by Dick Cluster
“Suzanne…” Alex said, because he didn’t like the idea of this gutsy young woman giving up. But he was also thinking that if she’d rolled down a flight of stairs, then besides what happened to her shoulder, there ought to be bruises on her arms or her ribs. He hadn’t been looking for bruises when he took her sweater off. Of course, it sometimes took a day to get black and blue. Suzanne read the thought without much trouble. She said, “I’ve got a hell of a bump on the back of my head.”
There was no need to answer. Alex reached out his right hand and felt her thick hair, still damp from the snow. It reminded him of when Meredith had discovered the lump in his neck. She’d put his hand on it, told him she’d first noticed it while they were making love the night before. He’d felt the lump, been unable to deny it, and his first reaction had been anger that she knew something about his body that he hadn’t been aware of at all. Now he pressed against Suzanne’s scalp too hard and felt her wince. She was right. There was a hell of a bump there.
“This guy that claimed to be the cop, Callahan. You didn’t recognize him? He wasn’t anybody you ever saw up in New Hampshire or down in Cambridge with Scat?”
“Nobody I can remember clear enough, anyway. A big guy, nobody I remembered, or I wouldn’t’ve believed him, would I?”
Right, Alex thought. You wouldn’t’ve. “So now he’s got more reason than ever to come after you again.”
“And I owe you again,” Suzanne said, “for getting me out of that motel.”
“Uh-huh. Now go back and tell me what happened Monday, why you weren’t there when Scat got killed.”
Suzanne undid the clasp around her forearm and now she held the tape recorder up with both hands and her voice grew matter-of-fact again. “He disappeared. So I went out looking for him. Natalie went off to meet Professor… Meredith and bring her back.”
“When did he split?”
“Monday afternoon, late, just past when I talked to you. I went out to get him cigarettes. Natalie was there, but it was like I had some kind of power over him that she didn’t. He ran.”
“On foot?”
“No, the car, his car, remember? I went out looking for him— I went to his folks’ house, to a couple bars, but he wasn’t there. I came back to Natalie’s, and I saw his bike was parked out front. I went in— and the rest is like I already said.”
“Why did he come back on his bike instead of the car?”
“I don’t know,” Suzanne said. “Now tell the truth. Do you believe me?”
Alex didn’t answer. He had asked all the sharp questions he could think of. Between now and Sunday, unless he found a reason not to, there was nothing for it except to believe. After that, what he thought wasn’t going to decide where she spent the rest of her life. Probably some parts of her story could be checked. Possibly her performance on a witness stand would matter more than any facts. But it occurred to him to try one more test. “You went to his parents’ house?” he asked.
“Yeah, looking for him.”
“Who’d you talk to? His mother? Do you think she’ll admit that now?” Alex waited for her answer, for hesitation, for Suzanne to decide she’d talked to Scat’s mother, even though Graham Johnston had said his wife was in Europe.
“His mother? No. It was just, you know, the maid who opened the door. She didn’t speak much English. Or maybe she pretended not to understand.” Passed that one, Alex thought. If Suzanne had talked with Josefina the ceviche chef, Josefina could testify that the accused had been there, knocking on a Brattle Street door, and not at home during the time Scat might have been killed. But would she? That depended, possibly, on whether Josefina was legal. Most Salvadorans and Guatemalans were not. Kim had been active with a group that got the City Council to declare Cambridge a “sanctuary city,” guaranteeing access to municipal services for refugees whether they had immigration papers or not. That wouldn’t get Josefina her job back, however, or protect her from the INS if the Johnstons decided to turn her in.
“Yes, I believe you,” he said at last. “I still have a couple more questions, though. One is that there’s something I don’t understand about Scat. He didn’t have to do anything but sit on his ass and collect dividends from some great-granddaddy’s stock. Why was he mixed up in drug deals and shit, and the people that come with that line of work?”
“To— you know— pull himself up by his own bootstraps, I sometimes thought. Did you ever hear of the Opium Wars?”
