by Linda Barnes
I’d have to find another method to get information on Carlos Roldan Gonzales, another way to convince his attorney to share.
5
Early the next morning I found Roz—my tenant, housecleaner, and sometime assistant—sniffing around my desk as though she could smell the cash I’d rejected the night before. Roz started out simply as my tenant, then requested reduced rent in exchange for house-cleaning, a task I despise. I accepted, immediately and gratefully. Had I tested her cleaning skills, she’d be paying more for her room. Had she left in a snit, I’d have been deprived of her karate training, post-punk art, and intuitive computer expertise. Not to mention her wide range of ever-changing fashion images.
Dressed in shiny black bike shorts and a tie-dye halter salvaged from a sixties headshop, she was updated for the nineties with cone-shaped inserts à la Madonna-does-Dietrich and hand-scrawled graffiti. “Boobs are Back,” she’d lettered across her left breast. A tattoo of sexually entwined eagles decorated her awesome cleavage. She was barefoot so I could appreciate her toenails, each a different shade of green: chartreuse to forest and beyond.
“Paying client?” she inquired, totally unabashed at being caught in apparent espionage. Maybe she’d crack a locked drawer or two while I watched. Roz has no shame.
“What makes you think so?”
“I heard you chatting last night. You coulda been talking to yourself, I guess. In two voices. Maybe you’ve got multiple personality disorder.”
Roz watches daytime TV talk shows. I try not to hold it against her, but I figure it contributes to her general delinquency.
“Privacy is nice,” I said.
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she replied, a bit huffily for somebody practically ransacking my desk. “I was setting camera angles.”
“What?”
“Never mind. The guy want to hire you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Retainer?”
“Not yet.”
“Carlotta, ya gotta get the bucks up front,” she said.
“Man’s good for it,” I replied.
“Something I could help out on?”
“Hard up for cash?” It’s wise to know in advance when your tenant can’t make the rent. Roz has never had financial problems before; far as I know she’s a trust-fund baby whose fabulously rich parents will ante up any amount provided she doesn’t appear at their fancy digs with magenta-and-blue striped hair, tattoos, and multiple nose rings.
“It’s not like I’m flat broke,” she muttered. “I have a hanging,”
“A hanging?”
“A gallery show. At Yola’s in the South End. Woman’s crazy about my stuff. Says I’m gonna be the next Boston artist to score.”
“Score as in money?”
“Like I must be doing something wrong,” she said sadly. “I told the lady, yeah, like she can sell this batch of shit, but I’m never doing anything remotely resembling it again. I’d take it all back, but, like, I need bucks because of the film.”
“The film,” I echoed.
“I’m branching out,” Roz said.
“Into cinema?”
“Sort of.”
“You have actors?”
“Me.”
“Ah,” I said, repenting my foolish query. Who more could she need?
“I priced rentals. Cameras are like totally out-of-this-world expensive. Editing equipment, bummer.”
“The show, the ‘hanging,’ won’t bring enough?”
“It’s consignment. She may not sell a single item.”
“Ya gotta get the cash up front, Roz,” I echoed cheerfully. I did not ask what the all-purpose word “item” entailed. I don’t discuss Roz’s appearance. I don’t discuss the content, shape, or form of her artwork. I’m scared if I ever got started I’d never stop. I’m still suffering from her art trouvé period. Loosely translated: found art, and she found most of her stuff in my kitchen. I didn’t think I’d attend this particular opening. It would be disconcerting to find my cheese grater hanging on the wall with a price tag on it. And I can’t figure out where the hell else that cheese grater could have gone. I’m an investigator. I find things; I don’t lose them.
“So you want work?” I asked Roz.
“Anything.”
“Run a check on an Adam Mayhew. Here’s the address and phone. Brother-in-law of the posh Dover Camerons. Check the whole family. One’s running for governor so it’s not exactly low profile.”
She rubbed her thumb and forefingers in an international moolah gesture that allowed me full view of her fingernails, the reds and oranges clashing wildly with the toenail greens. “You get in good with those Camerons you can start a whole new game here. Rent an office. Pay your operatives a living wage.”
