by Jon Loomis
“My brother worked at McDonald’s for a couple of years,” Lola said. “He smelled like French fries all the time, even after he’d showered.”
The wind hissed softly in a tall row of cedars at the cemetery’s edge. Coffin started walking again, and the others followed.
“So just by viewing porn, by being part of the market for it, you’re participating in the coercion of the actors?” Coffin said.
“It’s an oversimplification, but that’s basically the idea,” Priestess Maiya said, giving Gracie another peanut.
Coffin raised an eyebrow. “That’s why people get off on it?”
“Right. It’s not the sex, it’s the act of coercion that’s at the heart of the voyeuristic impulse. That’s the standard psychological reading, anyway.”
“That was something that Kenji was concerned about?” Lola said. “As a social justice issue?”
Priestess Maiya shrugged. “I suppose so,” she said. “Or she pretended she was.”
“Pretended?” Coffin said.
“Appearances are everything,” Priestess Maiya said. “Especially in academia.”
“You make a good point,” Coffin said. Lola shot him a look.
J. Hedrick coughed and spat again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “How so?” he said.
“If Kenji was concerned about the coercive aspect of voyeurism, why would she have filmed her lovers with a hidden camera?”
“What?” J. Hedrick said. He turned on Coffin, eyes bulging. “What did you say?”
Priestess Maiya took his arm. “He said that Kenji filmed her lovers with a hidden camera, dear.”
“That doesn’t seem to surprise you,” Coffin said.
“No,” Priestess Maiya said. “It would have surprised me if she hadn’t been up to something like that. I mean, no one really bought her interest in porn and voyeurism as a purely academic exercise. Why study porn if you’re not into porn?”
J. Hedrick’s face was very red. His breath was coming in little gasps. “I think I’d better sit down,” he said. “Have you got my pills?”
“Of course, dear,” Priestess Maiya said, catching some of his weight as he lowered himself onto the base of a tall column with a marble globe at its top. The column marked the grave of Coffin’s great-grandfather, Captain Ephraim Coffin, who had hanged himself in the cupola of his Commercial Street mansion in the 1880s.
“I’m sorry,” Coffin said. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You shouldn’t have,” Priestess Maiya said, “but you did.” She looked at Coffin with her hard black eyes. “I suppose that makes you no better than the rest of us, Detective.”
Coffin nodded. “I suppose it does,” he said. The rain had started again in earnest, and Coffin was getting very wet. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, and he and Lola turned to walk back across the cemetery to their cars.
Chapter 11
Coffin absently steered the moldering Fiesta, trying not to stare too long at the gray harbor and, in the middle ground, the magenta bursts of beach rose flickering between the rows of tiny cottages as he drove out Route 6A, through Beach Point on his way off-Cape. There was something almost heartbreakingly romantic about those cottages, he thought—all built in the thirties or forties, some a bit run-down now, but still booked solid every summer with tourists who didn’t mind the high prices and cramped conditions, as long as they were waterfront and kid-friendly. At night, the view from Beach Point back toward Provincetown was lovely—moonrise over the harbor, the twinkling lights of Commercial Street—but now it was daytime, early afternoon. Coffin was driving up to Boston to meet with Kenji Sole’s private investigator, one D. Towler, who had refused to discuss anything to do with Kenji over the phone.
For the moment, the Fiesta seemed to be running reasonably well. The heat gauge was only slightly above normal; the transmission was sluggish but shifting; all the tires had air in them. Coffin turned left off of 6A after passing the old Days’ Cottages, then paused at the stop sign before turning right onto Route 6, the “new” highway, four lanes for the next few miles, until the exit for Truro Center. As he waited for a truck to pass, the Fiesta shuddered, then stalled. He turned the key in the ignition. The Fiesta farted a blue plume of oil smoke before rattling back to life. The engine sounded like a garbage disposal grinding up a stainless steel fork. As Coffin pulled onto the highway, two women rode by on matching mountain bikes. They turned in their seats, pointed at Coffin’s car, and laughed.
