by David Daniel
The trees were spangled with yellows and oranges and arterial reds, though in six weeks’ time, with wind and one good drenching rain—a real October reaper—the leaves would be sopped all over the streets like the tears of autumn, where car tires and pedestrian feet would beat them to a brown paste. For now, however, September was in her glory. At Bihoco I was too early for the swarms of lovers and families, so I had the waiting area to myself. I wasn’t sure that Pepper would even agree to see me, but after a few minutes he came in, his cheeks stubbled and wan against the bright jumpsuit, his red-rimmed eyes evasive, and I wondered if it was the sleepless look of a man tormented by guilt. He sat across from me, and I asked if he had seen the news.
He nodded. “On the TV in the mess hall.”
I mentioned Rag Tyme, and he professed to know very little about the outfit beyond the fact that people had brought up the name on occasion. “So who are they?” he asked.
“There have been some feeble attempts at explaining them,” I said, “but they’re all variations on a theme that spells ‘loan sharks.’ They’d bristle at the idea, of course. Their contracts apparently pass legal muster. Did Flora ever mention them?”
“No. What are you saying?”
“Tell me about Ray Embry.”
He blinked. “Rogo the Klown works for them?”
“Have you had any problems with him?”
“I hardly know the guy.”
“Can you see him having any reason to get you in trouble?”
“What?” He frowned. “I can’t say I’m crazy about him—I think he’s a pain in the ass … but no.”
If true, it confirmed my feeling that Rag Tyme’s appearance wasn’t connected with the killing. I was fishing, plain and simple, but my questions had thrown Pepper off balance; they’d chipped his stony silence and gotten him speaking more than monosyllables. I didn’t spend time wondering why. “I spoke with Flora’s friend Lucy Colon. She said that she thought Flora seemed nervous about something the last time they talked. She seems to think that the cause was you,” I said.
“Me?” He licked his lips anxiously.
“It’s not an unreasonable idea.”
His brow knit. “I don’t even know the woman. Anyways, I told you. I’d never hurt Flora.”
“Yet she took out a restraining order.”
“That was in the past, a mistake.”
Now I was the one to keep silent, waiting for him to go on. Which, after a pause, he did. “I don’t know … nervous. Well …” He sighed. “When I saw Flora on Sunday morning, she seemed a little scared.”
“Did you ask her about it? Or tell anyone else?”
“I was waiting for her to tell me, if she wanted to. But I don’t think it was about me.”
“Why’s that?”
“We’d talked a little about that time in New Jersey—the restraining order, how I was supposed to keep away from her. Though I didn’t even know where she was then. But she said it was a mistake.”
“A mistake. The restraining order? Or coming here to Lowell?”
“Both, I guess. I don’t know if she said it, but I think she meant because it caused her more trouble.”
“In what way?”
“I don’t know.”
I stared at him. “You didn’t ask her?”
“I guess I was a little scared, too.”
“What about?”
He lowered his eyes, and I waited for them to come back, but they didn’t. He went on staring down. “Thinking … maybe she was seeing someone else, and she was scared to tell me. Or maybe she was worried because she was going to break something else off.”
“Why would she fear that?” I looked at him, but he wouldn’t look up. “Was she seeing someone else?”
Now he did look at me, and his voice was a murmur. “I don’t know.”
I thought about that. If there were another person, would that person hurt her? Would he have killed her? I let out a breath. “Come on, Troy. I need something here if you’ve got it.”
He looked away. I thought of what Fred Meecham had said about Pepper not being a very persuasive witness. He seemed to lack energy, and I couldn’t see him convincing a jury that the case against him was wrong. We sat there in a sluggish little pool of silence, and then from my shirt pocket I took a juror ballot card and laid it on the ledge between us. Pepper stared at it a moment. “What’s this?”
“The fruit of Mary’s womb. It was in a statue on an altar in Flora’s apartment.”
“How’d you—” He broke off. “What’s it supposed to mean?”
“I was hoping you’d explain it to me.”
He looked at the card again, examining it as intently as Moses Maxwell did the Times crossword puzzle, then shook his head blankly. “I don’t know.”
“These places with the T beside them—were you with her on those dates?”
“Huh? I don’t know. No.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“What’s going on?”
“I talked to Sonders already. The show was in Connecticut on two of those dates, en route elsewhere on the other. You were traveling, right?”
He shrugged.
“Possibly you called Flora and talked by telephone.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Definitely maybe!” I wanted to reach through the barrier and grab him and drag him forward and bang his head. I actually felt my hands twitch with the impulse. Controlling it, I said, “Give it to me straight. What happened on those days? What’s this mean? T is you, right?” My voice had risen. The guard glanced our way.
Pepper looked at the card, but he only frowned. I put the card away. He didn’t move, thinking maybe, then said, “Pop’s in bad trouble, isn’t he?”
“Pop?” His response surprised me. “What about you?”
“But Pop … tell me.”
