His tight nasty grin gave me my answer.
We went back inside, ran water over the cigarettes while Charles watched, then threw the soggy butts away. The two women had returned to the kitchen, Mrs. Sullivan looking motherly and Gloria looking relaxed. I wondered whether Gloria had any family.
Julie was staring at Dr. James. “What did the mugger look like, girl?” His lips barely moved.
She looked at me. “You tell him. I can’t give anyone a description of anything right now.” She looked at Mrs. Sullivan who was hovering around her shoulder. “I need to take some pills.”
Julie kept his eyes on her. “Rather have it firsthand.”
“I’m worn out now. I can’t stand being awake.”
Mrs. Sullivan snapped, “You know better than this, Julius,” and wrapped her arm around Gloria. Without another word, the two of them worked their way back down the hall toward the bedrooms.
I shifted my attention and described Gloria’s assailant and behavior. “I want to know who the hired help was. First because of that,” I pointed to the back of the apartment, “and I want it so there’ll still be something to do if everything else goes down the drain.” I grinned tightly. “You know how it is when you’re paid by the hour.”
Julius didn’t return the grin.
I shrugged. “The important thing is to get her to the office. She may get hesitant about going or getting the information I want. Be velvet, but please get it.”
Julius reached into my pocket, withdrew my cigarettes, and placed one behind his ear. He put the pack back in my pocket and shook his head disgustedly.
Charles had retreated to the far side of the room, almost forgotten. “Please, Charles, keep alert,” I said. “I don’t think anyone will show up here, but I didn’t imagine Gloria getting assaulted either.”
Julie murmured, “Not to worry, slumlord.”
Charles looked at me. “Where will you be?”
“New Jersey. I won’t be there long.”
Charles nodded, but Julius was looking at me out of the side of his eyes.
“There is a stiff involved with all of this and I’m going to get some background. Isn’t that the way all good detectives work?”
Julius and Charles exchanged glances.
I looked hard at Julius. “Can I count on the two of you?”
Charles nodded. Julius’ mouth twisted into another mean smile. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to your shrink, man. You need one.”
I returned to the apartment and thought I could get a few hours of sleep. It was impossible. I just lay flattened and frustrated by my inability to understand what was happening around me. I was tightening a noose—and more information about Starring and the case records would help cinch it further—but I had no idea who would hang. I hoped it wasn’t Gloria and me.
I kept trying to sleep, and kept failing, so I finally gave it up and took a long shower. When I finished I dug through my stash, found the coke and snorted; there were things to do, places to go.
I pulled the phone, cigarettes, grass, and gun to the kitchen table and sat down. I didn’t have a reason for bringing the gun. Maybe I was getting superstitious. I stared at the phone and tried to decide who to call first. It wasn’t an easy choice.
Looking up at the wall I remembered that I wanted to remove Mrs. Sullivan’s light. If someone came hunting for Gloria, I didn’t want them to wonder about the flasher. The momentary relief I felt about delaying the calls was quickly replaced by a vague sense of loss as I dismantled the equipment. I told myself that it was only temporary, but part of me wondered.
When I finished I returned to the table. It took two cigarettes and a hit of dope to compose the message I wanted to leave on Boots’ machine; it took two words of her recorded distorted voice for me to shred the entire idea and replace the receiver. I’d talk to her when I got back.
After I got my answer from New Jersey Information I stared hard at the telephone. This time it wasn’t going to be fun playing Rockford. The phone was answered on the fourth ring.
“Who is it?” A man, his tone brusque and defensive.
“This is Detective Jacob calling from …”
“I know where the hell you’re calling from,” he interrupted. “For crying out loud, how many times are you people going to call? We told you a dozen times that we’ll go along with delaying the autopsy. Can’t you leave us alone?”
