The Weeping Buddha
Page 15
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
But the torture dragged on as good fortune.
—J. BRODSKY, About the 1910’s
Detectives Brennen and DeBritzi stood in front of a plate-glass window on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor and found themselves watching a strange ritual of exercise. The wind whipped up off the bay, but inside the health club people were sweating and women and men alike seemed to be in all manners of oddly erotic positions.
“What the hell is this place?” Gary exclaimed.
“Pilates, the latest exercise craze that started fifty years ago.”
“Looks like S&M.”
“That would explain the modern interest,” Loch surmised.
Beka was a partner in the studio, more silent than anything, Jenny O’Doherty had said. Evidently, Beka had backed it financially for two reasons—to help her old dance partner and to have a place where she herself could exercise. It had ended up being a cash cow, though, with articles in Vogue, In Style, and other magazines; the studio now had a waiting list of over a hundred Hamptonites wanting to come exercise one-on-one with exclusively trained Pilates instructors.
“Well, this is going to be anything but routine,” Gary muttered. They opened the door and entered, uncomfortably aware that they were the only people in the room fully dressed. And it wasn’t just their leather shoes and winter parkas that looked out of place amid the more scantily clad people in leotards and gym shorts; it was the surprised looks on both of their faces. Lochwood kept trying to erase the smile creeping around the corners of his mouth, but the mirrors on every wall reflected his failed attempt to wipe off his amused grin; and Gary was doing no better in hiding his mirth. They would have been more comfortable in a gay biker’s bar.
A woman moaned loudly while an instructor leaned her body weight into the client’s thighs. The exercise salon was full of almost medieval-looking contraptions: Tables on wheels slid back and forth with people lying on their backs moving their legs from open to closed positions in midair. There was something that looked oddly like a bed-and-rack combination holding a man’s legs in metal springs and leather straps.
“Hello, did you want some information?” A woman in her midthirties walked away from a man closer to Lochwood’s age, who groaned as he tried to stretch over his pale white legs while sandwiched between a box and a board. “Here’s a brochure.” She handed Lochwood a glossy tri-fold with the words, Change Your Body, Change Your Life embossed on the cover above a color photo of Beka performing some exercise that looked particularly tortuous and, to any straight red-blooded male, sexually suggestive. “If you want to sit down and watch I can talk with you in a minute, just as soon as I get Harold over to the bed.” She turned back to the groaning man. “Come on, Harold. Drop those heels! Drop your head. Suck in your gut and get your shoulders down.”
No wonder there were so many men exercising here, Loch thought. Where else could you get pretty women to stand on you, or better yet, stand over you and yell, “Drop your head!”
“I wonder how much they pay for this kind of torture,” Gary whispered to Loch.
“Seventy for your first session, three hundred for a series of five,” the woman piped in. “I can answer all of your questions in a minute.”
“Actually, we aren’t here to, um, work out.” Loch wondered if that’s what they called it. “We’re looking for Edilio Ferraro.”
“So are we. Harold, focus on your body, not what’s going on around you.” She leaned on the man’s back to press his chest closer to his thighs—it hurt Lochwood just to watch. “He was supposed to come back and open this morning, but I guess he decided to extend his Christmas vacation.”
“Where did he go?”
“Can we do this later? It’s crazy today without Edilio here and with Beka’s misfortune … We should have closed, but everyone wants to work out now that the holidays are over, and I’m not being paid to rearrange the schedule.”
“Imagine,” Gary commented in a low voice to his partner, “expressthe ing your grief by changing your appointment.”
“Harold, did I tell you to get up? Come on, one more exercise. Stomach control!” She was no longer interested in them and her body language made that plain. She planted a fist into the man’s stomach as he tried to sit up. “Exhale! And inhale!” Loch wondered if her clients called her Mistress, but decided not to ask—she scared him.
“What time is good for you?” Gary inquired.
“We’re booked solid till three and the last client is done at quarter after four.”
