Blunt Darts - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  "You know, that's why they got me in here."

  Usually, but not always.

  "They gave me my own office. Me, a reporter. No Pulitzer putzin' Prize or anything. Just me. In my day I don't think the city editor had his own office. But I got one. You know why?"

  I cleared my throat. "Ah, no, Mo, I don't."

  "It's because of them." He swung his hand in an all-inclusive circle. "It's because of youth. The brass is afraid I'll infect them. So they stay out there with their video terminals and I stay in here with my Remington," which he paused to slap firmly but affectionately. "I type my stories on this, then they gotta go to somebody on one of those terminals to be entered. 'Entered.' That's another one of those words like intern."

  "Bad words, Mo. One and all."

  "Tell me about it. I haven't had three stories in a year get printed without 'constituency' becoming 'constitutional' or 'receive' becoming 'recieve' or . . . oh, I dunno. I'm just so tired. So fuckin' tired."

  He paused again to try to resuscitate the cigar. I leaped in.

  "Mo, I was wondering if you could help me."

  "Sure thing, John." Two puffs. "What's up?"

  "I'm trying to locate a guy who was a reporter for a suburban paper and who now is supposed to be in Boston. His name is Thomas Doucette—"

  Mo held up his hand to stop me. "He's an assistant editor at the Gay News in the South End. I forget the street."

  "Thanks, Mo," I said, getting up.

  "Hell, if that's all you wanted," he said between pulls, "why didn't you just say so?"

  FIFTEENTH

  -♦-

  I had a filling meal at Dante's, a restaurant on Beacon Hill with a spicy Italian menu and an incongruously Asian staff. It's a candlelit place, spread over several rooms, with low ceilings and fireplaces. I was the only one eating alone. Romantic couples occasionally glanced sympathetically at me as I chomped my linguini and read my Evening Globe.

  The next morning I started out running four miles but cut it back to two because of the heat. I cleaned up and grabbed a few doughnuts on my way to the rent-a-car, happily still parked where I had left it. The Gay News was located on a South End street that was "in transition." In some cities, that expression is an unfortunate euphemism for a racial evolution. In Boston, however, the expression is used to reflect a building-by-building renovation. The South End (not to be confused with the heavily Irish South Boston, where I grew up) is predominantly narrow streets, some with imitation gas lamps. The architecture is three- and four-story attached brick townhouses, many with beautiful bowfront windows. The population is a mixture of upper middle class, young professionals, gays, blacks, Greeks, Cubans, and a dozen other racial or ethnic minorities. The major condominium developers moved from Back Bay and Beacon Hill to the waterfront, somewhat leap-frogging the South End because of its streetside drug trade and derelicts that are somehow never brought under control. Accordingly, each block is torn between gentrification and degeneration.

  The newspaper offices were over a Greek restaurant in the middle of one block. I found a parking space and trudged sweatily up the stairs.

  There was no air-conditioning, but by the bustle of activity in the one large cavern you'd never guess that the staff was troubled by the heat. About ten men and two women were telephoning, typing (old Standards, most not even electric), editing, or jabbering cross-desk or cross-room.

  A man about twenty-five came up to me. "Can I help you?" he said without expression.

  I decided to try a smile. "Mo Katzen at the Herald said I might find Thomas Doucette here."

  He smiled back. "I'll get him for you." Apparently trading on the news fraternity does open doors.

  I watched him walk to the back of the newsroom. He tapped a thirtyish, slim man with short-cropped blond hair who was bent over a spread of papers. My emissary pointed me out, and the blond man nodded and came over, hand extended.

  "I'm Thom Doucette. T-H-O-M if you're from the Herald, too."

  I wasn't sure if Doucette's remark was an inside joke or an acknowledgment of the staff spelling capacity of which Mo had complained. I laughed politely and shook hands.

  "My name is John Cuddy. Mo thought you might be able to help me with a story I'm following up."

  "Happy to if I can. Mo sat at my table at the last Boston Press luncheon." Doucette gave a quick frown.

  "He was one of two who would."

  I nodded. "It's kind of confidential? I glanced quickly around the room. "Is there some place private we could talk?"

