by David Daniel
“Like the old idea of carnies as suspect,” Courtney said, thin lines of worry marring her brow, like the tiniest cracks in a bone china plate.
“At best,” I agreed. “At worst, they’re viewed as a clear and present danger to decent folks everywhere. That’s sure to rear its head. I see it already starting.”
“So it’ll be best if we can come up with something strong,” Fred Meecham declared. “Very strong.”
From my office, I called some of the motels in the area, as I’d promised Pop last night I’d do, but if the places had any vacancies at all, the rooms were scattered and few. There was some kind of trade show at the civic auditorium, I was told, and foliage was promising to be prime this year, so the leaf peeper bus tours were already starting. I called Pop back to tell him no luck so far, but his line was busy. Then, on my way to the car, I remembered a conversation I’d had with Moses Maxwell.
16
The Venice Hotel sat on the ragged fringe of another age. Constructed in the 1880s, drawing its name from its location along one of the canals that ran for six miles through the city, it had ridden economic boom-and-bust cycles and natural catastrophes, narrowly missed being pulled down in half a dozen urban renewal campaigns, and survived more or less intact. Even in its heyday, it had never possessed the elegance of some of the city’s other hotels, and yet it had its charm. In the late 1920s a prominent Boston bootlegger had been shot to death, along with his two mistresses, in one of the suites; in 1956, Joseph Kennedy upon the eve of his son’s winning a U.S. congressional seat, had publicly declared that someday one way or another, Jack would be president. But the hotel’s charms had grown frowsy with time. Then, in the 1980s, the city caught renaissance fever and, buoyed by state and federal money, set up commissions to preserve this and that. The Venice wasn’t in the Historical Register, and it wouldn’t make any of the chamber of commerce’s four-color puff pieces, but there it was. In Vegas the developers would have run a grand canal through the lobby, with gondolas to carry the rubes from casino to casino, last stop debtor’s prison.
These days the hotel was mostly residential, though even with its low rates, it didn’t run near to capacity. It had the faded splendor of an era when beauty was its own reward. The other thing in its favor was what Moses Maxwell had reminded me of: its tradition of being color-blind. In the days when bands like Maxwell’s came through town, a black performer’s money spent just as good as the next guy’s. My guess was that a gaggle of displaced carnival workers would find the same hospitality
The carpet and drapes and the lobby furniture were saturated with the effluvia of tired salesmen and behatted conventioneers and glamorous women in black dresses, and some women in red dresses, too. It wasn’t hard to conjure up women with cigarette trays, and bellhops still calling for Philip Morris, and gangsters and their molls, and musicians, but all that was as gone as hip flasks and hipsters. The ventilation system seemed to wheeze with emphysema, and cancer was eating at the ceiling molding. Still, the place whispered of a tarnished grandeur you weren’t going to see the likes of again outside of a Disney theme park. At the timeworn registration desk, a black man with faded rust-colored hair sat reading the Christian Science Monitor through half-moon glasses. He wore his black beret with panache and had warm brown eyes, even if the mouth beneath his thin gray mustache barely moved to say “Good day, sir. May I he’p you?”
I said that I was looking for information.
“If you’re with the blues, I got a instant dislike. Sorry, but it’s personal.”
“Save it for someone deserving,” I came back. “I’m private.” I showed him my license.
He studied it, moving a pink-nailed finger along the words. “Right here in the city, I see.”
“I’ve got an office that overlooks Kearney Square, in a building nearly as old as this, but not as suave.”
“The Fairburn?”
“You know it?”
“I used to go to the reading room there on the street floor.”
Quicker than you could say Mary Baker Eddy, we understood each other. I told him that that space was a pawnshop these days. Then I told him I was looking for rooms for a group of carnival employees.
If he had a reaction, I didn’t see it. “Want to look at one of the rooms, sir?”
