“Is it really necessary to sell the house?” he asked, and she nodded. “I suppose,” he said, lowering his voice, “you want a divorce.”
“When you feel up to it.”
He looked away, his forehead wrinkling. “Please, do me a favor.”
“What is it, Chris?”
“Get out,” he said softly.
• • •
She walked out into the swelter, the heat of the city rushing at her. With a light head and a stunning sense of freedom, she floated into the crowd, found it congenial, allowed it to dictate her direction, which was to the plaza of the Kennedy Building. At first she did not recognize the black man coming toward her. He was wearing dark glasses and had his suitcoat slung over his shoulder. They jostled each other. The impact was slight.
“I know you,” she said. “You were baby-sitting me.”
“You knew,” he said without surprise, his face shining from a patina of sweat. People slid looks at them in passing. She nodded.
“I called the Wellesley police when I was sure you were watching my house. They told me not to worry about it. They said you were keeping an eye on the neighborhood, to prevent break-ins. That made me feel safe, even though I knew it was a lie.”
“Why did you think I was there?” he asked.
“Something to do with my husband. Maybe somebody was trying to get at him through me. I’ve been a cop’s wife for a long time, you see. Or maybe I’m reading this all wrong. Who are you?”
“I’m a special agent, FBI.”
Her face darkened. “Is my husband in trouble?” she asked, and Agent Blue immediately shook his head. “We’re separated,” she said, “but I still worry about him.”
“I understand,” Blue said. The crowd pushed them closer. Two teenage girls shuffling by in sandals stopped abruptly to peer at him for a second, as if they thought he might be a celebrity of sorts, a singer or a comic.
Susan Wade said, “Will you let me take you to dinner? I don’t feel like going home and eating alone.”
He looked down at his shoes.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, “I should’ve asked if you’re married.”
“Yes,” he said, meeting her gaze. “I am.”
“Your wife could come too. That would be nice.” She paused, aware of her own growing embarrassment. “No … I guess she wouldn’t understand.”
“I think she would,” Blue said and offered his arm.
• • •
The sun vanished, but the air was still stifling. In the North End people sat on kitchen chairs placed in front of buildings and fanned themselves. Anthony Gardella, leaving his real estate office, spoke to people he knew, which was nearly everybody. A woman smiled at him proudly. She was sitting with a fat, bald-headed baby who looked like a miniature masseur. The baby, wearing only a diaper, had an unsightly rash, which did not prevent Gardella from petting the child’s head. The woman said, “That was terrible about Augie.”
“Yes, it was terrible,” he said and turned a censorious eye on a passing dark-haired girl whose underpants, patterned with daisies, blossomed through her tight, thin shorts. It was the woman’s niece. “Tell her,” he said, “if she leaves the neighborhood that way she won’t be safe.”
He crossed the street, spoke to others, and entered the Caffè Pompei. A table in the rear was cleaned off for him, and a glass of lime juice topped with crushed ice was soon served. Cigarette smoke spiraled at him, and he asked the man at the next table to reposition his ashtray. Instead, the man ground the cigarette. Halfway through his drink he sensed a movement beside him and glanced up sharply. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve got a right.”
“Sure you do,” he said as Christopher Wade sat down. “I’m just surprised.” He gestured to a waiter. “Usually I’d recommend a cappuccino, but on a night like — ”
“What you have looks good,” Wade said, and the waiter brought him one. He wrapped his hands around the glass as if to cool them.
“That’s a nice ring you’ve got,” Gardella said. “I meant to mention it before.”
Wade looked at it, seemed to study it. “Emerald, my birthstone. My wife gave it to me years ago.”
“Okay, Wade, what’s the story? We got a problem?”
“No.”
“Something you want to tell me or ask me?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I see,” Gardella said dryly. “You dropped in for nothing.”
“I didn’t feel like going to my apartment. No air conditioning.”
