We both gaze at my black Beetle with its red silk rose in full flower in the dashboard bud vase. Now is not the moment to discuss automotive upsizing. I have something else in mind. “Trudy, let me ask, do you treat homeless patients?”
“When they’re brought in unconscious or injured. Boston City gets most of them, but I treated a few when I worked in the ER years ago. Why?”
“Yesterday I talked to a homeless woman, probably in her late sixties. She seemed lucid but partly confused. Does street life cause hallucinations?”
“Dementia. It’s a contributing factor. Street people tend to be unstable to begin with, and then a trauma pushes them over the edge. They can develop remarkable survival skills, but malnutrition takes a toll. Plus alcohol and drugs are a factor, sometimes abuse. It’s hard to know, Reggie, because these people don’t get regular workups. We don’t have good records. But if the woman didn’t make sense, it’s par for the course. You’re not hearing-impaired.”
“Thanks, Trudy. I’d better let you get some sleep.”
“Not till I turn the birdcage into a language lab. By the way, I’m going to start representing Cutco cutlery. How about a free demonstration? No obligation.”
“Knives?”
“Cutco is premium cutlery for every lifestyle.”
“Trudy, my lifestyle is cutting up fruit.”
“Sounds like the eight-inch trimmer to me. Meanwhile, here goes the birdseed experiment. You look spiffy. Great color. Going shopping?”
“Going to work.”
“Like he said, time is money. See you soon.”
In moments, I’m on my way across the South End line to Warnock Street in Roxbury, a section of Boston I’d never go near in my former life. Every store has a pull-down steel grate for nighttime lockdown, and every person on the sidewalks is black.
It’s jarring to be the whitefish out of water, to face a lifetime of prejudice and stereotypes. But the Roxbury streets are definitely not my comfort zone. A parking slot opens up, and I ease the Beetle in beside Bertie’s Bar-B-Q. Next door is StyleSmart, the store where I work Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
“Reggie, good to see you. And that indigo looks so fine. It brings out your eyes.”
My boss, Nicole Patrick, glides across the floor as if this shop is a ballroom, as if its customer seating area is a salon, as if the racks of business-dress clothing fill a dance floor.
And why not? Our clientele comes here to learn to dance, so to speak. StyleSmart, you see, provides business-dress clothing for the low-income and no-income women trying to enter the workforce after years on welfare. The idea is to outfit them for post-welfare lives. It is a not-for-profit consignment shop of sorts, meaning its inventory is donated by women like my former self, who seasonally went through her walk-ins to thin out whatever had “expired” and replenish her wardrobe. The customers here pay little or nothing for their purchases and fashion consults. Nicole Patrick is a social-worker-turned-fashionista for the working poor. Me, I’m the chief consultant.
At least, that was the original plan. My Aunt Jo matched us up practically on her deathbed, thinking her niece and friend would cross-pollinate. It’s funny how things turn out differently under the law of unforeseen outcomes.
“Reggie, step back there a minute.” Nicole teeters on four-inch mules, her hair upswept today. Her skin tone is between milk and bittersweet chocolate. She raises an aerosol can and practically arabesques in her turquoise peplum jacket, its jet beads clicking as she moves. Her onyx drop earrings swing as she shakes the can.
Is she spraying bugs this early in the season? I swear, one spider sighting, and I’ll quit.
“They’re cookin’ up spareribs at Bertie’s, Reggie, and if that landlord doesn’t do something about the vents, our whole inventory will smell like a smokehouse. ‘All manner of baked meats,’ says the scripture, but Genesis isn’t Bertie’s. Here goes.”
A mist of orange oil rises. Suddenly, StyleSmart smells like— “Creamsicles,” I say. “Ummm, it takes you back in time, like snow cones on a hot day. Glad you’re here a few minutes early, Reggie. I sold the suit we’d put on Oprah. We got to find our girl another outfit.” We stare at the nude mannequin. “Let’s dress our Oprah up real fine.”
“How about that burnt-brown outfit on the far rack?” It’s my background that should make me valuable to Nicole. I repeat, “Definitely the burnt-brown with a nice scarf.”
