Now You See Her

by Cecelia Tishy

  “A car wreck?”

  “No, a live power line. She was electrocuted. There was no storm, just the live wire down in front of her house. Nobody knows how or why she touched it. Her daughter sold the house right away. All the holdouts knuckled under fast and took the cash.”

  “The whole neighborhood was terrorized?”

  He looks left and right down the block and lowers his voice. “Nobody said sabotage or death threats, not in so many words. We couldn’t pin it down. And hey, I can’t get into hearsay. Cross a line, it’s a legal mess. We tried to get owners to come forward, go on the record, see a lawyer. Nobody would talk, not even the guy attacked by the Dobermans. Maybe because we’re students. Grad students, but students.”

  “Let me ask about the new buyers. Was one of them named Perk?”

  “Perk?” He shakes his head. “No.”

  “How about Carlo?”

  “Carlo? I don’t think so.”

  “The one who claimed to be Portuguese? Did he quote lines from Dante’s Inferno?”

  “No. I’d remember.”

  “Was there also an Asian man making offers and buying the houses?”

  “The Chinese guy, yeah. He showed up right after the Irish and Portuguese. He smiled a lot and tried to sell us cars.”

  “Steve, Steve Yung.”

  “That’s him. How’d you know? How come you’re so interested?” He cocks an eyebrow. “That stuff about your daughter, it’s fake, right?”

  “Let’s say I’m looking into a situation.”

  He pulls a shirt button. “Look, it’s none of my business, but whatever you’re thinking, this fight’s lost. The neighborhood is finished. But mainly, these guys don’t fool around. They have money and tactics. That downed live wire was enough for us. Go up against them, it’s not worth it. Try to buck them, one morning they have a live wire ready for you.”

  I ache to call Devaney but refrain. We haven’t spoken since the Iron Chef dustup. If I tell him about the door-to-door search, he’ll reproach me for amateur adventuring, then promise to “pass along” my information. He’ll shove a scribbled note into a pile of papers while the Homicide Division works round the clock on the Dempsey case. No, I won’t call, not yet. Instead, I wash up a few dishes, straighten the kitchen, and do my morning free-weight workout and sets for the thighs and calves.

  If I’m correct, Steve Yung is Jeffrey Arnot’s man, and so were the Irish roofer and the Portuguese too. This makes Arnot’s role in the Bevington Partners Group clear: it’s land procurement. Whatever the cost of “persuasion,” Arnot gets title to properties even if it takes ethnic front men, Dobermans, and a lethal high-voltage wire—or an arsonist’s torch thirteen years ago. The houses that Yung and the others bought were doubtless sold immediately to dummy shell companies. No wonder Danny Conaway’s Friends of Eldridge couldn’t track them down. Ownership lines blur through leasing arrangements, as I well know from Marty’s business mantra on outsourcing and externalizing costs and special partnerships. The Bevington Partners Group wouldn’t necessarily hold title to the land. No blood on its books.

  Did such deals turn Jeffrey Arnot into a high-profile Boston businessman? Did they vault him from women’s wrestling and nightclubs to Bevington Partners Group? At what point did death become one cost of doing business. Was it the arson and the accidental death of squatters on Eldridge Street?

  If Arnot had ordered B&B Auto and the Eldridge houses torched, was it Carlo who did the dirty work? Why else would the B&B worker turn up as the Eldridge Place night manager? He was probably rewarded for the firestorm of his own making. Big Doc’s rant about Carlo and “flames of hell” makes sense in a new way. The incineration of Eldridge Street is the real inferno.

  But how does this tie in with Peter Wald’s murder? The fatal shooting and the fire occurred the same day. Big Doc remembers young Wald; he called him a “pale wanderer” and “child of death.” And he acknowledged that Faiser lived in the cult house. What’s more, the Tsakis brothers remember Henry hawking jewelry and shoes at B&B Auto, so the young man had access there. The chop shop workers knew him on sight. Does Carlo know anything about the murder? Or Perk?

  It’s a struggle to calm down long enough for household tasks, making a bed, tossing in a load of laundry. Every minute is a mental strategy session. My thoughts stampede—Henry Faiser, Jeffrey Arnot, Carlo Feggiotti.

