by Linda Barnes
Hooray for Hollywood, I thought. Why should it be different?
“You said Valerie handed in her assignments late,” I said.
“Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yes, she did.”
“All of them?”
“I don’t give much written work. That’s why the counselors sic the losers on me. But they all have to keep a diary, a kind of interior monologue, throughout the class, and I give specific assignments from time to time. The kids never know when the diary’s going to be collected. Otherwise, they’d wait until the day before it’s due and write a whole semester’s worth of bilge in one night. I hate it when it takes longer for me to read the tripe than it took them to write it.” Charming smile number three.
“An interior monologue?” I said.
“Their thoughts about the school experience, about themselves, about each other, about me. I try to make them bring their own experiences to acting, so they have to be aware of their emotions. And by the time I get them, by the time they’re teenagers, they’re already so caught up in not showing their feelings. For the boys in particular, even acknowledging emotion is hard.”
His hands flew as he spoke, very expressive hands, fingers fully extended. His eyes, open very wide, never left my own. I felt like I was watching a performance given especially for me.
“Do you have the diaries for Valerie’s class?” I asked.
He thought it over. “I collected them a few weeks ago.”
“Valerie’s?”
“Hers was late.”
“Could I have a look at it?”
Smile number four, apologetic, but sincere. “I’m sorry, but one of the few things I make a point of is absolute privacy. Otherwise I’d never get them to explore their minds, would I? They know the diary’s a safe place to bring their thoughts.”
“It might give me an idea of where she’s gone.”
“Sorry. I just can’t do it.” His eyes went to a drawer in his desk. I remembered the notebook with the rotten handwriting. Dammit, Valerie’s might have been the next one in the pile. “Look,” he said, “If there’s anything in Valerie’s diary about running away, about a special place, anything like that, I’ll call you. I have your number.”
“When?” I asked.
“You really think this might help?”
“Yes,” I said.
“As soon as I can. I’ve got a lot of stuff on right now, but maybe I can find time tonight. No guarantee.”
“The girl’s been missing a week,” I said.
“And you’re looking for her,” he said. “How on earth did you get to be a private investigator?”
“I was a cop,” I said in a tone that usually kills conversation about what I want to be when I grow up.
“Oh.”
“You mentioned the guidance department. Who was Valerie’s guidance counselor?”
“She didn’t have one.” Reardon leaned back complacently. “She never went. Very intelligent decision on her part.”
“You don’t think she needed guidance?”
“Not the kind they give. They’re not therapists, they’re high school guidance counselors. They’ve got slots and they stick kids in them. All they care about is where you go to college. They guide you to a college, period. They don’t want to talk. They don’t listen.”
“But you do.”
“Valerie never confided in me, not in words.”
“Without words, then,” I said. “What did you see in Valerie?”
He paused, seemed to give the question some thought. “I don’t know. A kind of desperation, maybe. Who knows if I saw what was there? Or what she meant me to see.”
I wondered if this guy ever saw anything beyond himself reflected in other people’s eyes.
“About tonight,” he said, smiling, flirting. “Those diaries. I’ll really try to get back to you. Is the number on your card home or office?”
“Both,” I said.
There was a knock on the door and a soft voice said, “Geoff, you in there?”
Reardon checked his wristwatch. “I’m late,” he said, standing and waiting for me to precede him out of the office. He made quite a production out of locking his door, patting the key in his pants pocket.
The girl in the hallway was more than pretty, with silky blonde hair and a glossy pink leotard. She took his arm to lead him to the stage. Very touchy-feely, this drama coach. Damn friendly, these kids and their teachers.
I watched them disappear down the hall and wondered if the initials “GR” on the back of Valerie’s photo stood for Geoffrey Reardon.
I took a few steps and my knee almost buckled. I wondered if the extravagance of the Emerson ran to hot tubs for the gym.