  Doucette regarded me for a moment, then said, "Let me make a call first." He turned and moved to a vacant phone. His call was quickly concluded and he came back smiling. "All set. There's a park two blocks from here. It's not private, but it'll be a hell of a lot quieter and probably cooler than this place." He moved past me toward the door.

  "That's probably the least amount of time Mo's ever been on the phone in his life. What's your secret?"

  Doucette turned and gave me a sly smile. "Mo did say you were a pretty good detective."

  The "park" was in a traffic triangle perhaps fifty feet on a side. There were nine newly planted trees and four newly painted benches. One other bench was occupied by two men, one of whom smiled at me while the other frowned at him.

  Doucette and I took the farthest bench. There was very little traffic, and a robin played king of the hill to three sparrows in "our" tree. We had bought lemonades at a corner grocery and had just exhausted the subject of Mo Katzen as we settled onto our bench.

  "So," said Doucette as he downed the last of his drink, "what's the story you're following?"

  "The death of Diane Kinnington. I'm investigating the disappearance of her son, Stephen, and . . ."

  I stopped because Doucette's face had turned the color of dry putty, and I was afraid he was about to blow his lemonade all over me.

  "Shit," he said, "you're the guy who was at my parents' house."

  "That's right. Your mother seemed pretty upset."

  "She said it was a man and a woman. But she said they were from the school department."

  "No one misrepresented anything," I said quickly. "The woman I was with is a schoolteacher. Stephen was one of her students this year. I'm afraid your mother never let me introduce myself."

  Doucette gave a short laugh, and some of his color began to return. "That's like Mom. Always protective. Even to the point of getting the facts wrong."

  I sat back on the bench. "What are the facts, Mr. Doucette?"

  "Thom, please."

  "Thom."

  He stared at the ground and licked his lips. "Did the judge hire you?"

  Easily answered, but I decided a fuller explanation might advance me. "No. Confidentially, Stephen's grandmother, through that schoolteacher, hired me. So far as I can tell, the judge is hindering, rather than advancing, the search."

  Doucette grunted. "That doesn't surprise me." He licked his lips again, looked up at me, and took a deep breath. "Look, moving to Boston and working on this paper, the Gay News I mean, has been the best thing in my life. I've pretty much put Meade behind me. If . . . things got opened up again, I can't be part of it."

  "I understand."

  "No, no, I don't think you do." He seemed to puff up a little, regaining most of his color. "Working on this paper, you get cursed at and jeered at and threatened, but small-time stuff over the paper's telephone, sometimes at home. That's why I'm unlisted. But, the Kinnington death, that was the real thing. If he . . . if it's found out that I've talked to you, I could be killed. No joke. That was the threat then."

  I held him with my best steady look. "Thom, I promise that I will not tell anyone at any time that I've spoken with you."

  Doucette nodded once and swallowed twice. I offered him the rest of my lemonade and he downed it. He cleared his throat. "What do you want to know?"

  "As I started to say, I think there's a connection between Diane Kinnington's death and Stephen's disappearance. I don't know what
the connection is, but I think it might help me find him. Precious few people seem interested in helping me, including some of those who should be most concerned. Since I don't know what I'm looking for, it would probably be best for you to just tell me all you know, and even suspect, about her death that night."

  A woman walked by with a dainty dog on a purple ribbon leash. "Okay," Doucette said. He waited until she was out of earshot, then began.

  "I don't remember whether it was March or April, but it was cold and rainy. You know much about small-town newspapers?"

  "No."

  "We1l, a reporter isn't paid a lot, and the newsroom isn't open after maybe three P.M., so you get most of your tips from the police radio. One advantage is that by definition, you're close to the action in your town, and the Boston papers and stations don't beat you to the scene.

  "Well, it must have been about one in the morning, maybe one-thirty. I couldn't sleep that night, so I was dressed, but in bed, reading a novel. I was still living with my parents. I heard his . . . an officer named Gerald Blakey's voice came over the scanner on my bureau."

  "I've met him."

