by Jon Loomis
“I’ll take the Taj Mahal,” Lola said. “You do the closet.”
The linen closet was a walk-in, lined in cedar. It contained a tall built-in cabinet with shelves above and wide drawers below. It had not been searched; perhaps whoever had done the searching hadn’t thought to look there, or had run out of time. Coffin opened the cabinet doors, pulled the towels and sheets off the shelves, then slid the drawers out one by one. An electronic box was nestled behind the bottom drawer, which was about ten inches shorter than the other two, leaving a void inside the built-in plenty big enough for a DVR, a tangle of cables, and an electrical outlet. The DVR was warm to the touch. It had a green power light and looked like a large external computer hard drive. A smaller aluminum box was plugged into it.
“Pay dirt!” Coffin said. “Check it out.”
Lola appeared at his elbow and peered into the drawer. “Wow, Frank,” she said. “You’re not as dumb as you look.”
“Thank God for that,” Coffin said. There was a third, mediumsized box behind the drawer. It was made of blue plastic and had two antennae sticking out of its top. Coffin tapped it with his finger. “Now, what the hell is this thing?”
“Okay, I take it back,” Lola said, grinning. “You’re still a throwback. It looks like a wireless router. You know, for the Internet. Must be pretty powerful to get a signal out of this cabinet. Mine barely hits the living room from under my desk in the bedroom.”
“You kids today,” Coffin said, unhooking the cables from the DVR, “and all your newfangled gadgets. If it wasn’t for Jamie, I wouldn’t even have dial-up.” He fingered the small silver box; it also had antennae. “What about this critter?”
“Must be a wireless receiver,” Lola said. “Quite a setup she had here.”
“One receiver,” Coffin said. “One camera?”
Lola nodded. “Makes sense. Too bad she didn’t like to film herself in the living room.”
Neither of them said anything for a few seconds. Coffin wanted a cigarette, but it seemed wrong to light one in the house where Kenji Sole had been killed.
“Jesus,” Lola said, clutching the DVR against her chest. “What the hell are we going to do with this thing?”
“We can’t take it to the office,” Coffin said.
“Or give it to Boyle. Or Mancini.”
Coffin scratched his ear. “Not until we’ve looked at whatever’s on it. Which kind of leaves my place out.”
Lola shook her head. “You’re the only person I know who doesn’t own a TV. What are you, some kind of Luddite?”
“When Mom’s crapped out, I just never got around to buying a new one,” Coffin said, walking around the beautiful blue-green rug and its large dark stain. “I haven’t missed it except for the Red Sox games, and I can watch those at the bar.”
Lola followed him out of the house. “Okay, that leaves my place,” she said. “Man—just holding this thing’s giving me the creeps. It’s like it’s got some kind of weird, freaky energy.”
“Yesss, preciousss,” Coffin said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, before somebody shows up.”
On their way out, neither of them looked up. They did not look up as Lola climbed into the driver’s seat, or as Coffin loaded the DVR into the trunk of the Crown Vic and then slid into the passenger’s seat beside her. They did not look up, and did not see the curtains stirring in the front window of Bobby Cavalo’s carriage house apartment, or the two men standing at the window, looking down at them.
“Well, now,” Cavalo said, picking at a speck of dust on the curtain. “Look who found the Holy Grail.”
“If I know Frankie,” the other man said, “he’ll keep it a secret till he knows what’s on it. He’s suspicious by nature.” He was tall and broad, not quite sixty years old. He carried a large semiautomatic pistol in his jacket pocket.
“Where do you think they’re taking it?” Cavalo said. “His place, or hers?”
“One way to find out,” the other man said, lighting a cigarette. “The keys still in Kenji’s Range Rover?”
______
At the bottom of the hill, Lola steered the Crown Vic onto 6A, heading back toward town center. “So, the guy in Baltimore,” she said. “The one with all the cameras in his house. What happened to him?”
“He was a PI,” Coffin said. “Did mostly divorce work. Very good at his job. Lots of high-end clients.”
“But,” Lola said.
