“Miss Cutter, we use SPARC workstations, which serve the financial services industry. A home computer could be donated to charity. Perhaps a school. We can handle that. We’ll send someone immediately to take the equipment off your hands.”
“There are personal things too, Mr. Vogler, perhaps keepsakes for Steven’s coworkers. I could make a selection.”
“We have a good many personal effects, Ms. Cutter.”
One last try, though if I fail, a Corsair courier will come for the computers, and that will be that. So here goes. “Mr. Vogler, if you have just one moment… I have spoken to Rev. Gail Welch of All Souls Church here in Boston’s South End. Steven Damelin was involved in a mentoring program through the church, a program to help disadvantaged children. Such an important program, really inspiring to us all. I’ve agreed to help Rev. Welch plan a memorial service. Though I barely knew Steven, he was quite close to my late aunt, who knew him well.” Here goes the family pitch. “My aunt was devoted to Steven. He was like a… a grandson to her.”
“And a son to me, Miss Cutter. A son and brother to the Vogler family.” The voice swells, Shakespearean. “We ourselves have begun to discuss a memorial service.”
“I’d be so willing to help, in homage to my aunt’s affection for Steven. Perhaps to coordinate. The mentoring of young children, what could be more important? Why, you yourself understand firsthand.”
A pause, then a snuffling. “Actually, Ms. Cutter—” He clears his throat. “Ms. Cutter, it’s possible my wife would be interested in talking with you.”
Talk to the Voglers? Son Andrew too? In a Corsair Financial conference room, perfect.
“In fact, if she agrees, perhaps you’d be free to pay a call at my home. We live on the North Shore.”
The shore—here’s a water connection. Play this, Reggie.
“My wife is not well. She is confined to our home and might welcome the opportunity. Arrangements… well, my wife would be grateful.”
“Mr. Vogler, whatever I can do to help. In any capacity whatsoever.” He promises to be in touch very soon, within a few days. I agree to give a Corsair messenger the computers this very afternoon. A true CEO, he puts his assistant on to handle specifics.
Motorcycle school requires long sleeves, trousers, leather gloves, and boots. Stark has forced me into this. The school provides the bikes gratis from local dealers. It’s Saturday, and I’m in denims and red cowboy boots, which Nicole scrounged from a closet at StyleSmart. They’re a size too small, and my toes tingle, though circulation in my feet is the least of things. My daughter has checked in to say that Tom Chou needs somebody else’s help to decipher the Chinese characters in the snapshot. I don’t know why; neither does she. Devaney seemed bored by the log and water of my psychic vision. He refused comment on Luis Diaz except to say that surveillance is a waiting game, that an afternoon stakeout is nothing. When I asked about the credentials of Hugh Lee, he replied that Homicide sometimes hires a freelancer or borrows a federal agent. He wouldn’t specify FBI or ATF or Homeland Security. I ran out of agency names.
There’s no invitation so far from Vogler or his wife to the North Shore. A young woman Corsair employee came for the “bait” computers within an hour of my talk with Leonard Vogler, so the firm has now known for days that the hard drives were already yanked. I at least hope to seem harmless though well intentioned. If I’m forced to call Corsair again next week about the memorial service, I’ll need a new strategy. Mustn’t sound overeager.
“Listen up, people.” We listen. The instructor is the walrus-mustached Vic whose jacket rains fringe. “Folks, believe it, your bike is not a toy.”
We believe. To walk a motorcycle in a figure-eight pattern is to learn its heavy, clumsy, dead weight. I’m between a bald guy in ballistic nylon and a slender child-woman who speaks broken English. Stark is stationed by the storage shed at the edge of the parking lot. He’s an assistant, which proves he has some human association and is not a total loner.
“Your transmission’s now in gear? Which gear?”
“Neutral!” This from the bald guy who plans to tour the Rockies with his bride in the rear seat and Miles Davis in their headsets. His jumpsuit is emblazoned “Just wing it.”
“Prepare to mount… mount!”
Legs up and over, we straddle. My feet feel encased in cement.
“All riders ready?”
We nod yes. My bike’s gas tank, I notice, is dented, meaning that it has fallen over or been “dropped,” or as Stark says, kissed the asphalt. We’re instructed to ride in a big circle around the vast parking lot of a community college. “You’re gonna look through the turns.”
