by David Daniel
Up three steps was a brick-paved area and a double row of trees with spiky branches, from which hung curly pods. The trees were locusts, which are about as native to these parts as Buddhists. Someone had figured the trees gave class to city hall plaza, though I’d bet there wasn’t a cop or a politician within bribing distance who had the foggiest idea what kind of trees they were.
Inside the lobby I slipped through a glass door behind a pair of women who were arguing with the desk officer in mile-a-minute Spanish. I just waved without making eye contact, hipped through the hinged gate and went back through the reception area. Do it with élan, and the world is your oyster.
I walked down a long corridor where a glass-block half-wall lent light and mystery to offices along one side. There were two other men in the end office with St. Onge, the three of them looking at a computer screen, talking. The two were a pair of plainclothes named Gus Deemys and Roland Cote. When they saw me, their chins quit. Deemys hoisted his trim form off the edge of St. Onge’s desk and tugged his suit jacket straight: brown on a beige shirt and green silk tie. He was a dresser. “Catch you, Ed,” he told St. Onge.
“Yeah,” said Cote. They strolled past, into the corridor.
St. Onge pecked briefly at the computer keyboard, and the data vanished from the screen. He pulled a toothpick from his mouth like he was going to say something, but he didn’t, so I did. “I love walking in and seeing a room light up.”
He pointed the toothpick at the door. I closed it.
“What do I have to do, Ed? Wave a white flag?”
“Kind of late for that. What happened never should’ve in the first place,” he said. “None of it.”
I couldn’t deny it, so I didn’t. He gave a gruff sigh that was meant to say, What the hell, I’m just a big softie at heart. “Sit.”
Ed was in his mid-forties, with a dark moustache and hair fading like a pair of scuffed Navy shoes. He had half-moon crinkles on his cheeks under the eyes. He hauled a deck of Camels from the pocket of his short-sleeve shirt, wandered over to the window that looked out at a Dumpster behind Pollard Memorial Library and lit up. He fanned out the match and sucked smoke. I decided there were more interesting sights than the seat of his pants.
The framed Sierra Club print on the wall behind his desk was new. It showed a mountain meadow confettied with wildflowers. Dealing all the time with the worst that city streets and the human soul could toss at you, you wanted to believe there was peace somewhere. Could be it was a sucker’s game though. As soon as you walked into the scene in the poster, any peace thereabouts hightailed it for the hills. As Thoreau said, more or less, peace is where people ain’t.
“So what’s what?” St. Onge said at last, turning.
I lifted my eyebrows. “Spreading tales about a round-heeled P.I. again?”
He moved smoke around in his mouth like he was deciding whether to do rings or something really fancy. “So she went. She was bound and determined to do something. I figured you wouldn’t rip her off at least.”
“I appreciate it. I think. Though I’m not sure what I can do.”
“She’s as persistent as she is cute, I give her that.”
“And you wanted quits.”
He came over and parked a haunch on the corner of his desk, which was only a little bigger than mine but had a lot more paper on it. He pinched up the knee of one pant leg. There was a slight flare to the cuff, I saw, but on a local cop’s salary, it made sense to keep your suits and hope the style rolled around again before they had to bury you in one of them.
“There’s nothing to tell her,” he said. “You know the routine. The Tran killing’s just one of the six we’ve got ongoing. Don’t you read the Sun?”
“I stare at the sign all day. That count?”
His expression didn’t unsour.
“Yeah,” I admitted, “I did read there might be a drug tie-in.”
“We found blow at the scene.”
“I wondered about that. The paper didn’t say how much, either.”
“What diff?”
“Ten pounds? Dust on a mirror? Come on, you sent the woman my way, you had to figure I’d come asking.”
He drew in smoke so deep I expected to see it come wisping out of his flared cuff. But it didn’t come out anywhere for a full minute, during which he leaned across his desk and carefully stubbed the butt into a tray of bent friends. When the smoke did appear, there were words in it.