  I need Detective Frank Devaney. I do. But he’s off-limits until the Dempsey furor dies down. On that front, I have a plan. In ten minutes, I’m expecting my neighbor, Trudy Pfaeltz, whose day off from the hospital is crammed with sales pitches for Cutco knives, her newest side business. She wants an hour with me, and I’ve agreed, mostly to ask this veteran nurse about artificial skin. I’ll buy a kitchen knife if I must.

  Trudy will make sure I do. She enters the front door like a weather front in cross trainers. I barely have a minute’s breezy chat about her parakeet’s vocabulary with the new talking-bird seed diet. “The jury’s out, Reggie. Kingpin still says ‘pretty bird,’ but it’s weird, his feathers are turning orange. He’s healthy but looks like a feathered carrot. Imagine the marketing potential of orange parakeets shipped online. I’m testing ten young birds now, but my kitchen’s small. I don’t suppose you’d—”

  “Raise test parakeets? I’m afraid not, Trudy.”

  “Then let’s get to Cutco. This is a wonderful product.” We sit across the table, and Trudy sets down her bundle of cutlery wrapped in red felt and begins to unroll it. “Home sales cuts the middlemen, so the cost benefit is to you, the customer. This is a 440A chrome-molybdenum steel blade, least likely to rust or corrode. It holds a chef-standard edge.”

  “How much?”

  “We’ll get to that. As a nurse, I know what ‘surgical steel’ means. These knives are surgical steel for the home.” She shows how a serrated knife cuts a piece of leather. “Imagine that this is the toughest steak.” In moments, she snips a penny in half with the demo scissors. I marvel.

  “Trudy, sales are your calling in life.”

  She gives me a frank stare. “Believe me, it’s refreshing to talk to healthy people after what I see every night in the ICU, the oncology floor, the burn unit—”

  “That’s actually what I want to ask you about.”

  “Burns?”

  “Skin. Artificial skin.”

  “It’s a modern miracle, Reggie. When you’ve seen what I have… the can of spray paint that explodes when the nine-year-old lights a match. I tell you, tissue engineering is amazing stuff.”

  “But what is it?”

  “The ‘skin’? Usually, it’s a combination of living cells held together with a scaffold of biodegradable plastic or protein, plus chemicals to stimulate growth. It’ll be fabulous when they work out the kinks and the business problems. Right now it’s business problems holding them back.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  She smooths the red felt and straightens the knives. “I hear about struggles with financing. A couple companies went into Chapter 11. Their sales aren’t high enough, plus there’s the nightmare of jumping the regulatory hoops. Right now they’re just not profitable enough.”

  “Is Advent Tissue Science one of them?”

  “Advent?”

  “Here in town, in Cambridge. It’s headed by a dermatologist, Bernard Dempsey.”

  “Dempsey? Oh God, not that guy again.”

  “Married to Sylvia Dempsey. You’ve heard about the Sylvia Dempsey case? It’s all over the media.”

  Trudy blushes. “Reggie, with my schedule, days pass without a newspaper or glance at TV. Sitcom reruns, maybe a Globe that’s left in a lounge. I go for the latest on the Sox or Patriots. But, God, I haven’t thought about Bernard Dempsey in years.”

  “How many?”

  She shrugs. “He was a researcher at a hospital where I worked right out of nursing school, St. Clement’s. I remember his creepy dark eyes, but he was a hotshot. He patented an acne cream and supposedly had th
e cure for eczema. He published a ton of papers, but the data were cooked. He pressured a lab technician to alter the notes. He resigned, and the technician got fired. She got prosecuted. He got off, mostly because the docs protect their own. I heard he went to another lab, charmed everybody, and got in more trouble. He’s a major sleaze. No, a crook.”

  Trudy picks up a knife and tests the edge. “I wouldn’t ordinarily say this much, but the lab technician was a friend of mine at the time. He groped her, threatened to get her visa canceled, made her life miserable. She took the rap for him. She’ll be paying off her fine until her last day on earth. It doesn’t surprise me that Dempsey’s in the thick of the artificial skin business. The man smells money. Whichever companies make it big, I hope his goes down the toilet.”

  She stands. “Hey, I’m due at another sales call. How about the Homemaker Plus Eight Set.”

  “Trudy, my homemaker days are over. I’ll take the scissors and spend lonely Saturday nights slicing pennies.”