It was what you’d expect of a place that still used actual door keys: two double beds with nubbled cotton spreads, dinged furniture, sturdy green carpet, beige-and-green flocked wallpaper, reasonably clean. The water tumblers didn’t have little paper jackets on them, but at least they were real glass, and not everything movable was attached with a chain. As I was returning to the elevator, I passed a door that stood partway open, and I caught a glimpse of an old man in his underwear sitting on a bed, his lifeless white hair streaked with yellow, like snow around a city hydrant, staring at nothing. It was stuffy and warm in the corridor, but I felt a chill along my backbone. Outside I welcomed the sunlight and took a deep breath of air. From my car I phoned Sonders. An answering tape as tattered as a big-top tent came on, and after the moths fluttered off I left word that the rooms would seem to do, and his people could come over anytime.
I was on my way over to Bihoco when I saw blue and white flashers light up behind me. I drew to the right to allow a city cruiser to pass, but it stayed Velcroed to my rear bumper. I shut down the mill and waited. In the side mirror I watched the cop do his thing with the onboard computer before he climbed out. He didn’t don a cap (had I actually seen a city cop wear one in recent years?). He came up, adjusting his belt. He wasn’t going to quip, “Going to a fire?” and I wasn’t going to be able to volley back, “No, to jail,” because I hadn’t been speeding, and we’d get this sorted out in a minute and both be on our way.
He bent toward my window. He was young, with a narrow face and a wedge of crisp auburn hair. “Do you know why I stopped you, sir?”
I said I sure didn’t.
“Your automobile registration has lapsed.”
“It has?” The surprise was genuine.
“May I see your operator’s license and registration?”
I dug them out. The license was in a clear plastic foldout alongside my PI ticket. It didn’t make much impression. He scoped the paperwork, then pointed out that my auto registration had expired as of the last day of August. I’d been riding around in a fool’s cocoon for two weeks. “My mistake. I’ll drive over to the registry right now,” I promised.
“I’m sorry, sir. The car will have to be towed.”
“Towed?”
“Once I punch you in and the registration comes up as expired, the car can’t be driven.”
May not be driven, is what he meant; it ran fine. But what was I going to say? I was on the job once; cut me some slack? That and five bucks would buy me a cab ride to the Registry of Motor Vehicles. I didn’t have a paper bag to put over my head as law-abiding gawkers crept past, lamping us with paparazzi eyes, so I sat in the cruiser with the officer while he called for a tow and then I listened to him Tuesday-morning quarterback last night’s Pats game. The fatal error, he said, was Brady throwing an interception early in the fourth quarter when he had a man long and free. He said Brady needed to learn to stretch a defense more. The wrecker arrived in minutes, the way it never does when you really need it. The tow driver introduced himself—Eddie, truck number nine—and handed me a smudged card that told me the name of the company and where I could reclaim my car once I had the proper paperwork. He ducked under the back bumper of my car with the nonchalance of a man who’d lifted more rear ends than Cher’s lipo doctor and got the chain hooked. The cop even apologized again.
Figuring I might be able to get a courtesy ride through my insurance agent, I phoned there but only got a recording saying that business hours were Monday through Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. I looked at my watch. It was 10:05. I called a cab.
If you want to see the changing face of the American city, visit the RMV I quit guessing countries of origin at about twen
ty and just melted into the pot, which included one gray-haired woman who held her yellow sari very tight around herself, as if she were in the midst of the underworld. But there wasn’t anything to be afraid of that I could see, if you didn’t count the thief of time. Everyone there was just eager to enjoy America’s biggest freedom: mobility. An hour later, equipped with my new registration, I took a cab over to the tow company, which was housed in a tin-sided shed tucked away behind several nondescript industrial ventures. The fleet of wreckers was evidently out and around the city winching away people’s money which left one guy behind to run the op center. I gave him the registration, and he pulled the pink invoice from a stack as thick as a rare Porterhouse. “That’ll be a hundred and eight dollars,” he said.
“How much?” I croaked.
He repeated it.
“To tow the car a half mile?”
He put a grimy forefinger on the bill. “This is the seventy-five fifty the state authorizes us to charge,” he said patiently. “This twenty’s for storage. Plus a city fee.”
