by Linda Barnes
Chapter 20
I was exhausted, and my butt ached. Maybe I’d have fallen asleep if I’d gone right home, but then I would have missed volleyball, which might not have been a bad thing considering that Caitlin, our best center setter, was down with the flu, and all the women were trying to make up for her absence, crashing into each other as well as the floor. I took a flying elbow in the ribs that knocked me breathless. After winning three out of five from a team we should have beaten three straight, I did my twenty laps, and finished up with an adrenaline overload. Ah well, I read somewhere that it’s easier to adjust to a new shift if you stay awake extra hours instead of forcing yourself to sleep when you’re not tired.
I jaywalked to Dunkin’ Donuts out of force of habit. My stomach wasn’t sure if it wanted dinner or breakfast. I ordered a lone cinnamon cruller and black coffee. If I stayed at Dunkin’ Donuts, I didn’t have to go home. If I didn’t go home, I didn’t have to check my answering machine. If I didn’t check my answering machine, I wouldn’t have to respond to any messages left by Sam Gianelli. If I didn’t talk to Sam, I wouldn’t have to figure out a discreet way to question him about John Flaherty, the man with no employment history.
I could hear myself casually tossing probes about Flaherty into our pillow talk. “So, Sam, I been meaning to ask, you hire anybody at the cab company, say, in the past year and a half?”
I burned my tongue on the coffee, and set the cup down so fast that it teetered in the saucer and almost spilled all over the counter. Why do simple things always get so mixed up? I’d seen the man, and liked what I saw. I was ready for a little uncomplicated coupling. I should have known better. Sex without strings attached is a rare commodity.
I called Missing Persons at Area D, and harassed some poor sergeant. Nothing on Eugene Devens. I called my client, in the hope that the wayward brother had suddenly seen the light and come to visit his ailing sister. No such luck.
I’d parked the Toyota in its usual Bishop Richard Allen Drive slot, and since I was close to the project, I kind of gravitated to Paolina’s school, ugly yellow brick with bars on the windows, just like a prison.
The kids were outdoors, although it seemed early for recess, divided boys and girls, just the way we used to be back in my Detroit elementary school, not by decree, but by custom. A red-faced male teacher with a silver whistle on a chain around his neck supervised an intense game of late-season baseball among the boys. The girls played halfhearted unsupervised volleyball, which made me angry. I mean, why teach girls to play, right? They’re never going to make millions in the big leagues, right? As if all the tubby little boys on the field were hot prospects. I wanted to join the girls’ game. Take it over.
I yawned and stretched, and told myself to stop being so bad-tempered. It was easy to shift moods. All you had to do was watch the kids. They wore bright colors, and they moved fast. Spots of yellow and blue and red flowed over the playground. I felt like I was staring through a huge kaleidoscope at a swirl of color come to life.
I tried to sort through the color spots to see if I could find Paolina. The kids seemed about the right age.
One white and brown blob stood out. I swear the hairs on the back of my neck stiffened.
He was behind the high fence, half hidden by a brick wall, but I picked him out. I knew him. Old Wispy Beard with his satchel, selling dope by the schoolyard.
I had the car door open before I realized I’d moved, and I had to force myself to stick my legs back inside and cool off. What was I going to do anyway? Assault the guy in front of fifty young witnesses?
I wanted to. God, I wanted to.
Instead I breathed deeply for a count of ten. I took my Canon SLR out of the locked dash compartment, and took several long-lens shots. I breathed for another count of ten.
I located my little sister on the volleyball court. I was glad to see her involved in the game. She was holding back, you could see that, letting a taller girl on her right smash most of the shots. But she was playing.
No doubt about it, I was going to have to teach her a few finer points of volleyball.
I waved, even though she didn’t see me. I drove off.
I didn’t go far. Just over to the police station.
Chapter 21
The lone parking space at the curb, smack in front of a POLICE BUSINESS ONLY sign, was a tight one. I wedged the Toyota in, rubbing bumpers with two cruisers, and trotted up the front steps.
