A Slepyng Hound to Wake

by Vincent McCaffrey

  Henry kept walking, and then halted, even before his thought was complete. Next to him was Holyoke Center, a small plaza enclosed on three sides by the architecture of cement and glass. Ten feet from him was the bank machine where he had withdrawn the money for Eddy Perry.

  Henry turned. The cop turned away.

  This was the same man who had been sitting in the car watching Mrs. Murray’s house that day, after Sasha had come to his door worried about a stalker. Mrs. Murray had been right. He was a cop.

  By the time Henry reached home, he had come to more than one conclusion.

  There, in the dark, with the porch light turned off, he found Mrs. Murray sitting by herself, smoking a cigarette.

  “I’ve never seen you smoke.” He said from the gate.

  “I quit for Sam. He hated it. First pack I’ve bought in almost twenty years.”

  “How is it?”

  “Not as good as I remember.”

  She held the pack out to Henry. He took one and sat down beside her.

  He shrugged. “Is anything ever as good as you remember?”

  She said, “Yes. Some things,” and handed him a book of matches and he lit his first cigarette in months.

  “Like what?”

  “Popcorn. Pretzels. Popsicles. Pizza. Sex.”

  He laughed, “I’m glad about that …”

  She exhaled a short laugh with her smoke. Her voice already seemed more husky than he had heard it before.

  She said, “Della told me all about … everything. Are you okay?”

  “I think so.” He smiled, “I guess all I really needed was a cigarette. Now everything is fine.”

  He smiled at her with the cigarette trapped in his lips and the smoke squinting his eyes. Mrs. Murray seemed to study the darkness.

  She said, “What is Barbara going to do?”

  Against the streetlight, Henry imaged shapes through the smoke. “She said she’s going to close. But she won’t. She’ll figure something out.”

  “Good. And George Duggan is off the hook.”

  “I think so. But he’s a little unhappy. He’s lost Nora. She ran everything for him. I think he’s feeling a little lost in the woods himself. I spoke to him this morning about Sharon, and he sounded a bit depressed by it all. He’s up there alone now. But he’ll be coming back to Boston next week to find a new secretary. I suppose Nora will keep operating Tremont Press, but she won’t be able to get Duggan’s manuscripts in shape for publishing anymore. On top of everything else, she was a damned good secretary.”

  Mrs. Murray’s laugh was short.

  “She was too young for that old goat.”

  Henry calculated his answer and tried to remember all the points he had thought of as he drove to Worcester.

  “Maybe, but she seemed to be able do it all. Now he needs to find somebody with a command of English grammar, excellent typing skills, and a broad knowledge of literature. Not an easy thing to find, nowadays.”

  She looked away again toward the street light. “I don’t imagine so.”

  “I told him I would keep my eyes peeled.”

  “Did you? Busy, busy, busy.”

  “He’s a good guy.”

  “So you say.”

  “Della thinks so too.”

  She smiled and inhaled deeply on her cigarette, ignoring his words. The smoke came back as she spoke.

  “So, life will get back to normal.”

  “No … I don’t think so. Not yet.”

  She did not answer quickly.

  “What’s wrong?” Her eyes had wandered up to the night sky.

  “I think I know something more about the murder of Eddy Perry now,” he said.

  She stood and stepped onto the strip of grass by the fence, where a tree shaded her completely from the streetlight. A plume of blue smoke reached upward when she bent her head back and faced the stars.

  “They say Mars is closer right now than it has been in thousands of years. But I can’t see it.” she said.

  He said, “That’s because it’s in your hand.”

  She looked down at the glowing end of her cigarette.

  “So it is.” She did not laugh. “And what is it you found out about Eddy Perry?”

  “I just figured something out .… I’m a little slow, I guess. I’ll tell you about it when I know more. First I have to do something about it.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Albert drank half his beer before taking a breath, as if anxious about getting it down before he spoke.

