"Back to my situation?"
"Two minutes worth."
"There were some slugs, Lieutenant, but no casings. I think it had to be a rifle. At least one of the slugs was intact, but flattened."
"What'd they hit?"
"Bricks."
"Don't – "
" – wait by my phone, I know. Can you do anything?"
Murphy sucked some diet Coke through a straw. "Not much. I can see the slugs get the full treatment, but that's about it."
"I appreciate it." I got up. "Since this isn't your case, I take it you have no objection to my staying on the investigation'?"
"Your time."
I left wondering if all cops talked the same before they went to the academy too.
***
"How's Inés doing?"
Maisy Andrus set down the book she was reading. "Pretty well, I think. She's lying down, sleeping, I hope. The proximity of all this has hit her pretty hard. I think it reminds her of being… on that boat."
"Manolo let me in. Where's your husband?"
"Tuck hasn't gotten back yet."
I glanced at the clock on the desk behind her. Nine forty-five P.M.
"I thought you said he was just running some errands?"
Andrus got huffy. "I in no way have to justify Tuck's activities to you, and neither does he."
"Professor, I'm tired too."
"I'm not tired."
I let it pass. "Whoever that was today is a reasonably good shot to have hit the mailbox nearly dead center."
"It's a large mailbox."
"On a downward angle from a rooftop on a cold and windy night. He wanted to miss you. Us. He's playing some kind of game, to get you rattled."
"He won't succeed."
"He is succeeding. You're upset – "
"I am not – "
"And you have every right to be. He's got some kind of private agenda planned for you, and I have to try to figure that out before he ups the ante much further."
Andrus heaved out a breath. "Understand this. I am upset only by your continuing to think that my husband could have anything to do with any of this. Or Manolo, as that ass Neely seemed to imply. Since I am not stupid, I recognize that whoever is doing this wants to keep me off balance, to discourage me from doing what I do. I am pained to admit that this evening he was successful. I canceled a speaking engagement which would have provided appropriate coverage to the issues I hold dear. I want you to continue your investigation on my behalf, but I do not, I repeat, I do not want you harassing my husband in any way. Now, is that clear?"
"Crystalline. "
"I'm sorry." She leaned her head back. "You're not stupid either. I know that. Will the police be much help?"
"You've met Neely."
"Yes, but aren't there any other police?"
"Bluntly, not until our friend comes closer."
"As he suggested in the note."
"Yes."
"Well, it will be a while before he has another chance."
"What do you mean?"
"We'll be going to New York tomorrow. I'm conferring with the new National Council on Death and Dying."
"Professor – "
"That's the successor organization to Concern for Dying and the Society for the Right to Die. Then it's on to D.C. for a few days of lobbying before we fly back to the coast."
"When you say 'we'…?"
Andrus set her expression firmly. "Tuck, Manolo, and I."
"Professor – "
"Please stay in touch with Inés." She softened just a little. "I had to cancel Alec tonight, too, though I'm going to try to see him early tomorrow. Please do whatever you can to help."
I said, "I will," no longer knowing who Andrus meant for me to help. Or how.
***
"Hey, John! John-boy, how you doing?"
I was almost at the corner of Charles and Beacon. Tucker Hebert waved to me from half a block away. He tried to pick up his pace, skittering down the sidewalk with mincing steps, like a hockey coach in street shoes crossing the rink.
Despite the crisp wind, a heavy dose of eau de Dewar's rolled toward me. "I never will get the hang of skating around up here. Didn't get this ice stuff more than once a decade where I come from."
Hebert must have seen something in my face. "John, I hope you're not still put out about that phone call thing, but like I said back then, Maisy needed the rest more – "
"I'm not upset about the phone call."
The eyes swam in a glassy sea. "What's in your craw, then?"
"Somebody shot at us tonight."
Hebert tipped forward on his toes and lost his footing. Going down, he grabbed for my arm just as I grabbed for his and steadied him.
"Shots? At the lecture?"
I would have asked first if anybody was hurt. "We never got that far. It happened in front of the house."
"God almighty! I never would have – Lordy! Maisy, John." Hebert's fingers nearly pierced my coat sleeve. "Maisy, is she okay?"
"Yes. Nobody was hit."
"Oh, God. Thank – "
"Of course, the shooter wasn't trying to hit us."
Hebert opened his mouth, but no words came out. I said, "The slugs went way high. Just a warning."
"Warning?"
"Yeah."
"Of what?"
"Good question. You finish your errands?"
"Huh?"
"Your errands. Maisy said you were doing errands."
"Oh. Oh, yeah. Well, truth is, I was just out having a few snorts. All this time in San Diego, I've been kind of missing some of the places around here."
"Any places in particular?"
"No. No, just here and there. You know how it is."
"The police may be calling you on that."
"On what?"
"On where you were this afternoon and tonight."
"The police? Lordy. Maisy, she's… at the house?"
"Right."
Hebert let go of my arm and took off for the mews. He slipped three times and went down once before making the corner.
