Shallow Graves

by Jeremiah Healy

  Somebody nine feet tall probably could reach and pull down the raised, last flight of fire escape. The green trash cans were ribbed plastic and looked sturdy enough to support my weight. I had just positioned the second can under the escape when the basement door opened.

  A man dressed in droopy pants and a strappy T-shirt put one foot over the threshold, keeping the other inside the door. Maybe five six, he had the face of a pug from the club fights at union halls in Dorchester. Both eyebrows had divots missing, and the nose detoured more than once on its way to his mouth. The left ear was cauliflowered, the right loppy, like the Velveteen Rabbit. His hair was black, thinning unevenly at the crown, scruffy around the sides. Pushing fifty, his head flicked right, like he was ducking a punch, and he sniffed twice in quick succession through his nose.

  “Whaddaya think you’re doing?”

  “You the superintendent?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “John Cuddy.” I reached into a pocket for my ID. “I tried the buzzer and knocked.”

  He brought the other foot outside and stood in front of me. I handed him the holder, open. He stretched out his arms and studied it.

  “I’m a private investigator, Mr.… ?”

  He looked up from the ID, then down again, although there was no picture on it to compare against me.

  “Whaddaya want from me?”

  I extended my hand for the holder, which he gave back carefully. “I represent the company that insured the life of the woman who died here.”

  “The … ?”

  “She was a model. Mau Tim Dani?”

  This time he winced before flick, sniff/sniff. “I don’t know nothing about that. Nothing.”

  “That’s okay. I’d appreciate your letting me see the apartment, though.”

  “What for?”

  “She was killed there, Mr.… ?

  “Don’t mister me, pal. Okay?”

  Not my best start ever. “Okay. You got a first name?”

  “Yeah. Carmine.”

  “All right. Carmine—”

  “But everybody calls me Ooch.”

  “Ooch?”

  “Yeah. From when I was in the ring. The other guy’d hit me, everybody went ‘Ooch! You see that shot?’ ”

  I laughed politely. “You fight, you’re going to get hit, right?”

  “You can take it from me.”

  “So, can I get a look at the place?”

  Flick, sniff/sniff. “No way.”

  “I have a letter here from the company.”

  “I don’t know from no letter. The owners told me nobody gets in without they say it’s okay.”

  “You let the police in, didn’t you?”

  “No. The others let them in. I wasn’t here.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Over to the gym. They was going to have a party up there.” He gestured toward the elevated first floor. “They get loud, the music, you know? I get itchy, gets too loud down there.” He gestured back toward the basement door.

  “Where do you work out?”

  “The Y. Over by Northeastern. Ain’t too many real gyms left.”

  “What time you get over there?”

  He shrugged. “I worked out, is all.”

  “Then came back here?”

  “Uh-unh. Had a few beers along the way. Didn’t want to get back till they was all out for dinner.”

  “I thought there was supposed to be a party?”

  “Yeah, but Sinead, she said Tina and them were going out to eat after. So I could come back then, it wouldn’t be loud no more.”

  “Tina?”

  “Huh?”

  “Who’s Tina?”

  “Tina’s … ” Flick, sniff/sniff. “Tina’s dead.”

  “I thought her name was Mau Tim?”

  “That’s what she called herself, for the modeling and all.”

  “What was her real name?”

  “Tina. Whaddaya, deaf or something?”

  I smiled. “How can I get in touch with the owner?”

  Ooch stopped. “I’ll call them, let them know you were asking.”

  I reached into my side pocket, found a business card. “You can call me there. Leave a message if I’m not in.”

  Taking the card, Ooch said, “Right, right.” Then he pointed with it. “You don’t mind, you put those cans back where you found them.”

  “Sure.” I started moving one of them.

  “The city, they raise hell with me, those cans ain’t right along the building ’cept for Tuesdays and Fridays.”

  I came back for the second can. “Trash days.”

  “Right.”

  I replaced the second can. “So, Tuesday and Friday mornings, you put the cans at the alley, the truck picks up the trash, and you put these cans back against the wall.”

