by Linda Barnes
CHAPTER 18
If this had been the movies, Freddie Church would have lived in Allston, within walking distance of the Birmingham Parkway. He didn’t; he lived in an apartment complex off LaGrange Street in West Roxbury.
It was maybe a half hour’s drive, but I didn’t bother with a phone call. If he wasn’t home, I’d visit his neighbors, inquire about his recent visitors. I stopped by the house and grabbed a photo of Benjy Dowling to flash. It wasn’t a great one. Roz had done her best in the basement darkroom, but the rain had been heavy the night of the payoff. Still, the features were recognizable. Dowling had thick eyebrows and deep-set eyes over a well-shaped nose. A good-looking man. I stuck the photo in my backpack and drove, wishing I’d asked Garnowski more about this Freddie Church. Was he the kind of guy, unlike Benjy, who’d head up a criminal enterprise, an idea man, a leader?
There’s no quick route from Cambridge to West Roxbury. I took cabbie shortcuts, turning every few blocks, twisting my way through the back streets of Allston-Brighton and Brookline in sporadic traffic, sitting almost two minutes behind some driver too chicken to enter a busy Brookline rotary.
I crossed the VFW Parkway, turned right off LaGrange, then right again into a rutted alley. I didn’t see any visitor parking, so I took a numbered resident-only slot. There must have been a hundred apartments in the complex, but no visible inhabitants. It looked like the sort of place where you didn’t want to hang around outside, an isolated clutch of yellow brick buildings, half still under construction and half already falling apart. On my left was a sorry playground, a barred basketball court with steel nets, another dusty gravel parking lot. It wasn’t exactly a project, but it had the air of a place with plenty of subidized Section 8 housing. Kids in school, Mom drunk or sleeping it off, Dad bagging groceries or living elsewhere. It looked a lot like a prison, so Church probably felt right at home.
I removed my suit jacket and folded it neatly on the passenger seat. Visiting a place like this, I would have been better off in jeans or sweats, maybe a splatter suit.
Church’s apartment, 5G, was a “garden” flat, meaning it was almost entirely underground, a habitable basement. I eyed the narrow windows. Barely visible behind straggly shrubs, they’d provide all the natural light he got.
Jail security had it all over Church’s apartment complex’s security. His vestibule door was heavy, steel-reinforced, and had a good lock to boot, but, like most of the other doors, it was propped open with a wooden board. Easier for construction crews to gain access; easier for thieves, too. It enabled me to walk right up to Church’s apartment without sounding a warning bell. I could hear the TV blasting, a good sign somebody was home. I knocked, waited, then knocked again loudly.
“Yeah? Yeah? Hang on, for Chrissake.”
I knocked again.
The man who answered the door didn’t look like a crime titan, but who knows? He was in his thirties, skinny, bare-chested, and wore his wrinkled khakis low on his hips. His narrow face was covered with stubble and he smelled of booze and sweat. His eyes were pale gray, the whites veiny.
“Whatcha want? Quit yer banging. I gotta helluva headache. Bad enough the crews start work crack a fuckin’ dawn, ya gotta—” He stopped yapping and gave me a long look, registering my presence in much the same way parole officer Garnowski had. “Hey, lookit you, now. Ain’t you a big girl!”
Big is a comparative term. I’m tall for a woman, yes. I’m not a heavyweight, but I’m not scrawny, either; no fashion-model famine victim, thank you. But if I’d been six inches shorter, I’d still have been big compared to Freddie Church. He was no more than five two, but he stood erect, a little rooster of a guy, with a hint of a Tennessee accent and bad teeth.
“Jake Garnowski sent me.” As I spoke, I stepped into his apartment and the smell hit me, a pungent mix of unwashed clothes, unwashed dishes, rancid food, spilled beer, and overflowing ashtrays. He could have used about a bushel of Margo Chaney’s rose-petal potpourri. Sometimes I think I quit being a cop because I couldn’t stand the stink.
“Hey, how ’bout a drink?” said the little man, a blast of liquor on his breath.
“Bet you started without me.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Well, I know it’s early, but I’m havin’ myself a li’l wake here. Friend a mine died. Hit by a fuckin’ car.”