25
I SKIPPED RUNNING THE MORNING AFTER THE SHOTS WERE FIRED, instead calling Inés Roja, who said she was feeling much better. Andrus, Hebert, and Manolo had left the house and the city safe and sound. It took Roja just a few minutes to dig up the only home address I didn't already have, although I decided to save that one for last.
***
The condominium complex abutted the sea, a cluster of structures four stories high with weathered shingles. I found a parking spot on the street, not even diehard sailors thinking about braving the waters on Marblehead in February.
I went through the foyers in live buildings before I found "Cuervo, R." on a mailbox behind an unlocked entry door. I climbed two flights to the third floor, Cuervo seeming to have a duplex condo that included the fourth.
I could hear a stereo set low on a jazz tape. I knocked, got nothing, knocked again, and heard the slap of shower thongs on a hard surface. The door opened, and Cuervo, barechested in tennis shorts, looked out at me.
"What are you doing here?"
"I'd like to talk with you, Mr. Cuervo."
"Ray, please. I thought we had a talk already?"
"Something else came up."
"I'm, uh, entertaining." He sent his eyebrows toward the interior staircase behind him. "Can't it wait?"
"I'm afraid not. Somebody took a shot at your stepmother yesterday."
"Somebody… you mean with a gun?"
"That's right."
"Dios mia! Come in, come in."
Cuervo's living room had a view of the harbor through a glass wall, French doors leading to a wooden deck. He waved at the sectional furniture around an elaborate home entertainment center that dominated one of the other walls. "Sit down. I'll be right back."
Cuervo took the stairs two at a time. I heard just vague voices, then a door opening and closing. Cuervo came back down, pulling a rugby shirt over his head, the collar of the shirt une
ven.
I said, "I'm sorry to be interrupting anything."
"That's okay. Her night was just about up anyway."
A shoe hit the floor upstairs, and Cuervo got serious. "So what's this about Maisy'?"
I went through it for him.
Cuervo raked his hair with his left hand. "Unbelievable. I can't believe none of you got hurt."
"The shooter wasn't trying to hit us."
"How do you know?"
"I know. The question is, do you have any idea who it could have been?”
"Me? How would I know anything about it?"
"You told me you and your father used to go hunting."
"Sure, we… Oh, come on, man. You're thinking I had something to do with this?"
"That's right."
"Hey, lots of kids go hunting with their fathers. Doesn't mean I'd – look, I don't have any reason to shoot Maisy."
"Any reason to scare her?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You said last time that you didn't care about the split on your father's estate."
"That's right. She got the house in Candas, I got the liquid stuff."
"Any nonfinancial reason for getting back at her?"
"Like what?"
"Like sexual?"
Cuervo hurled himself from the sectional piece. I rolled to the left, felt him land, then rolled back, clamping my arms around his. I pushed his face into the cushion for about ten seconds, then let up enough to hear him say "Okay, okay. Let me go."
I stood up and over Cuervo as he turned back to me. He kneaded his left bicep with his right hand, then switched off to the other arm. I said, "Just what exactly happened between you and Maisy Andrus?"
Cuervo cocked an ear toward upstairs before speaking in a low voice. "I was maybe fourteen, fifteen. After my mother died, I was pretty used to having the run of the house in Candés, you know? I mean, it was just my father, Manolo, and me when I was home from school. Well, one day I was coming back after going to the beach, and I was dripping wet on the tile floor near the staircase. So I stripped down as I was climbing the steps, hurrying so the water wouldn't get all over the rugs upstairs.
"I kind of burst into the bathroom, naked, and there's… there's Maisy. Naked, too, just stepping out of a bath. I was stunned, I guess. Then Maisy looked down at me" – Cuervo dropped his eyes to the crotch of his tennis shorts – "and she said, 'Ramon, you're your father's son,' and smiled. Looking back on it, I guess she meant it to cut the embarrassment, but at the time I took it… I took it for my father's marrying a whore, okay? A whore who'd make a play for her new husband's son."
"You ever talk it out with her?"
"No."
"Why not?"
Cuervo blushed for the first time. "We don't do things that way."
" 'We'?"
"In Spain. We don't do that kind of thing. It's just… different over there. You wouldn't understand."
"This scene with Andrus in the bathroom. Is that why you were so long coming home to see your father?"
"Probably. It was all a long time ago, all right? Not a real happy time to remember either."
"Where were you yesterday?"
"Yesterday?"
"Right."
"At the plant."
"In New Hampshire."
"Yeah. Where you saw me before."
"When did you leave?"
"I don't know. I headed back here around four, four-thirty. What difference – oh. Look, I told you, I don't know anything about the shooting. I don't even own a gun anymore, okay?"
"You said Maisy Andrus got the house. What about the hunting rifles you and your father used?"
"I don't know what happened to them. I was thinking about college, man. I didn't care about guns."
"I'll let you get back to your day."
Cuervo glanced upstairs, then at the clock on his VCR. "Hope she isn't expecting breakfast."
***
I followed Louis Doleman and his teddy-bear hair through the second door of the spacelock.
He said, "Marpessa? Company's here."