“Let’s think on that one for a few minutes.” This means no. I have struck out, backslid in just minutes to my old clothes habits. Women on the job aren’t nuns, Nicole says. A little plumage keeps the season bright. She tells this to our customers, making sure I overhear.
Moreover, she coaxes me into apparel from the donation boxes. The indigo bolero I’m wearing came from one such box. But don’t think for a minute I’m skimming the charity clothes. For every peacock feather, so to speak, I donate something from my closet filled with sedate heathers, bland taupes, and innocuous blues. Accessorized, they’re sometimes just right for our clients.
Crazy as it sounds, the used clothes are an upgrade for me, a makeover that Nicole Patrick calls Operation Peacock, with Nicole as my consultant and personal shopper. In other words, my fashion fairy godmother.
“I got some new size tags for the racks,” Nicole says. “Let’s put ’em on first. You take the skirts, I’ll do the tops. I’m also expecting someone I want you to meet.”
The shop is ours alone for the moment, and I seize the opportunity. “Nicole, when you were a social worker, did you have Rastafarian clients?”
“My caseload had its share of families with young men in dreads.”
“Were they—” I want to ask, religious fanatics? Cult members? “Were they believers?”
She shoots me a look. “Believers? They tried to find their place in the sun in a world that is mostly hostile to them. Es-tranged, I’d say.”
“What are their beliefs?”
“The history is complicated, Reggie. Mainly, it’s a mix of Marcus Garvey’s back-to-Africa movement and Haile Selassie as God-on-earth in Ethiopia. It’s not my religion, but one big thing: the Rastas oppose Babylon.”
“You mean Babylon as a symbol of sinful luxury?”
“For them, it’s more like a symbol of centuries of white power oppressing black peoples. Here in North America, the shackles of the slave days become the shackles of poverty, inequality, the trickery of whites. They eat natural foods.”
“I hear they smoke a lot of marijuana.”
“Tokin’ offenders?” Nicole chuckles, snaps a size 16 tag, and looks my way. “Reggie, most of America is hopped up on drugs of one sort or another. Think of the pill pushers on TV. Think of all those feisty little schoolchildren getting off the bus with their tummies full of sugary Froot Loops. They turn the kids’ energy into an illness. They call it attention deficit and dose them up good, so they sit cooped up inside the whole livelong day. Who benefits? The drug makers. That’s the real ‘disorder’ we’re talking about.”
I recall my son Jack’s Ritalin year, practically a rite of passage for every other fourth-grade boy at Fox Country Day. Marge Hooper and Leah Stromberger had coaxed me to their pediatrician because Tucker and Brent behaved so much better. Jack did too, but we wanted our real son, not a Stepford boy. Even Marty agreed, Marty who hardly gave the family a thought.
“Okay,” I say. “I take your point.” We work along. The new spring hues are light and bright. “I hear the Rasta colors are red, green, and gold. Are they symbolic?”
“They’re from the Garvey movement. The red stands for the Church Triumphant of the Rastas. It symbolizes the blood shed by martyrs in the history of the Rastas.”
“Do their preachers wear red robes?”
“Not that I know.”
“I have one preacher in mind, a red-robed preacher with dreadlocks. He was—or is—called Big Doc. What can you tell me?”
“Not very much.”
Nicole can clam up when you least expect it.
If knowledge is power, Nicole Patrick guards hers carefully. Years of social work made her the eyes and ears of Boston’s black communities: Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan. She’s a storehouse of information, but prying it loose is something else.
I’m not ready to be shut out. “This Doc headed a group home on Eldridge Street near the turnpike. I’m trying to find out—”
Just then an unlikely customer enters, a tall white woman in a plaid jacket and a briefcase-like handbag. She and Nicole exchange air kisses. “Reggie, would you come on over? There’s someone I’d like to introduce. Regina Cutter, this is Ms. Caroline French. Ms. French represents the Newton Home and Garden Alliance.”
We shake hands. Caroline French has light brown hair and ivory skin and a certain eagerness about the eyes. Her emerald-cut wedding set brushes my fingertips.
