by Linda Barnes
From the second floor, the marketplace spread out beneath him like an intricate moving tapestry. People turned into blobs of color: a dark head surrounded by purple, a blond head in blue. Too much tan. Too much gray. Directly below, the wooden benches and tables melded into the wooden floor, the cacaphony of laughter and words deafened. A constant hunt for the rare empty table took place. As soon as one was vacated, figures sprang upon the seats like famished vultures.
Outside, with the pale sunshine for a backdrop, the scene turned into a Breughel frolic. Constant movement, vivid color—almost a dance. Spraggue circled the rotunda. Gave up the chase. Sat on the corner of a precarious bench.
Was Tan Raincoat Arnold Gravier? Or was Tan Raincoat a cop? Had he been sent to spy on both Spraggue and Gravier? Had Spraggue just witnessed the ransacking of Gravier’s apartment?
The man had played the radio, turned on the lights. He’d bounced merrily down the front steps, ignoring a perfectly good back alleyway that would have served far better as an unobserved escape route … He’d acted like the apartment’s rightful tenant, which made him Arnold Gravier. But he didn’t answer his phone.
Why not? And why did he spend his time darting through the streets of the Back Bay? What did Tan Raincoat know about the arson that had claimed the life of JoJo Stearns? What did he know about the murder, if indeed it was murder, of Pete Collatos?
Spraggue wondered what Pete’s killers would be charged with, just in case he should happen to stumble across them. What was the charge for spiking drinking water? Not first-degree murder. It would be harder than hell to get the district attorney to call it first-degree murder. Even though premeditation was evident, intent was not. What if the target were actually Donagher? What if—
Shit. Spraggue consoled himself with the fact that he’d discovered something about his shadow, that he’d probably be able to pick him up again. He headed over to the Government Center MBTA stop. Maybe they’d meet while waiting for the train. If it arrived with its customary dispatch, most of the world would have time to parade by.
He had to wait in line to buy a subway token. He passed a telephone and, on impulse, called Sharon Collatos. The operator told him to dial one first and try again. Deposit fifty-five cents for the first three minutes.
Sharon sounded eager. She’d been trying to reach him. He was almost disappointed to learn that it was about her brother.
“I got something in the mail today, from Pete.”
Spraggue computed dates. “From Boston to Chelmsford in seven days? Did it come by water buffalo express?”
“Well, it could have been delivered anytime within the past three days. I haven’t been reading my mail.”
“I’m glad you answered your phone.”
“I thought it might be you.… I mean, I have been trying to get in touch and …”
“What did Pete send you?”
“I’m not sure. It looks like some ordinary envelope. I don’t know if he meant to send it or not. Maybe he put the wrong thing in the mail. It makes no sense.”
“Did he ever send you things?”
“On my birthday. Christmas. Not envelopes.”
“I’d like to see it.”
“I want to show it to you.”
“Hang on.” Spraggue ran his tongue around his lips, thought quickly. “I’m booked this afternoon. I’ve got a show at eight and I won’t be out till eleven … You couldn’t meet me for dinner, could you? Somewhere in Cambridge, near Harvard Square?”
“I suppose I …”
“There’s one of those Cambridgey salad-and-quiche places on Huron Avenue. Or a good Spanish place right on Boylston.”
“The Iruña? Behind the wrought-iron gates, across from the Galeria? I’d like that. What time?”
“Would six be too early?”
“I’ll be there,” she said.
The wait for the train wasn’t bad. No tan-raincoated watcher lurked.
He switched to the Red Line at Park Street Station, waited again, got off at Central Square and walked down Pearl Street to Magazine Street, into the heart of the Cambridge Riverside community, where gentrification warred with the old neighborhood. Every other house was spruced up with fresh paint and elegant hanging greenery in just washed windows. The bright touches made the other houses look even worse by contrast—peeling paint, sagging porches, dusty, smudgey windows, some broken and replaced with slabs of plywood. The renaissance seemed to have halted fifty-fifty. He saw no signs of present renovation, no moving vans. The trend had died midstream, leaving an uneasy truce between the old and the new, the revitalized and the dying.
