by Linda Barnes
I contemplated plan B: retrieving Chaney’s love letters.
CHAPTER 12
Daylight did nothing to improve the Claremont Street triple-decker I’d watched Dowling enter in the early hours of the morning. The gray clapboard siding and weathered white shutters needed paint. The parched scrap of lawn cried out for water, and gray dirt bloomed in the flower beds. The houses on either side had the same faded paint job, the same semiabandoned air, which made sense, since all three buildings were owned by Jimmy Flaherty, a small-time Somerville property owner with a bad rep for not maintaining his overpriced units.
I knew Flaherty owned the place, because I’d made a brief but necessary stop at my friend Gloria’s cab company. It used to be called Green and White. Now it’s Marvin’s Magnificent Cabs, but all the drivers call it Black and Blue, because of the unfortunate color of the cars, and as a tribute to Gloria’s deceased brother, Marvin, who was quite a bruiser. Gloria, dispatcher, owner, and queen, lives behind the garage in a specially adapted apartment. She is at Black and Blue the way prisoners are in their cells. I hadn’t had to call ahead to know she’d be available.
It had taken her about three seconds to make 157 Claremont as a Flaherty property. Then she’d really gone to work. I knew the name of each tenant in the three buildings. I knew that Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Hooper on the ground floor of 157 served as building managers for the complex. Dowling rented the top floor flat.
I wanted Chaney’s letters, and given Dowling’s record, I didn’t think he’d return them even if I said “Pretty please.” So I’d decided not to ask. If the man had lived in some isolated suburban house, I’d have handled the breakin solo. A triple-decker in a crowded neighborhood required a different strategy, something devious, like Gloria’s youngest brother, Leroy.
Leroy used to be all sorts of things. He used to be in the NFL, till he bit somebody’s ear off. He used to be a bar bouncer, till the bar’s clientele started going elsewhere. Now he’s Black and Blue’s garage guy, the one who keeps the old Fords tuned and shepherds them through the Hackney Carriage Bureau inspections.
Leroy owns a truck. At various times, it’s been known to say Highlights Interior Decoration, O’Casey Plumbing, and Vanderbilt Electrical. He keeps a set of ready-to-paint interchangeable panels behind a wall in the garage. Leroy and I had debated the proper wording while Gloria made her helpful phone calls. First, we thought we’d use Exterminator, but then we went to Pest Control. We finally settled on Hamlin Chemical because nobody wants the neighbors to know that their place is infested with bugs.
Leroy had parked the truck legally, a minor miracle in itself. The sign on the side looked great. We’d debated getting Roz to come over and do a logo, maybe a little Pied Piper figure, but Gloria had nixed the idea. The lettering was simple and dignified. The paint was dry.
Leroy and I wore coveralls. His said Bruce above the left chest pocket. Mine said Al. I don’t look much like an Al. If questioned, I’d be Alison, but I figured the subject wouldn’t come up, since most people don’t want to get up close and personal with bug-spray dispensers. I grabbed a heavy silver canister. Leroy helped me strap it into the harness on my back and then I did the same for him.
We stopped at the ground-floor digs of the Hoopers and showed some official-looking paper to a woman with smudged cheeks and a vague manner. She was a bit ruffled that Flaherty hadn’t warned her about the spraying. Not that it wasn’t long overdue, mind. But she was cooking, her husband wasn’t home, and she didn’t want any chemical residue in her barley soup.
She didn’t question the paper. It looked good. We’d pulled Flaherty Realty’s letterhead off his Web site.
Leroy and I argued with each other a bit and allowed that we could come by to do her flat another day. Or we could give the entire place a miss. No, no, now that we’d finally made an appearance, we should definitely do the second and third floors at least. That nasty Maguire woman on two complained all the time about bugs. Then Mrs. Hooper got worried that if we sprayed the other flats, all the cockroaches would rush into hers like an invading army. I told her that the stuff we used stopped the little critters in their tracks, and, bless her heart, she believed me.
When she opened the door to Dowling’s apartment, Leroy and I lifted our face masks into position. Mrs. Hooper, right on cue, asked whether the chemicals we used were dangerous. We assured her that they were perfectly safe, but just to be sure, no one should enter the sprayed flats for two to three hours. That was why we sprayed when most people were off at work.