“I’ll tell you your problem,” Gardella said. “It’s what I told you a long time ago. No guy should live alone. You live alone, you don’t eat right, you don’t make your bed, you don’t pick up after yourself. Pretty soon you start looking seedy. You want to know something? Right now you look seedy.”
“It’s the heat.”
“It’s going to be hotter tomorrow and stay that way through the week. I’m beating it. I’m leaving for Rye tomorrow afternoon. You’re smart, you’ll come with me. You could use a few days’ rest.”
Wade was silent for some time. He was wearing a body microphone and a tape recorder beneath his clothes. For a giddy second he considered opening his shirt and exposing them. “You’re sure I wouldn’t be in the way?”
Gardella laughed. “That happens, I’ll tell you.”
• • •
Russell Thurston left his car in the dark off Dewey Square and walked to South Station, whose grandeur was now confined to its Ionic columns and its weathered eagle perched atop the building. Inside, vagrants momentarily got in his way, shuffling toward him like gray ghosts and then drifting off, as if they could tell from his face that he was not the sort to give. The floor of the concourse was cracked and grimy. Merchants’ booths were boarded up, some for the night, some forever. People waiting for Amtrak trains were few. Thurston looked for a woman wearing a headscarf and saw her right away. Dropping down beside her on the bench, he said, “Do I know you?”
“You will,” she said in the same slow and forced voice that she had used much earlier on the telephone. Her voice had intrigued him, along with what she had to say.
He said, “What’s the matter with your face?”
“My jaw was broken. I still have some wire in it.”
“I still don’t know your name.”
“Laura will do.”
He scrutinized her carefully, openly, from the polish on her mouth to the pumps on her feet. He estimated the cost of her clothes, the rings on her fingers, and the bracelet on her incredibly thin wrist. Her scent was subtle, which also told him something. “You look too intelligent for the business you’re in,” he said.
“You don’t know what business I’m in.”
“Do you want me to tell you?”
She retreated from his stare by gazing off toward a section of the station where marble had been sledgehammered away, as if in a burst of energy from a workman without purpose. An Amtrak patrolman, finishing off a candy bar, tossed the wrapper into the rubble. She said, “Are you ready to listen?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
She talked without looking at him, in her labored voice, which had soft breaks in it, sudden catches, at odd times a wheeze. Her mouth began to look sore, then her whole face. “Rest if you want,” he said, but she continued talking. When she finished, he again scrutinized her, this time as if she were someone much more valuable. He said, “This is bigger than just Scatamacchia, you understand that. If you give me him, you’ve got to give Scandura too, maybe even Gardella.”
“No,” she said, “you take what I give you or nothing.”
“We’ll work something out,” he said. “We’ll do it slow and easy, okay?”
“There’s a condition,” she stated flatly. “When you arrest him, I want to be there. I want him to see me.”
Thurston’s smile was instantaneous. “You know something, Laura? I could learn to like you.”
•
• •
Christopher Wade left the Caffè Pompei and returned to the deserted Saltonstall Building, where a security guard let him in and walked him to the elevator. When he learned that Wade was staying the night, he joked with him. “What have you got up there, a bed?”
“No,” said Wade. “A bag.”
In his office, after giving a quick look at his watch, he plucked up the phone, pressed numbers, and held the receiver hard against his ear. He counted the rings. When Jane Gardella picked up on the fifth, he said, “This is Sweetheart.” There was silence. He said, “Your husband’s joining you tomorrow.”
“Why are you telling me something I already know? Why are you even calling?”
“I’ll be there too.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t want you up here.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“I’ll leave.”
“No, you can’t do that either.”
“Why can’t I?”
“You need me,” he said.
• • •
The body, meant to rest forever in the bed of the river, wriggled free of its weights, floated serenely to the surface, and drifted with the current. Two boys fishing for hornpout and dragging up nothing but eels spotted it in the moonlight. The river was the Shawsheen in Andover.
