Gypsy Sins

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  “Got a recent address for him?” McGuire asked.

  Ronnie made a few keystrokes, then leaned back in her chair while the computer screen asked her to Please Wait. When new text appeared, McGuire bent from the waist to look over her shoulder, and they both reacted with a start.

  “So what’s it say?” Ollie called from his bed.

  “Looks like Tate did all right somewhere along the line,” McGuire said, and Ronnie nodded in agreement. “He lives here in Boston. Number twenty-one Louisburg Square.”

  “With the Brahmins,” Ollie said. “Hell, Louisburg Square makes Compton look like the ass end of a goat.” His eyes met McGuire’s. “You goin’ there?”

  “The hell for?”

  “Find out what you know that you don’t know you know.”

  McGuire grinned. “You knew I’d go all the time, you smart-assed bastard.”

  “Man says I’ve got brains in my ass,” Ollie said to his wife in mock seriousness. “Young people these days got no respect for their elders.”

  “Have some lunch first,” Ronnie Schantz instructed McGuire. “You look gaunt as a ladder.”

  “I need some fresh clothes.” McGuire stood up. Of course he would go. He knew it as soon as he saw the address. Louisburg Square? God, how much wealth had Tate accumulated?

  “Time for you to have a nap.” Ronnie Schantz switched off the computer and walked to her husband’s bedside, stroking his head and smoothing the covers around his withered body.

  “Too much to think about,” Ollie protested, but the lines of his face and the milkiness in his eyes said she was right.

  “You’ll think about it in your sleep and wake up with new ideas,” Ronnie said. “You always do.”

  “Joseph,” Ollie called as McGuire stepped to the door. “What kind of code did this cop use for the witness? The one who gave him the alibi?”

  “A number.”

  “Well, what number, you horse’s foot?”

  McGuire shrugged. “It’s in the car. I’ll get it for you.”

  “How many digits?”

  “Five. No, six.” McGuire tried to visualize the number in his mind. “Couple of zeros, that’s all I recall. I’ll write it down, bring it in, leave it with Ronnie.”

  Ollie grunted and lay quietly after McGuire and Ronnie left the room, trying to hold back sleep, knowing he was about to seize upon something, a key, a compass point, a direction. His crippled hand moved spastically as though conducting an unseen and unheard orchestra while his mind raced through the few facts McGuire had provided him.

  In the entire world, the status of a handful of neighbourhoods is instantly confirmed by the mere mention of their names. Park Avenue in New York, Georgetown in Washington, Belgravia in London, the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris and San Francisco’s Nob Hill are all preserves of old money, of wealth taken for granted, of inherited titles passed on with solemn ceremony, and of cautious reserve. Residents of Nob Hill feel less alien strolling the streets of Belgravia (or, more likely, being navigated past its mansions and pieds à terre in a chauffeur-driven Daimler) than in their own city’s middle-class areas.

  In Boston, no neighbourhood carries greater cachet than Beacon Hill. And on Beacon Hill no address is more prestigious than Louisburg Square.

  The one-block cobblestoned street extends down either side of a green park enclosed within an elegant cast-iron fence. Stately brick townhouses line each walkway facing the park, their proportions near perfect, their detailing so authentic they are emulated throughout the country as the standard of true Americana.

  McGuire found a parking space on Chestnut, south of Mt. Vernon Street. He clambered from the car, cursing the sling that rendered his left arm almost useless and vowing to discard the device the following day, no matter what the doctor’s opinion.

  Crossing Mt. Vernon to Louisburg Square, McGuire stumbled once on the skewed sidewalk and wryly recalled the city’s plan to replace the uneven brick surface with concrete several years earlier. The dwellers of Louisburg Square had no interest in being subservient to the wishes of Boston politicians and, en masse, they had carried their Chippendale chairs and oak benches out onto the ancient brick sidewalks where they sat defiantly, arms folded, and dared the city to alter any artifact of their splendid neighbourhood. The city, of course, soon backed down and the brick walkways remained, regularly tripping up more than one elderly or inattentive pedestrian.

