The idea had taken hold in her young mind, the romance of it not lost on her youth. She never entered the sea without remembering that around her flowed the remnants of stars that had fallen from favor of the Divine.
It comforted her somehow to know that as she lay there the sediment of dead stars washed over her, that in her they again knew a form of life, of flaming through the cosmos, never knowing where the trajectory would land one. And that through those same dead stars, long quenched, she would again know life long after her own death. There was continuity in such knowledge. Sometimes it was enough to know these things and breathe, to merely exist. It could take away the stain of yesterday, the grime of everyday life, the pain of a week ago Tuesday. At least long enough to allow her to catch her breath and meet her husband’s eyes without shame.
The bedroom in the Brookline apartment had been lit with candles, and every luxury had been attended to. Of course, one would never expect less of Lovett Hagerty. The bed, a cloud adrift in a blue carpet sky without stars. He’d plied her with champagne, which she’d drunk, desperately wishing it were whiskey, something that would shear the edge off her nerves and blot out the smell of his cologne and the smoothness of his skin against her own.
She’d hoped, foolishly, she supposed, that he’d talk before the inducement of the pillows, but he’d been intent on one thing and one thing only.
And she, smiling, had put her soul in a corner, and given it to him.
The betrayal had not gone deep enough for him though, he had wanted more, wanted emotion to go along with the body. Then she had understood, Love had wanted what she gave to her husband, he had wanted the emotion of response. She only hoped her imitation of it had fooled him.
She shivered. Rose had been right. There were, indeed, ghosts all around, and not all were dead.
She turned from the window and saw pale fingers of light stealing through beneath the curtains, outlining Casey in a rosy-gold corona. He’d turned over onto his stomach and the scars on his back were faintly luminescent, borrowing light from both morning and the fire. The just curling ends of his hair, stiff with salt, rose in clockwise whorls away from his scalp. Sleep’s restorative hand had smoothed the lines of worry from his face. He looked so vulnerable and she felt a fierce surge of protectiveness come over her at the sight of him. Whatever she’d done to keep him safe had been worth it and she would not regret it, she would do whatever was necessary to keep him alive and whole. He stirred beneath her gaze, half-rising on an elbow, looking up at her, voice rough and tender with sleep.
“Come back to bed, Jewel, ye look as though ye could use the warmin’.”
“In a minute,” she said quietly, knowing he’d drop back to sleep instantly. She glanced out the window one last time, where the sea surged against the shore, giving and taking in one swift movement. Continuity, here long before she had drawn her first breath, here long after she had drawn her last. But for now she would take the allotment of time given to her and love the man in the bed behind her without impediments or guilt, knowing that without her sin he would not be here to love.
She could feel the heat of his body the minute she slid under the blankets. He rolled over, arm tucking her to him instinctively, hand curving across her belly.
“Ye alright, darlin’?” he asked sleepily, bestowing a kiss on the back of her neck.
She stroked the forearm that lay protectively about her.
“I’m just cold,” she said.
Chapter Twelve
Emma
THE BUILDING WASN’T SO DIFFERENT from her own. A little more rundown and desperately in need of paint, but the same basic layout. A three decker with sagging windowsills and cracked sidewalks, where weeds grew through the seams. Dandelion fluff floated in the humid air and there was the slightest hint of salt wind off the Point.
A shattered nameplate stated that E. Malone lived on the second floor. Pamela tried the buzzer, found it was broken and so tried the door. It too was broken and swung open the minute she put her hand to the knob. Security was obviously not a priority.
The building stunk inside of stale, greasy cooking, and cat urine. The stairs leading up to the top two floors were canted to the left and covered with filthy green indoor-outdoor carpeting.
E. Malone, the nameplate had stated, was in unit number 4. It was on the right-hand side, a lime green door whose battered surface testified to the fact that it had once been red. Pamela took a deep breath and knocked, waiting for what seemed a small eternity before hearing a slow shuffle on the other side of the door.
