“Lieutenant,” I continued, “I was only trying to help the guy. There’s not much more I can tell you about it.”
“I’ll help you remember. And if your friend shows up, you tell her to stay put too.” Then Branco went off to arrange for an interrogation room, where he’d probe and press and get personal, but all in the quest for facts, facts, facts.
Nicole, who’d been watching Branco and me, lingered behind the crowd. I asked her secretively, “Where the hell is Laurett?”
“Ladies’ room.”
I shook my head. “Not good timing.”
“Nerves, darling.”
“It looks suspect.”
Then, with a sudden lilt in her voice, Nicole asked, “Does hope spring eternal?”
“What?”
“Were you happy to see the lieutenant again?”
“Nikki, you know as well as I do the man is straight. Pathologically straight.”
“So is spaghetti until it gets wet.”
“Doll, he’d die before he’d face another man intimately.”
“Now, Stani …” There it was again, the diminutive of my full name, Stanislav. Nikki really wanted to win this round of Big-Sis-Little-Brother. “You can tell me, darling. Don’t you harbor a secret dream of exchanging vows with the lieutenant at a nice ethnic wedding, with both families showering you with money and gifts?”
“Along with a vine-covered cottage? Nicole, your imagination has no connection to reality.”
“That’s the best kind of dream, darling.”
Another officer appeared to take me to the questioning room, which turned out to be a large storage closet just off the kitchen. Once Branco and I were alone in there, amidst the steel shelving and the industrial-sized canned goods, the real fun began … fun for me anyway. Personally, one of my pleasures is enjoying absurd situations—situations like hearing your mother’s voice on the answering machine while you’re having tantric sex with the UPS man on the living-room rug; or like finding that your cat has fastidiously picked out all the fresh crab, only the crab, from a platter of appetizers you’ve laid out just as your guests arrive for cocktails; or like sharing a six-foot-square cubicle with a mega-macho cop. Whatever the absurdity, I try to make the most of it and have some fun. Alas, Branco wasn’t cooperating that night. Some examples of his imaginative interrogation: “Did you know the victim? Why were you in the kitchen? Tell me again exactly what happened. Do you know anyone who wanted to hurt or kill the victim?”
There he was, pounding away with inane questions, looking for an answer that I certainly didn’t possess. It reminded me of the annoying questions a mistrustful lover might ask when you return from the grocery shopping. Your arms are full of bundles, the food you bought for him. You stagger and stumble and juggle with them, while he sits at the kitchen table enjoying fresh coffee and Danish pastry. Then he has the nerve to ask, “What took so long?” or “How many stops did you make?” and “Was the market cruisy?” It’s curious how similar police interrogations are to lover’s trysts … and quarrels.
When Branco was content for the time being that squeezing this fairy wasn’t going to produce any more facts, he finally relented and said, “You can go now, but I want you to stay in town.”
“Yes, sir,” I said with a salute. “I guess I’ll have to cancel that vacation in Sitges. But, Lieutenant,” I said as I stood up to leave, “if you’d question Nicole next, I’ll wait for her and we can leave here together.”
Without looking up, Branco flipped his notebook open to a new blank page and said, “I’ll take things in my own order.” Then he called his assisting sergeant to take me out of the room. It was all done with fascist detachment.
As I was escorted from the interrogation chamber, two other police officers appeared, grappling Laurett Cole between them. She was struggling to pull free, and I was embarrassed for her, especially since one of the officers restraining her was a woman. I stepped up to Laurett and said quietly, “Don’t resist. Just surrender.”
“Surrender what, Vannos? I did nothing!”
“I didn’t mean it that way. But you have to be questioned like everyone else.”
“I did not give him any chocolate. He took it.”
“Don’t talk now, Laurett. Wait until they question you. You’re only making it worse.”
“Vannos, they will send me back. And my boy too. What about my boy?”
“Laurett, listen to me.” It was clear that she needed to relax, so I tried to help her breathe deeply. She resisted, but I kept on. Holding her close with my lips near her ear, I murmured a soothing mantra—not my own personal mantra, of course, but something simple and quieting. But it was hopeless. My cop escorts were tugging me away from Laurett, while the officers holding her were doing the same from her side, only more violently. Meanwhile Branco came out from the questioning room just in time to hear one of the cops say to me, “Keep to yourself, mister. There’s no secrets now.”
“I’m just trying to calm her down.”
“She’s got plenty of time. She’ll get her chance.”
Branco stepped up to the two officers holding Laurett. “You got her,” he said to the sergeant. “Good. I’ll deal with her later, after we’re finished here.”
“Lieutenant,” I said, “she’s upset.”
Branco gave me a cold, blank stare.
I went on, “She’ll say things she doesn’t mean. That’s entrapment.”
Branco ignored me and ordered the officers to take Laurett outside to a cruiser. “We’ll handle this now, Kraychik.” His voice had no feeling in it, just calculated power.
Laurett looked back toward me as the police dragged her away. “Vannos, tell my boy! Stay with him. He is waiting for me.”
I nodded to her. “I’ll take care of it, Laurett.”