  “There’s not much you can do. Break it down. Look at the facts … There’s nothing to link the cop to Eddy Perry except that you saw him on duty that night and he probably saw you give Eddy the money…. I like the fact that he called you a junkie when you surprised him in his car. That makes a pretty clear statement of what he thought of you, and probably explains why he was watching your place that day.”

  Henry did not grasp this. Something was missing. “I don’t understand. Why watch my place, if he thought I was the one buying the drugs? You figure he wanted to steal my drugs?”

  Henry had said this very thing on the phone to Boyle as well, and gotten no good answer. Albert swallowed half of what remained in the glass.

  “I figure that’s something you just haven’t figured out yet. It’s a piece missing from the board. A rook maybe. If he’s tracking down pushers and drug users and taking their stuff, he must have his own game plan.”

  Tim moved toward them from the sink behind the bar. “What piece? There’s another piece?”

  Henry said, “There has to be. Otherwise it would all fit together.”

  Tim looked confused. “Are we talking chess here, or is this some kind of puzzle?”

  Albert shook the idea away. “Go ask Alice. She reads that stuff. She knows how mysteries are supposed to work.”

  This idea appealed to Henry. “What are you having for dinner?”

  Tim retreated to the sink again.

  Albert stood, as if in response, nearly pushing Henry off his stool. Henry recovered in time to keep his own beer out of his lap.

  “Excuse me. … She’s out tonight with her buddies. You call her up later and talk to her. In the meantime, I have to take the boys to the mall. They’ve got to get their stuff for school. Alice told me it’s my job this year.”

  Henry remained sitting but leaned back on the bar. “What’s got you so upset?”

  Albert twisted his face into a dramatic frown. “Everybody. You. You keep putting your head in where it doesn’t belong. Alice, because I get to eat egg salad again tonight. Junior, because if I don’t keep an eye on him, he’ll buy all the wrong stuff. And now I have to give up a Sox ticket to go to a testimonial. I hate testimonials.”

  “You’re the main speaker. You have to go.”

  “I’m going to be sick. I’m going to be in front of a hundred people. I’m getting ill right this very minute just thinking about it. I’m getting a violent headache. I’m going to be nauseous. I’ll be bedridden. I can’t write a speech in bed. Myron Evans doesn’t need a testimonial. Myron’s wife is the only person who liked him, anyway. Myron had four sons. Let them give the testimonial. Why didn’t one of his sons take over the business? Myron was eighty-five years old, for Christ sake—”

  “But he’s dead.”

  “Testimonial enough—lucky stiff.”

  “I thought you said he was cremated.”

  “A technicality.”

  “But he started you in the garbage business—”

  “Refuse removal,” Albert corrected him.

  “He started you in the refuse removal business. You owe him! You could have ended up a lawyer like Boyle.”

  “I owe him for a lot of garbage.”

  “Refuse,” Henry reminded him.

  “Refuse! I should have refused when his wife asked me to give the testimonial.”

  Henry shook his head and held up his hands to stop Albert. “Look. All I need is one thing. I need to know what the mis
sing piece is.”

  Albert waved his arm in the air as if dismissing Henry’s problems as minor, as he backed toward the door.

  “Think it over. It’s there. I can’t stand mysteries. Alice says in the books they always leave the piece right out in the open and cover it with details so you won’t notice it. Drives me crazy. Give me a good history book any time.”

  Henry tried for pity. “I’m just looking for a little help, is all …”

  Albert stopped, came back, and handed Henry his Red Sox ticket for the game Friday with Baltimore.

  “Why don’t you take Tim? He won’t mind sitting next to you. He’s smelled worse.”

  Tim looked over from the sink with the mention of his name. Albert knew Tim had season tickets he shared with one of his beer distributors and didn’t need another.

  Henry stayed at the bar for one more round, after Albert left, listening to Tim expound on the failures of the Red Sox as he walked back and forth behind the bar, cleaning up from the lunch crowd and bringing all the world within earshot up to date with the team’s latest attempts to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

  Henry heard little of it, but nodded or grunted when it seemed appropriate. He found himself thinking about missing pieces.