The woman who answered the door could have been thirteen or thirty; she had the small-breasted, slim-hipped androgyny that was so loved by the fashion industry. A slimness accentuated by the boy’s tank shirt she wore. Once you got a glimpse of her face, though, you saw your mistake clearly. Over thirty with the eyes of eighty. A photojournalist she knew called that look ‘the thousand yard stare’. He had seen it plenty in Vietnam. People who’d simply seen and done too much.
A mop of badly cut pale gold hair framed a face with cut-glass cheekbones and hostile amber eyes. You want somethin’, lady?” The voice was hard, dragging the last word out into an insult.
“I’m looking for Emma Malone,” Pamela replied, hoping she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life.
“You’re lookin’ at her. Hey,” the door opening narrowed a little, “you that bitch from DYS keeps callin’ here?”
“No,” Pamela answered hastily, “I’m here about Love Hagerty.”
The door stayed where it was.
“How do you know Love?” Emma’s face was hard and the tone of voice no less so.
“I work for him,” Pamela answered, her own tone even but not friendly.
Emma gave a bitter little grin. “You must be the one I been hearin’ rumors about. Heard the bastard was smitten with someone else’s wife, heard she had a face on her like an angel. Can’t be two of you wanderin’ around lookin’ like that so I figure it must be you.” The door opened, “You wanna’ come in, or you gonna stand out there all day?” She turned and wandered back into the dishevelled apartment, as though it made very little difference to her what Pamela did.
“So what’s Love want? Gotta say his messenger service has gone uptown in a big way,” Emma flicked a jaded glance over Pamela’s pale linen outfit.
“I didn’t come on behalf of Love. He’s got no idea I’m here, actually.” She took a deep breath, “He thinks I’m home sick with ‘women troubles’.”
Emma snorted. “Yeah that’d keep the squeamish bastard from getting too curious. So what d’you do for him?”
“Public relations.”
“Yeah, I could see where he’d need some help there.” The woman went to the fridge, opening it and glancing idly inside it. “You like workin’ for him?”
“He’s not so bad, though he’s under the impression he’s next to Jesus in this neighborhood,” Pamela said mildly. Emma gave a short bark of laughter, face an unhealthy gray in the light issuing out of the refrigerator. She was terribly thin.
“Well he ain’t no savior, but I guess you could say he looks after people,” she said, taking two icy beers from the fridge and popping the caps off on the bottle opener attached to the edge of the counter. “Like a pimp looks after his hookers.” She shrugged, handing one of the stubby bottles to Pamela, “He’s a way of life here, people don’t know any different from Love. Not so many nice, white urbans looking to get in this neighborhood, and most of us,” she sat, hooking her legs over a stool, “forgot long time ago that we ever wanted out. So what exactly do you want with me?”
“I came to talk to you about my husband.”
Emma’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? Can’t say I know him. Pretty sure I didn’t bang him—so what’s the problem?”
“Casey Riordan is my husband.”
Emma tilted her head, a thick lock of golden hair sliding over her eyes. “That the big one, real tall, dark, looks like he’d be hell betw
een the sheets, but the kind of hell a woman’d gladly burn in ‘bout ten times a week?”
“Yes,” Pamela replied dryly, “that would be my husband. And I know you were friends with him Emma. He told me everything.”
“Yeah, that so? Wouldn’t be so sure about that, lady.”
“He told me about the murder of your friend up in New Hampshire,” she said softly, but there was no warmth in her tone.
“What’s your point?” Emma was feigning nonchalance, but a small vein beat rapidly in the thin skin of her throat.
“You must have thought he was a real chump. The situation looked a little too pat to him though. He checked into just who owned the property where Rosemary died. Turned out the man who owned it was your father’s former partner, John Mullins. And then I got thinking about how a girl with a cop for a father and teacher for a mother ends up on the streets. So I went to see Mr. Mullins. Turns out he remembers you really well Emma, and very fondly I might add.”
