"Yes."
"Not good news."
"There's worse."
I waited for it.
Loiselle held up a toy the size of a hand calculator.
"Olga's PDA."
"Where was it?"
"On the desk." Loiselle looked back to the black furniture. "She must have come home from the bank yesterday and dropped this here, then taken off in her car."
"And not on business."
"Without this baby? Never." Loiselle's expression grew dark. "What's going on, John?"
"I'm hoping you can help me find out.”
Loiselle looked around the room. "How?"
I inclined my head toward the PDA. "Can you make that thing give us Uncle Ivan's last name and address?"
As she poked furiously at it, Loiselle said, "I told Olga."
"Sorry?"
"If I told her once, I told her a hundred times: 'This Dees character is just no good for you.' "
"I hope you get the chance to tell her again."
Claude Loiselle looked up at me, then went back to work even faster.
* * *
The address turned out to be a turn-of-the-century building on Beacon Street near Coolidge Comer in Brookline, about three miles from my place. Red brick with white cornices, the landscaping of low shrubs and postage-stamp lawn was meticulously trimmed, and the twin entry doors were oiled mahogany. Obviously cared for by someone who really cared, and I thought again of Paulie Fogerty at Plymouth Willows. Propping Nancy's rose upright against the passenger seat so the water from its little tube wouldn't run out, I left the car and walked to the main entrance.
Uncle Ivan's last name wasn't on the list of buzzers and mailboxes between the entry doors and the security door, so I pushed the one marked SUPERINTENDENT. After a short time, a bandy-legged man who looked eighty but moved spryly appeared inside the foyer. He opened the security door and stuck his head out.
"I can help you?"
It sounded like the voice from Olga Evorova's tape machine. “If you're Ivan Evorova."
"That is who I am, but it is pronounce 'Ee-vor-ov', no 'a' at end. Because I am man, not woman."
He spoke with a certain loopy elegance. "My name's John Cuddy, Mr. Evorov." I held out my identification holder to him. "I'm a private investigator from Boston, and your niece hired me. Now I'm trying to find her, and I'm hoping you can help."
Evorov absorbed all this without looking at my ID.
"Olga, she has some kind of trouble?"
"I hope not."
His face darkened. "You will come in?"
"Thank you."
Evorov made a curious gesture with his right hand, almost like a conductor cuing the brass section, and I followed him down a sparkling, tiled corridor, the floor beneath my feet feeling freshly waxed.
"You do a fine job of maintaining the place."
"It is good job for me now. Olga, she helped me from her bank to get it." We reached the end of the corridor, and he made the same conductor's gesture toward a door just barely ajar. "Please."
I passed through a coat-closet foyer into a small living I room, the furniture that puffy style of the Great Depression, the floor hardwood and as polished as the tiles outside. Instead of his niece's Russian motif, though, Evorov had framed posters on one wall. Of Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera House, and other New York institutions. On another wall were framed photos, all eight-by-ten black-and-whites, showing a 1940s version of him in a tuxedo with entertainers like Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland.
I said, "You were in show business?"
"I played the concert violin." He gestured again, this time toward a glass cube on top of a mahogany server. Inside the cube were a violin and bow, arranged like museum pieces. "Not for one orchestra only, but for many vocalists."
He walked to the wall of photos. "When I come this country—from Soviet Union, 1932—the boat lands in New York. But first I see the Statue of Liberty, and I tell you this thing: it makes me feel very good, very warm inside. I am then on the dock place, and all I have is my violin, in a leather case with handle. And a man I do not know"—Evorov touched the corner of a photo showing a man I didn't recognize, also in a tuxedo, hugging him at the shoulders—"Teddy Adolph, who is there on the dock place waiting for a relative, he sees me with my case and he says to me, 'You are musician or gangster?' And I do not know what he talks about, but Teddy laughs and tells me if I am good violinist, he can maybe get a job for me. Imagine, I am in this country five minutes, and already yet somebody is helping me with job!"