“Fine, we’ll come back then.”
They left by the same door they’d entered and walked out onto the pier. “What a trip!” Gary laughed. “I felt like I was doing undercover work on the West Side Highway in the ’80s.”
“At the Ramrod or Bull and Chain?” Loch chuckled. “Come on, let’s go someplace that’s more our speed and get some French onion soup at the Corner Bar.” He led the way from the docks and up into the small town where Devon lived.
The Corner Bar was dark, as usual, and seemed full of regulars. Two famous authors sat at the oak-hewn bar. Loch recognized one of them from his book jacket and the other from his mug shot—a DUI, Christmas 1999. He couldn’t remember either name but they were already fairly sloppy and he hoped they were walking home. He and Gary took a seat by the window and ordered two French onion soups and coffee.
“Guinness on tap,” Gary said thirstily. “Want a draft?”
“When was the last time you saw me drink?”
“Don’t remember.”
“That’s cause you’re the one with all the vices.”
“Well, somebody in this partnership has to be human!” Gary paused, then waved to the waitress. “Can I smoke in here?”
“At the bar.”
“I hate puritans.” He stood up and walked over to the bar a few feet away. One of the authors held out his hand, mistaking Gary as an approaching fan rather than one of the country’s illiterate. “So, what do you think about this Edilio character?” Gary did not even notice the hand proffered him.
“Don’t know enough to think anything.”
“Odd, though, disappearing right after they croak?”
“Right before, actually, and being on vacation doesn’t equal disappearing.”
“He doesn’t call in?”
“He could have called Beka and told her he was extending his trip and she never told, or got the chance to tell, anyone at the studio.”
“Why not just call the studio himself—there’s an answering machine at the desk.”
“Maybe the machine was full of messages.”
Gary stabbed his butt into the ashtray and returned to the table. “You’re so good at negating theories, how about coming up with one?”
“What if he ordered a hit and got the hell out of Dodge?” Loch smiled at Gary’s stunned face. The tureens of soup arrived, thick with bubbling cheese, and they set about digging out the beef broth and French bread hiding beneath its surface.
“A hit. That would explain the scene,” Gary finally admitted.
“Too messy?”
“Yeah, it seems contrived. Too many clues that don’t add up to anything concrete. That’s not how a hit usually is.”
“You sound like Halsey. Either it’s clean and professional with one, maybe two mistakes, or it’s an open book. This story has too many possible endings.”
“So, you’re not married to the murder/suicide scenario?”
“I’m not married to anything, Gary. You know me.”
“Let the evidence speak for itself.” Gary mimicked Loch’s voice as if by rote. “I took your course back when I was a rookie detective hoping to pass the test.”
“And I passed you?”
“You’re such a prick.”
Case: Daniels, Todd
Number: 84101-1001
Relationship: Friend
Date/Time: 1/6/84, 15:20
Interviewed: DEVON HALSEY
Transcribed: 1/7/
84
Det. Freesia: What do you do for a living, Miss Halsey?
Halsey: I’m an artist.
Det. Freesia: You were a friend of Todd Daniels?
Halsey: I know his brother. I met Todd last weekend when he was staying with Sam.
Det. Freesia: And you last saw Todd?
Halsey: He was dancing with Beka. He looked like he was going to be sick and someone was in the bathroom, so he ran downstairs. Sam and I followed. He and Sam talked a bit, that was when Todd decided to go for a run around the block. I think he thought the fresh air would sober him up, and it was pretty cold out so it should have. That’s what I keep thinking about.
Det. Freesia: What?
Halsey: He wasn’t so drunk he couldn’t hold a conversation with his brother. And everyone keeps saying he was so drunk that he could have slipped into the river, or an elevator shaft, but I don’t see how he could have been that drunk.
Det. Zambini: Who’s everyone?
Halsey: At the party.
Det. Zambini: Was he on something else?