  “Better pennies than anything connected with Dempsey. Stay away from him. Whatever the deal is with his wife, he’ll get off free. She’ll pay the price.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Devaney phones on Tuesday afternoon, his voice brusque and blunt. “Reggie, can you come downtown to the federal courthouse? There’s somebody you want to meet.”

  “Who?” Bernard Dempsey is on my mind. Could it be? “Get here by four. Come around the back. Look for me.”

  I drop everything, grab my purse and keys. The traffic snarls on Milk Street, and I feel like Devaney’s gofer. There’s no place to park on the courthouse block, so I stow the Beetle in a pricey garage and hoof it.

  Platoons of briefcases swarm the gray granite courthouse, and bicycle messengers weave in and out. At the rear, a FedEx truck idles and five motorcycle police sit with radios crackling. Where is Devaney? Why am I here?

  Then I see him by the curb. In a blue suit and loud green tie, he signals to me with a quick hand gesture. He’s by himself near a state police car with dark windows. Who is it he wants me to meet? “Frank, what’s up?”

  “Tune in to your psychic channel, Reggie. This is not by the book. The troopers are doing me a favor.”

  “What is it?”

  He steps close, his voice low. “They’re transporting a prisoner who testified in a trial today. You’re gonna meet the prisoner.”

  “Who is it?”

  “You’ll check your sixth-sense message, okay? Any visual pictures, be alert. They’re gonna open the front door and let you inside for a minute. The prisoner’s in back. He’s cuffed. You’ll have just a minute or two. Make the most of it. They’re taking him back to Norfolk.”

  “MCI Norfolk. It’s Henry Faiser.”

  “It is.”

  There’s no time for questions. At Devaney’s signal, the front passenger door is opened from within. I see a trooper’s flat hat brim and hefty hand with a signet ring with the Massachusetts state seal, the Indian and symbolic stars. Then I’m inside next to the trooper, who smells like Polo aftershave. I twist around to look through a steel mesh grille. In the backseat between two more uniformed troopers sits—

  “Henry Faiser?”

  “Yeah.”

  The liquid-eyed youth in the snapshot that Kia showed me is long gone. The slender, smiling boy with short hair has given way to a saturnine man who’s dwarfed by his prison blue denims. His thin frame is hunched yet angular, a stick figure wedged between two uniforms. His face looks sallow, his dark hands and wrists spotted with red welts, which he rubs as if the handcuffs are a Chinese nail puzzle to be uncoupled. What do I say?

  “My name is Reggie Cutter. Detective Devaney told me about you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I met your sisters. I met both of them. And your niece and nephew too.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I heard Big Doc preach.” He says nothing, looks at his wrists. I feel no psychic currents, hear no message, visualize no image. “I know you lived in his house on Eldridge Street. I spend some time on Eldridge myself. Does Big Doc ever visit you?”

  He rubs the steel cuffs at his wrists as if it’s occupational therapy. “Big Doc, no, he don’t come out.”

  “Or others from the house?” Maybe he’ll name someone. He shakes his head no.

  The trooper who’s driving taps the car key, which is my signal to get going. Mere seconds remain. There’s no way to touch Henry Faiser, and I feel no vibe. My rib is quiet, and my thumb too.

  All I’m getting from Henry Faiser is a blank stare.

  “A lead doesn’t have to be psychic, Frank.” I press the point. The police car is gone. Devaney and I linger at Courthouse Square by a curbside vendor in a quilted truck as homebound office workers swirl to the T stop. “The Carlo connection—Frank, this is hot as fire.”

  “You want a soda, Reggie? Let me buy you a cold soda. Make it two Sprites.” He doesn’t hear me because he’s sulking. His huge gamble did not pay off, and now he’s embarrassed and owes the trooper. Men. “Frank, the paranormal is not a teleconference, for godsake. You know that.”

  “Straw?”

  “Will you listen to me? Carlo Feggiotti worked in the chop shop that burned to the ground the day Peter Wald was shot. He’s now a night manager at Eldridge Place. The Greek grocers in my neighborhood remember him because he sold them a stolen car. I suspect Carlo torched the shop on someone’s orders. I think it’s a good bet that he witnessed the shooting of Peter Wald or knows someone who did. He could testify.”

  Devaney pops the Sprite, takes a long pull, stifles a burp. “Reggie, do you believe in rehabilitation?” This is classic Devaney, out of left field. Wherever he’s going with this, I want to scream. “You believe in paying your debt to society?”

