Around three o’clock, Eddie pulled on his overcoat and walked to City Hall to make his rounds. City Hall is a grand stone building with a high clock tower and a tin roof, tarnished green. Inside, worn white marble stairs wind to the upper floors.
At the City Clerk’s office, he checked campaign finance reports filed by the candidates. The incumbents had raised more money than the challengers. That was no surprise. But one detail interested him. Six incumbents fighting for reelection had recorded contributions from the “GLCI Political Action Committee.” It was a Lowell-based PAC, according to the contribution disclosure forms, but Eddie had never heard of it. Each contribution was for the maximum allowed by campaign finance law. It all went into the notebook for a possible story.
Eddie headed back to the office just before four. Melissa was waiting in the lobby. They hugged. There was nothing special in her touch. She wore a black skirt and tights, a thick knit sweater, gray like Eddie’s suit, and a beige beret. Her jacket was tan suede with fake fur around the wrists. They headed up Market Street toward The Dead Zone.
Melissa Moreau was The Empire’s top general assignment reporter. She was nearly six feet tall and spindly, lacking deep curves. But her eyes! Melissa’s brown eyes were huge, round and dark as French-roast coffee beans. They were always moist, like they were holding little tears about to spill out. Lots of men looked into Melissa’s eyes and yearned to protect her. Men couldn’t shut their mouths around her, even when she was taking notes. Some men never learned. Some like Eddie. He’d thrown a dozen passes her way, all incomplete.
Melissa talked like she wrote, a little too dramatic. They had gone only a few steps when she said, “I don’t know what I’m ever going to say when we see Jesse, that poor woman, all alone in the world.”
“Maybe the answer’s in here,” Eddie said, pulling her furry sleeve toward The Umbrage, a gourmet coffee spot.
She sighed. “You’re so addicted.”
The one-room restaurant had its usual gathering of pale, skinny people dressed in the all-black uniform of the tortured individual, brooding over their lattes. “I’m just here looking for something to say at the wake,” Eddie whispered to Melissa. “Who knows more about death than this crew? This looks like a casting call for a vampire movie.” In a loud Dracula voice he said, “If you stay up late feasting on human flesh, you’ll need that caffeine kick in the morning.”
Melissa scolded him, “Edward!”
He ordered an Italian roast, black. Melissa didn’t want anything. She picked at her cuticles while Eddie’s order was filled.
The cold front that had dawdled over New England for two weeks hadn’t budged. Gusts of icy wind passed like X-rays through Eddie’s overcoat. They walked toward the funeral home, zigzagging through the Acre neighborhood, past Asian restaurants emitting odd and wonderful smells, and Khmer markets with bottles of strange brown spices in the windows, which, when added in the right proportions to stirred vegetables, created those odd and wonderful smells.
People sat on their front steps, watching what went by. Children giggled and chased after each other, unaware they were underdressed for the cold. Graffiti, peeling paint and plywood windows became common. Trash blew against rusty chain fences. Parked cars with two wheels on the curb shared the cracked sidewalks with pedestrians.
But there were also patches of pride amidst the decay. Immaculate little yards. Bushes trimmed into spheres and cubes. Victorian architecture lovingly restored, from the fieldstone foundations to copper cupolas. And washing over the neighborhood as dinnertime drew near, came the voices of mothers and fathers calling for their children in Spanish, in English, and in words of Southeast Asia, which Eddie could only guess were from Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia.
Eddie and Melissa walked in step, her stride as long as his. For the first half mile, neither of them spoke. Eddie fought the cold by gulping coffee that nearly scalded his insides. Melissa broke their silence. “You haven’t said much about Danny since he died. You two were friends, weren’t you?”
Eddie finished his coffee and pushed the cup into an overflowing can somebody had dragged to the curb for trash day. “We were beat partners,” he said.
Melissa wouldn’t take his politician’s answer. “But not friends?”
Eddie bristled. “Danny and Jesse had me over a couple times. I spent Christmas afternoon with them last year.”