  In the conversation Henry had with Boyle that morning, it was clear that Police Officer Paul Higgins was a real loser. He had been on the force for almost twenty years, and never risen in rank without soon losing it again.

  “He is not a trusted man. Probably just waiting for his chance to retire and get his pension.” Boyle had said.

  Boyle had suggested it might be a sign that Higgins had done something unforgivable, but there was no way to actually know. His sources could not get easy access to Higgins’ complete record. That, in itself, was not common. But then, the Cambridge police force was a smaller and tighter group than the Boston Police, where Boyle’s brothers worked.

  Henry wondered aloud if they could at least gain a partial victory. Boyle had contacted someone at the Internal Revenue Service, but that did not seem enough.

  “My guy says the investigation will start pretty quick. Now we have to wait for a nameless bureaucrat to turn up something that might put Higgins in jail. If Higgins has been spending more than he’s been making, he’ll get nailed. Just like Al Capone.”

  This might satisfy a lawyer, but Henry was not happy about it. How many men did Capone kill and never pay for? And Higgins was still on the street, in uniform.

  Boyle had not called without prompting. His tone had been dismissive and his information short on detail. He had called because he wanted to keep Duggan happy. Henry had spoken with George Duggan again the day before and mentioned there was no word from Boyle. Duggan said he would check with the lawyer and see what was happening.

  Henry walked home slowly in the breezeless heat of late afternoon. Even the rush-hour traffic was reduced by the number of people away on August vacation. Things felt like they were coming to a halt, and he was without a clear idea of what he was going to do next. The puzzle was nearly complete, wasn’t it? There were not that many pieces to choose from, certainly. But one piece was close at hand.

  He found Mrs. Murray in the side yard and spoke to her there. With the house next door still empty, there would be no one else to hear.

  She smiled at him broadly as he approached. “You’ll never guess what’s happened. Unless it’s you behind it. Have you been busy again? I got a call this morning from George Duggan. He wants to hire me! He needs an assistant. It sounds like he needs a secretary, but he calls it an assistant. He needs somebody to go over his manuscripts for lapses of grammar and typos and that kind of thing. The publishers don’t do that like they used to. I think he just needs somebody to talk to, if you want my opinion. But it’s a good job. The kind of thing I can do.”

  Henry congratulated her.

  Green tomatoes nested large among the leaves in clutches, almost as high as her head. The brim of her broad-billed sun hat was bent back so that it was out of the way as she loosened the earth at the edge with a hoe. Henry watched her work a moment before speaking again. He would not have said so aloud, but Mrs. Murray in her hat reminded Henry of his mother in at least that respect. His mother had tried so hard to get things to grow in their backyard. Though never successful, she had always worn a hat just like that. It was an image he had not thought of in a long time.

  Henry presented Mrs. Murray with the only facts he knew. It would be up to her to tell him what he could not have known.

  “Why was Eddy on the stairs that night? Why did he come to see me?” Henry paused, hoping she would say something. She broke another clot of dirt with her hoe. “And why was Higgins watching this house? He couldn’t have the time to watch every person he thinks might be buying drugs. He might have known Eddy had been a dealer, sure, but why watch me?”

  When she finally stood straight and faced him, she winced, as if the sun had suddenly given her a headache.

  “Eddy Perry was an odd little fellow, as you know, but he wasn’t a pusher. It was me. I went to him .… After Sam died, I needed something doctors wouldn’t prescribe, and Sam had told me once that Eddy was an addict. … In any case, I really had no idea how to get any drugs. It had been so long since I had even smoked a little grass. And even then, after college, I had never bought it. Jer always got it somehow. He was my fella then. Jer of the Golden Hair, I used to call him. He’s bald now and teaches political science at Middlebury. … So long ago it seems like another lifetime. Ford was President. Do you remember Ford? Then, it was recreational. Drugs for fun … But after Sam died, I thought I would die too. We had no real friends besides ourselves. We were that close. I had never considered being alive without him. You don’t know about that yet. I understand. But maybe you will …” She pulled her leather gloves off and folded them in her hand before she continued.