The drive from Provincetown to Boston could take anywhere from two and a half hours in the off-season to four-plus hours on busy summer weekends; most of the P’town natives in Coffin’s circle avoided it except in cases of absolute necessity. To those who had never lived anywhere else, anyplace off-Cape seemed almost as foreign and distant as Turkmenistan or Tierra del Fuego. Even for Coffin, who had lived off-Cape (in exotic Baltimore) for almost ten years, Provincetown and the Outer Cape had a kind of gravitational pull that kept him close; leaving was always a big deal.
The rain started again as Coffin neared the turnoff for Wellfleet Center; he flicked on the windshield wipers, which groaned—somehow the right wiper blade had adhered to the windshield—and then suddenly flapped into action. The blade that had been stuck was now torn; part of it hung loose from the wiper like a ragged black ribbon, slopping back and forth across Coffin’s field of vision. He turned the wipers off. At least it’s only a drizzle, he thought. A fork of lightning zagged out of the clouds as he passed the Wellfleet Drive-in, and the sky seemed to open up as the Fiesta labored into the storm, the drizzle becoming a torrent in an instant. The rain roared on the Fiesta’s roof, and Coffin could see nothing through the windshield except rain and more rain. He turned on the wipers again, cranking them up as fast as they would go. The torn blade flapped back and forth a few times, then flew off, disappearing into the storm. The wiper’s metal arm screeked shrilly across the windshield, the blade clip grinding a large, curved scratch into the glass.
Coffin gritted his teeth. “Christ,” he said. “This is fun.” He was thinking about pulling over at one of Eastham’s several Route 6 gas stations and trying to buy a new wiper blade when the rain stopped almost as abruptly as it had started, the clouds parting to reveal blue sky directly ahead. Coffin turned on the radio, but the reception was bad all across the dial. The only station that came in clearly was right-wing talk, some blowhard grumbling about how the U.S. was winning the war in Iraq, but the media refused to report the truth. The blowhard seemed more dispirited than outraged to Coffin, as though he were just going through the motions, saying what he was paid to say.
Coffin turned the radio off and kept driving, through Eastham’s congested roadside commercial zone, two or three miles of clam shacks and package stores and mini golf for the tourists, and then through the Orleans rotary, one of those New England engineering oddities known elsewhere as a traffic circle. The rain started again, wind-driven and hard, just as Coffin’s Fiesta entered the two-lane stretch between Orleans and Dennis that everyone called Suicide Alley.
Suicide Alley was one of the most dangerous stretches of highway in New England, despite the installation of a raised center divider (about six inches wide by three inches high and topped with slender, three-foot plastic pylons), meant to discourage those who were foolhardy enough to try to pass slower vehicles in Suicide Alley’s thirteen miles of blind curves and hidden on-ramps. It usually wasn’t too bad in the off-season: You might get stuck behind a slow-moving truck, or a local senior citizen motoring along at forty miles per hour with his left turn signal on, but there was also a decent chance that you’d sail straight through from Orleans to Dennis unobstructed and at a reasonable speed. During the season, though, there was no escape—Suicide Alley would suck you into its long alimentary canal, and there’d you’d be, slowly digesting in your own juices until the mid-Cape was done with you and you popped out the other end. This time of year—with the first real flow of tourists an
d preseason renters just beginning to appear—traffic was heavier than Coffin expected, though it still moved faster than the high-season crawl. The Fiesta was nestled between an eighteen-wheeler and a humongous SUV, with a long tail of traffic strung out behind. Oncoming traffic was sparse and moving fast in the heavy rain, passing cars and trucks kicking up explosive, blinding sheets of water from the road surface.
Coffin’s left shoulder and shirtsleeve were getting wet. It was confusing at first—the window was all the way up—until he realized that the door seal was leaking. “Wonderful,” Coffin said, wiping at the wet spot with his right hand. “Fabulous.”
Then the Fiesta jerked hard to the left and half-jumped the center divider, plowing over a dozen of the tall plastic pylons (thwapthwapthwapthwapthwap against the front bumper) before Coffin’s brain could compute what was happening. The road seemed to have melted into rubble—the stuttering left front tire rapidly losing pressure and starting to shred. Coffin braked and tried to steer back into his lane, but the big SUV behind him blasted its horn, not giving way. Coffin found himself driving down the centerline, half into oncoming traffic, barely able to steer on the one bare rim, headlights bearing down. A horn blared and a big delivery van in the oncoming lane swerved around him, two wheels on the narrow shoulder, spewing a curtain of spray, horn blasting, the driver leaning down to give Coffin the finger and mouth the word “asshole.” Coffin swerved left again, between two oncoming cars and onto the eastbound shoulder, before he braked the Fiesta to a skidding, sideways stop.