Laurett’s son was a precocious four-year-old named Tobias. When Laurett worked at Snips, I saw a lot of Tobias, sometimes too much. I suppose technically I was his godfather—make that fairy godfather—if you believe in such things. Sitting out the night with Tobias wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but then, what are friends for? I wanted to tell Nicole what had happened and where I’d be, but the party crowd was locked away in the main hall, and the door was guarded. I’d have to call her later, from Laurett’s place, since my own cop escorts were shoving me roughly toward a nearby exit.
Outside, in the painfully cold February night air, the street was full of people and police cruisers. It was all flashing lights and cawing radios—the epitome of the ordered chaos the police are so good at creating. I loitered a few minutes, hoping to sneak back inside to Nicole, but the outside cops let me know that I was not welcome anywhere near the crime site. Here I’d been a good citizen and called them in and tried to cooperate with them, and what did I get for it? Booted out and sent off like a bum.
3
A SUDDEN STORK
I COULD HAVE TAKEN A CAB to Laurett’s place, but I decided to walk instead. I could feel tension building in my body, and I’ve learned that the best way for me to dissipate it is to give my long legs some motion and give my scalp some outdoor space around it. So despite my usual gripings about New England winters, which usurp about five months of the year in Boston, tonight I found the subfreezing air refreshing. My face and newly shorn head tingled from the gusts of dry, cold wind; and the crunch-crunch of my shoes over the grimy, snow-crusted sidewalks yanked me back to mental and physical alertness.
Fifteen minutes later I was at Laurett’s place in the ungentrified part of Boston’s South End—the neighborhood I call the panty line of downtown Boston, since it marks the divide between the so-called clean and dirty neighborhoods. My hike ended in front of a large, blocky brick building that was part of a low-income housing project, euphemistically dubbed “affordable.” At almost ten o’clock on a Sunday night the street was dark and deserted, lit only by the stray light from some of the apartment windows. I rang Laurett’s apartment, hoping her son’s baby-sitter would let me
in, but it didn’t work. So I rang every other apartment in the building. The notion of security long gone in that neighborhood, someone did buzz me into the building, even though I was unknown and unidentified. Good thing I was on a do-gooder’s mission.
Once inside, I climbed the four flights of stairs to Laurett’s apartment. Like me, Laurett lived on the top floor of a five-story building. Ironically, her place even had an elevator, but it never worked.
I knocked on her apartment door, and after a few minutes I heard a young girl’s voice through the door.
“Hello?” she said, sounding like a shy, bleating lamb.
I told her who I was, and that I was there to see Tobias.
The girl replied, “Missus Cole told me don’t open the door for anyone ’cept her or my daddy.”
“That’s good, but you can trust me. Tobias knows me.”
I heard soft murmurings behind the door. Then I heard a familiar boy’s voice. “Uncle Stan?”
“Tobias, open the door.”
“Why you here?”
“Your mom asked me to stay with you until she gets home. Just let me in, please.”
More quiet murmurings between the two of them, then the girl’s voice rose slightly. “No, Toby, don’t!”
The doorknob twisted, but the door didn’t open. I heard Tobias say, “It’s Uncle Stan. He can come in.”
More arguing behind the closed door, then finally I heard the dead bolt being released. The door opened a crack, held with the safety chain. Tobias’s brown face appeared.
“Uncle Stan?” he said with squinting, sleepy eyes.
“Hi, Tobias.”
The baby-sitter’s darker face appeared above his. She was barely a teenager, and she sure didn’t trust me. Her eyes were wide open and wary.
Tobias said, “It’s okay. It’s him.”
The safety chain was released. I’d earned my way in. The first thing I saw was the young girl running to the telephone. “Who are you calling?” I asked.
“My daddy.”
I felt a tugging at my pant leg. I looked down to see Tobias there. Though he’s only four years old, with his tawny complexion and blond curls and bright green eyes, I knew that he was already turning heads. As an adult, he’d probably be a knockout and a perpetual heartbreaker.
He was in a flannel nightie, and I saw that the sofa bed was open. Tobias had been asleep, and I reminded myself to be cautious about telling him too much about his mother’s situation. I didn’t want this nighttime intrusion to scar his young psyche.
“Where’s my ma?” he asked, as though reading my mind.
“She’ll be home later, Tobias.”
“Did the police take her?”
How can a four-year-old boy know so much?
I nodded. “There was some trouble. Your mom’s with the police now.” I purposely avoided telling him about the death of a strange man. “She asked me to stay with you until she comes home.”
“Okay,” he said, then climbed sleepily back onto the sofa bed and crawled under the covers. He dozed back to sleep almost instantly. Perhaps by tomorrow morning he’d remember our brief exchange as a harmless dream.
Meanwhile, the baby-sitter had put her coat on, and she still looked frightened of me. She seemed too gentle, too innocent, to be caring for a young boy in a rough neighborhood at night, but then, Laurett Cole probably had little choice in trustworthy baby-sitters.
“It’s all right,” I said to the timid youth. “You can go home soon.”
“I am,” she said, “as soon as my daddy comes.” Then, tentatively, her chin still quivering, she asked, “Is she dead?”