Sergeant Billy lived in a dying house, untouched by paintbrush or repairman. A lived-in-all-your-life house, so that you no longer noticed the crumbling eaves, the shabby curtains, the worn steps leading up to the blistered front door with the dull brass knocker.
Spraggue checked the street for tan raincoats before beating a tattoo on the door. He heard slow shuffling steps after a five-minute wait.
He had trouble reconciling the memory of the spit-and-polish uniformed, if red-faced, codger of the funeral with the down-and-outer who blocked the doorway, old eyes blinking in the sunshine. It was as if the uniform had held him together. In a tattered robe, a miasma of whiskey surrounding him, the man seemed to have blurred, expanded, softened. Spraggue wondered if his conversation would be intelligible.
“You sellin’ somethin’?” the man began belligerently. “I ain’t puttin’ this house up for sale even if you was to offer me the mayor’s own Parkman House.”
“No,” Spraggue said.
The man’s bloodshot eyes narrowed suspiciously. “No, what?”
“I’m not selling, Sergeant Billy.”
The name had a transforming effect. The old man tried to pull his belly in. “Sergeant? Do I know you?” He tilted his chin and scratched the three-day stubble on his face.
“I know you. About you.”
“You from one of these goddam socialist agencies? Gonna ask me personal questions? Make me beg for a goddam handout?” Billy’s fingers tightened on the doorhandle.
“Nope.”
“Well?”
“Aren’t you going to guess anymore?”
“No. I’m gonna slam the door in your face is what I’m gonna do.”
“I used to be a private investigator,” Spraggue said. “You used to be a cop. Maybe that gives us something to talk about.”
Billy trumpeted a laugh. Spraggue was glad the man’s mouth wasn’t any closer to his nose. “I retired,” he said. “What’s your excuse?”
“Somebody over at District One said you might be able to help me on a case.”
Spraggue could have sworn the man grew two inches before his eyes. He wiped a hand across his face, tugged the front of his robe closed, retied the belt under his bulging stomach, made a curious burping noise and moved out of the doorway.
“Come on in,” he said. “You want … um … coffee or some other liquid refreshment?”
“No,” Spraggue said quickly. “Just a little of your time. The use of your memory.”
“Memory,” Billy muttered. “One thing I’ve sure got is memories.” He motioned the way into a dark curtained sitting room that smelled as musty as it looked. The furniture was uniformly dark and heavy, built to last. The curtains were dust-coated green plush. Spraggue wondered if they’d ever been opened. He sat in the armchair Billy offered and tried not to cough when a puff of dust exploded around him. He wondered when Billy had last used this room, this dead formal parlor. He probably lived in the kitchen or on a back porch, wherever the TV and the radio were kept. This room was for company.
“Memory,” Billy repeated. “I guess guys on the force today just shove numbers into computers. Every once in a while I suppose they could use somebody with a memory about people instead of fingerprints and numbers and times and dates. That’s where some of us old guys could help. But no way. Pension you off and be glad to see the back of you. And I guess I
should be glad for it. The streets nowadays ain’t safe, even for a cop.”
“I saw you at Pete Collatos’ funeral.”
“Collatos … Collatos. Yeah, that’s the one last week on the Sunday. I didn’t know him, mind. I go to all the funerals of the boys in blue. The cops and the ex-cops. Least I can do and a chance to see the old guys. Gets pretty dismal, huh, when the only place you see your friends is at funerals.”
“You knew a lot of people there?”
“A few. A few. Are you headin’ someplace particular?”
“I saw you talking to someone I know. Martin Emery.”
“Ah, Marty! Marty. Talk about a surprise. Maybe twenty years and I knew him right off the top even if he was dressed up in a three-piece suit the like of which I never thought to see on a boy like that. I heard his voice, good and clear, and it made me stop and stare, I can tell you. I’ve got a better memory for voices than I do for faces.”
