Violation

by Sally Spencer

  Kaleta, Master of Disguise, has been through another metamorphosis. Today I’m wearing a suit which is aggressive, and just this side of flashy. I’m carrying a mock-leather briefcase, and on my wrist is a bright red and black watch which can tell the time to a water depth of 200ft. The mid-western bank clerk who drove up to Boston has gone forever, to be replaced by SuperSalesman.

  Have policy – will travel.

  If I really was an insurance salesman, I would sell myself a policy, because when Marty finds out how much I’ve spent on his Amex Card, I’m going to need one. Yeah, and the watch will come in useful, also – it’ll be real nice to know what time it is when I’m lying at the bottom of the East River.

  “Shall we go?” Carrie says.

  She looks different, too. She has dropped her schoolteacher image and, with a change of costume and hairstyle, she’s now a bright young thing from one of the marketing research organizations.

  I check my new watch to see if it works out of the water, too, and calculate that we have been fugitives from justice for around forty hours. In that time we have escaped from Ringman, sponged off Marty and made love.

  We have also found out a few simple facts about Maxwell Tait. According to the Registry of Vital Statistics, he wasn’t born in Massachusetts, and if he is married, the ceremony was performed out-of-state. From the Registry of Motor Vehicles on Nassau Street, we learned that he has held a Massachusetts’ drivers’ license for seven years. And for the moment, that is about all we have. Not a hell of a lot with which to convince Thurston Craddock that Tait is a crook.

  “You take the left side, I’ll take the right,” I tell Carrie.

  We are very exposed on this open street, but I’m not worried. No one is likely to report strangers like us to the police – salesmen and professional busybodies are as much a part of the suburban blight as school run rotas and bridge clubs.

  I stroll up my first driveway, and knock on the door. The woman who opens it is maybe 35, maybe 37. Her skin has the tightness of a disciple of aerobics, her eyes the dullness of a woman trapped in a hardwood and stainless steel prison, with only the gin bottle to talk to.

  “I represent the Pacific and Northwestern Insurance Company,” I say, giving her my most winning smile.

  She smiles back, but hers is tinged with regret.

  “‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you,’ she says. ‘We’re insured right up to the hilt. My husband is a very cautious man.”

  The words are slightly slurred, and she makes ‘cautious’ sound like an insult.

  “However careful you might have been, there are always some areas that are left unprotected,” I say.

  She laughs bitterly. “You don’t know Wilbur.”

  She’s about to close the door.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll come clean. Even if I can’t sell you any insurance, I sure as hell would appreciate a cup of coffee and a sit down.”

  She hesitates – but only for a second.

  “Then you sure as hell better come in,” she says.

  *

  We don’t have coffee. Instead, she makes us each a martini with which you could strip paint. We sit opposite each other, elbows resting on the polished pine kitchen table, and she tells me about herself.

  Her name is Lucy. She’s a Fine Arts graduate and if she hadn’t married that wimp Wilbur, she could have really made an impact on Greenwich Village, you know?

  I nod, and say I’m sure she could have.

  For the next fifteen minutes, I listen to her dish the dirt on her husband (who, as her glass gets emptier, progresses from wimp to fully-fledged cocksucker), her ungrateful kids, and her petty-minded neighbors.

  “What about the people who live opposite?” I ask innocently.

  The effect is instantaneous.

  “People!” Lucy says scornfully. “Maxwell Tait isn’t people.”

  “What does he do for a living?” I ask, prompting her.

  But she obviously on one of her pet subjects, and needs no encouragement from me to go into further detail.

  “Lemme tell you about Max Tait,’ she says. ‘Seven years he’s been living in tha’ house. Seven years! An’ you know what I know about him?” She tries to snap her fingers and fails. “I know abshol … absolutely nothing.”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “Oh, he looks all right. Big handsome man,” she smiles at me with a grotesque coyness, “though he’s not as big and handsome as you …”

  She’s losing her thread.

  “He looks all right,” I say.

  “He looks all right, but he’s nothing but a fairy.”

  “A fairy?”

  “Came over here for a party once.” She holds up one shaking finger. “Once! Isn’t interested in women.”

  And what she means by that, I decide, is that she made a pass at him – and was turned down.

  “Maybe you’re just not his type,” I say, figuring she is now too drunk to distinguish between what she says and what she means.

  “Not jus’ me. Any woman. And I’ll tell you somethin’ else. Suppose to have been to Harvard Law School. Wilbur – the cocksucker – Wilbur’s ’bout the same age. He was at Harva’ Law School. Din’ know no Maxwell Tait.”

  She continues to ramble on about her life in the suburbs, but after five minutes, when it is clear that she can tell me no more about Maxwell Tait, I rise to my feet.

  “It’s been nice talking to you, Lucy,” I say, “but now I really have got to get back to work.”

  She examines me through bleary eyes.

  “Kids are out at baseball practice, an’ my husband won’t be home till seven.” She looks down at the table, and in a voice which is no more than a whisper now, she says: “Wanna come upstairs?”

  “I can’t,” I say.

