by Jon Loomis
“I changed my mind,” Plotz said, pushing his front door open. “I don’t want to talk to you after all.”
“Arrest him,” Coffin said. Lola started up the stairs, moving fast. She took them in three loose-limbed bounds and got a boot inside the crooked door before Plotz could slam it.
“You can’t come in here,” Plotz said, backing toward his kitchen. The apartment was long and narrow, like the cabin of a sailboat. “You don’t have a warrant.” He lunged for the coatrack and picked up an umbrella, which he brandished like a sword.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Lola said, grabbing the umbrella and twisting it out of Plotz’s hand. She hooked the umbrella’s handle behind Plotz’s neck and yanked it down and sideways, forcing the recycling engineer off balance. He stumbled, and Lola kicked his feet out from under him. Plotz fell heavily, grunting as his shoulder hit the floor. Lola rolled Plotz onto his belly and, with a knee in his back, snapped handcuffs onto his wrists.
Tears welled up in Plotz’s eyes. “Fuck,” he said. “That hurt.”
“All you had to do was show us the truck,” Coffin said. “Now you’re going to jail.”
“Hey, Frank,” Lola said, wiping her hands on her uniform pants. She tipped her head toward Plotz’s bookshelf. “Check it out.”
There were at least a dozen photographs on top of the small bookshelf, crowded together, some in frames, some leaning or lying flat on their backs. They were all pictures of Jamie—Jamie loading grocery bags into her car, Jamie on her front porch, Jamie at yoga class—grainy black-and-whites, mostly taken with a telephoto lens. A scatter of razor blades lay among them. One of the photos—Jamie in silhouette, shot through the window of Coffin’s house—had been cut into jagged strips.
“I’m not answering any questions,” Plotz said as Lola stuffed him into the back of the squad car.
“Fine,” Coffin said.
“Not without my lawyer,” Plotz said.
“Okay.”
Lola started the engine.
“So what am I being charged with?”
“Right now? Assaulting Officer Winters with an umbrella.”
Lola steered the car onto Commercial Street. The clouds had moved on, and the harbor glinted in the afternoon sun. A big whale-watch boat was rounding the breakwater, nosing toward MacMillan Wharf, engines rumbling. After dark, the same boat would head back out to the Atlantic, taking several hundred men, a DJ, and a great deal of liquor on an all-night dance cruise.
“Look, I’m sorry about the umbrella thing,” Plotz said. “I felt threatened. It was just instinct.”
“Bad instinct,” Coffin said. “What about last night, in the cemetery? Did you feel threatened then, too?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Coffin turned around and looked at Plotz through the wire mesh separating the front and rear seats. “You really suck at lying, Duffy. I’d be embarrassed, if I was you.”
“Whatever,” Plotz said. “I’m not answering any questions.”
________
“We’re fucked,” said Louie Silva. Louie was pale; the rims of his eyes were pink, as though he hadn’t slept. His hair, which had always been jet black, was suddenly flecked with gray. “We are officially one hundred percent fucked up the ass.”
Brandon Phipps raised a finger. “What Mr. Silva means is that the business climate shows signs of deteriorating.”
They were in Louie’s office, on the third floor of Town Hall. Louie sat in an antique office chair behind a big oak desk. Phipps and Boyle sat on the leather sofa. Coffin stood near the windows, watching a green sailboat as it tacked slowly across the harbor.
“Is that what you mean, Louie?” Coffin said.
“Yeah,” Louie said. “We’re fucked.”
“Who is we, exactly?”
“Mr. Silva is referring to the business community in general,” Phipps said.
Coffin leaned toward Louie. “Can you talk while he drinks water? I mean, I’d be impressed if you could do that.”
“Very fucking funny, Frankie,” Louie said.
“More to the point,” said Phipps, raising a neatly groomed eyebrow at Boyle.
“More to the point,” Boyle said, “what have you got? Who are your suspects?”
Coffin shrugged. “Beats me,” he said.
Louie groaned audibly. Phipps threw up his hands.
“What do you mean, beats me?” Louie said. He was fiddling with a black and silver fountain pen—taking the cap off, putting it back on. “How can you not have suspects when corpses are piling up all over town?”