“Holy shit,” Coffin said, still gripping the Fiesta’s wheel, the little car standing still at last, off-kilter, facing the wrong way on the eastbound shoulder, the smell of melted rubber seeping in through its rusted floorboards. The rain pelted the Fiesta’s roof. Coffin lit a cigarette, hands shaking a little. He wasn’t sure if he had a spare tire—he’d never checked. A state police cruiser pulled onto the shoulder in front of him, blue lights flashing.
The trooper took his time running Coffin’s plates before he got out of his big Crown Vic, put his hat and his rain slicker on, and walked around to Coffin’s side of the car. Coffin rolled down the window.
“I was three cars behind you when your tire blew,” the trooper said. “Lucky you didn’t kill us all, driving a piece of shit like this on a state highway.” He was young and seemed to be working at projecting an air of authority.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Coffin said, handing the trooper his shield along with his license and registration.
“Well, looky here,” the trooper said. “Detective Coffin, from Provincetown. You made the collar on that serial killing out there, a couple years ago.”
“Not me,” Coffin said. “My partner.”
“Well, nice going anyway.”
“Thanks.”
The trooper pursed his lips and peered into the Fiesta’s fogged interior. “They outfit all you P’town detectives with fine vehicles like this one? Or are you undercover or something?”
“As what?” Coffin said.
“I don’t know. I see a lot of Eastern European guys driving piece of shit cars like this nowadays. One of them, maybe.”
“I bought this car from an Eastern European guy. Croatian, I think.”
The trooper kicked meditatively at the Fiesta’s flat tire. “Wow,” he said. “You paid money for this thing?”
“Look,” Coffin said, “I’ve got to get to Boston. I’m not sure I’ve got a spare.”
“I’ll call a wrecker for you,” the young trooper said. “Shouldn’t take him but a few minutes to get here. I’ll tell him to bring a doughnut, which ought to get you into the nearest service station. Hey—are you working on a case right now? That rich broad that got stabbed?”
“That’s the one,” Coffin said.
“Any leads?”
“Too many.”
“Gotcha,” the trooper said. “Well, good luck gettin’ this piece of shit to Boston.” He rapped twice on the Fiesta’s roof, then strode back to his cruiser.
The tow truck arrived ten minutes later. The driver was a tall, wiry Eastern European man with a thick mat of black hair and Cyrillic letters tattooed across his knuckles. He looked at Coffin’s car and laughed. “Haw haw,” he said. “I know this car.” His accent was heavy.
“Hey,” Coffin said. “Great.”
“It belong-ed to my cousin, Zoran,” the driver said, pulling a jack and a lug wrench from behind the seat of his truck. He wore no hat and no raincoat. His T-shirt was already soaking wet. “He sell it. Piece of shit, this car. You buy this stupid car from Zoran?”
“That was his name,” Coffin said. “Zoran.”
“Haw haw,” the driver laughed, loosening a lug nut, then another. “That Zoran. I ask-ed him, who would buy this piece of shit car?”
“It was the only one I could find in my price range,” Coffin said.
“What,” the driver said, jacking up the Fiesta with a few quick pumps of his long, muscular arm, “you don’t have job?”
“I’m a cop,” Coffin said. The rain drummed on the Fiesta’s roof. “Out in Provincetown.”
“You are cop! Haw haw,” the driver said, putting on the small temporary spare. “You crack me up, buddy. You should drive tow truck like me. Make good money. After work, drink some beers, meet some nice girls.”
“Sounds pretty good,” said Coffin. “I’ll give it some thought.”
“All set,” the driver said, lowering the jack. “Where you want old tire?”
“Backseat, I guess,” Coffin said. “The trunk’s kind of small.”
“You go two exits, back to Brewster—turn left, stop at Exxon. They sell you new tire. Retread. Very good price.”
