if I get in any trouble, I’m on my own, too.”
“You’re in trouble.”
“Well, I don’t know anything.” He gave an elaborate shrug.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Go where?”
“Two choices, Paco. And one is the Feds. Passport forgery is Federal, right? As in Leavenworth.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple jiggling up and down. “Uh, I thought you wanted to deal.”
“What time does Griffith open his office?”
“Hey, not till late. Not till after noon, at least.”
“I don’t want to have a lot of conversation about this, Paco. I’m kinda on a tight schedule. The way I see it, if you love Griffith like a brother, and you’re gonna get all bent out of shape when I suggest visiting his office after hours, we might as well talk to that uniform over there. I’m sure he can get through to a Justice Department suit who’d love to see how you doctor a passport.”
He swallowed again. “Say we do visit Griffith’s
place. What do I gotta do?”
“Sign in. Sign out. Work the security system. No reason the boss should know about our visit. Then you go back to work for him, you split for New York, whatever you want.”
He considered the situation.
“And then you’ll give me the passport?”
“I never said that, Paco.”
“Come on.”
“It’s either the Feds or a quick peek at Griffith’s files.”
Before we left the train station, I found Roz sheltering behind a column and told her to get home to Paolina. Sanchez couldn’t pry his eyes off the shaved section of her scalp.
When you work the middle-of-the-night shift, you don’t have to worry about parking. I got a perfect slot on Boylston Street, and Sanchez and I strolled into the Prudential Center like buddies, almost arm in arm. I kept the funny passport in my handbag, its strap double-looped over my arm. I didn’t trust my new buddy.
Like a lot of office-tower tenants, Griffith had unshakable faith in the building guards, uniformed do-nothings who could be counted on to make sure visitors signed in and out. His office locks wouldn’t have baffled a toddler. Even worse, he’d lavished a key on Paco.
How does a guy who employs squirrelly ops like Sanchez rate a plush office in the Pru? It baffles me; it really does. The rents there are astronomical, and Griffith Investigations wasn’t squeezed into any broom closet either. My socialist mom would have ranted on about inequality for weeks. Me, I just noted the thick pile carpet, the fancy Roman shades, the leather chairs, and got down to business.
Griffith was an organized bastard, maybe that was the key to his success. He kept his current cases at the front of a tall metal filing cabinet. Six of them. I should be so lucky. I studied the file tabs, spotted no familiar names.
I started with the first file, an assets search for a potentially messy divorce, read it through, looking for my name or Paolina’s. Next case, another divorce, I did the same. Third case, also marital.
The fifth file was it. There was my name, heavily underlined. My address. My phone. My Social Security number. The file was headed Vandenburg. Some kind of code? No. Thurman W. Vandenburg. Of Miami Beach, Florida.
I glanced at my watch. It reminded me that I needed sleep. “Hey,” I said to Sanchez, who was folded into one of the leather chairs, chewing the ends of his moustache. “Xerox machine in here?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the warm-up time on it?”
“It’s one of those little jobbies. Pretty fast.”
“Turn it on and copy this. Don’t ‘forget’ any pages either.”
I didn’t know a Thurman W. Vandenburg from Miami or anyplace else.
Sanchez did a good job handling the copy machine. Maybe paperwork was his forte.
“Can we get out of here?” he asked when he’d flipped off the machine and tidied up.
“My pleasure,” I said.
“I dunno,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“You considering calling your boss and fessin’ up?” I asked.
“Nah,” he said.
“Because you ought to think before you do it, long and hard. If you spill it, I’ll tell him you sold me the file. And I’m a good liar. He’ll believe me.”
We walked out of the building after signing out with the guards. We’d used names other than our own upon entering.
“Now for one last thing, Paco,” I said as we reached the sidewalk.
He said, “I’m finished doing business with you, lady.”
“My garbage cans, Paco. Where are they?”
“Huh?”
“You using them?”
“I dumped ’em.”
“Damn, that is too bad.”
“Tough,” he said.
“I expected more sympathy, Paco. I was fond of those cans. You know, you can help make up for my loss. True Value Hardware Stores. The gray wheeled cans. Two of them. By tomorrow night.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Tomorrow night is garbage night, Paco. Would I kid about that?”
“You’re crazy.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “I guess I am. But if I don’t get my garbage cans, the Feds get the passport, with your name, and probably your prints on it. They’ll ask questions. They won’t be as polite as I am.”
“Shit,” he said.
“Just put them by the side of the house,” I said. “No need to ring the bell.”
I got in my car and sped away while he was still searching for words.
I don’t normally listen to the news. Usually my tape deck goes full blast, but I’d played all my tapes twenty-seven times, so I hit the radio button instead. Not a news station, a blues-and-oldies station. But even they have news breaks and I caught one. I heard talk of the thirty-seventh recent health-care proposal and slaughter in Bosnia. It sounded the same as last week’s horrors, so I leaned forward to punch it off.