CHAPTER 15
I made it home by four-thirty. The plumbers had not installed a tub. Undeterred by the gaping hole that yawned in its place, they had already knocked off for the day—and Roz was nowhere to be found. The red light on my answering machine flashed, so I sank into a chair, pressed the button, and listened to Mooney’s deep voice rattle off a phone number and ask me to return his call. The number wasn’t his home phone.
I got a can of Pepsi out of the refrigerator, gulped enough to make my nose tickle, and dialed.
“Mooney? Yeah, hang on a minute,” the male voice said. There had been background noises on the tape; these were more distinct: the clink of glasses, the enthusiastic patter of a TV sports commentator.
“Carlotta?” Mooney said after a long wait.
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“Meet me for a drink,” he said.
“Come on.” A bar. Of course. The guy answering the phone hadn’t given the joint’s name but a lot of bars didn’t. That way customers could give out the phone number to suspicious wives and business partners.
“Come on,” Mooney insisted, and I agreed. I thought if he’d taken to spending his afternoons in bars, I ought to see how he was doing.
Al’s, an Irish pub in Brighton, wasn’t far away. I gave my hair a quick brush, rubbed my aching knee, and left.
Inside, Al’s was dark wood and cool, but that was about all you could say on the positive side. The red leather bar stools were cracked, the long wooden bar warped, the linoleum patchy and yellowed with age. Al’s solution to his wear-and-tear problems seemed to begin and end with dimming the lights. You could barely see, what with the haze of cigarette smoke.
Mooney was on the far left of the bar with three empty seats between himself and the next customer. The place wasn’t crowded. The few patrons stared up at the big-screen TV, mesmerized by college basketball. Mooney’s shoulders were hunched. He wore jeans and a navy sweater.
I didn’t think there was another woman in the place. It was so dark, I couldn’t really tell.
I tapped Mooney on the shoulder and we adjourned to a table. He already had a Molson’s, and I ordered one of the same.
“You getting anywhere? You find the broad?” He asked as soon as the bartender was out of earshot.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“Sorry,” he said. “Broad. I’m not supposed to say that, right?”
I gave him an update on my progress, bare bones, definitely not the way he’d taught me to report. I’m not sure why I didn’t fill him in on all the details, but maybe it was that I didn’t want him out chasing Janine. He’d missed a patch shaving, and I wasn’t sure how many beers he’d downed. So I gave him the short form.
If he hadn’t been drinking, he’d probably have noticed its sketchiness.
“Carlotta,” he said, tracing a wet circle on the wooden table. “Look, maybe you should just forget about it.”
“If it’s the money—” I began.
“It’s the damn review board. Who says they’ll take her word? A hooker’s testimony isn’t worth shit. Maybe they’ll think I threatened her, bribed her? I mean, even with a witness, unless the damn knife turns up—”
“We’ll take it one step at a time, Mooney, right?”
“Sure,” he said after a
long pull at his beer bottle. He had a glass, but he seemed to have forgotten about it.
“I mean, maybe the woman knows where the knife is,” I said.
“Maybe you ought to forget about it.”
“Nah,” I said. “I’m feeling lucky.”
He said, “I’m thinking of resigning.”
I’m thinking of swimming the English Channel. I’m thinking of entering a Tibetan monastery. I’m thinking of running for President. Any of them seemed more likely statements than the first. Maybe I hadn’t heard him right.
“Mooney,” I said. “For Christ’s sake—”
“No,” he said. “Listen to me. I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of thinking, and I keep seeing that guy, that Vietnamese guy. He’s still in intensive care. I mean, why the hell did I hit him so damn hard, you know?”
“He could have killed you, Mooney.”
“There was a time I’d have talked to the guy. I’d have found a way to stop him without sending him to the hospital. I’d have—Hell, maybe I’ve been a cop too long, you know. You get—different. You start thinking differently. About people.”
