The Dorchester Five

by Peter Manus

  “I’ll come with you,” he says, emerging into the street. “You shouldn’t do this alone.”

  “No, no!” I say. “I must run!”

  “I’ll call the ambulance, then. The address!”

  “They have called already,” I cry out. I am running.

  When I am still many blocks from the apartment, I come out on the boulevard, still running, and I can see the building, far ahead. There is indeed an ambulance at the curb, and lights in a number of windows, like I have never seen before. I slow in spite of myself, my breath ragged in my chest, and watch as a stretcher appears—all of this silent at my great distance—balanced by two anonymous males in uniform. One is a white man, the other black. They disappear behind the ambulance, and I hear the doors thud and then again, or maybe it is an echo I hear. The ambulance takes off, circling round to coast off in the other direction. I hear the siren wail as the lights disappear in the distance. It is like a song sung by an immortal. I hear it in my ears after it is gone; it seems too rich an anthem to die. It means he is alive.

  I arrive at the clinic an hour later. I have stopped only to borrow a pair of sneakers from the boys in the first floor drug den. I have lost, somewhere along the way, the mix of plastic bottles the pharmacist had bundled into my arms. I have lost also the money I had grabbed on my way out. There would be a path of crumpled bills and bicarbonates behind me, I suppose, but all have undoubtedly been snatched up, so my trail has disappeared as if by magic.

  The clinic is small, its walls white stucco, its only artistry the thin blue neon cross that pierces the dawn sky from its roof. I enter the place—this kiosk of tragedy, always agitated with traffic—mechanics of the soul toiling under the constant cross-tides of sufferers and their lovers, their mourners, and, of course, the flowing stream of freshly deceased, both coming and going. I pass through the automatic sliders, groping for the hood of Simon’s sweatshirt against the sudden bright, pass through the waiting area where silent figures sit staring at nothing with leaden eyes. At the desk is a round Latina, her hair combed back smooth, pinned in place like a waitress.

  “Simon Love,” I say. I am hoarse, practically voiceless, from all my running, and perhaps from fear as well. My accent thickens in my throat. “He is alive?” I tell myself that I would know if he had died. He would have come into me at that moment. It calms me.

  She checks and even from her face in profile I can see that he does live. “You kin?”

  “Excuse?” I cannot comprehend her through the rush in my ears.

  “You are his kin?”

  “What is…?”

  She refrains from meeting my eye. “You are his brother, yes?” she hints.

  “Yes,” I parrot. “He is my brother.”

  I follow the red line of tape down the linoleum hall to the men’s ward. He is behind a curtain, amid the weary old palsied men who lie in rows, listening to one another groan. He is pale and thin. He has a tube in his arm and one in his nose. His eyes are sunken and the skin around them grey-black. He sees me.

  “The violin?”

  I stand against the bed. “It is well,” I say although I do not know.

  “They can suffer a hairline. Sometimes to a seam. It can be something you can’t see with the naked eye. You didn’t bring it?”

  I lean over and look into his face, then ease myself up and lie upon him so that we are face to face, the hood practically covering us both. “You have survived, then.”

  “Your stuff was no good. You can’t kill with that.”

  “When will they remove the tube?”

  He shrugs.

  “You will do the concert now? For me, at least?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “You have a—how do we say—‘comp’ ticket for me? In the front row?”

  “The sound is best further back, in the middle.”

  I shake my head. “I want to be at your feet. I want your sweat to spray me.”

  He doesn’t answer. Eventually he says, “Bruno? Did you finish that tonight?”

  I flick gently at his feed tube. “He himself has killed another. They will get him for that—there is no doubt. And you have killed yourself. So think of it as over. All of it.”

  “Until you’re caught,” he points out.

  “Sure, sure—until I am caught,” I agree readily.

  Steps approach. A voice, firm but polite, addresses me as “sir.” I peer into Simon’s face.

  “They think I am your gay lover.” I kiss him. “Adieu.”

  “Get my violin. I need to leave this place.”

  I nod and climb off him. The nurse checks Simon’s tubes to make sure I have dislodged nothing. She does not scold me.

