The temperature made the running paths icy. By the time I'd turned for home at the four-mile point, my stride and my breathing were on automatic pilot, my mind drifting to the Andrus case. It had been a month since I'd seen the professor at the Ritz for breakfast, and she was due back in Boston that day to deliver a lecture. In the interim I'd helped a defense attorney on a questionable manslaughter charge. I'd also called Inés Roja three times: no more notes at the school or house, Andrus telling Inés the same thing from San Diego.
The notes. Our boy sends one when Andrus leaves for Sint Maarten, but none when she comes back. And none when she leaves for San Diego. Does that mean he knew about the Caribbean trip but not the California one? Walter Strock, Tucker Hebert, and Manolo obviously knew about both junkets, Louis Doleman probably neither. Ray Cuervo and Gunther Yary each were sharp enough to find out where Andrus was at any time.
Another thing. The mode of delivery varies: U.S. mail, by-hand delivery, pasted label, intraschool system. Why be erratic in both when and how the notes are sent? To throw Andrus even more off balance?
My frustration level was lowered by Andrus being three thousand miles away as her case went nowhere. Passing the Hyatt Regency, however, I decided to burn off the frustration I did feel by upping my pace a little, the wind flapping the Gore-Tex jacket against my shoulders as I ran before it.
* * *
At the office that day, Inés Roja called. The professor had arrived from the coast for her lecture that night. If possible, Andrus wanted me to come to the town house by five P.M. and ride with her to the site. I said I'd be there.
After spending the afternoon on the manslaughter case, I walked through the cold to the mansion, the sidewalks nearly as glazed as the running paths had been. It was just getting dark as Manolo opened the door for me. If he'd been out in the sun of San Diego much, he didn't show it. He was sweating heavily, the foyer like an oven. I took off my coat, Inés coming downstairs in a short-sleeved blouse and dark skirt.
"John, it is so good to see you."
"Same here. Have you had your furnace adjusted recently?"
"I am sorry?"
"It's pretty hot in here."
She smiled. "The professor is no longer used to the winter. It was eighty degrees Fahrenheit when she left California."
"She's upstairs?"
"Yes."
"Can I see her?"
"I will ask."
I watched Inés clop back up the stairs. Lithe and attractive when she didn't think about it.
I turned. Manolo, a long parka over his arm, was staring at me. He moved his mouth as if to spit, but just went out the front door, slamming it behind him.
* * *
"John, have you been sick?"
Andrus appeared weary, a pile of opened mail on the desk behind her.
"No, I've been running a little more. Probably dropped a few pounds."
"Good. For a . . . Alec told me that you and he talked."
"Last month, after I saw you at the Ritz. How is he?"
"I've spoken with him, and sometimes Del, from California. They seem buoyant. I'm going to see them after the lecture tonight."
Andrus massaged her eyes with the heels of her hands. I said, "Would you like me to wait downstairs?"
"Oh, no. It was just the flight."
"Bad?"
"Bumpy. Storms everywhere east of the Mississippi. I must concede that San Diego offers considerable meteorological charm, if it weren't for the fact that I'd probably never get anything done out there."
"Tuck come back with you?"
"Yes. He's off running errands." She indicated the pile of correspondence. "I'm left to wade through all this."
"Any surprises?"
"Any . . . ? Oh, you mean notes. No, nothing."
"No incidents in San Diego either?"
"None. Tuck was with me most of the time, Manolo the balance. I must say, I believe my demented pen pal has lost interest."
"Yet you asked Inés to have me come over tonight."
"For two reasons. First, have you made any progress?"
I explained how I'd played out the string of people to see. "What's the second reason?"
Andrus frowned. "I'm mindful that the labeled book appeared after my last speaking appearance here."
I nodded. "What's your speech tonight?"
"The same one you heard at the Rabb debate, I'm afraid."
"Doesn't the audience notice that?"
Andrus shook her head. "Most of the people will be different. But even the faithful feel reinforced, hearing the same things."
"Where is the lecture?"
"Sanders Theater."
"In Cambridge?"
"Yes. Part of the Harvard Law School Forum."
"Harvard invites a professor from another law school to come talk?"
"Yes. Rather daring of them, but it's more a students' speaker series, really." She checked the digital clock on her desk. "Manolo ought to have gotten the Benz by now. Let me gather myself, and I'll see you downstairs."
"We going to wait for your husband?"
"No. Tuck said to go on without him."
In the foyer, Inés Roja and I made small talk until Maisy Andrus joined us. In a full-length fur with matching hat. Sensible against the cold, but I started to hope that there wouldn't be any animal rights folks at the speech.
I helped Roja into her coat, then pulled on mine. The secretary opened the front door, me moving across the threshold and out to the sidewalk. Cars were pushed up on the curb to park and yet allow a lane wide enough for traffic to pass. No sign of Manolo and the Mercedes.
As Roja closed the door behind the three of us, Andrus stepped by me, hugging herself against the night wind. Tugging on my gloves, I heard a flat crack and, just over my head, a sound like someone whistling in water.