  She raises her head again, and there are tears in her eyes.

  “It’s because I’m ugly, isn’t it?” she says. “It’s because I’m growing old, and I’m drunk and I’m ugly.”

  I picture in my mind how she must have looked when she married Wilbur – young, fresh, full of expectation. I can see it all so vividly that when I speak again, I am not really lying.

  “You’re not ugly,” I say. “You’re beautiful. It’s just that I’m involved with someone else.”

  I half expect her to try and stop me leaving, but she doesn’t, and as I head for the front door, I can hear her softly sobbing.

  28

  The guidebooks will tell you that while Quincy Market is a marvel of urban renewal, it is also overrated and overpriced. They are probably right, but when you’re in hiding, the very best place to be is somewhere you can be swamped by a flood of tourists.

  Carrie and I sit on a bench in the center of the market, eating kebabs and pitta bread out of a paper sack.

  “What else have you got?” she asks.

  She is talking about my afternoon’s discoveries, not the contents of my sack. On the way back to central Boston, I have described my visit with the drunken Lucy, and now I tell her about my other calls – two outright refusals to let me through the door, another sexual proposition (though not quite as blatant as Lucy’s), three cups of coffee, a second martini and one woman who was actually interested in buying insurance. And while some of the people I spoke to were able to confirm – more or less – what Lucy had said, none of them were able to add anything else.

  “You got more than I did,” Carrie says gloomily. “I completely missed the part about his not having attended Harvard Law School.”

  She is licking the last of the kebab juice off her fingers, and frowning.

  “Is something wrong?” I ask.

  “Not with me,’ Carrie says. ‘But there is something with Tait living where he does.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re agreed that Tait is a rich man. Right?”

  “Right! You don’t get to have a large office complex in the Prudential Center without being loaded. And the Craddock Industries account alon
e should be enough to keep him in Ferraris.”

  “Where would you live, Mike? If you were Tait, I mean.”

  I think for a second.

  “I’d have an estate in Hyannisport, and a house on Beacon Hill.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I could afford to.’

  ‘Is that the only reason?’

  ‘And because that’s where most of my clients would live – and where they would expect anyone who they did business with to live.”

  “What you’re saying is, it’s a question of image. You need to look wealthy to deal with the wealthy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Tait really cares about his image, doesn’t he?”

  “About as much as any man I’ve ever met.”

  “But in spite of all that, he lives in suburbia, which isn’t really rich at all – merely prosperous.”

  “If you can call what he does living,” I say. “He hardly socializes at all, isn’t married, and doesn’t seem to have any girlfriends – or even boyfriends, assuming Lucy’s right and he’s gay. He doesn’t even—”

  “It’s like he doesn’t have a private life at all,” Carrie interrupts. “It’s like he’s a suit and tie in the daytime, and at night he just hangs himself in the closet until he’s needed again. Maybe that’s why he lives in suburbia – because it’s easier to be anonymous there.”

  “But why should he want to be anonymous at all?”

  Carrie smiles.

  “I’m only the sergeant here,” she says. “You’re the hot-shot lieutenant. You go figure it out.”

  I screw up my paper sack and throw it at the trash bin. It’s a direct hit – which makes it my most significant success of the day.

  “I’m going to call Marty,” I say. “Maybe he’ll have come up with something we can work on.”

  I head for the nearest phone booth. A spotty kid in an MIT sweatshirt just beats me to it, and I am forced to stand around while he tells someone on the other end of the line that: “You know, like that’s the way things are going down.”

  When he finally surrenders the phone to me, I feed it with enough coins to wipe out the Brazilian National Debt, and am connected with Marty.

  “We still hot?” I ask him.

  “You bet your sweet ass that you’re still hot. And the temperature’s rising every minute.”

  So what did I expect – that if we weren’t arrested in the first twenty-four hours, everybody would forget about us?

  No, I’m not that stupid – or that hopeful!

  So why does what Marty tells me still come as a blow?

  “Do you want to know what I’ve turned up on our friend Lawyer Tait?” my ex-partner asks me.

  “Yeah.”

  “I went through all the police records and he’s clean as a whistle. The man’s never even had a parking ticket.”

  A wave of disappointment sweeps over me. If there had been just one bribery case – even just a hint of corruption – I would have had something to show to Craddock.

  “Thanks, anyway,” I say.

  I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn round – heart galloping – expecting to see half the Boston Police Force with their pistols pointing at my head.

  A rough-looking hard-hat, his breath reeking of cheap whiskey, is standing just behind me.

  “You gonna be long with that phone, buddy?” he asks, like he is just looking for an excuse to deck me.

  I have started to reach for my shield when I realize I don’t have the right to use it any more.

  “I’m talking to my mom,” I say. “I won’t be a minute.”

  The hard-hat takes a step back.

  “Just so long as you ain’t,” he says threateningly.

  “Are you still there?” Marty asks me, from the other end of the phone line.

  “Yeah, I’m still here.”

  “So after I came up with a blank from police records, I tried some other sources. I got in touch with one of the national credit bureaus, and asked if they’d help me out.”

