"I give up."
"It's some kind of nurses' thing, only the fucking theme or whatever you call it is 'Sexually Transmitted Diseases.' The computer screen's rolling panels with titles like 'Dysfunctional Vaginal Bleeding' and 'Canker Sores of the Male Organ,' and I say to myself, 'Fuck, the vibes this board's giving off, there ain't gonna be nobody laid in this hotel for a year.' "
Zuppone's laugh was cut short by the gate agent's announcement that our flight was just hooking up to the jetway. He rose to look and said, "Come on."
"No."
"What do you mean, no?"
"I mean I'm not setting up Alfonso DiRienzi for your hitters."
His face coloring, Zuppone sat back down. "Cuddy, they aren't 'my hitters." They're the guys have a score to settle with a certain bean counter who betrayed them."
"I don't see the difference?
"The difference is that my people owe the Milwaukee people a favor, and the coordinator I told you about let the cat out of the fucking bag that 'we' know where the rat is. And that 'we' includes you, since it was the fucking favor you asked with the photo that got me into this situation in the first fucking place."
"And they expect you to produce me for a little talking to."
Primo shrugged. "You might say that, yeah."
"Not tonight."
"What?"
"They know who I am?"
"Cuddy, you winking out on me or what'? They never fucking met you before."
"So they don't know my name."
Zuppone struggled to keep his voice down. "Of course they don't know your fucking name."
"All right, then. You tell them you've been trying to reach me. Tell them you camped out in front of my house and I never showed up."
"Your car's there now."
"Tell them it wasn't when you left."
"Cuddy," the face getting more flushed, "why should I tell them any of this fucking shit?"
I pointed to the jetway. "Because when they come through that door, I'm going to be holding one of the telephones next to us, speaking on an open line to Boston Homicide. Just to make sure nothing cute happens here."
Zuppone glanced nervously at the jetway door. "You got rocks in your head or what? These guys just flew how many fucking miles to talk to you tonight, get this thing done.”
"You tell them you're working on finding me, and meanwhile you'll show them the city."
"Show them the city? Cuddy, these guys didn't come here to shop Quincy fucking Market. They came here to avenge the family honor and fly the fuck back.”
The gate agent opened the doorway, putting on a year book smile to greet the arrivals.
I said to Zuppone, "I'm going to make the call, and then I'll try you tomorrow on your car phone."
"Tomorrow'? What the fuck am I supposed—"
I stood up and walked over to the phone bank. After I picked up a receiver and dialed, Primo took a series of breaths, the color in his face finally returning to normal. Only three people—an older couple with what looked like a granddaughter-came through the doorway and into the lounge before two men appeared and nodded to Primo. Both wore suits. One was tall, stooped, and balding. The other was husky, with dark, styled hair. Neither of them looked anything like the two guys who had worked me over behind my office building, but the husky one, talking animatedly to Zuppone, was familiar in a different way. There was an obvious scar line through his left eyebrow, a lot like the one Primo described as belonging to the son of the "gentleman" Alfonso DiRienzi had helped send to prison.
=14=
To allow Primo Zuppone enough head start to clear the baggage carousel area downstairs, I stayed at the arrival lounge telephones. Trying Olga Evorova's home number, I got an outgoing tape, her voice anonymously announcing, "Please, leave your message." After the beep, I said to call me at my home number as soon as possible, any hour. Then I dialed the bank number and left the same on her voice-mail.
Trying Nancy at home next, I got her machine too. After a similar beep, I said into the receiver, "Nance, if you're there, please pick up," but only static crackled back at me. I replaced the receiver and thought about it. I could go to Nancy's in South Boston by taxi, but I'd have to make the driver wait, because if she didn't answer her door, I'd be stuck over there without a car, and hailing or calling a second cab would mean hiking to Broadway. On the other hand, I could go to Evorova's apartment on Beacon Hill by taxi. If she didn't answer her door, I'd be within walking distance of my parking space, assuming Primo and the Milwaukee contingent weren't already planted outside the condo building, watching for me to do just that. Then I could drive to Nancy's, and my car wouldn't be where I'd told Primo to tell the hitters it wasn't.
