Lie Down with the Devil

by Linda Barnes

  “Well, bravo,” said Robert Thurlow. “That’s one heck of a stump speech, Brad. I see you two have met.”

  “Mr. Mooney’s a friend of yours? Well, I apologize if I was making a speech. Everything all right, Chief?”

  “A little trouble at the schoolyard.”

  “Not the windows again?”

  “Pro-Nausett slogans, but I think they might have been financed by the opposition.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I figure pro-Indian propaganda spray-painted on a school is gonna rile voters up against the tribe. Kind of a double game, you know what I mean?”

  “Clever,” the lawyer said. “If that’s what’s going on. Have you spoken with Mitch yet? I know he wants to talk to you.”

  “I’ll head right over.”

  Hastings said, “And Robert? You haven’t heard anything about an arrest yet?”

  “No. I’m sorry, Brad.”

  “It would make people feel better if they’d just get it over with.” The lawyer sounded wistful.

  “I know it would,” Thurlow said. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Danielle Wilder’s boss,” Thurlow murmured as the white-haired man moved away. “You make the agents in the front room?”

  Mooney nodded.

  “Indian Affairs. Bureau, too. Maybe they think the hit and run’s a hate crime. I gotta see the old man.” Thurlow set out toward the family gathering, Mooney traveling in his wake, thinking about other possibilities: that McHenry had gotten impatient, that Big Mac had a buddy in the bureau.

  Mitch Farmer, enshrined in a heavy dining room chair, had a weather-beaten face and ramrod-stiff posture. His bearing gave him dignity in spite of the brown short-sleeved bathrobe he wore over a cranberry sweater with holes in the elbows. One by one, people approached, patted him gently on the back, touched his shoulder.

  He nodded solemnly to each one, clasped an occasional hand. Thurlow worked his way through the throng. Mooney followed.

  “I’m sorry about this,” Thurlow said when his turn came. “Real sorry, Councillor.”

  Brown eyes looked out from a nest of gray wrinkles. “Robert, thank you for coming.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “Help her come home,” the old man said. “She should be home.”

  A middle-aged lady wearing too much makeup stood at the old man’s shoulder. She nodded vigorously. Mooney thought she might be drunk, then he decided she was probably the old man’s daughter, mother of the hit-and-run vic. Her eyes looked as red and exhausted as the old man’s.

  “Julie is still in the city,” Farmer said. “Her body. Ask them to let her come home.”

  Thurlow explained the routine in an unexpectedly gentle voice. Then he introduced Mooney as a Boston officer who might be of assistance.

  “I want to know whether she was drunk,” the old man said. “Can they tell that? If she was drunk?”

  “Yes,” Mooney said.

  “She was stubborn. She had to do everything her own way, and she always knew what was best. Once that girl got the bit between her teeth, she ran with it. But I don’t believe she was drunk. I won’t believe it unless they tell us.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Thurlow promised.

  “Do something. We’re supposed to be so patient and long-suffering. People die waiting. You understand? We die waiting.”

  Mooney followed the old man’s eyes as he raised them to glance into a mirror over the sofa. The men who looked like federal agents watched with unblinking eyes.

  As if he’d sensed the outside interest, the old man lowered his voice. “Come talk to me later, Robert. I’m very tired, too tired now. Come talk tomorrow.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Outside, fewer cars on the grass verge. Overhead, a thousand stars. Mooney, used to the murky night skies over Boston, stared straight up, awed, and felt like a rube when Thurlow said, “Let’s get in the car so I can get the heat on.”

  “So what was the deal with Luke and Andrew?”

  “Not all the Nausett are in favor of this Proposition Six thing. I mean, it’s like everything else. No organization represents all the members on all the issues, and some of the Indians are scared of what this could mean, worried about the gambling and sin and whatever.”

  “Andrew in the opposition?”

