Swan Dive

by Jeremiah Healy

  By 11:30, I was back behind the wheel of the Fiat. Hanna had fixed me a thermos of tea with lemon, which I stood upright on the passenger’s bucket. On the floor near the pedals was an old tin saucepan that she wordlessly had handed me on my way out the door.

  Purple dress rolled in with a different guy, but he was too short to be Marsh in disguise. Aside from that diversion, Saturday night made Friday look like New Year’s Eve.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I HAD SUNDAY LUNCH with Hanna and Vickie, Rocky mauling a catnipped cloth mouse in the corner of the kitchen. By then, I was fairly sure that Marsh had decided to take the hint I’d dropped at his house, and I left Peabody around 2:00 P.M.

  Driving into Boston, I circled my block a few times to be sure old Roy hadn’t decided to shift his aim to me. I parked behind my building and trudged up the stairs. I tried Nancy’s number first, but apparently she wasn’t back from New York yet. I reached Murphy’s home, his wife calling to him to leave the grill alone for a while and come talk to me.

  “Cuddy?”

  “Hi, Lieutenant.”

  “We got company for barbecue, so I don’t have too much time.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Your boy Marsh, Roy M., stirred some interest.”

  “How so?”

  “Seems my friend in Narcotics has some photos of Marsh in the company of one J.J. Braxley.”

  “This Braxley a cocaine dealer?”

  “Call him a distributor.”

  “Big-time?”

  “Dawk—that’s my narcotics man, Ned Dawkins—he didn’t seem to think so. Braxley’s a Crucian.”

  “As in Saint Croix?”

  “Right. Come up from the island in the early seventies, set up shop. Not oversmart, but enough careful and enough lucky to stay out of the big shit so far. Probably deals with a white dude like your Marsh just to spread the snow line a little farther north without a whole lot of risk.”

  “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

  “Cuddy, you remember what I said to you. And don’t you be messing with Braxley, either. Old J.J. like to use the muscle, and his hired help’d scare the Fridge off the football field.”

  “Good to know.”

  “I got a round of drinks to make here. Anything else?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got to requalify at the range tomorrow. Can you put in a good word for me?”

  I think he was laughing as he hung up.

  The couch felt so good I figured I’d doze off for a while. I woke up at 9:15 P.M., hungry but still blurry after my two nights sitting upright. I heated some canned chili and put half of a frozen French baguette on top of the pot lid to defrost. I washed things down with a couple of Killian’s Irish Red ales, tried Nancy again without success, and went to sleep in a real bed for a change.

  To get to the Boston Police Revolver Range, you drive south on the Expressway to Neponset Circle, then over the bridge to Quincy Shore Drive. At a traffic light, you turn onto East Squantum Street, bearing left all the way and enjoying an unusual aspect of Dorchester Bay and the city behind it. You feel as though you’re driving on a deserted causeway, winding toward some abandoned lighthouse. Then, just after several large water locks, you see the range compound, technically on a harbor chunk called Moon Island. I parked next to the one-story bungalow with the police department’s blue-on-white sign.

  Inside, the range officer took my name and told me to have a seat. He was about fifty-five, with curly gray hair and a soft-spoken manner. Handing me a duplicate of the instruction sheet you get at the licensing unit back at headquarters, he suggested I review it while he got some ammunition.

  In Massachusetts, the right to carry a concealed firearm is governed by the police of the municipality in which you reside. You have to have reasonable grounds for needing a permit, and Boston’s live-fire test involves shooting thirty rounds at various distances. All in the bull’s eye would be a perfect 300. To pass, you need 210 points, a 70 percent score. Basically, that means hitting a roughly chest-size target with most of your thirty bullets. The problem is, if you shoot less than 210, you have to wait six months before you can try again.

