Lie Down with the Devil

by Linda Barnes

  “The bag?”

  “Remember? The tote bag type thing your guy carried? When I described it— I mean, I leaned over the desk and drew it on a piece of scrap paper, and I got this weird silence. You still there?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Look, don’t go back there, Roz. Don’t spook them, but find out about them. Who owns them, exactly what they do, who they work for.”

  “Okay. And I made some calls about the senate committee. The lobbying is fierce on all sides.”

  “How many sides are there?”

  “More than you’d think. Really, this has nothing to do with whether or not the Nausett are a tribe. Everybody knows they’re a tribe. It’s about gambling and how many gambling empires there ought to be. So, like, other Indian tribes are not necessarily pro-Indian. It’s ‘I got mine, Jack, and screw you.’”

  “Huh?”

  “Think about it. Here I am, a member of the Connecticut Pequot and I am sitting pretty. New Englanders are pouring into my state begging me to take their money, and then all of a sudden, it’s not bad enough the Mashpee Wamps are probably gonna open a place in Middleton or New Bedford, but here come the Nausett. How many tribes are gonna split the pot? So it’s not anti-gambling types doing the lobbying, it’s pro-gambling folks, too. You got your do-gooders, your religious—”

  “Keep on it.” I had my finger poised to disconnect.

  “You don’t want to hear about Nardo?”

  “What?”

  “He’s worried about you. He dropped by, wanted to talk, very concerned. Says you should call him.”

  “Fine. You can reach me on my cell.”

  “Where are you?”

  I hung up. Then I reread the salmon-colored flyer. Citizens for Good Cape Government were concerned that gambling would usher in a host of social ills. Drinking, drug abuse, street fights, gangs. Their logo featured their initials: CGCG.

  Did the Consortium Guidance Consulting Group also use initials? CGCG?

  If I’d had a car, I’d have sped off to investigate, without breakfast, without explanation. I might have left a note.

  The thought of a note on the kitchen table gave me pause. God, I wouldn’t leave Mooney a note. How could I even think of it, a note like the notes I’d left men who meant nothing to me? Thanks for a great evening. See you never.

  I was having a hard time putting a label on how I felt. Up until last night I’d had one good male friend in my life and now what did I have?

  I guess I have always believed that friendship precludes love, that the bond of friendship takes the fizz out of the sizzling messy chemistry of sex. Up until last night, up until this morning, I’d have insisted on it.

  THIRTY-SIX

  I tucked the cab into a slot in front of 843 First Street. It wasn’t a cab stand, but it wasn’t a tow zone either. No meter, which was fine. I didn’t want to attract the attention of a meter maid or a patrol car.

  It was almost noon, the high, bright sun contrasting sharply with the chilly temperature. Members of the Consortium Guidance Consulting Group should be hunched over their desks, crunching numbers from last week’s polls, inventing questions to trip up potential voters, polling citizens who’d rather be eating lunch than talking on the phone to a stranger.

  Worker bees take lunch breaks between noon and one. That’s when I would go in. Maybe the gate would be temporarily unguarded. I might have hashed out the plusses and minuses of a variety of approaches with Mooney, if he’d been there, sharing the front seat.

  He’d returned triumphant to the Marshfield shack, bearing a dozen eggs, bacon, a half gallon of Tropicana, four grapefruits, a loaf of sliced Italian bread, salt, and two cups of steaming coffee encased in Styrofoam. The toaster was dead, so I grilled bread on the stove while Mooney peeled bacon slices and broke eggs into a cast-iron skillet the size of a wagon wheel.

  While he cooked, I explained about the two CGCGs.

  “Up or over?”

  I said “over” just to watch him flip the eggs with a warped spatula.

  He caught me looking. “Something wrong with the eggs?”

  “No.”

  “Something wrong with the big picture? You and me doing breakfast together?”

  “I don’t know, Moon. Maybe it’s because you’re the same as always, because here we are talking work.”

  “And you thought once we slept together, I’d treat you differently?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That I’d be a different person? You?”

  There was no knife sharp enough to penetrate grapefruit skin. I started peeling a yellow sphere, but Mooney insisted on using a hacksaw. The eggs were excellent.