  Doucette visibly shivered, then continued. "Gerry was calling in to the dispatcher, saying a Mercedes had gone off the Swan Street bridge and was in the water."

  "Did Blakey say he saw the car go into the water?"

  Doucette finally looked at me as brightly as he had after the call to Mo. "No, which made me wonder how he could know it was a Mercedes. But I'll get to that."

  "Sorry," I said. "Go on."

  "When I heard Gerry's call, I pulled on a slicker and some boots and drove out there. It was a terrible night for driving. Still, the police station is in Meade Center and my parents live just off Swan, so I had a mile or so lead on the rest of the cops. I got to the bridge first. That is, Gerry was the only one there when I arrived.

  "It was raining so hard as I pulled up that I'm not sure he heard me coming. When I slammed the car door, he turned around. He was down at the foot of the bridge, near the water. Have you seen the bridge?"

  "Not yet," I said.

  "Well, it's on Swan Street, the part of Swan Street as you drive toward the Bonham line. It's maybe half a mile, I don't know, before the Bonham line. Anyway, I pulled in at an angle alongside his cruiser on the Meade side of the bridge.

  "When he saw it was me, he came scrambling up the bank, which was quite a sight, with him being so big and the bank so slippery. He was cursing at me when he got to the top. That surprised me, because I hadn't done anything.

  "Before he could say anything specific, another cruiser pulled up, lights flashing but no siren, and Chief Smollett in his own car behind it. I remember there were two cops in the cruiser, one with a rope who ran up to Gerry and one who opened the trunk and started pulling scuba equipment out. Smollett came up to me and asked me what the hell I was doing there. Before I could tell him, the cop who'd been with Gerry rushed back and said, 'Chief, Blakey says it's Mrs. Kinnington. It's the judge's wife.'

  "Smollett broke away and went after Blakey, who now had the rope, down the bank. The other cop ran back to the cruiser to help with the scuba gear. I heard an ambulance siren. It looked pretty crowded down on the bank, so I ran out onto the bridge.

  "Some of the railing was broken away, and you could just see the left front side of the car, from about the middle of the driver's window up, and the front of the hood pointing at an angle away from the bridge."

  "How far from the bridge?"

  "Maybe twenty, twenty-five feet. There's a big rock at that point, and the car was sort of slanting up on it, like the car had tried to drive over the rock and got stuck partway up. Then I—"

  "Just a second," I said. "From where you were on the bridge, could you tell it was a Mercedes?"

  "No, well, maybe from the hood ornament, but it was raining and blowing so hard, I couldn't make it out."

  "Could Blakey have from his angle?"

  "No. I looked as closely as I could. That rain was really coming down, and anyway, Gerry, on the bank, was off to the side. In terms of perspective and line of sight, he was directly behind the trunk."

  "In those days, cars had license plates on both front and rear. Could Blakey have seen a plate from where he was?"

  "No. Nor could I. Both were below water. You couldn't even tell what color the car was, the rain was blowing so hard."

  "Go on."

  "Let's see. I tried to take a few pictures with my 35 millimeter, but the conditions were pretty hopeless and none of them came out. I was just putting my camera away when the ambulance pulled up. Right about then, the cop with the scuba gear got into the water, and he swam out with a rope around his waist."

  "Did he seem to have much trouble with the current?"

  "No. But he was swimming hard and I guess he was a pretty strong swimmer, being a diver and all. When he got to the car, he grabbed hold of the door on the driver's side. He yanked on it a few times before it opened."

  "Wait a minute. The driver's door was closed?" I "Well, it was hard to tell from where I was. I mean, you really couldn't see whether it was closed, but he did seem to be trying to pull it open and was having a hard time. And, like you asked me, it didn't seem like much current. Still, I suppose the door was pushing a lot of water in front of it."

  "Go on."

  "After he got the door open, he swung his head and shoulders inside, then he turned to the chief and the others on shore. He took his mouthpiece out and yelled, "No body. Nobody inside." The chief waved his hand in a circle over his head, and the diver replaced the mouthpiece and went under. Even with the rain, you could follow his progress by watching the rope. After he zigzagged back and forth on the bridge side of the car a few times, he circled around the car, kind of jump-roping his line over the top of the car. He finally came up, shaking his head, and the chief waved him in to shore. He swam ashore, and then—"

  "Any trouble with the current this time?"

