by David Daniel
“Though you didn’t really have evidence, apparently,” Ada said.
“Not enough. We met with the guy, who indicated he’d make it worth our while to help him out. Not in any words you could take to court, of course. We worked it so the statie, Rydell, was wearing a voice-actuated recorder and battery pack taped to his body. I was to take the money. It was set for midnight in the courtyard behind the old Boote Mills complex. Only something went wrong. When we got there, nobody showed.”
“They were late?” Ada said.
I shook my head. “With that kind of thing, you’re either on the dot, or not at all. We should’ve scrammed. But we didn’t. Rydell took cover, and I walked down into the courtyard. As I stood there, I heard something. Someone walking on broken glass. It was too late to get Rydell there. A bearded guy appeared, said the agreed upon password, and handed me the satchel. I took it. As I did, someone started shooting from the mill. I drew my weapon and returned fire. Rydell did too. He was hit in the face. By the time reinforcements came, the guy with the beard had vanished. The gunman was dead.”
“Oh, God.”
“He turned out to be hired help from the Bronx. Rydell made it, but he ended up with about a year of memory gone.”
“He has no recollection of that evening at all?”
“What evening? A big nothing. Just a lot of hassles, a busted marriage, therapy afterwards. He took his state pension and got a job selling vinyl siding by telephone. Meanwhile, he keeps hoping that some day he’ll get back what he lost.
“His wife?”
“His memory. But I’m not holding my breath. The weird thing—when we got him in, there was no wire on him.”
Ada frowned. “You mean the councilman’s people took it when he was shot?”
“I want to believe that.”
“What’s the alternative? If he never…” She answered her own question. “Oh, no.”
“I don’t have the answers yet. I did have the bills on me though. Which was enough for most people.”
She said nothing for several moments, then: “Can I ask the name of the councilman?”
“Cavanaugh.”
“Oh, boy. Mr. Incumbent.”
“Still kissing hands and shaking babies. The link with extortion, conspiracy, and intent to murder a police officer never materialized.”
Ada was slowly shaking her head. “And he’s been one of social service’s biggest boosters this year.”
I smiled. “At least some good’s come out of it. He wants to keep super clean now because he knows somebody knows.”
She set the folder on the desk. “So this stays open?”
“For me it does. Until I can close the drawer on it for good.” Or until they closed one on me, I thought. Though the way things were going, there wouldn’t be anyone for it to matter to either way. “I’ve got to figure whoever set me up is still around, and so am I. I’m a finger in his eye, a stone in his shoe. A small one, but I’m there. I’ll find him. Them.”
“And you’ll put Cavanaugh away?” Ada said.
“Only when I’ve got all the ducks straight. A guy as crooked as he is will have law school profs lining up to defend his constitutional rights.”
Ada tipped her head to one side. “Couldn’t you just go shoot him?”
She ventured her first smile of the afternoon, a little wry at the edges, and brief, but it was a great start. I put the folder back in the file drawer and lifted George Dickel by his neck. Ada nodded. I quarter-filled two glasses and added some spring water and put the bottle back and locked the drawer.
“To honor,” she said as we touched glasses.
“Doesn’t sound like much fun.”
We drank.
“You doing anything tonight?” I asked.
She raised her eyebrows tentatively. “Quiet evening at home with a friend?”
“That sounds a lot funner.”
24
SO WHAT DO I KNOW? With four million in the bank, there are not many houses ruled out on account of price. None in Lowell. But the scion of the Stewart fortune had chosen a plain, two-story wood-frame on Christian Hill with a pair of big sugar maples soughing in the small front yard.