Despite the surly greeting I was glad someone was home, not up here looking after the body. I heard a woman’s voice saying something in the background, but couldn’t make out the words. The sound of the receiver twisting in Starring senior’s hand suggested attention to what she was saying. He finally returned to me and growled, “My wife says I oughta shut up and listen. What do you want?”
“I would like to come down to Perth Amboy and talk to you about your son.”
“Not my son. Her son. How many times do I got to tell you people before it sinks in? Her son. I let him use the name, that’s all.”
I tried not to blink. “I apologize, Mr. Starring. The more paperwork there is, the less accurate the important information seems to be. That’s why I want to visit and speak directly with you and your wife.”
“What the hell is there to talk about? You want to know what kind of people raise an asshole who could get himself in that kind of trouble?”
I wanted him to continue but he stopped and just breathed heavily into the phone. He didn’t want an answer to his question. I heard the sound of a hand slapping over the mouthpiece and muffled voices. I waited patiently and wondered what kind of trouble Mr. Starring referred to, and whether that trouble had been real or something the police up here were telling him. The questions slipped from my mind when a woman came on the other end of the line.
“Can I help you?” She sounded tired and resigned. It was a tone I was familiar with.
I skipped an introduction, the fewer lies the better. “I would like to visit you and your husband to talk about Joe.”
“Must you?”
I decided to take a chance. “Not absolutely. But I think it would help.” It would be nice to have her on my side.
She gave a rueful laugh. “No one has sounded very interested in helping so far.” Her voice grew closed and protective. “One lousy thing after another. It’s just been something for Ernie to hurt me with. Now you want to come down and tell me more.”
“No ma’am, not at all. I don’t want to tell you anything about your son. I want to learn about him.” I thought hard for a moment and swallowed. “I don’t think it’s possible to get an idea of someone unless you speak to the people closest to them. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t know him at all.” I felt like a real estate agent poring over obituaries in a hunt for choice property.
“I’m afraid you’ll only get one point of view. Ernie won’t talk to anyone about Joe. And what he says to me isn’t really talking. I’m sure it’s much too far for you to come just to speak with me.”
“Not really. It seems to me that you could talk about your husband’s perspective. You’ve been quite honest and I would learn a great deal about Joe.”
“You really are interested in talking about him, aren’t you?”
“Yes I am.”
She grew quiet. I closed my eyes and hoped that talking about Joe to someone other than Ernie might give her some relief. Bullshit—I hoped it might give me relief.
Almost as if she were whispering to herself she said, “They said we wouldn’t be needed until sometime next week.”
“You mean up here?”
“Yes. Can’t your questions wait?”
“I don’t think that’s wise. The quicker we act, the faster everything will be resolved.”
“Everything is resolved,” she choked. Then she drifted off and added absently, “Ernie will probably drink ‘til then. What is your name?”
It took me a second to realize that she had asked a question. “Matthew Jacob.”
“Officer Jacob,
if you insist on coming it will have to be tomorrow. And I must warn you that Ernie will not talk about Joe. Tomorrow he probably won’t be able to talk at all.”
“Is there a particular time that is good for you?”
She hesitated, then said, “About eleven, if you would like.”
“That would be fine.”
There was a moment of strained silence that magnified the background hiss of the long-distance connection. I grew uncomfortable and moved to fill the gap. “I’m grateful for your cooperation, Mrs. Starring.”
“Thank you for your respect, Officer Jacob.”
I was still uncomfortable when I got off the phone. Like I’d just conned Mrs. Sullivan. I still had one more call to make, but I couldn’t do it feeling like this. I got up and packed for the trip.
It had been a long time since I went anywhere that demanded packing, and by the time I’d finished, less of the sleaze and more of the hunt was back in my system. I returned to the kitchen table and dialed Simon’s number. I knew the call would bring me down, but now at least I had somewhere to drop.
“Roth here.” He sounded tired.
“It’s Matt.”