  The officer came back to me with an old tomato can in his hand. He took me out through a rear door, passing under the large-print sign that spelled out Boston Police Rule 303 (“The Use of Deadly Force is Permitted: …”). We walked toward the numbered asphalt firing stations at the close edge of the range. No one else was in sight. The blue target holders were posted about twenty-five yards away against a high reddish brown barrier and an even higher earth berm behind it.

  The officer placed the can on the ground and unholstered his revolver. After checking to be sure the cylinder was empty, he stuck his fingers into and through the gun’s frame to keep the cylinder swung out and safe. I slowly drew the four-inch Combat Masterpiece I had carried.

  He said, “No, sir. You’ll use my weapon. I’ll be handing you the cartridges as appropriate. Please keep the barrel pointed downrange at all times and deposit the spent casings in the can.” I returned my piece to its holster and took his, keeping my fingers through the frame as he had.

  “We’ll move downrange now to the seven-yard line. You’ll be firing twelve rounds from there.”

  We came to a stop at the target distance from which over half of the actual police gun battles are fought. “All six shots have to be fired one-handed, double-action. Do you understand what that means?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can practice a few dry-fires with the weapon if you want.”

  “No thanks.” He doled out six bullets to me, and I loaded them.

  “You may fire when ready.”

  I put my left hand in my pants pocket, assumed a bent-L arrangement with my feet, and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. I inhaled again, aimed, and began to exhale, pulling the trigger without cocking the hammer. I repeated the procedure, including the deliberate breathing, five more times.

  “Make it safe.”

  I swung the cylinder out, and we walked to the target.

  He said, “Four tens, a nine, and an eight.”

  Back at the seven-yard line, I fired another string of six. Five tens and a nine.

  As we moved to the fifteen-yard line, he said, “You have any prior experience?”

  “With guns?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Military Police. Mostly forty-fives.”

  He nodded.

  “Weapon as finely balanced and maintained as yours would make anybody look better.”

  Another nod.

  I fired my next three strings single-action, two-handed, with my feet spread wide and my shoulders and trunk hunched down in what’s usually called the combat stance. My point total came to 289. We returned to the bungalow, and the officer certified my score in a logbook.

  He handed me the necessary paperwork and shook my hand. “Hope we’ll be seeing you again in five years, Mr. Cuddy.”

  I said thank you and decided it was the first time he’d actually smiled since I’d met him.

  After the second ring, I heard, “Nancy Meagher.”

  “As a watchful taxpayer, I’d like to know why you’re not guarding the common weal in court.”

  “Oh, hi, John. As a matter of fact, I should be, but after I broke my neck to catch the dawn shuttle back from La Guardia, the judge I’m trying before was in a fender bender this morning and still hasn’t arrived.”

  “Will this screw up dinner tonight?”

  “No way. Just drop by a little after six-thirty and see the guard in the first-floor lobby. I’ll come down as soon as he tells me you’re here.”

  “See you then.”

  “Oh, John?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks for calling.”

  “Don’t thank me. It’s good to hear your voice.”

  “Bye, John.”

  I hung up the receiver and looked at my watch. Plenty of time for a quick lunch and a visit before going in to the office.

  I
’m glad about Nancy, John.

  “Me, too. I think.”

  There’s always going to be some uncertainty, you know.

  “I know.” I laid the baby tulips, mixed yellow and white, longways to her, just outside the shadow the marker threw.

  You’ve seen enough of people who won’t move forward with their lives.

  I thought of what Roy was doing to Hanna and Vickie and said, “I’m working on a miserable case, kid. Divorce.”

  I thought you didn’t do them.

  “So did I. But it’s a favor for Chris Christides.”

  Chris. Chris and Eleni.

  “Right. She’s no better, though. In fact, she’s much worse. In a wheelchair now and so old, old and worn.”

  I squatted down beside the flowers. The topmost bud had opened a little, and the wind off the harbor bent the petals, like a moistened finger on the page of a book. “Remember how Chris used to revolve around her, spend all his time describing what new American thing she’d seen or learned?”