On the way we stopped to do a little domestic number, whisking a shopping basket through busy supermarket aisles where the only language you did not hear spoken was English. We picked up the makings for dinner, and I dropped a twenty on a Pouilly-Fuissé and let it age another fifteen minutes. With Michael Franks on her CD player and the sun sliding down behind the distant New Hampshire hills, Ada did a stir-fry with vegetables, cashews, and tofu. Afterwards she came across the deck and set herself comfortably on my lap, and we sat for a long spell watching the sky dim. Someone a few houses away set off skyrockets, and we laughed. When dusk was full and the bottle empty, she rose and took my hand and we went inside to her bedroom.
We undressed each other, shedding clothes the way you do, with the eagerness of kids opening presents on Christmas. When the gift wrap was gone, she kissed me. Before I could fairly kiss her back, she skipped free and went into the adjoining bathroom. I fumbled my way downstairs. I did not know how to work the CD player, so I slipped an old Oscar Peterson LP out of its jacket and sleeve. I know how to work records. As Peterson’s piano began stringing through the moonlit house, I returned and saw Ada standing looking out the bedroom window, saw the curve of her bottom and thought I would like to see the bikini that had made those tan lines.
She came to me with a velvety purr of pleasure, her mouth minty with toothpaste, and we kissed in a fever and when the time was right we lay on the cool sheets and I felt a small shiver prickle her with gooseflesh that caught me too, and we moved together slowly, then quickly. Afterwards I felt her eyelashes on my face, and I tipped my head back and looked at her. She smiled for me.
* * *
Moonlight gleamed on the maple leaves beyond the window of the bedroom where Ada lay on her side, propped on an elbow, watching me. I watched her right back. The sheet was tented over my raised knee like a cool mountain in the dark. The house had been silent a long time. Her fingers found the little puckered scar on my shoulder and asked the question in the way they touched it.
“Old mishap,” I said.
She shifted position. “From a gunshot, isn’t it?”
Her face was a few feet from mine, but except for the gleam of her eyes, I could only just make it out. With a finger I brushed her lips.
“You think I’m someone else,” she said after a silence.
“You better not be.”
She shifted again, her eyes never leaving mine. “You don’t think I’m someone who’s technically kidnapped a child and brought it here for its own safety and then had the mother attack me with a hot iron the next time I went to her apartment. Or who’s had men push me against a wall and press boozy mouths on me so my only defense was to knee them where it always hurts. I’ve seen people put needles in their arms, and beat up on the ones they’re supposed to love.”
“You’re one tough kid.”
She looked away.
“You’re right,” I said.
“About what?”
“It’s a gunshot wound.”
“On the job?”
“The old job.”
She sat up, drawing the sheet around her, her face in a shaft of moonlight now as she brought her chin to rest on her knees. “I was thinking tonight … Bhuntan’s name is clear as far as I’m concerned. That was the thing I wanted when I hired you. I’ll request a meeting with the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association and present what you’ve found.”
“Is that what you want to do? Even though nothing’s proved?”
“The police can handle the rest.”
“Maybe. I’m not sure they’ve got the motivation right now.”
“It doesn’t matter then. I don’t want you taking chances. I’ll pay you for everything you’ve done.” She was quiet a moment. “Say something.”
“Time was,” I said, �
�when that’s how lunatics were made.”
“What?”
“Sitting in the light of the moon like that.”
“I’m serious, Alex.”
I sat up too. “It isn’t the money anymore,” I said.
“You mean you won’t stop?”
“There are people who have died, Ada. Maybe I can keep it from happening again. Because I think someone means for it to.”
Her bare shoulders clenched with a shudder. “What if you can’t?”
“What if I can?”
“You could become a victim yourself.”
“With a tough character like you to look out for me?”
She got out of bed and padded across the room to the window. I looked at her in the moonlight, shadows showing the dimples in her lower back and her hips and the smooth swelled curve of her buttocks down into her legs, and I knew one thing. I didn’t want to be alone, not there in the night, not in my life. I got up and went across the carpet. She turned and I saw the gleam of wetness on her cheeks and saw her smile bravely. As I reached for her I thought: Grab this, Rasmussen, because you won’t find it again, a one-of-a-kind piece like rare jade, with all the handiwork of the master carver.