I was hoping she’d discuss Dowling’s schedule. All we knew, courtesy of Gloria, was that he’d picked up his phone at 9:05. The answering machine had taken over at 9:50, but what did that mean? He could be asleep in his bedroom, with the covers over his ears. The landlady hadn’t even bothered to knock.
Mrs. Hooper—she was Geraldine by then, and smiling cheerfully—assured us that neither of the tenants in 157 would be in till five o’clock. She worried that they should have been warned about the intrusion. Once again, we offered to leave. Leroy allowed that it was possible we’d be able to swing by again within the month. Geraldine dithered a bit, remembered her simmering soup, and left us to our work. Leroy and I exchanged grins; we’re a convincing team. People tend to trust me on sight; Leroy looks scary enough that you don’t want to ask him a lot of questions.
Both of us pulled on latex gloves.
I said, “Sing out if you find a Whitman’s Sampler box. And keep it neat. The guy shouldn’t know we’ve been here.”
Not only were we searching for Chaney’s letters, I wanted a reason to put Dowling back in the can. Leroy has an eye for a hot item. If twenty thirty-six-inch Sony TVs fall off a truck, he usually hears about it. I reminded him to keep an eye out for stolen merchandise as well, and had him start with the living room. I started with the bedroom because that’s where most people store the items they hope to keep private.
Dark clothes were heaped in one corner, the T-shirt still damp. Any possible doubts about Dowling as the blackmailer vanished when I found Chaney’s backpack underneath the pile. It was empty, and I wondered what the man had done with the cash. Most people don’t walk into a bank with five grand in small bills, even though it’s legal to do so. No clerk will even fill out a government form if you deposit less than ten grand.
Maybe he was out buying a used car. There are a couple dealers in Saugus who’ll take cash, sell you a car for a day, then give you a check when you return it. The check’s for a couple hundred less than you paid for the car that morning, but worth it for a quick laundering service.
The cash wasn’t under the mattress.
A man who dumps wet clothes in the corner doesn’t make his bed. Doesn’t change his sheets too often, either. The place smelled of body odor and old cooking smells. I opened the bedside table’s drawer. Most people keep their valuables, jewelry, watches, eyeglasses, close to the bed so they can grab them fast in case of fire. Silver’s usually in the dining room, but this place didn’t run to a dining room.
The bed was a saggy single, with a striped spread and mismatched sheets. Posters displayed members of the WWF in full battle array, including two curvy, muscled women who might, on second gaze, have been guys in drag. The posters had been pushpinned into the plaster walls; one hung crooked and loose.
I found myself wondering about Denali Brinkman again. Had Dowling invited the Harvard girl to share his unkempt bed under the World Wrestling Federation posters? Like her, I’d have preferred sleeping in the unfinished addition to the boathouse.
I had a bad feeling about the decor. I’d have been happier with a whole lot of creature comforts, sharp stereo equipment, wall-to-wall CD cases. This wasn’t the room of a man who had a lot to lose. The bedside table was filled with different varieties of condoms. The closet ran to soiled jeans and cargo pants with holes in the knees. Two pairs of khaki coveralls, not unlike the ones Leroy and I wore, hung on a hook behind the closet door. I checked for name pat
ches but didn’t find any.
In the living room, Leroy was watching music videos with the sound turned off, which made the gyrations even more obscene.
“Hot?” This was more like it. Dowling had a massive TV. I’ve been to movie theaters with smaller screens.
“Huh?”
“The TV, Leroy, is it stolen?”
“Probably. I wouldn’t mind lifting it. Cost money, that thing did.”
“Take a picture of it, get the numbers off the back, and keep going.”
“Dude’s got Xbox and PlayStation, plenty of titles, most of ’em rentals. Probably boosted ’em.”
Stealing videos from the local rental store wouldn’t keep Dowling in the can long. Yeah, he had a record, but Massachusetts is not a “three strikes and you’re out” state.