  What, McGuire pondered, would bring the son of a truck driver from the wrong side of the tracks to Louisburg Square? Money, of course. Massive amounts of it. And a fierce need to distance himself from his past.

  He paused at the short flight of steps leading to the heavy oak door of 21 Louisburg Square and thought briefly of Barbara.

  It’s out of your hands, he reminded himself. It is not your decision to make, it’s hers. It has always been her decision to make. More than any other concern, the abdication of control over his own life had kept McGuire from romantic commitments over the years. A man who chooses a wife lends a hostage to fortune. He had read that somewhere years ago, soon after his second wife fled his dark moods and his darker demons and wrote to assure him she would always love him but she could never live with him. Not again. Not ever.

  A discreet brass star framed the doorbell button and McGuire pressed it, unsure of what he would say to whomever answered.

  Soft footsteps approached the door from the other side. McGuire straightened his posture. Just a few moments to talk, nothing official.

  He heard the snick of a dead bolt being slid aside and watched the door swing slowly open.

  McGuire blinked and drew in a sudden short breath.

  The face was angelic, devoid of make-up, clear as January air in high mountains. The smile was warm, unforced.

  “Yes?” the woman asked. She wore a severely cut two-piece gray suit over a plain high-necked white blouse, with blunt black shoes as ungracefully shaped as anvils. A silver cross hung heavily from a chain around her neck. “Is there something you wanted?”

  “I was . . .” McGuire began. The furrow between his eyes grew sharp and deep, as though cleft by a heavy instrument. “I’m looking for Charles Tate. I was told he lives here.”

  “Here?” the woman repeated curiously. “I’m afraid you have the wrong address.”

  “It’s the right address,” said McGuire, although he backed down a step to confirm the brass numerals over the door. Yes. Twenty-one.

  “I’m sorry,” she assured him. “This is the Sisters of Saint Theresa and there is no one by that name living here.” The door began to close.

  “Is someone else available?” McGuire blurted. “Maybe a Mother Superior? This is a matter of, uh, some importance and, uh, I would like a moment to check something with her.”

  The nun’s eyes flew up and down McGuire and beyond him to the empty street. “If you would care to wait in the foyer,” she said finally, “I’ll see if Sister Sophia is free.”

  And McGuire entered the convent, into silence and dim light.

  “What business would you possibly have with Mr. Tate?”

  Sister Sophia had descended the stairs dressed in the same casual habit as the nun who greeted McGuire. She stood on the last step of the ancient walnut staircase leading from the foyer to the upper floors, her hands clasped loosely at her waist. She was plump and gray-haired and her small eyes, behind rimless glasses, were as shrewd and strong-willed as a streetwise South Boston cop’s.

  “I want to ask him some questions,” McGuire responded. “About a crime that was committed several years ago.”

  “Are you a police officer?” More a challenge than a question.

  “I was at one time—”

  “At one time?” One heavy eyebrow rose behind her glasses.

  “My name is McGuire. Joe McGuire. I was a lieutenant with Boston homicide. If you’ll cal
l the police department they’ll confirm that fact.”

  “But you have no official capacity.”

  McGuire exhaled noisily. “No, I haven’t,” he agreed.

  “How did you know Mr. Tate lived here?” she demanded. Her eyes were in constant motion, assessing him, challenging his presence not only within the convent but, McGuire suspected, on earth itself.

  “Police records. This was the last known address given to his parole officer.”

  The eyebrow, which had descended slowly while she spoke, soared above the eyeglasses again. “I had no idea information of that kind was available to the general public.”

  “I’m not the general public.” Let it loose, McGuire told himself. “I just told you. I’m a former homicide detective. I retain contacts with my old colleagues. I became aware of a crime which took place years ago, when Sonny Tate—”

  “Who?”

