Now You See Her

by Cecelia Tishy

  Tania bites her lip and pinches the tongs. Her face is stone gray, her eyes two coal-dark pits. Jeffrey looks at his watch. “Jordan, if you don’t mind, the schedule—”

  “Of course. Let’s move on.” He faces me. “Regina, political life is complex. A candidate must always know the score. It seems you’ve been tampering with the scoreboard.”

  “I—”

  “Maybe not purposely. You had good intentions, right? But you got out of your depth. You plunged into the Boston of the past, into an incident very painful to me personally.” His voice drops low. “My own son was gunned down by a drug-crazed man on Eldridge Street. You know that?”

  Silent, I nod. “Thirteen years ago Eldridge Street was full of addicts and drug dealers. My son, tragically, sought drugs there. As a father, I live daily with that knowledge.”

  I nod again, my ankle throbbing as a new pain sensation rises in my right thumb. It feels suddenly hot and raw.

  “As a parent, I’m haunted by what I could have done to prevent my son, Peter, from turning to drugs. A good student, he was college age.”

  My thumb is searing. It looks normal, but burns as it once did in the donut shop with Devaney when I held the stopwatch. And in Newton at the Home and Garden Alliance. I close my eyes and see blood ooze at the knuckle.

  “A tragic, senseless killing that robbed my son of his future.” My thumb is on fire, my vision a scene of spurting blood. I can hardly bear it. Wald stands over me, towers over me.

  “But fortunately, the killer was brought to justice and is in prison. Norfolk Prison.”

  Does he expect me to say Henry Faiser’s name? Wald’s own thumb is inches from my eyes. It’s malformed. And shiny, likely from scar tissue. That’s why his handshake feels odd. Because of his right thumb. His right thumb… Didn’t the gun dealer warn me about holding a gun, locking down the right thumb? Hold it two-handed, he said, clear of the trigger. “Unless you want to lose your right thumb.”

  “The jury convicted the assailant. No one else will die as his victim. Justice was served.”

  I see Wald’s own thumb bloodied, ripped, and mangled. My gaze drops to his shoes, running shoes. What did he call himself at the microphone here at the fund-raiser? A runner to go the distance for Massachusetts? The love nest condo in Eldridge Place had a track suit. And the stopwatch that made my thumb burn raw was a runner’s stopwatch, the watch found in the weeds near the weapon.

  “My son, you see, was an environmentalist. Greenpeace, Sierra, the Wilderness Society—he was their captive.” His gaze locks on mine. “Peter was an idealist, as young people often are.”

  I nod, thumb blazing. “But idealists won’t compromise. Reasoning with my own son was out of the question. The environment was nonnegotiable. You can understand the problem. Anyone in public life understands the basics of compromise.”

  “Compromise,” I echo in a whisper out of fiercest pain.

  Wald goes on. “In life, in business, to serve the greater good. Our heating oil business, for instance, where Peter learned of certain … activities. He worked part-time in my trucking business, you see. He drove certain routes.”

  Sick with pain and revulsion, I stare. “A father-son standoff was the last thing in the world I wanted. He brought it on. He went to Eldridge Street. He had no business there. That route was for other drivers, other deliveries, not his—”

  Jeffrey interrupts. “He went for drugs, Jordan. He had a habit.”

  “He had no business. No business on Eldridge Street.”

  “Buying drugs,” Jeffrey says. “Drugs.”

  “No business there at all.”

  “Cocaine and hash. He met his dealer.”

  “A father in public life had no choice,” Wald says. “Measures had to be taken. Everything was at stake. He wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t keep his mouth shut. His conscience, really. He became… dangerous.”

  Through the fog of pain, I make sense of what Wald is telling me. Peter Wald learned his father’s trucks dumped toxic waste. Peter went to Eldridge and found out. Peter was adamant. No compromise was possible. Vowing to tell authorities, he posed a threat.

  “Yes, it was drugs.” Wald begins to parrot Jeffrey. “It was. And self-defense on my part. I came immediately, but he provoked me in the street. A father tries to help, but things happen …it was self-defense.” Wald recites the words as if they’re anchors that will hold me steady to his version of the past. I meet his gaze. Piety and righteousness gleam in his eyes, but I know I’m looking at the face of Peter Wald’s killer.

