“You ever hear of duress?”
Braxley started to laugh, then cut if off. “ ‘Duress,’ huh? That woman own that house now, she can do whatever she want with it. Like she can put it on the market for maybe twenty thousand less than it worth, and sell it like in a few weeks, and she get plenty on it, mon, plenty enough to cover her husband’s debt. And she gonna wanna do it, too. Know why?”
I still didn’t say anything.
“Sure you know why. You just don’t wanna hear the words in the air. You a sensitive son of a bitch. Well, maybe you better brace yourself, ’cause here they come, ready or not. She gonna wanna do that for me because I like be holding her little child in excrow. The daughter she so careful not to let us see this morning. You know what excrow mean?”
“The expression is ‘escrow,’ Braxley, and I know what it means.”
He sat back, even more pleased with himself. “You got the benefit of a fine stateside education, my friend. I just a poor immigrant, but I catch on fast. This here an open society, anything possible for a mon who willing. You believe it.”
I believed it.
I waited in the bar for half an hour after J.J. left. Then I looped around the blocks the long way and drifted toward my building from the river side. No whiff of Terdell or sign of anyone else. I went inside and upstairs.
I called the Christideses’ home number.
“Who is this?”
It sounded like one of Eleni’s cousins, so I said, “My name is John Cuddy. Eleni wanted to see me yesterday.”
I heard some muffled talk in Greek, then the voice came back to me with “Wait, wait, she come.” I waited.
“John?”
“Yes, Eleni. Is everything all right?”
“Yes, fine, fine. You want Chris?”
“Please.”
“He not here, John.”
“I really need to speak with him. Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“He gone to a meeting two hours already. Can he call you back?”
“Yes. I’ll be home.”
“I tell him.”
I thanked her, pushed down the button, and called Murphy again.
“Murphy.”
“Lieutenant, it’s me, Cuddy.”
“Hold on. Holt’s right here.”
“Lieutenant, wait—”
“Cuddy, this is Holt. Just what the hell you think you’re pulling here?”
“Lieutenant, I’d like a meeting with you and Dawkins tomorrow.”
“You fucken asshole. Where do you—”
“In the morning, if possible. Your office would be fine.”
“How about I send a cruiser right now?”
“How about I call Senator Kennedy and tell him how you’re violating my civil rights?”
“What rights?”
“You want to send a cruiser, fine. You want me to tell the papers and TV in a few days how you and yours were responsible for botching a double murder and getting a child hurt on top of it, go ahead.”
“What child? The fuck are you talking about?”
“I’ll explain it tomorrow. How about ten A.M.”
The gnashing of teeth. “You be here. If we are, too, we’ll hear what you have to say.”
I put the receiver down and turned on the news. I sat through sports, weather, and Tom Brokaw. Then I went downstairs, backed the car out of the space, and drove to the waterfront.
Most of the residential housing on the harbor consists of condominium flats in redeemed warehouses. The warehouses themselves sit on wharves, huge stone and beam intrusions into the water and from another century. Before Boston’s renaissance fifteen years ago, the wharves were abandoned, and only the intrepid would wade through the muddy moats the filled land around them had become. Ten thousand cash at a tax title auction would have snagged you a whole structure. Now, the same money would just about cover two years of property assessment on a single two-bedroom unit.
I slowly drove by the address Niño gave me. Teri’s place was in one of the newly constructed towers, rising floors above even the elevated, six-laned Central Artery that still separates the docks from the commercial downtown. As I pulled over to come back around, I saw Niño get out of his parked Olds across the street and incline his head toward the building entrance. Five minutes later, I found a parking space and joined him.
He nodded approvingly. “Punc-tu-al-ity, man. At lunch and tonight, too. Important quality for professional men like you and me.”
Niño was wearing brown suit pants with cuffs and Hush Puppies shoes, but it was the top half of his outfit that caught the eye. Blue dress shirt, pencil-width leather tie, and a starched white coat with “Dr. Rodriguez” stitched over the chest pocket. The earpieces of a stethoscope protruded from a side pocket.