“What do I owe you?” Coffin said.
The driver shrugged. “Nothing. Maybe someday I’m in P’town, you do me a favor.”
“I’ll do that,” Coffin said. “What’s your name?”
“Zoran.” The driver grinned, his teeth wolfish and sharp. “Like my cousin.”
The Fiesta handled even worse with the spare than it had on its four bald tires. At forty-five miles per hour, the front end started to shudder; at fifty it bucked and jerked as though the wheels were falling off. Coffin slowed to about forty and drove back toward Orleans, a long line of traffic crawling along behind him. Just before he reached the Harwich exit, the red battery light next to the speedometer flickered on.
“Uh-oh,” Coffin said. He tapped the clear plastic over the gauges with his fingernail, but the light stayed on. “What the fuck does that mean?”
He passed the Harwich exit—feeling the barbed hatred of the drivers behind him—intending to follow Zoran’s directions to the Brewster Exxon station. After two or three miles his windshield wipers started to slow perceptibly and the engine temperature gauge began to rise, trembling just below the red zone. The steering grew even worse—stiff and heavy, as though the Fiesta were driving through a shallow lake of glue. He pulled over onto the narrow shoulder as far as he could. The Fiesta died completely about two hundred yards from the Brewster exit.
“Motherfucking fuckball,” Coffin said. He lit a cigarette and waited, traffic streaming past on his left. The rain had almost stopped.
Ten minutes later the young state trooper appeared again, lights flashing in Coffin’s rearview mirror. Coffin got out of the Fiesta and walked over to the cruiser as the trooper was typing something into his dashboard computer. The trooper looked up.
“Looks like you busted your serpentine belt,” he said.
Coffin looked. A thick black loop of rubber hung from the Fiesta’s engine compartment like an intestine. “Ah.”
“Not your day, I guess.”
“Not so far,” Coffin said. “It doesn’t want me to leave.”
The trooper’s blue eyes flicked up to Coffin’s face. “What doesn’t want you to leave, Detective?”
“The Cape. It’s not letting me leave. Ever have that happen?”
“Nah. I live in Buzzard
s Bay. Other side of the bridge. You said you were headed to Boston?”
“I was,” Coffin said. “Doesn’t look like I’m going to make it, though.”
The trooper looked at his watch. “I go off duty in exactly seven minutes. Hop in. I’ll give you a ride.”
Chapter 12
The Ramos house felt cramped to Lola, even for a Provincetown saltbox. The ceilings seemed unusually low, the doors exceptionally narrow. The furniture was early rumpus room, all vinyl and plaid. Plastic Fisher-Price toys occupied most of the living room floor space.
“Once a cheater, always a cheater,” Mrs. Ramos said. “That’s what they say.”
Sophie Ramos was a large, tired-looking woman with hair the color of butterscotch. She sat on her plaid sofa, entirely surrounded by plastic toys. The two-year-old, little Ronnie, was parked in front of the TV set watching Bob the Builder. The rest of the kids were at school.
“Should we be talking about this here, Mrs. Ramos?” Lola said, tilting her head in little Ronnie’s direction. “Maybe we should step into the kitchen for a minute or two.”
“Nah,” Mrs. Ramos said, dismissing the suggestion with a wave of her meaty paw. She wore a nubbly terrycloth bathrobe. Her fingernails were painted bubblegum pink; the polish was chipped at the edges. “We had a big blowout about it last night. The kids know everything. No way to keep secrets in this teensy little house.”
“Okay,” Lola said. “If you say so.” She lowered her voice. “Are you saying your husband’s had other affairs?”
“Uh, yeah,” Mrs. Ramos said, letting the inflection rise a little. “With me. He was married when we first got together. I hired him to install some cabinets, and I guess you could say one thing led to another. He was a hottie, you know? We’ve always been under that cloud, in a way.”
“You never really felt you could trust him,” Lola said.
“Yup,” Mrs. Ramos said. Tears welled in her eyes, and she dabbed at them with a Kleenex. “I just figured maybe I could keep him busy, you know? Things cooled off after I had little Ronnie here, though. I guess I kind of lost interest, after three kids in five years. I’m like, you know, can we give it a rest, already?”