“Half a gram. In a little plastic film canister, with Tran’s prints on it. I know, it could’ve been just a recreational honk.”
“Or planted,” I said.
“Or it could very definitely be tied in. People get iced for pocket lint, dammit.” He climbed off the desk.
“Touchy,” I said.
He went to the window again.
“You implied to Ada Chan Stewart that you’re sitting on evidence.”
He began to whistle through his teeth.
“Any hints?” I said.
The tune could have been “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”
“Got a weapon?” I said.
On second thought it was “Good Night, Ladies.”
“Come on, don’t I always let you stand in a circle and clap when I do my fancy stuff at the policeman’s ball?” I said.
“Not this time, Raz.”
“That bus runs two ways. Think about it.”
Maybe he did. Maybe he admitted to himself that having a private cop who played straight with him had occasional advantages. He checked the shine on one shoe and buffed it on the back of a trouser leg. When he had brought the other shoe up to luster, he turned. “This is between us.”
“Okay.”
“If a person who shall remain nameless found out I’d leaked investigative info, he’d have me raking the pods from those damn trees out front, whatever the hell they are.”
“Locusts,” I said. “Forewarned.”
“We’re working the angle this one could’ve been a professional hit,” he said. “It has the looks.”
That woke me up a little. It also made me wary. Nothing takes heat off a killing—and therefore the police—like calling it gangland. Folks figure, Hey, play with fire you get burnt, victim probably got his due. Pros aren’t interested in plain old tax-paying me.
St. Onge said, “Tran was shot twice in the back of the head. Twenty-two pistol, point-blank range.”
I gave a low whistle, no tune at all. “Suspects?”
“Nope, and if it’s tied to drugs, I’m not sure we’ll find one.”
“If not?”
“Find a suspect?”
“If not tied to drugs.”
He picked up his Camels. I saw they were Lights—the reports had scared him that much anyway. He tapped one out and got it burning. “It sounded to me like Miss Stewart is looking to keep this Tran as a model to the community. If he was straight—though I’m betting against.” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“And I do?”
“You don’t have the same cuffs on you I’ve got.”
I smiled, I couldn’t help it. He frowned and kept talking. “Most of these people are okay, from what I can tell. Except for the little turds in the gangs. But the others work hard and keep their noses clean. Let’s face it, though: they see cops come around with a lot of questions, they’ve got to have some hairy flashbacks, some of them. We’ve already run into trouble just trying to get them to talk to us.”
“Maybe you need some new icebreakers.”
“They think we’re there to hassle them, they hide. Someone with a lower profile … they might open up a little.”
“You’re looking for a coal-mine canary.”
He gave a smoky grin that put little down-turned smiles under his eyes. “I’m just saying you and I might help each other out.”
“Old time’s sake?” I said. Still, he was right in one sense. Cop work these days is all paper. Someone had estimated that taking one bad guy off the streets costs sixty trees.
Being private gave me a mobility he didn’t have. But, for resources, I had only my shoes and two days’ pay.
“I’m not taking her money if there’s no place to go.”
“Not saying you should.”
“I told her a day or two.”
“So it takes three. She wants to know. It isn’t going to break her bank.”
“I don’t work for free,” I said.
He gave a skeptical snort. “She’s good for it.”
“You know that?”
“You did recognize the name, didn’t you, Sherlock?”
“She related to Charlie Chan?”
“Her great-grandfather was Charles Blaine Stewart.”
I hadn’t even been close. So when she had said not to worry about the money, she was telling the truth. Charles Blaine Stewart had been in the clipper ship trade to China when they still called it the Opening of the Orient. The estate he had left filled a museum and about twenty prime acres in Andover, two towns east. I wondered if one of Ada’s forebears had been a little China doll that the old man had collected and brought back with him.
“Do I get to eyeball your report?” I asked.
“Of course not.”