  After getting an encouraging medical update from Thurlow, Mooney felt the need to be at the hospital when Mitch Farmer woke. I was keen to check out the Cambridge consulting group as soon as possible. Mooney thought it a long shot. So we split, Mooney dropping me at the T station in Braintree so I wouldn’t have to wait forever at a commuter stop farther south. En route, I connected via cell phone with Leroy, who agreed to bring a cab to South Station, which was terrific because I didn’t have the time or the nerve to face down Gloria in Allston. It wasn’t so much that I thought there’d be cops watching her building; it’s that Gloria has six senses and then some. I was sure my old friend, who could sniff sex in the air from afar, would take one look at me and say, “Girl, what the hell have you been doing?”

  I leaned back in the cab, recalling, picturing the night I’d followed “Ken,” the pseudo-bridegroom, watched him leave the silver Volvo with the tote bag clutched in his hand. He’d still been carrying it when he came out, but who knew what he might have removed from its interior, what he might have left inside?

  I couldn’t prove it yet, but I was sure he’d been driving Danielle Wilder’s car. I was convinced that “Ken” was the key, that “Ken” was Kyle, connected to Danielle Wilder by Amy’s sighting at Radio Shack.

  How did he connect to Julie Farmer?

  They had eaten dinner at the same table. The waiter claimed he hadn’t overheard the conversation, but he branded it unpleasant, argumentative.

  “Ken” had to be the key.

  The image of a key made me think of a car key. That made me think of Jonno, who’d brought me the box containing Sam’s car key, and in turn, I thought about Eddie Nardo. I wondered whether Eddie had heard from Sam, whether he’d dropped by the house to give me a message from Sam. I checked my cell phone, just in case. Sam hadn’t called and I was relieved.

  Julie Farmer had hired me to follow the man in the Volvo. The case had taken a few odd twists and turns, but now I was back on the initial job. I glanced at my watch and decided it was time. As to an approach, I’d wing it, go with whatever hit me once I saw the setup at CGCG.

  The Consortium Guidance Consulting Group was closed.

  The door was locked and no one answered my knock. It was a business day, no holiday. The firms next door and down the hall were open. Their respective receptionists had no idea why CGCG’s door was still locked.

  It took some time to locate the building super, a skinny, surly man wearing cut-fingered gloves and eating a brown bag lunch in the furnace room of an adjoining building. It took some cash to convince him to talk.

  “Huh, those guys,” he said, with a jerk of his chin and a sniff, once bills had slipped into the pocket of his oversized jeans.

  “CGCG. Who are they?”

  “They pay the rent.” Another sniff. Twitchy, too, probably a cokehead.

  “Cash or check?”

  “Huh, I’d have to look.”

  “Why don’t you do that?”

  There was a four-drawer metal file cabinet in one corner. The super gave me the eye, like he thought I might be planning to steal it. We glared at each other while the furnace clanked. I was getting ready to ask for a refund when he finally rambled over to the corner, yanked the second drawer from the bottom, and thumbed through a manila file folder.

  “Check.”

  �
�Company check? Personal check?”

  “Company.”

  “Sovereign? Bank of America?”

  “Citibank.”

  Checks can be traced. I’d put Roz on it and maybe Mooney would help. Mooney. Oh, my God, he and I had finally done it. We’d had sex. We were lovers…. I almost had to shake myself physically to get back to the sunken room and the clanking furnace and Mr. Big Jeans.

  “Do you have an emergency number for Guidance Consulting?”

  “What do you mean, emergency?”

  “Fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night, sprinkler system comes on, who you gonna call?”

  He searched the file, ran a grubby finger down a page, gave me a number with a 508 area code. That’s central Massachusetts. It also covers the Cape.

  “Why is the company closed today?”

  “Huh, you sure? Nobody there?”

  “Not answering the door.”

  “Well, how about that?”

  “You know about it?”

  “Who says I know anything?” He was almost crowing with secret glee.

  “You do, right? Smart guy like you?”

  “I just figure they might be closed for good, that’s all,” he said smugly.

  “Why?”