  "No." Doucette stopped for a moment. "No. In fact, this time he was swimming pretty slowly." Doucette blushed a little. "I remember thinking, 'No rush on the way in. Nobody to save.' "

  "What happened then?"

  "When he got to shore, Smollett seemed to ask him a few questions, then motioned everybody back up the bank. I trotted back to the cars. Gerry was the first one back. He waved off the ambulance guys, who waited for the chief to tell them to pack it iu. I went up to Gerry as he reached his cruiser, and asked him what happened.

  "He said, 'The judge's wife. Mrs. Kinnington. Her car went off the bridge.'

  "I said to him, 'Did you see it happen?'

  "He said, 'No. I was driving across the bridge, I saw the railing was broken, and then I saw the car in the water. So I backed up and went down the bank. I couldn't see anybody, so I came back up just as you pulled up.' "

  "Did you ask Blakey about his identification of the car?"

  "Yes," Doucette grinned. "I asked him how he could tell it was her car, since it was already covered with water. He turned around, looked at the car, turned back, and grabbed my slicker like this"—

  Doucette clutched and twisted his shirt front—"and slammed me into the side of the cruiser. 'Don't you ever say a fuckin' word about this,' he said to me. 'Or print it. Or you're dead.' " Doucette grew still. "He really meant it."

  "Go on."

  "Smollett came up and told Gerry to get to the other side of the bridge—another car had stopped to make sure there wasn't another accident. Gerry said to me, 'Remember,' and sort of sloshed off.

  Smollett gave me his usual disgusted look, but he walked back to the other cruiser, where the diver was putting his equipment back in the trunk.

  "I got into my car and drove home. Gerry's threat had really shaken me. I was just pulling out my house key when I heard a honk behind me. I turned, and it was Gerry in the cruiser. He rolled down the window and said, 'Remember,' again. Just the one word. Then he drove off. I went in and didn't fall asleep till nine or ten in the morni
ng. I never wrote the story. I never really saw Gerry again. I moved to Boston a little while after that." Doucette paused. "I think that's about it."

  "Ever talk with anyone else about what you saw and Blakey said?"

  "No way. Oh, my parents knew the Kinnington incident was what pushed me to move out. It hit Mom hard." Doucette cleared his throat and voice. "You've met Gerry. He and I are the same age. We went to high school together. He was always so big. He was never good at athletics, not well-coordinated enough, I guess. Just big. And aware, painfully aware, of his hair. He started to lose it when he was a sophomore, and it was pretty well gone by senior year. Anyway, one day, our senior year, he and I were walking home from school, and we started talking, and well, we went into a bunch of woods and gave each other sex. He was real nervous, I think it was his first time ever, and I wasn't very experienced either. Anyway, we left the woods separately.

  "The next day, I was walking to school, and a lot of guys suspected—funny, I still think of it that way, it's certainly the right word for back then—'suspected'—I was gay. One of them was jibing me that morning. He was a lot bigger than I was, but a lot smaller than Gerry. So, I went up to Gerry between classes and asked him if he'd tell the other guy to lay off me. Well, Gerry grabbed me by the collar and slammed me against the lockers, my books flying all over the place. He hissed at me, 'I don't protect faggots. Now stay away from me.' A bunch of other guys and girls turned around to stare, and Gerry huffed off. I was so embarrassed. It was so bad that the other kids didn't even make fun. I gathered up my books, got to the boys' room, and threw up. Then I

  cried.

  "A few weeks later, I was walking home from school alone. I heard somebody running behind me. I turned, and it was Gerry. He apologized for embarrassing me, and then he asked me to go into the woods again. We did, but this time because I was scared of him. When we were finished, he said, 'You know, if you ever tell anyone about this, I'll kill you. Remember.' He used the same word he used that later time—remember—like maybe his parents used it on him when he was young and he thought it had some magic to it.