“The British beat up on China in the 1850s or sometime, so they could ship Indian opium in— isn’t that it?” Alex answered, surprised.
“Scat knew all about the Opium Wars, had read every book about them, though that isn’t very many, I guess. He used to say he was just a good Yankee trader, and narcotics traffic was an old and honorable trade.”
“Um,” Alex said. The car in front pulled out to the left of the plow, and since the interview was nearly over, he followed its red lights around. Beyond the plow, the car left black tracks in the snow. “You know,” he said, “you and Caroline were alike in some ways. I mean, different classes, social classes, but you both ran off from your futures to wait tables instead of going to school. I guess you were a few years ahead of her, but your tracks were parallel in a lot of ways. I need to ask you about that, and then we can shut that machine off and forget about confessions, as far as I’m concerned.”
“What about it?”
“Caroline got to be friendly with a woman or women up there that were hookers. Expensive ones, I think, catering to the resort trade. I want to know if you ever met anybody that you knew was into that. And I want to know if, while you were an addict, you ever… worked… yourself, up there.” Now he’d asked the question, so he could stop talking and wait for her answer. He felt, though, that he ought to keep going, to say somehow that it didn’t matter, that any answer was okay with him. “I didn’t want to ask in front of Tommy. But I’m looking for anything you know that sheds any light on why Caroline was killed.”
“No,” Suzanne said. “Sorry. I didn’t know Caroline, I don’t think she was there when I was. And I’ve never been in that line of work. It’s a way to make a living, I guess, but I’m not so philosophical or I didn’t need the money that bad. One or the other. And I’m not starting on you, no matter what I owe you for— if that’s what you’ve been trying to figure out.” She laughed, as if she too had said something that might cause offense, and she wanted to soften the blow. “I mean, this has got us a long way from the university, and I’ll call her and you by your first names and all that, but you’re my professor’s sweetheart, for Christsake. If we ever get out of this mess, I would like to pass her course.”
15. THE WOODS
By pushing the furniture around, Alex was able to make enough space to do his stretches, his balance exercises, and his kicks. He opened the curtains and saw the sun breaking through thin gray clouds above a low mountain covered to its summit with trees. Alex had been to Britain, but not to its first and nearest colony. So he didn’t know what Rosemarie Sturgeon Davis or William Butler Yeats had meant, specifically, when they urged the heart to fly to a place where hill was heaped upon hill. Yet he thought it was an apt enough description for the White Mountains.
A Westerner— looking for alpine meadows, glacial lakes, and skyscraping summits— wouldn’t regard New Hampshire’s heights as mountains at all. The country here was rugged but rounded; the heights were cold and desolate, but low. The roads through the mountains did not rise in grand, sweeping curves past vertical waterfalls to high passes with immense views. Rather, they followed deep, narrow valleys— notches, in local parlance— cut by swift but unspectacular streams. It was old, stern, mossy country. Indeed, it was the sort of place where the brotherhood of sun and moon and river and wood had long since worked out their will. New Hampshire had furnished masts for the Royal Navy, Meredith claimed, when the British had exhausted the forests of Ireland. Later it had furnished pulpwood to float a million books. Now it was Ski Cou
ntry, so dependent on the winter sports trade that the local chambers of commerce put out glossy pamphlets referring to the highway from Boston as Ski-93.
If the sun was rising over the nearby mountain, the motel window had to face east. For the purposes of the tai chi form, however, you called whatever direction you first faced “north.” Alex faced the mountain and planted his bare feet on the synthetic carpet, trying to find in it some connection with the stony, glacial New Hampshire earth. He let his arms float slowly up as if they were being raised by strings attached to his wrists, then brought them in toward his body and let them float down the same way. He relaxed, allowing weight and energy to settle into his legs. He remembered that the most important thing was to breathe. This directive was a variation on the old chemical company ad: Without Breathing, Life Itself Would Be Impossible. Had Scat Johnston actually heard the breath bubbling out of the wrong end of his lungs?