“Career change?”
“You like the getup? Shit, man, this here a condo building. Half the units owned by fucken docs as tax shelters, you know it? I walk in like this, we blend in. Rent-a-cop figure, ‘Big-time médico, too fucken cheap to have some agency show the place to a new tenant.’ C’mon.”
Niño pulled the door open for me, then moved in quickly and got ahead of me, marching along in that self-absorbed way you see in hospital corridors.
The guard said, “Evening, doctor.”
Niño half saluted but never broke stride. I shrugged at the guard and whispered, “Famous surgeon.”
The guard winked to show no offense taken.
Niño eased the door closed, pushing the police bar back into the slot on the floor.
I said, “That was easy.”
“The cops, they don’t post no round-the-clock shit for a dead hooker, man. Besides, she killed someplace else.”
The room was a large L-shaped studio, sleeping alcove off to the right, bathroom and kitchenette to the left. Sweeping view of boat moorings and airport runways through the picture windows, a small telescope set up near the glass.
Niño walked toward the telescope, saying over his shoulder, “Do you thing, man. Just don’t break nothing, okay?”
I started with the alcove. Cherrywood four-poster bed, frilly comforter, the collar of a flannel shirt just visible under one of the pillows. On cold nights, Teri probably slept in it. Beth used to do that all the time.
Matching nightstands flanked the headboard. On one of them sat a telephone and a tape machine identical to the one in my apartment. An “0” glowed in the message portal. I pushed the side button which releases the lid. Both outgoing and incoming tapes were still there. I moved the lever to “Answer Play,” the device immediately rewinding the short distance with no noise. That meant the “0” wasn’t kidding, buddy, there really were no messages. The machine automatically clicked to “Play” anyway, nothing but silence coming from the speaker. Stupid to think the cops hadn’t already tried it.
“Hey, man, come look at this!”
I went into the living room portion, Niño bending over the telescope and adjusting some knob near his squinting eye. “This little mother is powerful. Planes, luggage carts, shit, I can see right into the terminals almost.”
“Teri ever mention anything about the telescope?”
“Not to me. But she was weird that way. She give me the key to this place ’cause she trust me and somebody gotta have it, case she get the slam and all.”
I thought about what Sandra had asked me. I’d gotten the impression that Teri had told her about the apartment and given her a key. Would Teri have given keys to both of them?
I went back into the sleeping area and toward the other nightstand. A Harlequin romance face down, marking her place the hard way, binding nearly broken through. An ashtray, some kind of nail strengthener, china cup with coins and subway tokens in it.
“Niño, did Teri drive a car?”
“No. She knew how, but she didn’t want to keep one in the city. She need one, she borrow mine or see the Hertz counter.”
On the walls, a couple of Natalie Wood publicity stills, framed professionally.
Below them, a bureau with an overload of cosmetic enhancers, most of which I couldn’t identify without reading the fine print.
On either side of the cosmetics, two photos in stand-up Plexiglas functioned almost like bookends. One was a staged pose of a young, dark couple dressed in the style of the early sixties. They stood behind two little girls sitting on a piano bench, party dresses, white socks, shiny black shoes with straps, and ankles crossed. The younger Sandra and Theresa, Sandra’s smile shy, Theresa’s bold. The other photo was a yearbook shot of Sandra, smile still shy, features unformed like the first sense I’d had of her outside the house in Epton. No yearbook photo of Theresa.
I opened each drawer in turn. The police would already have searched pretty thoroughly, so I just poked and peered a little. Mostly different kinds of strappy and tube tops with short shorts. Lingerie ranging from the erotic to the ridiculous. Some regular clothes too, though. Sweaters, polo shirts, Reebok sports shorts.
Behind me I heard, “Ooh, foxy lady, keep that light on! Hey man, you wanna catch some of this?”