Local police were presently at the scene and, using poles, coaxed the body out of the sedge where it had settled and guided it to shore, where they stretched it out on the bank. A state trooper, who just arrived from the Andover barracks, bent over it with a flashlight and illuminated the face. “He couldn’t have been in the water long,” he opined. The mosquitoes were brutal. Swatting at them with his free hand, he flashed the light on the sodden shirt and said, “That looks like a bullet wound, what d’you think?”
An Andover policeman, who had never seen a bullet wound before, said, “Could be.”
The trooper, a corporal named Denton, returned the light to the face. “I used to be stationed in Lee,” he said. “I swear, there’s a cop in Greenwood looks just like this guy.”
22
CHRISTOPHER WADE AND ANTHONY GARDELLA walked over wet flats of sand, leaving behind squishy footprints. Gardella had the wider foot. Wade had the longer one, the lighter one. He was unencumbered, unwired, at ease for the present. He had packed brilliant swim trunks and was wearing them, along with a loose and open short-sleeved shirt to protect his shoulders from the sun. Gardella, bare-chested, darker-skinned, didn’t worry about the rays. He said, “How are you doing?”
“Enjoying,” Wade replied, his eye glancing over people they came upon, a mother doling out sandwiches from a basket, a girl improving her tan.
“Good,” said Gardella. “I want you to relax.”
“Any special reason?”
“Does there have to be one?”
“Sometimes it helps.”
Gardella veered away and waded into the surf, dipping a hand into the water to bless himself and then hurling himself headfirst into the onslaught of a wave. Stripping off his shirt, Wade followed but was slow to plunge in. The current around his legs was frigid. It was only when he saw Gardella watching him that he doused his face and challenged a wave. When they came out of the water, Gardella said, “I could live here.”
“You’ve mentioned it.”
“Year round. Forever.” Gardella gave Wade a sideways look of irony. “But I could be kidding myself.”
“People do that.” Wade, still wet, put his shirt back on. Gardella flexed his arms, letting the sun dry him.
“Since my first wife died, maybe I’ve been kidding myself a lot.”
“Meaning?”
“I’m thinking out loud, Wade. Pay no attention.”
They walked on, past children using shovels and pails. Gulls, which had arrayed themselves on the beach as if for a charge, scattered reluctantly but soon regrouped, like tactical geniuses.
Gardella said, “My boys were little, they couldn’t wait for summer to come here. They knew every inch of the beach. Then they got older, you couldn’t drag them here. How do you figure that?”
“Typical, I guess.”
“My oldest son, the marine, he’s too cocky for his own good. He got promoted and demoted in the same week. Two black guys in the mess hall gave him a hard time, and he went at them both. Could’ve got himself killed. But I don’t worry about him. He’s tough. It’s Tommy I think about — you met him, the tender one. His mother always thought I’d be hard on him because of the way he is, but the truth is I favor him.”
“What’s the matter with him?’
“Nothing,” said Gardella darkly. “Nothing you’d notice.”
When they returned to the house, Jane Gardella began preparing a small meal for the three of them. She set a table on the patio, laying out cornflower-blue napkins to complement the color of the crockery. She looked especially leggy in an overlarge sweatshirt that covered her shorts. Slipping an arm around her, Gardella drew her close and smiled at Wade. “Don’t you think I’m lucky?” he said with something ambiguous in his voice that caused Wade to look away.
“I hope you like crabmeat,” Jane Gardella said quickly to Wade.
The table was slightly unsteady and trembled throughout the meal, the conversation guided by Gardella, who kept it casual, interesting, at times witty. Bantering about Ronald Reagan, he said, “I finally figured out what he’s really got against the Russians. They’re there.” He told a joke. “What’s endless love?” he asked, and answered, “Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder playing tennis.” He nodded to his wife. “I’ll have some more bread.” She passed the plate, eyes lowered.