  “Life goes on, Regina, as it must. My memorial to Peter is environmental law. I continue my son’s passion for green causes. My fatherly duty endures in the Massachusetts Senate. As lieutenant governor, I can make certain those efforts will not stop.”

  He leans close. His breath smells of clove and rot. “Providing we’re not smeared by rumors and allegations. Providing a certain Boston police detective stops his personal mission and comes to his senses. We don’t blame you, Regina. We’re prepared to wipe the slate clean, but we need to know a few things. We need to know the so-called new evidence.” He crosses his arms like a TV prosecutor. “We need to know who else the detective has talked to. Who you’ve talked to.”

  So this is why Wald’s here. It’s damage control by diplomacy. And if that doesn’t work, then what?

  “I…I have nothing to say.”

  “Take your time, Regina. No harm is meant. Consider your own future. When the Carney-Wald administration takes office, my door will be open. We’ll have positions to fill. The Commonwealth needs good people such as yourself. Right now I simply want information so we can correct any falsehoods. As a citizen, you can help prevent campaign mudslinging. You don’t want to be implicated in slander.”

  “No.”

  He flashes his white teeth. “So we agree. The rest is simple.” Simple indeed. And crystal clear. The clean slate begins with the elimination of Reggie Cutter.

  I walked into this snare with eyes wide open, yet I must not give in. The cane—can I use it? The mounted armor, the breastplate? Can I get to a phone and hit 911?

  “I’d like to stand up, please. Powder room…”

  “But of course.” Wald steps aside as if he’s gallantry itself. With the cane in my left hand, the whisky in the right, I exaggerate my halting steps across the shag carpet. I’m in the middle of the room, suddenly drawn to the chandelier I’ve so shunned. It gives me an idea. Jeffrey, Wald, and ponytail there at the door—they’re a triangle. I’m in the middle, and Tania is nearly in a heap off to the side.

  Cold sweat runs down my back. I stand directly under the chandelier, the steel blades too high to reach. “Regina, we need to hear from you.” Wald is prodding. “Visit the powder room, collect your thoughts, and let’s proceed.”

  My hands are icy. In this instant, a new current wafts here in the room. It’s chilly. The AC? No, it’s sharp, more like winter. And it comes with a jangling of what sounds to be metal on metal.

  I shiver and look up. Is the draft swinging the chandelier back and forth? And did the lamplight shift? Because the blades have turned dull gray, as if coated with dust. No, with frost. Before my eyes, snowflakes begin to swirl. Wald and Jeffrey Arnot stand in place. Don’t they hear this? See or feel the cold? Tania is unmoving. It’s freezing in here. I look up again.

  Wald’s voice comes from afar. “Regina, let’s not abuse the Arnots’ hospitality. Gazing at the ceiling won’t help us. I’m ready to listen. Speak up.”

  Ice is coating the halberds and swords and knives of the chandelier. The glaze thickens before my eyes. It coats the slender wires suspending the entire light fixture. The whole mass glitters, with a snow squall whirling like a storm. Cold flashes against the back of my throat. My eyes water. I think of airplanes forced down from ice on the wings. Ice storms split winter’s stoutest trees from end to end.

  I know what I must do. The cane goes first, my one and only weapon sacrificed for the moment.
I drop it as the wires of the chandelier ping and tick like a ship’s rigging strained to the hilt. “Oops, Senator, would you please?” Trust Old Boston manners. He springs.

  Now the whisky. I let the glass go. “Oh, Scotch on your rug. Jeffrey, I’m so sorry.” The wires groan. Jeffrey glances up, then back down at the whisky-wet rug. The onetime Boston street tough who wears a suit—will he retrieve the glass and stand with Wald by my side? How many seconds? Five?

  Here comes Jeffrey to pick up the glass, but Tania steps up too, as the wires click and twing. Wald hands me the cane, and Jeffrey holds the glass. Both men are right beside me, the three of us directly under the frosted blades. I have one chance, one chance only in this instant.