“You could stash a chinchilla coat for less.”
“And you got state tax on top.”
“Why don’t you just tow the bank away?” I hauled Visa from my wallet.
“I’m sorry sir. Cash only.”
“What?”
“I know,” he sympathized. “The owner’s been burned too many times.”
I looked at him. “Aren’t you the owner?”
He sighed. “All right, then, I’ve been burned too many times. People cancel a credit transaction or bounce a check, and I’m hanging in the wind.”
And cash is easier to hide from the taxman. “I don’t carry that much on me.”
“There’s an ATM down at the corner in the drugstore. Sorry. I don’t make all the rules, sir.”
No, he was just chiseling along like the rest, a little here, a little there. Still, he hadn’t allowed my registration to lapse; I’d managed that all by myself. It stinks when there’s no one to blame but you. I hooked a ride with the Portuguese tow truck driver, paid an extra dollar fifty for the privilege of having a machine give me my money, and had an amiable conversation with the driver going back. He was as nice as the cop had been, and with thank-yous all around, I picked up my car and was back in business. Forgetfulness had cost me half the morning.
17
I didn’t stew long; sunshine and blue sky wouldn’t allow it. I got over to the house of correction, and after a short wait Troy Pepper was led into the interview area in his orange jumpsuit. He sat across the screen from me and pushed something under it. My notebook. I fanned the virgin pages. I put it in my pocket and looked at him questioningly. I drew a breath. “You don’t have to convince Fred Meecham. He’s working for you regardless. Hell, you don’t even need to convince me. I get paid one way or the other. But everyone else—cops, the judge, jurors—you need to sell them, and sell them good, because the way things are stacked up, you’re going down for murder.”
“They can’t do that.”
“Who’s ‘they’? I believe ‘they’ can and will. And you won’t end up back at this place. It’ll be Walpole, which makes life here seem like day camp.”
His face tightened, but he said nothing.
“I spoke with Lucy Colón,” I said. “Do you know her?”
He shook his head.
“She told me that Flora had been planning to tell you something. What was it?”
He didn’t answer.
“Did Flora tell you something when you saw her?”
He went on not answering. When he spoke at all he bit off his words, not letting anything like emotion creep into them. It was the way that prisoners talked; even their language was in jail. I had to find a way to bust it out, just to feel I was earning what I was being paid. If the man was guilty—or a fool—I still owed him my best shot.
“Well,” I answered myself, “I’m sorry you asked that, Mr. Rasmussen. Because it stirs up a painful reminder. Flora told me that she didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. Didn’t say why but I think she found someone else. But you see, my sense of manhood couldn’t take that.” His eyes were on me, narrowed and dark. “A tiny little woman like that telling me she didn’t want me?” I went on. “Well, the hell with that. Be told off by some chippie? Me? I showed her. I made her love me. And afterward, I put a scarf around—”
Pepper got to the wire fast, grabbing at it the way I imagined he’d like to grab my throat, his fingers hooked through the mesh. I was glad for the barrier. I sat back down, letting my heart slow. He backed off, too, his face losing its tension again. We shared a new knowledge now, one that we probably each would rather have done without, but there it was. The man had the potential for sudden violent action. He let out a long, heavy sigh.
“Look,” I said, “I was pushing you, but I’m done listening to myself talk. If you want help on this, you’ve got to speak up, because we’re running out of time. The clock is ticking:” I hesitated, then said,”If Sonders can’t make a loan payment in a few days, he stands to lose the show.”
Some of the resistance left his face. I saw uncertainty in it now “Lose it?”
“To a couple of sharpies who think they’re the General Motors of carnivals. They hold a loan on the show, and if he can’t make the nut, it’s all going to come due at once. It’ll break him. His problem is the show’s shut down, and he can’t—excuse me, won’t take it on the road. He’s got some crazy notion he has to stay here to show solidarity with you.”
His brows drew together. “That’s dumb,” he murmured.
“You’re telling me? If I were Pop, I’d toss you over just on general principles.”
