by Linda Barnes
I glanced around cautiously, knowing that cops and doughnut shops go hand in hand, but the place was deserted. Didn’t bode well for the coffee. No sirens, no prowl cars. No activity across the street. I ordered two glazed doughnuts and coffee for myself, the same for Señorita Moros Santos. The middle-aged waitress had dull eyes.
At first, Señorita Moros Santos seemed too nervous to eat, but once she took her first bite, the doughnut disappeared in a few ravenous swallows. Then she started to talk again, and it seemed as though she’d keep going forever. Most of it was in Spanish, but the occasional phrase came out in English. I didn’t have trouble following her.
She loved her business and she loved Medford, which was also where she lived, and nothing like this had ever happened to her before, and it was terrible, terrible, that it had happened now, when she was so busy and understaffed. She wasn’t a grand cleaning business like the ones that did the big skyscrapers in Boston, but she didn’t have the union problems they did, either. She had lots of family members on her crews and she’d brought over friends and family from Guatemala, sponsored them now she was a citizen, and everyone was willing to work long hours because they were used to it and they wanted to stay in this country, and the money she made was very good, very good. Even her lone American was happy to work for low wages because, well, he was so very interested in the future of her firm.
An employee willing to work for low wages always catches my attention. The way she spoke about his interest in her future made me check her hands again, looking for an engagement ring. She blushed and paused, and I got a chance to insert a couple of questions.
“Do you sell uniforms? Coveralls for cleaning?”
“No.”
Dowling hadn’t bought the coveralls from Graylie; so much for that theory.
“Do you work for any of the universities in the area. Tufts? Harvard?”
“No, no.”
She was off again, and I learned she had an indirect connection to Harvard, cleaning many of its research labs. She was very proud that she was a licensed and bonded agency. No one ever complained about her work. Prompt, her people were, and they cleaned very well.
“Do you want another doughnut?”
She looked at the case longingly, then patted her round stomach and declined.
I said, “The American man who works with you, he has the other desk in your office?”
“Sí. We work together most days.”
“He only answers the phone?”
“Ai, no, he is so good with customers. He does everything. Even he heads one of the cleaning crews. He doesn’t want to be the favorite, the owner’s pet boy, my Ben.”
I was glad I hadn’t been drinking coffee when she gave his name; I’d have choked while trying to swallow. “Excuse me, but what’s Ben’s full name?”
“Benjamin Dennison.” She smiled as if it were the most beautiful name she’d ever heard, said it like the syllables were musical notes. The way her tongue caressed it, I wondered if she sat and practiced writing it over and over like some high school girl: Señora Dennison, Señora Dennison.
“And how long has he worked with you?”
The blush reasserted itself. “Almost a year now. We are such very good friends.”
“And so you’ve told him about the breakin?”
“Ai, no. I cannot. He is gone away. Very sudden, he goes. I don’t even know he is planning to go, but maybe it is his family. You know, sometimes things happen, and there’s nothing you can do but go yourself.”
“Where is his family?”
“I think maybe New York. I don’t really know. We have not yet been acquainted, but soon we will all meet. Maybe he goes to tell them about me.”
“When will he be back?”
“He didn’t say. The note he left is so very short. He say not to worry. He knows me—always I worry. And now look, see what has happened, and he is gone.” She gave me a wry smile, but the worry predominated, shadowing her black stone eyes. I thought she had more reason to worry than she knew.
“So you’re engaged?”
“Sí.”
“A handsome man?”
“Sí. Very.”
“You have a photo?”
“No. Ben hates it to have his picture taken. He hates it.”
“He is tall?”
“No, not so tall as you, señorita. You are tall as a man.”
“He has dark hair?”
“Sí. Dark hair, dark eyes. Muy guapo.”
She’d grown to rely on Ben because his English was so very good. She absolutely depended on him. He was such a devoted employee. She trusted him so much. Really, she hadn’t realized how much she’d placed on his plate. She didn’t actually do the cleaning much anymore, not that any of them were above pitching in. She kept coveralls at the office in case she had to fill in for a sick worker. The big firms expected things to get done. They didn’t want their efficiency hurt by a slow cleaning crew.