I handed over the precious manila envelope containing the possible Thea manuscript. I’d dusted the whole business for prints. The shiny paper and smooth cardboard cover defeated me. Not even a smudge to offer a more experienced technician. The rough manila envelope boasted plenty of prints. Alas, when I compared them to prints on the leatherbound folder Mayhew had reluctantly given me, they matched in so many particulars that I knew I’d detected my client’s presence. I’d expected as much. In fact, I’d only done the fingerprint bit as an exercise. Used it as an excuse to keep the original documents. Where, precisely, was I supposed to come up with a genuine twenty-four-year-old Thea Janis print?
Maybe nobody’d cleaned her room since she’d left.
“While you’re out,” I said to Roz, “Xerox this. Two copies. Don’t lose it, okay?”
“Handle the Camerons right,” Roz advised, “and you can buy your own Xerox machine. The super-duper color model. Print your own money.”
“CopyCop’s barely half a mile from here.”
“Line’s half a mile long, too.”
“Then don’t let me waste your precious time.”
“Lend me a Widener ID card.”
Widener is Harvard’s main library.
“They allow you in the hallowed doors dressed like that?” I asked, tongue in cheek.
“You kidding? Half the Harvard kids look tons weirder than I do. I pick up style pointers.”
“I find that hard to believe,” I said, gazing at her attire.
“Believe it.” She sighed. “Money. Root of all evil, hah! You can get some good shit with it, I’m telling you.”
“Money is not the root of all evil,” I informed her automatically. “The desire or lust for money is—”
“Same thing, right?”
“Not exactly.”
“Picky, picky,” she said.
“Wear shoes,” I suggested. “The pavement’s hot.”
“Right,” she said.
“Roz.” I was suddenly reluctant to let the notebook out of my sight. “I’ll do the copying.”
“I didn’t mean to bitch and moan. I really need a few bills. I’ll do it, Carlotta.”
“Check the Camerons. Emphasis on the uncle, Adam Mayhew.” I fished another phony university ID card out of my collection. “Then head over to B.U., make like a grad student, and Xerox a few pages of genuine manuscript, if you can, handwritten by Thea Janis. Got it? Thea Janis.”
Roz thrust both cards into her cleavage. “Truly, I don’t mind CopyCop. Line or no line.”
“Nothing personal,” I said, taking possession of the envelope.
Some things you need to do yourself. Roz is basically reliable. But “basically” didn’t seem strong enough for Thea Janis’s first message to the land of the living in twenty-four years.
6
Roz departed, stepping over a morning Globe that the delivery boy had forgotten to toss in the bushes. Balanced precariously in high-heeled mules that hid the weird toenail polish and accentuated everything else, Roz didn’t bother to pick it up. I did. Picked it up and carried it into my office, where I searched each column for mention of the mysterious disappearance of Paolina’s dad, the reputed Colombian drug lord, Carlos Roldan Gonzales
. I double-checked every two-inch foreign news brief. For all the details Vandenburg Esquire had dished, the man could have been murdered in Sri Lanka.
Nothing on Roldan Gonzales.
The Camerons owned the front page, everything except the headline and a slim right-hand column, which were duly devoted to the latest Balkan disaster. Boston’s other paper, the Herald, wouldn’t have bothered to give the Balkans the lead. They’d have plunged straight to the nitty-gritty: Was Marissa Cameron ditching her husband in the midst of a gubernatorial race?
And who was I to criticize the Herald? I didn’t even scan Serbs vs. Croats before wallowing in the details of Garnet Cameron’s domestic brouhaha. I especially enjoyed the article’s lofty tone, with the Globe earnestly implying that it merely covered such sordid fare because other, lowlier, tabloids considered it newsworthy. I wondered when the Globe would start picking up on the pregnant-by-aliens death row inmates.
Normally I can leave the peccadilloes of the rich and famous alone, thank you very much. But this same Garnet Cameron, who couldn’t seem to hang onto his second wife, was brother to the missing Thea. So I took a gulp of orange juice and waded in.