“Hey—”
“You ‘hey.’ What the hell have you done to earn anyone’s loyalty? Why should anybody give a rip about what happens to you, when you obviously don’t care enough about it to make a case for yourself?” I drilled him with a stare. “Or to confess?”
He put his good hand across his mouth and blew a breath against it, making a sound like steam escaping from a pressure cylinder. He lowered his hand and sat still.
“You should be singing like a bird, filling me up with more details than I can ever use, instead of me having to pull them out of you one by one. Fred Meecham has got to build a case, and from what I’m seeing, he doesn’t have anything to go on.”
He scowled at the floor, a restless man in a situation that gave no room to move. His eyes flicked up and met mine. “Flora and me were going to get together. Permanent. We talked about it. The show had a layover in Hartford. I took a bus up, and she met me. We walked along the river.”
“Wait.” I had the notebook out again. “When was that?”
“May, it must’ve been. All the trees were blooming, and there were birds. We walked and we talked and we set all the old stuff between us to rest.” With the telling, his voice had softened a little, and his body lost some of its tension. He looked at me only once in a while, and briefly, but he talked as though the events he was describing were happening right now. “We knew we wanted to be together. The idea was, when I came up this time, we’d do it and then she’d come on the road with me. She was going to ask this priest she knew. We’d get married and maybe travel with the show. Or that was the idea anyways.”
“She was willing to do that?”
“She wanted to try it. I said I could give Mr. Sonders notice and quit the show, get other work. She didn’t want that.”
“Did you tell anyone else about your plans?”
“You mean like Pop, or people in the show?”
“Anyone.” I almost said “relatives” but I remembered he didn’t have any “Or did Flora?”
“I don’t know that. I would’ve, when the time came. I didn’t want to jinx it.”
“It’d be helpful if there were someone else who knows about this.”
“Maybe … maybe she told the priest.”
“Do you know his name?”
“No.”
He furrowed his brow and looked away. “It was a mistake,” he said softly
“The court system didn’t think so.”
“My mistake, I mean. I shouldn’t have got so mad. When she told me about the baby, and … I didn’t even know. And anyways, it was too late, she’d already taken care of it. I didn’t know she didn’t want a baby. I gave her some money, said it was okay, we could talk when she was ready. She threw the money at me. I guess I got mad—but it was like I was mad at everything, you know? Not her. But … things.” His shoulders drooped. “She left. Didn’t tell nobody where. I didn’t even know she was up here till a month after. She got a court order for me to stay away, probably ’cause someone down there told her I was asking. But I wouldn’t have hurt her, not ever. I loved her.”
I wondered how many maggots doing life terms had fed themselves that line. I wanted to think he was telling the truth, but wanting isn’t the same as believing, and I wasn’t able to decipher any subtextual meanings in his silences and body language. I still had plenty of questions and blank pages in my notebooks when the guard came in and said our time was up.
18
Okay, I’d gotten Troy Pepper to open up a little, maybe more than he had to anyone else so far, and yet I couldn’t shake the image of him lunging at the barrier when I’d prodded him. That outburst hinted at the possibility that he had done what he was accused of. No one can push our buttons like someone we love, or believe we do. It was time to find out more about Flora Nuñez.
I drove over to the Lower Highlands and found the address where Flora Nuñez had lived. It was a triple-decker with gray asbestos siding and a sagging porch. I paused just to look, then headed back downtown.
At my office I shuffled among the papers in the file folder and found the photocopy of the restraining order again. A mistake, Pepper had called it … his mistake. The form was filled in and witnessed. There was Pepper’s name, written in the proper space. And the reason Flora Nuñez had given for filing the request: “He’s angry with me on account I don’t want his babey.” She hadn’t bothered to file for an extension of the order when, after six months, the term had lapsed. Significant? Perhaps, though not uncommon. Men and women fooled themselves all the time, about all sorts of things. Or maybe it was just a case of out of sight, out of mind. The signature of the witness to the document was Carly Ouellette. I got the work number that Lucinda Colón had left and dialed it.
