The Barker Street Regulars

by Susan Conant

  Instead of bringing the chase to an end, Kevin’s bellow of authority acted like a bullet that missed its mark. With sudden energy, the man veered around and launched the only weapons he had. Raising his right arm, he swung one plastic shopping bag backward and sent it flying over the fallen woman and a companion who knelt next to her. Kevin caught the bag before it hit his face, but as he did so, the man flung the second bag at him, turned, and raced away.

  Kevin and I again took up the chase. This time, we didn’t stand a chance. Working our way around the crowd, we had to squeeze between a parked car and a bicycle chained to a meter. By the time we did, our quarry was whipping around the corner of a distant side street. When I reached it, Kevin was dimly visible far ahead of me, and the man was nowhere in sight. Sucking in air, wrapping my arms around my aching ribs, I finally gave up. Along both sides of the street were typical Cambridge three-deckers, with here and there a brick apartment building or a big single-family house. Our prey could have vanished into any of the yards or down any of the driveways. He could have been hiding between or even under any of dozens of parked cars.

  I waited for Kevin, who’d been ahead of me and might have seen where the man had gone. After ten minutes, Kevin still hadn’t shown up, and I began to retrace my steps to the sidewalk in front of the tiny bistro. When the cat murderer had flung the white plastic bags, I’d noticed that he was wearing gloves. Even so, fingerprints might be all over the contents of the shopping bags. It now seemed to me that I should have left pursuit to Kevin and made myself useful, as even Hugh and Robert would have done, by protecting the evidence. And, indeed, I returned to the spot to find that well-meaning members of the group waiting for tables at the bistro had gathered the spilled contents of the two white bags. The crowd was animated. The woman who’d been knocked to the sidewalk hadn’t been seriously hurt, someone told me. In fact, having waited for a table, she was now inside seated at one. Had I eaten here? someone asked. The food was wonderful, well worth the wait. Of course, you didn’t always get entertainment like tonight’s.

  “Entertainment?” I asked.

  Everyone laughed.

  The cause of merriment, I learned, was the contents of the white plastic bags. On close inspection, the bags turned out to be imprinted with the interlocking red circles that were the logo of a chain of discount drugstores. Now repacked with the man’s purchases, the bags were propped up against the front of the bistro. When I was first told what they contained, I didn’t believe it. I’d assumed that the man had been toting the usual variety of odds and ends that people buy when they run ordinary errands: milk, coffee, toothpaste, a can of tomato sauce, microwave dinners. Those who’d picked up after the man, however, wondered aloud whether he was the sort of kleptomaniac who makes the newspapers by succumbing to a bizarre compulsion to shoplift large numbers of items that could serve only to meet some deranged and evidently symbolic need—the pitiful man caught filching a hundred pairs of ladies’ underpants, the wealthy woman who wears her diamonds and pearls while stealing cheap costume jewelry from cut-rate establishments where she’d never stoop to shop.

  But the white plastic bags did not contain lingerie or costume jewelry. And the man hadn’t stolen anything. In one of the bags was his receipt for the bags’ contents—two dozen packages of women’s hair coloring. All in the same shade: jet-black.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  GIRL SCOUT COOKIES? I was far too old. Vacuum cleaners? Because of the dog hair, I burn them out all the time. There were two broken ones in the cellar, but neither those nor the one that was still working would pass as a demonstration model. Besides, did anyone still sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door? Magazine subscriptions? I could legitimately present myself as a representative of Dog’s Life, and we’re always eager for new subscribers, of course, but for once, I preferred to avoid the subject of dogs. So much for collecting donations to Alaskan Malamute Rescue. But what about another charity? Or better yet, Cambridge being Cambridge, a political organization? I owned a clipboard, and could easily fake a petition of some sort and forge the signatures of imaginary people ardently in favor of such-and-such or adamantly opposed to this-and-that. But no matter how Cantabrigian the cause I selected, around here, I’d be doomed to encounter a devil’s advocate or possibly a Cambridge misfit who’d keep me stuck for hours listening to the case for global nuclear armament or the imminent destruction of the rain forests. But solicitors for charities and lobby groups needed licenses. I didn’t have one. And solicitors always handed out literature.

