by David Daniel
“So Bhuntan’s killing may tie in with others,” she said.
“May. The rest adds up to less than zero so far. Except for the bill. If I were you I’d keep the escape clause open.”
“I’m determined.”
“You had me fooled. Anyway, this isn’t client and gumshoe tonight, I hope. I punched out when the last of the trail dust swirled down the shower drain.”
Her eyes had not left mine. In the gleam of the tiny white lights strung through the ficus trees in their big terra cotta urns on the patio, they were silky and bright and wise. “Friends?” she offered tentatively.
“I could use one.”
We drank to it, then Ada took her purse and excused herself to go find the powder room. I leaned on the railing and looked down at the starlight in the deep black water.
In the 1790s the Pawtucket Canal had run right by this spot. A mile and a half long and dug by hand to bypass the Merrimack’s thirty-foot falls, the canal helped water the roots of what blossomed thirty years later as industrial America. After a visit to England, Francis Cabot Lowell brought back a head full of ideas for factory machines. Other canals followed, tapping the supply of immigrant labor and the energy of the river to run textile mills. Dubbed the Venice of America, Lowell boomed through the century, drawing each new wave of workers to tend the machines. The labor movement got its impetus here too, complete with strikes and headbusting, scabs and prototype Jimmy Hoffas. By the 1930s, however, with depression and the competition of cheap sweat in the South, the city bottomed out and stayed down for four decades. Hard times toughen people who survive them, and the rawboned resilience never went away. Now Renaissance was a term the Chamber of Commerce and the media used. But rebirth did not reach everywhere. I found myself thinking about the distance between Bhuntan Tran and Joel Castle. And yet … had something linked them in death? I could not shake the question, nor could I answer it.
So I let it be. Here, off the streets, with starlight winking in the canal, I imagined all of that as far away. Ada’s sweet scent was still in my nostrils. I shut my eyes and savored it.
“Penny,” the lady herself said beside me.
I didn’t see any powder on her nose, but she looked good anyway. “Throwing your money away again,” I said.
“What are trust funds for? To quote a friend.” She smiled wickedly.
We turned back to the rail, like passengers on an ocean liner in a calm, dark sea. It had occurred to me that in all my years in the city, I could not remember a night without sirens. Ambulances, cop cars, fire trucks—always some crisis, someone’s life in turmoil. But tonight … “Peaceful,” I said.
We listened to the stillness, then looked at each other for confirmation.
She said, “It’s nice.”
I put my hand lightly on her arm near the shoulder and bent my head into the fragrant space thus formed.
The kiss had all those qualities of the first one that are never there again in the same parts: mystery and softness, gentle fear, wonder, electricity, lust.
“Alex,” she murmured after our lips had moved back to the distance of a breath.
If only we had let that be enough for the moment, if we had gone back to the music that the band had started to make again. We were too hungry.
“Alex,” she said again, but differently, “I don’t ask much … but today, I finally let myself remember where I’d heard your name before. I got one of the secretaries in the office to fill in the rest.”
Had I drawn back another step? “You could have just asked me. I figured you already knew.”
“I was thinking about you, and I wanted to know at that moment right then. Were you dismissed from the police for taking a bribe?”
“Did you stay for the whole show?”
“I know only that. And that the charges were never proven in a court hearing. But I don’t care about it. You can tell me, that’s what I’ll go on. You didn’t really take money, did you?”
I considered making it easy—the night was so full of stars and promise, the sweet siren of jazz and gin. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t. There was a point in any linkup between people when either you told the truth or you lied, and that set the rules. Everything else followed the path you chose that moment.
I said, “I took it.”
Her eyes got a tunneled look and she nodded. “Oh.”
I started to say more, but she looked away so quickly that any words were lost.
“It’s getting late,” she whispered. She took her purse off the railing. “I’ll have the doorman get me a cab.”