  I clasp the cane in my hand, prepare to raise it up above my head as Tania steps forward. I can’t warn her. There’s no time. Braced on one leg, I raise my head, look up, thrust the cane, and jump. The cane’s crook catches on the blades and wires, grabs fast. Tania takes another step. I yank the cane hard. Once, twice, then one last time.

  For a split second, I hang suspended from the cane as the ceiling crunches. Cracks open, whole crevasses. The plaster rains, tumbles, and the room shudders and quakes. Dropping down, I lunge and shove Tania, the two of us thudding to the floor, away from the chandelier, while Wald and Jeffrey Arnot scream out, both buried in a cascade of plaster and an avalanche of steel.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  So you crawled out?”

  “Not exactly. Tania and I were both winded, but she got herself up and helped me. We wheezed and choked, but she helped to steady me.”

  “Helped you but not her husband? Interesting.” Devaney shifts in the love seat and uses a handkerchief very delicately on his sunburned, peeling nose, his memento of Orlando. I face him in the rocker, my ankle at rest on a footstool.

  “The house felt bombed, Frank. Plaster and blood were everywhere. It was like Armageddon.”

  “Reggie, you could have been killed.” His voice is more plaintive than reproachful. “You came way too close.”

  “I took a chance, all on my own. It was for Henry Faiser, Frank, my ‘innocence project’ paid off. But who’d imagine a sprained ankle as good luck? Because that cane was crucial.” I pause for a couple of deep breaths to help calm the days’ long aftershocks from Marlborough.

  “Tell me again, Reggie, how you pulled the chandelier down.”

  “I jumped, hooked the wires and blades, and gave it three hard yanks. It let go. That contraption looked ready to crash from the first night I saw it.”

  “What about the frost and ice on the swords?”

  I’ve told him twice. But Frank’s face shows his concern about my state of mind. He’s trying to talk me into a soft landing, as if by repeating the story, I’ll be free of it. It’s probably a cop version of therapy.

  “You think maybe a psychic presence was involved?”

  “A resident ghost, Frank. Paranormal power came into play, I know that for sure. The Marlborough house has a troubled history. No wonder it gets sold frequently. I think it’s haunted. Someday I’ll tell you the story of the house and Senator Wald’s connection to an angry ghost spirit. But believe me, timing was everything at that instant. When the chandelier crashed, we choked and coughed and made our way out the front.”

  “What about the blond-haired guy with the ponytail?”

  “He ran to help Jeffrey, who was pinned down and howling like a beast. Wald was facedown in the rubble. He wasn’t moving. The blades were so treacherous, Tania and I groped our way along the wall to the door. The guy with the cleaver came running too. Tania and I… well, it was like we were in a three-legged race to the door. Once in the street, we flagged down a woman. We were trying to talk her into taking us to the precinct, but my friend came. I’d called him earlier to let him know where I was going.”

  “He drove you?”

  “He’s a biker. We worked it out.” I don’t describe Stark roaring up Marlborough, hailing us a cab, then riding ahead, like a motorcade escort, to the precinct house. It was three days ago but feels like five minutes. I ask, “Is Jeffrey Arnot conscious?”

  “He’s still too doped up to talk. He was stuck like a pig. The EMTs took him to Boston City with blades still in his gut. He has deep lacerations. They’re watching for internal bleeding.”

  “What about Wald?”

  “The senator is in intensive care at Mass General. That chandelier did a job on him too. He’s got a collapsed lung and a bucket of blood in the chest cavity from severed blood vessels. The trauma surgeon got a workout. Of course, Wald’s lawyers are massing like an armed camp. It’s gonna be hardball all the way. The prosecution has its work cut out.”

  “Frank, I know how you hate to tell a civilian about a case—”

  “There’s no exact case yet, Reggie. We got a search warrant for Eldridge Place. We got Carlo Feggiotti in for questioning, and we’ll look into medical records for treatment of the injury of Wald’s right thumb. If it matches the death date of his son, we’re in business.”

  “And Henry Faiser can count down the days till his release and medical treatment.” I pause. “So Peter Wald’s death was never about drugs, was it?”

  “Sure it was—to a point, because Peter flirted with the Rastafarians. He smoked weed and used a lot of other junk too. But the drug connection fooled us. His murder seemed like a street killing.”