Glass shattered as I tackled Andrus, shoving her behind the engine block of the closest car. Roja was already crawling behind me as another flat crack came from across the street and high. The mailbox next to the front door of the house clanged on its screws. The first bullet had gotten the imitation gas lamp over the doorway. Andrus pushed herself to her knees and said, "What the hell is...”
"Shut up and stay down."
Roja said shakily, "We are being shot."
The rooflines across the street seemed even and empty. No silhouette, no muzzle flash.
I took a quick look at Roja, but didn't see any blood. "Inés, are you all right?"
She shifted her weight, one leg on a snowbank, the other on the icy cement. "Yes. Can you see anything?"
"No."
Andrus said very quietly, "Are you going to shoot back?"
Looking down at the revolver in my bare right hand, I couldn't recall taking off my glove or drawing the gun. "Not from this angle. I might go through a window or throw one high and over to another street or building."
Andrus faced her house. "Shouldn't we call the police?"
Eight feet separated us from the locked door. "Not till I'm sure we'd get to the phone."
Five or six minutes passed. I was thinking about the shooter's aim when a powerful engine approached, charging hard. Brakes squealed on the other side of the parked cars. A door was flung open, creaking on its hinges, and Manolo squeezed himself between two bumpers.
I motioned for him to get down, but he was signing frantically to Inés Roja. When there were no more shots, I let out a breath. Manolo rushed over to Andrus, helped her up, and reverently brushed the snow off her coat.
Roja said to me, "Manolo was caught in traffic, behind a truck that stalled or something. He saw us from the corner" — she pointed behind her — "and was afraid for us."
I watched Manolo, who seemed awfully agitated. Almost theatrically so.
Then I moved toward the mailbox. My shoes crunched shards of glass from the light over the door. There was a perfectly round hole in the front of the box, off center but not by much. I put my right glove back on. Using a pen, I lifted the lid
of the box and looked in.
Andrus said, "What are you doing?"
I coaxed out the folded white paper, undamaged from the shot. At the bottom of the box, bits of brick from the exit hole on the back wall lay around a flattened slug.
I unfolded the paper. Headline-sized words again, but twice as big as the snips from the earlier notes.
"ALL BAD THINGS COME TO AN END CU-NT."
I doubted Roja could read what it said, but she certainly could see what it was. The secretary began to cry.
=24=
"SO WHAT MADE YOU CHECK THE MAILBOX?”
Neely had a pad and pen on his lap, actually taking notes once in a while. Slouching on the parlor sofa of the Andrus mansion, he'd visited a new barber since I'd seen him last. The currycomb cut made him look like a lowland gorilla.
I said, "The shooter threw the second one high after the first slug already wrecked the lamp over the doorway. Seemed kind of coincidental that he'd happen to hit the mailbox after my client had been getting threatening notes."
Neely used the pen to scratch behind his ear, then swung it in an abrupt arc toward the staircase. "How's this Andrus taking it?"
"Pretty well. She made calls to cancel things out for tonight. The secretary who came to see you is pretty shaken up."
"Minute ago, you said the shooter was a 'him'?"
"Just an assumption. We're figuring the shooter was the guy sending the notes."
"So you didn't make him on the roof there."
"No."
"You been looking into these threats for what, about a month now?"
"More than two."
"Anybody handy with guns?"
I'd been giving it some thought. "The Spanish son, Ray Cuervo, mentioned hunting with his father in the old country. Louis Doleman, the guy whose daughter committed suicide, talked a little about hunting too. And Walter Strock has a bunch of marksmanship trophies in his office."
"How about the other names I ran for you?"
"I don't see Steven O'Brien as a rifleman. And Gunther Yary of the Fourth Reich says he doesn't believe in guns."
"A Nazi who don't believe in guns?"
"He says freedom of speech will set us free."
"Christ on a crutch. The hell can you count on anymore?"
"One of Yary's storm troopers seemed a little more in the mold."
"Don't get you."
I laid it out, including the address of the storefront in Dorchester. Neely said, "How's about you leave the Nazis to us?"
"Fine."
He finished scribbling and lowered his voice. "That guy, the houseman. Manello?"
"Manolo. M-a-n-o-l-o."
"Right, right. Manolo. He was where when the shots were fired?"
"Getting the car. Supposed to have been stuck behind a truck."
"Supposed. Why 'supposed'?"
"Because I didn't hear any horns."
"Horns. Like you would if some truck was fucking up the traffic there."
"Right."
"Stupid thing for him not to think of."
"Yes and no. He's deaf. Might not have occurred to him."
Neely looked skeptical. "You really figure he could be the guy?"
"If so, I'm the only one who does."
"Let's hear it."
"One, Andrus pushed over the man who basically pulled Manolo back into life. Two, he's always around her for the notes except when she goes off to the Caribbean, and then a note appears at the law school when not many people know she's gone and nobody outside the school could easily access the internal mail system."
"Motive and opportunity for both the notes and the shooting. But why does he miss, then?"
"Don't know."
"Why does he wait — what, ten years? — to start at her?"
"Same answer."
Neely shook his head.