We lip-synch, “Through the turns.” I do my Zen stare through the helmet face mask. We’re all bobble heads today. The bikes growl to life, and we ease out into a wide circle, motorized.
Vroom. Three times around, and we throttle to 5 mph, which feels somewhere between Evel Knievel and the Wild Bunch.
On the ninth or tenth round, however, my bike somehow orbits wide and veers from the group. It feels programmed, actually beelining by itself toward an asphalt curb that looks over a foot high… higher.
Message to self: get turned, woman, or hit that curb. I grab the brake… too late. I crash, pinned by the handlebars and foot pedals. It hurts like hell, but stifle the groan, Reggie. Not one audible ouch. A woman has her pride.
“You okay?” At Vic’s signal, all engines stop. The moment is solemn and ridiculous. My leg is jammed under a wheel, and my feet feel like concrete blocks. “You okay? Anything busted?”
I lift the visor and shake my head as he lifts the bike. Pack me in ice tonight.
The slender child-woman asks, “¿Se fueron los frenos?” Stark shakes his head. “¿Hay huesos quebrados en las piernas?”
To my amazement, Stark lets loose in rapid-fire Spanish, including botas and sin garantías. Since when is this man bilingual? He needs no phrase book. He speaks the language. This info is worth its weight in gold. It’s worth a batch of bruises. A Jamaica Plain plan is hatched right here and now.
“You know what you did wrong?” Stark asks a short time later. It’s lunchtime. I’m across from him over meat loaf (his) and a grilled cheese (mine). We’re in a neo-“authentic” diner with items like “Cuppa Joe” and countermen in turquoise bowling shirts. “You know your mistake?”
My mistake? Expecting a quarter ounce of sympathy. “Since when do you speak Spanish?”
“You made a classic mistake, actually two mistakes. What were they?”
Getting sucked into a motorcycling course. “I forgot the foot pedal.”
“Right. The bike spun out. What else? Gotta debrief, Cutter. You steered for the curb because you fixated on it.” He smacks fist into palm. “I’ve seen riders T-bone into trucks, smash into trees—”
“I get the idea.” We chew. “So where did you learn Spanish?”
“Picked it up.”
“In Boston?”
“Maybe Mexico.”
“You lived there?”
“Maybe Cuba.”
“The Marines? Guantánamo?” He doesn’t reply. “You sound fluent.”
His eye gleams with the devil’s own sparkle. “You think I’m just a dog-sitter, Cutter? I’m full of surprises.”
I don’t doubt it for a minute. “I need your help, Stark. I want to track down the boy Steven Damelin mentored. He’s known to be violent. A friend of Steven’s thinks he killed him.”
“So motorcycles don’t drive murder off your mind?”
“His name’s Luis Diaz. A minister gave me his family address, but nobody named Diaz lives there. Nobody would talk to me. I took a phrase book. It’s phonetic.”
His laugh booms over the jukebox doo-wop. “Where was this little side trip of yours, Cutter?”
“Jamaica Plain.”
“Then the kid’s probably Puerto Rican or Dominican.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Salvadorans and Mexic
ans like East Boston.”
“But you’ll go back there with me?”
“Your U.N. translator? I’ll consider it.”
“It has to be yes.”
His gaze narrows. “Eat up, Cutter, you got a big afternoon.” He stops my protest. “Okay, here’s the deal: you pass the biker course, and I’ll help track down Luis Diaz.”
Late Monday afternoon, I’m back to Mozart Street, Stark at my side. Still no call from Vogler. It’s cloudy, 4:35 p.m., and icy, thick raindrops suddenly begin to fall from a lead-gray sky, a low pressure system from a sputtering hurricane far out at sea. The Lava lamp is in a bag under my left arm as we climb the front porch and go down the central hall to the same curtained doorway on the left. Salsa music plays somewhere on a radio in the building. I’m still sore, but I somehow passed Biker 101 with a D minus. This time it’s Stark who calls out, “Hola,” and here comes the woman in flamingo, though today it’s hot orange. Seeing me, she halts and blinks, her face tighter. Stark, however, launches in with a little bow—“Buenas tardes, señora. ¿Cómo estás?” He keeps up a line of patter, and she begins to nod and murmur, then says a few words as he goes on, raising his voice because it’s now raining hard. “Soy de Boston,” he says. “¿De dónde eres?”
