by Dick Cluster
“Did you buy drugs from him anymore?” Alex asked. “Not needle drugs. I mean, you must have still bought an occasional ounce of grass—”
“Why ‘must’?” Tommy demanded. “Because you do, you mean? You think somebody has to be weird if they say no to drugs?”
Not really, Alex thought. Though frankly I get confused about any issue when Nancy Reagan and Jesse Jackson say the same thing. He didn’t want to be drawn into this argument, but he did want Tommy to feel taken seriously. Kid brothers tended to have a problem about that.
“In my generation,” he said, “doing certain drugs was a way to confront reality— to believe we and it didn’t have to be the way we and it were. In your generation, doing drugs may be a way to blend in or space out. Like watching TV, I don’t know. If it was up to me, I’d repeal the prohibition and ban handguns and unemployment instead. But I asked the question because Natalie implied Suzanne still bought from Scat.”
Suzanne stuck out her chin and reached her free hand to fluff up her hair. Alex imagined the arm in the sling had to be getting stiff or hot, there inside the sweater. She had to be dying to soak in a bath or just lie down and conk out. It was no time to be sympathetic, though, not yet. “Well,” she said, “truth is I buy from him for Natalie once in a while. She likes to keep her hand in that stuff. As long as anybody’s not an addict, I don’t care what they smoke or snort or guzzle at the bar. I’ve been an addict. I know that’s in me, that tendency. So I stay away from narcotics, and alcohol, too.”
Bernie was still taking notes, without comment, but for the first time Alex saw him smile. He thought Suzanne would be a good witness. He might or might not think she was telling the truth.
“I saw Scat sometimes,” she went on. “He wasn’t in such good shape, but he seemed to think he was into big things, big plans. I don’t know if he cared about me anymore, really. He was jealous of Natalie, like she’d stolen me from him, and he— well, the thing is, I hadn’t seen him in maybe six months until Saturday night. When I was sitting for Maria. I liked Maria, Alex. She’s a smart little kid. We got to talking. She… told me about how you used to have cancer, by the way.”
Alex felt his eyes pop open, and felt them tum to Bernie in surprise, for support. He watched Bernie smile again. “That’s good,” Bernie said. “Alex always thinks she’s afraid to talk about that.”
“Used to?” Alex repeated. “Were those really the words she used?”
“Used to.” Suzanne nodded. She started to lean forward and reach out for Alex, in a sisterly way. She thought better of it, and stopped. Her fingers walked in place on the table. For her, Alex thought, that asterisk had been there next to his name the whole time. What did it mean about her decision to trust him with this mess? He didn’t want to owe her anything. But he did want to know what she’d learned about the things that went on inside Maria’s head.
“She said you took ‘medications,’ ” Suzanne added. “She sounded like a little doctor, ‘medications.’ She said it was hard, you worked hard, and you were as healthy as the next person now. Is that true?”
Alex shrugged. “Sort of. What did they tell you about your shoulder?”
“The more I wear the sling, the better it will probably heal. After a few months I don’t have to go easy on it or anything. But because it once popped out, it’ll never be quite as good as new.”
“That’s what I thought. Well, it’s sort of like that for me. Worse, probably. But sort of like that. I don’t have to go around acting like I’m sick. I shouldn’t expect never to be sick again. If you care about Maria, there’s something I have to show you. In a minute. But tell me what happened Saturday night, why you left.”
Suzanne closed her eyes, took some slow, deep breaths. She seemed to be waiting for something, maybe counting to ten, maybe what Terry would call opening her channels for the circulation of the chi. Alex studied the smudged lines of eyebrow pencil, the streaked eye shadow, the chapped and burned look of her cheeks and lips. Suzanne Lutrello, a success story. Bruised, maybe knocked off track, but definitely not giving in. He looked at Tommy, to see what Tommy thought about her, but Tommy was watching him. Caught, the brother dropped his eyes hurriedly. Alex wondered how the asterisk changed Tommy’s view. Had Alex Glauberman, scraggly sixties dinosaur, metamorphosed into Alex Glauberman, battler against the Big C?