“But. He was cutting it both ways. If the rich, philandering wife was good-looking, he’d approach her, show her some incriminating video of herself, tell her he could keep her secrets for a price.”
“Nice,” Lola said. “Talk about asking for it.”
“Exactly. They’d do pretty much anything to keep him quiet, of course. They gave him money, slept with him, bought him fancy clothes, watches—cars even—you name it. He’d get them over to his house, screw their brains out, secretly film the whole thing, and then blackmail them some more.”
“Who killed him?”
Coffin shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. “He was shot at night, in his driveway, as he was getting out of his Mercedes. Three in the head.” He tapped a quick rhythm on the dashboard—bada-bing! “Professional hit, no witnesses. The only physical evidence were the slugs that killed him, which were standard 9 millimeter. Could have come from any Wal-Mart on the eastern seaboard. Ballistics came up with a make and model on the weapon; nothing exotic, your basic Glock, hundreds of thousands in circulation. That was that, end of story.”
“What goes around,” Lola said.
Coffin nodded. “And then some,” he said.
Chapter 7
Let’s see if this thing works,” Lola said. “Looks pretty simple to hook up to the TV.”
“Got any popcorn?” Coffin said. Lola’s apartment was a newer West End duplex on the inland side of Commercial Street—upstairs unit, one bedroom, generous living room, small kitchen, one bath. It felt like a midscale hotel; tidy, impersonal, everything color-coordinated.
“You’ve never been here before, have you?” Lola said.
“Nope,” Coffin said. He pointed his chin at the big front window, which looked out on the harbor. “Nice view.”
“I can’t actually afford that view,” Lola said, “but what the hell. You only live once.”
“Unless you’re a Hindu,” Coffin said.
Lola was fiddling with the back of her wide-screen TV, borrowing the cable from her TiVo unit. “Popcorn’s in the cupboard above the microwave. Next to the scotch.”
“Now you’re talking,” Coffin said. “I’m not sure I can watch a dead woman having sex with a whole lot of hairy white guys if I’m not at least half in the bag.”
“Better pour yourself a tall one, then, because here we go.” Lola pushed the play button and turned on the TV. The screen turned bright blue; she pushed another button, and it filled with snow for a moment before two figures appeared beside Kenji Sole’s bed and started to undress each other.
“Weird,” Lola said, “the way they just popped onto the screen.”
“Must be the motion sensor in the camera,” Coffin said. “There’s a second or two delay, maybe, so you don’t see them walking through the door. They just appear.”
The picture was a bit fish-eyed from the spy-cam’s wide angle lens, the action a bit herky-jerky, but otherwise the video quality was reasonably good. One of the figures was definitely Kenji Sole. The other was a man Coffin didn’t recognize.
Kenji Sole and her lover had wrestled their clothes off. He lay on his back, and she turned and straddled his head, planting her backside firmly over his face, hips grinding while she stroked his erect penis with her left hand. There was no sound: The scene played out in jittery silence.
“What do you know,” Coffin said, tilting his head. “A lefty.”
“Frank?”
“Hm?”
“Shouldn’t we watch the end first? You know, the part where the murder happens?”
“Han
g on a minute,” Coffin said. “Here comes the silk scarf.”
“Frank?”
“And the paddle.”
“Frank.”
“And there’s the strap-on. Yeow—Cap’n Rory wasn’t kidding. Look at the size of that thing.”
Lola looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“Okay,” Coffin said. “Fine.” He knelt on the floor next to the DVR and pressed the skip button. The next scene popped onto the screen, then the next: Kenji Sole with a silent procession of men—mostly middle-aged, mostly handsome, flickering into the big bedroom to be put through the same paces as the first one.
“There’s Ed Ramos,” Coffin said. He skipped through a few more scenes. “And Nick Stavros. Interesting tattoo he’s got there. What is that—a butterfly?”
“Ew,” Lola said. “When’s he due back in town?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” Coffin said, pressing the skip button again.
“There’s something very creepy about this,” Lola said. “Creepy and sad. Are we almost at the end?”