I’d spent six years teasing Mooney about leaving the force, egging him on even, because it seemed so impossible. Now—
“Mooney,” I said quickly, “you used to tell me if all the good cops left—”
“Shit, Carlotta, somebody’ll do the job. Maybe it shouldn’t be me anymore. Maybe I’m not one of the good guys anymore. Maybe I’m what the papers say, a racist, a Southie Irish bigot. Maybe it’s part of me, the way I grew up. I remember there wasn’t a kid different from me in my whole school. All Irish Catholic. And I keep thinking about that guy—I mean, I don’t have a whole helluva lotta pleasant memories of Vietnam. And I can’t remember what I was thinking about when he came at me. I mean, maybe I had some kind of flashback. Maybe I thought, you know, he was the goddamn enemy or something. I don’t know.”
The bartender came within hailing range and Mooney waved a finger.
“Want another?” Mooney asked.
“No.”
“I hate to drink alone,” he said. “But I manage.”
I didn’t respond and he ordered two beers. Maybe he intended to drink them both.
“I mean,” Mooney said. “I keep thinking if the guy hadn’t been Vietnamese—”
“You said you forgot the language.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Not true?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I saw him coming at me and—I don’t think about the time I was over there much, Carlotta, but sometimes I wake up sweating and I—”
“What?”
“Shit, I can’t talk about this,” he said. “I’m sorry. How’s Paolina doing? How’s—”
“Mooney,” I said slowly, “you remember when I shot that guy in the Zone, before I left the force?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I remember.”
“And you sent me to Dr. Warner?”
“Yeah,” he repeated.
“That was a good thing to do. I don’t think I ever thanked you for it.”
He set his half-empty beer down with a heavy thud. “You think I need a shrink,” he said.
“I think you need to talk to somebody who knows how to help. The department’s got people like that. I’d like to help you, Mooney, but all I can say is I don’t want you to stop being a cop, and even if you fire me, I’m going to keep on looking for this hooker because I’ve known you a long time, Mooney, and—shit …” I took a gulp of the second beer, the one I hadn’t intended to drink.
Neither of us said anything for a while. The drone of the sports commentator got louder. The score was tied and the jerk was going into raptures at the thought of a second overtime.
“I’m sorry about my mother,” Mooney said.
I took in a deep breath. “Forget it,” I said.
“She just doesn’t understand—” he began. “Hell,” he said under his breath, “I don’t understand, either.”
CHAPTER 16
“So how the hell’s your knee?”
Those were the first words out of Gloria’s mouth when I limped into G&W’s late that night, which is why I adore that woman. None of this “What did you do to my cab?” business. No bemoaning what can’t be changed.
She had the phone tucked between her shoulder and one of her chins and was busily scribbling an address down with one hand and hanging onto the microphone with the other.
“Get me a cab at 124 Emory,” she crooned into the mike. “Come on, boys, pick it up now, pick it up. And be careful. I understand it’s slippery at the corner of Comm. Ave. and Allston.”
I grinned. In cab talk, “slippery” means the cops have set up a speed trap.
A metallic voice responded: “335, Gloria, I’ve got it. Five minutes.”
“Sit down,” she said, replacing the receiver. “Take the weight off.”
I sank into the guest chair, forgetting for once to check for cockroaches. I hate the idea of sitting on a cockroach. Nothing squished beneath me.
“Knee’s not bad,” I said. “But I wish I’d been driving my own car.”
“Wishes don’t get you shit, you know,” Gloria said, punching buttons on her console and biting into a Hostess cupcake. “It happened. It’s over. You’re sitting here, not lying in some hospital, so you be grateful.”
Gloria has a certain authority when she talks like that. I’ve never heard her version of the car crash that put her in the wheelchair, but she and hospitals are no strangers.
“You want a cupcake?” she asked. She had a whole carton of them, twelve packages, two to a package, squatting on one corner of her desk. “They got cream in the middle,” she said.
“No, thanks.” Normally I love junk food, but I can’t eat with Gloria. I just sit back and marvel.