I checked my watch, sat for another five minutes trying to think of a better plan, and finally went downstairs to the revolving door marked GROUND TRANSPORTATION.
* * *
I had the cabbie drop me at Joy Street, a few blocks from Evorova's address. Then I zigzagged another two blocks around it. Given the narrow, one-way streets on the Hill, there was no way anybody in a car could follow me without tipping themselves, and nobody on foot who looked like one of Primo's "associates" stayed close.
Finally reaching Evorova's building, I saw the telephone-style keypad at the main entrance and realized that if I punched in her code, I'd only be ringing her phone, and therefore would still get just her answering machine. I tried anyway, heard the "Please, leave your message," and said it was me, waiting downstairs, and if she was there, would she please pick up or buzz the outer door. Neither happened, so I pressed the HANG UP button, then walked around the block to the back of her building.
There was a parking area tucked into what should have been the rear garden of the first floor unit, but I didn't see the orange Porsche Carrera my client had told me she owned. One slot stood empty. though, between a green Mercedes and a gray Lexus, and I figured I'd done as much as I could about warning Olga Evorova about "her Andrew," at least for the night.
Using a similar zigzag pattern, I walked down to Charles Street and over to Beacon. I went west up Marlborough to approach my building, then loitered at the corner of Fairfield for a while, watching the Prelude in its space under the streetlamp. Expanding my field of vision a few parked cars at a time, I didn't see any people obviously sitting in them.
Moving as casually as possible to my driver's side door, I opened it, slid behind the wheel, and started the engine.
Nobody tried to block me in as I backed out, and no vehicle seemed to stay in my rearview mirror very long on the drive to Southie.
* * *
I left the car around the corner from the Lynches' three-decker. At their stoop, I pushed Nancy's button. No fancy phone pads or intercoms in this neighborhood, just old-fashioned bells that rang above doorways upstairs. I pictured her coming down the interior staircase, a towel over her right hand, a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard with shrouded hammer under the towel, in case a customer she'd nailed in court had somehow gotten the prosecutor's address and decided to cross the line.
I waited a minute, then forced myself to use my watch to wait a full minute more. I tried her button again. Same lapse of time, same lack of response.
Mrs. Lynch, in her sixties, lived alone on the first floor. Her son, Drew, shared the second with his wife and baby. I pushed the middle button.
When the front door opened a foot, Drew stood inside wearing a hooded gray sweatshirt over red sweatpants, his right arm hanging straight down from the shoulder, the hand hidden behind his thigh. As he recognized me, the right hand came out, relaxing its grip on a long-barreled revolver.
"Drew, I'm really sorry to disturb you, but Nancy's not answering her phone or the bell, and I'm kind of worried."
A nod. "I heard her walking around the kitchen above us, so she's there."
I didn't ask to come in, but he swung the door wide for me to enter. Saying thanks, I moved past him and up the stairs, trying my best not to take them two at a time. On the third la
nding, I waited until I heard Drew's apartment door close below me, then knocked gently on Nancy's. I could hear Renfield pawing against the other side, but nothing else. I knocked louder, and the cat upped the ante too, now mewling a little as he couldn't get at whatever was on my side of the door.
I bent down and over the sill said, "Renfield, tell her if she doesn't open up, I'm kicking it in."
That's when the deadbolt clicked back, and the door finally cracked ajar.
Renfield scuttled out, his bent rear legs churning like a locomotive's wheel linkage, his clawless front paws trying to burrow a hole through my shoe laces. Nancy stood in front of me. She wore a cotton turtleneck under a fuzzy mauve robe, knee socks going up past the hem of the robe. Her eyes were red, and her hair was mussed, but less like she'd been lying down and more like she'd been tossing and turning.