“Yet it’s weirdly hard to look away,” Coffin said. “Holy shit.” He pressed pause, squinted at the screen. “Is that Boyle?”
Lola covered her eyes, then peeked between her fingers. “God,” she said. “I hope not. I already feel like I need a shower.”
“I’ve got to watch this part,” Coffin said. He pushed the DVR’s fast-forward button. “Just for a minute, okay?”
“Frank—”
“Oh, come on,” Coffin said, sipping his scotch. “It’ll be fun. Preston Boyle meets the Strap-on Queen. Imagine the watercooler hilarity!”
“Oh my God,” Lola said, covering her eyes again. “I can’t watch.”
“Fine,” Coffin said. “Suit yourself.”
Chief Preston Boyle threw his clothes off, leaped onto the bed, and allowed himself to be tied, spanked, and violated by Kenji Sole at very high speed.
Coffin grimaced. “Do they still have the Hairiest Ass Contest at Carnival?” he asked. “Because I think we’ve got a winner.”
He pressed the skip button. The screen went dark, grew bright again, and Kenji Sole flickered into the bedroom with another man. Skip, another man, skip, another. One of them was a corporate lawyer who flew his own plane to Boston five days a week. One of them, Coffin knew, owned a great deal of very expensive Provincetown real estate.
“It’s enough to make you reconsider the erotic possibilities of the missionary position,” Coffin said after a while.
Lola squinted. “Easy for you to say,” she said.
“Hey,” Coffin said. “It’s McCurry.” He pushed PLAY, and the video returned to normal speed.
“Look at that,” Lola said. “No scarf. No paddle.”
“No strap-on,” Coffin said, scratching his chin, “but she’s still on top.”
“Different treatment for McCurry,” Lola said.
“She liked him,” Coffin said.
Lola nodded. “You can see it. There’s real tenderness there.”
“Except she’s still filming him,” Coffin said.
Lola’s cell phone rang. She took it from her pocket and looked at the caller ID.
“Boyle,” she said, looking up at Coffin. She thumbed the talk button and held the small silver phone to her ear. “Winters,” she said. “Yes, Chief. Yes. He’s right here.” She held the phone out to Coffin. “For you,” she said.
Coffin took it. “Thanks,” he said.
“Coffin?” Boyle said, his voice small and tinny in Coffin’s ear. There was a surge of static. “. . . the fuck don’t you get a fucking cell phone? How the fuck am I supposed to get ahold of you?”
“Cell phones don’t work out here, Chief,” Coffin said into another static blast.
“What?”
Coffin looked at Lola’s phone. There were only two service bars showing. “Cell phones don’t work out here!” he shouted.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Boyle said. “Are you trying to burst my fucking eardrum?”
“Sorry,” Coffin said.
“I’m sure you’re devastated,” Boyle said. “Whatever. Where the hell are you?”
“In the car. On our way to interview one of the boyfriends.”
“It’ll have to wait. I need you and Winters to get your asses over to Town Hall, pronto. I’ve got an investigator here from the AG’s office. As in attorney general.” Boyle was from Ohio. He said things like “pronto” and “ahold.”
“Tell me there’s not another dead person,” Coffin said.
“It’s worse,” Boyle said.
“Worse?”
“Child porn. They think your witness, what’s his name—”
“Cavalo?”
“Right. They think he’s been filming underage girls.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Coffin said. “A woman got killed out here, remember? You want me to drop everything because one of Cavalo’s Croatian girls was seventeen instead of eighteen?”
“You two get your asses in here. Stat,” Boyle said. The cell phone crackled and went dead.
Coffin stared at the cell phone for a second or two, then closed it gently. “Strap-on Boy requires our presence,” he said.
“Thank God,” Lola said. “I don’t think I could have taken much more.”
Coffin pointed at the DVR. “Before we go, let’s hide this thing.”