“Who?”
“Missus Cole.”
“No,” I said sharply. Then I realized my error. I’d purposely censored what I’d said so far, and without all the facts, the girl was assuming the worst. “No,” I said again, more gently. “Laurett’s okay. There was some trouble at the party tonight, so she had to go with the police.”
We heard a car blasting its horn loudly and insistently outside. I looked out the window and saw it double-parked near the plowed-up snowdrift down on the street. “Is that your car?” I asked the baby-sitter.
She came to the window and peered downward. “Yes,” she said, then nervously buttoned her coat and ran out of the apartment.
“Wait,” I called out. “What about your pay?”
The girl stopped halfway down the first flight of stairs and came back. “I forgot,” she said. “Missus Cole pays me when she comes home.”
“How much?”
She told me, and I paid her double. “That’s for the extra time and for staying calm and for trusting me.”
She took the money. “Thank you,” she said with a voice like snowflakes settling on soft wool.
“Thank you,” I replied.
She departed, leaving just me and a sleeping Tobias in the apartment. I’d been there a few times before, sometimes visiting Laurett, sometimes taking Tobias out for an afternoon. But tonight felt different. I uneasily sensed that Tobias and I might be spending more time together than either of us was expecting, or perhaps even wanting.
I called Nikki, just to see if she’d got home yet. Her answering service took the call—no machines for that woman. I left a message that I was at Laurett’s place, along with the number there. Then I sat back and began the vigil, waiting for Laurett to get home. Since it was too late to phone any of my friends for a little chat, I turned on the television, the electro-narcotic.
The telephone woke me with a start. I fumbled to pick it up and expected to hear Nicole, but it was Laurett. She was upset and angry. “Vannos?” she asked anxiously, using my shop name again. She never could accept that my real name was Stan. “Vannos, how is Tobias?”
“He’s fine, Laurett. Sleeping.” Like my brain.
“Vannos, I’m in trouble. They are keeping me here.”
“Why?”
“They say I tell lies.”
“Laurett, they can’t hold you without a charge.”
“Oh, they charge me too. Then they say I can call one person, so I call you. Vannos, I need a lawyer.”
“Now?”
“Sure now! That’s why I call you. I need help.”
I hedged. “Well, I’ll try, Laurett. I don’t know who’d be available now. It’s late already.”
“I’m going no place.”
As my mind became clearer and more awake, I realized there was nothing to do but help her. “I’ll make some calls, Laurett, then I’ll call you back with the news.”
“Vannos, you can’t call me. You have to come in person. They don’t give you a secretary here.”
Stupid of me. Since when do the police provide private telephones for their prisoners?
I said, “Then I guess someone will be coming by the station later.”
“Vannos, you have to do something right now. You have to take my boy away from there.”
“Why?”
“Because they might come and take him. He be safe with you at your house.”
“But Laurett—”
“You want them to put him in a home?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then promise me.”
I hesitated. What was I about to agree to? “Okay,” I said reluctantly. “I’ll take him home with me.”
“And Vannos,” she added, “Take him some clothes with you, and take my money. It’s under my kitchen sink, in the can of Drano.”
“I don’t think I’ll need money.”
“You take it, or else the police will.”
“Okay, Laurett, okay, but we’ll probably get this all straightened out tonight.” Big words, easy to say, but could I make good on them? What fresh hell was my goddam sense of duty and obligation getting me into this time?
Suddenly Laurett was speaking secretively, in a low voice. “Can you still hear me?”
“Yeah,” I answered, in a similar hushed tone.
“There be some chocolate there, too,
hiding near the telephone. Take it out.”
“Chocolate?”
“Truffles. Take it all.”
“Sure, Laurett, but—”
“Just do it. And don’t be giving any to my boy.”
“But—”
“Hurry, Vannos, before the police are getting there.”
“Okay, Laurett, I’ll do it.”
Then we hung up.
So much for the popular delusion that hair stylists see only glamor and high life.
Within seconds the phone rang again. When I picked it up, an angry voiced buzzed from the handset.
“Who the bloody hell have you been talking to?” It was Nicole, yelling at me and neglecting to use whom.
“It was Laurett. Besides, I was just about to call you again.”
“Well, I’m finally home, and I can tell you, it’s been no party.”
“Nor here, either.”
“Stanley, after you left, Lieutenant Branco became as dull-witted and clumsy as a bureaucrat.”
“Nikki, he is a bureaucrat.”
“I think he needs you to provoke him. You seem to bring out the best in him.”
I ignored her taunt. “Doll, listen. Laurett’s in trouble. They’re holding her on bail, and she needs a lawyer. Can Charles help her out?”
I heard Nicole lighting a cigarette and I envied her. She always seemed to find the perfect moment for a smoke, then light one up and actually enjoy it. “Darling,” she said, and I could almost see the smoke streaming from her lips, “Chaz does corporate law, not those criminal cases.”
“I’m not sure there’s much difference.”
Silence. Another exhalation.
“He does owe me a big favor,” she said.
Love You to Death Page 4