“How did you get my address?”
“Genevieve wrote it down.”
Then Larry Courson merged with the stream of college students, and, once they were gone, he too had vanished.
Chapter Twenty-four
Officially, Mr. and Mrs. Jon Kim lived in a modernist high rise of glass and brick near Mount Auburn Hospital and the bird sanctuary that makes this bend of the Charles River in Cambridge off-limits to development by Harvard, the various neighboring day schools, or the upscale markets peddling wine, organic food, and antiques in the vicinity. The simplicity of the building—vaguely resembling a high school designed during the 1960s, with a lobby with concrete planters of pink-flowering African succulents—could fool you into thinking you could afford a condo here.
I’d persuaded Roberto to tag along. He was doing anything not to hit his textbooks, even sneaking out onto our balcony to babble in the voices of his old characters from our days in improv. Besides, he liked Asians; he’d once had a boyfriend, a weightlifter from Melbourne with a Mohawk and a cute Aussie accent. “Are you sure this Kim lives here? If he’s separated?”
“Yes, and more importantly, his wife lives here. Rudy finally e-mailed us all a list of trustee contacts.”
“And we’re snooping around why?”
“Because Jon Kim is acting strange.”
Roberto absent-mindedly kneaded the subtle pot belly his Tex-Mex cooking had sired. “Is he acting killed-someone strange?”
“Hard to say. Just think of this as a background check.”
“What is our mission, should I choose to accept it?”
“To try to see the all-important Mrs. Kim and get a handle on Jon’s darkest secrets.”
“And if that fails?”
“We’ll talk to whomever we can. We’ll say we’re interested in buying a condo. I saw a unit listed for two-million dollars with Coldwell Banker.”
The lobby was locked, with no guard or concierge in sight. Someone entered the building from the Charles River side, a girl I guessed was an au pair or nanny, but she was too intent on the baby in her carriage to respond to my frenzied waving.
“I guess you’re a bust with Swedish girls.”
“My Norse period is definitely over.”
Then a Verizon repairman exited on our side, but was too engrossed in the drama on his cell phone to stop. So we stood there, too summery dressed to seem respectable in this neighborhood, especially Roberto in his ratty Ogunquit T-shirt and cut-offs.
“How long do you have to sit before you’re loitering?” I asked him. “Legally?”
“In this zip code, about ten minutes.”
Soon, an ark of a limousine, big enough to accommodate a dozen giggling, prom-bound teenagers, eased quietly to the curb, and a thin woman, all rouge and frosted hair, alighted. “Alonzo,” she told her driver, “bring the groceries up once you’ve parked the car. But not before Anastasia has had a stretch.” She wore a miniskirt of sorts, and opaque white hose on her knock-kneed legs. On one wrist was a watch emphasized by an oval of diamonds, and on the other, a cuff of beaten silver. “Are you delivering something?” she asked Roberto—because he looked Hispanic?
“No. We figured you’ve got everything you want.”
“Because, if not, we don’t allow salespeople on the premises.” She clutched her small bag with its clasp in the guise of a rhinestone cat’s head.
“I’m a friend of Jon Kim.”
When she wrinkled her brow, she aged another decade. “Are you Rudy Schmitz?” Before I could answer, she ran on like the Boston Marathon. “Because everyone in this building, everyone, is on Emily’s side. She has done no wrong, she is the wronged party. Jon knows perfectly well not to send his friends here on any little reconnaissance missions. But he wouldn’t stay away, and that’s why Emily took out that restraining order. So he has no business here, and you have no business here. Either.”
She stamped into the lobby in her sling-back high heels. The doors to the elevator opened and she was born skyward to her expensive lair, the raptor flown home with fresh meat.
“Popular, this buddy of yours.”
“Not at all. And that’s relevant information.”
Next, hugging four Whole Foods bags and a corpulent angora cat, Alonzo came lumbering along. A scratch on the back of his right hand was leaching blood. The cat yawned lavishly, parting its pink mouth to bare very white fangs. Then it nipped two vicious times at Alonzo’s thumb.