She said nothing. Her heels fell harder on the asphalt sidewalk.
Eddie sighed and gave her what she wanted. “There was a distance between Danny and me, a professional distance.”
“Professional?”
“It was unspoken, but we both wanted out of The Empire. There are only so many journalism jobs in New England, and only so many of those go to political reporters. Danny and I were teammates in Lowell, but competitors for jobs everywhere else.” Eddie hoped to end it there, but she elbowed him. “Danny was the best reporter I’ve ever seen, but not the best writer. His raw copy was sloppy and too wordy.”
“Always read fine to me,” she said.
“Danny got good editing.”
“Gordon?”
Eddie nodded. “Phife rewrote Danny’s stuff. But Danny was making progress. As soon as his writing caught up with the rest of his skills, he was out of here.”
“And you were afraid he’d take a job from you?” The truth sounded pathetic coming from her mouth.
Eddie confirmed her conclusion with silence.
She waited a moment, and then said, “Your competitor is dead. But at least you didn’t lose a friend.”
Her words hammered him. The blow cracked something open inside Eddie and spilled his own foolishness all over him. An acid tear burned his eye. He blinked it away, gave her a little smile and said, “You must have been a reporter from birth—you’re a natural.”
“Actually, interior design class was full,” she said, “I needed three credits, and journalism fit my schedule.” She laughed. “True story. And you?”
Eddie felt closer to Melissa than he ever had before. “There was this perfect little forest of white pine near my neighborhood growing up, with deer tracks and windy trails running through it.”
“It’s probably a subdivision now,” she said.
“Goddam condos. Anyway, none of the kids dared to play around there because the forest had an abandoned well in the middle of it. It was dry and capped, perfectly safe, but the story had gotten around that the well was where the town fathers used to dump crazy people from the state hospital, and that the bottom was full of bones.”
Melissa clapped her hands. “I adore urban legends.”
“I didn’t,” Eddie said. “I was ten years old and wanted to play in that forest. So I took my aunt’s Polaroid and some rope from her clothesline.”
“You didn’t!”
“Yup. Left some wet sheets on the lawn. The cap over the well had a trap door. I smashed the lock with a rock, tied off the rope, and lowered myself down. Problem was, I was heading down a forty-foot hole with about thirty-three feet of rope.”
She laughed.
“When I ran outta rope, I jumped.”
“Did you find bones?”
“Naw, just the carriage of an old wheelbarrow. It might have looked like bones from above, which was probably how the legend got started. I snapped a picture, and then realized I couldn’t reach the rope. I scraped my hands red trying to climb the wall.”
“You must have screamed bloody murder.”
Eddie admitted, “Never been so hoarse. When darkness fell I started to believe that I hadn’t debunked the legend at all—I was going to prove it true with my own bones. A search party of neighbors heard me pounding stones the next morning, digging in the bottom of the well, and got me out of there.”
“Why were you digging?”
“Not important,” Eddie said. He blew into his hands. He had never told anyone about his sleepless night at the bottom of the well, where Fear had firs
t visited him, perfumed in mold and mud, and had persuaded ten-year-old Eddie Bourque to dig himself a proper grave. “Anyway, it didn’t go the way I planned, but my investigation worked out. A writer at the Weekly Chieftain wrote a few inches about me at the bottom of his column, and ran my Polaroid from inside the well.”
“You must have been the hero of the adolescent world.”
“Sure felt like it. Nobody was ever afraid to play in that forest again, and I realized how powerful the press could be. I was a reporter from that day.”
They turned onto Pawtucket Street and walked into The Dead Zone, a stretch of six funeral homes along just a few blocks. They were fat Victorian-style buildings with plenty of parking and canvas canopies between the sidewalk and the front doors.
A line of dark suits and overcoats snaked from under one white canopy. Danny Nowlin was an impressive draw. Some local pols were there, including Councilman Manny Eccleston.
Eccleston spotted Eddie and waved him over. Eddie walked Melissa slowly up the line, warning under his breath, “It’s Manny the Mangler.”