I moved into the kitchen. I once found a .38 in a freezer, scaring the hell out of a carton of mint-chip ice cream, so I always give kitchen appliances a careful once-over. Chaney’s money wasn’t in the fridge, imitating lettuce. I poked through the garbage bag under the kitchen sink. Looked like the staple of Dowling’s diet was peanut butter and jelly on sliced white bread. I could threaten to turn him in to the local food co-op. On the Cambridge-Somerville line, pb&j on Wonder bread is actionable.
“Carlotta!”
Leroy, still in the living room, was beaming. He hadn’t turned off the dancing girls and boys on the TV, but he’d glanced as far as a small desk in an alcove. Smack in the middle of the blotter: one Whitman’s Sampler box.
“Leroy, check the john, okay? There should be cash somewhere.”
“Gun in the toilet tank?”
“Whatever.”
I lifted the lid on the Sampler. Seven letters, in envelopes addressed to Denali Brinkman at Phillips House, handwritten. Either they’d arrived before she’d moved out or she’d made regular stops at her dorm to pick up her mail. I left the box where it was but stuffed the letters in the generous pockets of my coveralls.
Mission almost accomplished.
A scraggly plant sat on the windowsill behind the desk. A nearby mug read impro. It looked like he used the mug as a watering can. The left-hand desk drawer gave me a line on Dowling’s everyday life. Rent checks, a couple of old phone bills. He had a cell phone, and that costs. He had a mother in a small Ohio town; she wrote him earnest letters twice a month. He hadn’t destroyed them, so maybe he cared about keeping Mom’s good opinion. Maybe Mom knew her son was an ex-con, maybe not.
There was a filing system of sorts, but only a few labeled folders. Others, unlabelled, looked used, but they proved to be empty. I couldn’t find any bank statements. No checkbook. I glanced at the Whitman’s box, set out like a gift on the desktop, and wondered why it wasn’t hidden away like the cash.
There wasn’t much in the way of paper. I lifted all the file folders out of the drawer. Where were the pay stubs? If the building manager was sure he wouldn’t be back till after 5:00 p.m., didn’t the man work? If he lived on his blackmail earnings, where were the other letters, the incriminating stuff he used to open other victims’ wallets? There were two crumpled sheets of paper in the back corner of the drawer. I smoothed them on the blotter. Both were from Graylie Janitorial Services, one a receipt for $287, the other for $83. I stuck the pricier one in my pocket. There was no computer, no sign of peripherals for a laptop hookup. No printer, no scanner. No photos on display. I’d been hoping for a framed shot of Denali Brinkman, something more revealing than the rowing shot the papers had printed. He didn’t even have a photo of his mom.
I found a plastic Baggie stuffed with marijuana under the cushion of one of two droopy armchairs facing the big-screen TV. I took its photo in situ, then raised my voice.
“Leroy?”
“Nothing in the john.”
“Come in here, please.” I held the Baggie up for his inspection.
“You plant this?”
He gave me wide eyes. “Look at that shit; it’s all stems and seeds. That’s good shit; I’d smoke that shit myself.”
“Does that mean you didn’t plant it?”
“If I was gonna do a plant, don’t you think I’d put enough shit in the bag so he’d go down for dealing, not just taking a toke? Gimme credit.”
I could see his point. I nodded.
“So, can I take it?”
“Nope,” I said.
If all else failed, I could pretend to be Mrs. Hooper and drop a dime on my dope-smoking tenant. Maybe, with his record, he’d draw more than a smack on the wrist.
“We done here?”
I walked through the whole place slowly: kitchen, bath, bedroom, living room. That was it. I felt unsatisfied and puzzled, uneasy. The apartment was unremarkable and unrevealing. There was no trace of Chaney’s money. The Whitman’s Sampler box filled with his letters had been left in plain sight. Empty file folders. No address book, no Rolodex. Maybe Dowling kept a lot of his personal stuff in his car. Maybe he carried a Palm Pilot.
We gave the room a few hits from a can of commercial bug spray before we left, so it would smell right. Then Leroy asked Mrs. Hooper to let us into the second-floor flat. We played a few games of rummy and sprayed there, too. That place had some serious roaches in the kitchen, practically lapped up the Raid and begged for more. We sprayed a little in the hallway.
“Verisimilitude is all,” Leroy said.
His vocabulary is outstanding.