“We’ve got no witnesses to any of the killings. We’ve got very little in the way of physical evidence, and limited access to forensic lab reports on what evidence there is. What we do know is that the killings all appear to be connected to the Moors condo development. I’d like to know more about the consortium that owns it—it’s very secretive.”
“Quite the investigation you’re running, Detective,” Phipps said.
Coffin met his eyes. They were a foggy blue, the color of bread mold. “Last I heard, this was an unofficial, off-the-books investigation. We can’t just start busting heads and serving warrants.”
“But you arrested the Plotz guy,” Boyle said. “What’s that about?”
“Unrelated, probably. He tried to run me down last night.”
“Jesus. What’d you do to piss him off?”
“He’s been stalking my girlfriend. He followed me into the cemetery and tried to flatten me. Or maybe just scare me. Anyway, he’s in jail.”
“So,” said Phipps, pursing his lips. “You’ve basically got nothing.”
“We’re so fucked up the ass,” Louie said, furiously capping and uncapping the fountain pen.
Coffin shrugged. The green boat was turning at the breakwater, heading for Race Point and the Atlantic. “We can narrow things a little,” he said. “Our guy is probably male, pretty big and strong. He’s probably local; he knew Duarte and Serena were involved with the Moors. He had Serena’s cell phone number.”
“You checked her incoming calls?” Boyle asked.
Coffin nodded. “Her cell phone and PDA were in her car. Lola got a look at them before Mancini showed up. Serena had dinner with a client at eight o’clock. Got a call on her cell at nine seventeen. We talked to the client—guy named Henderson. He says the call seemed to upset her. She wrapped things up with him and took off.”
“So . . . ?”
“Dead end. The call came from the pay phone outside Adams Pharmacy.”
Louie groaned softly. Phipps folded his arms across his muscular chest.
“How sure are you that the killings are related?” Boyle asked. “That’s not what the state police think.”
“You talked to Mancini today?”
“Yup. He’s working on Merkin’s wife and Serena’s girlfriend. Duarte he figures is drug related.”
“Maybe—but then you’ve got three unrelated murders in less than two weeks, in a town that hasn’t had three murders in ten years. Pretty freaky coincidence.”
“Okay,” Boyle said. “What’s your game plan?”
“Keep poking at Real Estate Investment Consortium,” Coffin said. “See what crawls out. Find out who’s involved, how they’re making money. Look for anyone connected who had a reason to start killing people.”
“The Moors?” Louie said. “You think someone involved in the Moors did this? These are wealthy, prominent businesspeople, for God’s sake. They don’t go around nailing people to freaking buildings.” He uncapped the fountain pen. It made a faint blurping sound, and ink splattered all over his hands. “Fuck,” he said.
Coffin shrugged again. “If these are motiveless killings, we are screwed.”
Silva glanced at Boyle, who nodded. “We need results, Coffin,” Boyle said. “This thing cannot drag on till fucking Judgment Day. We like your pal Kotowski for Serena’s murder, and if he did that one, he probably did the others, too.”
/> “He’s completely fucking deranged,” Louie said, wiping his hands on a white handkerchief. “Capable of anything.”
Coffin watched the green boat as it passed Long Point. The water was pale turquoise near the shore, deep blue farther out. It sparked and glittered in the sunlight. “Kotowski hasn’t killed anyone,” he said. “I was with him when Duarte’s house caught fire.”
Boyle waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. Duarte may not be related. Maybe Mancini’s right about him. The point is, we want you to take a good, hard look at Kotowski.”
“Trust me, Frankie,” Louie said, dropping the ink-smeared handkerchief into the wastebasket beside his desk. “The Moors angle’s a loser. It’s going nowhere.”
“Obviously,” said Phipps.
“Fire me,” Coffin said.
“Now, Frankie—” Louie said.
“You force me to open an off-the-record, probably illegal investigation, and now I’ve got a committee telling me how to run it. Fuck you. Fire me.”
“Think about your mother, for God’s sake,” Louie said. “What happens to her if you lose your job?”