“She’ll bite me if I put her down, she’ll bite me if I keep holding her. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Mrs. Merrithew, she doesn’t want cat hair on her new organza blouse. Or on her new cat purse. So I get stuck carrying Anastasia. But Anastasia, she’s in a really bad mood because she just came from the vet’s and got a pedicure. That always makes her really mad. Almost as mad as Mrs. Merrithew.” It suddenly dawned on him that we were strangers and he swiftly channeled his employer. “Who do you want to see? Are you delivering something?”
“We’re friends of Jon Kim.”
“Jon Kim—the maricon. I don’t know the Korean word for that.”
“It’s kimchi,” Roberto told him in English, “it means ‘hot stuff.’” Then he and Alonzo conducted an extended exchange in Spanish. Roberto kept nodding, sympathizing, I assumed, about being employed by such a diva. Then Anastasia again punctured Alonzo’s hand.
“Jon Kim moved out,” Alonzo said in English. “Quite a while ago. He came back from a conference in Singapore, and his wife had all the locks changed, so they had a big fight. Right here in the lobby. The superintendent told me all about it. He yelled at her, he threatened her life. He said, ‘I can break your neck like a chicken bone. Any time I choose. I’m a black belt and blah-blah-blah.’ The superintendent threw him out of the building. See that boxwood? Stop it, Anastasia. Where the hedge is all caved in? Little bitch! That’s where he landed when he fell. Jon Kim, the maricon. He was crying like a baby.”
Roberto asked a few more questions in Spanish and Alonzo replied, then said, “I’ve got to get going and show Mrs. Merrithew my hand. She pays me extra when this stupid cat bites me. She’s scared shitless I’ll sue. That extra cash makes this dumb job worthwhile. And she gives me her old clothes, for my wife. Like this cashmere sweater Anastasia scratched, and this negligee Mrs. Merrithew stained with her Bloody Mary. My wife’s very clever, she can fix anything. But Jon Kim’s wife, now she’s really smart. She’s an M.B.A. from Harvard.”
Fluffy cat in bleeding hand, Alonzo watched to be sure we both left the premises. Roberto paraphrased the information he’d gleaned. “Guess where Jon Kim met Rudy Schmitz? According to the super, anyway. In the bird sanctuary across Memorial Drive.”
“A notorious cruising area.”
“He’d been warned by the police. I mean, a guy in a three-piece suit and wingtips isn’t a very convincing birdwatcher. Especially with his pants down in a field of cat-o-nine-tails. And the rumor mill in the condominium says this Kim’s personality had changed. He’d become crazier, more confrontational.”
We were walking toward the trolley stop outside Mount Auburn Hospital, where a group of young people in scrubs were clustering.
“A restraining order. What does it take to get one of those?”
“Threatening someone. Threatening to break your wife’s neck would do the trick. And brawling with your super would help.”
“Genevieve Courson died from a neck injury. As the result of someone using his hands. Of course, the police would know about the restraining order. And all of us were questioned, all of the trustees. The night I found Genevieve, the night of the trustees’ meeting.”
The trolley crept toward us, making that pinging, outer-space sound in the wires overhead.
“But why would Jon kill Genevieve Courson? He wouldn’t have been involved with her while playing in the bulrushes and coming out.”
“But if his marriage was crumbling and he’d dated Genevieve as an alternative to Emily or as a beard…Then realized he
was gay and tried to dump her, but perhaps she wasn’t willing to go easily. Perhaps she had a few requests, a few demands…And if she had a bun in the oven that could give his wife more ammo for their divorce…”
It was becoming evident that Jon Kim was a suspect in something.
Chapter Twenty-five
The woman in the Shawmut College registrar’s office, Trudie, gave me Fletcher Coombs’ new address, a condominium in a former warehouse in South Boston, in the area between the new Moakely Courthouse and Fan Pier. It was a hulking building made of granite the color of a dirty snow pile, snow soaking up exhaust in a shopping center parking lot for weeks. It dominated its own pier in the choppy, cloudy water of Boston Harbor.
In the North End, such structures had been transformed into costly quarters for people and corporations. Through the massive plate glass doors, I could peer past the lobby down a long, dim corridor littered with drop cloths, a ladder, and rolls of what could be carpeting or insulation. Plainly, this place was under construction, and Fletcher was living in one of the first completed units. Fletcher buzzed me in without waiting for me to identify myself, so I assumed the developer must have trained hidden security cameras onto the entrance.