“I’d like to hand her the execution angle at least. She’s tuned in to the community, maybe she’s heard something.”
That he could allow. I jotted down a few details. This would be more interesting than walking around the Raytheon buildings punching tape. And maybe I could give Ada Chan Stewart a truer picture of Bhuntan Tran’s last days, whatever it turned out to be. I had a feeling she would accept only the truth.
“So, business done,” he said. “You hear from Lauren?”
“Ask me tomorrow. We’re having dinner tonight.”
He gauged me a moment. “Good luck.”
As I headed for the door, he called for me to stop. I knew why. The bullhorn voice that had started up in the corridor outside was one I knew too well. Lieutenant Francis X. Droney was giving somebody the big chew. The chewee made some reply, but it was like the cry of a mole under a rotary mower. The glass block wall gave their shapes a staircase effect, like figures embroidered in a country sampler, but the language was city stuff all the way. After a moment the figures moved off in opposite directions and Droney’s voice was silenced by a slamming door.
St. Onge ground another butt into his ashtray. “Figured neither of us wanted you to walk into the Ogre.”
He figured right. Down the hall, and even after I got outside among the locusts, I kept trying to think of someone I would want to see less. A dentist telling me I had six months of gum work ahead came close, but Droney still won out.
3
THAT TV STUFF about bullet-riddled car chases is bunk, and with my eight-year-old steel-gray Bobcat, it was going to stay that way. My wants were simple: leg room for the six-one stretch and space overhead for thinking. I also required a heater that throws flames on a bitter January night when I’m watching a drawn shade on a street so lonely even the rats are blue. With me, wheels were a matter of cost and visibility: I wanted it low on both counts. Back in the alley behind my office I fired up and got wheeling east on Merrimack, the tattoo of knocks from the engine beating light rhythm to my thoughts.
Belvidere is one long ridge sloping away on all sides, making snobbery an exact science. On top are the castles that the mill owners and captains of industry built a century ago, and which would not be ashamed to rear their turreted heights in Newport. On the downslope toward the heart of the city, the houses are still big, but as elevation declines, so do values. At the bottom, butting the Concord River, you got so much vinyl siding in pastel shades you could be in East Boston.
The Tewksbury side of the hill, rolling away from downtown, has little neighborhoods of bungalows and capes, mostly well-kept and tucked behind hedgerows. I had to check my street map for Longfellow. Logic would have put it somewhere near Emerson and Hawthorne, but that would have made sense. I found it off Butman, nary a blacksmith or spreading chestnut tree in sight.
Even without a P.I. ticket, I would have had an easy go of finding the house. A kid in a pale blue shirt with loops of perspiration darkening the underarms was hammering a Century 21 realtor’s stake into the small front lawn. As I got out, a neighbor from the adjacent house looked up from hosing his lawn and gave me a hostile stare. The kid with the sledgehammer paused to swipe a forearm across his brow, nodded my way, and went back to pounding. With a stroke like that he’d never want for work in Transylvania. Around here, though, with the real estate market softer than a Republican’s wallet, it was a dubious skill.
“Nice morning for it,” I said.
“Hi there. It is.”
He was a beefy, freckled kid, his rosy cheeks as wet as the ink probably was on his broker’s license. He took a last whack, then stopped to catch his breath and test the post for rigidity. He seemed satisfied. “Want to buy it?” he said hopefully. “This is an established neighborhood.”
“I guess that explains the guy with the hose.”
“Him. He says to me when I came today—no good morning, or nothing—he says, ‘I hope you’re gonna be careful who you sell that to.’” The kid shook his head and laughed wonderingly.
He said his name was Ken Smith. He handed me the sledgehammer while he dug out his card. I liked his hard sell. If he were a dog, he’d be panting in the kitchen as you asked your mom if you could keep him. I told him who I was and asked if I could look around. He didn’t see why not.