I’d been dealing with a Cambridge detective named Schultz—a guy I knew from my police academy days—on the Wispy Beard business. While I waited for him to answer the desk sergeant’s call, I wondered if he’d be clued into IRA activities in his fair city. I’ve never heard of an Irishman named Schultz, so I figured he wouldn’t be likely to lie if I asked him outright. On the other hand, you can’t always tell by the name. I mean, with a tag like Carlotta, wouldn’t you expect a trace of Spanish blood on my family tree? Not a drop. Dad named me for some starlet who was eclipsed the day after her movie debut.
Even if Schultz turned out to be a whiz on Cambridge crime, that didn’t mean he’d know squat about Boston. Cambridge and Boston don’t cooperate. As a Boston cabbie, I couldn’t even pick up a hailer in Cambridge, which makes cabs in both cities more expensive, and folks on the street corners angry.
Schultz didn’t rush across the linoleum once he saw me. I figured that meant he hadn’t done a thing.
Detective First Class Jay Schultz looked like he combed his hair about every fifteen minutes, and carried a mirror for spot checks. Maybe he used the mirror to see who was gaining on him. He was a test taker, a promotion chaser, a potential captain on the make. Good-looking, if you like the boyish sandy-haired type, which I don’t. He gave the impression of a certain coolness, a cultivated so-what. I didn’t take a so-what attitude about Wispy Beard. In regard to that situation, I was definitely uncool.
“So,” I said, as he guided me to his desk, resting one hand heavily on my shoulder in that proprietary manner I despise, “you know where that bastard I asked you to nail is? Right this very minute?”
“I know he ain’t in my jail.” Hearty laugh.
“Funny.”
“Hey, hey,” he said, pointing to a battered chair in his dingy corner. “Cool off. Not for lack of trying.”
“Really?” I tried hard to keep the disbelief off my face. Well, not too hard.
“Hey, Carlotta, we busted the creep. Nothing on him.”
“Jay, that guy hasn’t had nothing on him since the nurse first diapered his ass.”
“We thought he had something but he didn’t.”
“Not in the satchel?”
“No satchel.”
“Probably dumped it when he noticed you tailing him.”
“Not me personally.”
“Of course not, an important guy like you. Jeez, I wouldn’t expect anything like that.”
“Look, we blew the collar. But we got some interesting stuff.”
“Like?”
“Name, date, serial number. Rap sheet, if you’re interested, and the creep is into something heavy.”
I waited. When they teach cops to interrogate suspects, rule one is never interrupt.
“You know who that bastard called after we charged him? I mean, we charged him with some bullshit vagrancy rap, because we didn’t have the evidence. Probably should have kicked him loose, but we wanted to see what shook when we rattled his chain. So you know who he called?”
I shrugged my ignorance.
“Wendell Heyer.”
Now that was a name to give one pause. Wendell Heyer, a man who did more than his bit to make “lawyer” a four-letter word, emerging from under this particular rock. Word was that when Wendell surfaced, the mob was not far below. Let me tell you, it gave me pause.
“Now, look that over for yourself,” Jay continued. “You think this freak of yours is an independent, and just happens to have the bucks to retain Wendell, that’s your business. But I think we jus
t found the tail end of some big mother, and I’m gonna take some time before I yank it again.”
“But you’ll let me see the file on this guy. I’m getting tired of calling him by a nickname.”
Wispy Beard had his own nickname: Bud. The poor sucker had been named Horace by his adoring mom about thirty-six years back. Horace “Bud” Harold. I could practically hear the schoolyard jeers: “Whore-Ass, Whore-Ass.” Destined for a life of crime. Ever notice how all those mean-looking football players are named Lynn and Marion and stuff like that? That’s how the best of the weirdly christened turn out. The rest wind up behind bars.
Bud’s rap sheet was not quick reading; it was too long for that, but so far it was light. Started boosting cars at eighteen. Either he was pretty good not to get caught until then, or, more likely, he had a sealed juvie record. Nabbed in his nineteenth year for armed robbery. Suspended sentence. Tried it again, seeing as how he got off so easy, and sent a victim to the hospital this time with a chunk of his ear blown away. Four-year sentence at Concord, of which he served a big six months. Just long enough to learn more sophisticated ways to boost. Long enough to hook up with the sort of companions every mom hopes her kid will cultivate.