“Just send your bill.” The receiver crashed in my ear. I redialed his number. The line was busy. I got annoyed, then admitted to some relief. I smoked more dope, went over a checklist, then tried his number again. As soon as I identified myself he said in a hard, chilled tone, “I apologize for hanging up on you, it was juvenile. But I still don’t want to talk to you.”
“Look …”
“There is nothing to say.”
“Okay, you need more time. I can understand that.”
“No, you don’t understand. Time hasn’t anything to do with this. Call today, call tomorrow, but all you’re going to hear is the same.”
“Simon.”
“Don’t ‘Simon’ me. Just send your bill.”
It was just like his last walk out of here, only this time I was looking at a dead telephone instead of his back. I wasn’t guilty of anything except failing to protect him, but his words drove home the magnitude of that failure. I felt like doing some slamming of my own, but I gently hung the receiver back and sank down into the chair.
I looked at the clock and knew it was time to leave. If I kept sitting, I wouldn’t get up. I finished gathering my things and forced myself out the door. I thought about saying goodbye to Mrs. Sullivan, Gloria, even Charles, but I just pushed my bag into the back seat and drove to Manuel’s. When I got there he was surprised that I asked him to do a trip check but immediately agreed. It had been a long time since I’d made a similar request.
I met Manuel the first time I moved into the neighborhood. I was a young social worker learning Spanish, he was a young mechanic learning English. I spoke to him in his language, he in mine. Over the years we kept up our dialogue; his English became impeccable, my Spanish passable. He did the maintenance on the different cars I’d owned and, since I never bought retail, he did plenty of it. Before trips I always came in for a Dominican blessing and due to Manuel’s mechanical creativity, I always got it.
And I got it today, though it took a while. It was night by the time I got out of town, and the dark brought on a fatigued restlessness. I wished it were a faster car to give me something to do with my time. Since it wasn’t, I stayed pretty legal and only occasionally played tag when memories of other trips to Jersey made me too uncomfortable to simply cruise. Too many first wife fights along these roads, too many bitter attacks, defenses, and painful silences to be alone with my thoughts. Megan was from the Garden State, but between her, her family, and me, there was no garden.
Route 95 wasn’t an easy highway to hardnose so, with a mixture of relief and dread, I finally pulled onto the Turnpike and headed south. I stopped at a motel just outside Elizabeth. It advertised cable television and was far enough from Perth Amboy to give me time in the morning to think about my meeting. I was too fucked up to think now.
The room was a room and the TV worked. I lay on the bed, smoked, and watched the tube while images of life with Megan danced past my eyes. . . . thrust back into the jagged shards of one lousy marriage, my inner eyes riveted on the still-open wounds in my heart. A grammar school air raid jingle, “Duck and Cover,” chorused nonstop in my ears until a part of me wished the bomb would drop.
When I awoke the next morning the television was still on, but mercifully my life with Megan, at least for now, was gone.
The Starring home was on a sliver of a street off a dead end. I had to circle the area a couple of times before I noticed it. None of the houses on the street looked as if they’d been noticed for a long time. Actually, calling them houses stretched the point: they were more cottage than house, workers’ housing of another era. I wondered which factory made its bones on the people who lived here.
The door was opened halfway by a woman who looked like she had seen too many difficult years, and stared at me like I just brought another. Maybe I had.
“Officer Jacobs?”
“Detective, ma’am, and it’s Jacob, without an s.” I smiled, “Everybody adds the s.”
Her mouth returned the smile and she opened the door the rest of the way. We walked through a small, dim living room cluttered with stacks of clothes, N.R.A. magazines, and other signs of indoor life. Mostly male. Somehow I didn’t think it was Ernie who kept it neat. I didn’t spot baskets of flowers or cards or anything else suggesting a recent death in the family.
There was very little daylight throughout the house and I almost tripped on a small, frayed throw rug that lay just before the kitchen entrance. I followed her into the kitchen over to a gray formica table surrounded by three unmatched chairs. When she turned and faced me in the lamplit kitchen, I got my first real look at her.
