McGuire left Micki sleeping, curled like a child in the oversized bed where her sister had taken countless men, driven there by the frenzy of their own libidos. She had always hated getting up, she loved to stay warm in her bed, and so he left her there. He stepped into his trousers, put on his shirt and tip-toed from the room.
He shrugged into his jacket and descended the stairs, emerging in the late morning traffic on Newbury Street to find a newspaper, put himself in touch with the world again. At a newsstand on Boylston across from the Lenox, he bought a Globe from the newsdealer who sucked on a hand-rolled cigarette set in the middle of his mouth, the man shifting his weight from side to side, trying to warm himself with the motion. McGuire scanned the headlines and the sky and walked back to Newbury, feeling something close to affection for the people he passed, street people and Back Bay condominium residents, B.U. students and delivery people, all of them more driven by than engaged in their lives, rarely questioning themselves, and he envied them for it.
On his way to the apartment McGuire thought of Heather, picturing her face, its quick smile and dark eyes, and her compact body: square shoulders, deep chest, hips that flared from a taut waist and dancer’s legs, the thighs strong, the calves delicately sculpted.
He had never known a woman so entranced with her own place in the world, so firmly fixed upon her own status and so driven toward some goal or objective visible only to her, her progress measured according to her own secret calibrations.
McGuire and Heather had shared nothing warmer than a truce, although more than once at parties and social events, Heather passed behind him and drew the fingertips of one hand across McGuire’s buttocks, murmuring “Nice ass” from the corner of her mouth before breaking into that strange laughter she had, that way of finding every incident that touched her life either secretly humorous or sinister and dangerous.
In the beginning McGuire told himself the gulf between the two of them existed because they both loved Micki, and Heather, as the older sister, the protective sibling, would always be jealous of McGuire’s influence over Micki, filling a role that had once been her own.
But Heather’s view was different. “You know why we don’t get along, gumshoe?” she once said to McGuire, a glass of wine in her hand and a laugh poised to explode from her mouth. “It’s because we’re too much alike.” And before McGuire could reply, there was the laughter and she added, “Of course, I’m also a hell of a lot smarter than you are.”
There had been a desperation about Heather, McGuire recalled, unfathomable in its source, and in combination with Heather’s anger it would drive her to achieve any goal, no matter how outrageous. “What makes her so angry?” McGuire once asked Micki, and Micki said it was something that had happened to Heather when she was a child, something about an uncle who had sexually abused her, something the family never openly acknowledged or discussed.
“Heather told me once,” Micki said, “that when Mom heard about it, she blamed Heather for leading Uncle Jack on and Heather realized later that Mom had been jealous. Mom hadn’t been angry about her husband’s brother screwing her daughter, she was jealous.” Micki had smiled and shook her head and said, “Aren’t some families totally messed up?”
It was Heather who detonated the explosion that destroyed McGuire’s marriage by telling him of Micki’s lover, revealing her long-term affair with a lawyer in Cambridge, and when McGuire awoke to the meaning of Micki’s many lies and disappearances over recent weeks, it was Heather who had laughed and mocked him, who taunted him as a cuckold.
When Tim Fox and Micki told McGuire of Heather’s crude blackmailing of her lovers, McGuire knew that Heather had gained more enjoyment from the dominance, from the fear her threats generated in the men she betrayed, and from the rush of power and danger than from the money it earned her.
McGuire climbed the stairs to the kitchen, made coffee and ascended the steep stairway to the fourth level. He crossed the alcove beyond the bedroom where Micki was still sleeping, and walked down the short hall to the office.
He remembered.
It had begun returning to him on the street, watching the people, envying them their concerns, their purposes. Now the memory was crystallizing, solidifying, the facts butting edge to edge like cellular growth.
Heather had sent a message to him with Django, a note on her personal lilac-coloured stationery, Django handing it to him furtively across a table in the Flamingo. He remembered that.
