Blunt Darts jfc-1

by Jeremiah Healy

  I read his entries. To me they seemed the sort of bland evaluation an assistant principal might give a kindergarten teacher. Stein's notes indicated good readjustment to home life, eagerness to return to school, intellectual curiosity, etc.

  "I take it you came to no independent diagnosis of Stephen's illness."

  "Well, no, but perhaps for a different reason. You see, by the time he came to me, he was no longer exhibiting any symptoms of any condition. He appeared to be a normal, well-adjusted boy of-he consulted his entries-"ten, nearly eleven years old. Since he wasn't sick, so to speak, there was nothing to diagnose. Hence only the few increasingly spaced visits."

  "Do I understand then, Doctor, since neither Willow Wood nor you determined what was wrong with him, you don't know for sure that his mother's going off the bridge caused it?"

  Stein blinked several times, and his mouth opened before he began to speak. Then he lapsed into a smile and gave me a patronizing look. "Given the chronological proximity of the event and the onset of the condition, what else could have caused it?"

  I thanked him for his time and left.

  EIGHTH

  – ¦ I drove into downtown Boston and parked on the fourth floor of the Government Center Garage. I walked through the new Faneuil Hall Market area. Although the renovated space opened in 1976, I grew up in old Boston, so I'll probably always call it the new market.

  I stopped at my camera shop, where Danny promised me he'd have fifty copies of Stephen's photo for me within an hour. I moved down State Street. Sturney and Perkins, Inc., was in an old, tasteful building near the waterfront. I took the elevator to the tenth floor. Sturney and Perkins occupied about half of it, the kind of offices a good medium-sized Boston law firm would have had twenty years ago, before the glass-eyed skyscrapers opened.

  "John Francis to see Ms. DeMarco."

  The receptionist gave me an uncertain look and dialed two digits. Her telephone had a cover on the mouthpiece, which prevented me from hearing what she said into it. She hung up.

  "I'll take you down myself." As we wound down a labyrinthine corridor, I thought it odd that she would leave her post. She showed me into a spacious, leather-done corner office with a harbor view. A tall, graying man who looked like an ex-navy commander stood from behind an expensive desk.

  "Mr. Cuddy, this is Nancy DeMarco. I'm Charles Perkins. What can we do for you?" he asked without extending his hand.

  Ms. DeMarco stood up. Nancy DeMarco. Medium build, Harpo hair, and late of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Empire had had one of the worst sex-discrimination-in-promotion records in the Northeast, and Ms. DeMarco had been the one who crammed it down our throats. I'd met her once across a crowded conference-room table. Aside from an Empire stenographer, she had been the only woman present. She'd won.

  "Mr. Cuddy," she acknowledged. I stopped at a leather chair, and we all sat down together.

  "Well," I said, "this doesn't seem to be my day for surprise attacks."

  Silence from them.

  And from me, too.

  Then Perkins: "Why are you here'?"

  "You must have discovered that in the process of finding out who I am."

  "Amateurish, Mr. Cuddy, amateurish. That phone call, I mean."

  "Look, Mr. Perkins," I said, "let's stop the urinating contest. Notice I avoided 'pissing' out of respect for your decor. You're one of the best in Boston at what you do. You've been asked to find Stephen Kinnington. So have I. He appears to have run away, so there is probably no criminal element behind the disappearance, and therefore nobody to tip off Why don't we share information and coordinate those efforts?"

  "Our client does not appreciate your involvement, Mr. Cuddy."

  "Does the judge appreciate that every hour we don't find Stephen increases the chances that we won't find him'?"

  "We will find the boy-and as soon as this conference is over, Ms. DeMarco can resume her efforts in that direction."

  I looked over at Ms. DeMarco. She was looking at Perkins without expression.

  I rose and sidled toward the door. "Mr. Perkins, I guess I can understand why you don't want to tell me what you know. What I can't understand is why you don't want to find out what I know." I opened the door. "Amateurish, Mr. Perkins, amateurish."

  NINTH

  – ¦ I had a drink at Clarke's while I waited for my photos to be finished. They were ready as Danny had promised.

  When I arrived at the apartment an hour later, the red light on my tape machine told me I'd had some calls. The first message was from Valerie. The usual you're-a-tough-man-to-reach-but-I-forgive-you. Then there were three dial tones, meaning that whoever had called had hung up instead of leaving a message. Then there was this:

  "I don't like leaving messages, even for a discriminating man like you. Meet me at Father's First at eight P.M."

  I might have had some question about the voice, but not the "discriminating" tag. I wondered if she'd wear a disguise.

  I dialed Mrs. Kinnington's number. Mrs. Page answered, grumbled, and told me to hang on.

  "What have you to report?" asked my client.

  "Precious little. Everybody but the psychiatrist is slamming doors in my face."

  "Does that mean my son is aware of your efforts on my behalf?"

  "It does," I said, and I summarized my day for her. She sounded like a little girl when she spoke again.

  "I should have realized that your prediction about his discovering you would be accurate. I am an old woman, Mr. Cuddy, autocratic and perhaps even cranky. Stephen is all I care about anymore. I will pay you to search for him until you advise me it's hopeless."

  "I'll call you again when I know more."

  "By the way, I was never contacted by this DeMarco girl regarding Stephen."

  "That's odd. Maybe she thought it best not to disturb you."

  "Perhaps that's what she was told to think."

  Iwas nodding as I hung up. I drummed my fingers on the tape machine, then dialed another number.

  Valerie picked it up on the second ring.

  "It's John," I said.

  "Oh, John, how are you doing? What have you found out?"

  "Not too much. I'd like to ask you some questions about Stephen."

  "Oh, I'm ten minutes late for a tennis match now, and Marie will have to give up the court if I'm not there in five minutes. How about meeting me for a drink tonight."

  "Sorry. Prior engagement."

  "Oh." I could hear her frown over the phone.

  "I'll be in Bonham early tomorrow morning. How about lunch?"

  "Terrific. I'll pack a picnic basket and we can go down to a great swimming beach, and we-"

  "Slow down. You're on vacation. I'm working."

  The frown-pause again. "Well, you still have to eat lunch, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. Pick me up at my place. Seventeen Fordham Road, first floor. Eleven-thirty. I've got to run. Bring your trunks. 'Bye."

  "Val-"

  Click.

  Annoying woman.

  TENTH

  – ¦ If Father's First were located in a poorer neighborhood than Beacon Hill, it would be a dive. Being on Charles Street, it's a charming institution. It's dark, dingy, and jukeboxed, with a mixed bag of gays, MBTA motormen, nursing students from Mass General, and law students from Suffolk University. I spotted her near the corner. She was wearing a disguise, sort of.

  I slid in next to her. "I like your fatigue jacket," I said.

  She looked down into her beer. "You realize that this could cost me a job I've worked toward for six years?"

  I ordered a screwdriver. "If it makes you meet guys like me in places like this, it can't be such a great job."

  She looked up, but her hands kept toying with her beer mug. "It's not, really." She reached into a big leather tote bag and withdrew a file folder. She passed it to me. "Read it. No notes. No copying."

  It took all of three minutes to read.

  "This is it?"<
br />
  "Yup."

  "After two weeks?"

  She nodded.

  "What's going on, Ms. DeMarco?"

  "Nancy, please," she said, more I thought from anonymity than cordiality. She took a sip of beer and began. "The case came in through Perkins on the thirteenth, the day after Stephen disappeared. He assigned me right away. He handed me the police reports, which he'd already had copies of. After I read them, he told me I'd be on my own because the judge wanted a quiet, accent quiet, investigation."

  "How can you find a fourteen-year-old under that kind of mandate?"

  "You can't. Look at the file. Initial police report. Five-minute call to the housekeeper. Follow-up police report. Alert calls to airport and train-station security. One leg visit to the bus stations. End present efforts."

  "Amateurish."

  She grimaced. "Worse. Perkins himself has loaded me with other files. I'm not complaining, but I was the operative with the most files pre-Stephen, and I've gotten more than my share since. Every time I try to do something on Stephen's case, Perkins moves up the priority of some other case I'm on. I'd be embarrassed to talk with the judge-assuming Perkins would let me."

  I confirmed that Smollett's signature was on both the initial and follow-up reports before I closed up the file and passed it back to her. "What do you suppose Perkins is trying to tell you?"

  She put down her beer. "He's a professional. That means minimal effort is intentional. And that probably means pressure from the client to keep it that way."

  I took a sip of my screwdriver. "You know anything about the judge's wife?"

  She looked surprised. "Perkins told me she was dead."

  I nodded. "Years ago. It pushed Stephen off the deep end. I was wondering if something similar pushed him again."

  She shrugged. "I don't know. But then, what I don't know about this case could make a mini-series."

  I smiled sympathetically. "It's not your fault, you know. You're a professional who's being reined in."

  "Yeah." She finished her beer and slid off the stool.

  "If you need to talk to me again, which I hope you don't, call me at the office and identify yourself as Mr. Pembroke but don't leave a return number."

  "By the way, why did you decide to call me?" I asked.

  She smiled as she slung her bag. "What we're doing stinks. And in the office you didn't refer to him as 'the kid' or 'the boy.' You called him by his name, Stephen. Poor little son of a bitch."

  Eleventh

  – ¦ The next day was bright and clear. There was only one cruiser in the range parking area. Cal was waiting for me inside the wire enclosure. He waved to the short wooden tower, which was centered just inside the range. The tower man buzzed me in through the gate. Bonham may not be a big-budget town, but Chief Calvin Maslyk knew where the money he got was best spent.

  "Been a while, John."

  "Nearly four weeks."

  We picked up some sonic muffs and wad-cutter cartridges and moved to the seventy-five-foot line, just left of center. Cal had already set up some traditional bull's-eyes down range, one target easel apart. We adjusted the muffs over our ears, and the tower man clicked on.

  "Gentlemen, load five rounds." We did so. Then the tower again. "Is there anyone down range?" A pause. Then again. "Is there anyone down range?" Another pause. "The range is clear. Ready on the right. Ready on the left." We waved. "Ready on the firing line." A pause. Then, "Fire."

  We fired five rounds, single-shot. "Clear your weapons." We opened our cylinders, jacked out the expended shells, and slid our fingers into the gun frame so the cylinder could not close back in.

  "Is the firing line clear?" intoned the tower. We held up our weapons, cylinders out. "The firing line is clear. You may proceed downrange." We began walking toward the targets.

  I liked Cal, and I liked the way he required his range to be run. I'd read about a chief on the South Shore who hadn't taken those precautions. A nine-year-old, playing army, had crawled onto the range. A rookie cop who never saw him hit him twice. The boy died the next day, and the rookie resigned the day after. The chief was forced out the following week by the board of selectmen, the governing body of the town.

  Usually Cal outscores me. This time he slaughtered me. "Something on your mind, John?"

  "Have you got any unbreakable vows toward Meade?"

  He measured me evenly. "None past neighborliness."

  "I'm trying to find Stephen Kinnington, the judge's son. It looks to me like the judge has told the present searchers to stand down and has sealed the case against outsiders like me."

  "Unfortunate family, the Kinningtons."

  With a pencil he marked our bullet holes on the targets so we'd know that unmarked holes came from our next shots. We walked back to the firing line.

  "Feel like talking about them?" I asked.

  He rubbed his chin as we approached the bench.

  "The judge's brother, Telford, was killed in 'Nam, oh, 1969, maybe. The wife died four or so years ago. Went off the Swan Street bridge into the Concord. I suspect the booze caused the crash."

  "No autopsy?" I said as the tower told us to load five more.

  "No body."

  "In the Concord?" I asked. "That river's current barely pushes a leaf."

  The tower man's voice crackled in the background.

  Cal clicked his cylinder shut. "It was early spring, John. Big from the snows and rain. When they pulled the car up, she wasn't in it. Never found her."

  "Was one of the doors open?"

  Cal smiled and pulled his muffs on. The tower man finished his liturgy. We fired the second string double-action and again cleared our weapons.

  As we moved downrange again, Cal continued the conversation. "Smollett's diver said he didn't notice."

  "Did you say 'driver' or 'diver'?"

  "Diver, as in scuba diver."

  "Meade has its own scuba team?"

  "Of sorts. Meade is 'concerned about crime.' At least I think that's Smollett's usual budget speech. Pretty effective speech, too."

  "Cal, I'm told that the kid flipped soon after his mother's death. Institutionalized. Then he was apparently fine until two weeks ago. Can you tell me anything about his disappearance?"

  Cal frowned and dropped his voice. "Smol1ett never even called me to put me on alert. I found out from one of my men whose wife works in the cafeteria in Stephen's school. Nothing on the radio or the computer. Nothing at all."

  We reached the targets. "Can you think of any reason the judge wouldn't want his son found?"

  Cal clucked his tongue, perhaps at the question, but more likely at my miserable shooting. "Maybe the kid just doesn't fit into his system." He began penciling our shots. "The judge, who by the way this department and I have to live with, is a cold, cold man. Just the opposite of his brother, who was real personable, though in an unpredictable sort of way. But the judge… well, if you ever saw him in court, you'd know what I mean."

  "I have. I've also met his bodyguard."

  "Bodyguard? Oh, Blakey?"

  I nodded.

  "Blakey," said Cal. "He's a bad-ass, John. He was on the Meade PD, then broke up a fight in a tavern a little-no, a lot-too hard. Citizens' group managed to raise enough fuss to get him off the force, because he was still probationary. But then the judge hired him on at the courthouse. One of those political moves that makes the judge look fearless to the law-and-order folks."

  Cal pocketed his pencil but made no move back toward the firing line. "You have a jam with him?"

  "Sort of," I said.

  "Watch his hands, John. He could open coconuts with 'em. By the by, if memory serves, Blakey was the officer who noticed the smashed fencing when Mrs. Kinnington went into the river."

  I perked up. "And then sometime later, when Blakey is squeezed off the force, the judge gives him a job?"

  Cal nodded.

  "How does that add up to you?" I asked.

  Cal gave me a philosophical look. "Small-town
police chiefs don't add, John; they subtract. Every time they take a stand, they subtract from their support in the town. Support remembers only the times when you do what they don't want. Enough subtractions and there's a new chief to do the arithmetic. I don't know what happened between His Honor, Smollett, and Blakey."

  While I decided not to push my luck any further, Cal walked over to a locker at the end of the range and came back with a stapler and two bigger cardboard targets. He stapled them onto the target easels. They were full-sized, human silhouettes.

  "Why these?" I asked.

  "You didn't do real well on those first two strings, John. Never can tell when you might need to be better." We turned and walked back toward the tiring line.

  "Combat string," he yelled to the tower man.

  TWELFTH

  – ¦ Fordham Road was a short street of older houses three blocks from the center of town. I parked and rang the bell marked K Jacobs.

  "Oh, John, I've been leaving messages for you all morning. Where have you been?" She was dressed in a halter top and shorts. Both were pastel and the colors clashed a bit.

  "What's the news?"

  She ran back down the hall, disappeared, then reappeared with a picnic basket and a beach bag. "I ran into Miss Pitts this morning in the market. You remember, the retired teacher who had Stephen in the fifth grade? We have to go see her right away."

  She was past me and halfway to my car. I shrugged and followed after her.

  ***

  The living room was filled with the kinds of things one obtains with trading stamps. Plastic-brass floor lamps, plastic-walnut cocktail tables, and plastic Hummel-like sculptures on eight separate knick-knack-holding shelf arrangements. My rocking chair, however, was built of massive pine. It must have gone for twelve and a half books, minimum.

  Miss Pitts was plump and spoke in a soft purr. The three of us held teacups and coffee cakes in our hands and on our laps in a precarious balance that I've never been able to master. Miss Pitts had thus far covered her brightest class (1959), and her catlike voice was slowly putting me to sleep. I began to wonder why the hell she had the cocktail tables if she wasn't going to use them for the tea and cakes. I was giving serious consideration to cutting a fart to change the direction of the conversation, when Valerie mercifully jumped first.