I watched her, wanting to say something to lessen the blow, to apologize in some way, but there had been enough of that tonight already. I trailed her back inside and then out, looking on mutely as she got into the cab and it looped off, leaving me rooted on the sidewalk like a lone pine tree the bulldozer has spared. Inside the hotel lounge the band did a moody intro to “’Round Midnight.” The piano sounded a little off, although it was probably me. Their timing was right on though, as confirmed by my watch. As I walked to the parking garage, I heard the distant goosehonk of fire engines. I had spoken too soon about the silence. Trouble did not quit just because you wanted it to.
22
I SPENT SATURDAY morning with plainclothes cops in Andover, a fresh-faced pair, one short with a pale brown crew cut and sunglasses hanging around his neck on a cord, the other sturdy, dark, moustached. They would have looked good on prime time. But then crime in their town tended to stock swindles and art theft and Potter and Kit over at the Phillips going on a rampage and toilet-papering the maple trees on the town common. We walked through the crime scene at Joel Castle’s, then sat in their car in the Sheraton parking lot. They had already checked with the motel staff about suspicious activity the night before. They had asked about a small white car. Nothing. Now they wanted to know all about my involvement with Mr. Castle. I guess when people make your salary worthwhile, you call them Mr. They called me Rasmussen.
I told them what I could. The problem came when I reached the part I could not. They looked at each other in the front seat, maybe cuing a rehearsed role play, then looked back to where I sat in the rear of the unmarked Crown Vic. I was grateful for the car. The patrol cars there are white with red and blue stripes; I would have felt silly sitting in one of them. The cop with the moustache said, “The woman from the Haskell and MacKay Gallery called us soon as she heard the eleven o’clock news report that Mr. Castle had been murdered. She gave your name—the same name as the person who called Lowell police to say he’d found the victim.”
We had been all over that. With the sun on the roof, the car was getting hot inside. We were all being polite about not sweating, but I was getting close.
“Let me understand this,” said Crewcut, resting his arm on the steering wheel and twisting to eye me. “You went back there last night to ask Mr. Castle some questions about his jade collection?”
“Right.” I had said nothing about Lauren’s relationship with Castle; why give people motive where none exists?
“Do you always walk into people’s houses uninvited?”
“I’m trying to quit.”
Moustache gave me a warning look. I had already told them about the sound I had heard. I was getting bored hearing myself. “What was your interest in the jade?” he asked.
“Professional, like I said.”
“A case you’re working on.”
“Right.”
“For whom?”
I smiled into his eyes. They were that bright, watery blue-green shade that some people like in their toilet bowls.
“Don’t pull client privilege with us,” Crewcut said. “We’ve got ways around it.”
I doubted it. When you’ve had Francis X. Droney searing your shirt collar with his breath, you don’t sweat a crew-cut Michael J. Fox.
“Statistically,” he went on, “the odds point to the one who reports a killing as the killer.”
Cops are your friends un
til they’re not. Treat me nice, I roll over and let you scratch my belly; but I can go the other way and snarl and bite your foot if you swing it. “That stat only works if the two were related or romantically involved,” I said. “We weren’t. Check the M.E.’s report for time of death then get back to me. The woman at Haskell and MacKay was probably still propositioning me at that point. As for the rest of it, you don’t need to know my client’s name. There’s no connection, so why clutter your report with irrelevant details? You both took freshman comp.”
They swapped another look, as if trying to decide what they could hold me on. But they knew the score; it would mean trying to justify a bust on a phony obstruction charge, and with the judges we had in this state, that would be tough. Hell, second-degree murder got you about six months. It did not hurt either that St. Onge had vouched for me. As we sat there scowling, a pair of deeply tanned young women in French-cut swimsuits and fluorescent Vuarnet T-shirts came out of the hotel with canvas beach bags. Crewcut slipped his sunglasses on, and the three of us watched, united for a moment in something. The women hopped into a graphite gray BMW and got a little bun warming on the hot upholstery. In a few seconds the AC was blowing cool across them like the breath of youth.