  “I don’t know. But the boy had a run-in with Andy a while back, dumped trash on his lawn, got caught, and had to do community service. So I figured Luke was lying about who hired him, trying for a little payback. Plus I thought maybe somebody at the gathering would come over, show more interest than they should, but that didn’t happen.”

  “But you think it’s like you said to the lawyer, a double game?”

  “Could be. There’s an undercurrent for sure.”

  “Think the land’s the thing? Somebody else wants to buy the same land the Indians want to buy?”

  Thurlow eased the patrol car onto the roadway. “Big chunks of land don’t come on the market often down here. Every town with money is trying to buy land, set up conservation reserves, conservation trusts. Nausett’s poor. We have to sell, and good Cape land this close to the sea, well, it’s pure gold.”

  “Developers interested?”

  “Hell, I’m almost as beat as the old man. I take you back to your car?”

  “Yeah. And recommend someplace to stay the night. A B and B?”

  “All closed for the season, but if you’re not fussy, you can have my comfy living room couch.”

  “Your wife’ll be okay with that?”

  “That’s how I know the couch is comfortable. I spent a lot of time there before she left.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m not.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Mooney sat on the lumpy sofa in the dark, listening. The toilet flushed, the sink gurgled, the floorboards sighed. The faint squeak of bedsprings subsided and Mooney peered at the battery indicator on his cell phone. It was charged, but the service signal was weak. He dialed Carlotta, waited, pressed END as soon as the message started.

  He didn’t keep any numbers on speed dial. He knew what cops could do with a recovered cell phone, and the knowledge made him cautious. He memorized numbers, considered it mind training, like crossword puzzles. He punched the numbers for Gloria’s cab company.

  “Let the other lines ring,” he said.

  “I’ll lose money.”

  “Consider it an official call.”

  For a moment he thought she had hung up on him; then, after several clicks, her voice came back on the line, still deep and melodic, but flustered.

  “Moon, I was going to call you. Look, she didn’t know the car was here—”

  “Did you know? He garage it with you?”

  “I don’t run a parking lot. Hey, what can I say? Carlotta was looking for that car, looking for Sam’s Jag. She didn’t have a car and no way he’d mind if she used his.”

  “She had the key?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Gloria had paused a beat too long before her reply. Carlotta would have had to have the key, Mooney thought. Otherwise what good would the car do her? Why would she be looking for it?

  “Where is she, Gloria?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re the worst liar I know.”

  “Leroy drove her to Logan.”

  Jesus, that was like taking out an ad in the paper: guilty, guilty, guilty.

  “She’ll be back soon,” Gloria said. “Maybe tonight.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Which terminal?”

  “I’m not saying.”

  “International?” He couldn’t bring himself to mention Gianelli’s name, to ask whether Carlotta had gone to him, joined him in whatever elegant place of exile the mobster had picked.

  “Mooney, she didn’t run. She’ll be back. She said she’d be back, so she’ll be back.” />
  Mooney couldn’t think of anything else to ask. “Can’t you call off the dogs, Moon? You know Carlotta’s not the kind to run some girl down in the street.”

  “Can’t do it,” he said.

  “I got calls, Mooney. Goodbye.” Gloria’s voice had turned to ice.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Hey, hey, rise and whine, pardner.”

  Mooney’s eyelids felt like they’d been glued shut. He tried to remember where he was. Yawning and stretching, he rediscovered that the police chief’s couch was too short.

  “Couch sucks, huh?” Thurlow’s voice was thick with sleep, but the man was dressed and ready to go. “Lied to you about that. But I made it up to you big-time. You eat cornflakes?”

  “You made it up to me with cornflakes?”

  “I made phone calls.”

  “To?”

  “I had to call Rosemary, find out if the station burned down since last night, but that’s neither here nor there. You eat cornflakes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I been dating.”

  “Good for you.”

  “I date this girl, Amy Gerson, works over at Hastings and Muir. I called her.”

  Mooney ran the name Amy Gerson through a mental file, didn’t recall it from the state police interviews. “You ask her about Danielle Wilder?”