And before that, a week after their meeting in the Esplanade, she had found McGuire in the Public Garden, waiting for Django to appear. She proposed the idea then, the first time.
“Make yourself some money,” she told him. “You still have friends over on Berkeley Street, haven’t you? All you have to do is tell me a few things about them, about one of them anyway. And maybe hold on to some stuff for me.”
He recalled how she was dressed: a fur coat swinging open over a flowered print dress, her neck ringed in heavy gold and large diamond earrings flashing fire in the low autumn sun.
In the most eloquent manner he could summon at the time, McGuire had told her to go away.
“Hey, if you won’t do this for me,” she had said, “I’ll find somebody who will.” And that quick cold smile. “But I’d rather get you to do it for me. And I will.”
And then the note delivered by Django, saying she knew how much McGuire relied on Django and what Django did, what he sold McGuire. “You do this for me, loser,” she had written. “Or I’ll see that the guy delivering this gets his ass in jail and yours in the harbour. Call me tonight.”
Why me, McGuire had wondered, and the answer came back: Because she wants to humiliate you, because she despises you for rejecting her. And because, as an ex-cop, you know things she doesn’t, you have access to something she needs.
He remembered the murder investigation summary Zelinka had given him and he withdrew it from his pocket, unfolded it and sat heavily in the chair at Heather’s desk. Scanning its contents, thinking of all he had absorbed and pondered since Heather’s death, he pictured Heather fleeing her attacker in the bedroom, running down the hall to this office, turning abruptly again for the door, seeking refuge in the bathroom . . .
And he knew.
He sat back in the chair and nodded his head.
He knew.
Garce found Django in a doughnut shop on Charles Street, there in a back booth, stretching a coffee, trying to stay cool, wasting the morning. “Grizz wanna talk,” Garce said, standing there over the booth, hands in his pockets, a crazy black beret on his head, black nylon windbreaker done to the neck.
“What for?” Django said. “Saw Grizz last night. Don’t need to see the man now.”
“Hell you don’t,” Garce said. He had an upper tooth missing in the front, a black hole in his mouth that made him look like some kid maybe fell off his skateboard or something. “Man says you come, you come.”
“He mad?”
“Grizz never get mad.” Garce stepped aside for Django to get out of the booth, staying close. “Grizz jus’ get along. With evr’body. You know that.”
Django nodded and rose to follow Garce, feeling something inside him, something scratching and clawing, telling him not to go, just run but don’t go, and he ignored it.
Grizz wouldn’t hurt him. Even walking down the corridor to Grizz’s room, Garce behind him now, Django kept telling himself there’s nothing to worry about, just have a talk with Grizz, find out what’s on the man’s mind.
Standing outside Grizzly’s room, Django didn’t know what was going on inside from the sounds coming through the door. Grizz would put something across the Gypsy’s mouth, maybe a leather strap to bite on, Django never knew. But now he could hear her moaning or screaming or whatever behind the door.
Took three knocks on the door by Garce before it opened and there’s Grizz standing there, big belly hanging ou
t over the pants he just pulled on, the Gypsy lying back on the bed, her face red and her hands flying in the air like bats or something, like she can’t control them.
Grizz looked really pissed at first, then he smiled when he saw Django. “Need to talk, you ’n me,” he said. “Gimme couple minutes, go wait in your room.”
Garce had never been in Django’s room before, Garce hardly ever came to the Warrenton, had his own place in Charlestown. But he came in now, followed Django in and leaned against the door frame like he’s being cool while Django sat on his bed, saying here it comes, here it comes to himself, trying not to show the shakes.
Grizz opened the door maybe five minutes later and said, “We gotta talk, over inna alley. Let’s go.”
They walked down the stairs and out onto Washington Street, crossing the road among Oriental families carrying food in plastic bags and gawking tourists looking for what was left of the Combat Zone. They went up the alley to the square formed by the back of the empty buildings, Tremont Adult Novelties and Shawmut Imports and others, Grizz leading the way, Garce behind Django, Django’s mouth dry and his knees weak. In the middle sat the forty-gallon drum, all rusty, two feet of ashes in the bottom.