“Miraflores.”
“Ah, Miraflores. Tropical… la naranja, la mimosa.”
Even I can pick up mimosa and orange, but she crosses both arms over her bosom as if he’s invoked heaven itself. Stark introduces us by name, and he translates so I learn that she is Carmine from the village of Miraflores in the Dominican Republic. Just when it seems as though he’ll never get to the point, Stark finally says, “Estoy buscando la familia de Luis Díaz.”
At Luis’s name, she tenses and gazes down at the floorboards. Looking up, her eyes are filmed with fear. Is this about a school problem? she asks Stark. Is Luis in trouble again?
“¿La escuela? No.”
“Ask her about his school, Stark. Ask whether he has Chinese friends.” He gives me the “are you nuts look?” “It’s about my door, the marks.”
“¿Amigos chinos?” Maybe he does, but she’s not really sure. In America, kids come from everywhere. Her son is on his own a lot. She doesn’t know who his friends are. Carmine widens her stance as if to brace herself to ask, “¿La policía?”
“No, no.” Stark smiles and points at the bag. “Tenemos el regalo para Luis.”
A gift? He takes the bag and shows the Lava lamp. The gift changes everything. Carmine’s relief is palpable. But Luis, she tells us, is sleeping. He doesn’t feel well. He cannot be disturbed. Perhaps we could come another day.
Stark enters into a complex negotiation that seems to go nowhere. The rain is pouring in icy bucketloads. In moments, we’ll dash through it to the Beetle. Just now, however, somebody thuds onto the porch and stomps down the hall toward us. He’s big, his footsteps thunderous, his body soft yet muscular and bulked. He’s in cargo pants and carries a basketball. He drips from head to toe, and water pools at his enormous feet. “Mamá, esta lloviendo!”
It’s Luis.
Carmine looks mortified, but Stark grabs Luis’s hand and pumps it man to man. Or mano a mano. It saves the moment, though Carmine doesn’t know what to do. She faces the boy as if to air-dry him with plumes and jets of Spanish. I suggest we all go inside. Stark makes the request to Señora Carmine. With great reluctance, she parts the doorway curtain. We’re in.
The kitchen is spotless, the dinette table centerpiece a casserole dish set on a lacquered wood tray. We sit down. The fridge is covered with shapshots of smiling babies, children, family groupings against a background of banana trees. One pantry door, however, is splintered, and the wall by the stove is punched, through the paint and plaster. The hole is the size of a fist.
Luis’s sneakers squish on the linoleum, and Carmine wraps the boy in a beach towel. His wet, curly dark hair frames a broad-featured face with heavy-lidded dark eyes, a wide nose, and mouth with full lips parted just enough to reveal the space between his two front teeth. His hands, as Matt Kitchel said, are huge, and the nails of his right thumb and index finger almost black. From trauma? From a death struggle with Steven? Could it be?
I say, “Luis, we’re here to give you a gift.” He squints but says nothing. “We have something from your Big Buddy, Steven.”
“Steven? From Steven?” He breaks into torrential Spanish, his voice cracking. I hear muerto and policía. Carmine strokes his arm.
“We’re not the police,” I say. “This is from Steven’s apartment. He wanted you to have this gift. It’s a lamp.”
“And the película… the movie?”
“What movie?”
“The video?” His eyes are wide, eager.
“I don’t know anything about that.” His gaze shifts. He’s no longer interested. “I don’t know about a movie. Here’s what I brought.” I take the lamp from the bag and put it before him to gauge his reaction.
There is no reaction. “Do you remember this lamp in Steven’s apartment?” A shrug could pass for yes. “You visited his apartment, right?”
He mumbles, “Couple times.” Carmine hastens to tell Stark that Steven’s death has greatly saddened Luis. She pauses while he translates. The police came and asked questions, and this upset him very much. She speaks as though her son isn’t present.
“Let’s plug in the lamp to make sure it works,” I say. Carmine rummages for an extension cord. Voilà, the deep glow of cobalt blue. I try to buy time. “Let’s wait for the bubbles.”