“Benjy.”
He brightened. “You know Benjy? My man Benjy? Hey, you and me’ll have a drink to him, then.”
“No, thanks. I just want to ask a few questions.”
“Don’t tell me you’re a cop. That would be too damned depressing.”
“I’m not a cop.”
He smiled like he’d put one over on me. “Hah, if you ain’t no cop, I don’t have to answer shit.” He waved a finger at my nose.
“Up to you,” I said. “Depends how much you want to go back to the can. Way I understand it, you’re on parole, Freddie, and unless my eyes are bad, you’ve got some serious weed sitting on your sofa. Probably your own personal stash, but your record, any prosecutor would go for distribution.”
He stared at the sofa, saw the Baggie plain as day. He tucked it under a cushion, marched back to the door, and made as if to hold it open. He was pretty well looped and having trouble walking. “Whyn’t you just leave? You’re pretty, but you gotta bad attitude.”
I smiled. “Hey, Freddie, you got a beer?”
“That’s better. That’s sociable.” He closed the door and staggered off into an alcove that passed for a kitchen because it had a hot plate and a refrigerator. Meanwhile, I investigated the Baggie under the sofa cushion. Damned if I could tell whether it came from the same mother lode as Dowling’s stash. Leroy probably could have.
Church came back with an open bottle of Michelob and a smudgy jelly glass. I wiped the lip of the bottle with my sleeve and drank from that. Seemed safer.
Church said, “You’re kiddin’ about the weed, right? I could just flush it, and how’d you prove it? You ain’t no cop.”
“So when was the last time you saw Benjy?”
He took awhile, trying to decide whether I was bluffing. The pint of store-brand whiskey on the battered coffee table was freshly opened and a third gone. Two roaches sat in an ashtray otherwise filled with cigarette butts. He took a seat on the sprung gray sofa and slugged from the bottle. “Hell, the man’s dead, right?”
“Yeah.” His brain was operating and he was asking himself why he should risk jail to protect a dead man.
“I used to see Benjy at meetings, AA and that shit, but we both quit going. I ain’t seen him more than three times this past year, and, man, we used to be tight.”
“You argue over anything?”
“Nah. It’s women. Women is what does it, gets in the way of men staying friends.”
“Your woman or his woman?”
“Does it look like I got a woman hid in here?”
He made an expansive gesture that took in the filthy room. If he had a woman, the gesture said, by God, he wouldn’t be living in a sty. Guys like that never seem to understand why women aren’t lining up to do their cleaning.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you?”
“Hah. Wished I did, hon. I’m talking ’bout Benjy’s babe. He never said nothing, but that’s what I figure. Babe like that, what’s she wanna hang out with me, classy little babe like that? Don’t want him hanging with lowlifes like me, either. Man, Benjy was always a lucky one with the broads, I tell you. You know what he had?”
“Nope.”
“You never met him?”
“Never had the pleasure.” I’d searched his apartment, but it wasn’t the same as a personal introduction.
“Confidence. Course he had a dong long’s a horse, too. That’s what gave him confidence. He wasn’t a big man, you know. Just hung, the way some of us small guys are.”
He gave me a look to make sure I knew what he was telling me. Two in as many days, Garnowski and now this runt. My cup runneth over.
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br /> “Jake a buddy a yours?” he asked. Do you sleep with Jake? was what he meant.
I said, “Probably you’ve got more than an ounce of dope in this dump, right?”
“Hey, hey, let’s keep it civil.”
“Let’s keep it professional, too, Freddie. I want to know what you had going with Benjy.”
“And I’m telling you. I ain’t even seen him lately.”
“I heard you were storing stuff for him.”
“Yeah, well that’s horse shit. Who tole you that?”
“Your pal had a lot of cash when he died.”
“Good for him.”
“How do you think he came by it?”
“Was he working something?”
“You tell me.”
“Well, if he was he was working it without me. I told him come to me he finds something, but once that girl got with him, he didn’t hang with me no more. You know her? You talk to her? She was a looker. Blond hair, looked real and all.”