I let Doleman take his seat before I took one opposite him. The same cardigan sweater and slacks as in December. The same worn copy of The Right to Die open, facedown, on the TV tray. I gave him the benefit of the doubt on the cupcakes. The macaw perched on the arm of his chair, giving me a revolving-eye once-over as I leaned forward, elbows on my knees.
"Mr. Doleman, I wonder if you can help me here."
"I'll sure try, Mister…?"
I'd said my name for him thirty seconds before. "Cuddy, John Cuddy."
"Sure, sure. Cuddy. What can I do for you?"
"I'm thinking of doing some hunting this week."
"Hunting? Hunting? My boy, you can't go hunting this time of year."
"Not here. Overseas."
"It's winter in Europe too."
"Not Europe. Below the equator. It's just turning fall there."
"Ah. Ah, yes, I remember that. What… what is it you want again?"
"I'm trying to decide what firearms to bring with me. I wonder if I could see some of yours."
"Mine? Mine, they're awful old, son."
"That's all right."
"Besides, I don't know, I don't think it's legal somehow for me to loan them to you."
Doleman seemed like that the last time too. Fading in and out, foolishly inviting a bigger, younger stranger into his house, then fixing on some detail. Loose to lucid. If it was an act, he was one of the all-time greats.
"No, Mr. Doleman. I don't want to borrow them. Just look at them toward deciding which kind I should buy."
"Oh. Oh, sure, sure. Come on." Doleman stood, waggling a finger at the bird. "Marpessa, you be a good girl now."
The macaw pecked his finger and made an atonal squawk, but stayed put.
I followed Doleman into his kitchen. The appliances all looked 1950s and crudded over.
He paused to move a case of generic soda cans away from a cellar door. "I keep them down in the basement, of course."
The stairs were steep, each step shallow enough for the ball of the foot to land just a little too far forward. Doleman almost pranced down them, an agile gnome at home in his cave.
"Over here."
He stopped in front of a padlocked steel cabinet mounted on the wall. The cellar was neglected, a strong, musty smell matching the dingy whitewash on the cement.
Doleman fished in his pocket for keys. Getting them out, he held each up three inches from his face before settling on one. "Here she is, here she is."
He inserted the key in the padlock, having to force the lock itself off the hasp. He pulled open the door, grating from rust. "Help yourself."
Three rifles and a shotgun, standing muzzles up. I worked the first one out. An M-1 with enough dust on it to have been there since Truman fired MacArthur. I looked into the bottom of the cabinet. The dust around the other butts seemed undisturbed.
"Been a while since you've had these out."
"Long while. Haven't taken a deer since… I don't know when. Still have to apply for some kind of goddamn permit though. Every birthday, seems like."
Probably every fifth. I tried the action of the M-l. The outside bolt you wedge back with the edge of your hand wouldn't move.
Doleman said, "That's a military weapon, son. The others are your sporting arms."
I put the M-1 back and tried the next, a lever-action Winchester. I sniffed the breech area. No smell of burnt powder or gun oil to have cleaned it. Same with the third, a Ruger. I left the shotgun where it was.
"These are your only firearms, Mr. Doleman?"
"What, four ain't enough?"
Smiling, I still let him precede me up the stairs.
Back in the living room, I said, "Thought I saw you over on Beacon Hill yesterday."
"Beacon Hill? Me? Not a chance. Don't go into the city these days."
Not counting his trip to the library for the debate, I guess. "Why is that?"
The bird said, "Right you are, right you are."
Doleman beamed. "See that? See? Better than kin, better than a son or daugh – "
His face got doughy, the lips working at cross-purposes to each other. "What… what was it you wanted again?"
I could have asked him about his daughter's treatment, about his contacting the Mass General over it. About a lot of things. Instead, I said, "I'm all set, Mr. Doleman. Thanks for your time."
He nodded, but more as a good-bye as he retook his seat, Hopping the opened book over into his lap and beginning to read. The macaw primped her feathers as I moved backward toward the spacelock.
***
The door to Walter Strock's house bowed open, Kimberly Weymond standing next to it. She was wearing a pink terry-cloth robe with a peekaboo front and a hood that rode down from the weight of her blond hair, recently washed. A floor lamp backlit the hood, making her look like a cobra. If you believed in omens, that is. Weymond didn't have to be reminded of who I was. "Come in, Mr. Cuddy."
"Is Strock here?"
"No, but come in anyway."
I moved past her into the living room. A thick hardbound case-book and a nearly as thick paperback vied with peach five by eight cards atop a low, square cocktail table. In front of the table was a beautiful marble fireplace, a couple of logs crackling.
Weymond said, "I've always loved a fire after a long, slow bath."
I took a chair facing away from the fire and nodded toward the worktable. "I thought everybody used computers now."
Weymond glided to the table, nestling behind it Indian-style. "Some things are better the old-fashioned way, don't you think."
Great. "When do you expect Strock back?"
"Not for a while."
"Were you with him yesterday?"
"No. Walter and I see each other only a few nights a week."
Weymond planted her elbows and made a pedestal of her palms, resting her chin in them and speaking through partially clenched teeth. "Walter's not exactly an everyday player anymore. He needs pumping up."
"You know where I might find his gun collection?"
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