“A spokesperson for the pharmaceutical firm Cephagen Company has announced that a man shot dead today at the Marine Wharf Hotel in downtown Boston has been identified as company president and CEO David Menander.”
She pronounced Cephagen with a long E sound. Cee Co.
More, I commanded silently. More. Come on.
Three teenagers wounded in a drive-by shooting in Boston’s Grove Hall area had been taken to Boston City Hospital for treatment. Police suspected gang involvement.
No! More about Cephagen with a long E.
The woman’s voice slid into the weather forecast, fair and sunny, while rain spattered my windshield.
I drove faster, checking my rearview mirror for cop cars, and hitting fifty in the thirty-mile zones. A Store 24 had one tattered Globe left. I hurled my thirty-five cents across the counter top to the bored and indifferent clerk.
It was one of those inside-page late-breaking Metro stories. Splashy because the Marine Wharf is no fleabag, and soft-pedaled because tourists are easily discouraged from spending two hundred a night to endanger life and limb. Hotel PR would have been all over this one. Bad luck, the victim being a notable. That would hinder further efforts to soften the impact. My eyes skimmed the print. Possible robbery of a male Caucasian. Wallet removed. Wristwatch ignored.
I climbed back into the car. Cephagen Company. Cee Co. Cee Co. Pharmaceuticals. They had to be related. Had to be. I drove quickly through the rain. Oncoming headlights dazzled my eyes. My tires squealed on the slick pavement.
At home, all was quiet. Paolina slept.
31
I was tired enough to fall asleep in the car, but I still had one phone call to make—to Mass. General, where according to Patient Information, Marta Fuentes was in satisfactory condition and resting comfortably. “Resting comfortably” had such a nice ring to it that I hurriedly splashed water on my face, brushed my teeth, stripped, and yanked on my in-lieu-of-nightgown tank top. Then I slowed to enter Paolina’s bedroom in barefoot silence, listening to her hushed, regular breathing and smoothing the rumpled sheets.
When I do fall asleep, I slumber soundly and rarely remember my dreams. I recalled this one only because the phone woke me before it ended.
“Hello?” The shrill of a phone in the middle of the night summons the elemental power of childhood terror, as well as the adult knowledge that no one calls with good news past midnight.
“Hello,” I repeated loudly. The line was open. I heard something at the other end, a crashing sound, then silence.
“Who is it?” I demanded. “Is someone there?”
I muttered a curse and slammed down the receiver.
I could hear the clock tick. Ten past four in the morning. I was drenched in sweat and my pulse drummed in my ears. I gulped deep calming breaths. My throat felt scratchy. Not from an oncoming cold, from my interrupted dream.
I’d been spinning, whirling along with my bed, which floated above the floor, abruptly released from gravity. The sheet and quilt became restraints, imprisoning my arms and legs. The mask had begun its descent, cove
ring my mouth, my nose, choking me, stealing my breath.…
Why had I assumed oxygen, air, anything, in the mask? Why not the simple absence of air? Nose and mouth covered, airways blocked … would Rebecca have lashed out, squirmed, and kicked? Would Tina Sukhia have recognized her distress for what it was? Suffocation.
What it might have been, I amended. I could hardly ask Tina now, and I doubted “suffocation” would appear on Becca’s medical chart. I shut my eyes and tried to force myself back into the dream, to view the resolute face above the mask.
When I woke again, my alarm clock was on the floor where I must have hurled it. Sunlight flooded the curtains.
The house was still. Paolina slept, catching up for two late nights in a row. I tiptoed downstairs, brunched at my desk on crackers smeared with peanut butter.
The phone book gave only one number for JHHI. I didn’t want Admissions. I didn’t want Muir. I didn’t particularly want Personnel. I closed my eyes and came up with the name of the floor on which I’d spent so much time waiting: Eastman Two. I dialed and repeated the words to the operator.
I was almost certain the woman who picked up was Barbara, the dragon-lady receptionist. “May I speak to Miss Cates?” I said clearly.
“Who?”
“Savannah Cates.”
“Oh, Savannah. Right. She’s no longer with us.”
Damn. “Is she ill?” I asked.
“Who is this?”
“Her sister. I’ve been trying to reach her at home—”
“Can you hold, please?” Barbara said, zapping me into limbo.
She was back in a minute, sounding harried. “Look, Savannah was temping with us. Try her agency, okay?”
The line went dead. There was an S. Cates in the book. I let the phone ring twenty times before I gave it up.
Harold Woodrow and Savannah Cates. An odd couple, but if Emily had hired me to prove infidelity, I’d have gone a long way toward earning my fee.
I gathered my uncombed hair into a messy topknot and yanked it, leaning way back in my chair and trying to figure a connection between Harold and Savannah that amounted to anything more sinister than sex. Could they have caused Emily’s disappearance? Could they be implicated in Rebecca’s death?