Hours later something woke me and I saw the moon had set. I laid a hand on the tilt of Ada’s back and whispered her name. She made a sleepy sound.
“Do you have a pair of nylons?”
Her muttered words could have been “top drawer bureau,” or nothing at all. I checked the big lacquered Chinese bureau whose drawers exhaled the jasmine scent I knew so well. I found a fresh packet of pantyhose and took it quietly into the bathroom where I pulled the door partway closed and put on one of the globed lights flanking the medicine cabinet.
I tore open the nylons. Haynes, the gentleman’s preference, size small, sheer. There was no gentleman present, as one glance in the mirror confirmed. I ignored the sleep-bleared presence by opening the cabinet. Inside I found a tiny pair of surgical scissors. There was also a stick of eyeliner. Slowly, carefully I did my eyes, bringing the corners up, elongating and thinning the shape. Then I used the dainty shears to trim the dainty sheers, snipping off half of one leg.
“Is this something we should talk about?”
Ada was leaning sleepily in the doorway. She had on a pale blue silk kimono with a darker brocade dragon guarding each breast and red piping running throat to hem, which came to mid-point on her golden thighs.
“Tell me something,” I said. I pulled the cut stocking over my head, working at it in the mirror a moment before I turned. “Could I be a long-lost cousin?”
She gazed and blinked.
The upward tug of nylon over the lined eyes, and the nose-flattening effect, made me Oriental. “Could be,” she said. “Strange inspiration.”
I yanked the stocking off and pushed back my hair. “I’ve got a strange muse.”
“What does it prove?”
“Only that the man I saw at Lauren’s last night didn’t have to be Asian.” I shrugged, losing my inspiration. “Just an idea I woke up with.”
“I woke up with an idea too,” she said.
She had not moved. She was still leaning easily in the doorway, arms across her chest, the red-piped hem riding high on one round hip. Victoria’s Secret would have paid handsomely for the negative, but I wasn’t selling. I dampened a face cloth and swiped it across my eyes. It did wonders for my vision. When I looked again, the kimono was hanging on the doorknob.
* * *
I woke to daylight and the whisper of Ada’s breath on my jaw like a shared secret. My arm was snugged around her, as asleep as she, but she was curled so warmly into the space I did not move. Sunday morning. I had an image of us lounging around, lazy as a pair of pet store puppies. The sheet had come off her top leg, which curved from the swell of her flank to her delicate golden toes. I started to smile. I could not help myself.
I eased loose and gathered my clothes and moved quietly to the shower door, where I stopped to look back. Ada lay deep in some final dream. I hoped it was about her favorite private eye. Downstairs in the kitchen I found a teapot and some loose black tea and started the water. I used the telephone on the counter.
“What?” St. Onge answered in an annoyed tone.
Why wasn’t I surprised to find him in his office? “Wanted to catch you before you left for the beach,” I said.
He grunted.
“Any word on the prints at Castle’s place?”
“I thought you got canned.”
“That was malicious rumor.”
Another grunt. “Not yet. Ballistics came through, though. Same gun that was used on Tran.”
After a moment’s hesitation, I agreed to meet him for coffee. I shut off the kettle. Ada was still sleeping. I looked around for something to leave a note on. There were several envelopes on the counter, utility bills and something from a mortgage company. Through a little cellophane window I saw the name Mrs. Ada Stewart. Mrs.? Colonial Gas had her listed that way too. The envelope was open, so I slipped the bill out.
It was an overdue notice to the tune of a hundred bucks, threatening that the gas would be shut off if the bill was not paid immediately. The telephone bill was in Ada’s “Miss” incarnation, but it too showed an outstanding balance. The mortgage company statement indicated she had made late payments twice already this year.