“So you don’t even think Mr. Castle brought this on himself?” Crewcut said in a lighter tone, turning back and letting his shades hang again.
“If so, it was by advertising. Some people figure goodies are worthless unless other people know you’ve got them.” I sent another look toward the girls in the BMW, but they had the tinted windows up now.
“But as for being into anything dirty…?” the cop said.
“Only other folks’ laundry, as far as I can tell.”
I found it odd to be defending Joel Castle, but in spite of all of his smooth, polished parts that fit so well in this town, there had remained one small rough edge that was pure Lowell.
“So why did he employ those two goons?” Moustache asked.
“Personal assistant and chauffeur,” I corrected.
“They’re both Concord grads, you know.”
I knew he didn’t mean the prep school. “I wondered about that too, but it makes a kind of sense. Some people keep big ugly dogs to scare away folks they don’t want around. From what I saw, everyone got fed and patted in the deal. You suspect them?”
“No,” said Crewcut. “They were at the airport in Boston last night, waiting to pick up someone who never showed. A state trooper confirms it. He ticketed the Lincoln for being in a taxi zone.”
I did not pursue that, but I stored it away. There were a few more questions, then Crewcut started the Ford. “In case we all need to do this again,” he said, “you aren’t planning to go away anytime soon, are you?”
I gave them my most law-abiding grin. “Not unless you’re buying the ticket.”
* * *
I pulled into a McDonald’s on 133. Inside I found a phone and punched in the code to get my messages. Make that message. St. Onge had called to say he was having a late lunch at the Athenian Corner downtown if I cared to join him. Somehow it did not sound like a suggestion.
I found him sitting by the window working on a piece of moussaka the size of a paving stone and sipping retsina. I could not see if there was a flare on his pants cuffs, but the sports jacket had lapels that a sunflower boutonniere wouldn’t have looked out of scale on. I ordered salad. The place was between lunch and dinner hours, and we had the corner to ourselves, surrounded by leggy philodendrons and the clutter of decorative decanters and gimcrack souvenirs that Greek restaurateurs think constitute interior design.
“This a date?” I asked.
He swished the retsina like mouthwash and swallowed. I could see the whiskers on his cheeks as they puffed with a suppressed belch. He pushed his plate away and lit a cigarette. “I felt like hell being over there last night,” he said. “Lauren’s one good woman.”
“Thanks for clueing me.”
“Not for you,” he said irritably. His eyes were as dark as Calamata olives. “I was sad for all of us. You, me, the wives. We used to have good times.”
“Our hearts were young and gay,” I said.
I nibbled salad. He smoked in silence. Finally he said, “Negative on any car last night. No one in that neighborhood saw nothing. I know, it’s a double negative.”
“I wasn’t going to say a word.”
“It’s the way I feel. Christ, instead of birdbaths and trolls, people ought to just put three fucking monkeys on their lawns these days. Nobody wants involvement for shit.”
“Do you kiss your wife and kids with that mouth?”
“It’s about all I do with them lately.”
He finished the wine and got the waitress’s eye by raising the empty glass. “You done with that rabbit food?”
“You want to finish it?”
He scowled and ground out his cigarette in the salad and lit another one. I recounted for him my session with the TV cops from Andover.
“Castle is their problem. Tran is still mine.”
“And?”
“Life seems to have an odor lately,” he said metaphysically. “I clued Droney on last night’s events. He’s not interested in a big maze of might-bes. He likes the shake-and-bake ones. Homicide Helper. Man hits wife with an ax and eats a bullet. Druggies smoke each other in a deal gone sour. The ones that give neat headlines. These complicated jobs only make everyone look bad.”
The waitress brought him another glass of wine, which he lifted into a shaft of smoky sunlight so that it sparkled. “I’d like to hang around the rest of the afternoon and get bingoed. Interested?”