Shit. If her Ben was my Benjy, I bet she didn’t know about the ex-con stuff any more than she knew his real name. Maybe he’d told her he had trouble with the IRS so that she’d pay him in cash. Maybe she paid all her employees in cash.
I said, “Tell me, do you work for a company called Improvisational Technologies?”
“Sí, that’s one of Ben’s places. Always he goes with the team to Impro.”
Impro. That word was emblazoned on a mug on Benjy’s windowsill, next to an unwatered plant.
“Excuse me,” I said softly. “Did you drop this?” I had placed the photo of Benjy in my jacket pocket, just in case. Now I mimed plucking it off the floor under her seat.
“Oh,” she said. “No, but look, that is Ben, yes. Maybe he put it in my bag for a surprise. It’s not so good a likeness, too dark, but you see how he is handsome? Muy guapo.”
I agreed with her, then deliberately glanced at my watch and looked out the window. “Where can they be? Really, a team should have come by now. I’d better see what’s holding them up.”
“Shall I go back to the office? Leave things alone? Fix things?”
“No, no, you finish your coffee, Señorita Moros Santos. If I’m told to report to another crime scene, you remember to tell the new people everything you told me.” I patted her on the shoulder, but I couldn’t offer any more reassurance, couldn’t make myself say that everything would be all right. Because it wouldn’t.
I called the Medford cops from a pay phone, reported the crime again, but this time I added an untruth, saying the thief might still be on the premises, possibly armed and dangerous. I thought that might speed them along sooner. I wondered if the señorita would ask them about me, about what had become of the tall Anglo woman cop with the so very red hair.
If my deception came home to roost, so be it. I couldn’t worry about it now. I had other fish to fry, plenty of them. For instance, I wanted to see exactly what Benjy Dowling had cleaned at Improvisational Technologies.
CHAPTER 24
I drove the twisting parkways on autopilot, considering the breakin at Dennison/Dowling’s workplace, dismissing the possibility that some clueless thief would choose that office to rifle and rob, not the shop next door or the liquor store down the block, but the office in which Dowling had a desk. Did Dowling’s killer imagine he kept blackmail materials at the office rather than at home? Would I need to visit his house again? If I did, would the woman cooking barley soup downstairs make me for the exterminator?
I recalled the photo of Dowling I’d left with the señorita, the hooded dark eyes, straight nose, and heavy brow. What in that face had made Denali Brinkman, small, blond, delicate but strong Denali, take notice? Question: How does a Harvard girl meet an ex-con? Answer: She spots him shoving a mop across the floor of her lover’s research facility and, boom, it’s love at first sight. Something wrong there.
But, of course, Denali and Benjy had rowing in common. Maybe she’d met him on the river, never known his interest in her lover’s business. I tried to
make the couple work. I thought about the men I’ve dated, the men I’ve seriously dated, not the one-night stands or the blind dates recommended by friends you realize you don’t really know. The men I’ve dated have stuff in common. They’re tall, for one thing. I’ve wondered about it, about whether I harbor some secret desire to be dominated, but I think it’s just the culture; I’m not immune to it. I’ve never really dated anyone much shorter than my own six one. It limits the field.
Beyond the physical, there are other similarities in my men: humor, sensuality, intensity. Plus, like a lot of women, I tend not to date down, not to date guys less educated than I am. That doesn’t mean I need to see a prospective date’s college diploma—or proof of professional employment. It just means I look for a guy who’s quick on the uptake, a guy with something on the ball. No one I’d spoken to had stressed Dowling’s brilliance. Everyone I’d spoken to had stressed Denali’s.
Had Dowling been a break in her pattern? Or had Chaney? What was there about both men that had drawn Denali Brinkman? Had the choice of Dowling been a reaction against the overly intellectual Chaney? Had the girl felt so outranked, so outmatched by her Harvard peers that she’d rebelled and chosen a townie like Dowling? Had she been on some precipitous mental decline? Had Dowling been part of the disease that led to her decision to die?