Alex didn’t hold on to the thought of Scat Johnston, or of Suzanne Lutrello sleeping off all the things that had happened to her the day before. He let the form, nearly a habit now, come slowly as he concentrated on his breath and on the placement of his weight on one leg, then on the other. When he’d reached the first Cross-Hands he was facing “north” again, ready for the movement known, curiously, as Embrace Tiger. That meant a slow, 135-degree turn, right leg raised from the earth and empty, weight sinking and energy rising through the left. His hands blocked downward and then outward, and as he finally shifted to his right foot he swiveled his hips and let the motion carry into his right hand. The hand slashed across his body, palm down about where the neck of an uprooted opponent ought to be. Then the left hand pushed the opponent out of the way. Embrace Tiger. Alex liked tigers, of course: their unabashed stripes, their grace, the sinuous way they moved.
Rolling back from this stance, he could see Suzanne watching him, both eyes open and intent, though her head hadn’t come up from the pillow. The form directed his gaze away from her until he was into the Repulse Monkey, glancing to his side as he stepped back. Now she sat upright, back against the headboard, wearing the baggy, Nike logo T-shirt she’d bought the night before. Even in winter, her neck and crossed arms were several shades darker than the clean new shirt. Conscious of watching and being watched, Alex lost track of how many steps he’d taken. He stopped and swung his arms loosely, like a rag doll’s. Repulse Monkey was as far as he knew, anyway. In three months he’d covered thirty-eight positions out of 150, according to Terry’s way of counting— though the sifu made a point of discouraging counting at all.
“Tai chi chuan,” he said, turning to Suzanne again. “It’s a kind of slowed-down Chinese martial art. If you do it every day for ten years, it might begin to pay off in a fight.”
“I know,” she said. “You do it for your health, right? You take lessons from Terry Newcombe. Maria told me about that too.”
Alex passed over Maria’s surprising bond with Suzanne this time. The one confidence would have followed the other: he’s healthy now, and a thing he does to stay healthy is he studies that tai chi. What hit him was the inflection of familiarity that Suzanne’s tongue put on Terry Newcombe’s name. “You know Terry?” he asked.
“He used to come once a week to give meditation classes at the program I was in. He’s some kind of distant cousin of Natalie’s, or their mothers go to the same church, or something.” Suzanne slid out of the bed, the T-shirt falling partway down her thighs. Without the tight jeans, her legs looked flabbier and more utilitarian, not so strongly sculpted as they had the day before. Or was that just because she had made the limits of their partnership clear? Suzanne tested the bump behind her head and scratched an itch at the top of her spine. She disappeared into the bathroom. Alex heard the toilet flush, the shower go on and then off. She reappeared dressed in yesterday’s black sweater and jeans, fastening her left arm into the sling.
“We should get going,” he said. “We can stop for breakfast, and I guess Rosemarie Davis has to buy us both a few more clothes.”
* * *
The approach to Pepperell Woods followed a branch of the Pemigewasset River. The plows had been out overnight, and the road up the valley ran clear and dry between snowbanks six feet high. The evergreens wore clumps of new snow like fat white mittens on their boughs. The dark green mountains wore white where ski trails had been cut, or where rockslides on steep faces had removed the trees. The valley was narrow and steep and sparsely developed until it abruptly widened, upstream, into a large and flattish bowl.
Alex had never been here before. By reputation, the ski runs were long and well maintained, but the lift lines were long as well. Seeing the size of the development ahead, he understood why. The vanished farms and woodlots of the old Yankee settlers had been replaced by what looked like an architect’s model, jig-sawed out of balsa wood and pieced together with glue. Block after block of multi-unit condominium buildings sat on the valley floor and the lower surrounding slopes. Construction trailers, new semicircular drives, and empty excavated lots showed that the building boom wasn’t over yet. Alex guessed there could be five thousand units either occupied, under construction, or on the drawing boards. If they went for, say, $200,000 apiece, then the Pepperell land and neighboring properties had turned into something like a billion dollars’ worth of vacation homes. Plus the hotels, the eating and drinking places, and other recreational facilities on top of these.