Stark asks Luis about baseball, then fútbol. I notice a kitchen door panel that’s shattered. Kicked out? The kitchen so neat, why the damage? From Luis on the rampage? He says he likes American fútbol, likes the NFL. A metal tray table by the stove is dented as though it was toppled. Or thrown?
“Oooh.” The lava bubbles up. We all watch it, and Carmine prompts her son to say gracias to Señorita Cutter and Señor Stark. But Carmine sees me steal a glance at the dented tray table and punched plaster. Clasping her son’s arm, she speaks insistently, breathlessly, to Stark. Luis is a good boy, she says. He has a hard time in Jamaica Plain, the cold winters… and is homesick for his grandparents and cousins. In Miraflores, people help out. It’s different here, she says, you’re on your own.
Stark nods and translates fast while Luis sits like a toweled Buddha. Carmine leaves the apartment at 5:30 in the morning, she says, and Luis gets himself off to school, summer school too. She cleans hotel rooms and wants a better life for him. There was a hurricane in Miraflores, and her parents feel too old for a teenage boy. TV… americano TV is full of monsters that turn boys into brutos. Luis has high spirits, she says, like his Uncle Tomas. The police don’t understand high spirits. Yes, sometimes Luis is angry. A boy in a new country, it’s not easy. Sometimes he forgets himself. But see how Luis helps out. He’s learning to cook. Yesterday he prepared pollo loco and sun rice. Maybe he’ll be a chef.
The object of all this attention, meanwhile, sits as if waiting for the aliens to go. The rain has lessened. The Lava lamp bubbles on. Carmine has testified on her son’s behalf, and now she rises, our signal to leave. As we stand, she points to the centerpiece tray, picks it up, and shows the finish, the handles. La bandeja, she says, was Luis’s gift to her on Mother’s Day, a good American holiday. Her son made it himself in woodworking.
“Wood shop?”
“Sí.” Very good with his hands. Good with tools. Steven helped with this.
“Helped how? Stark, ask her how.”
With care for the tools. “Tener respeto.”
“What tools? Stark, ask about the tools.”
But we’re at the curtain, then ushered outside to the porch. Luis is sports crazy like all boys, Carmine says, but later he will use his good hands for a good future. Perhaps Luis will be a carpintero because the tools fit his hand like gloves.
Chapter Twenty
You like barbecue?” Detective Frank Devaney holds a take-out bag as he rea
ches to open his car door to let me in. “Sandwiches and slaw for two. Get in. Let’s eat.”
It’s Wednesday, just past noon. Moments ago, my cell rang and Devaney asked my whereabouts, which was Boylston Street. “Meet me on Columbus by the Park Plaza, Reggie.” I hustle over there, and within minutes, he pulls in behind a taxi parked curbside at the hotel. He’s brought an autumn drive-in picnic. “No cup holders. Here’s RC. You drink RC?”
I do. He unbuttons his houndstooth jacket, spreads a napkin between us, aligns plastic forks just so as if setting the table, and opens the foil wrappers. I’m eyeing the police radio gear in the dashboard. There’s a portable blue light on the floor. If Devaney is called for a high-speed chase, do I ride along? Why has he phoned me? Maybe it’s about the Chinese markings.
“Here, extra sauce.” He puts the salt and pepper packets in place, uncaps the slaw, and disposes of the tops. He points to my sandwich. “At my house, nobody will eat barbecue. There’s a course on pork and beef ribs next month, and the teacher’s a Memphis chef. But I can’t take it. My wife saw the sauce mop once. It reminded her of a dirty floor. Here—more napkins. It’s picante.” I bite in. He says, “¿Está demasiado picante?”
“Frank, no Spanish. Stop it.” Devaney blinks, and so do I. “Sorry, Frank. For a second there, I thought… I’m way offbalance. First the Chinese marks on my door, now Spanish. Don’t get in a twist about this: two days ago, I went to Jamaica Plain to find the boy Steven Damelin mentored.”
“The Latino kid.”
“Yes, I took him a memento from Steven’s things, from Big Buddy to Little Buddy. It was pouring rain. His mother let us in, and a friend translated. The police… I take it you’ve already questioned him?”
He takes a bite. “Juvenile has its own records on Luis Diaz. He was caught with a chimba—that’s a homemade pipe gun. And yes, on your tip, we questioned him in the Damelin case.”
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