  Très sincèrement,

  Nightingale

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Marina Papanikitas’s Personal Journal

  Breakthrough today. Have I mentioned lately, Zoey, how glad I am to be a spastic psychic? Not even kidding, for once. Check this out.

  So I’m up relatively late due to my all-night blood bucket marathon. I stumble through a shower while you throw down some sour cherry French toast for us. Absolutely love your French toast—never knew French toast till I met yours. I hit the road early afternoon with my phone under my chin and my latte warming my inner thighs.

  Phone rings and it’s Malloy. Starts getting into something, but I’ve got static and am not getting the gist. I try to clue him in but he barrels ahead, apparently not hearing me, and I have a flash memory of the night on the Hampstead Arms terrace, Harry sending him galloping after the lady’s scarf that our Agnès had entangled in the roof’s cornice. This, in turn, trips a memory of some facetious comment Harry had made a little earlier that night about Elliot taking his plunge to escape the upcoming wedding nuptials, and suddenly I start getting an acute premmie tingle. First time ever behind the wheel—occurs to me I should have started wondering long ago about how I was going to handle one of these bad boys in traffic, but I guess I didn’t want to face the question. I drop the phone and steer for dear life. Fortunately, there’s no visual to this particular premmie, but it’s scary enough to start going brain-numb at sixty-five mph, so I’m grateful to shift over a couple of lanes and roll to a living standstill in the breakdown lane. I wait—turns out there’s nothing more to it then the temporary numbing. After a minute or so it occurs to me that I can hear talking. I fish the phone from under my seat and tell Malloy to get over to Calvary Cemetery in Mattapan, find Jake Culligan’s grave, and call me. Then I sit for a while, sipping coffee and pondering the many great unponderables of my first major homicide case. Don't know everything. Don't even know much. But essentially I just solved it. I know her MO. I’m in her head.

  Phone rings and I decide to kick Malloy’s ass round the block, just to celebrate. It’s Harry. “Where are you?”

  “Late.”

  I’m not ready to be plied, but, fortunately, he’s got his own tale. “So listen to this. Tried to get in touch with Simon Love this morning, just to see if he’s harboring your homeless waif. His phone’s off so I drove to his place on my way in. Apartment ransacked. No blood, but someone puked his guts out in the tub. Kitchen window open, and I found a couple of old ibuprofen capsules scattered on the fire escape. Elderly woman who lives below told me Love got rushed to some clinic, middle of the night. I went there but he was gone. Didn’t check out—removed his tubes himself and vanished. That includes a nose tube, meaning he was damned determined. Nurse at the clinic wouldn’t quite say, but they think it was an aborted suicide. She did say there was a guy in to see him, claimed to be Love’s brother. My sense, Pop, is that they use ‘brother’ as code for a same-sex partner who isn’t a spouse. That sound about right to you?”

  “Standard stuff,” I assure him. Actually never heard of that, Zoey, but I feel pressured to come off as hip to the whole gay scene, male and female. “So Love is…?”

  “Melted into thin air, Pop. I’m not happy. One additional fact the neighbor told me—she figu
red Love’s place would be fleeced soon as the ambulance took off, and so she herself shuffled up there to nab Love’s fiddle. She’s heard him practice all hours and figured the instrument meant more to him than the rest of it combined. Said she’s felt blessed to live below him and hear that music all times of day and night. Kept an ear out and opened up at dawn when she heard someone on the stairs. Turned over the fiddle to Love’s girlfriend, who grabbed it and a suitcase and ran off to Love, wherever he may be. So this girlfriend either thinks Love’s alive or is trying to make the rest of us think it.”

  I consider. “Maybe the old lady meant ‘boyfriend’ when she said ‘girlfriend.’ You know how people mess up their gender pronouns when they’re talking in an unfamiliar language.”

  “Crossed my mind,” Harry concurs. “But it didn’t read that way. This lady seemed very ‘old country,’ like she might not even recognize a same-sex couple as what they were if they were necking in her doorway.”

  “Takes but one gay kid of your own to see the light.”

  “Maybe so, but I’m still confused about who’s who in Love’s life, all due respect,” Harry says.