Snooperman. Suspicion is my trade. Ada’s pocketbook lay on a living room chair, where she’d dropped it last night. There was a checkbook inside in a pebbled gray leatherette folder. The balance, which had been meticulously carried forward in pencil, a detail out of phase with the overdue bills, was $211.76. Two lines above was the entry of the check for three hundred which she had given me.
Ada’s voice startled me.
An answering machine on the kitchen counter had kicked on. Ada must have left on the unit down here and put the phones on mute last night; there had been no ring. After the beep a man said: “Darling. Are you there?” Pause. “I guess not. You’re up and out early for a Sunday. I hope you won’t be tired later. I’m going to the village for lox and bagels, then I’ll be at receptions till noon. So, uh, I’ll call you when I get a minute. Or you can try me.” He left a number. “I’m dying to know what’s happening with everything. Ciao for now.”
Forget the TV stuff. This work has almost no shoot-outs. The car chases are unwitting, generally the by-product of tailing a Massachusetts driver. The bulk of the time is spent polishing your pants. The callous on my trigger finger is from dialing phones. With a sizable private library of directories from around the Northeast, I know area codes: 212 is Manhattan. Did that make the village Greenwich?
But it was the “darling” and the envelopes on the counter that had me wondering. I tried to think of something witty to write for posterity, but what kept coming up had to do with how hard it is to break fortune cookies neatly. I wrote: “Had to run. Call you later.” I skipped the “ciao mein.”
It would have made a cheap telegram.
25
TEN O’CLOCK MONDAY morning, under a sky as gray as last month’s bedsheets, I drove over to Edson Cemetery. I beat the cortege and parked inside along a spiked iron fence, in view of where a backhoe had boxed out Joel Castle’s final home. The earth was mounded nearby, covered with a mat of artificial turf. A canopy had been set up, and beneath that stood rows of folding wooden chairs. From the sky came an ominous rumbling. I did not have to wait long before cars with their headlights on began to wind through the gate and along the paved avenues of the dead. No one was going to accuse me of being a big Joel Castle fan, but in the end I had come to accept him. Now I wanted to lay to rest along with him any lingering rumor that I had put him here.
My charcoal wool suit had hung in the closet so long that I had brushed epaulets of dust from the shoulders that morning as I took it off the hanger. I had discovered pinned to the lining a red paper tag bearing the logo of Castle Cleen. Fate has some great gag writers.
No soo
ner had the mourners emerged from the cars than light rain started to fall, sizzling on the warm pavement. Black umbrellas began to snap open like bat wings. The mortuary service provided loaners for people who had not counted on this one added bleakness. Neither family nor close personal friend, I kept a distance, getting wet. The poet might claim the heavens were weeping for Castle. I say it was just raining.
The pallbearers brought the casket, a brushed bronze affair in the same rich Neapolitan blue as its occupant’s Rolls Royce. Wet buds from the maple trees pasted themselves on the metal, providing the only natural touch I could see. The ersatz turf was no more lifelike than the job the mortician would have inflicted on Castle. The ancient Egyptians sent their dead off in well-stocked boats for the after-life journey. I thought about what Syd Keyes at the Haskell and MacKay Gallery had said about jade cicadas.
I estimated the crowd at four or five hundred, including a lot of big money and a scattering of Greater Boston household faces. What did people say? That I’m going to the funeral of my dry cleaner? It didn’t sound any worse than saying you were going to send off your private eye. I spotted Bob Whitaker from the Sun in his old military poncho, keeping a discreet distance, shooting with a long lens. The editors had known it would be one of the best celebrity turnouts since they had buried Jack Kerouac a few grassy aisles away. The funeral home pros stood to one side under the dripping trees, cupping cigarettes and waiting. A stocky man with shiny dewlaps and a black Chesterfield coat began to speak about his friend in slow, reverential tones over a background of sobs.
I saw Lauren. She was on the opposite side of the grave, seated among a group of old and new friends and members of the family. She looked dignified and pained and beautiful, and it stabbed me to realize she and Castle would have been an attractive couple.