  “Right, right.”

  “And you did that a week ago Friday, too.”

  “A course I did.”

  “And they were still against the wall after the police were here that night?”

  “Yeah. I even checked, after they went.” Flick, sniff/sniff. “Fucking cops, you can’t trust them to do nothing right.”

  “When you checked the cans, did you find anything else back here?”

  A blank expression. “Like what?”

  “A rake, maybe?”

  “A rake?” Ooch’s eyes went around the bricked space of his and the adjoining buildings. “You see any lawns back here, pal?”

  “How about a push broom, even a piece of rope with a hook or bar tied to it?”

  “No. Whaddaya, crazy?”

  I looked up the fire escape. “Too bad you weren’t here.”

  “Huh?”

  “Earlier that night, when Tina was killed. Too bad you weren’t here. You might have stopped it.”

  A pained expression, like he hadn’t thought about that before. Then flick, sniff/sniff. “I was here, none of this woulda happened to her.”

  Ooch got weepy. “I was here, I woulda killed the bum did this. Tina was a good girl.”

  He moved back into the doorway, drawing the strap of the T-shirt up to dry his eyes before closing the door behind him.

  I stood in the alley for a while. Holt might have been lying to me back at Homicide. Or maybe he just didn’t throw me a “little chunk” about what his people found behind the building.

  Staring at the back wall of Number 10 Falmouth Street, I tried to figure out how a burglar could get up to Mau Tim Dani’s apartment by the fire escape without using the cans, or a rake or something, to pull down that raised last flight.

  Five

  I DROVE FROM THE South End toward my neighborhood. In a parking lot on Newbury Street, a guy was maneuvering a large vehicle that had to be seen to be appreciated. Or believed. A brown, swaybacked tube of a cabin like a hot dog was laid partially inside a yellow chassis and frame like a bun. A meat company’s name was printed on the side of the cabin. The passengers could see through Flash Gordon windows at the front and use a hatch where a panel truck’s door would be. I tried not to embarrass the driver as I went by and headed the Prelude back to its space a few blocks away.

  The address Harry Mullen gave me for the Lindqvist/Yulin Agency was on upper Newbury, but when I got to the numbered front door, there was no sign on the building that the agency was located inside. The outside door was unlocked, however, and the mailboxes in the foyer showed a listing for both the agency and a “LINDQVIST, E.” on the next floor. I pressed the button by the agency name, and the inner door buzzed long enough to let me pass through it. I climbed stairs, one office suite to a floor, until I reached the fourth level and a yellow six-panel with brass knob that had the agency name on a brass plate. I knocked and a male voice said to come in.

  As I swung the door inward, I saw a man about my age and height in blue jeans, turtleneck, and a corduroy Norfolk jacket. He was good-looking in a college professor way, but with a weak chin and shaggy hair, as though he’d told the barber to give
him a Beatles look, then said, what the hell, take off another two inches. The hair seemed black and silver, but more like each strand was half each color. He used a telephone receiver to beckon me into the reception area while his free hand reached for a loose-leaf binder on a shelf behind a desk.

  The man was saying, “Right, Kyle. Trunks, athletic wear … Half day guaranteed at a thousand … No, plus agency fee. Any problem if it runs over? … Over half a day, what do you think? … Good, good … No, no your legs are fine. You get a chance, you might work on the upper body a little … No, generally it’s fine, Kyle, you’re in great shape, but for this one … Right, right, a swimwear catalog, not just a department store—what? … No, no tanner than you are now. Right, right.”

  I assumed I was watching George Yulin in action. I decided to wait until he got off the phone. The reception area had a love seat and two barrel chairs in complementary colors. I tried the love seat. On the beige walls were enlarged photos, all black and white, matted but not framed. A couple of advertisements were in stand-up cutouts, backed by cardboard. Most of the models shown were female, but three were male. One of the men flexed the kind of physique I might have had in college if I’d been eating complex carbohydrates instead of drinking them.