Halsey: I could smell pot on the roof, but didn’t notice anything else. There was a lot of activity in one of the bedrooms but I didn’t try to go in, so I don’t know what that was about.
Det. Freesia: Dare to hazard a guess?
Halsey: No.
Det. Zambini: So you and his brother were the last people to see him?
Halsey: I guess so, except for Broadway Bob. He lives on the grate outside the A train. I think he saw Todd after we did.
He said something about an alien taking Todd up in the air. I didn’t think much of it at first, but now I’m not so sure.
Det. Zambini: What changed your mind?
Halsey: He said they flew away, but now that I think about it he could have been pointing down Howard Street. Only we walked down Howard right after that and didn’t see anything.
Det. Freesia: What do you think happened?
Halsey: Sam says he worked at soup kitchens and was very interested in street people. That’s probably why Bob saw him, I bet Todd stopped to say Happy New Year. Maybe he tried to help an unfriendly type. Ever since Reagan released all those people from Bellevue there are a lot more psychotic people on the streets now. Bob warns Beka about them all the time.
Det. Freesia: How do you mean?
Halsey: She likes to go for walks late at night and Bob always tells her when the bad aliens are out and which streets to avoid.
Det. Freesia: If this “bad alien” got Todd, where’s his body?
Halsey: That’s your job, officer.
Devon smiled at her past self; she sounded so young, and she had made the typical mistake of calling a detective “officer,” something she’d never do now. Yet even then she had an eye for observation, albeit untrained at that time. She bet if they’d had her on the case in 1984 they would have found out something about Todd. Of course, she was forgetting that techniques for finding evidence had changed enormously in the past ten years, and the department back then was probably even more understaffed than it was now. Plus, this was a big city with a lot of people—Todd had probably been one of several to disappear that week.
She closed the casebook on Todd and stood up from the spare desk. “Thanks, I owe you.” She walked over to Freesia, handed her the folder, and watched the detective place Todd Daniels back into the vertical file amidst a number of other worn and semi-worn folders.
“Are those all of your unsolved cases?” Devon asked in disbelief.
“Lord, no! We have a roomful of those. These are simply the boys who have disappeared on New Year’s Eve.”
“How many?”
“Eight. Only three were ever found. Spring floaters.”
“That college kid two years ago?”
“He was the last one.”
“Any sign of foul play?”
“There was something.”
Devon’s eyes narrowed, silently demanding that Freesia share the information with her.
“We don’t know for sure. He was pretty well gone by the time we found him, and so were the other two,” Freesia said. “I really thought Todd would be a floater.”
Devon looked at the folders in the vertical file. “Why do you keep them out?”
“The similarities—their age, Ivy Leaguers, New Year’s Eve in the city. I keep looking for some other connection, but they all belong to different frats, come from different areas in the tristate.”
“And you have five more that never came up, including Todd?”
“Five, yes.” Freesia fingered the files tenderly, rubbing her fingers on the tabs of the folders. “And it’s happened almost every other year—except for the millenium.”
“Too many undercover cops to get away with much,” Devon reasoned. “What does Homicide think?”
“That I’m looking for a promotion out of here.”
“Are you?”
“I like what I do; at least my folks are alive—sometimes.” Freesia leaned back in her chair and cocked her head as if to say, that’s more than you can say.
“I think I’d like to come back and read more tomorrow. Okay?”
“Suit yourself, detective.”
“What shift are you on?”
“Seven to three.”
“Great, I’ll get here at seven-fifteen.”
Freesia stopped what she was doing and looked the younger detective straight in the eye. “You know, your information was one of our only leads.”
“What was that?”
“Broadway Bob. Zambini talked to him the day of your interview and thought that maybe his aliens were real people.” She opened the file and read Zambini’s notes. “Bob accepted a bottle of bourbon from the party-goers and maintains that he saw one of them go off with an alien. When asked what the alien looked like he said, ‘All aliens look alike—short and dark. Everybody knows that, and antennas, they all gots antennas.’ He then started waving at somebody walking by and screaming, ‘There’s one now.’ The man was Chinese, about five foot seven with black hair.” Freesia looked up at Devon. “Unfortunately, Bob started slipping halfway through the interview and screaming at a few more aliens who were trying to use the A train.”