“You recognized Marty’s voice and you went over to say hello.”
“Sure. We did a lot of talking, me and him, in the old days, I can tell you. He’s the one you want to know about, is he?”
“Yes.”
“Hope he’s not in trouble. Looked like he’d gone straight as a ruler, that three-piece suit and all.”
“I take it you knew him professionally.”
“You could say that. I got him in off the streets a couple of times. He was running with a bad crowd. I took him in to Juvenile Court maybe three, maybe four times, Never saw him after he was seventeen or so. Figured he’d wised up or moved out of the neighborhood, Southie that was. Guess he knew he’d get different treatment as an adult. They don’t mess around with you once you’re over eighteen. Off to Walpole.”
Walpole was the maximum security state prison, not someplace you got sent for drunk and disorderly, not someplace to house a runaway. “What kind of stuff was Marty up for as a juvenile?”
Hurley was right. The man had lost his discretion in a bottle years ago.
“Breaking and entering, mostly. A little street robbery. He tried that afterward, when we’d convinced him he’d never make it as a burglar. Left his signature all over the place. Never could pick a lock worth shit. I could take a look at the doorhandle, go straight from the site of the burglary, and pick the kid up before he even had a chance to pawn the loot. I got to thinking maybe he just pulled a job when he got lonely, so I’d go over and have a word with him. I liked the kid. No father and his mother not what she should be. I’m glad Marty’s made something grand out of himself.”
“How did he pick locks?”
“Well, he never had any money, you know. And he wasn’t as good with his hands as the other kids. They could make a set of picklocks just like pros. But Marty used his mother’s long hairpins. Too thick. He’d mess the door up terrible.”
He stayed as long as politeness demanded. Billy hated to see him go. It was as if Spraggue had completed some ancient circle. Sergeant Billy had comforted Marty—now Murray—long ago. And now Spraggue comforted Billy.
No tan raincoat waited outside the house.
He fumbled in his pockets as he approached a phone booth near the bus stop on Mass Ave. He’d have to start carrying more change. If Ma Bell switched over to the twenty-cent call from pay phones in the Boston area, he’d be in trouble.
He asked for Hurley in Homicide.
“Parnate,” he said when the right voice grunted hello. “I checked it,” Hurley said. “It’s the trade name for tranylcypromine, which is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor.”
“No shit.”
“Anything else I can do for you?”
“On you, Hurley, smugness sounds good.”
“I get to try it out so infrequently.”
“Just what is a monoamine what’s-its-face?” Spraggue asked.
“They call it an MAO inhibitor for short.”
“I like it. Cute and snappy. Could it have anything to do with Pete’s death?”
“Sure could.”
“Did it?”
“There is absolutely no way on earth to tell.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was. This I can tell you. If Pete was taking that medication, then that hit of speed, that minor hit, would have killed him as sure as a tank running over a field mouse.”
“How?”
“His blood pressure would have shot up to about 300 over 200. Incredibly high—as if the dose of speed had been a hundred times what he actually got. He would have ruptured an artery in his head. It just would have blown up.”
“Like it did.”
“But it can’t be proved that he ever took this drug.”
“You’ve found his doctor?”
“Think you’re dealing with an amateur? Prescott on Beacon Street. Never gave him anything stronger than tetracycline. Never recommended a shrink. We’re asking around, but—”
“But you can’t put in time on a crime that’s been solved, right?”
“Right.”
“But I can,” Spraggue muttered as he hung up.
TWENTY-SEVEN
He had to check twice to make sure the dark woman in the silky coral dress was really Sharon Collatos. Then he quickly reevaluated his impulsive invitation to dinner. Pity had been part of the motive; he’d extended the invitation like a lifeline to a sinking exhausted swimmer. This Sharon Collatos, chin high, color in her cheeks, clad in a garment that lost detail in its overall impact, turned heads. This Sharon Collatos was a washout as an object of pity; no sinking swimmer, but the proud pennant on the topmost mast of the Coast Guard rescue cutter.