“You got a real nerve coming in here and—”
Pamela cut her off, “No I think you’re the one with the real nerve here, Emma. I’ve done a little homework, studied your past, and suddenly it’s looking to me like you’re not so much a victim as a manipulator. John Mullins was your father’s partner and best friend. Best man at your parent’s wedding; you even called him Uncle John. You set out to seduce him. He left his wife and three kids for you. You wrecked his life and then dropped him like a hot potato. So then I ask myself why you’d do such a thing.”
“Yeah, so what? I was only eighteen, he shoulda known better. Besides that’s all ancient history.”
Pamela shook her head slowly and then took the picture from her pocket that John Mullins had given her, in an attempt to exorcise himself of the ghosts he’d been haunted by these many years. She put it on the table and slid it over where Emma could clearly see it. This time she knew she didn’t imagine the flinch.
“History has a funny way of catching up with a person, Emma. Particularly when a crime is involved. You see, when a cop gets murdered that really never becomes history for his colleagues. They take it fairly personally, and they have long memories.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emma said, but her hand kept compulsively smoothing the hair around her ear.
“Don’t you? Look at the picture Emma. Lieutenant Robert O’Donnell. A good honest cop. And maybe one of the only ones with enough courage to attempt to break the stranglehold Love Hagerty has over Southie. Disappeared one autumn on a hunting trip up in New Hampshire. In the White Mountains somewhere. They never did find his remains, but I’ve got to wonder if they might show up if the police were to excavate John Mullins’ property. What do you think Emma?”
“I think you need to go, lady, that’s what I think.” She made to stand up, but Pamela caught her wrist in her fingers and squeezed until she could feel the frail bone bend. The woman hissed at her, but she hung on.
“You see,” she pulled Emma down by her wrist, halfway across the table, making sure the woman could not mistake her intentions. “This is what I think. I don’t think a man called Rosemary at all. I asked around a bit, and Rosemary sounds like she was a pretty smart girl. What I think is that you called her. You told her you had to meet someone up there and that you were scared and she ran to your rescue just like she always did. Only it wasn’t you waiting when she got there, was it? It was Blackie. You set her up to be slaughtered and then tried to get it pinned on my husband. Just like you set John Mullins up years ago to take Robert O’Donnell out on a hunting trip. And then blackmailed him with pictures of the two of you in bed afterwards to make sure he kept his mouth shut, knowing it would destroy his career, which was all he had left when you were through with him.”
“You can’t prove it,” the woman said sullenly.
“I don’t need to, all I have to do is call the police and drop a few hints and suspicions and they’ll prove it.
“What do you want then?”
“Love Hagerty.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s going to kill my husband if I don’t find a way to get him locked up for a really long time.”
“What makes you think I got anything on Love?”
“Because it was him that you seduced John Mullins for, him that wanted Robert O’Donnell dead. Him that you were setting my husband up on murder charges for. Am I right? It’s just that Blackie did the dirty work of killing that poor girl.”
Emma’s lip twisted up in an unattractive sneer. “You think you’re Trixie Belden or something? Pretty little detective in her expensive clothes. But those clothes were paid for with dirty money.”
“You jealous?” Pamela asked, trying to disguise how badly the remark had unsettled her. Emma might be fishing, but she didn’t look as though she was making lucky guesses.
“Jealous?” She shook her head. “I hate him. I hate him like I ain’t never hated anybody in my life. And not for the reasons you’re thinking, either. Yeah, I whore for him, I have for a long time. I done a lot of things for him that I ain’t proud of. But I hate him because he killed my brothers.”
“What?”
“You let my wrist go so I can have a cigarette and I’ll tell you what you want to hear.”
Pamela let go, keeping a wary eye on the woman.
Emma tapped a cigarette out of a nearly empty package, the shaking of her hands making the task take a minute. “You want one?”
Pamela shook her head, feeling a sudden terrible pang for Casey. Ridiculous as it seemed, she even missed the smell of his smoking.