I guessed he’d swung away from the airport. “No thanks.”
“You missing academy award shit here, man. Ow, yes, yes.”
I came into the living room area. Sectional furniture, nice rug, three-tiered coffee table of brass and glass. “Teri decorate herself?”
“She pick—oh, mama, I didn’t know it could bend that way!—she like picked it out, but the landlord, he pay the freight.”
“You know him?”
“No, just some dentist, pillar of his com-mun-i-ty somewhere in the suburbs. He rented the place to her himself. I think maybe she let him stick something in her mouth beside the little round mirror, you know it?”
I opened the sliding door to a wall-length closet. Lots of flash and sparkle, but also a tweed suit, a nun’s habit, and a nurse’s uniform. “Pretty varied wardrobe.”
“Some of the johns, man, they like the ladies to dress up, fantasyland.”
I thought about her coming home, hanging up an outfit after spending the day and most of the night with Niño’s clients and her free-lances. I shook my head and walked into the bathroom. Typical modern job, clean and impersonal. “You have any idea where she kept her paperwork?”
“Paperwork?”
“Yeah. Bills, checkbooks, that kind of thing.”
“The Angel, man, she was cash-and-carry. Fucken cops got all the papers she have, and probably stuffed in their wallets.”
I came back into the living room area. “She must have had light bills, phone bills …”
Niño ignored me and began futzing with the lens again. I walked over to a sectional corner piece and sat down.
Niño said, “You just about done here?”
When I didn’t answer him, he looked up. “Man?”
“I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Teri, this apartment. Seems kind of an empty place to call home, and even this she paid for in kind.”
Niño’s face contorted for just a moment, then resolved. “ ‘In kind.’ You mean by hooking, right?”
“That’s what I meant.”
“Look, let me tell you one thing, okay? The Angel, she never hook in here, not even for the dentist. She do him, she do him out in the ’burbs, his last appointment for the day. She keep this place outta the fucken life, man. This the best place she ever live, but it still like her tunnel.”
“Her tunnel?”
“Yeah. Like in the Nam. The fucken dinks, man, they knew those tunnels were safe. We could chase ’em around all we wanted on top, ’cause we own the air. But they get too pressed, they just drop down a hole and they knew we couldn’t get ’em.”
He shook his fist at the picture window. “You think living space cost a lot down here, with the harbor and the marketplace and all? Shit, nothing cost more than those tunnels, man. They sweat and they dig and they got little bugs eating them and they die to make them tunnels and make ’em safe, and space was a pre-mi-um item. Most of the fuckers didn’t have a change of fucken clothes, man, but they bring what they had into the tunnel.”
Niño gulped and talked faster. “Times you go into a tunnel, and you don’t hear nothing but you own heart beating, you know it’s a cold fucken hole, but you can’t take the chance. So you go slow, and maybe you find where they sleep and their shit. Their personal shit, I mean. And it’s like maybe one book in dink writing, and a piece of junk jewelry, and a picture. A photo like of their family, all blur ’cause the camera cheap. And all dirty and cracked and mildewed, too, ’cause the tunnel do that to everything. And you hold this fucken photo in you hand, and you sit there like a fucken dummy with you light on it, like you was in a museum staring at the Mona Lisa or something. And you know that fucken dink weigh less than most dogs we got over here and eat a fuck of a lot worse and the only thing that dink fight for is the tunnel you in and the memory he got someplace of the family in that photo that probably got all shot to shit before you even in-country. And you know that dink just like you, man, only he ain’t going home after no three hundred sixty-five days. And you hold that fucken photo, and you start to cry. You cry like you was a little baby and mama’s tits all dried up, because you hate the little fuckers so much but you see why you ain’t gonna beat ’em, not up on top where we trying to fight ’em.”