“Where did you meet her?”
“Some bar, one of them places over on Harvard Street. Wished I could remember her name. Probably see her at Benjy’s funeral, you wanna talk to her.”
“About five two, little oval face, good body?”
“That’s the one.”
“She won’t be there. She died.”
He gave a soft grunt and placed the bottle carefully back on the coffee table, moving with the caution of a man who knows his sense of balance can’t be trusted. “Her and Benjy both? Jesus. When did she go?”
“In April.”
“Christ on a crutch, I didn’t know. Man, Benjy didn’t even call me or nuthin’. Girl had a funny name, like a hill.”
“Denali.”
“Yeah, yeah. You tellin’ me that pretty girl’s dead and gone?”
“Killed herself.”
“Whoa.” He grabbed for the bottle and took a long drink. “Go figure. You think that’s why Benjy was playing in traffic? Shit, I never thought a that. I mean, maybe he didn’t want to go on without her, you know?”
“I think Benjy was into something that got him killed.”
“You think he was offed?”
“Hit-and-run. I do.”
“Damn.”
“Who else did he hang with, Freddie?”
“Shit, lady, I dunno. I tole you I—”
“When you last saw him, what was he doing?”
“Lookin’ for work, like always.”
“What kind of work?”
“What kind— Hell, maybe he figured he’d try brain surgery, lady. You got a record, you take what you get. Benjy used to clean places. Me, I paint houses. Fuck, what time is it, anyway? What day?”
“Benjy ever take you out on the river?”
“Huh?”
“He was a rower, right?”
“Oh, yeah, he used to stay in shape on one of them machines up at Concord. Machine, boat, same shit, he says. But he liked it on the river. I got no use for it. I go to the gym, but the river, man, it stinks. You fall in, they gotta give you a shot.”
“He store his kayak here?”
“I didn’t even know he had a boat. Look, maybe he was into loan sharks. That’s all I can figure.”
“I told you. He had money.”
“Well, shit, maybe that’s where he got it from. Jesus, he finally gets some money and now he’s dead. You know, I ain’t gonna go to work today after all. What the fuck good is money anyway? Get some, you die. Your buddy’s dead, you should get to take the fuckin’ day off, right?” He lifted the bottle and took another swig.
I tried to get him back on the track, but the liquor glazed his eyes and made him repeat my questions instead of answering them. He grew increasingly maudlin and increasingly incoherent, and I didn’t learn much beyond the fact that he wasn’t Benjy’s partner in blackmail. I figured I ought to cut my losses and get out before somebody stole my car. Church told me to be sure and drop by again. I think he’d forgotten who I was and why I’d come.
I kicked the board out of the way so the vestibule door would shut. Let the construction workers press the buzzers and wake the tenants. Two Latino boys had materialized on the basketball court. They looked at me with dead eyes. I walked down the narrow path to the parking lot, then stopped and turned suddenly. The boys were shooting hoops, feinting and dribbling, trash-talking in Spanish. No one else was there, but I had the same feeling I’d had when Leon walked away from my house in the darkness—that someone was watching. I walked some more, listening for footsteps behind me. Nothing. Probably someone looking down from one of the apartment windows.
My car was there, unharmed. I checked the time on the dashboard clock and decided I could afford a brief detour. I took Market Street through Allston-Brighton, sneaked onto Parsons behind St. Columbkille’s Church, then drove the loop of the Birmingham Parkway, looking for the place where Benjy Dowling’s life had come to an abrupt end. No broken glass on the pavement. No brownish stains. A Buick honked as I slowed to check for yellow crime-scene tape. I didn’t see any. Nor did I see any pedestrians, not even in the middle of the day. A couple of bicyclists, yes, but no walkers.
Damn it, I wanted the accident report. I wanted details. I phoned Todd Geary and left a message on his line, telling him to get in touch with the officer in charge, have the police report Xeroxed and sent to my house.
CHAPTER 19
From Greenough Street on the Cambridge side of the river, the Charles looked gray and sullen. I scanned the riverbank as I drove, looking for boathouses, wondering whether Dowling, who’d used the river as a road the night of the money drop, might have traveled it again the night he died. Stands of high cattails blocked my view.