  Behind the guy on the phone was a restored brick wall and some leafy plants. He fingered one of the leaves and seemed close to finishing the call when a female voice said, “Can I help you?”

  I half turned and stood up. She was in the doorway to what looked like the front office. About five five without the two-inch heels, the woman had lush brown hair drawn back and down her neck. Maybe thirty-five, her face was a notch to the handsome side of pretty, with a perfect smile. The shoulders were a little broad for the body, and her breasts inside a turquoise dress were no more prominent than the pockets on a lumberjack’s shirt.

  “Are you Ms. Lindquist?”

  “Lind-qvist,” coming down on the “v,” but still beaming the smile.

  “Sorry. My name’s John Cuddy. I wonder if I could talk with you for a while.”

  “About what?”

  “I’m representing Empire Insurance on the claim you have on one of your models.”

  “The claim—oh.” The smile faded. “You mean Mau Tim, don’t you.”

  Lindqvist pronounced it “Mahow Tim,” just like Harry Mullen had. As I said “Yes,” the man on the phone said, “Kyle … Kyle I have to hang up now,” and put the receiver down.

  He said, “Mau Tim’s death was a terrible shock to all of us.”

  “Mr. Yulin?”

  “Yes. Yes, George Yulin.”

  He came around the desk as Lindqvist came a step further into the reception area. I shook hands with him, then with Lindqvist.

  Yulin said, “I have to admit, I’m impressed with your service.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Coming to deal with us only a week after I made the call, I mean.”

  “I’m a private investigator, Mr. Yulin. I’m looking into Ms. Dani’s death as part of processing your claim.”

  A different tone came into Lindqvist’s voice. “I thought the police said she was killed by a burglar?”

  “A policy this size, we do an independent investigation.”

  Lindqvist moved her tongue around inside her mouth. “Should we be calling our lawyers, Mr. Cuddy?”

  “That’s not up to me. I’m just here to ask you some questions, help the people I work for process your claim.”

  Yulin said, “What can there be to process? We had a policy for half a million dollars on the girl. She died, you pay, correct?”

  “The company decides that after they get my report.”

  The telephone began bleating like a sheep. Then another line joined in, just out of phase with the first. Lindqvist made no move for either, Yulin jumping for both.

  While her partner covered the calls, Lindqvist said to me, “If you want to confer with us, this isn’t a terrific time. We’re on the phone quite a lot during business hours.”

  Yulin hung up with identical promises to call back.

  “That’s okay. I’d rather talk to each of you separately anyway.”

  Lindqvist watched me while Yulin watched her. I was beginning to see why the agency was Lindqvist/Yulin rather than Yulin/Lindqvist.

  She revived the smile. “Fine. Let’s start with me. Come on in.”

  I followed her into the large front office. In addition to a desk with computer, calculator, and fax, there was a long conference table and six chairs in one corner. The office was decorated in blue and yellow: rug, walls, blinds, even furniture. The bay window behind the chair that Lindqvist took offered a 180-degree view of Newbury bustling with foot traffic below us.

  As I chose a seat across the desk from her, Lindqvist said, “I’ve never been investigated before. How does it work?”

  “I’m not investigating you, Ms. Lindqvist.”

  “Sure you are. And I can understand it. I just want to be helpful.”

  Sure you do. I took out my pad. “We can start with your first name.”

  “Erica. Full-blooded Swede, though you’d never know it to look at me.” She pointed to an old sepia photo in a frame on the corner of her desk. It showed a man with a handlebar mustache and a little boy with a mop of pale hair, both in homespun clothes. “That’s my grandfather and his grandfather, Mr. Cuddy—by the way, is it all right if I call you ‘John’?”

  “If you’d like.”

  “Fine. Why don’t you use ‘Erica’? A little easier to say than the hard ‘v.’ ”

  “Okay,” I said, kind of liking the way she’d taken charge of the conversation. Sometimes you learn more by letting the other side ask its own questions.