“Huh?”
“Just don’t laugh.”
Eddie introduced Melissa to the councilman. They shook hands, and then Eccleston said gravely, “Danny was a pillow of the community.”
Eddie felt Melissa’s gaze, but kept a solemn face pointed to Eccleston and apologized for not returning his call immediately that morning. The councilman leaned close to talk business. The only wake that slowed down a Lowell politician was the very last one he attended.
“I want to feed you a story about the old church,” Eccleston whispered. His breath smelled of boiled eggs and Listerine.
Eccleston was referring to St. Francis de Sales. The diocese had closed it nearly twenty years ago. Eccleston had been floating a plan to take the land by eminent domain, and tear down the old church to make space for public projects. Eddie had heard rumblings of opposition from a neighborhood group.
Eddie cupped a hand to his ear. “I’m listening.”
“That old building is a real sore eye,” said Eccleston. “It’s been an Alcatraz around the city’s neck for years. I’ll leak you a report that demonstrates absolutely no integrity.”
“Huh?”
“The building—no integrity.”
“You mean the building lacks structural integrity?”
“Right. I’ll have it on your desk by the end of the week.”
Eddie nodded. There were more handshakes, and then Eddie walked Melissa back to the end of the line. She whispered to him, “I nearly bit my poor tongue clean through.”
They shuffled along with the crowd, winding down stairs and through three pine-paneled rooms in the basement of the funeral home. The hushed mourners seemed like zombies in a catatonic line dance, plodding across the undertaker’s rose-colored carpet. Eddie left his overcoat and Melissa’s jacket with the coat checker, and then hunched his shoulders to hide the ill fit of his suit. His cell phone vibrated. Caller I.D. showed that Phife was on the line, but there was no place to talk. Gordon would have to call back.
Near the end of the line, a small table draped in shimmering pink fabric displayed Nowlin’s photo in a stand-up frame and a few relics from his life, including a twelve-inch lock of reddish hair, braided into a ponytail. Nowlin had worn long hair until his wedding. He let Jesse snip it at their reception with hedge shears. There was a reporter’s flip-top notebook on the table, opened to a page of scribbles done in black ink, and Nowlin’s laminated press identification card from the state police.
The line finally brought them to the closed casket—a deep brown poplar model with silver hardware—and to Jesse. A golden shaft of sunlight streamed into the basement chamber through a window high on the wall above the coffin. The light illuminated bits of dust spinning above Jesse’s head.
Danny’s widow was twenty-nine, the director of a small art gallery in upscale Concord, a half-hour south of Lowell. She was barely five feet tall, nicely proportioned, with sweet blue eyes, like a newborn’s. For her husband’s wake, she wore an unflattering black dress that hung straight from her shoulders and hid the heart-shaped tattoo on her ankle. Her short blonde hair, usually worn spiked, was jelled back flat against her scalp.
There were no children with her. Jesse could not conceive, and the Nowlins had planned to adopt. Last year, Danny had written a first-person commentary about the red tape hassles of adopting from overseas. Today it seemed a blessing. Jesse embraced Melissa lightly, and then Eddie. Her touch was distant, the way a political opponent hugs to fake reconciliation after a nasty primary.
“You don’t have to go through this alone,” Eddie said.
“You get used to being alone,” Jesse said. Her voice was flat. Her eyes looked past him.
Used to it? “Is there anything I can, ah, do for you?”
“Thank you, Danny’s done quite enough.” With that, she turned to the next person in line and the current swept Eddie along. He gave Melissa a raised eyebrow, but she showed no reaction.
They greeted Nowlin’s father, his sister, stepsister, and assorted relations arranged in what seemed to be decreasing order of emotional distress. Nowlin’s father could barely stand. The teenaged cousin from Oakland at the end of the line probably got more upset when the Raiders failed to cover the spread.
The line emptied through a wide archway into a reception room. It was crowded with mourners, many of them holding flaky pastries and collecting their crumbs into white cocktail napkins.
Pastries? Then there had to be coffee.