“Look, Coffin,” Boyle said, “maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re a little too close to this Kotowski guy to see the situation clearly. All we’re asking is that you take a look. Talk to him. See if he’s got alibis for Merkin and Hench. If it doesn’t pan out, you can poke at whatever you want.”
Chapter 22
Coffin knocked on Kotowski’s door. It was locked, which surprised him—Kotowski had never even had a working latch, to Coffin’s knowledge, much less an actual lock. The house was quiet. Kotowski’s truck sat in its usual spot in the scraggly front yard.
Kotowski had probably pedaled his rattletrap bike to the Yankee Mart for coffee or a pack of cigarettes, or over to Billy’s for unhappy hour. Coffin decided to wait on the front porch, but after a few minutes he got restless and walked around to the back of the house, figuring the sliding glass door that opened onto the deck was almost certainly unlocked.
Late afternoon slantlight, the sky luminous and clear, only a few wisps of cloud at high altitude, mingled with the contrails of passenger jets heading into Boston. Coffin hopped from Kotowski’s low seawall onto the beach. A pair of gulls shrieked at each other at the water’s edge, fighting over some dead thing they’d found in the sand. The tide was going out, sucking through the breakwater, speaking a thousand watery tongues.
Kotowski might have gone to the Little Store, to peruse a fresh shipment of porn magazines. He could have been paddling his kayak around Long Point, nude except for his conical Vietnamese straw hat. Or maybe he was inside, asleep or sitting in one of the moldering armchairs with headphones on, smoking hashish and listening to Rostropovich play the Bach cello suites.
A flight of rotting wooden stairs ran from the beach to Kotowski’s deck, with a little gate at the bottom to discourage tourists from trespassing. Spaz, Kotowski’s scruffy orange tomcat, sat on the warped railing, licking his paw. Coffin swung the gate open and climbed the stairs, which sagged a bit under his weight. He crossed the weathered deck and peered in through the glass door, cupping his hands around his eyes to block the glare. Kotowski’s rusted three-speed leaned against the shingled wall. There were no lights on inside, no Kotowski. Coffin tried the door, but it was locked. He thumped on the glass with the flat of his hand.
“Kotowski!” he called, but there was no movement inside. He thumped on the glass again. Nothing. Kotowski wasn’t home.
Coffin clambered awkwardly over the seawall, crossed Kotowski’s yard, and got into the Dodge. He turned the key, and the engine roared to life instantly, a black plume of smoke belching from the tailpipe. The Dodge backfired loudly twice, then stalled.
“Fuck me,” Coffin said. “Motherfucking fuckball.” He climbed out of the Dodge and stood staring at it, pondering revenge. Something smelled like melted plastic. He opened the hood. Green flames flickered up from the carburetor.
Kotowski’s garden hose was snarled in the front yard, near the scraggly tomato plants. Coffin turned the water on at the house, grabbed the hose, and trotted toward the car. The flames were bigger, rising two or three feet above the engine compartment. Coffin trained the garden hose on the fire, a miserable spritz aimed at its heart. The flames grew. It occurred to Coffin that if the fire spread to the gas tank, he might be killed by the explosion—or at least maimed by flying shrapnel. He tossed the hose aside and backed off.
“Burn, then, motherfucker,” Coffin said. “Go on and burn.” The fire hissed and steamed and went out. The smell of burnt radiator hose hung in the air.
Coffin crossed the yard, jumped over the seawall, then came back a minute later with Kotowski’s decrepit three-speed over his shoulder. He set it down, climbed aboard, and rode off, wobbling. He’d call Sal when he got home.
Chapter 23
Jamie napped fitfully on Coffin’s sofa. The day was warm; the couch was lumpy and narrow, upholstered in something itchy. She dreamed a woodpecker was drilling a hole in the house. It knocked, paused, knocked again.
It knocked.
Jamie’s eyes snapped open. Someone was there—outside the screen porch. A dark figure stood on the doorstep, peering in, silhouetted against the late afternoon light. Jamie’s heart was pounding. Plotz? she thought.
“Frank? You in there?”