  The availability of props thus determined my role. I already owned a Bible. My possession of the collection of leaflets and tracts was mainly the dogs’ fault. I’d opened the door without knowing who’d rung the bell. To prevent the dogs from getting out, I didn’t open the door all the way, but held it a little ajar. Standing there was a sweet-faced, dowdy woman accompanied by a guy in his twenties with hair so oily and skin so red and clean that he looked as if he’d been submerged in hot fat, like a fried clam, but not for long enough to turn brown. As I was about to say politely that I wasn’t interested and then swiftly shut the door on my callers, Rowdy and Kimi poked their noses out, thus making it entirely unnecessary for my callers to get a foot in the door; I couldn’t shut out the Jehovah’s Witnesses without simultaneously squashing the dogs’ muzzles. The woman caressed the Bible she carried and, instead of telling the blunt truth (“I’m a Jehovah’s Witness here to plague you”), said brightly, “We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, and we’re sharing some Good News from the Bible.”

  The woman and her underfried clam wasted forty-five minutes of their time and mine sitting in my living room trying to convert me, of all people, to a sect that would’ve required me to do an awful lot of walking without being able to take a dog. I’m serious. I asked whether dogs could go along. Why I bothered, I don’t know. I mean, have you ever opened the door to find a Jehovah’s Witness standing there with a dog? It’s obviously a good idea. With gorgeous dogs along, these poor people would have a lot fewer doors slammed in their faces than they do now. Greenpeace should also consider the possibility. As to vacuum-cleaner salespeople? Yes, imagine! With long-coated dogs trained to shake hair all over the houses of likely prospects, who’d then have no choice but to agree to have the mess cleaned up? Indeed, a foot in the door no more. From now on, it’s a paw. A nose. Or an awful lot of fur.

  Anyway, I retrieved the sheaf of religious tracts that I’d put with the newspapers and other recyclables. Then I worked on my disguise. After taking a hot shower, I put nothing on my face except moisturizer, and with the aid of a blow dryer, I did my best to convince my hair to curl conservatively under. As a costume, I selected a white blouse, a gray wool skirt, black flats, and my navy blue wool coat. The finishing touch was a white rayon scarf fashioned into a wide headband that held my hair back from my face the way mothers always like. The only missing element was a second Jehovah’s Witness. It seemed to me that like the legs of panty hose, they always traveled in pairs. A man and a woman? I couldn’t remember for certain. It didn’t matter. The only person I could think of who’d join me in the charade was my cousin Leah, whose red-gold curls would create an undesirably pagan appearance and who, in any case, had classes to attend. Men? Steve and Kevin would’ve been equally opposed to the project. I toyed with the idea of enlisting Hugh or Robert, who’d have enjoyed emulating the Master by traipsing around in disguise, but I was afraid that either of the Holmesians would overcomplicate what I meant as a simple piece of research. Besides, I didn’t really need an accomplice.

  Dressed in my costume, armed with my Bible and tracts, I paused briefly in the hallway to brush dog hair off my coat. Then I got into the car, cut down Walden Street, turned onto Mass. Ave., passed the bistro where the cat-drowner had abandoned his many packages of hair dye, covered a few more blocks, and parked at a meter. Making my way on foot toward the street where Irene Wheeler had her apartment, I naturally hoped that I wouldn’t run into her. If I did?
Well, maybe for all she knew, I was a religious fanatic, as in a sense, of course, I am. The thought proved useful. Ascending the wooden steps of the house opposite Irene Wheeler’s, I allowed the sincerity of my devotion to dogs to flood my face with an expression of fervor and holiness.

  From the outside, the building looked like a mirror image of Irene Wheeler’s, except that hers had fresh paint, new windows, and other signs of renovation. The outside door to this one was battered. More to the point, it was unlocked. The entryway was dirt brown and stank of cats. In the light of what must have been a twenty-watt bulb, I examined three ancient mailboxes set in the wall by three paint-encrusted doorbells. Lying on the cracked linoleum was a ton of junk mail: ads for supermarkets and discount hardware stores, and sad blue-and-white postcards with blurry photographs of children who asked, “Have you seen me?” The mail on the floor was addressed to “Resident.” The first-floor mailbox bore a strip of masking tape on which someone had printed “Schultz.” The other two mailboxes were unlabeled.