“I was feeling pretty good,” Suzanne said in a sudden rush, “about how you licked your illness, and how you and Professor— you and Meredith seemed nice together. I had licked my addiction, I was thinking maybe I’d find somebody nice, like you, for myself soon. Maybe I’d have a cute, smart kid like Maria someday, after I finished school, made some money, was ready. I put Maria to bed and turned on the TV. I wasn’t really paying attention, half paying attention, and they had this little story on the news about this girl, this woman, getting hit by the car. They said, you know, something like, ‘A tragic incident in New Hampshire claimed the life of a nineteen-year-old skier.’ They said she ‘blundered over a snowdrift’ and flopped onto the road. They said the driver, ‘Cambridge resident Lowell Johnston,’ was treated for shock, questioned by police, and released without charges. And I don’t know where it came from, but I had this impulse, you know, to take care of him. I should have stood up to it, but I thought, he’s surrounded by people who don’t give a shit, and here he’s gone and done something really tragic that for once isn’t his fault. I called and asked if he wanted me to come up. I had to catch the last bus, that was why I left so fast. You were going to be home real soon anyway. But it wasn’t the right thing to do, for Maria. It wasn’t the right thing to do for me.”
Alex took from his inside coat pocket the message that had been rolled around his wiper blade. He spread it in front of Suzanne. He said, “Whoever busted my windows left this.” Tommy and Bernie edged their chairs closer to Suzanne so that they could read it too. Tommy started to say something, but Suzanne shut him up with a look. Alex had a speech ready, but Suzanne made that unnecessary.
“Okay,” she said. Her eyes were wide, and the bones seemed to be trying to press their way through the scraped skin of her cheeks. “It’s Wednesday. I know I can’t run forever. I promise, I swear that on Sunday you can turn me in. I don’t know if I’ve got the strength to tell the whole story now. But I know from Natalie that you were hired to find out whether it was an accident. I know it wasn’t an accident. And I think that’s how come Scat got killed.”
“I want to hear about it,” Alex said. “Whenever you’re ready. This note may be bullshit, is probably bullshit, but I’m taking it at face value. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t have any choice. Bernie is going to get a message to Trevisone and another to Graham Johnston that Suzanne will turn herself in by Sunday at the latest. I hope by then we can hand Trevisone some evidence that convinces him there’s more to this than the Johnstons want him to think. But if you disappear on me, Suzanne, I’ll go to Trevisone right away and do anything I can to help him catch you.”
He turned to Tommy. He needed to give Tommy something to do. “There’s a bunch of motels out there, across the street. I want you to take Suzanne over there before your break from work ends. She should register under some other name— not the one from the hospital— and pay cash. If you haven’t got cash, we’ll get some from a machine. Suzanne, you stay in the room, don’t leave, and get some sleep. Tommy, you go back to work. I’ll stop by and get the key.”
“Where are you going?”
“Bernie and I need to talk. Then I’m going to fix my window. Then I’ll come back to Suzanne.”
“Okay,” Tommy said. “C’mon, Suzy. Let’s go.”
11. OLD MONEY
For a long minute Bernie just leafed through his notes, saying nothing. Then he took off his thick glasses and wiped them on his solid navy blue tie. After he was satisfied, he rested the glasses back on his nose. He put both elbows on the table and rested his forehead on the heels of his hands. He drummed very slowly with his fingers,
a kind of slow massage of his scalp to get his thoughts in motion.
Bernie was deliberate where Alex was headstrong. His hair, which Alex saw was thinning faster than ever, was cut and styled, where Alex’s grew thick and wild. Yet he could also be headstrong, in his own way, in places and times where Alex would be deliberate. When they skied together, Alex cared about finesse and technique as well as speed. Bernie went all out. He almost always reached the base of the mountain first.
Bernie sat up straight, drained the coffee cup, and said, “I’ve got a wife and two children waiting. What’s all this about fixing your car?”
“I’m driving it to New Hampshire, but not with shattered glass. Also, I want to see whether Suzanne will run.”
“Because without her you won’t be in this so deep?”