“I love this shop,” she says to me, white-to-white. “The heavenly aroma—it’s my favorite, sorbet à l’orange. And how inspiring to know so many women are rising to their full potential.”
“Reggie, Ms. French and I have been talking about our StyleSmart ladies modeling their new career clothes for a luncheon benefit event. It’s a fashion show that Ms. French is chairing next month in Newton.”
Newton, the home of Boston College, the Chestnut Hill Mall, many large and lovely homes.
“Such a paradigm, your store,” Caroline French says in well-modulated tones. “Your women bravely helping themselves to a better life… and the great determination of your people to get going.”
Your people, so different from hers. From the shop’s front window, I notice that Ms. French gets going in a Mercedes SUV.
Nicole says, “Reggie, Ms. French tells me the Alliance hopes to name StyleSmart as the beneficiary of their fund-raising this year.”
It’s my cue. “How wonderful! StyleSmart so very much appreciates the opportunity to work with your organization. Did Ms. Patrick tell you she envisioned this store after years as a social worker? No? Well, the store is flourishing. With the help of groups such as the Newton Home and Garden Alliance, we can continue to work with the women whose self-esteem and economic independence we strive to advance.”
This goes on. We all look at our calendars and commit to a plan. Caroline French rises, and we all promise to finalize the specifics.
After she leaves, Nicole practically orders me to script and direct the Newton fashion show. “You can talk that white talk, Reggie. Those home and garden ladies can do us a world of good.”
Opportunity knocks. Like Nicole, I can strike a bargain. I look her in the eye. “Before I say yes, Nicole, I want to know who lived in a group house on Eldridge Street about thirteen years ago. I want to know what happened to the red-robed preacher who was called Doc or Big Doc. The house was destroyed by a fire, and I want to know who were the people in that house and where they went.”
“Well, that’s a bundle.”
“There’s more. I need to know about a man named Henry Faiser. He’s black, and he lived in that house. He’s now in prison for a murder he possibly did not commit.”
Silence falls like a winter night. What I hear next is a ticking sound in Nicole’s throat. She lowers her voice to a throaty whisper and says, “Reggie, you got a nice new life goin’ for yourself. You got a roof over your head and lights in the darkness and taps running hot and cold water. You got kids, maybe one day some grandkids. You got spirit, Reggie, just like your Aunt Jo said. But you got to be careful it doesn’t turn into ‘vexation and vanity of spirit’ or you’ll have ‘no rest in your spirit.’ So don’t you go looking for new trouble. Take a word of good advice. Mind your business. Stay away from evil dealings.”
Chapter Six
In Boston, regular coffee means with cream. I sip, wipe off donut glaze icing from my fingertips, and look at my watch. It’s 3:14 p.m. Finally, Frank Devaney appears.
“Reggie, sorry. Couldn’t get away. Let’s sit in the back. I’ll grab a coffee. You all set?”
We move to the farthest of the fast-food pink plastic molded seats, which allow you ten minutes before your spine cries out for a chiropractor. Devaney balances coffee and a cream-filled donut. With his back to the wall, he can see whoever comes in. He likes fluorescent light and quick customer turnover. They appeal to his idea of public privacy. I resist a joke about the cop-donut connection as he sits down. His eyes are bloodshot, and he could use a shave. He scans the room, flips his necktie—chrome yellow with red comets— over one shoulder, arranges a plastic fork beside a napkin, and centers his donut as if it’s a first course.
“Gloomy weather.” In Bostonese, it comes out “wetha.”
“Bet you used to be in Florida this time of year, didn’t you? Or the islands.”
“Something like that.”
“Must have been nice.”
I will not fuel his tropical yearnings with postcards from my past. “It had its moments. It’s done.”
He cuts a bite of donut as if to savor a delicacy on fine china. “On the Faiser case,” he says, “I want to update you.”
“Good—because I want to help. I’d like to see your notes.”
“From the leather notebook? Forget it. The handwriting’s so bad my wife says I could’ve been a doctor.”
“I can puzzle it out.”
He puts down his fork. “Believe me, the notes don’t make any sense. They’re like…a foreign language.”
“I might spot something you’ve missed.”
He shakes his head. “Reggie, you have to understand that this is complicated. I wasn’t exactly myself in the crack years.”