No drug-related arrests.
Not yet.
“What’s the plan?” I asked when I finished reading.
“Wait,” he said.
“What do you mean, wait? He’s over at the schoolyard now.”
“What I said.”
“You got an order for a wire? An undercover? What?”
“Look, next week I can put somebody on it. Maybe two weeks. We haven’t got enough detectives to cover this right now.”
“So I just keep watching the guy.”
“Don’t spook him.”
“Me? You rousted him.”
“It’s different now.”
“Is he dealing crack?”
“Do you know or are you asking?”
“I’m asking.”
“I can’t say.”
“You can’t say?”
“Right.”
“So tell me,” I said to Jay after silently digesting the whole mess, “on a different subject altogether, you got much IRA action going down over here?”
I guess I was just pulling his chain, the way he’d yanked old Horace’s. He looked at me as if I’d sprouted horns, and repeated the initials.
“IRA?”
“Yeah? Irish, et cetera, et cetera.”
“You kidding? That bunch is out. No more support. No more wicked Noraid collecting money for guns. The government forced Noraid to register as an agent of the IRA, and that was the end of it. It’s all respectable these days. The Irish Fund, thank you very much, faith and begorra. Ritzy dinner dances at the Parker House, thousand-dollar-a-plate banquets with Tip O’Neill as emcee. They even made a TV commercial. All the money to the church and charity, and not one penny for the IRA.”
“You sure about that?”
“Why?”
Ah, cops. Always a question. “Well, see, on the way over, I met this leprechaun, and he came up to me, and—” I saw the look Jay was giving me, and decided not to ride him. Sometimes cops have bad days. Most of the time, cops have bad days.
“So long, Carlotta.”
“Thanks, Jay.”
Chapter 22
It’s a good thing my Toyota knows the way home. As soon as I got near the car all my volleyball adrenaline and most of my righteous anger leaked out, leaving me deflated and sleepy and kind of ornery. A double-parked patrol car blocked my exit, so I had to clump back up the stairs, and trade insults with the desk sergeant until some jerk grudgingly moved it. I spit on the fender. I’m not proud of it. I just did it.
Roz was in the kitchen, yakking on the phone in her usual position, cross-legged on the countertop. She is a motor-mouth phone gabber, and it’s a miracle anybody ever gets through on my line. Paints, brushes, palette knives, and bottles of oily gook were spread over the kitchen table, and as far as I could tell, she was composing a still life of steel wool pads and a Windex bottle. I always know the cleaning aids I purchase will come in handy.
“Carlotta, great, I’ve got messages,” she said, dropping the phone to one shoulder. “Tequila, how about I call you back? At the Rat? Tonight? Gross. Jeez. Okay. Later.” She hung up on Tequila. I wondered if Tequila was a boy or a girl. I knew it wasn’t a rat. The Rat is this punk hangout in Kenmore Square. If Mooney got a call to go to the Rat, he’d bring rubber gloves, a chair, and a whip.
I stared blankly at the refrigerator, wondering if anything inside would make me feel human. The clock said three, and the sun was blazing through the window over the sink, so that made it three in the afternoon. Monday afternoon. I felt like it was 3 A.M. on some planet where everything was slightly out of focus. I held open the refrigerator door until it started doubling as an air conditioner. A container of cottage cheese looked vaguely appealing, except I couldn’t remember buying cottage cheese, so chances were that if I opened the carton, furry green curds would greet my eyes. I shut the refrigerator door.
“Messages,” Roz was saying. “You okay?”
She was wearing this fifties housedress get-up, with lacey white socks and black pointy-toed ankle-high boots. She’d added a purple streak down the left side of her pink hair. Her earrings looked like Coke bottle caps.
“Me?” I said in a dead voice. “I feel great. Absolutely.”
“It’s the riotous living,” Roz said.
Maybe she had eavesdropped on me and Sam. The idea perked me up.
“Carlotta?”
“Yeah?”