  “Sonny Tate. His given name is Charles, but he’s known as Sonny in his home town—”

  “Which is?”

  “Compton. Out on Cape Cod.”

  Her distrust was replaced with an expression of wonder. “Really? I had no idea he was from there. I assumed he was from . . .” A glance down at her shoes and a fleeting shadow of disgust across her face, as though she had discovered a toilet overflowing at her feet. “New York City.”

  “He’s from Compton. When he was a teenager, a woman was murdered there. Charles Tate was a suspect but he was cleared of any suspicion. He’s not a suspect now. But he may have knowledge of the crime and of some other things that have happened since.”

  Sister Sophia stared back at McGuire for a moment, then dropped her hands and walked across the gleaming tile floor of the foyer into a parlour whose windows looked out over Louisburg Square. “How did you injure your arm, Mr. McGuire?” she asked as she approached a massive cherrywood desk.

  McGuire followed her into the room. The carpeting was thick, the detailing of the cornices and door frames impeccable, the furnishings sumptuous. “It’s not my arm,” he said, absorbing the elegance of the room. “It’s my shoulder. I was shot.”

  The nun looked up, startled. “Really? By whom?”

  “I’m hoping your Charles Tate will tell me.”

  She removed a large gold-tipped fountain pen from the desk drawer and wrote an address on a small sheet of linen paper. “He is not our Charles Tate,” she corrected him, waving the paper in the air to dry the ink. “He has never been our Charles Tate.”

  “But you know him. And this is his house.”

  She folded the paper once. “Yes, I do know him. No, this is not his house. Not any longer.” She approached McGuire, holding the paper at arm’s length toward him. “He donated the property and all of its contents to our order.”

  “When did he do that?”

  “More than a year ago.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” As though McGuire had asked why the sky is blue. “Because the order required a home for our sisters and a base from which to reach out to the community. And because he no longer needed it.”

  McGuire took the paper from her hand. “A house like this?” he said as she led him back to the foyer. “He just gave it away to a bunch of nuns? He wasn’t even Catholic, was he?”

  She was walking toward the staircase. The younger nun who answered the door had returned to stand near the entrance, prepared to let McGuire out and secure the latch again. “That hardly matters, does it?”

  “Sure it does. Tate was a convicted felon. He smuggled drugs into the country. He probably paid for this place with drug money he stashed away before being arrested. Why would he give it to you people? And where is he now?”

  The nun paused on the bottom step of the staircase and turned to look at McGuire with something uncomfortably close to contempt. “If you will read the information on the piece of paper and do whatever it is you wish to do, you will undoubtedly learn all you need to know. And save myself and my staff a good deal of valuable time. Goodbye, Mr. McGuire.”

  “God be with you,” the young nun said, swinging the heavy door open.

  McGuire stepped into the soft humid morning. He heard the door close firmly behind him and the brass latch slide into place. He opened the folded piece of paper and read the words written on it with exquisite penmanship: Heather House, 72 Benefit Street, Providence, Rhode Island.

  The rain had ceased and a mild breeze, refreshingly dry and encouragingly warm, wafted from the southwest.

  It looks like, he told himself, I’m going to Rhode Island.

  In the car again, he removed the sling from his arm. His shoulder was stiff but mobile. No left hooks, he told himself. No taking a punch on the shoulder. Otherwise, I’m as good as new.

  An hour later he exited southbound I–95 at Providence, skirted the massive white marble state house and nursed the car up the steep hill of Meeting Street to the enclave of colonial homes that surround Brown University like a moat of history.

  To McGuire, Providence always seemed to be a town with a split personality, wavering between sweaty industry on one side and uplifting intellectualism on the other. As a high school student, McGuire had once ventured down from Worcester with buddies on a summer weekend, driving a borrowed car fueled with borrowed money, gazing thoughtfully at the Brown co-eds, fascinated by their beauty made more exotic by their apparent wealth and status.