As Coffin and Lola climbed into the Crown Vic and pulled out of the parking lot, they did not see the two men slouched down in the seats of a red late-model Mustang parked a few cars away. The two men, both dressed unobtrusively in jeans and dark T-shirts, did not notice the Range Rover parked across the street as they levered themselves out of the Mustang’s low-slung seats, walked up the two flights of wooden stairs to Lola’s front door, and, without fanfare and in just under four seconds, pried her front door open with a short, wide crowbar specifically designed for that purpose.
“Son of a bitch,” Cavalo said. “Who the fuck are those guys? Are we just going to let them take it?”
“Relax, Colt,” the older man said. “We’re not letting them take it. We’re letting them find it. Saves us the trouble. They find, we take. Get it?”
“Okay,” Cavalo said, after thinking it through for a moment. “If you say so—but who the fuck are they?”
“Cops, most likely,” the older man said. He was big, with heavy-lidded eyes and gray close-cropped hair. He took a flask from his pocket and drank from it.
“Cops?” Cavalo said, after another pause for thought. “Wait—cops are stealing the DVR from other cops?”
“Right,” the older man said. He put the flask back in his jacket pocket without offering Cavalo a drink. “Now we’re going to steal it from them.”
“What kind of cops?” Cavalo said, picking nervously at his seat belt. “Locals?”
The big man shrugged. “I didn’t recognize them. Pretty slick, the way they popped the door. One way to find out, I guess.” He climbed out of the Range Rover, took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, tapped one out, and lit it. Then he sauntered across Commercial Street and into the parking lot next to Lola’s building.
For Cavalo, watching Rudy Santos peer at the Mustang’s license plate, then open its door and rummage through the glove compartment, was nerve-racking in the extreme. He slid down in the Range Rover’s passenger seat as far as he could, eyes just level with the bottom edge of the window, expecting the two cops or whatever they were to come bursting out of the lesbian’s apartment at any moment. “Come on, for Christ’s sake,” he muttered. Rudy closed the glove box, quietly shut the Mustang’s door, and ambled back across the street.
“Well?” Cavalo said, as Rudy settled his thick hams into the driver’s seat. “Who the fuck are they?”
Rudy took three items from the pocket of his suede car coat and set them on the console between the front seats: a set of car keys, a chunky semiautomatic pistol that Cavalo recognized as a Glock, and a cell phone.
Cavalo poked the gun with his i
ndex finger. “Holy shit,” he said. “You stole their gun? And their keys? Holy fucking shit.”
Rudy shrugged. “State of Massachusetts plates. If they’re state police detectives, you’d think they’d be smart enough to lock their freakin’ car, at least. Can you believe they left the keys in the ignition? Dumb-asses.”
“State police? You stole from the state police?”
Rudy fixed Cavalo with a heavy-lidded stare. Cavalo half expected his eyes to blink from the side, like a snake’s.
“This stuff doesn’t belong to them, son,” Rudy said. “It belongs to the taxpayers. You and me.” He powered the window down and flung the set of keys into the bushes on the bay side of the street. “Besides,” he said, “things will be a lot simpler if they can’t follow us or shoot at us. Or call for backup.”
“What,” Cavalo said, “they don’t have a radio?”
“Not anymore,” Rudy said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a black plastic radio microphone—the kind with a thumb-activated toggle switch—still attached to about six inches of coiled black cord.
______
Fifteen minutes later, the door to the lesbian cop’s apartment opened, and the two men came out. One of them was cradling something in his arms: an object about half the size of a toaster, wrapped in a towel.
Rudy put a big hand on Cavalo’s shoulder and shoved him down in his seat. “Here we go,” he said. “Showtime.” He climbed out of the Range Rover, approached the two men, pulled a very large pistol from his pocket, and pointed it at the crotch of the man on the left. The man on the right set the DVR carefully on the ground; then both men turned, put their hands on the Mustang’s trunk, and allowed Rudy to frisk them. When he was done (having taken another gun from the man on the left), Rudy delivered a brief, finger-wagging lecture to the two men, who hung their heads like scolded schoolboys. Then he picked up the towel-wrapped DVR and walked back to the Range Rover as casually as a man bringing a six-pack of beer to a cookout.