  “Well, John, my grandfather was in retailing, but his grandfather was an immigrant from north of Stockholm. Came over on the boat and made his way west to Minnesota, even fought Indians, believe it or not. Funny, I never thought much about Indians in Minnesota, as opposed to maybe Montana or the Dakotas. But that’s what he had to do, and quite a lot, too. You ever see A New Land?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a movie with Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman, all about that time. Terrific piece of work, but then I don’t suppose you need my Swedish heritage for your report.”

  “Probably not. What I could use is some background on Mau Tim Dani.”

  “Background.” Lindqvist shook her head. “That’ll be tough.”

  “Why?”

  “You know much about how the business works, John?”

  “If you mean modeling, no.”

  “Actually, I meant agenting, but let me give you a little orientation about both. George and I run this agency. We’re both called ‘directors,’ but basically that means we’re both like vice-presidents when there’s no one president.”

  “With you so far.”

  “I do the pitching, the rain-making, getting new accounts from ad agencies or the advertisers themselves. George does the booking, matching the right models for the right jobs. Sometimes it’s like a little of both. An ad guy will see our book and say, ‘How about Sandy on page ten, I like her. Can you send me her composite, maybe her mini-book?’ ”

  “Now you’ve lost me.”

  “Okay. The composite, that’s kind of like a brochure on the girl herself. Just a fold-over glossy piece, with a couple of photos of her, her measurements and specialties. The mini-book, that’s a more substantial … scrapbook of her, kind of. Quite a lot of photos, some tear sheets.”

  The “quite a lot” seemed to be Lindqvist’s catchphrase. “What are tear sheets?”

  “Ads actually run in Sunday supplements or whatever. We tear them out, put them in the mini-book so the ad guy or the client can see she actually is a professional.”

  “You represent only female models?”

  “Oh, no. We’re a full-service agency here. Male/female, fashion, corporate. Print as well as runway.”

  “By runway … ?”

  “Fashion
shows for designers or boutiques. They’ll hold them as a luncheon, invite the big-spenders off their mailing lists. We’ll supply the girls, who show the clothes off on the runway, then walk through the crowd during lunch, let the ladies see how nice the merchandise looks up close on a beautiful girl.”

  “With the price tag still on?”

  The beaming smile again. Like Nancy, a bright, direct woman who became more attractive the longer you talked to her.

  “Actually, they do have the tags still on the garments. Part of the cachet of going to the luncheon is seeing how much looking great costs.”

  “Did Ms. Dani do many of those?”

  The smile became wistful. “Mau Tim could have done just about anything she wanted, John. Elegant neck, generous mouth, perfect skin tone and bone structure. But most of all, those eyes. The most exotic girl I’ve ever seen.”

  “How did you come to represent her.”

  “The usual way. A scout.”

  “A talent scout?”

  “A photographer who spotted her in a mall. Or maybe just on the street, I’m not sure. But he spotted her, asked her if she wanted to be a model.”

  “Sounds like kind of a pick-up line.”

  “I know, but it works. Especially on a fifteen-year-old.”

  “Fifteen?”

  “Not Mau Tim. No, she was at least eighteen when she first came to us. But the prime age is fifteen to nineteen.”

  “Why so young?”

  The good smile again. “Unfairness of nature, John. It’s easy to use makeup to make the face look older. It’s tough to use makeup to make the body look younger.”

  “So the career is over early?”

  “Not for everybody. Some of the girls do fine into their mid-twenties. And after that we can use them as commercial models.”

  “As opposed to?”

  “Oh, sorry. Commercial as opposed to fashion models. Mommies selling diapers or businesswomen selling computers rather than vamps in evening wear. Some even subspecialize as parts models.”

  “Parts of the body?”

  “Right. Hand model, leg model, even foot model for shoe ads.”

  “Do you remember which photographer scouted Ms. Dani?”

  “Sure. But you might make more headway if you called her ‘Mau Tim.’ That’s how she was known in the business.”