At twenty-three, Marissa Gates Moore Cameron had been wed two years. Before that she’d briefly attended an Ivy League college, and taken stabs at acting, modeling, and singing careers. A photo caught her campaigning in her “trademark yellow dress,” a blond Miss America type, the girl-next-door with pizazz. Dazzling smile, sweet perfection, she looked as if she could twirl a baton while jogging as far as the nearest Elizabeth Arden spa.
Yesterday, she’d missed a scheduled interview for a glossy women’s magazine, as well as the opening of a pet-project senior citizens center in Brockton.
Sounded to me like she was throwing a spoiled-brat tantrum. Maybe Garnet forgot to send her flowers. Maybe her yellow dress had a ketchup stain acquired at a campaign-sponsored weenie roast.
Her family background—the toney yet sporadic education, the European travels, the near-misses at film stardom—was all trotted out as though she were a fledgling Princess Di. The Globe got in another dig at the other paper by suggesting that a recent Herald column speculating on the state of the Camerons’ May-December marriage might have been the last straw in this perilous Would-they-stay-together-for-the-sake-of-the-campaign? drama.
I tried to care. My folks didn’t even stay together for the sake of the kid. They did try to avoid divorce for the sake of the money—my mother being too poor to support us, my dad knowing he’d have to shell out more for separate accommodations than he did for rent on our crummy Detroit apartment.
I doubted Marissa or Garnet found continuing financial stability an overwhelming concern.
I downed a third glass of orange juice. I could have used more sleep. I get nasty when I don’t sleep.
Thea’s curious novel-cum-journal had kept me awake. Both her prose and her poetry had a strange uneasy power. Thirty-six pages made me want to know everything about her, discover the smallest detail about her disappearance.
Or death.
No smiling author’s face decorated the dust jacket of Nightmare’s Dawn. The photo Adam Mayhew had given me was professional work. A thin, waiflike creature stared forth from an arty black-and-white eight-by-ten, all wistful eyes and exquisite cheekbones. It wasn’t a perfect face. It had flaws. The lips were immensely wide, full, pouty. The chin was too small to balance the mouth. She wore a short white dress, a flowered sun hat, a knowing look that contrasted sharply with her virginal knees-together pose.
It was a photo that seethed with complexity: sexual, sensual, oddly innocent. Marissa Cameron’s, admittedly a grainy news shot, seemed by contrast as simple as a fifties sitcom.
I stared at Thea’s photo. Computers might be able to age it, but I didn’t have the necessary equipment or the right program. Roz could probably do better than any machine. Age the photo in a variety of ways. Thea grown up wealthy, Thea grown up poor, Thea aging, plump and thin, healthy and ill. Roz has the eye, the gift.
And me, well, I took another quick glance at the front page and revised my morning. I’ve learned enough not to stomp into a hornets’ nest of reporters. No visit to the Cameron estate today. I’d have to work my best source first, sneak in the back door of my former place of business.
I ran an icy shower—a good short-term sleep substitute—donned a sleeveless tank top and khaki shorts for a visit to the cop house. I figured I’d flaunt my lightweight attire, let the uniforms sizzle in envy and suffocating heat. Freedom to dress as I choose is one of the few perks of my job.
Of course, as a homicide cop, a plainclothes detective, I’d enjoyed similar liberty. I just hadn’t exercised it. I’d known bone-deep that had I come to work dressed “unprofessionally,” it would have been another black mark against one of the few women on the force, an offense that might well have led to a dreaded return to uniformed pavement pounding. The only time the uniforms seemed to appreciate my presence was when they assigned me to phony hooker patrol, preferably in winter, out of “concern” for the poor sidewalk strutters: Get ’em the hell in jail so they wouldn’t freeze to death. No such concern for me, stuck wearing a crotch-high miniskirt with the wind-chill way below zero. Some guys really got off on it, vetoing heavy tights in favor of sheer panty hose, remarking that I might do better business if I stuffed my bra with Kleenex.
And if I didn’t take it with a smile, I had no fucking sense of humor. Right.
I’d told them I’d be happy to stuff my bra, provided they’d arrest the johns who tried to hustle me, instead of the working girls I was supposed to pal up with, then betray.
Maybe if I’d lasted longer on the streets I could have made a difference. Maybe pigs could juggle billiard balls.