  “Huh. Having trouble with the equipment, man says to me yesterday. Shredder on the fritz, cleaning out a ton of paper. Says he’s waiting on one of those trucks.”

  “What did the man look like?”

  “Some man. I don’t pay him no mind.”

  “But he’s waiting for a truck?”

  “You know, like a shredder on wheels. Porta-shredder, yeah.” He stepped aside to display six well-filled thirty-gallon trash bags stuffed into an alcove beside the furnace.

  “I told ’em I’ll burn it for half the price,” the super said with a wide grin. “I did some of the bags, but I’m not finished yet. Been real busy.”

  “Can I see what you’ve got left?”

  We dickered. I explained that I didn’t intend to pay for bags he might have collected from some other office, some other building, for all I knew. He rolled his wily eyes and professed himself shocked, shocked, that I’d consider the possibility that he might be planning to deceive me.

  I peeked into one bag, then another. There was leftover food as well as paper, but the paper belonged to Consortium Guidance.

  We held a second round of negotiations, then the super helped me wedge the Hefty bags into the trunk and backseat of Gloria’s Ford. As I drove around the corner, I saw him scurry into the building that housed CGCG, probably rushing to search for a warm body who might make him an offer for information about me.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Mooney found me down by the beach, on a long flat stretch of sand bounded by strategic trash barrels. He cupped his hands and hollered down from the top of the dunes. “Aunt Pat flagged me as I drove in, told me a crazy woman was garbage-barreling down Burke’s Beach.”

  I’d hauled a tarp, a rake, and the trash bags from the Marshfield house. “Aunt Pat?”

  “All the ladies on the road are my aunts. It’s a neighborhood thing. I feel about five years old here. Having fun?”

  “If you can find another rake, I’ll let you help.”

  “What a tempting offer. You lose something?”

  “Found it.” I jerked my chin to the left.

  Mooney followed the gesture, knelt near the place I’d secured a pile of salmon-colored flyers under a hefty stack of stones. “Where’d the trash come from?”

  “Consortium Guidance.”

  The salmon-colored flyers were identical to the one from Mooney’s pocket. The headline read STOP PROPOSITION 6!

  Mooney said, “I’ll be right back.”

  There is no dainty way to sift through thirty-gallon Hefty bags. Primarily office waste, this stuff wasn’t as bad as some I’ve encountered. No used needles or condoms, but the political consultants ate a lot of pizza, and week-old pepperoni-and-cheese smells none too grand. It was almost enough to make me grateful for the wind that froze my ears. It dissipated the stink.

  I had a method: outright garbage to the left, paper and objects of potential interest to the right. The Consortium Guidance Consulting Group read both the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Herald. They tossed their printer manuals. They did Chinese and sub-shop takeout as well as pizza. Somebody in the office suffered from a bad cold. The wind blew used Kleenex far and wide in spite of my efforts to contain it.

  Mooney came over the rise, carrying a broom and a carton of disposable plastic gloves. The gloves would have been in the Buick’s glove compartment, standard-issue cop gear.

  “This is so romantic,” he said, gazing at the trash heaps.

  I tried to keep a straight face. “No luck with your old Indian?”

  “Good chance he’ll recover, but he may never remember what he wanted to tell Thurlow. His daughter’s not sure he remembers his granddaughter’s dead.”

  Small mercies, I thought.

  “Didn’t attract any followers?” That was Moon’s way of saying he’d taken note of the cab.

  “Didn’t go home, didn’t go to Gloria’s.” I hadn’t gone to see Paolina either. The omission troubled me while I told Mooney about the abrupt closure of Consortium Guidance, the encounter with the building super.

  “You got a phone number?”

  “Roz already tried running it. It’s a phony.”

  “Makes it harder to track.”

  “Did you have to wait long at the hospital?” I figured we might as well have a little conversation while we sorted and shifted the foul mounds.

  “Thurlow wanted to chat.”

  “About?”

  “Job stuff.”

  “You don’t want to talk about it.” The wind spiraled more Kleenex through the air. We’d probably get arrested for littering.

  “You made the Boston papers. That’s one thing Thurlow wanted to talk about.”

  “The other?”