Niño looked hard at me, a look I hadn’t seen since I climbed gratefully on the plane that took me back to The World. “Well, this here was Teri’s tunnel, man. This was where she hide from the rest of us. And now you gone through her shit and know all about her. And now you gonna find the motherfucken turd who did her, and you gonna tell me, and then I square things all ’round.”
He passed his hand over his eyes once, like a jogger wiping off sweat. “I gotta take a piss,” he said, hurrying by me into the bathroom and closing the door.
He was in there maybe a minute, water running, when I heard the voice from the alcove. I jumped up, then went on in.
The answering machine, which I’d left running on Play when Niño had called me from the telescope. The tape had almost reached its end. I hit Stop, turned down the volume, and pressed Review. I listened to the tape rewind for only five seconds, when what was recorded had passed. Then I replayed it.
The beginning of the message was gone, probably erased automatically by the recording of messages after it. The only part left was “noon, because I really should like to, uh, see you. Please call, but at the office here. Uh, thanks so much.” The incoming tape reached its end, and I turned off the machine.
I walked into the living area near the telescope. If the architect had put in bay windows, I would have been able to look northward, maybe all the way to Swampscott.
“Guess I went a little loco, man.”
We were in the elevator riding down, and Niño hadn’t spoken since he’d come out of the bathroom.
“Don’t worry about it.”
He took a deep breath, let it out.
We got off at the lobby level and moved past the guard, who stood with his hands behind his back. He smiled officiously at us.
Outside, Niño said, “You need anything else from me?”
“I don’t think so.”
He made no effort to walk away. “Man, you been straight with me, I be straight with you.”
I thought about the tape, but said, “Go on.”
“Staking out you place, I see J.J. and Terdell messing around the cans. Then I spot their tail.”
“Tail?”
“Sur-veil-lance. I think about telling you last night, but I want to sleep on it, turn it around a little first. The tail was you classic unmarked sedan. I see it pull in and park while J.J. and Terdell getting ready for you. I was already there, so the tail didn’t make me.
“Who was it?”
“Two guys, I didn’t try to see closer than that. But one thing sure, they good. Terdell and J.J. grab you, the tail wait till they away to turn on and come out. They follow you, I follow the
m out to the construction yard.”
I considered it. Niño said, “You got to know what I’m thinking.”
“Cops.”
“That’s right. And that mean they see you get snatched and don’t feel like doing nothing about it.”
“That mean they see me getting beat up, too?”
“Don’t think so. I do a little recon before I go into the pipes. The tail just wait outside the construction yard, lights off, like they only care about where J.J.’s car go next and not so much about you.”
“Thanks, Niño.”
“Yeah, well, I gotta go. Got a major chest-cutting at the Beth Israel, don’t you fucken know.”
Dr. Rodriguez turned and walked away, pulling out his stethoscope and twirling it like a foot patrolman with a whistle.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
RETURNING HOME, I CHECKED my own answering machine. No messages, not even from Chris. I tried his number three times before turning in at midnight. Busy. Or off the hook.
The sun streamed into my bedroom window about 7:00 A.M. I was a lot less stiff and sore than the previous day, so I decided to try a short run. I stretched more slowly and carefully than usual, then went downstairs and out into a beautiful morning.
I jogged gently across Beacon, Bay State Road, and the elevated walkway to the river. The wind was out of the northwest, so I started upstream toward Boston University. I heard a high, whining sound, and looked behind me. Nothing. Then a huge shadow passed over me, too fast for a cloud, too big for a plane. I looked up to see a blimp, all puffy and plump, with absurdly undersized fins and a small, windowed gondola. The whining sound was its engine, a noise like a bus going by you at eighty miles an hour on a highway. The fuselage had a broad green side stripe and the legend FUJI FILM. Its underbelly proclaimed, in smaller letters, OFFICIAL FILM OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL. As the pilot banked to hover over Fenway Park, I assumed that the abnormally potent Red Sox were going to be featured on Saturday’s Game of the Week and wondered why the blimp had to arrive two days early.
Swan Dive Page 15