“We were all younger thirteen years ago, Frank. And not so wise either.”
“It’s not that. I was more like another person, nobody you want to know—or I’d want to know, for that matter. In those years, the guy in the shaving mirror was a stranger.” He fidgets with the fork. “I don’t like to dwell on it. You think what’s past is past, but it lies in wait like a leg trap. The notebook stirs everything up.”
“I can help. Let me do my part and read the pages. We both have the same goal. We both want to find out whether an innocent man has spent nearly thirteen years in prison. We can read the notebook together.”
“And have a discussion? We’re not a book club, Reggie.” There’s finality in his voice, and his cheeks are flushed. He snaps off the plastic fork tines. The donut lies uneaten.
Is this shame, or is he hiding something? Or is the notebook a cop-civilian barrier? Whichever it is, I cannot simply retreat every time Frank Devaney pulls rank or becomes agitated. “Frank, do you have Henry Faiser’s mug shots from when you booked him? I’d like to know what he looked like. Any distinguishing features? What can you tell me?”
“He was slender. He looked young for his age.”
“That’s all?”
“My recall’s hazy, Reggie. I told you Homicide was a zoo back then.”
“But surely, you’ve reviewed the files in the past couple weeks. You’re working on his case, right?”
“When I can spare the time.” He drinks, stares off, blinks. “There’s a certain very big case right now. The whole division is pulled in. It’s a media circus.”
“Sylvia Dempsey?” He nods. “You’re involved in that one too?”
“To lend a hand.”
Meaning that he’s tied up a certain number of hours that otherwise would be spent on Henry Faiser. “TV news says somebody’s being sought for questioning.”
“I suppose you want to know who it is?”
“In fact, I don’t. I’m doing my best to avoid the whole thing, Frank, and it’s not easy when one story dominates the news, day in and day out. It’s like an infestation. Anyway, what good would it do to wallow in the murder of a business executive’s wife who was about my age?”
“That’s right, stay clear. Personal stuff is the kiss of death— that’s a figure of speech. By the way, the husband is a doctor.”
“Not a businessman?”
“A doctor who
’s in a business. A skin doctor. We’re working with the Newton police.”
“Newton?”
“Their place of residence. Look, Reggie, there’s a reason I asked you to meet me today. I’ve brought a piece of evidence from the Faiser case.”
“The gun?” My heart leaps. “No, a stopwatch, like coaches use to time athletes. How about if you hold it and try to get a feeling?”
“Was it Peter Wald’s? Or Henry Faiser’s?”
“It came from the vacant lot where the murder weapon was found. It was lying in the weeds with empty bottles and other junk. Our blues brought it in with the gun.”
“Just the watch? Why not the empties and other stuff?”
“Because the stopwatch was found a foot from the gun and looked clean, like it just came out of somebody’s pocket, maybe the shooter’s.”
“So you think that the killer shot Peter Wald and then ran into the vacant lot and dropped the gun and also lost the watch?”
“We thought so at the time.”
“The stopwatch was introduced as evidence in court?”
“No, it wasn’t. The DA didn’t need the watch—not when we had the gun.”
I ask, “Where is the gun?”
“In storage. It’s a snub-nosed .32. That probably doesn’t mean anything to you.”
He couldn’t be more wrong. Among the furnishings in my Aunt Jo’s Barlow Square townhouse condo are two handguns, one of which is a .38. Jo Cutter was not a markswoman, and I have no idea why she had these guns. It was shocking to discover them. They are scary and intriguing.
I say, “So Peter Wald was shot at close range.”
He puts down the fork. “How do you know?”
“Because a snub-nosed .32 is wildly inaccurate beyond fifteen to twenty feet.”
“Is someone in your family a sportsman, Reggie?”
“Sportsperson, you mean.” A feminist daughter and a divorce tune up a woman’s ears to gender pitch. I drink my lukewarm coffee. Clearly, Devaney knows nothing about these guns of Jo’s. “Nowadays everything’s on the Internet, Frank.”
He looks relieved. “So you’ve kept the watch all this time?”
Now You See Her Page 5