Always supposing she’d made that decision herself … I kept coming back to that: Had Denali chosen to die? I sighed, punched on the WUMB-tuned radio, lucked into Chris Smither singing “Drive You Home Again,” and let his intricate guitar work overwhelm the throb of unanswered questions in my head. Times like this, you follow the leads, do the work, take it doggedly step by step, and hope something makes sense. Usually, I excel at theorizing, at speculation, if you will. Mooney used to tease me about my vaunted “intuition.” I wondered what he’d make of this mess, wondered if the Cambridge cops and the Brighton cops and the Medford cops would ever realize they each held a piece of the same puzzle.
I knew it. Did it do me any good?
I decided on a quick stop at the house to grab the police report on Dowling’s accident. Roz heard my key in the door and wanted my opinion on a prospective tattoo, an abstract bow and arrow design of indelible weirdness that she was planning for her left breast.
“You need money?” I asked, only partially to change the subject.
“Why?” She was wearing what looked like a slip, black and shocking pink, barely covering her butt. Her legs were bare until you got to the big furry puppy slippers. If she’d opened the door to the messenger wearing that outfit—well, I was surprised he wasn’t still panting on the doorstep.
“Impro,” I said. “Improvisational Technologies, a research lab affiliated with Harvard.” I told her I wanted every scrap, who stood to make money, who stood to lose it. Anything and everything she could find, as quickly as possible.
“Oh,” she said. “You got a message. Woman. Jeannie St. something.”
“Cyr.”
“Yeah. She says you should come by and grab a trophy. Does that make sense?”
“Did she leave her number?”
“Yeah.”
“Call her back, tell her you’re my—” What? I thought. Not assistant, not associate. Friend would have to do it. “Say you’re my friend and that I asked you to pick it up for me. Okay? Then do it. Be really nice to her, okay?”
“What? You think I’m not nice?”
“Just be yourself. And take along one of those photos from Magazine Street Beach. Ask Jeannie if she knows the man in the picture.”
“Just knows him?”
“Yeah. And if she ever saw him with Denali.”
“Denali. Like the mountain? Am I supposed to know Denali?”
“Don’t complicate it.”
“Way cool name, Denali.”
She saluted and I took charge of the police report. Before I left, I picked up another photo of Benjy Dowling as well, and a Pepsi from the fridge.
Improvisational Technologies was in north Brighton, the scene of the hit-and-run an easy detour. I headed west on Memorial Drive, took Greenough to Arsenal, crossing over Soldiers Field Road, then turning left to join it. Traffic was light on the Birmingham Parkway, no pedestrians, not even a cyclist. I drove the complete loop of roadway, retraced my route, and pulled into the narrow access road near the Day’s Inn. In the small, deserted parking lot, I came to a halt between yellow lines.
The Birmingham Parkway runs almost parallel to Soldiers Field Road. There’s not much ground between the two big streets, a football field’s worth, maybe. The businesses, a McDonald’s, a Staples, a party store, front on Soldiers Field and turn their backs on Birmingham. Only an oldies radio station and the motel face the parkway. Traffic is heavier on Soldiers Field, cars heading downtown. Trucks take the Birmingham Parkway, the quickest path to North Beacon Street. Across the parkway, a rusty six-foot fence barred pedestrians from the slightly elevated Mass Pike. Farther on the left lay a construction site littered with massive lengths of pipe, wide-diameter pipe big enough to sleep in if you were homeless. But Dowling wasn’t homeless.
I couldn’t imagine what had brought Dowling on foot to this ugly urban stretch of roadway, any more than I could conjure what Denali had seen in him. Maybe he’d hitched a ride as far as Mickey D’s. I wondered if the cops had questioned the burger-flippers and fry cooks. I opened the envelope, read the typed double-spaced report, then exited the car.