  “Dailey, the Boston fed who’s after my ass.”

  “The red-faced guy? He was hanging around Charles River Park. And he stopped me on the road, almost like he wanted me to know he was following me. What’s his game?”

  “Wants my badge, wants Gianelli in the joint. Bastard’s loaded for bear. He wasn’t indicted in the Whitey Bulger business, but feeling in the bureau is that he’s dirty.”

  “So he’s trying to prove them wrong.”

  “Mr. Clean. Gonna put away the dirty copper.”

  “Nobody would believe that about you, Moon.”

  “Hey, it’s true. I told Gianelli about the indictment, didn’t I? And I know where you are, but I told Thurlow I didn’t.”

  I stopped raking garbage. “You did not let Wilder’s murderer walk.”

  He met my eyes. “Let’s agree to disagree.”

  “But you’re working—”

  “I’m working this because you did not run over that girl. I don’t even know for sure the hit and run reaches back to Nausett.”

  “It has to. Julie Farmer links Nausett and Boston. You can’t get away from it. She was Danielle Wilder’s closest friend. She contacted the BIA—”

  “Yeah,” Mooney said. “Okay.”

  We sorted trash awhile. I batted the rake at an aggressively curious seagull and he squawked off down the beach.

  Mooney said, “How long have you had the key to Gianelli’s car?”

  “It was in a purse. In one of the boxes that Jonno brought by when he cleared out Sam’s apartment.”

  “A mob errand boy.”

  “Jonno’s not mob as far as I know. He’s family. His mother married Tony G, but I don’t know that he’s mob. Nardo was angry when Jonno dumped the boxes on me. Like Jonno had overstepped his authority.”

  “Nardo’s a stone killer. If they’d found his DNA in the graveyard with the girl’s body—”

  I said, “I’d buy it.”

  “But you still don’t believe that Gianelli—”

 
; “No.”

  The pesky gull started creeping back. When he encroached on the tarp, Mooney took a swing at him this time.

  I barely paid attention. I was kneeling in the trash. “Hey, this could be a spreadsheet. Money in, money out.” I held it up for Mooney’s approval.

  “Could be polling numbers,” he said.

  There was no way to tell. All the numbers were in neat columns. The rest was groups of initials.

  “Code?” I said.

  “Everybody’s got their own shorthand,” Mooney said.

  “Like you’re still officially AWOL with BPD?”

  “I’ll work it out.”

  A glint of silver caught my eye. Normally I don’t mind getting my hands grimy, since crud washes off, but I was increasingly grateful for Mooney’s plastic gloves. The CD was half-hidden by a rotting banana and too close to a dead mouse.

  I held the disc aloft. “Keys to the kingdom?”

  “Or a bootleg Michael Jackson concert.” Mooney picked up a filter filled with damp coffee grounds and tossed it aside.

  “You’re just jealous ’cause you didn’t see it first.”

  Bag Four was the jackpot, but I didn’t realize it at first. There was more paper, a blend of lined notebook stuff and twenty-weight bond, hand-ripped into larger-than-confetti-sized chunks. When I noticed the first matchbook, I swept it into the discard pile. The second one, too, without bothering to read it. When I spotted the third, I noted its similarity to the rest. Then I bent and extracted all of them from the remains of a moldy bag lunch.

  “Smoking while in the People’s Republic of Cambridge,” Moon said. “Great. We’ll nail ’em for that.”

  The matchbook was glossy green with FOXWOODS printed on the front and a sketch of a castle-like tower outlined in deep brown.

  I said, “Jessica Franklin had matches just like this in her purse. Along with a deck of cards.”

  “Julie Farmer. When did you go through her bag?”

  “She spilled it.” I remembered her hands, the assured shuffle so at odds with the tearful eyes. “She knew how to handle cards.”

  “Like a pro? Thurlow told me the Nausett Council arranged to apprentice some of their young people at Connecticut casinos.” Mooney peeled off his gloves, stepped downwind, and extracted his cell from his pocket. He punched buttons, waited till someone—I assumed Thurlow—picked up. “Hey, you know if Julie Farmer ever worked over at a casino? Call back on this line? ASAP. Great.”