  My mother used to say that.

  “What?”

  That you know you love people when you think of past times in terms of events in their lives rather than your own.

  “I’m not sure Eleni and Chris qualify anymore.”

  Oh, I’m sorry.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  I looked down the slope to the water. Two people with nothing better to do on a Monday than sail seemed to be racing each other as a low-slung, enormous freighter of some kind, black except for the rust patches, sloughed past them. The sailboats, probably twenty-five feet each, looked like tiny moths fluttering around a shambling old dog.

  John, do you think Eleni is close?

  She didn’t have to say close to what. “I don’t know much about MS. Just that it takes a long time to take you.”

  A minute passed, then: If there’s a time you think it would help, tell Eleni that afterwards isn’t so bad.

  I backed and hauled, a half-turn of the wheel at a time, into the pitiful parking space in the alley behind my office building on Tremont Street. I could barely open the driver’s door because of the Dempster Dumpster and the fringe of near-miss trash around it. In downtown Boston, however, a manageable slot for a car is nothing to get mad at. Plus, with the Fiat there, I could drive to the condo to shower and change before picking Nancy up for dinner.

  I used the stairs to my office, which smelled musty when I unlocked the door and scooped up the mail. I left the door open and pulled up one of my windows, enjoying the bustle of the Common and letting the refreshing air cross-ventilate the room. I’d let slide two reports on insurance scams, so I wrote them out longhand; the claims departments involved would have them typed and returned to me for signature.

  After the reports, I read a letter request from a concerned mother in Kentucky. She believed that her Marbrey, aged fifteen, had run off to Boston and would get in more trouble than a rooster at a fox farm. Finding my name in a telephone directory at the library in Lexington, she trusted me because she once knew an honest storekeeper over to Clay City named Cuddy who came from back east somewheres. Enclosed was a weathered family photograph (with a penciled arrow pointing to a boy who couldn’t have been older than ten) and a postal money order for $100. She didn’t include a telephone number. I wrote her back a polite letter, returning the photo and the money order and suggesting that she contact me if she could assemble the laundry list of information I requested.

  I called Hanna, who said that she’d seen no sign of Roy and that Vickie really loved her new kitty. I told her I thought the worst was over and that the divorce would probably go as smoothly as those things could.

  I hung up, tried Chris’s number, and got him on the third ring.

  “Christides.”

  “Chris, John Cuddy.”

  “Jeez, what have you done now?”

  “Nothing, Chris. That’s why I was calling, to see if you needed anything else.”

  “Anything else? Listen, I got plenty now. A driving-under tomorrow morning with a guy whose Breathalyzer shoulda belonged to a beer vat, another closing with that bank—”

  “Chris, Chris, nice and easy. Any progress on Hanna’s case?”

  “No, and if I don’t have anything better to tell Felicia Arnold than what you gave me on Friday, I don’t see any.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Marsh is still saying you roughed him up.”

  “Believe me, I barely touched him. His wounds are self-inflicted.”

  “Yeah, well, you gotta remember that I’m telling Felicia—to cover your ass at your request, remember—that you weren’t even there.”

  “That’s right. Just like Marsh wasn’t there at Hanna’s house.”

  “Jeez, John, enough with the cat, all right? Anyway, Felicia says that while her client would have been, quote, ‘reasonable and flexible,’ your ‘unprovoked attack’ has changed all that.”

  “Chris, what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying she’s saying they’re gonna litigate it now, understand me? No settlement, trial all the way.”

  And no easy ten thousand for Hanna’s lawyer. “Chris, first of all you’ve got to see this for what it is.”

  “For what what is?”

  “Felicia Arnold’s ‘let’s litigate’ talk. For God’s sake, you said yourself you’ve got him on adultery.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And I’ve got him even tighter.”

  “You do?”

  “That’s right.”

  “On what?”