I knocked on Mrs. Hooper’s door and told her we thought there might be a major roach infestation in the garage. She looked nonplussed. She couldn’t give us the garage key because she didn’t have it. One of her tenants rented the garage and he had the keys.
Didn’t she keep a spare set? I asked. Well, yes, she usually did, but they’d gone missing.
Dowling, I thought, probably stole them. He kept stuff in the garage that he didn’t want other people to see. I was sorry I’d formally requested entry. I could have picked the lock or Leroy could have forced it. In the second-floor hallway, we debated our next move. The garage door was in plain view of the window over Mrs. Hooper’s kitchen stove. The barley soup seemed to require frequent stirring. There was no way she wouldn’t notice any hanky-panky with the garage door.
We carried our canisters back to the van, like it was time to refill, maybe time for a break. Mrs. Hooper’s probably still expecting us to come back and do the other two buildings.
Leroy negotiated the narrow one-way streets, stopping at all the stop signs, keeping to the fifteen-mile-an-hour speed limit. I should have been pleased; I had the blackmail letters in my pocket. Dowling smoked dope, maybe had a hot TV. We turned at the KFC franchise and started heading back toward the river. I wasn’t pleased. I’d wanted hard evidence of criminal activity that had nothing to do with my client.
“How the hell do you make somebody stop doing something illegal?” I was musing aloud, talking more to myself than to Leroy.
“This a bad dude, guy on the top floor?” The question surprised me. Usually, Leroy doesn’t ask. It’s immaterial to him.
I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me with his gaze directed straight ahead. “Bad,” I agreed.
“But you don’t want to take it to the cops?”
“No.”
“Dude bothering you?”
“Not personally.”
“That’s good. ’Cause if he was—”
“I know. Thanks for the offer, Leroy.”
“Lemme make you another one. How you stop somebody doing what’s illegal? What you do is, you hire me to mess with him. I’ll break his fucking leg. That’ll stop him from doing what he’s doing, least for a while.”
Back at my place, after sliding Chaney’s letters into a heavy mailing envelope and updating my expenses on the case, I found myself replaying Leroy’s offer in my head, giving it serious consideration. I’m not saying the idea didn’t bother me. I was concerned that I couldn’t seem to find a better solution to Chaney’s dilemma than grievous bodily harm. It made me feel like some
kind of vigilante, some kind of gangster, on the opposite side of the law from the one where I consider I belong. But in a curious way, Leroy’s words comforted me. When I discussed the next step with my client, at least I’d have more than one option.
CHAPTER 13
Chaney was right: That day, he was unreachable. I left message after message on his cell phone, which was all I could do, since he didn’t want anyone to know he had business that involved a private investigator. He didn’t want me leaving word with his dragon lady secretary, and I was specifically forbidden to communicate via his home phone, as his wife wouldn’t take kindly to calls from females asking to speak to her husband.
When Leon phoned, I warned him I might have to cut the evening short, but I agreed to meet him for dinner. I took my cell along. Chaney would be able to reach me. It didn’t feel like a dereliction of duty.
We ate bowls of hot-and-sour wontons and plates of spicy green beans and dun dun noodles at Mary Chung’s in Central Square. Over dinner, we talked music and movies and he told me about his first wife, Sally, who’d hated his cop job from day one. I told him about my ex-husband, Cal, a Cajun bass player who’d turned into a coke addict and run off with a blues singer. The Szechuan spices were hotter than Leon expected, but he seemed to relish the flavor, downing glasses of Chinese beer to soothe his tongue. Sam Gianelli’s name didn’t come up. I assumed Leon knew we’d been involved; he’s in law enforcement, where the gossip mill churns. Sam’s name never surfaced, but there were moments when I almost felt his presence, as though he were a third at the small table.
I met Sam even before I met Cal, and I married Cal when I was a green nineteen. Sam knows me. I don’t need to tell him stories about my younger days. He knows them. I am who I am with Sam; no temptation to reinvent myself by leaving out the ugly parts, retelling the tale. It’s easy to misrepresent yourself with someone new. It’s not even lying. You simply don’t mention this error or that lapse. And it’s not really lying, because at that moment you figure you’ll never do anything that stupid again, won’t be that person anymore. You’ll be somebody who’s learned from her mistakes. Sure. Bullshit. Excuse me, but ha.