“Maybe. In the meantime, let’s go buy a coat at Jordan Marsh. If she keeps to the deal, I have to take her with me, and I don’t want her to freeze. You can tell me what you know about the principals while we shop. I don’t guess you can get out here again in the morning…”
“No. We’ll buy a tape recorder along with the coat. You can send me the tape by courier. All I can say now is she’s a good, sympathetic witness, if we end up trying to get it down from murder to a lesser charge. Everything else depends on the facts about Johnston’s death, which you’ll notice we still know none of.”
Alex stood up, and Bernie did too, and they walked slowly out of the fast-food arena and back toward the main corridor. It was a little busier now. Alex supposed that the evening shopping time had begun. He said, “Graham Johnston told me the police told him she was seen on Scat’s motorcycle, leaving the apartment where he was killed around the time of death.”
“Well, find out how much her movements can be pinpointed. And get her to be exact as possible about what exactly she did and saw.”
“And my own legal situation, assuming she does turn herself in, and I helped talk her into it?”
“Depends on how much your sergeant ends up thinking it screwed up his investigation not to have her right now,” Bernie said. He was talking fast, as the doctor had, as Alex did when his customers asked him how bad the damage was before he knew what was wrong. “You’re going to be aiding interstate flight, it looks like. I can’t encourage you to do that, but I don’t think you’ll end up spending more than maybe a night or two in jail, if Trevisone gets spiteful. I guess Tommy has the cash for the motel, by the way. Who’s paying for this jacket, and the cars you’re not fixing while your whereabouts are unknown?”
“Rosemarie Davis,” Alex reported. “She hired me to look into her granddaughter’s death. I can still do that, regardless of what Suzanne’s story is. Let’s start your information on the principals with Rosemarie.”
“I can tell you more about the Johnstons, really. But if you want ancient history, then Rosemarie’s father, Paddy Sullivan, does happen to figure in the annals of the Boston Bar.”
Alex and Bernie turned the corner, heading toward the big department store that anchored the mall’s south end. Alex felt that he didn’t need Bernie showing off right now. Besides, he bet Rosemarie’s father wasn’t really called Paddy, certainly not to his face. He said, “Patrick?”
“Yeah. Michael Patrick on his birth certificate, but Paddy to his friends and enemies alike. He studied the law at Trinity College in Dublin, and they say he played some part in the patriot game. They say he had to go west, after the Easter Rebellion, to stay out of a British jail. He became Boston’s leading Irish lawyer when there weren’t so many Irish lawyers to lead.”
“Uh-huh,” Alex said. “If he was a patriot, why did he change his name?”
“The legend goes that it was the price for losing a bet: if I don’t bed a certain young lady by Friday, I’ll rename myself after a fish.” Bernie sniffed. He couldn’t resist the story, Alex saw, but he couldn’t accept it either. “Anyway he did good and he did well, too, and they even let him teach at Harvard toward the end.”
“So,” Alex said. They drifted into Jordan’s without having to slow down to open a door or take off a coat. His thoughts were half on extracting useful facts from Bernie’s recitation, half on how expensive a coat he was going to buy. It was a present from Rosemarie Davis to the woman the police said killed the man who killed her granddaughter. He said, “Goosedown. If she runs, Maria will grow into it someday. What about Rosemarie? Does she figure in the annals too?”
“Not much. But she was a rebel, too, of course. She painted a mural somewhere, a memorial to Sacco and Vanzetti, that depicted Governor Fuller and Judge Thayer as Puritan clergy, hanging witches. With huge erections, I’m told. But she married George Davis, a coffee importer who didn’t know Dali from doily, and didn’t care.”
“It was a marriage of convenience,” Alex said. Department stores always disoriented him— too perfect, too clean, too hard to breathe. He finally spotted a sign for Women’s Outerwear and pointed the way he wanted to go. “She wanted cover, and also children, I think.”
“Aha. Do you want to know about her money? She would have inherited some real estate from Paddy and stocks from George, though it might all be sold by now. The Johnston money is bigger and more interesting. It’s old, old. Shipping, I think— probably slaving, sugar, lumber, rum. The Pepperells, that’s the mother, are as old as the Johnstons, but they didn’t used to be as rich. Lowell Townsend Johnston. A name made up of three last names will get you into any club in town.”