She was a tall gray-haired woman who looked sixty-five but might have been a decade younger. The hard-knocks impression I’d had at the door was reinforced by deeply etched wrinkles crisscrossing her face. In another economic bracket her face and bearing might have become elegant and wise; here she just looked tired and old.
“Please sit down. We can talk here, Ernie won’t disturb us.”
I didn’t ask why.
“He’s not a terrible man, really,” she launched into a practiced monologue. “He just doesn’t relate to strangers. His retirement has not gone well.”
“Has he retired recently?” I asked politely.
She waved her hand in reply. “I’m sure you don’t want our entire history.” She turned away. “Would you like some tea, Detective Jacob?” She recaptured my eyes and smiled wearily.
Watching her stand there, friendly, almost open, in a kitchen that catapulted me back to my own youth, left me unable to lie. “Mrs. Starring, I’m not from the police.”
She looked at me warily and put her hands in her neat gray housecoat. “Aren’t you Detective Jacob?”
“Yes I am, but I’m not with the police. I’m a private detective, licensed by the State of Massachusetts. The police don’t know I’m here,” I finished lamely.
She pulled her hands from her pockets and dropped them to her side. She clenched and unclenched her fists. Her eyes alternated between fear and anger.
“I’m not here to bring you more trouble, I’m really not. I meant what I said on the phone.”
“Why do you want to know about Joe?” She put her hands in front of her body and rubbed them together anxiously. They looked red and raw, as if she’d done too many dishes or spent too much of her life worrying. Both were probably true.
“I’m working on something that might be related to his death. It’s unlikely, but if I didn’t check, I’d be cheating the woman who hired me.
“You don’t want to cheat her, so you lie to me.” Her voice sounded bitter and resigned. She’d heard my story, or some variation, too many times to be impressed with it now. “I’m not surprised. She is paying you, and I’m not.”
“It isn’t the money. She’s a friend. I’m sorry about the li
e. If I told Ernie or you the truth, I was afraid you wouldn’t see me.”
“If you had told Ernie the truth he would have hung up on you. He almost did anyway.”
Before I could answer the tea kettle whistled and she turned her attention to fixing our tea. I had a cupful of time to plead my case.
Her graciousness overcame her hostility and, when she turned back to me with the cups in her hands, she nodded for me to sit. “You came a long way. I suppose there is no harm in having tea with you.”
I smiled in return. “Thank you.”
We sat down and she pointed to the sugar on the table. I helped myself.
“Is Detective Jacob your real name?”
“Yes. My name is Matthew Jacob. Please call me Matt.”
“You have two first names.”
“They thought it would be easier to get me coming and going.”
She chuckled and some of her tension seemed to ease. “I think I prefer to call you Mr. Jacob.”
I swallowed some Red Rose and nodded. “That’s fine.”
“Mr. Jacob, what is this visit about?”
“Pretty much what I said. Do you mind if I smoke?”
She stood and walked to a cabinet over the sink and returned with an ashtray. I offered her a cigarette and was surprised when she accepted. I lit the two of them and said, “I’m really only doing a background check.”
Her eyes welled up with tears. “Why do you need a background check? He’s dead, Mr. Jacob. Joe is dead.” She extracted an oversized handkerchief from her pocket and pushed at her eyes.
I waited until she finished before I continued, “That’s just it, Mrs. Starring. I don’t understand why he died.”
Suspicion replaced the tears. “The police said it was a drug deal. Joe was killed in a drug war. What is it you don’t understand?”
I sidestepped the question. “You don’t seem shocked by what they told you.”
She looked at me for a long moment. “I don’t know if I should talk to you. How do I know what I say won’t come back to haunt me?”
I pulled my wallet from my pocket and showed her a copy of my license. “Mrs. Starring, what you tell me is confidential. That’s why I can’t be more specific about my client and my work.”
The Complete Matt Jacob Series Page 24