Emma took a long drag, sighing as the nicotine hit her blood stream. “My daddy, as you know, was a cop. Big, freckle-faced Irish bastard, and my mom came from Polish immigrant parents. That’s where I get the blonde hair. Joe and Anna Malone, sort of the walking, talking version of the American dream. Couple of working class kids with immigrant parents making their way in the Promised Land. I was the oldest, and then there was my twin brothers, Stephan and Donal. Two blonde angels when they was little,” she said, “couple of hellraisers when they wasn’t so little.”
Emma looked down, skin tightening over the Slavic cheekbones. “I miss them. People always thought my baby brothers were nothin’ but trouble, but I still remember when everything about them was pure, y’know? I’d help momma bathe them, and after they’d smell so sweet, all those gold ringlets damp on their necks. That’s how I remember them.”
“What happened?”
“Drugs,” she shrugged eloquently, “what the hell else ever happens in this neighborhood? Stephan overdosed on heroin on his twenty-first birthday; he’d started using when he was fifteen. But he’d been clean for six months by then, no one believed that later, but I knew. I’d held his hand through the shakes and helped him to the toilet when he had to throw up. He went cold turkey, thought it’d kill us both before he was through. But he made it, thought he owed it to Donal.” She paused to take another long drag, yellow eyes heavy with memory. “Donal got shot ‘cause someone mistook him for Stephan. Stephan was into his dealer for a big wad of cash, somebody was putting pressure on the dealer and I guess the dealer thought he’d warned Stephan enough. Big old Eldorado drives past him on Broadway one night and bang he’s dead. Only it ain’t Stephan, it’s Donal.”
She tapped the ashes off her cigarette into a tin can on the table. The short-bitten nail of one thumb dug into the scarred melamine surface of the table.
“A week later Stephan decides he’s gonna’ go join Donal an’ ODs. Didn’t take, though his heart stopped a coupla’ times before the doctors were sure he’d survive. It changed things for him though, an’ he went straight after that. Six months clean, had a job at a garage down on Lancaster, wasn’t much but he was there every day on time, had regular pay. Then he goes missin’. Didn’t think much of it at first, I knew he was havin’ a hard time without Donal. Two days later he’s still gone, though, an’ hasn’t shown up for work. I knew he was dead then. Co
ps call my mom ‘bout a week later an’ tell her they need her to come an’ identify a body some jogger saw stuck in the shallows in the Neponset. It was Stephan alright, still had the black rubber tubing round his arm. Cops figured he stumbled into the river when he was high an’ that was that. Case closed.”
“But you knew better?”
“Yeah I knew better, but what did that prove? Cops knew Stephan, knew he’d been a junkie for years, he sure as hell wouldn’t have been the first to fall off the wagon an’ go back on the shit.”
“Why would anyone want him dead then, surely he wasn’t a threat?”
Emma shook her head, “It don’t need to make any kind of sense in this neighborhood. There’s people here, you piss ‘em off once an’ that’s enough. They’ll bide their time.”
“People like Blackie?”
The thumb had moved from digging at the table to scratching at the scars on Emma’s inner elbow, “Maybe, maybe not. You wouldn’t be the first to suspect it lady, but provin’ it, that’s somethin’ else. Besides, Blackie’s not the one givin’ orders, he’s just following ‘em.”
“I don’t understand,” Pamela said, thinking aloud, “Love’s been rich now for years. He doesn’t need the money anymore. What’s in it for him?”
“It’s not the money,” Emma shook her head resolutely, “he likes to own people, he likes to have their soul right there in the palm of his slick little hand. He’s like the devil that way—wants your soul and then when he’s got it he moves on to the next victim. You think you know, lady, but you don’t, ‘cause you ain’t made him mad yet.”
“How do you know that?”
“You’re sittin’ here with me ain’t you? Mmn-mn, you don’t know.”
“Then tell me, Emma, tell me who this man really is.”
Emma gave her a hard look, eyes like dull metal. She hugged her arms across her thin chest, shivering though it was abysmally hot in the small apartment. Pamela could see ancient track marks crisscrossing the delicate underside of the woman’s arms. She’d been an addict, but had been clean for a while to judge by the scars.
Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2) Page 14