  “No,” Thurlow said. “Use the blue towel in the bathroom.”

  Mooney didn’t ask why Thurlow hadn’t questioned his girlfriend until the two men were at the kitchen table eating cornflakes drowned in semi-sour milk.

  “I haven’t questioned her because I don’t want what happened with my wife to happen to us.”

  Mooney spooned cereal. He wouldn’t have taken Robert Thurlow for a family inquisitor, but it was an occupational hazard. Long ago, when his own marriage was breaking up, his wife had once inquired, mid-argument, whether he wouldn’t be more comfortable shining a light in her eyes. The memory was unpleasant.

  “Cops must have talked to her.”

  Thurlow shook his head. “I doubt it. She went out sick couple days after the killing. Then, by the time she was back, FBI had gone on to other things. Amy was pretty disappointed.”

  “I didn’t get much from Hastings last night.”

  “Cornflakes gonna be enough? You got yourself some exercise last night. At least.”

  “Hey, it was fun. I haven’t run after schoolkids in a while.”

  “Just like Boston. Big-time broken-window bust.”

  “Really, I had fun. You want me to dump my sheet in the wash or what?”

  “Let it be.”

  Mooney doubted his spinal column could endure a second night on the couch. “So what’s your take on this special election?”

  “The property thing? Sale seemed like a foregone conclusion, then some group, Citizens for Good Cape Government, yeah, CGCG, got hysterical, said it wasn’t about the tribe buying the land, said it was about casino gambling.”

  “Is it?”

  Thurlow rested his spoon on the edge of his bowl. “You know what? The Bay State’s one of fourteen left in the union got no casinos and no slots. And what’s our nickname? Taxachusetts.”

  Mooney nodded.

  “I hear the tourists. That’s what they say: ‘Massachusetts liberal’ and ‘Taxachusetts.’ You know how much Connecticut makes off of Foxwoods? Guaranteed? A hundred million a year is what and that’s not counting Mohegan Sun. You know, I live here, year-round, and the taxes on this shitty little house go up every year, and they scoot up by a lot. I want good services. I want plenty of policemen and firemen and trash collectors and new roads and open space. So where’s that money gonna come from?”

  “State lottery?”

  “See what I mean? The state’s already in the gambling business. What’s the big deal with slots and casinos if it gives everybody a break on the property tax?”

  “Organized crime—”

  “Bullshit. They got a study—a Harvard study, no less—says there’s no increase in crime goes with Indian-run casinos. What—you think people in this state don’t gamble? They drive to Connecticut is what they do. Buses roll out of Boston every hour for Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods. Three-quarters of a billion bucks moves out of state every year heading to Connecticut with love from Taxachusetts. What—you think they stop gamblers at the state line?”

  Mooney remembered buying a state lottery ticket once, back when they were brand-new, a novelty. Won fifty bucks and he’d never bought another one. Sometimes he’d bet ten bucks on a football game.

  “Local Indians interested in casino gambling?”

  “Couple tribe members spent some time at Foxwoods last year, checking it out. Who in their right mind wouldn’t be interested in running a casino?”

  “Is Citizens for Good Cape Government a religious group?” Mooney remembered the fervent cemetery guard, the way he’d tossed off the phrase, “high church of the dollar bill.”

  “Don’t know. They haven’t thrown any rowdy parties or broken any laws I know of. You ready?”

  “Coffee?”

  “We’re gonna pick up Amy, go for coffee. That good with you?”

  “And you’ll just lead the conversation around casually to the Wilder thing?”

  “I got a plan for that.”

  “What?” The way Thurlow smirked, Mooney figured he was screwed.

  “Remember that business in Truro? The Worthington killing? They had writers coming out of the woodwork, reporters, novel writers, everything in between. I’m gonna tell her you’re a writer.”

  “She’ll buy that?”

  “How about a retired cop who’s a writer?”