The real estate office stood proudly at the entrance to the complex, a residential-looking place with two stories and old-fashioned shuttered windows and a door painted bright red. Alex imagined it must be sell-sell-sell, build quick and unload quick while the Massachusetts economy boomed for the business and professional class. There would be tax write-offs, most likely, and real estate seemed to be everybody’s favorite investment right now— at least to hear the owners of the newer Volvos and Jaguars and BMWs talk.
Sometimes Alex felt guilty working on imports for people like that, when American auto workers were being thrown to the dogs. But he liked these machines, he liked the way they ran, and Buy American rankled him the same way as My Country Right or Wrong.
“Busy, busy, busy,” he remarked to Suzanne.
“Too busy,” she said. “They put wood stoves and fireplaces in every room, back to nature, you know. The air is great during the day, but at night you could choke on the smoke.”
“Plenty of work, though?”
“At peak time, yeah. You can always get work cleaning and booking reservations, cooking for the charter-bus parties, dishing out food and skis, hauling out dirty laundry and trash. I did all that shit, off and on. There’s construction, too, whenever the weather’s good enough, but mostly just for guys. Take a left up there, I’ll show you Scat’s place, okay?”
“You sound like a tour guide,” Alex said. Her nonchalance was too forced. She might have been offering to point out where John Belushi had lived.
“I guess. It’s just that my life depends on giving you the best information I can.”
Touché, he thought, and turned left where she said. The condominiums, the heart of the place, bore the names of mountains. They loomed like mountains, too, three- and four-story complexes with wood siding and tall chimneys and lots of picture windows. Alex drove past the namesakes not only of New Hampshire and Vermont peaks (Monadnock and Mansfield) but Wyoming and California (Teton and Shasta) as well. It was midday on a Thursday. The parking lots were nearly empty. Few owners would be in residence, and the weekend rental crowd would not yet have appeared. Anybody who was here would be off enjoying the clear crisp day and new snow.
“Did Scat buy his place, or did it used to be his parents’, or what?”
“They gave it to him, no mortgage, no nothing, when he turned eighteen.”
“That’s a pretty weird thing— to own a home outright, just when you start to vote, start to be officially responsible for yourself. Of course, I guess to him it was just a fancier version of what anybody gets that’s your first sp
ace on your own.” He thought of Suzanne’s room in Dorchester. “I mean, the driver’s seat of your first car, or a dormitory room, a bedroom in an apartment with other kids…”
“No, what was weird, if you call it that, was Scat didn’t feel that way. He said he needed to own something in this valley, like that place was his log cabin or something.”
“What do you mean?” Alex asked.
“Well, he said to me one time, ‘Doesn’t your mother’s family have some valley in Italy? Someplace where some of them are still fuckin’ peasants, and you could go back there if you wanted?’ He wanted his roots, and to him that’s what this place was. Up there, where it says Katahdin, see?”
Alex pulled into the entrance drive for Katahdin Homes. He didn’t know whether Graham Johnston had designed Katahdin Homes, but whoever did it hadn’t made any effort to cast the buildings in a New England mode. They weren’t ugly— they had nice angles, avoided the phony Swiss bric-a-brac common in Ski Country, and were faced with a pleasant gray, weathered-looking wood. But they might just as well have been in Vail or Aspen, or for that matter in suburban Chicago or Philadelphia. There were no gables, no clapboard, no weathervanes, no white picket fences. He searched for Scat Johnston’s door, number B-71. It was painted dark, deep blue. So was every third door in the row of nine.
“Funny place to go back to the land, if you ask me.”
“He didn’t mean actually get his hands dirty— like a fuckin’ peasant— he meant to belong somewhere, like a country person does. He kind of felt they— his father— had sold that out from under him.”