Eddie left Melissa and eased through the crowd as fast as courtesy allowed. He tried to make sense of what Jesse had said. She was used to being alone? Nowlin worked long hours when the news got hot, but all the reporters did that. And Danny had done quite enough? Enough what? He got himself killed somehow. Is that what she meant?
There was a two-gallon chrome coffee carafe on a long maple table in the back of the room. Eddie grabbed a Styrofoam cup and pulled the handle to let the mind-juice flow.
Damn. Empty.
He held the cup in place and tilted the dispenser forward. Watery brew dribbled out. Slowly, slowly. Just a little more—
A reflection in the chrome caught his eye. Red mittens. And a face he had seen before. Eddie glanced over his shoulder. In the window above the casket, a woman peered into the chamber. Her breath froze a small white patch on the glass. The wind pulled her hair and the ends of her white scarf.
She was the Cambodian woman who had watched from the rooftop when the police took Nowlin from the water.
She looked older than Eddie had guessed before, maybe mid-thirties. She was also more stunning that he remembered. High, sharp cheekbones, a strong jaw, and cords of muscle running down her neck, like an adolescent boy’s warrior-princess fantasy girl, peeking into the wake of the man she had watched police take from the canal.
Eddie paid attention. There was no such thing as coincidence.
The woman stepped out of sight, only to appear a moment later across the reception room. She spoke to no one as she walked past people waiting in line, then stopped before the table with Nowlin’s picture. She studied it briefly, then glanced about the room. Eddie turned around and pretended to get more coffee. He watched her in the chrome. She stepped toward the table for an instant, spun around and paced toward the exit.
Melissa was tied up, nodding politely as two school board candidates bent her ear. Leaving her behind, Eddie exited faster than courtesy permitted, covering bumps and gentle shoves with a string of apologies.
By the time he had reached the street, the woman was already a block away. With no time to collect his overcoat, Eddie turned up the collar of his suit jacket, jammed his hands in his pants pockets and walked after her. The winter air iced his sinuses and the wind shredded his coat as he followed her deeper, into the jumble of windy streets, misshapen city blocks and triple-deckers known as the Acre.
Chapter 7
The three kids yelled Spanish over the pulse of American rap music beating from a radio so big it should have had wheels. They discussed Eddie’s loud and haltingly spoken questions and wild gesticulations that were meant to ask: Have you seen a woman with red mittens?
Somewhere in this labyrinth of streets, originally laid out by Irish immigrants to resemble the labyrinth they had left back home, the woman from the funeral home had vanished. In his search for her, Eddie had twice walked past these kids playing music and kicking a beanbag to each other without letting it touch the street. A woman with centerfold looks wouldn’t slip unnoticed past these three boys sprouting puberty’s peach fuzz above their lips. It was just a matter of slogging through the language barrier. Eddie’s command of Spanish was limited. He could count to eight. For words, he knew muchas gracias. That would be handy if the kids were able to help him.
The kids were patient. Eddie’s pantomime of pulling mittens on his hands and combing long hair eventually got the question across, or seemed to. The kids covered their mouths and laughed and howled. Yeah, they saw some woman, all right.
They pointed down the street, toward a row of triple-decker tenement buildings. The kids nodded and chattered with excitement.
“Down here?” Eddie said, pointing where they were pointing.
Yes, yes. They were quite sure of it.
“This house?”
No not that one. The next.
“That one?”
Yes, yes. They all agreed.
Eddie tapped fists with each of them, and thanked them in Spanish. They said, “you’re welcome” in English, and resumed the beanbag game.
The triple-decker was shedding its skin. Light blue paint curled off the building. A witty drug dealer had scrawled advertising on the house: “Got crack?”
The building had a covered porch supported by old wooden columns, gouged by dry rot. Three windows jutted out in a first-floor bay. They were covered by weathered plywood streaked with rust stains from the nails. Windows on the second floor were glass, though each was cracked in a spider-web pattern, a small hole in the middle, where the spider would sit.
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