In the lobby, a fake birch kept company with a marble waterfall adhering to one wall; its cascade had been turned off for some time. The basin had collected its share of trash—a coffee cup, some plastic straws, a losing scratch ticket. An elevator, padded in the manner of a lunatic’s cell, transported me silently to the top floor, where, in the distance, Fletcher waved in the light flooding over his threshold. “Mark.”
“What a great place.”
His Superbowl T-shirt was speckled with paint, as were his putty-gray shorts, and the expensive sneakers he’d sported the first time I’d seen him. “What’s up?”
“Your view is spectacular.” Which it was. So much had happened since I’d spoken with him last that I was unsure how much I should divulge. Should I mention Jon Kim and his possible interest in Genevieve, his alleged temper and propensity to violence?
“Larry Courson told me you’ve spoken to him.”
That sure preempted me.
“Twice. At Mingo House and in the Public Garden.”
“He contacted me, I didn’t contact him.”
“Same here. He phoned…So, you’re upset about my film career, so Larry says. At least you’re not like that horny Asian guy. The big software honcho. He kept hitting on me again and again. He even offered to pay me. ‘I’ll pay you in blow,’ he said. ‘A blow for a blow.’ He thought that was hilarious.”
So Jon Kim was capable of propositioning a young male beyond an anonymous cruising site. What about a young female? The condo was sparsely furnished, with just three blue beanbag chairs facing a runt of a television, and a portable bar stocked mostly with tequila. No posters adorned the gesso-white walls, of Renoir ladies or anything else.
“It was just for money, just a business transaction—the movies…Hey, Larry thinks Jon Kim killed Genevieve. I can believe that. These executive types, they’re used to getting their own way. They say, ‘Jump,’ you say, ‘How high?’ ‘My way or the highway,’ that mind-set.”
Fletcher went to the kitchen and got us each a glass of the pomegranate-strawberry beverage.
“Jon Kim knows judo or something. I know because he used it on me, in the men’s room at Flex. I was taking a leak and just as I’m finishing, ready to zip up, he gets me in a headlock and starts kissing me. Which, no offense, I found gross as hell. I mean, Genevieve was right outside the door. Eating raw eel with Rudy Shits and his cronies. That Kim is a strong bastard. I thought he was going to strangle me.”
So he did have a temper, he was sexually aggressive, the Korean Wonder Boy, as Sam Ahearn called him. And this was first-hand testimony, so to speak.
“But who was the father of Genevieve’s baby? Whoever was the father probably didn’t kill her. If he knew she was pregnant.”
“Genevieve didn’t have many morals. I hate to say it, but it’s true.”
“Bryce Rossi believed he was the child’s father.” I was curious to see whether Fletcher would disparage Bryce Rossi’s masculinity, the way so many others so readily had—or whether he saw beyond the fey exterior to discern the fence and heterosexual.
“Bryce lectured at Shawmut. He gave a talk about Biblical archaeology, King Herod’s palaces. How Herod was a great builder. He didn’t just kill all those babies.”
“Bryce had done time. He’d fenced stolen art. He supposedly thought there was a robbery in the works. Targeting Mingo House, maybe stealing the monstrance of King Charles the First…Did you know Genevieve was a Mingo? Through her mother?”
“Well, I knew she thought she was. But she had so many big ideas. She thought she could do anything. Get away with anything. And look what happened. It’s horrible.”
Pounding commenced in the building, several floors below.
“This place is a work in progress,” Fletcher said. “I’m kind of being the handyman. They let me live here on the cheap.”
I needed the bathroom, used it, and glanced into the bedroom—at a sight that transfixed me. In the middle of the floor sat a fantastic contraption, a bit of Jules Verne imagining the Internet. It was a computer, sheathed in a carved walnut cabinet, with red velvet armrests projecting from its sides and a brass tray enclosing the keyboard. Small brass heads, of Athena or Medusa, guarded the velvet-lined mousepad. Some thumbtacks needed hammering into the upholstery and the whole thing reeked of glue.