  I thought about whether I wanted Chris to know exactly what I had. “No details, yet. Just take my word for it. Marsh can’t litigate this case. You push for the house, and they’ll fold on it.”

  “Push for the house.” He made a gargling noise. “John, do you have any idea how much paperwork I’ll have to do on that? Jeez, I can get my client a quick fifty-five, plus probably a car and enough furniture to set up in a nice apartment, maybe—”

  “Chris, your client doesn’t want an apartment. She wants the house, for her and Vickie, and I don’t blame her. Look, “I said, stretching a point, “I told her you were a tiger in these kinds of cases. You push the other side, and push hard. They’ll give in, hell, they’ll beg you to take the house and probably pay you twice the fee they trotted out on Friday.”

  “Twice?”

  “Guaranteed.”

  “I don’t know.”

  ‘Trust me, Chris. They don’t dare fight. And if they keep giving you trouble, I’ll call Marsh—”

  “Jeez, John—”

  “—I said I’d call him, and have a little talk with him about stuff he doesn’t want aired in court. No more trouble unless he starts it.”

  The conversation wound down from there. Replacing the receiver, I tried not to think about the pulling guard I’d known in college.

  I worked for another hour or so, doing bills and the assorted other trivia that had piled up. At 5:10, I closed up and went downstairs. The rush hour crowd was just filling Tremont as I walked around two corners and into the little alley. My car was the only one left. The building threw a deep shadow, and my eyes were slow to adjust, as though I were plunging into a tunnel on a sunny day. Digging into my pocket for the car keys, I heard a little shuffling noise in the ground trash next to the dumpster. I thought, “Rats, I knew we’d get rats.” Then something hit me just behind my right ear and night fell somewhat early.

  The sweet scent of Creamsicle. Actually, somewhat turned Creamsicle. I started to sit up, but lost my balance and banged my head on something metallic and heavy. A wave of nausea swept over me, and I rolled over instinctively. I threw up two good ones, then followed with some dry heaves as the complex stench of the surrounding air caught up with me and my other senses kicked in. My face and hands felt wet and sticky and the support under my palms and knees was uncertain, here sharp and unyielding, there soft and mushy.

  I was lying in garbage.

  I slowly
braced my legs, got a good purchase with one arm, and strained until I got up. I was next to the dumpster, grabbing the lid and causing it to clang against some chain-restraint. It was twilight. I looked at my watch: 9:10. Shit, Nancy—wait a minute.

  I still had my watch. I reached for my wallet. All there but the cash. My car and house keys still in the other pocket. Around the back—uh-oh. No gun. Cash and firearm. A mugger, but a pro.

  The Fiat was still where I’d left it. I gingerly probed the back of my head and brought my hand around for inspection. Lots of refuse colors, but no bright red. If I’d been cut by whatever hit me, it was closed and dried.

  Playing a couple of coordination games, I could make all my limbs work, and I was seeing only the right number of fingers. I drove the ten or so blocks home like a fastidious drunk, taking double the usual time to get there. Up in the apartment, I tried to call Nancy, but her line was busy. Twice.

  I considered reporting the missing gun. Then I thought about the details the cop who answered would want. Chewing four aspirin, I decided tomorrow would be plenty of time.

  As things turned out, it wasn’t.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IRONICALLY, I WAS AWAKENED by a garbage truck clanking and grinding its way down the alley behind the condo. I had focused on calling Nancy when I heard the pounding at my front door. I got up, just dizzy enough to have to use both hands to guide me through the bedroom doorway.

  “Who is it?”

  “Murphy. Open up.”

  I unlocked the door. There was a youngish guy in a cheap suit standing behind Murphy. The young one eased his hand out from under his coat when he saw I couldn’t be carrying. He had a ruddy complexion and that unformed, almost larval lack of features that some cops do.

  Murphy said, “Cuddy, I ever ask you to do something without a reason?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “This is Detective Guinness. He works Homicide with Lieutenant Holt’s squad. They want to talk with you.”