“Oh my God,” Jamie said. “Lola, is that you?” She climbed off the sofa, walked out to the screen porch, and unlatched the door.
“Hi,” Lola said. “You okay? Did I catch you at a bad time?”
Jamie pushed the screen door open. “Come on in. I was napping. I had back-to-back classes this morning, and with everything that’s been going on I haven’t been sleeping very well.”
“Oh, no,” Lola said. “Sorry to wake you. I just wanted to drop something off for Frank.”
“He’s not here.” Jamie padded into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water from the Brita. “I thought he’d be with you.”
“I can come back,” Lola said.
“You’re welcome to wait. He’s probably over at Billy’s, having a drink. Water? Glass of wine?”
“Sure—water. Thanks.”
Lola was dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt, and engineer boots. Her hair was pulled back in a short ponytail. A tomboy, Jamie thought. A cute one. No wonder Frank likes her.
“So Frank tells me you’re thinking about having a baby,” Lola said, sipping her water. “That’s a pretty big step.”
“The end of self-indulgence, or something. At least until they start day care.”
“I’m not sure I could handle the responsibility. I don’t even do very well with houseplants.”
Jamie blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Apparently people don’t usually forget their babies at the grocery store. Or eat them. It’s nature’s way.”
“Can I ask another personal question?”
Jamie smiled. “My life’s an open book.”
“It’s none of my business,” Lola said, leaning against the kitchen counter, “but I’ve been wondering about the not-getting-married thing. It’s kind of unusual.”
Jamie waved a hand. “Marriage,” she said. “You get a piece of paper that says you’re stuck with each other until you die. It seems like the quickest possible way to suck the life out of a relationship, doesn’t it?”
“Besides,” Lola said, “now that gay people can get married in this state . . .”
“It just ruins it,” Jamie said. “Up in Canada, straight people have stopped getting married altogether.”
Lola grinned. “You know, suddenly wine sounds like just the ticket.”
“When doesn’t it?” Jamie said. She opened the fridge, found a cold bottle of pinot grigio, and went to work with a corkscrew.
Coffin wobbled into his driveway on Kotowski’s bike, nearly crashing into Jamie’s old blue Volvo. The bike had no brakes at all. He climbed off and wiped a sleeve over his brow. He was soaked with sweat. Lola’s bl
ack Camaro was parked at the curb.
The house was alive. Music and women’s voices drifted through the open windows out into the summer evening. He opened the screen door and stepped onto the porch and said, “Hello?”
“You’re in trouble, mister,” said a voice from inside the house. It was Jamie. Another woman laughed. Coffin stuck his head into the living room. Jamie and Lola were in the kitchen, drinking wine and making a salad. A jazz record was playing—Chet Baker singing “The Best Thing for You.”
“I am?” Coffin said.
“No fair not telling me when someone tries to kill you,” Jamie said, wagging a finger at Coffin. “That’s very, very bad. Bad!”
“Nobody tried to kill me,” Coffin said. The goat’s head goggled at him incredulously. “Duffy just wanted to scare me, I think.” He put his hands on Jamie’s shoulders and tried to kiss her, but she ducked away.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she said, pointed index finger an inch from his nose. “I hate that stupid stoic shit.”
“Sorry,” Coffin said.
“Hi, Frank,” Lola said. “Want me to hit him for you, Jamie?”
“Hey!” Coffin said.
“Yes,” Jamie said, “but let’s give him a drink first.”
Coffin scowled at Lola. “You told on me,” he said.
“Sorry, Frank,” Lola said. “I had no idea you were playing tough guy.”
Coffin sighed. The pinot grigio was so cold that the bottle was beaded with condensation. “What’s for dinner?” he said, pouring himself a glass.
Something squirmed in a bag on the counter. Jamie reached in and pulled out a brown, struggling lobster. “Sea bugs,” she said, holding the lobster by its thorax. “I got you a big one. Two pounds.” The lobster waved its claws at Coffin.
“You’re getting very sleepy . . . ,” Coffin said, stroking the lobster’s spiny head with his fingertip. The lobster’s antennae drooped. Its black bug-eyes grew dreamy.
“Plenty for the three of us,” Jamie said.