“You not sayin’ much.” Grizzly slapped the side of the rusted drum as he passed, heading for the back door of Tremont Adult Novelties. “Garce, you ever see Django with his mouth not flappin’?”
“Sure ain’t,” Garce said.
Grizz stopped near the back of the building, turned around, looked up at a sky as cold and gray as the broken concrete Django was staring down at. “Not like the way it was flappin’ at that cop last night.” He looked at Django. “Like I hear.”
“That cop?” Django grinned, looked around, looked at Garce and Grizz, back and forth. “He a jive turd, Grizz.” Django shrugged. “Man jump me ’cause I was trackin’ Lady Billie, jus’ like you say, and he see me. No big deal, Grizz. I tell him I’m lookin’ for cars to hot-wire, tha’s all. Jus’ lookin’ for cars, Buick, Benz, somethin’, but I was gonna lay off, yes sir, stay on my own turf . . .”
Grizzly’s hand flew at Django’s head, catching Django just at the corner of his eye, right where Grizz had aimed, and Django was on the ground, his legs drawn up, waiting maybe for a kick.
“Hey, Grizz,” Django said. “What you wanna do that for?”
“You talk at cops,” Garce said. Sometime while Django’d been talking, Garce had pulled a knife from his jacket and he held it now in one hand, lightly, like he was weighing it, judging how heavy it was. Long blade, cut out at the top, ending in a nasty point.
“I answer the man,” Django said. He watched the knife, he couldn’t take his eyes from the knife. “He thinks I trackin’ him and Billie, tha’s all. . . .”
“Wha’s his name?” Grizzly said.
“Man didn’t tell me his—”
This time it was Grizzly’s boot. Django saw it coming and turned his head so that the boot caught him beside the ear and he lost it for a second, blackness and then flashes of light and then the pain, funny how there was that little bit of time when you wait for the pain to come.
“Donovan,” Django said. He kept his eyes closed. If more was coming, he didn’t want to see it.
“Talk to a cop an’ know his name?” Garce said, like he’s surprised and impressed, like Django just told him he’d won a million dollars in a lottery.
“Talk to the Jolt an’ know his name,” Django said. “Grizz know that. Jolt’s a customer, Grizz give me the goods to make a sale, I find him . . .”
“You didn’t find no Jolt,” Grizz said. “Tell you do somethin’ an’ it don’t get done, hell kinda way izzat to work? Huh?”
“I’m lookin’, Grizz.” Django lay where he was, wondering if he was going to be sick.
“Garce say you lay somethin’ heavy on this cop.” Grizz knelt down, got his face closer to Django’s. “That right, Garce?”
“Tha’s right.” Garce was tossing the knife from one hand to the other now, back and forth.
“What’d you tell him?” Grizz said. “What’d you tell this cop, make him so impress with you?”
Do it, Django thought. Let it go, can’t hurt you. Can’t hurt you now. “I tell him what I see,” Django said. “The night the black cop get his, behin’ the Bird, up at the Jolt’s place.”
“You see somethin’ then?”
Django nodded, biting his bottom lip.
Grizz, still watching Django, held a long arm up at Garce, the massive hand open, fingers splayed. Garcia took a step forward, placed the knife in Grizzly’s hand, the white mother-of-pearl handle first.
“Don’ move,” Grizzly said. His voice was calm, gentle. “Don’ move a thing,” and he brought his hand back and lay the blade of the knife on Django’s cheek, the feel of it cold and angry, and he slid the blade until the needle point tickled the inside corner of Django’s right eye, below the bridge of his nose. “You feel that?” Grizzly asked.
Django was afraid to move his head so he whispered, “I feel it, Grizz,” and Grizz said, “Good,” and then Grizz asked him to tell him everything Django had told Donovan, especially what Django had seen in the alley behind the Flamingo the night Tim Fox was killed.