“Yeah, he’s in trouble. Maybe worse than he knows.”
Deep lines etched themselves in his face. The guard signaled that our time was up. Pepper rose obediently. As he started to turn away, he stopped. He leaned toward me. “Pop’s got other stuff to worry about. Make him forget about me.”
I rose, too. Was he telling me something? But he turned and went out with the guard.
30
It was almost noon by the time I got parked and through security at the superior courthouse. Some of the proceedings were in recess, and people scurried through the lobby, a few looking relieved, others resigned, some beating it outside for a quick cigarette. There was no sign of Meecham.
“Alex?”
A woman in a flowered blue dress with padded shoulders set a book down on the bench beside her and rose. I went over. The calm oval face framed by brown hair pulled back in a braid was familiar, though she had to remind me. “Janelle. Phoebe’s friend from the office.”
“Of course.” Cobblestones the other night. The quiet one. “You have jury duty”
She smiled. “I got impaneled. I can’t say any more about it.” She zipped her fingers across her lips.
“Your secret’s safe with me. What’re you reading?”
She held up the book, which was by some Indian yogi whose name I didn’t have enough time to try to say. “I’m practicing being a center of stillness,” she said, “letting things remain in the realm of pure thought and not become action, which is where trouble starts. I like to just sit.”
“It seems to be working. You’re the only thing here not gyrating.”
“All crime grows from desire. Enlightenment means we can get beyond crime. If we could manifest that, it’d be a new world. This whole structure—the courts and juries and bail bondsmen—would become totally superfluous.”
“I’d get lonely.”
“No, because you’d be unnecessary, too. This you, anyway. A new you could devote your time to love relationships and just being.”
“Of course. What was I thinking?”
She smiled. “I know—where’s the airy music? It sounds pai
nful, but it’s not. It would just free us all to become who we really and truly are. I’ve come to believe that well-being is a lack of consciousness about ourselves, or about anything at all. But believing is one thing, becoming it …” She rolled her eyes.
I spotted Fred Meecham descending the broad stairway, and I told Janelle I had to go.
“Glad you could make it,” Meecham said. “I’d suggest we go grab lunch, but I’m due back upstairs before you can say habeas corpus. Let me just duck in here a moment.”
When he came out of the men’s room, we went down to a basement-level snack shop and got coffee in paper cups. Fred explained that he had tried to get the desist order lifted so at least the carnival could begin working again, or be released to go elsewhere, but no dice. I told him about Louis Hackett and his paean to the common man. Meecham grimaced. “Is there a chance that Sonders could really lose the carnival?”
“Rag Tyme makes their point the way sentimental heavies always do,” I said. “They hit you over the heart. If that doesn’t work, they break your legs. This time I think they’re just going to wait until Sonders can’t pay his bill.”
“And then it’s theirs.” Meecham sighed. “Well, it’s the criminal case we’ve got to concern ourselves with. That’s what’s pressing right now.”
When he’d headed back upstairs to tilt with the windmills of the system, I checked to see how Janelle was coming with being the calm center, but she was gone. I found the building locator in its glass case and checked the names. On the restraining order that Flora Nuñez had filed at the court, a Carly Ouellette had signed as a witness to the signature.
According to the courthouse directory, she was an assistant to Judge Martin Travani, with an office on the third floor.
A white-haired custodian was swinging a wet mop, leaving gleaming swooshes on the worn terrazzo. He nodded me past a set of double oak doors to the first door on the left. A sign on the pebbled glass read JUDGES’ LOBBY, and I went in and asked the matronly-looking woman seated there at a desk for Ms. Ouellette. Carly wasn’t in, she said; she was in Cambridge, where the county’s other superior courthouse was located. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“On a request for a 209-A, is the witness verifying the reported events or just vouching for the signature?”
“No, the witness is vouching for the signature. Or sometimes, with people who can’t speak English too good, the witness might help them translate to fill out the form. And then the police get a copy and …”
She walked me through it. It was mostly as I’d understood it. I thanked her for her help. “I do have one further question for Ms. Ouellette. Could I leave a number for her to call?”
She took my card and said she’d pass it along.
In my car on the way back to the office, I phoned Phoebe, who generally took her lunch break out of the office, but she was there today. Getting settled into her new cubicle, she said.
“The one by the window?”
“Someone else got that.” I heard momentary disappointment, but her enthusiasm bobbed to the surface again almost at once. “I jumped one desk closer, though. And thank you for the flowers. I’ve got them right here.”
I beamed. “You’re welcome. Are we on for tonight?”
“I’m counting on it. But, hey—is it okay if we stay in?”
“You don’t want to try that new restaurant?”
“I’m just feeling a little wimpy. I’m not sure I want to be out.”
“With me, you mean?”
“No, silly. But the mood in town … this carnival case has made things crazy. I hear they’re now convinced that fire was arson.” I’d missed that but it wasn’t surprising news. “So I was thinking—dinner at my place? I grill a mean Rock Cornish hen. I could invite some friends.”