  McGuire and his friends cruised the old restored avenues of Providence and marveled at the affluence of families living in massive, wonderfully restored houses in the colonial neighbourhood. Then they followed South Main Street to the waterfront where they whistled and shouted taunts at the prostitutes and finished the evening drinking beer in harbourside bars that weren’t nearly as dangerous as McGuire and his friends pretended.

  Since then, the industrial base of Providence had been undermined by foreign competition, leaving crumbling brick warehouses and rusting machinery scattered among hopeless neighbourhoods of poverty.

  But the city’s original colonial homes remained and Benefit Street, McGuire knew, was as close as anyone could come to Beacon Hill and Louisburg Square outside of Boston.

  So why leave Boston, he wondered, finding a parking spot beneath a chestnut tree still heavy with leaves. He stepped out and looked down the stretch of Benefit Street, Providence’s “Mile of History,” the most impressive concentration of original colonial homes in the country.

  He checked the address of the houses around him, determined his bearings and walked north on Benefit, searching for Heather House, number 72.

  It was across the street, on the side where the steep slope of the hill ran down to the centre of the city, a two story brick building with white-painted columns framing a modest entrance. A bronze plaque next to the door declared Heather House, and McGuire crossed the street toward it.

  A sign on the front door, framed in wood and set behind glass, read “Visiting Hours 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily.”

  There was an open expanse beside the building, separated from the sidewalk by a tired and broken cast-iron fence. A grassy area led from the fence down the incline of the hill. McGuire stopped and rested a hand atop the iron filigree, absorbing the scene in front of him and sampling his first taste of understanding.

  The graves began just beyond the cast-iron fence. The stones dated back two centuries or more, the slabs tilting toward and away from each other. Many of the names and dates carved into their faces were worn away by the combined ravages of time and pollution.

  A brick walkway wound down the grassy slope between the graveyard markers, switching back and forth until it reached a terrace just above a small stone church at the base of the hill. From the terrace, wide steps set among shelves of flower beds led down to the church and North Main Street, the plantings wild and overgrown in their final days of life.

  The original two stories of Heather Hous
e had been extended in recent years from the level of Benefit Street down to North Main Street. The new addition, built of preformed concrete slabs, was four stories high with single panes of sealed windows in the top three floors. An expanse of floor-to-ceiling glass formed the walls of the bottom level where, as McGuire watched, a nurse sat alone at a small table facing the rock garden, sipping a coffee and turning the pages of a newspaper.

  He stepped through the open gate in the fence and walked along the path winding among the old gravestones. He found a bench facing the state capitol across the river and he sat for a moment, contemplating where he was and what he was about to encounter.

  He looked to his right and down one story of the new wing of Heather House to an open area the size of a suburban backyard patio, set near two heavily framed glass doors leading into the new wing. Three people sat there together in the weak morning sunshine: a middle-aged man, his weary wife, and a man in his twenties secured in a wheelchair by a broad canvas belt around his chest.

  The older man’s face was red with sunburn and rough with beard stubble. His shirt was more gray than white; one collar point curled upwards like a leaf on a dying plant. He wore gray suspenders, a flowered tie extending well below the waistline of his shiny blue trousers, and new black shoes, and he glared defiantly up at McGuire before exhaling and looking off toward the state capitol building again.

  His wife, a cheap white cardigan over her faded and shapeless print dress, was holding the hand of the man in the wheelchair. She smiled and spoke softly to him, and the young man, whose cheeks were gaunt and whose eyes were withdrawn into small dark caves within his skull, nodded without expression.

  McGuire narrowed his eyes against the sun.

  The young man’s hair was sparse. His white sweatshirt hung on his chest like a towel over the back of a wooden chair. In the brilliant light of the day, McGuire saw the plum-coloured spots on his face and neck and the thickly encrusted sores on his arm.

  He looked toward the dome of the state house, reputed to be among the largest self-supported marble domes in the world, second only to St. Peter’s in Rome.