I nodded at the other photos. "And you got to work with some real celebrities?
Evorov shrugged. "Teddy, he was fine fellow and always with his camera, but he took photographs only of the ones we admire." He touched the comer of another shot. "Sinatra, he was the best male vocalist I ever work with. The quality of the voice, the showmanship on the stage. Nobody else ever come close to him."
Evorov moved to a third photo, a man who was vaguely familiar, with flowing gray hair. "This is Leopold Stokowski, the finest conductor. His hair, like the mane of a lion it was. And the hands? Stokowski, he never used a baton." Evorov made his curious gesture with both hands. "He used his fingers, so long, so graceful, and all his conducting he did with them. You play for him, and it is like watching the butterflies on the first day of spring."
Evorov touched a jaunty face I remembered from movie musicals. "And Maurice Chevalier, you see his straw hat? He made all the orchestra wear a hat like he did—a 'skimmer' is how he called it. Wonderful man, Chevalier, wonderful personality. Was only one problem for me with him. I have to wear the skimmer, and everytime I do an upbow, I knock my hat funny. So I try to do more the downbow, because it is the stronger motion, the exclamation point if music is literature."
And one more. "This of me with Judy Garland here, Teddy takes this photo at the old Metropolitan Opera House, where I play for her two weeks. She was the best female vocalist. Garland sang, you could hear the hurt in her voice. The only time I ever cry when I am playing for the public." Evorov's voice suddenly changed. "Mr. Cuddy, you going to make me cry about my Olga?"
"I hope not."
He turned, indicating that we should sit. "Tell me what you here for."
I took a puffy chair across from his. "Your niece didn't come to work at the bank today. I found your messages on her telephone machines there and at her apartment. Have you spoken with her since?"
"Not since I leave for her the messages. She always calls me back, unless she tells me she is going on trip."
"Trip?"
"Like for her bank or the vacation?" A small smile. "Or maybe the weekend with her boyfriend."
"Andrew Dees?"
"Yes. You know him too?"
"Not really. We met once."
"He is fine fellow. Good match for my Olga. I tell her so."
"You like him, then."
"What is not to like? He has his own business, good manners at the table."
"Then you have no idea where your niece might be?"
"No, but I tell you this thing: my Olga, she cares about other people. She does not leave without telling me where she is going, the people at her bank what she is doing."
Evorov's mouth twisted a little over his next words. "Her friend there—the one who likes women—you talk to her?"
"Claude Loiselle. Yes."
"And she does not know too where my Olga is?"
"No."
The darkening came over Evorov's face again. "This is very bad, yes?"
"It's hard to say. She's been missing only since some time yesterday afternoon."
"When I am in Soviet Union, it is time of Stalin. You know what that means, Mr. Cuddy? That means missing is gone forever."
"Maybe not here, Mr. Evorov."
A head shake. "Stalin, he shot many people. Millions, even during the Great Patriotic War. I am over here already in the United States, but my friends, they tell me. All our relatives, Olga's and mine, are dead from the
war or dead from the shootings or dead from the gulags. Stalin, he killed a whole country of people. Hitler was a devil, that one. But Stalin, he was the devil's devil, yes?"
When I stood to leave, Ivan Evorov made me promise to call if I found his Olga. Then he rose too, but got no farther than the photo showing him with Judy Garland, and I let myself out.
* * *
"Lieutenant, you have a minute?"
"Cuddy. Where you been keeping yourself?"
"Out of state, on a case."
I closed the office door behind me. Lieutenant Robert Murphy of Boston Homicide sat at his desk in a building off West Broadway in Southie, a flowered tie snugged tight to the collar button of a starched shirt, the points of the collar held close by a golden stay. The single gold pen from the holder in front of him contrasted, like another piece of jewelry, against the black skin of his hand. Closing a file folder, he replaced the pen in one of the holder's angled sheaths, next to the miniature American flag flying at forty-five degrees in the other.
Murphy said, "Sit."