Nearly lunchtime. A stream of cars was starting to pull into the McDonald’s drive-through lane, but I could have stood in the middle of the road for five minutes without a car passing the spot where the van had smashed into Dowling. I traced hypothetical footsteps. If he was coming from the river, he’d have had to cross Soldiers Field, scoot through the McDonald’s lot, walk in near darkness down an unpaved path almost as far as the construction site, then cross four more lanes toward the inaccessible turnpike. I considered the path in reverse; no illuminating insights.
According to the police report, all area businesses had been canvassed, all workers, customers, even motel guests questioned, with no results. I walked to the the site the diagram specified as the place the body had been found, an upgrade near the Mass Pike fence. The grass was brown and matted by heavy feet. I yanked out the scene-of-crime photographs.
Dowling looked more like a bloody rag doll than a human, his neck bent at an impossible angle, his legs crushed, his body torn, and yet it was hard for me, even with the awful photos in my face, to regard him in a sympathetic light. Ex-con, blackmailer, deceiver—he might be all of those, I reminded myself, but he was still a victim, dead before his time. For a moment, a thought flickered like a dying bulb and I saw a possible link between Chaney and Dowling. Both victims.
I crossed the road and stared at the construction site. It looked abandoned. I kept walking, found Market Street closer than I expected, over a shallow rise.
The Birmingham Parkway came to a dead end at Market. Faces stared at me speculatively from behind the wheels of Hondas and pickup trucks, and the prickly feeling at the back of my neck made me glance around sharply, searching for—I don’t know—maybe a black TransAm. Everything seemed normal. I was simply the lone pedestrian as far as the eye could see, a curiosity.
I took note of the buildings, the number of for sale signs, the new construction. Harvard had bought up a lot of the land here. There was speculation in the newspapers as to which of the Cambridge colleges might be asked to move to this less-desirable location, on the same side of the river as the Business School but without the ivied redbrick splendor of the Cambridge campus, without the storied history.
I walked back to the car, got the address for Improvisational Technologies. Life Street. Off Guest Street. And Guest Street was off Market Street, close, very close. Dowling could have been heading toward Impro when he died.
Chaney’s baby, Improvisational. An attempt to improve the lives of those with AHDH through a new drug, an alternative to Ritalin and Adderall,
a better, safer, stronger drug. Fording had pooh-poohed it as a moneymaker, but what had Chaney’s wife said? Her husband wasn’t a wealthy man yet. She wouldn’t divorce him now. I wondered whether she was waiting for a big score, whether Impro figured into her plans.
I placed the police report on the passenger seat, keyed the ignition. I’d go there, trust to the moment, see what I could learn.
My cell rang. I glared at it, considered ignoring it, then answered. It was Geary, the lawyer, feeling pretty full of himself. He hadn’t had to arrange bail for Chaney after all. The cops didn’t have a leg to stand on. Not only had he fearlessly wrested his client from their clutches but shark-to-shark courtesy had prevailed, and if I could be at 500 Federal Street in fifteen minutes, Mr. Fitch, attorney for the plaintiffs suing Harvard, would grant me an audience.
“Can he see me later today?” I asked. “After lunch?”
“He can see you for five minutes in fifteen minutes, period. Then he’s going to New York and then to Washington, and you’ll be lucky if I can get you in to see him in six weeks.”
There are times I miss being a cop. Not many, granted, but this was one. A cop doesn’t work alone. A cop is part of a team, and right now I wanted to send a member of my team to cover the lawyer while I continued on to Impro. But there was only me.
Fifteen minutes was cutting it close, but I’d absorbed enough caffeine to know I could make it. Hell, I could probably make it if I had to abandon the car and run.
CHAPTER 25
The rowers on the river glided along like exotic waterfowl, lifting their oars in unison and flowing gracefully under the bridges. The traffic on Storrow Drive, tracing the curve of the Charles, was stop-and-go. Drivers, penned in their stuffy cars, honked and gave one another the finger. The Leverett Circle jam stretched back toward Charles Street, so I took the exit, edging through narrow Beacon Hill streets, using my cabbie know-how to avoid main drags and stoplights. The parking gods smiled, and I hastily pulled into a just-vacated slot. I stuck bare feet into pumps, fed the meter, and rushed down the street, only three minutes behind schedule.