  “Eddy refused at first. Later I went back again and drew him a rather nasty picture of trying to buy a small amount of cocaine from a dealer I had found on the street in Boston. It pained him. He was afraid I would get hurt … Eddy actually sold me what I wanted in order to protect me.”

  Henry drew a breath. This was much too complicated.

  “How did you know him—from his bookshop?”

  “Oh, Sam used to buy his reference books from Eddy. Eddy always called Sam when he got something nice … Though I really didn’t get to know him until Sam died, when I called him over to take the books away. Eddy looked the books over for an hour or so, and then he sat down—the room was lined with books then, and it was so dark without Sam in his chair by the lamp—”

  She stopped her story for a moment, wiping at her cheek with the back of her hand.

  “And Eddy said he couldn’t afford to buy them. They were too good, and so many, and he didn’t have the money … Well, I knew Sam liked him, so I just told him to pay me when he could. It was an odd moment. Eddy sat there in Sam’s chair for at least ten minutes without making a sound or a move. It was creepy, really. I didn’t know what to do … but then he just said thanks. And then, after a minute, he said it was funny, but his whole life had been like that. He said it made him wonder about God. Whenever he was down to his last dime, someone came through for him …”

  Henry looked away, his eyes wandering up toward his own kitchen window as if the answer would be written there in the iron of the fire escape against the white clapboard of the house.

  Mrs. Murray studied the broken earth at the end of her hoe.

  Henry said, “So you think Higgins was watching you? Could he have thought the money he took from Eddy was for drugs? He might have known Eddy had been involved with that before. And if Eddy was dealing again, he might be dealing to you? Or me? Or both of us? He saw me give Eddy the money for the book that night. He just didn’t know it was for a book. Especially if Higgins had not found any drugs in Eddy’s apartment after he killed him …”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I let Eddy in that ni
ght because he came by to see how I was. Just to see how I was doing. We talked awhile on the porch. You know he wasn’t a talker, but he was happy about something—I’m not sure what. … Maybe it was the manuscript. I happened to mention I had another book dealer living here, and he seemed to know you. He asked if he could wait, to ask you about something.”

  Henry wondered if any of this was important to anyone else but the two of them. Her past was Sarah Murray’s business. And there was no need to mention it to anyone else, especially George Duggan. George needed help with his manuscripts, and Sarah had agreed to give it a try. If it worked out, that was enough.

  Henry inhaled the thick sun-warmed air, liquid with the smell of the tomato leaves, as if it were better than oxygen.

  Duggan called again that night.

  He seemed to like talking with Henry, like an older brother bearing secrets. Henry was more perplexed than flattered. For all of Duggan’s knowledge and money, he was really just a geek who loved to write. This was something Henry could understand. The man had very few pretensions so long as he was not discussing his work, and Henry avoided the critical assessment of writing as much as he avoided eating eggplant—he had not done either within memory. No, that wasn’t right. He had not played the critic since Morgan Johnson was alive. And then it was Duggan who brought Morgan into the conversation.

  “I have to make a few decisions. Time is passing. I wish I had Morgan to talk with now. She always had the right sense of things.”

  Henry hesitated with his answer, worried over stating the obvious, and then decided it was better said.

  “She’d tell you to forget what everyone else wanted from you and do what you wanted from yourself.”

  It brought a silence before the answer.

  “Yes. She would say exactly that.”

  The latest news was that Duggan had hired Sarah Murray to take over Nora’s job as his secretary. That was the real reason for the call. Henry didn’t mention that he already knew. Duggan was coming down from Maine the next day to Boston to meet with Sarah and Nora at the Tremont Press office. He would be around for the weekend and wondered if Henry could have dinner with him. He wanted to talk about an idea for something he had to write—some kind of introduction to Eddy’s book.