“This guy keeps calling. Sam Gianelli.”
My face got warm, all of a sudden. I hoped I wasn’t blushing. “Yeah?”
“He’s phoned like five times. Awesome voice.”
“Yeah.”
“I told him I didn’t know when you’d be back.”
He might call Gloria to check when I got off. That would be great. Gloria would razz me for the next hundred years. I stared ruefully at the telephone, picked up the receiver, and slowly replaced it in the cradle. I didn’t want to call Sam. I didn’t want to see Sam. I didn’t want to ask him about Jack Flaherty. Sam’s no dummy. He’d know I was investigating at G&W. He’d realize I didn’t trust him. And that would be the end. Better leave it for a few days. Then I could say I’d met the guy, and wondered if Sam had ever run into him. Something like that.
I opened the refrigerator again. I had a faint memory of a salami in the meat tray. Three anonymous tinfoil bundles later, I located it. I keep leftovers until they get fuzzy. That way I don’t feel guilty about throwing out good food.
“And Mooney’s been calling,” Roz said. “The cop. Just one message, repeated over and over and over. Call Mooney. Call Mooney. Call Mooney. Capitalized. Underlined. Totally emphatic, with sugar on top.”
I shrugged. It took all my concentration to slice three rounds of salami without severing a thumb.
“He got the hots for you, or what?” she asked.
“Didn’t he say?”
“He said urgent. Something else, too.”
She’s like that. Saves up the good parts. Eats her pie starting at the crust end.
“Contest,” she said, nodding her head gravely. The bobbing purple streak ruined the solemn effect. “Contest. Urgent, about some contest.”
I scooped up the phone so fast I almost dropped the knife on my foot.
And, of course, Mooney was nowhere to be found. I left a message.
Urgent.
“Jeez, that was some mess over in J.P.,” Roz said. “Wow. There was this pile of glop in the middle of the kitchen floor you wouldn’t believe. Flour and honey and cherry pie filling and oatmeal. Totally gross. Wanna see the pictures?”
“While I’m eating?”
“Lemon wanted to, like, blow the place up or something. He didn’t think we could ever get it clean.”
“Did you?”
“We had to use boilin
g water, and the ice scraper from the pickup. I’m going back over today to put another coat of wax on the floor.”
I excused myself, and dove into the bathroom. T.C.’s cat box looked untouched by other than feline paws. Leave the money there, Margaret had said. I don’t want it. I wondered how long I could live with IRA cash in the bathroom. It generated a bit of tension, like juggling eggs.
Roz was staring critically at the Windex bottle when I got back, edging it a shade to the right of the S.O.S.
“You didn’t see my old school friend, did you?” I asked. “Uh, Roger Smith or something?”
She cast sheepish eyes at the floor. “Nope, he hasn’t been by.” She frowned and returned the Windex bottle to its original position. “Unless—”
“Unless?”
She bit down on her tongue, then realized it impeded her speech. “Well, you got one more call, from a weirdo who sounded kind of like Roger Smith. But he said his name was Andrews. From Cedar Wash Condominium Resorts. You’re not buying some gross condo, are you?”
“Relax. I’ll still be here to collect the rent.”
“You like the Windex picture? You think I should put in some fruit? Garlic?” She likes to paint bulbs of garlic. Those I can always find later.
“Lot of potential.” That’s what I say when I’m baffled by one of Roz’s masterpieces. I’m scared she’ll explain the deeper meanings.
I ate two slices of salami, called it a balanced meal, and went upstairs.
I didn’t call Mooney again. I didn’t call Sam. I didn’t get back to Andrews at Cedar Wash. I slept six and a half hours, like a rock.
Chapter 23
I didn’t like John Flaherty.
It took me two days to cross the guy’s path, although we supposedly worked the same shift. The bastard’s hours were so irregular Gloria should have given him the boot, except, of course, he’d been personally recommended by her partner—my lover—good old Sam Gianelli.
I finally asked Sam about him, worked it in real casually while we were up in my room, sated and lying back on the bed. Bonnie Raitt crooned “Angel From Montgomery” in the background: