Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  Holt said, "For a guy who got the shit kicked out of him last night, you’re pretty fucken chipper."

  "I had it coming, Lieutenant. I got drunk, then got I angry at the wrong guy."

  "’Tender at the bar here, we already talked to him. He says you only had two drinks tops at his place."

  I shook my head. "If that was all I had, I would have been all right. But I started at like four, down in Chelsea somewhere."

  “Chelsea."

  "Right. Guinness there knows where it is, right, Guinness? That’s as far north as you’ve ever been, you told me." '

  Guinness just stared at me.

  Holt said, "Where in Chelsea?"

  I described the place, then took him through the rest of the odyssey, but vaguely, skipping around a little, then backing and filling.

  Holt let out a breath. Guinness muttered,

  "Bullshit."

  I said, "What’s the problem?"

  Holt said, "Your friends J.J. and Terdell."

  I closed my eyes and said quietly, "Not Hanna and Vickie?"

  Holt waited till I opened my eyes again. "No. J .J. and Terdell themselves."

  "Dead?"

  Guinness said, "You expect us to believe this is news to you?"

  Holt silenced him with a look. "Cuddy, somebody set something up last night. We like you for it."

  "Set up what?"

  "The construction project where they worked you over. Somebody hit J.J. and Terdell there last night."

  “How could you know where it was they worked me over?"

  Guinness said, "Lieutenant. I gotta leave. I stay, I’m gonna clock him."

  Holt said, "Go."

  When the door closed, I said, "Where’s Dawkins?"

  "What’s it to you?"

  "Nothing. I just figured he’d be in on this with you."

  "Maybe we couldn’t reach him."

  "I thought he was shadowing J.J. I thought that’s how you all knew that J.J. had taken me to the construction site in the first place."

  Holt didn’t say anything.

  I said, "Well, it’s probably just Saturday night. Dawkins, I mean. You know, him having the weekend off and all."

  After a few seconds, Holt said, "You gonna stick to this pub-crawling story?"

  "It’s no story, Lieutenant."

  "I already got your gun, Cuddy, remember? Now I’m going after your investigator’s license."

  "On what ground? You know I didn’t kill Marsh or Teri Angel. You’re also gonna find out that I spent the afternoon intoxicating myself and the evening embarrassing myself. So now two pieces of shit turn up dead in some dirt pile that’s not even in your jurisdiction. If I remember right, back from when we were discussing protection for Hanna and Vickie, you’re real concerned about the limits of your jurisdiction."

  Holt put both of his hands flat on the table and heaved himself up from the chair. "You get away with this, it’s only gonna be because you didn’t do it in Boston, get me?"

  "Can I get out of here, at least?"

  Holt said, "If the Marblehead cops don’t want you, I sure as hell don’t."

  He opened the door and turned back to me. "You look like shit. I hope you’re gonna clean up before the wake."

  "Thanks, Lieutenant, but I’m afraid they’re going to have to send J.J. and Terdell to the great beyond without me."

  Holt looked at me kind of funny, then said, "You don’t know, do you?"

  "Know what?"

  He gave me a smile, a heartless, hard smile. “Your friend, Christides the lawyer. He got up yesterday morning and ate his gun for breakfast."

  * * *

  I knocked on the front door of the house instead of the garage. Fotis answered. He didn’t want to let me in, especially the way I looked. I made him understand that I thought Eleni would want to talk with me. He told me to wait and closed the door. He came back a minute later and told me to come in.

  She was in the kitchen, sipping coffee, both hands around the cup. When she saw my condition, the tic in her eye cranked into high gear. Putting down the cup, she said something quickly to her cousin in Greek, and he left us.

  "John, my God, your face and—"

  "I’m all right, Eleni. Just a little light."

  She seemed to relax. "You heard."

  "The police told me. Eleni, I'm so sorry . . ."

  She dismissed that tack with a flick of her hand. "No, John, you do not be sorry. What happen here had to happen."

  "I don’t understand."

  "He told me. After you leave Friday night. He finally come to me and told me. About the Marsh animal, about the drugs, about the . . . whore."

  "Eleni, Chris was—"

  “No! I do not want to talk about what he was. You I know, you a good man to help Hanna and the child, but that Marsh, he was a bad man. I could tell the first time I see him, and I tell you when I see you. But Chris does not kill Marsh because of what Marsh did, because of the pig he was. No, Chris kills Marsh because he was scared."

  "I think you’re being too hard on yourself. And on him. Chris was a good man."

  "A good man does not visit the whores! I was a wife to Chris as long as I could. The . . . sickness takes me, John. Chris know what I know, that the days, there are not so many left. Still, he goes to the whore, like all the men in Greece I leave to come here."

  "Eleni—"

  "Chris was weak! Too weak to help the woman and child, too weak to be faithful to his wife, too weak even to do the right thing."

  "What do you mean?"

  “After you leave, and he tell me all the things, he lie awake, he cannot sleep, he say he will never sleep again. He say he will go crazy when the other lawyers find out what he did and take away his practice. He say he will go crazy in prison. He see the right thing, in front of him, and still he is too weak."

  "I don’t follow you."

  "The suicide, John. The suicide, the right thing, and he too weak even to do that. He so weak, in the end I have to help him."

  I just stared down at her.

  She said, "You a man with honor, John. You know what I mean."

  God help me, I was afraid I did.

  TWENTY-SIX

  -♦-

  When you’ve been around death too much, I think you try hard to watch for encouraging signs of life. As I came over the Tobin Bridge, a dozen pleasure boats were making their way through the locks on the Charles River and out to the harbor. Winding along Storrow Drive, I paralleled couples strolling, kids playing, joggers striding. Even a few wind-skaters sailed by, twisting and dodging around the slower walkers and runners.

  The day was brightening as much as I’d let it when I reached the condo’s parking space. Along the street, an attractive woman was loading a picnic cooler into her hatchback, while a man holding his child’s hand was stopped by a pair of nuns, traditionally hooded and graciously accepting the money he dropped into their woven basket. That struck the only jarring note; you’d think the church would have gotten its share at Mass in the morning.

  I started walking around the building, but not fast enough. I could hear the nuns coming up behind me as I got to my front steps. One said, “Sir?"

  I turned around and looked from the basket into Salome’s not quite angelic face. Nino glared at me from under the other hood, a .357 magnum with a three-inch barrel pointing out from where rosary ' beads should dangle.

  Nino said, "Inside. Now."

  * * *

  "You give me a reason."

  I said, "To shoot or not to shoot?"

  Nino didn’t answer. He stood in the center of my living room, headdress on the table but gun in his hand. His eyes could have pinned me to the couch. I heard Salome at the refrigerator. She poked her head around the comer of the kitchen doorway, saying, "All you got is this Killian’s shit?"

  “Sorry."

  She opened two, brought one in for Nino. She took a sip and a chair. Nino held the bottle by the neck and I downed half of it.

  He w
iped his mouth and said, "I wanna hear just what the fuck you think you doing, man."

  "You might want to sit down. It’s going to take a while."

  "Maybe you don’t got a while. Talk."

  I brought him up to date, quickly, since he already knew most of it.

  "So Marsh use my Angel to set up the Greek lawyer."

  "That’s right."

  Salome said, "Fucken shithead."

  "And you can’t get J.J. to take the heat off the wife and kid."

  "Uh-huh."

  His voice rose. "So you fucken call me, and then call J.J., and tell both of us that his snow in one of those fucken pipes at the project."

  "Yes."

  "You motherfucken cocksucker! You set me up to get wasted, man."

  "Not the way it worked 0ut."

  "Worked out? I start in that tunnel at the end you and me came out, just like you tell me to, and fucken Terdell, he coming from the other side, where him and J.J. have you before I save you cojones. I’m coming up on meeting him somewhere in the middle, and if it ain’t for the fucken stink rolling ahead of him maybe five yards he waste me."

  "I can’t believe it was that close."

  Nino slung the beer bottle at me in a whippy, underhanded way that made it carom off my collar-bone and smash against the wall over my head, the red liquid staining as it ran down and along the woodwork. I rubbed the bone and didn’t say anything about my security deposit.

  "I gotta dive down when Terdell see me. He already have out this cannon, he start yelling my name. ‘Nino, you fucken little shit, you was the one, you was the one,' and like that. Well, he get the two shots off, I don’t even get the chance to say nothing, if I did I couIdn’t hear it ’cause the fucken noise from the shots like to break my ears open. Then J.J. coming up behind him, at the next junction in the tunnel. J.J. start spraying this Uzi all the fuck over, and maybe three slugs hit Terdell in the back. Fuck, Terdell not there, taking up so much of the tunnel, some of J.J.’s shots find me, you know it? So I low crawl to Terdell to get his piece, and somehow he stinking worse than when he was alive, musta had ten pounds of soul food shit coming out his ass when the muscles let go. J.J. not too good with the Uzi in real life, probably bought it and took it out somewheres, learn how to shoot it but never seen no real combat with it, don’t conserve his ammo."

  "You caught him reloading?"

  "Fucken A. He didn’t even have the other load out, I bring up Terdell’s piece, put one square in J.J.’s chest, man, he like explode. He tumble back, I wait on him, then check him out. Ter-mi-nat-ed, man."

  I moved my head toward the gun pointing at me.

  "That’s not Terdell’s?"

  Nino looked disappointed. "What you think, I got shit for brains? You think I carry away a piece that killed somebody?"

  "What did you do with it?"

  "I wipe it some, then put it back in Terdell’s hand, press his fingers around it."

  I thought for a second. “Which hand?"

  Nino shook his head. "His shooting hand. Madron!"

  I said, "You didn’t shoot your own gun in there?"

  "Never got it out."

  "Then the cops probably don’t have the physical evidence to say anybody else was involved."

  "The best I could do was leave it like maybe they had a business dis-a-gree-ment and did each other."

  "With each other’s weapons."

  "I didn’t know how much time I have, ’cause I didn’t know if the cops still tailing J.J., ’cause I didn’t know that you was inviting J.J., too."

  "The main cop involved in the surveillance is a sergeant named Dawkins. He told me he was off this weekend."

  "How come you didn’t tell me, huh?"

  "Somebody else was probably on. But you figure nobody saw you?"

  Nino just said, "You fucken set me up, man. I saved you fucken life that night, and you fucken set me up."

  “Put yourself in my position. You see any other way for me to get J.J. off the widow and the child?"

  "You ‘position,' huh? Back in the Nam, I had a lieutenant, fucken butter bar new guy, try to use me and my buddy to sucker some NVA one night. My buddy come back in a green bag, man. The butter bar got his ass reamed by a grenade somebody leave lying around."

  "You told me you were the best, Nino, remember? King of the tunnel rats. I set it up, sure, but I set it up so I thought you’d take care of J.J. and Terdell no sweat."

  "So you so thoughtful for me, I shouldn’t just blow you away now?"

  "No, you shouldn’t."

  "I still ain’t heard no reason, man."

  "In the Angel’s apartment. You said you wanted the guy who killed her."

  "You tell me Marsh kill her, and he’s dead."

  "Yeah, but J.J. was the real reason she was dead. You think Marsh would set up a crazy frame like he was working if he wasn’t crazy himself from the drugs?"

  Nino looked at me. “So I kill J.J., it’s like me getting the guy who did the Angel, huh?"

  "Right."

  "Right, shit. If you right on that, then I oughta kill you now, ’cause without you rousting Marsh, he never get your gun or try to set you up or even fucken know you."

  "Even without me in it, Hanna would have demanded the house, and Marsh would have tried to set up Chris through the Angel, just with another gun."

  Nino seemed to think it over. "What if all that shit ain’t enough reason?"

  "Then try this. When you were driving me back Tuesday night, you said you figured you were better off me owing you a favor."

  "So?"

  "So now you’re twice as well off as before. Now I owe you two favors, and you got an innocent woman and her daughter off J.J.’s hook."

  Nino looked over to Salome. I couldn’t see her, but I heard her habit rustle as though she was gesturing. Nino swung back to me and hitched at his robe near the crotch. "You got a set, man. You real lucky you draw a softhearted kind like me, you know it?"

  I told him I knew it, and I meant it.

  * * *

  What’s the occasion?

  I fanned the long-stemmed roses in front of her headstone and straightened back up. I told her about confronting Chris, setting up Nino, and seeing Eleni.

  Are you going to do anything about what Eleni told you?

  "Like what? How much longer has she got? Besides, my credibility with the police is a little strained right now."

  Not to mention you ’re feeling responsible.

  "I don’t. At least I don’t now. When Holt told me, I thought, ‘Jesus, it was me, me seeing Chris on Friday pushed him over the edge.' But not now."

  I didn’t mean so much that in particular. I mean in general, that it was you leaning on Marsh that started everything in motion.

  "Nino already reminded me."

  But you’re wrong, you know?

  "About what?"

  About you starting everything. Marsh was a louse and Chris was weak, but you didn ’t make Hanna marry one or Eleni marry the other.

  "Spouse-lock."

  What?

  I gave her Felicia Arnold’s explanation.

  Sounds like that could fit a lot of peoples situations.

  I didn’t say anything.

  John, don 't you think its time?

  "I don’t know."

  Yes you do.

  * * *

  “Can I come up?"

  She was wearing a loose-fitting Emack and Bolio Ice Cream tee shirt, white tennis shorts, and sandals. She took in my face. "Sure you weren’t looking for the first-aid station?"

  I followed her up the stairs and into her apartment. She motioned toward the couch and plopped herself on a throw pillow.

  "Nancy—"

  "No, I want to get this straight, okay? So you listen for a change. I don’t want to hear what you’ve been doing. I don’t care what you think your reasons were. I just want a decision from you, a decision about us and about what you want us to be."

  I looked down at her. The widely
spaced bluer-than-blue eyes, the upturned nose, the freckles sprinkled from one cheekbone to the other.

  "I’ve decided."

  Always the lawyer, she kept her face neutral. "What is it, then?"

  I reached for her hand and inclined my head toward the bedroom. "Let’s," I said.

  And so we did.