  I decided to practice my performance. My goal was the third-floor apartment, the one with the window where I’d seen the binoculars. I chose Schultz as the audience for my dress rehearsal. On a door opposite the mailboxes and bells was a pink plastic numeral 1. After adjusting my holy smile, I rapped on the door. Inside, feet shuffled. Then the door eased open an inch. A wizened yellow face peered at me through the crack. I’d intended to address whoever answered as Mr., Mrs., or possibly Ms. Schultz, but found myself unable to guess whether the creature was male or female.

  “Good morning!” I announced sweetly. Prominently displaying my Bible and my tracts, I said, “I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, and I’m sharing some Good News from the Bible.”

  Success! The door slammed in my face. Confident now that I had, indeed, played my role to perfection, I climbed to the second floor. Rapping on the door, I felt eager to repeat my performance. To my disappointment, no one came to the door. After once again knocking and waiting, I made my way up the stairs to the third floor. The effort of ascending one short flight of steps wasn’t nearly enough to make my heart pound. Rather, the extra beats were from second thoughts. Jehovah’s Witnesses, I decided, did well to go in pairs. In lieu of an animate companion—preferably canine, but I’d have settled for a mere person—maybe I should have protected myself with something other than a disguise that left my face readily recognizable. There was a Sherlock Holmes story called “The Veiled Lodger.” For a second, I couldn’t remember anything about it except the title. Who was the lodger? Oh, yes. A woman who’d been mauled by a lion. Too bad that Jehovah’s Witnesses weren’t required to cover their faces. But whatever awaited me in the third-floor apartment couldn’t be worse than a hungry lion. Could it? A living dog is better than a dead lion, I thought. Two living dogs would’ve been twice as good. The villain who’d tried to drown Tracker was obviously no animal lover. Maybe he was terrified of big dogs. Maybe my impersonation was a terrible mistake. Last night, after hurling the white bags of hair coloring, the man had vanished down a side street only a few blocks from this shabby building. Was it possible that …?

  Slowly inhaling and exhaling, I rapped on the door. This time, it took courage to paste on the smile of joy. Clutching the Bible, I felt tempted to raise it directly in front of my face.

  I heard brisk footsteps. Maybe because the yellow-faced creature on the first floor had opened the door, I somehow expected this door, too, to open, if only an inch or two. It did not. Cambridge is, after all, a city, and few city dwellers simply open their doors to strangers.

  Through the closed door, a male voice inquired, “Who is it?”

  Once again mimicking the dowdy woman, I repeated the line about sharing Good News. In my own ears, I sounded nervous. I felt like an actress who has lucked into a small part only to botch her one line.

  The door opened nonetheless. It opened wide. Before me, binoculars dangling from a strap around his neck, stood Robert, looking, as usual, as if he ought to be wearing a kilt. At his heels was Hugh. I felt like a total flop. If I recalled correctly, on not a single occasion had Watson ever come close to penetrating any of the Master’s disguises. Robert and Hugh, of course, recognized me instantly.

  “Good News,” repeated Robert, cocking his distinguished head.

  “A religious term,” Hugh informed him, “referring to—”

  “I am familiar with the expression,” Robert replied impatiently.

  I yanked off the headband and wiped the sappy look off my face. “I never was more glad to see anyone in my life,” I quoted.

  Robert responded with the quickness of a well-trained dog. “Or more astonished, eh?”

  “Well, I must confess so,” I said.

  “Confess to it.” Having set me straight, Robert added, “The surprise was not all on one side, I assure you.”

  Except for my misquote, the dialogue was straight from The Hound of the Baskervilles. I was disguised as a religious fanatic, right? It made sense to quote the Bible. My tactic worked. Hugh and Robert invited me in.