  “Maybe the man’s busier than anyone would figure.”

  Harry laughs. “It’s always the quiet type. Anyway, the doc who’d treated him at the clinic told me he’d ingested some over-the-counter rat poison, enough to do damage to his stomach lining, but not enough to kill. My guess is that it’s in the ibuprofen capsules I found on the fire escape—these are the type you can open and reseal.”

  “Thought they banned those years ago.”

  “That they did. Those Chicago deaths were in ’82, which makes these doctored pills just that old. We’ll let the lab tell the tale. Hey, speaking of labs, Pop, Bernie just got back to me on Jake Culligan’s death. Apparently there were no obvious signs of violence, and the guy was in a condition where death is not a surprise, so they called it natural. Bernie says that from what he’s read of the report, however, Culligan’s condition was consistent with asphyxiation.”

  “So maybe he was smothered?”

  “And maybe he wasn’t. Interesting detail, though. Bernie says the doc who received the body said he was dead no more than a day. We know Pruddie let him lay there overnight, so that accounts for the lapse. In other words, whoever told Pruddie it looked like Jake had been dead for several days up there was not correct.”

  “That would be our mysterious snooty law firm guy,” I say. “Well, well.”

  “Well, well, indeed,” Harry agrees.

  “So, what about the ten-million-dollar question?”

  “Date of death? Three months back, as you predicted, but get this: Jakey died at least ten days after D’Amante. This blows our avenging angel theory.”

  “Not totally,” I say slowly. “Not yet.”

  “If you say so. Hey, and speaking of our case unraveling, just now I called the uniform we got on watch outside Brewster’s room over at Boston Mem.”

  “And how’s our fifth would-be D-5 vic?”

  “Checked himself out. Nothing mysterious this time. He was, in fact, good to go and Yolie picked him up to do his driving for him. But when I call his cell, it’s not receiving, and when I dial the homestead, butler says they’re not in.”

  “On the way, maybe? Can’t see Yolanda Van Ness as a speed demon. Might even be the type to avoid highways altogether.”

  “Maybe,” Harry agrees. “I’d just like to know. Speaking of which, where are you?”

  “I’m heading in soon,” I tell him with a twinge of guilt. “Got some stuff first.”

  “Stuff?”

  “Just need to check on a couple of things on my own,” I say reluctantly.

  “What, the silence rule?”

  “You started it,” I joke weakly.

  He chuckles just as the static takes over and our call breaks up. I consider redialing, but instead pull out. I hit up the GPS and feel my way toward Mattapan.

  Cemeteries tend to give me a sense of peace. Maybe it’s morbid, but I think of burials, headstones, the act of tending graves, as an orderly part of the life-death ritual that most of us get right. It’s a chilly afternoon, cloudy enough that the frost’s still clinging to the grass. People crunch along the cinder paths, immersed in memories. I get Malloy on the phone, and he guides me through the maze toward Jake Culligan’s grave. When he spots me, he kind of swaggers down the path, then palms his ginger hair before taking off his shades and folding them in a single deft motion. I’m in a cop show—an overacted one.

  “So what do you know, cowboy?” I ask, walking back the way Malloy had come and eyeing the headstones.

  “The nurse,” Malloy says, flicking on his tablet. “Name of Florence Nightingale, according to both court docs and news stories on the trial. Don’t know where we got Agnès.”

  I look at him. “Malloy? Florence Nightingale’s the symbol of modern nursing—you know, the Lady with the Lamp from the Crimean War. Agnès was tending Jake Culligan at the trial. Calling her Jakey’s Florence Nightingale was Elliot Becker’s courtroom flourish. I’m sure the papers loved it and couldn’t have cared less about her real name.”

  “Ah,” he says, scratching his neck, “ah.” His ears go red as he thumbs through what looks like fifty pages of notes he’s taken. Since those ears kind of stick out, the effect is truly heartbreaking. “So that’s what that Grand Duchy stuff was about. And the pictures not matching up. Famous nurse from olden days. I get it now.” He starts tapping notes.