The mustached Latin waiter looked as if he enjoyed guiding her across the room.
“Hi.” She turned suddenly shy when she saw him, not knowing whether to expect a businesslike dinner or the date she had dressed for.
“You look terrific,” he said immediately. It wasn’t the most tactful opening in the world, but he knew he’d have to say it sooner or later. She blushed. The compliment apparently made her think, as he had feared, not of how well she looked tonight, but of how she’d looked two days earlier. And acted, clinging to him in Pete’s study.
“I’m getting myself together,” she said flatly. The waiter held her chair.
“Obviously.”
“Went back to work today. I teach. High school. It helped. Made me realize I’m not the only one in the world who has to deal with death and disaster and pimples.”
They opened tasseled, red leather menus, scanned choices printed on fake parchment. “The Spanish dishes are good. So’s the steak.”
“Paella,” she said. “And the stuffed avocado if you’re going to have an appetizer. I’ve been here before, years ago …” She turned her head and glanced back toward the door, at the clutch of small tables with pristine white cloths, dotted with tented scarlet napkins, the hallway leading to the other narrow room. “Hasn’t changed.”
“You want wine? A drink?”
“No. I might get maudlin again.”
“We’ll skip it then. I can’t drink before a performance.”
“Have you been acting long?”
“Long enough.”
He hadn’t meant it as a brush-off, but she was sensitive to every nuance. Her hand jumped to her leather bag. “I brought Pete’s letter,” she said, all business.
“Relax,” he said. “I’m sorry. We’ll get to the letter. We have to start by exchanging life stories, don’t we?”
“Not if you don’t want to.”
“Let’s do it slowly,” Spraggue said. “A little at a time.”
“That bad?” she said, smiling.
“How did you wind up out in Chelmsford when you used to eat dinner at the Iruña in the Square?”
“That alone would take us through to dessert.”
“Fine. Begin.”
He’d expected a protracted tale of indecision, love, rapture, disgust, divorce. Instead he got a cool, lucid, unsentimental account of a marriage that hadn’t made
it and a career that had.
“Would you like to see a play tonight?” he asked.
“I don’t have a ticket.”
“House seats could be made available. I won’t be able to sit with you.”
“What show?”
“Caucasian Chalk Circle. I think.”
She laughed. “I’d love to see it.”
“Good.”
The paella and steak appeared and disappeared. None of their talk had the nervous patter of strangers trying desperately to impress. When they tired of old tales, they talked current events; when they tired of that, they talked about Pete. That led back to the letter.
She held it out over the starched white tablecloth. Their hands brushed during the transfer. She did have wonderfully long dark eyelashes.
Pete’s communication wasn’t much to look at. The envelope was standard business size—plain, white, cheap—a Woolworth’s special. The postmark was blurred, but the word Boston was evident and a date could barely be made out.
“How the hell could it take so long to deliver mail from Boston to Chelmsford?” Spraggue muttered.
Sharon shrugged.
The envelope contained only one item, another smaller envelope. Spraggue held it up to the light, carefully, by the edges, even though the paper seemed too smooth for fingerprints. He stared at it for a full thirty seconds before its significance sank in.
“What is it?” Sharon asked anxiously.
“Your brother showed me five envelopes three days before he died. The envelopes Senator Donagher got his hate mail in. Pete expected there to be six envelopes, but there were only five.… He assumed that the police had kept one. That’s what he said.”
“Why mail an envelope to me?”
“Presumably, because it was important.”
“Yes?”
“I’m just thinking out loud. Don’t expect major revelations here. Okay. He sent it to you because he knew it wouldn’t be safe in his apartment, because someone else wanted it.…”
“Maybe.”
“I think the postmark is April twentieth.”
“That’s what it looked like to me,” Sharon said.
“The day after he died.”