In a hurt voice, Nancy said, "Didn't you get my message?"
"No. When did you leave me one?"
"A couple of hours ago."
Well after I'd checked in from Vermont. "What did your message say?"
Nancy closed her eyes. "That I was still on trial tomorrow, and couldn't see you tonight because I wasn't feeling well and had to make up for all the time I lost today."
The explanation sounded brittle. "Time you lost going to the doctor's?"
Opening her eyes, she started to say something, then stopped.
"Nance, how about if you let me in?"
A frown.
I said, "Maybe before Renfield tears the shoes from my feet?"
She stepped back and turned away, the cat leaving me alone as he trailed her into the apartment.
I came through the door and closed it behind me, noticing the tape from our Scottish fiddle night still on the shelf near her telephone. Then I followed Nancy and Renfield into the living room.
She plopped herself down on the couch, the cat at his station under the glass-topped coffee table, where I'd feed him scraps if we were eating. But instead of food covering the table, there was only a half-glass of white wine and a box of tissues, some soul-rending jazz piano at low volume coming from the stereo.
I sat across from her on a chair. "Nance?"
"It's just . . ." She ran a hand through her hair. "It's just this stuff they're doing at the courthouse?
"What stuff?"
"Well, when you came to pick me up, you saw all the scaffolding they have against the building?"
"Yes?"
"They've been renovating, but they put some kind of waterproofing chemical on the outside last June, and when the fumes seeped into the rooms, everybody started feeling sick."
"Sick how?"
"Oh, nausea, dizziness"—Nancy gestured at her face—“itchy eyes, even migraines?
"And that's the problem?”
"Yes," unconvincingly.
"Nance?"
"What?"
"The fumes have been there since June, and they're only getting to you in October?"
"They affect different people differently. And different parts of the courthouse at different times."
I just stared at her.
She said, "The Clerk's office got the worst of it at first, and they closed the whole building four days in August while a vent system was being installed. Even the people just using the Social Law Library felt it."
I stared some more.
"The Appeals Court is way up on fifteen, John, and three of the judges had to be moved off-site—they're doing their business now from Middlesex and even Concord District Court via personal computers and fax machines."
"Nancy."
Now she stared at me.
I said, "Making it longer doesn't make it better."
"Doesn't make what better?"
"Your story about the fumes."
Her expression hardened.
I ignored it. "Now, what's really going on?"
Her face turned harder still, then cracked in a way I'd seen only once before. When she'd had to kill someone trying to kill me.
"Oh, John . . ." She brought her face down to her hands, and began to shudder. "Jesus Mary, I didn't want this."
In one motion, I shifted over to the couch and closed my arms around her. All the muscles felt clenched, and she began rocking, like her stomach hurt.
"Nance?" I lowered my voice to a whisper. "Nance, please tell me. Whatever it is."
She kept rocking and began crying. I stroked her back with my right hand, deeply, almost like a massage. Nancy lifted her face a notch, glancing at me rather than turning. "I saw my doctor, and she . . . examined my breast, and she said I ought to go for a . . . tissue sample."
I felt a little part of me die inside. "When are you scheduled?"
Now Nancy turned toward me. "It's already happened. The doctor sent me immediately, this morning right after the examination."
"And?"
"It'll be a while before we have any results. She told me she'd try to get the lab to rush it, but then . . ." A weak smile as Nancy looked away. "I guess she probably says that to all the women she treats, because we'd all want to know as soon as possible."
"What else did the doctor say?"
"Oh, she was very good, John, very reassuring. She asked me if there was any history of breast . . . of it in my family, and I said no. But, Jesus, back then, I'm not sure I would have known if one of my aunts ever had something like that. I mean, nobody talked about it, and my mom sure never mentioned anything before she died."
I didn't want to interrupt.