I arranged one of the green padded armchairs for conversation, then tilted my head toward the folder he'd closed. "Am I taking you away from anything?"
"Just another dead end. Had a shooting in Charlestown last night. Seventeen-year-old Townie, three to the back of the head. Neighborhood's only a mile square, and that's the ninth hit we've had there since Fourth of July. Almost all the folks involved are yours."
Meaning Irish-American. "The victims."
"And the shooters."
"You know who they are?"
"We know it, all right, based on who the victims are. But knowing's one thing, and proving's another. Townie witnesses won't come forward, and we can't arrest, much less convict, on motive alone."
"What about the victims' families?"
"Not a word." Murphy rocked in his chair, the swivel part squeaking like a saddle. "Last night, for example. I'm watching the medical examiner's people finish up, and I spot this one woman, she lost her own son two years ago to this shit, and I ask her how long she's gonna put up with it, with seeing other kids gunned off a street corner like her boy was. And you know what she tells me?"
"No, what?"
"She says, 'Hey, if somebody knows who did it, the somebody'll call the family, tell them what happened. Then, the family wants to take out their grief, one of the sons or nephews'll go kill the guy? "
"The Townie code."
Murphy let his eyelids drop to half-mast. "Every society has one. Makes me wish I worked South Portland instead of South Boston."
"South Portland. As in Maine?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"They got Cop Cards up there."
" 'Cop Cards'?"
"Right. Like for baseball or football, except they got these color photos of the people on their police force, from patrol officer to chief. There's information on the backs of them about the cops and their families, and antidrug stuff, and so on. I guess they release one card a week, and the department's swamped with kids on that day, all wanting the newest 'collectible.' "
"You're kidding?"
"On the level." Murphy leaned back, lacing his fingers together behind his head like he was in a hammock on a summer's day. "Can you imagine the union here letting us put information about families and hobbies and shit on a card with the cop's photo on the front?"
“Not in this century."
Murphy used both hands to move his head left to right, a very limited calisthenic. "Most popular cards are supposed to be the K-9 Unit's, account of the dogs. Never cared much for dogs myself, but maybe I should have gone with the Mounted back when I had the chance."
"You on a horse?"
"Hey, don't you remember Hopalong Cassidy and Gene Autry? Besides, it's a good gig. Friend of mine from the academy works the Mounted, he's on eight to four every day. Which really means one hour beginning at eight over by the stable in Jamaica Plain, and one hour beginning at three to take the horses back. So it's actually only a six-hour shift. And this friend says the details you get to work are the best. Events with kids, patrol alongside pedestrians, everybody liking you because of the animal and all. Usually, the only time citizens meet a cop is when they're getting a traffic ticket."
"Yeah, but what about the weather?"
"I admit, I wouldn't fancy the duty come January, but every time I draw a case like last night, I still think about my friend, everybody liking him while he—what's that word, not 'trot' or 'gallop,' but my friend uses it?"
" 'Canter,' maybe?"
"Yeah, 'canter,' that's it. Here I am, trying to break the Townie code, and there's my friend, cantering his way toward thirty years and out."
“Lieutenant?"
"Yeah?"
"I was wondering if maybe you could help me with something?"
"Oh, and here I thought you'd come by just to cheer me up."
"Seriously. You know anybody in Witness Protection?"
"You mean the federal program for cooperating witnesses?"
"If that's what they call them, that's what I mean."
Murphy rocked forward in his chair. "We talking a witness now, or a marshal?"
"The U.S. Marshals run it?"
"Last I heard. 'Office of Enforcement Operations' sticks in my head some place."
"So you do know a marshal in the program."
"One."
"Any chance I can talk with this person?"
"No."
"How come?"
"Cuddy, I don't think they even talk to each other."
"Look, Lieutenant. I'm in a real bind here. I have a female client who's involved with a guy I think's protected by the program, and I need to find her."
"You need to find her?"
"Yes. I know who the guy in the program is."