  I could strangle the man. Instead, I open the soda can, insert the straw, fiercely sip. “Of course.”

  “Then you need to know that Feggiotti was convicted as an accomplice in vehicle theft. He’d served thirteen months when his conviction was overturned on appeal. He was released. The Eldridge contractors hired him when the high-rise went up, and he did so good the company put him on the management payroll. He’s a model employee.”

  “I suppose he coaches Little League.”

  “Soccer.”

  I could bite the man. “Don’t fool yourself, Reggie. Faiser’s a sick man but also a hustler. Feggiotti has no other criminal record, but Faiser had a long rap sheet. He could be in for any number of offenses besides murder.”

  “And free by now.”

  “Or back in for something else.”

  “Tough talk, Frank. I thought Faiser was on your conscience. I thought justice and morality were the point of all this.”

  “Handling the case right, that’s the point. Do it right, you sleep at night. The system takes it from there. I’m just saying, don’t get sentimental. Where’re you parked?”

  “In a platinum garage that’s costing me a fortune to argue with you.”

  “Here.” He holds out two limp fives. I refuse them, turn on my heel, and walk off in a huff.

  * * *

  It’s after six when Meg phones, her voice sounding chipper and tense. I’ve just finished a hard-boiled egg and a glass of merlot just this side of salad vinegar. Meg and I haven’t spoken since our tiff, and I’m glad to hear from her, glad for distraction from Devaney. “How’s the Red Hat sister?”

  “On that score, terrific. I just found the prettiest cherry-red straw for the season, in Filene’s Basement no less, a fabulous bargain. I’m shopping for a hatbox for the overhead compartment because this chapeau is going to the Red Hat convention. Reggie, no hard feelings, okay?”

  “Meg, let’s schedule lunch. My treat.”

  “Good deal. But are you free this evening? It’s not an innocent question. Tania wants you.”

  Wants me—like a bossy recruiting poster that pokes its finger at my eye. “Sorry, Meg. I’m settled in.”

  “Reggie, don’t make me be
g. Tania’s out of her mind. I swear the woman’s bipolar. Workmen doing duct work in the Marlborough attic found a piece of old cloth stuck in the rafters.”

  “So what?”

  “So it’s like she’s found the Shroud of Turin. Tania thinks the cloth is so old you can do your psychic thing. She says it dates from the 1800s. She had a textile expert examine it.”

  “Forget it, Meg. I turned in my book report on Marlborough. And I already made a try at a psychic reading today. You can tell Tania it was a total flop. Besides, I’m persona non grata to her husband. He banned me from the property.”

  “I know. But Jeffrey’s out of town.”

  “That’s no comfort.”

  “Tell me about it, Reggie.” Meg pauses. Her shallow breath is audible. “I try to keep my problems to myself. Everybody’s got their burdens to bear. But Jeffrey Arnot’s a one-off. He threatened to kill a deal of mine if I couldn’t rein in his wife.” Her voice is grave. “Really threatened, Reggie. I can’t laugh it off.”

  “Meg, please don’t put me in this position.”

  “Reggie, I’m a workingwoman. I have to pay my bills. Arnot holds me accountable for the Marlborough house. He thinks Tania’s hysteria is my fault. If you’d just stop by and hold the cloth in your hand and say… say the trail is cold or you feel a ghost or it’s going to rain cats and dogs. It doesn’t matter what. I can’t rile Jeffrey Arnot with this deal of mine pending. This is the last favor I’ll ask on this, promise, cross my heart.”

  “Meg—” I start to refuse. If I set foot in the Marlborough house, Tania is certain to tell her husband. In pique or passion, she’ll tell because she’s incapable of not telling. And there will be consequences. Suppose I’m summoned to the limo, that lair, and subjected to Jeffrey’s harangue, my slice of the Boston cream pie slammed in my face?

  Would he stop there? What could he do if he knew I’d been to the Brighton Auto Mart and the Eldridge II streets? “Meg, I—” From my window, the charming gas lights of Barlow Square glow a greenish yellow. Electrical power lines aren’t visible, but suppose my house were the site of a gas explosion? Regina Cutter could be the sole casualty of a freak “accident.” A downed wire, a burst gas pipe—if only Meg hadn’t asked this favor.