“Uh-huh,” Alex said. He had found a coat that would do, a navy blue parka, inconspicuous, on sale for only a hundred and seventy bucks. “Pepperell as in Pepperell Woods? How do the Johnstons and Pepperells turn money into more money now?”
“Graham Johnston is an architect. I don’t remember the firm’s name, but they work with Sloan, Garrity— that’s one of the hottest developers, not big yet, but hot. They specialize in research parks and conversions; take an old rubber plant and turn it into gene-splicing and software shops.”
Alex heard “rubber plant” and thought of the decor at the Typhoon. He tried to imagine how you dissected a tropical tree down to its genes and put them together with something else. “Oh, like Firestone, I see what you mean.”
“Yeah, good, Alex. That’s a pretty fancy coat; I hope it buys you some solid facts from her in return. All these old factories were built to last, only the buildings outlasted what went on inside. Maybe that happens every couple centuries in Europe, in China. It’s never happened here before.”
Alex folded the coat over his arm and stepped around a mannequin that was too perfect, like the rest of the store. Her skin was too smooth, her lips parted just slightly, not scared or laughing or happy or sad. He hoped Suzanne didn’t run away. He liked how real she was. Since he didn’t interrupt, Bernie rambled on.
“We represent a guy who calls his outfit New Habitats. Know what he does? He tears down old rooming houses and three-deckers in the old town centers. He guts what’s left of the old affordable housing stock and puts up health clubs and little motels…”
“Okay, so Graham’s an architect.” Alex moved into line at a cashier’s station, behind a woman with straight blond hair piled high on her head. She laid a credit card and a pile of children’s hats and mittens on the counter. “And an investor?” he asked.
“Sure. That way he keeps himself assured of work. Take Pepperell Woods. The Pepperells had farmland in New Hampshire. Graham Johnston put his in-laws in touch with some Boston money and the ski place was born. Graham and wife made a mint off selling the land, they got to be partners in the resort corporation, and Graham’s firm got a healthy cut of the design work. What I’d like to know is why Lowell Townsend Johnston had to sell narcotics. He had no need to do anything but sit on his ass and cash checks.”
The blond woman, her purchases bagged, shot them both a quick, interested glance as she went by. She had a high forehead and a turned-up nose. She might own a condo in the Woods, or she might have been interested in the word narcotics.
Alex paid for the coat with plastic. He said, “Maybe he was bored. I would be. I have a hunch that his rackets, whatever they were, might have been costing the family as much as they were bringing in. Graham seemed to think I was there to discuss business at first— like people had made a business before of keeping quiet about his son.”
12. REAGAN/BUSH
Alex knew he’d been right about fixing the window when a fine drizzle began. A drizzle like this, early on a winter night, meant worse was to come. The wipers scraped on the jagged glass, producing an ugly sound that might be made by claws. Then they stuck. There was no point in burning out the wiper motor, so Alex pulled to the side of the highway and banged away still more of the shattered window. He remembered to get his safety glasses out of the trunk. When he edged back onto the road, the rain picked up. It sprayed through the hole, drenching his face and beard as he drove. Maria would spray him like this, in the summertime, but then it was just a quick dash until he could wrest away the garden hose. Both of them would end up screaming, part in fun and part in anger, and soaking wet all through. Driving into the cold rain was not fun. Alex slowed down.
He fiddled with the radio till he got a weather report: rain in the city, possibly turning to snow. Snow in outlying areas, heaviest to the north and west. In his pocket was the room key he’d gotten from Tommy. Days Inn, room 314. Tommy had reddened, handing it over, as if he were handing his sister over to a stranger— which, as far as he was concerned, was the case. Spend the night there, Alex thought, and get the rest of the story. If it made sense, bring her along to New Hampshire tomorrow. Behind him, a semi driver blinked brights angrily and then pulled beside and ahead, throwing another gallon of spray through the hole.