“The insurance is paid up,” she said, separating cellophane from the chocolate frosting with the squiggle on top. “You’re bonded. I hate having a cab off the road, but Sam said to go ahead and lease one. Hackney Bureau’ll transfer the medallion.”
“You told Sam,” I said.
“She had to, didn’t she?” The voice came from the doorway leading to the garage, but I didn’t have to turn around to see who it was.
Not only hadn’t I looked for cockroaches, I hadn’t checked for fancy cars outside. He couldn’t have been standing there long. I’d have felt his eyes.
“Hi, Sam,” I said.
He looked like he’d stopped by on his way to someplace else, wearing an expensive gray suit, a white shirt, and a patterned tie with glints of blue and green. I didn’t notice the clothes right away. When I did, I wondered if there was some woman waiting for him out in that Mercedes or BMW, and I swallowed hard.
Sam’s not stop-your-heart gorgeous, not like Geoffrey Reardon, but he’s the right height and the right build. He’s got a strong, bony face, dark eyes and hair, a stubborn chin, and he does something to me, just standing across a room, that most men can’t do no matter how close they come.
“Carlotta,” he said. It came out flat, an acknowledgment of my presence, nothing more.
“Sorry about the cab,” I said.
He had Gloria’s big ledger under his arm. He’s the partner who keeps the books, and he stops in from time to time to pick up the records. I shot a reproachful glance at Gloria, who could have warned me. She was communing with Hostess.
“Nice blouse,” he said. I couldn’t remember what I was wearing. I knew I’d changed at home after substituting hot compresses for the longed-for bath. I remembered feeding the cat, the bird, admiring one of Roz’s incomprehensible paintings. My turquoise shirt, that’s what I’d chosen. Tucked into black jeans.
“Nice suit,” I said.
His face had that clean, just-shaven glow, and I thought I could catch a hint of his after-shave, but it was probably just my nose playing tricks—and my memory.
To tell the truth, standing in the doorway under the light from the bare hanging bulb, he loo
ked like a goddamn knight in shining armor. But did I feel like a damsel in distress? Nope. We six-foot-one-inch women rarely do. Glass slippers don’t come in size eleven.
There was one of those silences. I could hear Gloria demolishing cupcakes. Sam and I have too much to say to each other, and not enough. I left a message on his answering machine six months ago. A very inadequate message.
“Maybe you’re getting to be bad luck,” he said.
“I hope not,” I said. “I don’t mean to be.”
More silence.
“Your cop buddies gonna get the guy who hit you?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “You know how it is.”
“If you got a license plate, I know somebody who can run it down,” he said.
Sam Gianelli is the son of a Boston Mob boss. He has ways of getting information that I don’t even want to think about. If your name is Gianelli in this town, people tell you things. Strangers fall on their faces doing you favors.
“I’d like to do it,” he said.
Maybe he had a couple more lines at the corners of his eyes. Maybe I was just searching for flaws.
Gloria stopped chewing long enough to say, “Of course she got a plate. She’s got good eyes and she uses them. Here, write it down on this.” She stuck a stub of pencil in my hand and slid a card across her desk. I wrote down the number of the gray Caprice, feeling like I ought to explain that it wasn’t really the car that had run me off the road, knowing that I didn’t want to start a discussion. Not about Mooney’s problems. Not with Sam.
Gloria clicked her tongue impatiently, waiting for me to hand the card to Sam, or for him to cross the room and take it. We must have been eight, ten feet apart.
“Well, shit,” she said finally, reaching for the card and reading it aloud. “It’s 486-ITO. Got that? Mass. plate, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Sam said.
“Thanks,” I said.
He turned and went out the door, and I started breathing again.
The phone rang. Gloria scribbled, sang an order over the mike to pick up Dr. Bennett on Peterborough Street. She blew cupcake crumbs off her desk. Then she motored her chair halfway around the desk, leaned forward, and tapped me on the shoulder. “Wake up,” she said sharply. “That wasn’t so damn bad, was it? You could have moved your ass and given him the damn card, you know?”