  “And it was. He threatened to expose the waste disposal racket, and his father shot him in the street. We both know hypocrisy drives young people crazy. It had to be a bombshell for him—his dad, the state’s green politician, being a major polluter.” Silence falls. “Does it all surprise you, Frank?”

  He hesitates, shakes his head. “Yes and no. A guy like Wald is probably arrogant to start with. Then his greed mixes with privilege.”

  “The aristocrat teamed up with Jeffrey Arnot?”

  “Why not? Let’s say Arnot first okayed dumping grease and solvents in the B&B Auto days. Carlo ran it. Then Wald bought in. Why? Because he’s got a fleet of tank trucks sitting parked in warm weather and mild winters. The dumping brought in nice money, probably everything from petroleum waste to banned pesticides. And Carlo’s still their guy.”

  “Though they needed helpers, like Alan Tegier. When his acne treatment made him moody and tense, Carlo wanted him out, but doubtless suspected he might talk about it. He had to be eliminated.”

  Devaney nods. “We’ll look hard to find out if Arnot or Wald signed off on the Tegier murder, or if Carlo ordered it on his own. Maybe the operation expanded in the perchlorate phase.”

  “The hard evidence, Frank, is my sweater, which ought to provide plenty of perchlorate. I looked it up online. It’s awful. It plays havoc with the endocrine system, wrecks the thyroid, and damages the neural system. Perchlorate is found in underground plumes and has spread into water systems. And it’s nationwide. Massachusetts is just one of many states.”

  “Equal opportunity poison.”

  “So to speak. It’s even linked to auto air bags and fireworks and imported fertilizer but mainly to spent rocket fuels. It’s our souvenir of the Cold War. We’ve fouled our own nest in so many ways. Jeffrey Arnot and Jordan Wald knew from the first exactly what they were doing.”

  Devaney nods. “And young Peter Wald knew too, at least about his father.”

  I shift my leg on the stool. “But how did they get away with dumping for so long? Surely, Boston tests its sewer water. What about the EPA?”

  Devaney rolls his shoulders, loosens his tie. “Bureaucracies and budgets, Reggie. Agencies are understaffed, and people do what they can with skeleton crews and thin resources. Here in town, there’s two agencies, the Water and Sewer Commission and the state Water Resources Authority. They’re obliged to test drainage discharges in representative areas.”

  “But not everywhere?” He shakes his head no. “How about reported sickness? Or deaths?”

  “We’ll try to get the Environmental Strike Team
of the Public Health Commission on this. But, Reggie, you know how these cases play out. A cancer cluster isn’t proof. Hot spots aren’t definite. And don’t think I’m blowing you off. I’m mad as hell we missed our cue years ago.” He reaches for his Tums.

  “Will the Eldridge arson and murder be investigated now?”

  “Believe it.” Devaney chews the tablets and pats his tender nose. “I don’t want to get ahead of things, but if Carlo Feggiotti cuts a deal with the prosecutor, we can go after Arnot hard and heavy.”

  “And Wald?”

  “Wald for sure.”

  “Do I dare bring up Sylvia Dempsey?”

  He cringes. “You got a theory about the skin doctor?”

  “Yes, but I now suspect Wald. A high-profile love triangle would be too messy for an ambitious politician. A man who’d kill his son for jeopardizing his career wouldn’t hesitate to bludgeon a lover if she pressured him into making her Mrs. Lieutenant Governor. And Sylvia was ambitious.”

  “Spoken like a true rocking-chair deputy.”

  “Spoken like a woman thrilled to think Henry Faiser will be free.” In fact, the mental image of Faiser’s hands unshackled soothes and excites me at once. “How long before Faiser is released, Frank? What’s the time frame?”

  “A while, Reggie. The system grinds at its own pace.”

  “Promise you’ll stay with it. Promise me Faiser will be your top priority even if another tabloid-size crime erupts.” I give him my hardest stare.

  He meets my gaze. “It’s a deal. You can remind me.”

  “Nag?”

  “Nag. But I don’t want you in harm’s way. I don’t like the look of that ankle.”

  “It’s healing nicely. I’ll be fine. I have my daughter’s gallery show to attend, and lunch with a Red Hat friend.”