  “And they agreed? Just like that?”

  Marty chuckles. “I can be very persuasive when I want to be. Anyhow, it turns out this dude Tait is A-One-Fucking-Great as a credit risk. Expensive property, profitable business, never ran up a bad debt in his life.” He pauses. “Leastways, not as far back as the records go back.”

  “And how far is that?” I ask – but I think I already know the answer.

  “Seven years,” Marty tells me.

  Seven years – the magic figure.

  It is seven years since Tait became senior partner in his law firm, seven years since he bought his house in the suburbs, seven years since he first applied for a Massachusetts driver’s license.

  “Have I lost you again?” Marty asks.

  “No. Sorry. I was thinking.”

  “It got me thinking, too. When did you first start getting things on credit?”

  “I took out a car loan when I was at Yale.”

  “About the same age I did. Now if this guy was twenty-two, twenty-three, it would make sense. But he’s way past that, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “He’s in his late thirties.”

  “It’s almost like the sucker didn’t exist at all before ‘87,” Marty ponders. “It’s like he landed here from a UFO or something.”

  Or something.

  Another tap on my shoulder.

  The hard-hat again.

  “Your minute’s up,” he growls. “Tell Momma goodbye.”

  I’m about ready to give this guy more trouble than he’s ever wanted. And then I see a cop, hanging around by the kebab stall. I can’t risk being arrested. I can’t even risk being taken downtown to make a statement.

  “Well, shithead?” the hard-hat demands.

  “Somebody else is waiting to use the phone,” I tell Marty. “I’ll get back to you.”

  And then I hang up.

  *

  Carrie and I drive back to the Days Inn, where we are registered as Mr and Mrs Johnson again. We have plans for tomorrow – plans which depend on the uncalculated and incalculable reactions of other people, and so are dangerously unpredictable beyond the early stages; plans which could mean that by nightfall we will be sitting in a Harrisburg police cell, waiting to hear the footsteps of our unofficial executioners.

  We have plans for tomorrow – but there is nothing more we can do tonight.

  We minimize our risk by staying in the motel room and watching television, but my mind is not even half on the succession of comedies and re-run movies. I am thinking of Bobbie Hopgood, who I have failed. Of Thurston Craddock, whose money gives him the right to alter other people’s destinies. Of Mayor Pine and Chief Ringman, who will kill to get what they want. And of Maxwell Tait, the smooth Boston lawyer who – until seven years ago – did not seem to exist.

  I glance across at Carrie, and though her eyes are on the screen, I can tell that her mind is wandering too. I remember what she said to me, only two days ago, in her apartment in Lewis Square.

  ‘Do you think it would screw up our working relationship if we went to bed together?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I’d said.

  Yeah, well it surely has – but not in any way she would have imagined. The fact is that when I look at Carrie now, I am filled with fear. We are in a shitty situation, and I’m prepared to take my chances of not coming out of it in one piece – but I am terrified that something bad will happen to her.

  I can’t tell her that, because she is a fellow cop – her own woman – and she has made it quite clear to me that she wants protection from no one. So I say nothing. Instead, I reach across and squeeze her hand. It makes me feel a little better.

  29

  I choose the diner because it has a large plate-glass window, and from where I am sitting I can see way down the street. I have been at my table for twenty minutes when I spot Carrie. At first she walks very slowly, then she speeds up, and finally she comes to a sudden halt – like she’s seen something in
a store window that she just has to have. By the time she starts moving again, I’m as sure as I can be that she is not being tailed – and I can start breathing again.

  When she draws level with the diner window, I wave, which is our all-clear signal. She opens the door, steps inside, and makes her way towards my table.

  Today she is wearing a cheap black and white check skirt with a jacket to match. The outfit is meant to say ‘country girl’ – a hick of limited means who is trying to look smart, and is falling well short.

  This was all part of the plan, because we didn’t want her to impress. In fact, the last thing we needed was for her to be ushered into the office of one of senior partners at Tait, Walsh and Fineberg.

  “What an office!” she says, as she sits down. “You’ve never seen so much chrome and leather in your life. And I’ll swear the carpet was about ready for harvesting.”

  “You were a little out of place?” I suggest.

  “I was way out of place. They looked at me like they thought I was a john cleaner who’d taken the wrong turning. Jesus, Mike, even the receptionist was dressed for a luncheon appointment on somebody’s yacht.”

  “They tried to get rid of you?”

  “The receptionist and security guard were just moving in to give me the bum’s rush when I pulled the money out of my purse and started waving it around.”

  “They wouldn’t have liked that.”

  “They couldn’t have been more shocked if I’d told them to go fuck themselves. The place positively reeks of money, but it’s obviously bad taste to flash naked cash. The receptionist picked up the phone and fixed me an appointment right away – anything to get me out of the public area.”

  “You saw an associate?”

  “Yes. A guy called Colston. I told him all about my cousin trying to steal the family store from under us, and he told me I didn’t have a case. But I’m sure he wasn’t really listening at all. Most of the time, he looked bored, and when he wasn’t, he was looking hostile.”