“It’ll give me a chance to check it out again. We just got the listing and haven’t done a caravan yet. The bank bought it from the estate. I used to get a funny twinge about a house that came on the market on account of a divorce, back when I first started in real estate.” Back in his apprenticeship days no doubt, a hoary six months before. “But this … it’s kinda sad.”
I agreed. “Do you know who inherited the estate?”
“No. Sorry.”
We went up the driveway. The house was a gray Cape Cod with an unattached garage, no car inside. From the porch I peered into a small back yard in need of a mow. There was an old antenna clothesline pitched in a sunny corner back there with a few clothespins still clamped in place, like anorexic sparrows on a telephone wire. Beyond that grew a thicket of swamp maples. Ken Smith jingled an impressive clump of keys and got us in.
The kitchen was tidy, with a linoleum floor fashioned to look like tiny bricks, cherry veneer cabinets, and white curtains edged with blue gingham. On a small table sat an optimistic pile of listing sheets. Ken Smith’s blazer hung on the back of a chair in a color that looked best squiggled on hotdogs.
I picked up an info sheet and set the sledgehammer on the rest. I studied the details briefly, noting numbers and a name, then we strolled through the house together. Ken Smith pointed out features while I mulled the layout with another purpose in mind. I wanted to know what had happened here on a Tuesday night two weeks ago.
The house had the staple cape layout: kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, bath, with concealed stairs in the center leading to a basement and to an unfinished attic.
“The bedroom carpeting is new,” Ken Smith said, “in case you’re wondering.”
I hadn’t been. Only on TV do people get shot to death without it making a mess. The little house fairly sparkled. The victim had been found in the back bedroom. The wallpaper there had been washed, but I could make out the ghost shapes of stains below a window that faced to the side. I bent and peered through the gap under the drawn shade and the top of the Sears air conditioner. The adjacent house was twenty feet away, beyond a six-foot Cyclone fence woven with green and white plastic strips. Beyond it I saw the blue-green shimmer of a swimming pool. The other window in the bedroom faced the back yard, which ran sixty feet to woods that backed all the small yards on this side of Longfellow.
The second bedroom, in front of the kitchen, was decorated as a kids’ room, probably left over from whoever had owned the house before Tran. The w
allpaper depicted Sesame Street characters, and I realized that had Tran’s children survived the monster with the jolly name of Pol Pot, they would have known Oscar and Big Bird. I looked in the cellar, then poked my head into the attic. In the kitchen Ken Smith pulled on his blazer. He used one of his keys to lock up and we walked outside together.
“Did you find any clues?” he asked.
“The police do a pretty good job with that. I’d guess they found whatever there was to find.”
“But no killer yet, huh?”
“Not yet.”
“I hope they do. Or you do. Really.”
From the lawn, he gazed back at the house: fading shingles with green shutters in which shamrocks had been cut with a scroll saw. The asphalt roof had a few winters left in it, though the ceramic cat was a question mark. Ken Smith’s freckled brow ridged, his enthusiasm sagging for a second. “I hope it isn’t gonna be a jinx.”
“It’ll sell. People forget. It’s a tidy little house.” And it was.
“Sure,” he agreed, confident again. “It’s a great starter.”
“In an established neighborhood,” I reminded him. We shook hands and I thanked him for his time.
“Hey, in this business you got nothing but. Can I ask you one thing, though?” He nodded at the Bobcat. “You being a P.I. and all—is that really your car?”
“It’s a loaner,” I said. “Even as we speak, the Lamborghini’s in the shop getting bullet holes patched.”
A grin plumped his bright cheeks.
“My turn now,” I said. “I can see you wear the uniform with pride. Do you own the sport coat, or do they?”
He laughed. I gunned him with a finger pistol and headed for the street. He’d do okay. The house would be a slow sell any way you sliced it—which was why they had given it to him. But they’d leave the l out and settle for “homey” in the ad, and a couple or a young family would pick it up and life would go on. I wished them all well.