  Perhaps I should make it clear that the grubby apartment opposite Irene Wheeler’s was the abode of neither Hugh nor Robert. Rather, they’d rented it, as Robert explained to me, as an aerie in which to perch while casting eagle eyes on everything that went on across the street. The place was such an ugly, depressing mess that my first response was relief that no one had to live there. From the walls cascaded strips of hideous flower-patterned beige wallpaper inadequately coated with a primer of white paint that had also been applied to the woodwork. Paint chips leaped from the window frames, doors, and baseboards. Bare lightbulbs hung from the stained ceilings of some rooms. Other ceilings sprouted spidery masses of electrical wire. Scattered on the dirty, worn wood floors were coat hangers, crumpled bits of paper, and other debris that neither the last tenant nor the landlord had bothered to sweep up. I didn’t see the kitchen or the bathroom. And didn’t want to.

  In tidy contrast to the rest of the place was the observation post that Hugh, I suspected, had set up in the living room near the front windows, which formed a little bow that overlooked the street. I could now see that what I’d mistaken for curtains were, in fact, brand-new white sheets, their creases visible, nailed across those front windows. Right by the shrouded windows, mounted on tripods, stood a powerful-looking spotting scope and a camera. Nearby were two aluminum folding chairs and a narrow folding cot on which lay a rolled-up sleeping bag. Between the chairs, a big cooler served as a makeshift table that supported two stainless-steel thermos bottles. Hugh’s laptop computer rested on the floor by one of the chairs. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have assumed that Hugh and Robert were avid birders who’d camped in this improbable location in the hope of adding some exotic species to their life lists.

  “You’ve made yourselves very comfortable here,” I remarked. “Just like the Man on the Tor.”

  That, too, is from The Hound. The mysterious Man on the Tor turns out to be Holmes, who has camped out in an abandoned hut on the moor. Naturally, Watson doesn’t connect the mystery man with the Master until Holmes reveals himself: “It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson,” said a well-known voice. “I really think that you will be more comfortable outside than in.” The inside of the hut, however, is pretty comfortable. Holmes has blankets, cooking utensils, food, and water. For the sake of fidelity to the Canon, I should add that he also has a half-full bottle of spirits and a pannikin, but since I have no idea what a pannikin is, maybe I’d better skip that part. Anyway, in that part of the story, Holmes is all excited, and so were Robert and Hugh, who described themselves as hot on the trail.

  “Could we back up a little?” I asked. “I don’t understand why you decided to, uh, observe here to begin with.”

  With the air of one who quotes, Robert pompously announced, “These strange details, far from making the case more difficult, have really had the effect of making it less so.”

  Hugh came to my rescue. “In this case, the jarr
ing feature is the presence of the psychic.”

  “So,” I said, gesturing toward the curtained windows, “what have you observed?” I paused. “Besides me.”

  “We confess ourselves,” replied Robert, “at something of a loss as to how to account for your presence there.”

  “Let’s say that my mission was more or less the same as yours,” I said. “Among other things, it seems clear to me that Ceci Love is the victim of a con game, and that the con artist”—I pointed toward Irene Wheeler’s house—“is preying on Ceci’s grief about her dog. That bothers me a lot. In itself, that’s an evil thing to do. I’ve also wondered whether Jonathan Hubbell had the same idea and whether that’s why he was murdered. It’s also a little more complicated. There’s a friend of mine who’s also being victimized, in a minor way.”

  Hugh and Robert exchanged glances.

  “And would your friend,” asked Robert, “be a tall man?”

  “A lot of men are tall,” I said to Robert. “You, for example.” Steve, of course, is tall, lean, and muscular.

  Hugh took his turn. “Thin?”

  “Lean.”

  “Hair color,” said Robert. “Brown.”

  “Yes.”

  Hugh and Robert held another silent conference.

  “The owner,” Hugh said, “of a large dog.”

  Steve’s pointer, Lady, is medium size, but India—no slight intended, far from it—is a good-sized bitch. “Yes,” I said.

  The privilege of making the final, magical Holmesian pronouncement fell to Robert. “Your friend drives a black panel truck,” he proclaimed, as if pulling a rabbit from a hat. “His most prominent facial feature is an exceptionally bulbous forehead.”