By the time I found a parking place in the Square, I was eight minutes late for my appointment with Chaney’s enemy and department chair, George Fording. I donned my jacket, smoothed my hair, and then dodged Rollerblading students over the cobblestone paths, wishing I’d worn sneakers and a fuller skirt. I had no trouble entering the building or making my way unchallenged to the third floor. The olive-skinned young man behind the desk in Fording’s outer office gravely informed me that Fording was also running behind schedule. It would be another five minutes, possibly more.
I told the young man I’d be back, then retreated down a flight of stairs. I sat on a bench underneath a poster advertising an upcoming lecture in Askwith Hall. The subject: “Theory vs. Research in Education.” It was subtitled “Intended and Unintended Consequences.”
I grabbed my cell phone, dialed information, and got the number for Groton Academy before I realized I didn’t know Mrs. Chaney’s son’s last name. Damn. It wouldn’t be Chaney. It would be her first husband’s surname. I asked for the headmaster’s office, identified myself as Mrs. Chaney’s personal assistant, and asked whether Byron had safely returned from his weekend.
There was a pause. “Let me check,” quavered a middle-aged alto.
I was zapped on hold and treated to symphonic dreck, the sort of middle-of-the-road slop no one would listen to outside a dentist’s office or an elevator. Two chattering students passed, hunched under heavy backpacks. I checked my watch again. I’d stay on hold three minutes, no more.
The shaky alto interrupted. “Excuse me, but Byron has no scheduled overnights until the end of term. Byron Chase?”
“Right.”
“He hasn’t been off campus in weeks.”
“I must have misunderstood.” I apologized for taking up her time and crossed Byron off my list of suspects. Good. I didn’t have to worry about some stepfather-stepson intrigue.
I glanced at my watch again and considered calling Leon. Later, I told myself. Not enough time now. I went back upstairs, and as I approached Fording’s office, the olive-skinned man stuck his head out the door and waved me onward. He rapidly ushered me to an inner office door, rapped three times, and shoved the door ajar.
Dr. Fording sprang out of his chair, a small man in a three-piece suit. He stood by his de
sk, bobbing his head, and declaring himself delighted to meet me. His assistant’s eyes took in his smile and raised me from the level of peon to prospective lecturer at the ed school. I attributed Fording’s courtly greeting to Mrs. Chaney’s self-trumpeted influence.
He was narrow across the shoulders, long-waisted, and short-legged. His gold-rimmed spectacles shortened the bridge of a snub nose. He had smooth pink skin, silvery hair, the genial features of an aging elf. He wore pinstriped navy wool and invited me to sit with a smooth and practiced gesture. When he sat, he looked taller than he was.
The olive-skinned man closed the door with a discreet click.
The carpet was a vintage Oriental, the desk antique cherry. The chair into which I lowered my rear end was covered in a rich tapestrylike fabric. I wondered if Fording had another office somewhere where he worked. This one looked like a stage set. It was so perfect and the little man fitted into it so perfectly that it made me suspect him of something: impersonating a Harvard professor, if not actively pursuing a career as a blackmailer on the side. I inhaled the aroma of apple-scented wood from the picture-perfect logs on the fireplace and automatically scanned the mantelpiece for a pipe rack. Surely such a carefully cultivated image required a pipe. Bet he used to smoke one before the threat of mouth cancer made him give up the show.
“Bad business, this,” he said.
Out of sheer perversity, I said nothing. I like silence myself. Doesn’t bother me at all, and I find it revealing to watch others squirm their way through it. The two windows were draped in heavy velvet, the lighting indirect.
“I understand you work for Wilson’s attorney?” Fording said.
I nodded.
“May I see some identification?”
It amazes me how often otherwise-responsible people accept strangers for who they say they are. My respect for the man shot up. Of course, if I’d wanted to fool him, I’d have taken pains to provide myself with exactly the sort of laminated photo ID I now passed politely over the desktop.
He scanned it briefly. “Well, anything I can do to hurry Wilson’s return, I’m more than happy to do. I just don’t understand what that can be.”