  “Yeah,” I say. I spot Jake Culligan’s gravestone ahead. Looks like someone’s recently stuck some fresh flowers in a jar that leans up against the base. Same set-up at the neighboring stone. I read the stones, then look around and spot Pruddie Culligan, wrapped in a full-length quilted down coat, her eyes sheathed in oversized black sunglasses, sitting on a bench, smoking. I raise a hand and she half shrugs, which I take as an invitation. “So I need you to find everything you can for me on Agnès Rossignol,” I say to Malloy, loud enough for Pruddie to overhear. “Pretty sure that’s her name.”

  “Spell that?” Malloy studies his tablet, prepared to type. After I spell the name, he clears his throat. “This’ll really speed up my research,” he says opaquely. “Don’t suppose you remember when you picked up on the last name?” I picture him slaving away in some archival basement, spinning through old newsreels.

  “Learned her name just this second,” I give him. “Look.”

  He looks at the gravestone next to Jake Culligan’s. “Rudolph Rossignol—The Life Everlasting,” he reads. “I get it now. Uh, no, maybe I don’t.”

  “I’m only just starting to myself,” I admit. “I need you to verify this, Malloy, but I’m guessing you’re going to find that Agnès Rossignol dropped out of St. Francis high school around fifteen years ago. Another guess—she went through some program to be certified as a home health aide between then and now. Here’s another wild guess—born in Chicago to Rudi Rossignol thirty-five years back, relocated to Boston just around the time of that string of ibuprofen murders.”

  “Whuh?” He blinks at me. “How’s any of this connected?”

  “Just do the research,” I assure him. “So, a little while back you said something about the pictures not matching up. Does that mean you found some picture of this Florence Nightingale where she didn’t look like a nineteenth-century lady in ribbony headgear?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I got one of the Florence Nightingale from the Dorchester Five trial.” He reddens again. “Agnès Rossignol, I mean.”

  “Excellent. Got it on your tablet? Okay, why don’t you go to your car, and send it to me before you get going on this new research? I see someone I need to talk to. And Malloy?”

  He glances up from where he’s rapid-tapping instructions to himself with one finger.

  “Good work.”

  I don’t know why I encourage him. He swaggers away, flipping open his shades. I approach Pruddie.

  “Good time of day to visit a loved on
e,” I say. “Quiet.” She sniffs in acquiescence. “So you heard me guessing away just now. How off was I?” I ask.

  She nods, not quite looking my way. “He’ll find what you said he’ll find,” she admits. “And the rest of it is pretty much the way you’re figuring it, too.”

  I sit on the other end of her bench. “Rudi was Agnès’ father and also Jakey’s. Last time we talked, you said you put him in next to his father. Then I found out Dylan’s father is alive.”

  She throws a butt aside. “One fling. One fucking mistake in all those years. You know how many broads he was doing? Couldn’t count ’em. I let one lousy, sad drunk have his way, then decide to keep the kid, and he walks out. Never heard from him again, not once. I used to kind of fantasize that he got killed, early years. Not for revenge, either.”

  “Just to explain it,” I say.

  She lights a fresh cigarette, then glances my way and offers it.

  “I don’t,” I say.

  “Smart.” She smokes it herself.

  I hear a ping and thumb my way to the photo Malloy’s sent me. It’s one of those courtroom artist sketches, depicting Elliot Becker in mid-oration. The five defendants are cartooned in, all in profile. Jakey is depicted from his good side, looking young, hooked up to a drip tube. Beyond him is the single female in the sketch, a young woman with a cap of short blonde hair and sad lips, checking Jakey’s tube. It would be less than helpful, except for my purposes. She is, without a doubt, the falling woman in my vishie from the night at the Hampstead Arms. So now I know. This is Agnès Rossignol. This is Nightingale.

  I pass my phone to Pruddie. She glances at it and nods, then passes it back.

  “Got any actual photos?”

  She shakes her head. “I looked after she left. Feel free to poke around yourself, though.” She fakes a chuckle. “Or send the hottie.” She gestures in the direction Malloy took.

  “Appreciate it,” I say.

  “She the one killing everyone to do with the Dorchester thing?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” I give her. “I’ll only find out when I find her. Last time we talked, you said it couldn’t be her.”