Hell, I thought, calm down. I was getting overheated just remembering. It wasn’t the whole squad, just a few loudmouthed wrongheaded jerks. I glanced in the mirror, splashed cold water on my face, changed to a more conservative shirt and longer, looser shorts.
Why alienate the good guys when there are so many bad guys around?
I decided to walk into Harvard Square, take the T to South Station. A breeze might be blowing off the ocean. And I didn’t feel like getting another parking ticket, which I do almost every time I try to stow my car near the Area D cop house.
I stuffed the manila envelope containing Thea’s notebook into a plastic grocery sack, hung it over my left wrist, and took off.
Strolling toward Huron Ave., I turned abruptly, for no reason, just one of the things you do, and saw him. The same man who’d been casing the drugstore yesterday. Today he wore a denim jacket, a baseball cap, shades, and a bulge under his arm. Overdressed for the heat wave.
I knew it was the same guy because of his ears. Ears and fingers are what they teach you at the police academy. Anybody can buy dark glasses, a wig, a mustache. Gnarled stubby fingers don’t change. Neither do thin dangling earlobes.
Instead of turning left and heading toward Harvard, I hung a right and veered into the Mount Auburn Cemetery. It may not sound like a pleasant side trip, but I’d been intending to visit. The old burial ground is no modern run-the-power-mower-over-the-flat-tomb-stones affair. It’s a real park, with fountains, trees, sculpture, and glorious landscaping, as well as the graves of Edwin Booth, premier actor of his day and brother of the man who shot Lincoln; Fannie Farmer, the cooking maven; Mary Baker Eddy, the Christian Science lady who is not really buried with a telephone, but it makes such a good story; Winslow Homer, the painter; Buckminster Fuller; and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It’s also rumored to be the burial site of both Sacco and Vanzetti, but nobody talks about them.
I knew the layout, the location of stone angels and tall monuments behind which I could hide and observe my observer, provided he took the bait and followed me into the park.
I ducked under the stone archway leading to the main section of the cemetery. Across Coolidge Avenue, the less notable are laid to rest in the City of Cambridge Cemeter
y. I decided to stick to the tourist routes, at least at first, make it easy for the guy. I headed down a leafy path toward the Lowell family plot. The shade was a welcome relief.
The grounds were meticulously clean and well maintained, the hills tastefully landscaped, the ponds clear and sprinkled with lily pads. Marble saints stared heavenward to intercede for the soul of stogie-smoking Amy Lowell. My pursuer was not in sight. Maybe he’d missed the turn. Smelled a trap.
I backtracked.
No one.
I took a new path, wondering whether I should ask the caretaker if he’d seen another tourist abroad. The elderly man slowly raking the immaculate grass looked ready to talk, garrulous. I suppose with such taciturn neighbors, he didn’t get much chance to converse.
“Where would I find the Cameron family plot?” I asked as soon as he glanced up and acknowledged my presence. Surely the Camerons would have a tomb here, a palatial monument to illustrious ancestors.
The caretaker gave me detailed directions, past the third elm, a left at the wading pond, down the hill to the right, past the stand of lilacs. Right pretty in spring, he said. White lilacs.
Had he seen a man in a denim jacket? Nope. Hot day.
The Cameron plot was surrounded by a knee-high iron fence, elaborately carved like the metalwork on fancy patio furniture. I don’t know one kind of marble from another, but the Camerons favored white with almost invisible pink veins. It made the statues look alive, as if a faint blush warmed their sunlit skin. The oldest grave was dated 1714. Lucinda Eustachia Estes Cameron, wife and mother. Dead at twenty-two. Disease or childbirth.
Franklin Cameron’s monument, a tablet between tall fluted columns, was decorated with the veteran’s American flag and the motto: He served his country in war and peace. Born 1911, died 1975. Beloved husband and father.
I stared down the path. No blue-jacketed stranger. I searched for the grave I’d come to see, the one that might or might not be there.
It was plain. Almost stark in contrast to the carved seraphim and cherubim of the others. A thin upright marker, with two curved leaves. It took me a moment to realize that the marker was in the shape of a book. Nothing else indicated that the grave belonged to the woman who’d written as Thea Janis.