  “Retired? I look that old?”

  “After a night on the killer couch? You kidding?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hey, c’mon, you must know a couple big words.”

  “Asshole.”

  “That’s one. Oh, and keep this in mind: Technically,” Thurlow said judiciously, “far as Amy knows, I’m still married.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “You been seeing this lady long?” Mooney asked.

  A driver yielded right-of-way to the patrol car at a four-way stop, waving a friendly greeting. That sort of thing didn’t happen in Boston. Mooney decided he felt more at home cruising the Combat Zone, eyes darting sideways to catch movement in the dark alleys.

  “Couple months,” Thurlow replied. “We’ll pick her up at Hastings, Muir.”

  Mooney was uneasy about the writer cover story, too; he would have felt more convincing and comfortable posing as a lowlife drug dealer. He had already checked his cell phone twice, called his home phone, screened messages there and at the office. Carlotta hadn’t returned his call. If she’d left the country, he was wasting his time, spinning his wheels.

  “Hey,” he said, “did she own a car? Danielle Wilder?”

  Thurlow nodded and Mooney wished he had a key that would unlock Thurlow’s mouth, make the man talkative, free with information.

  “You’ll like this one,” the Nausett officer said. “Her car’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Nice car, too. Volvo or Saab, one of those. Can’t remember which. Kind of showy. She parked it on the street, so somebody might have stolen it, I guess.”

  “Is that what the feds guess?”

  The police chief shrugged his shoulders and made a left turn down another quiet street.

  The law office didn’t look any more like Mooney’s idea of a law office than the Nausett police station resembled his idea of a cop house. It could have been a big old family house except for the signboard over the wide front porch. The maroon Lexus was parked out front.

  “Here she comes,” Thurlow said. “Is she a looker or what?”

  Dark hair framed a thin eager face. Not strictly pretty, but fresh and bright-eyed. She floated to the passenger door, stopped, hand on handle, surprised to find the front seat occupied. Mooney, looking up at her, thought she was way too young for Thur
low.

  “Amy, meet Moon, my old buddy. He just might make you famous.”

  “Oh, famous, huh? I could do famous.”

  Not with that screechy voice, Mooney thought, as she declined his offer to move and climbed into the backseat.

  “Who do you figure should play her in the movie, Moon?” Thurlow was laying it on thick; the chief had evidently decided to have some fun. “Me, I’d go straight for Angelina Jolie. Can’t do better than Angelina Jolie.”

  “You talk such shit, Rob,” the girl said. “Where are we going? I got a meeting in an hour. And papers to get ready before then.”

  “Moon here is writing a book about your girlfriend, Danielle.”

  “Shit. You can just let me out at the light.”

  “Come on, Amy. He doesn’t have to use your real name. He can call you Deep Throat, huh?”

  “Well, I sure wouldn’t want to be seen with him. I don’t know about this.”

  “I was going to take the both of you out for coffee, but how about I go in and grab takeout? Then you two can stay in the car and talk?”

  “Are you going to use a tape recorder or a video-cam? Will I have to sign a release?”

  Thurlow was grinning.

  Mooney felt woefully unprepared. “Um, this is preliminary work. I’m not sure there’s a book in it.”

  “Are you kidding? Of course there’s a book.”

  “You gonna write it, Amy?”

  “Maybe I should, Rob.”

  “Go get us some coffee,” Mooney said.

  When Thurlow left the car, Amy hopped out, too, and they embraced in the parking lot. Mooney cracked the window and eavesdropped shamelessly.

  “Looking good,” Thurlow said. “What are you wearing under that coat?”

  “Old clothes, moron. They’re repainting the place. Again. I don’t want to spoil my good stuff. You take me someplace nice, I’ll wear something nice.”

  The girl strolled partway to the coffee shop, then hurried back and slid into the driver’s seat. Hard to tell about her figure under all the coats and scarves, but her legs were fine in tights and heels. Her scent held a hint of lemon.