Scattered throughout the bedroom were pieces from Victorian furniture—legs from chairs, handles from bureaus, finials, a bell, the pineapple posters of a dismembered bed, and architectural items—a pediment of gilded plaster, a frieze of mermaids from some bank or burial vault, and all sorts of doorknobs, of brass and porcelain, of clear and amethyst glass. It was a Victorian body shop, complete with jars of nails, cans of varnish, files, a chisel, hammers. I hadn’t yet heard the term “steampunk” back then, the movement to graft technology with the antique.
Fletcher had come up behind me. “It’s my hobby. I like making things. It relaxes me after studying all day. I think technology is making us all less human. I’m very keen on craftsmanship. So many things made today are just slapped together. I hate that. Someday, I’d like to live in an Arts and Crafts house. Nothing lavish, just something made with care.”
“So this terminal—”
“It’s just a regular Apple. But I’ve customized it. Covered up the plastic, given it some character.”
On the bed, a bland thing minus even a headboard, he had sorted out parts taken from period jewelry—pallid rubies, peridot, some moonstones and jet, and cheap clasps from bracelets and watch fobs.
“Is that gold?”
“No, it’s pinchbeck.”
I had heard the term somewhere. “What’s that?”
“It’s an alloy made from copper and zinc. It was used in cheaper—less expensive—jewelry. I use that stuff for ornamentation. You know, finishing touches.”
His other projects included a microwave oven on wrought-iron legs and a Bose radio in the belly of a gilded griffin. He had yet to fuse any antique tidbits onto his Patriots memorabilia.
“Did Genevieve help you in any of this?”
“She thought it was stupid.”
To his chagrin. “I felt I had to see you. Just to talk. After Larry Courson saw me. I figured you were his friend too.”
“The guy’s been through so much.”
“Did you tell the police about Larry calling you?”
“Of course not.”
“I figured he’d be long gone by the time they got to Mingo House or the Public Garden. It’s so easy to disappear in the city.”
Yes, Fletcher was obsessed with the past—as in thrall to it as Genevieve or Bryce Rossi. Did he want to live its ideals, revive its restrictions? Beyond the whims of attendees at Dickens fairs or the men who reenact the Battle of Gettysburg? Had he kil
led for that ideal? Used a dead girl for his own private tableau vivant?
Walking back through Quincy Market, I heard a gaggle of drinkers at one of the pseudo-colonial bars excitedly mention the “Victorian Girl.” Wasn’t it “amazing” that the case should break open so suddenly? So I elbowed through the crowd, past the wooden dummy of John Hancock hoisting a stein of beer and the resin lobster in a powdered wig, to watch Marcia Haight on a widescreen TV, summing up the day’s events. Larry Courson had been arrested in a motel in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in the company of a twelve-year-old Providence girl, Laura Petacci, who had been missing from a camp at Indian Lake since morning. So he was a liar, a pedophile, who used his dead daughter as a ghoulish prop in his act for sympathy. He had no empathy, no compassion, for the young girls whose lives he had defiled for his own pleasure.
“And, to repeat, there’s also been a break in the actual murder of Courson’s own daughter, Genevieve, the so-called Victorian Girl, whose slaying captivated the entire world. A software executive with ties to Mingo House, the historic site and scene of the crime, has been picked up by police and taken in for questioning. His name has not yet been released…”
The only software executive with ties to Mingo House was of course Jon Kim. Had Larry Courson tried to find him, tried to kill him, failed, and, upon capture, voiced his suspicions to the police, prompting Jon Kim to be interrogated? Wouldn’t Larry’s credibility be zero, considering his actions, especially being caught with an underage girl? But the restraining order would be seen as damning for Jon, as would his fight with the super at the condo.
Fletcher, independently, had pegged Jon Kim as violent. Who knows, maybe Rudy Schmitz had aided the authorities, monitoring his “Jonny” even while bedding him. That could be in character; this Mingo House crowd was so duplicitous…
“Can you believe it? It is the Korean,” Roberto said when I arrived home. “One report says they found a silk cord with Genevieve’s DNA on it at the suspect’s apartment. And guess what? The suspect had thousands of Ativan stashed at his place in the South End. Rudy Schmitz must be mega-mortified. Not to mention newly single.”
A Pinchbeck Bride Page 15