I said, "The husband's also not accounted for."
"The husband?"
"Tucker Hebert. Andrus says he was out running errands."
Neely plainly didn't like trying to keep track of all these people.
"So opportunity. How about motive?"
"He gets most of the estate."
"If the professor there buys the big one."
"Right."
"Meantime?"
"Meantime, he's a former pro tennis player who gets sported like a trophy."
"What?"
I explained it to Neely.
He scratched behind his ear some more with the pen. "So we got a husband who's riding his wife's money either way."
"Except if Andrus were dead, he'd be enjoying it without her."
"Yeah, but if the perp is either Manolo or the husband, how come she's not getting notes out in California there?"
"I've thought about it."
"And?"
"If it's either Manolo or Hebert, hand-delivering a note out there points the finger."
"So the guy could use the post office."
"Without an accomplice to mail the notes from another city, the postmark would give the guy away."
Neely shook his head again.
I said, "You get anything from across the street?"
"From the roof, you mean?"
"Yeah."
"Nah. The techies went up. Easy to do, some kind of scaffolding on the far side. Too windy and cold for the roofers today, though. No shell casings, no footprints they could make out."
"How about the slugs?"
"They'll run them through ballistics, but don't wait by your phone, okay? The slugs, one splattered and the other got flattened by the professor's brickwork. I seen ones like that before they couldn't do much with."
I figured that gave me an opening. "Homicide going to be by?"
A grunt. "Nobody bleeds, they try not to bother those guys. Why?"
"Thought maybe there might be something we're missing."
Neely closed his pad. "Probably. There usually is. But then in the end you find out what it was and turns out it don't mean shit anyways."
"Even so, you mind if I keep looking into this'?"
"Except for the Nazis, suit yourself. It's your time and her money, right? Lemme do the courtesy call on Andrus. I'll let you know about ballistics."
"I'd appreciate it."
Neely lurched to his feet. "Whew, tough day."
Uh-oh.
He patted his stomach. "Yeah, fact is, I been having the kind of day, if I was to break for dinner about now, I'd want somebody else to taste my food for me."
I got the hint and told Neely I'd wait for him.
* * *
"I was hoping you'd still be here."
Robert Murphy looked up from the wrappings of a submarine sandwich. The wax paper and a diet Coke nearly covered the one area of his desk not stacked high with files.
He said, "I can't even eat my dinner in peace?"
"Do me a favor, Lieutenant, don't talk about food. I broke bread with Beef Neely tonight."
Murphy set the sub down delicately and folded the paper over it. "Just ruined my appetite. Sit, but don't stay long."
"Thanks." I took one of the metal chairs.
"You okay, Cuddy?"
"Fine."
"You look, I don't know, kind of skinny."
"Been running, that's all. Listen, about that case back in December?"
"The one you had to see Neely on."
"Right."
"Now what?"
"Somebody missed my client and me with a couple of shots today."
"Probably forgot to allow for windage."
"Very funny, Lieutenant. Neely seems to think he's in charge because nobody got hit."
"Probably right."
"No chance you or Cross could come in on it?"
"We take the ones that bleed no more. Area cops draw the ones that never bleed. In between . . ." He shrugged.
"That's how Neely described it too."
"Besides, reason I'm still here is we're buried. Cross, she's out with the harbor boys, bobbing for what's left of s
ome wiseguy."
"What's left?"
"His hands we found inside a Maserati over in Eastie. Nice Italian driving gloves."
"Back to my situation?"
"Two minutes worth."
"There were some slugs, Lieutenant, but no casings. I think it had to be a rifle. At least one of the slugs was intact, but flattened."
"What'd they hit?"
"Bricks."
"Don't — "
" — wait by my phone, I know. Can you do anything?"
Murphy sucked some diet Coke through a straw. "Not much. I can see the slugs get the full treatment, but that's about it."
"I appreciate it." I got up. "Since this isn't your case, I take it you have no objection to my staying on the investigation'?"
"Your time."
I left wondering if all cops talked the same before they went to the academy too.
* * *
"How's Inés doing?"
Maisy Andrus set down the book she was reading. "Pretty well, I think. She's lying down, sleeping, I hope. The proximity of all this has hit her pretty hard. I think it reminds her of being . . . on that boat."
"Manolo let me in. Where's your husband?"
"Tuck hasn't gotten back yet."
I glanced at the clock on the desk behind her. Nine forty-five P.M.
"I thought you said he was just running some errands?"
Andrus got huffy. "I in no way have to justify Tuck's activities to you, and neither does he."
"Professor, I'm tired too."
"I'm not tired."
I let it pass. "Whoever that was today is a reasonably good shot to have hit the mailbox nearly dead center."
"It's a large mailbox."
"On a downward angle from a rooftop on a cold and windy night. He wanted to miss you. Us. He's playing some kind of game, to get you rattled."
"He won't succeed."
"He is succeeding. You're upset — "
"I am not — "
"And you have every right to be. He's got some kind of private agenda planned for you, and I have to try to figure that out before he ups the ante much further."
Right To Die - Jeremiah Healy Page 19