Micki came downstairs with sleep and hair in her eyes. “I smelled the coffee,” she said to McGuire. “Thought you might bring me some.”
McGuire was sitting at the kitchen table, the Globe spread open in front of him next to a cup of black coffee, but he hadn’t been reading. He had been thinking of Heather’s murder and Tim Fox’s death. “Go back to bed,” McGuire said. “I’ll bring a cup up to you.”
“Come with me,” she said.
She led him by the hand upstairs and back to the dishevelled sheets and they lay together, Micki folded into him, her head on his shoulder while he stroked her hair.
“Who are you mixed up with?” McGuire asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Down in Florida. What are you up to?”
“Nothing special.”
“Like the guy in Lauderdale, the dope dealer? You said he was nothing special either.”
“He wasn’t.”
“You lived with him two, three years.”
She shifted against him, avoiding his eyes.
“And when he got caught, he pulled you right in with him. Nice guy.”
“I never said he was nice.”
“You never said you loved him either.”
“I didn’t.”
“You spent three years of your life with him. Still be with him, maybe, if he hadn’t got caught in a D.E.A. raid. What’d he get? Five to ten, something like that?”
She twisted her head to look at him. “Why now?”
“Why what now?”
“Why bring all this up now? Down in Florida, when you came to see me, we never talked about this stuff. We didn’t talk much about anything.”
“Maybe it matters now. More than it did then.”
She exhaled slowly and her eyes drifted. “He reminded me of you.”
“Just what I want to hear. My ex-wife shacks up with a drug dealer because he reminds her of me.”
“I meant you’re both . . . dangerous in a way. That’s what attracted me to you in the first place.”
“Were we that much alike, him and me?”
“No. In other ways you weren’t alike at all. He was cocky, arrogant. You . . . you were always a little . . . sad, a little, I don’t know kind of blue.”
“You miss him?”
“No.” Not a moment’s hesitation in answering.
He wanted to speak, considered the phrases he would use, explored how he might express the anger, the hatred, the way he despised all she had done, but almost as soon as they sprang into his mind, he discarded them and continued to stroke her hair with his hand, wondering how they had
arrived at this place and this time, the both of them, together.
Grizzly had cut Django some, little nick under the eye, little slice down his cheek, just laying the edge of the knife in, let him know how sharp it was, how much it could hurt. While Django remained frozen there, his eyes closed, feeling the blood run across his cheek, Garce did what Grizzly told him to do, wrapping a length of wire around Django’s wrists, binding them together behind his back.
“Get up,” Grizzly said when Garce finished. He grabbed Django by an elbow and lifted.
Django stood, opened his eyes, looked at Grizzly. “Grizz, I never did nothin’ ’gainst you,” Django said. He twisted his body to look at Garce who was watching, eyes half-closed in that funny way of his, never know if he was stoned or sleepy or maybe just nearsighted.
“Never said you did,” Grizzly said. He opened the wooden rear door of Tremont Adult Novelties that led into the storage area, a space smaller than Django’s room at the Warrenton. Beyond it was a heavy steel-clad door, barred from the inside. “Move your ass,” Grizzly said.
Django took a small step forward, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness until Grizzly shoved him from behind, sending him sprawling to the concrete floor, and something skittered off among empty cardboard cartons stacked against the wall. He landed on one shoulder, trying to protect his hands, and his head struck the concrete, opening a gash above an eyebrow.
“Didn’t piss me off,” Grizzly said. He angled his head at Garce who brought the heavy door closed, shutting out the sunlight. “Pissed other people off’s what you did.”
Django heard something shoved through the hasp of the door, locking him inside.
The clinging warmth rising from his groin to his scalp exploded in the release, and he was crying words with meaning but without shape. Then he was lying beside her while she watched him catch his breath and swallow and blink several times before covering his eyes with his hand.
“Never in bed,” Micki said, tracing circles on McGuire’s chest with her forefinger. “We never had any problems in bed.”
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