“Yes to the mean hen, but you’re the only company I want.”
Sociability was a theme we’d discussed before. She said therapy had helped her discover that with the pain of her sudden widowhood, she’d filled the hole with friends but also developed a fear of trying new romantic relationships. She was trying to change that. I asked what I should bring, and she said, “Surprise me.”
“On the topic of people …” I told her about Lucy Colón’s turnabout, without mentioning names. I valued her insights. “What would keep someone from talking?”
“She’s not suspected of being guilty of anything, is she?”
“No.”
“Then it sounds as if she’s scared.”
“Of what?”
“What women are often scared of. That kind of scared, anyway. A man.”
A gaggle of elderly people were milling around on the sidewalk in front of the city library, showing each other their large-print book selections, happy as kindergartners as they prepared to trundle aboard a bright yellow school bus. They’d gone full cycle and looked as if they were enjoying it. I enjoyed just seeing them there.
In the reference room I dug up a Dun and Bradstreet report on Rag Tyme Shows, and a profile piece that had appeared in the Wall Street Journal eighteen months ago, under the title “Talking ‘Rag Tyme.’” In it, Louis Hackett was quoted as saying that his business was “like trying to knock over the milk bottles in an arcade—not easy, but if you succeed, you get the prize.” They’d started out operating a small show. In the past four years they had bought out half a dozen competitors, not with any desire to operate them but to absorb their assets and shut them down. Rag Tyme was a privately held outfit, with Hackett and Spritzer listed as the principals, backed by something called the East River Trust. There was a New York City address and a phone number.
I went out to the library lobby to use my cell phone. I got an answering machine that told me the number I had just called and said I could leave a message. I left my name and number and asked to have someone get back to me. As I was pocketing my phone, a woman backed into my arms. I caught her and she turned, sputtering apologies. It was fine with me, I told her. She’d been stepping back from a big glass display case. Inside it I saw an assortment of papier-mâché, ceramic, and old cloth jack-o’-lanterns interspersed with an array of books about Halloween.
“Did you do this?” I asked. “It’s good.”
She beamed. “Halloween is over two thousand years old, did you know that? I just learned it. The ancient Celts held a ceremony to mark the end of summer—and the start of the long, cold winter.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
She smiled. “They believed that the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead become blurred. They celebrated Samhain, when they believed the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In Mexico, it’s El Día de los Muertos. Oh, it goes on … it’s fascinating. You can read it for yourself—we’ve got a lot more books inside, for all ages. Enjoy the day.”
Outside the library, which sat just around the corner from city hall and police headquarters, I saw a runner come to a stop, glance at the big sports watch on her wrist, then put her hands on her hips and continue to jog in place for a moment. With her brown ponytail bobbing in the sunlight, she looked a bit like a schoolgirl, though I hadn’t forgotten the six-pack abs I’d seen at the West Side Gym. She quit bouncing and did a few side bends, then leaned against a concrete parking barrier to stretch. I went over. “You are ambitious.”
She looked up and straightened, recognizing me. “It’s an alternative to heavy lunches. You were a cop, you know how we eat.”
I rubbed my stomach. “The memory lingers on. How about a light lunch? On me.”
“Thanks anyway. I’ve got to go shower and get back to work.”
“Another time, maybe. Have you got time for a couple of quick questions?”
She shielded her eyes with her hand and regarded me. “Come on, I want to walk this off. Then I have to get back to work.”
We set off toward Post Office Square. I wondered aloud, “At the carnival site, the distance from the suspect’s trailer to the place where Flora Nuñez was found
is close to a hundred yards. I keep wondering how the suspect could have gotten her out there without anyone seeing it.”
“No one claims to have seen anything?”
“Evidently not. Which leads to my real question. Could someone else have dumped the body—maybe having driven it over and left it?”
She looked up at me curiously, her lips pursed.
“I checked, and there’s an area on the other side where a vehicle could get partway back. There’d be cover from the trees, and the distance to the drop spot would be less by half. Of course, it raises other questions,” I admitted. “If that happened, who did it? Because Pepper seems to have been on site all afternoon and evening. So did he have an accomplice? Or—”
“Did someone else kill that woman?” Officer Loftis finished my question. “Look, I wish I had answers. I’d love to be the one who broke the case. But I don’t. Officer Duross and I were on detail that night. I think we’d have seen or heard about anything like that. But this is stuff for the detectives.”
“Sure, agreed. I’m just jamming here, trying to open up possibilities that may not have been considered.”
“Well, that’s your job, I suppose. But I really have nothing for you.”
“Maybe just your listening is helpful. How about Officer Duross? He seems to still be on the case.”
Abruptly, she stopped walking and faced me. The runner’s flush was fading, and she had a lean, weathered look, just a little too drawn from relentless exercise. “You need to realize that I’ve got a job, too.”
“I know.”
“I’m not sure you do. What are you really doing here? You weren’t just passing by.”