“You’d only ramble and reminisce and recount old tales in a voice grown faintly wistful,” I said, “and wake up later with a taste in your mouth like you’d been licking gun barrels. What you need is a new set of lenses. Go see an optimist.”
He shook his head wonderingly. “Look at me. Saturday afternoon and I’m working. I’ve got a raft of paper that high on my desk. My family’s turning into a single-parent home. And Leona—she’s great about it, you know her—but it’s like … there’s no balance anymore.”
“You’re obviously not looking for sage counsel by telling me.”
He tapped ashes into the salad and sucked smoke. “Bitching helps.”
“Well, here’s old news. You’re right. The pile doesn’t get any shorter. You keep taking it off the bottom, they keep putting it on the top, and one day someone else is in your chair deciding what to pitch. So lock up for the weekend and go home and take everyone out for miniature golf and the drive-in theater. Go to Crane’s Beach tomorrow and get a lease on a sunburn and eat hot dogs with your sand. Life’s short all over.”
His mouth twisted under the steel gray threads of his moustache. “Old news, but it’s good to hear. Maybe I will.” In a lowered voice he said, “So what the hell, here’s something on the Castle burn. Along with the fancy watch, a wall safe in his bedroom was jimmied and cleaned out.”
“I’ll bet I know what was inside. Any prints?”
“Not up there. Downstairs there were more prints than on a diner spoon. The locals even managed to lift some, including yours and those gazoonies Castle had working for him. But there was one set hasn’t been ID’d yet. It’s got priority. Ditto with ballistics. Results should come in tomorrow.”
“When you’re at the beach,” I said.
“Interesting?” he said.
I shrugged. “Maybe I’ll catch it all in the newspaper.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“I don’t have a client anymore,” I said. “I think I’ve been axed.”
23
ADA STEWART WAS in my waiting room when I got back at three P.M. She set aside a copy of Time so old it still thought Michael and Janet Jackson were two different people, and we looked at each other with mute discomfort. I hung my jacket on the coat tree and put a couple of important turns in each shirt sleeve. I would have liked about ten arms.
�
��You caught up on ancient history?” I asked. “Or were you casing the paintings? They’re original ash can school.”
“I want to hear it, Alex, all of it. But no jokes. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
She hadn’t. Her eyes were dark-circled and her lips were drawn, not the lips I had tasted so briefly last night.
I unlocked the office and followed her inside. She took the chair she had sat in five days ago. With another key I unlocked the file cabinet and hauled open the bottom drawer. The licensed Smith & Wesson K38 Masterpiece was in there in the same snap-top holster I had kept it in for years. There was also a fifth of George Dickel. I let them both lie. I reached for the big envelope nestled flat behind the gun and the bourbon.
There was an envelope just like it in a security drawer at the Enterprise Bank and Trust downtown. I set this one on the desk and sat in my chair and unwound the little string that sealed the flap. I drew out three file folders, one of which I slid across to her. It held clippings from the local and Boston newspapers.
While she read, I paged through a second folder, the fattest of the three. It contained a transcript of the probable cause hearing, plus my own notes. The third folder, the thinnest, had the department’s official action. Francis X. Droney’s name and signature appeared quite often.
The office was as quiet as a library carrel where we might have been cramming for a tough final. For once I was grateful for the telephone’s silence. Afternoon sunlight crept across the walls on little mice feet. From the street the sounds of Saturday afternoon floated up through the open windows. A car with its radio turned up loud paused at the traffic light, and I heard the ball game from Fenway, where Greenwell and Vaughn had a cottage industry going, turning fastballs into souvenirs. At last Ada closed the file and set it on the desk.
“So taking the bribe was intentional?” she said.
“It was supposed to have been a sting. I worked with a state cop named Rydell and a supervisor—who’s gone now, retired to Phoenix—just the three of us. We didn’t want any leaks. The councilman was shaking down developers who hoped to build in the area. With the city economy going through the roof at the time, people wanted in and were willing to buy a ticket. We let the councilman know we knew.”