A confused expression. "Wait a minute. You lost your own client?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"Well," leaning back as he drew out the word, "the Witness Protection people aren't what you'd call forthcoming, like I said."
"Any suggestions, then?"
Murphy ran a hand down his tie, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles. "Might be they have a watcher on the one you think's in the program. Might also be you push on the witness, you get the marshals to come out and greet you."
Good tactic, except Olga Evorova had told me expressly not to approach Andrew Dees directly.
I stood up. "Thanks, Lieutenant."
"Just be sure that advice don't come back here with any shit on it."
Turning away, I said, "Do my best."
Behind me, Robert Murphy's voice trailed away. "A palomino. That's what I'd want." His chair squeaked rhythmically. "A big, bad-assed blond one, like Roy Rogers used to have, you know?"
=16=
I used a pay phone on West Broadway across from the Homicide Unit to dial my answering service. Nothing from Nancy, but then I didn't expect she'd have heard from her doctor as yet, either. The service operator also said no log entry showed for Olga Evorova, but Claude Loiselle was already on record with "Call me if you've learned anything." Primo Zuppone had left three messages, essentially, "As soon as you get back from out-of-state, I need to introduce you to some friends of mine." At least he'd come up with a good dodge to hold off his Milwaukee people.
Hanging up the phone, I went to a coffeeshop for lunch and tried to piece together what I knew so far. On Tuesday, Olga Evorova appears in my office, wanting a confidential investigation of her virtual fiancé, Andrew Dees. His past seems an empty cupboard, and her closest friend, Claude Loiselle, is suspicious of him. I think of an indirect way to interview Dees' neighbors at Plymouth Willows about him on Wednesday, but to make the cover story better, I first see Boyce Hendrix at the management company for the complex. I'm barely back to my office from the South Shore that afternoon when two sluggers come calling by the dumpster, advising me to stay away from both the company and the complex. At the University of Central Vermont on Thursday, I discover Evorova's
boyfriend isn't who he claims to be, while Primo Zuppone was finding out the man's real identity. Now it's Friday afternoon, my client and her lover—both unreachable in a way that scares Loiselle and Uncle Ivan, neither of whom has heard boo from Evorova for almost twenty hours.
And I've left Primo—the guy trying to do me a favor by showing the photo of "Andrew Dees" to people who might recognize him—hanging out to dry with his Milwaukee friends. Who, having flown into Logan the night before, probably aren't by now in the best of moods.
It seemed to me there were two ways to play it. One was to violate Olga Evorova's express instruction and confront Dees, as Lieutenant Murphy suggested. The other was to go innocently back to my condo or office, pretend to have just picked up Primo's many messages, and call him on his car phone, in which case the play might be taken away from me.
Leaving half my sandwich untouched, I came to a decision, choosing the office over the condo since I had less there to break.
* * *
Sitting behind my desk, as ready as possible, I timed it. Five minutes and thirty-five seconds after Primo rang off on the car phone, the three of them came through my pebbled-glass door. Without knocking first.
Zuppone was the point man, looking greatly relieved to see me actually there before he put the poker face back on and motioned the other two into the room. The balding guy walked in second, sing1e-breasted coat unbuttoned, watching me and nodding once, his expression the one you'd wear taking the space next to a stranger on the bus. The younger man brought up the rear, looking all around my office without even glancing at me. His doub1e-breasted suit was buttoned, which at least told me the action would come from the balding guy, if any action there'd be.
Still not looking in my direction, the younger one said, "City's a fucking shithole compared to Milwaukee, but cooling my fucking heels outside your apartment building, I'da thought the office here'd have a little more class."
The flat, midwestern "A" was lodged in his voice and pitched it a bit high, as though he were twenty pounds lighter. I said, "This part of the country, we tend to decorate down to the clientèle."
Zuppone said, "Hey-ey-ey, everybody, let's not get off on the wrong foot here, huh? How about I make some introductions?"
Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy Page 16