“His brain was fried.”
“Yeah, well suddenly being cut off from a daily dosage of Thorazine does that to people. Zambini went back the next day to talk to him. He was dead.”
“Dead?” Devon was stunned. Why hadn’t she noticed Bob’s absence from his post? Why hadn’t Beka ever mentioned it?
“Froze to death.”
“Was there an autopsy?”
“If I remember correctly, he died of heart failure and exposure. Common enough.”
“Poor Bob. I wish I could have done more.”
“You became a cop.”
Devon stood in the doorway and looked at the detective who had forged her way through departmental red tape, making it easier for women to get promoted and titled. “So, are you going to tell me who else wanted to see Todd’s file now?”
Freesia didn’t answer.
“It might help me.”
“I don’t see how. She didn’t get to see it. We can’t let civilians look at open cases, can we?”
Devon did not have the energy for any more games. “Just tell me who it was.”
Freesia fiddled with her pen and raised her eyebrows once more. “Your friend, Beka.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Today one often confuses passion and vice. Cigarette smoking, cocaine, and the vigorously esteemed recurrent need for coitus are, God knows, no passions.
—ROBERT MUSIL, The Man Without Qualities
Gary and Loch walked out of the Corner Bar and headed down Main Street and into the town of Sag Harbor. Shop windows still decorated with remnants of Christmas blinked cheerily and the town seemed to hum with people waving to each other from across the streets and wishing one another a Happy New Year. Loch pointed out all the local points of interest—the police station, the firehouse, Emporium
hardware.
“What is this place, a movie set?” Gary, a Brooklyn boy who thought Coney Island was the country, marveled. “Something out of Mayberry RFD. Where’s Opie?”
“It’s a real homey sort of town.”
“Except for those people all strapped up in springs and leather.”
“Some summer people never leave.” Lochwood could hear a dog barking behind him; it was a joyful bark, familiarly demanding. It got louder, moving up the street closer and closer to them. Loch turned around to see what the commotion was about and saw Boo dragging his pet-sitter up Main Street toward the object of his affection, himself.
“Brennen! What the hell are you doing here?” Aileen tried to catch her breath as Boo madly wiggled back and forth, his left lip curling upward, baring his teeth in that look only Dalmatians, or very happy dogs, can pull off.
Gary backed away.
“Aileen.” Loch kissed her cheek. “Gary, here’s your Opie!”
She socked him in the arm. “I’m not that short!”
“Yeah, you are, but who’s measuring?” He knelt down on the sidewalk and began rubbing Boo’s ears and received a thorough facelicking. “Good boy, good boy. It’s good to see you, too.” He continued to pet Boo while performing introductions. “Aileen, this is my partner, Gary DeBritzi. Gary, Aileen.” He gestured to the one hundred and one spots vibrating in front of their eyes. “And this is Boo, Halsey’s dog. Aileen is Halsey’s pet-sitter and roommate.”
“How you doing?” Gary shook Aileen’s hand, then gingerly patted the dog on the head. “I thought he was gonna bite my leg off!”
“Nah, that’s a smile!” Aileen laughed at him. “Not a dog person, are ya?”
“Aileen’s known for her keen observations of people …” Loch said as he stood up, “… and dogs.”
“Yeah, well so am I. How come you and Halsey’s dog are so chummy?”
“How was your New Year, Aileen?” Loch evaded Gary’s question with one of his own.
“I worked. You guys here cause of Beka?” she asked. Loch didn’t answer. “Oh, can’t say nothing, huh? Well, I hear Edilio’s taken a runner. You think he might’ve killed them?” Loch had always thought Aileen had missed her calling; she had a way of getting information that even the best cops would have struggled to find out.