"And then the doctor asked me when I first noticed the lump myself, and I had to tell her, I wasn't sure." Nancy turned to me. "And she tried, John, she really tried not to let the look show on her face, the look I try not to show the cops when I know they've been procedurally stupid in handling a suspect, and the officer involved begins to realize he or she may have blown the case."
"Nance-”
"The doctor told me that given my age, it's probably just a cyst, like I said when you found it. But I could tell she was doing the same thing I do with the cops, trying to restore their confidence about testifying—hell, about being cops, about doing their job, when they have screwed up royally. And then she said even if there was a problem, it might be just cancer in situ, not cancer per se."
"What's the difference?"
"The way she described it, cancer in situ is kind of precancerous."
I said, "Which would be . . . good, right?"
"Not exactly." Nancy looked down at her hands, moving one then the other, as though she were weighing things in them. "The traditional treatment for that is mastectomy."
I tried not to react. "What else did the doctor say?"
“She wanted to make me feel better about not having . . . examined myself, that the lump was probably growing there for years before I would have felt it by self-examination. But I could tell she was just saying that, the way I talk to the cops."
Nancy's voice grew deeper, slower. "And then I went down to where they take the biopsy—the tissue sample, John—with this . . ." She faltered. "And after it was over, I had to get dressed again and go back to the office and back to the trial and back in front of the jury, in my nice suit and two-inch heels. Because that's what the jury expects every female lawyer to wear, John, high heels, at least if she's still . . . I was going to say attractive, but . . ."
Nancy dropped her face again into her hands. I said, "Is that why you wouldn't return my calls?"
She looked up. "What?"
"Is the tissue sample and all the reason why you wouldn't tell me what was going on?"
A deep breath. "Partly. But mostly it was . . ." Nancy searched my eyes, curling her lips like someone without their false teeth in. "John, I know what you went through with Beth."
“Nance—"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it to sound that way. What I meant was, I knew that you'd been through all this once, and what it did to you, and I couldn't, I just couldn't tell you that it might be starting all over again with—"
> "Nancy, stop."
She did.
I said, "I don't know much about breast cancer, but I l did learn something about how you deal with the risk of cancer in general. You notice what might be a problem, like we did on Tuesday night, and you get tested, like you I did this morning. And then you have to wait for the results."
A tentative nod.
I brought my hand up to her cheek, tracing my fingertips down toward her chin. "And the person who loves you does the wait with you."
She closed her eyes, the tears starting again, following after my lingers. "John, you don't understand. They took this needle, and they had to stick it in—"
"Can I see?"
Nancy opened her eyes.
I said, "Can I see where they did this?"
She shook her head. "Not yet, I'm not . . . ready."
Okay. "Then how about if I touch but don't look?"
l Another weak smile. "Give me your hand."
I let her take the left one, as though she were a palm reader, about to predict my fortune.
Nancy brought my index and middle fingers toward her, then beneath the robe but outside the turtleneck, before stopping short. "It's still very tender under the bandage."
"I understand."
"It really hurt, even to have my bra on over it."
This time I just nodded.
Nancy brought me in contact, I could feel the bandage as she flinched.
"Sorry," she said, giving my hand back and shaking her head. "It didn't hurt when you touched it, I was just afraid it would."
"Tell you what, then."
"What?"
"How about if I go to the kitchen and get that Alasdair Fraser tape and put it on? Then we might have some wine and kind of cuddle up here until you fall asleep."
Nancy swiped at her tears, once with the forehand, then with the back. "I think that would be the bestest couple of hours I've had in two days."
"It's going to be more than a couple of hours, Nance."
I took both of her hands in mine. "It's going to be all night, every night."
"What comes after . . . 'bestest'?"
We both laughed, but as I stood and walked toward the kitchen, I heard the faint rustling sound of tissues being tom from their box. And I tried to close the door in my heart on what I remembered from years before, with the only other woman I'd ever loved.
Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy Page 14