When the meal was over, Wade excused himself. He was out of cigarettes, he said, and was going to Philbrick’s to buy some. Gardella said, “Pick me up a paper.”
Outside Philbrick’s, he counted his change and telephoned Thurston, reaching him after a short delay. “In case you’re wondering,” he said, “I’m in Rye. I’ll be here for a few days.”
“Good for you,” Thurston said. “While you’re there ask Gardella why he wasted Hunkins.”
Wade went cold in the heat. “What are you talking about?”
“Get yourself a newspaper. You can read about it.” Thurston seemed in a strangely good mood, which chilled Wade even more. “Listen, I’m glad I’ve got you on the line. I want you to think back to the first time you went to Gardella’s place in Rye. You had dinner. He had a woman there for you. Called herself Laura.”
“I gave you a full report.”
“Now I’ve got questions.”
• • •
Agents Danley and Dane drove Laura thirty miles out of the city to a Holiday Inn, where they checked her in under a fictitious name and checked themselves into the unit next to hers. Dane took his shoes off and stretched out on one of the beds to watch television. Danley went next door to see how she was doing. She was undressing. “Next time knock, for Christ’s sake!” she said and snatched up her robe.
“I’m sorry,” said Danley. “I thought you might be hungry. If you don’t like the food here, I can go out for something.”
“I can’t chew. All I can have is soup or something soft.”
“You tell me what you want, I’ll get it.”
“What I want to know is how long I’ll be here.”
“You have to ask the boss that. Could be a while. But anything you want, all you have to do is ask. Those are his orders.”
She said, “I want Deputy Superintendent Scatamacchia’s balls on a platter.”
Danley, blushing a little, said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“But nobody else’s. I don’t think your boss understands that yet.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, reaching for the door. “I’ll pass that on to him.”
“One other thing,” she said. “Don’t patronize me.”
• • •
Sara Dillon, standing on the landing, could hear Rita O’Dea’s voice in the room being converted to a nursery. “I want pretty t
hings on the wall, lots of bright colors. Babies, soon as they can see, notice those things.” Rita O’Dea’s voice was fluting, breathy, aggressive. She was instructing an interior decorator, who had arrived with a flourish but had wilted fast. “Mobiles we want, right? And the furniture’s going to be white. I like white.”
Sara Dillon heard a sound on the stairs behind her and turned to see Alvaro, who was also listening. He said, “I bet you wonder about us. Me and Rita.”
“No, I don’t wonder at all.”
“In bed, I mean. It’s an experience, I’ll tell you.”
“I’m not interested.”
His eyes traveled over her. “You’re getting big in the belly,” he said and passed a hand over it.
“Don’t do that.”
“My mother was pregnant, she always let us kids touch her. Feel. Listen. Put our ear right there. She said it was a miracle.”
“It is,” Sara Dillon said, “but I’m not your mother.”
“My mother used to show her tits. Used to shake ’em at us. At the time it made me sick. Now all I do is think about it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t help you.”
“I’d pay you.”
“Go away, Alvaro,” she said with a throb of discomfort. Her legs were swollen and her back was bothering her. For a moment her eyes failed to focus.
“Go ahead, fall,” he said. “I’ll catch you.” She reached for the rail. He said, “You were my lady, you’d still be getting your lovin’, believe me.”
“If I were your lady, I wouldn’t have a future.”
From the room came Rita O’Dea’s voice, sharply pitched. “Who’s out there? That you, Sara? Come in here, I want your advice on something.”
“She’s crazy, you know,” he said.
“No,” said Sara Dillon, looking at him a little sadly. “She’s as sane as you are.”
In his office at the Area D station, Deputy Superintendent Scatamacchia had stripped off his uniform shirt and was sitting at his desk in a coarse gray T-shirt, the sort athletes wear. At his elbow was a half-consumed can of Pepsi. He was about to turn the page of the police newsletter he was reading when he sensed eyes upon him. A man was peering in from the open doorway.
Sweetheart Page 22