by Peter Manus
I pause before ducking into Harry’s car. “Meaning?”
He slaps his door closed and hits the ignition. “Meaning that we are to share what we know in detail as soon as we can all get together, and we’re not take it upon ourselves to go calling on the two remaining defendants. Makes sense, of course.”
“Making sense sucks,” I say childishly.
Harry shrugs as he eases the car round the garage ramps. “Hey, it’s the system. Got something else to do right now, anyway.”
“That so?”
He nods and gives me his sideways smirk. “We’re dropping in on Jake Culligan.” He rounds the wheel, one-handed, pulling us smoothly into the flow on Atlantic Ave.
“We are, are we?”
“Sure,” Harry says. “Officially, he ain’t part of anyone’s turf. But who better to have a grudge against the gang of five?”
And here, Zoey, you see the difference between me and Harry. I’m the cop who blunders in, all psychic nerve endings and far-flung connections, and winds up on the collecting end of an angry citizen’s fist. Harry’s the classic image of the muscle-head flatfoot, but, end of the day, the man’s got finesse.
FIFTEEN
Marina Papanikitas’s Personal Journal
The Culligan house is clad in faded green siding with white metal shutters and a matching storm door, all streaked with soot. Wheelchair ramp runs round the side and into the driveway, where there’s a white Crown Vic nosed up against its base. Fender dents make it clear that it took the driver some getting used to the fact that the car and the ramp need to share the parking space. Harry noses his own car half onto the sidewalk, following the example of others up and down the street. A container truck roars by, explaining the custom.
I hit the buzzer. After a while, a lady with what looks like a permanent sneer opens up. Later forties, arms crossed, jaw set—probably used to be a looker, but life’s left her decidedly unimpressed, and it shows. Blonde frosted hair with a synthetic sheen to it, coifed in a kind of tiered mound, velour top with a plunging neckline, pink stretch pants, fuzzy mules—the kind with clear plastic heels. No cigarette to talk around but my guess is we caught her between.
“Sorry, sweets,” she says to me, “I’m on a call.” Both Harry and I flash our badges before she can swing the door shut in our faces.
I identify us as her mouth sinks into the surrounding flesh and her eyes go kind of hooded. “So now I gotta talk to detectives too?” she says. She walks away, leaving the door open, presumably an invitation for us to follow. We watch as she shoves her way through a swinging door muttering a couple of choice words that she’s happy for us to overhear. I glance at Harry as we follow her through to her kitchen.
“I’m assuming you’re Mrs. Culligan?” I say. “Jake’s mother?”
“Wow-wee, got it in one. How do you people do that?” She settles at the table, her phone call ruse forgotten. We can hear some tense dialogue from the next room.
“They got soaps on before noon now?” I ask, casting about for how to break the ice.
“It’s SoapNet,” she says, like everyone knows. She holds a mug between her hands, not offering us a seat. Looks like a World’s Best Mom mug. It’s the little ironies, huh, Zoey? She lifts the mug and has herself a sip. I don’t smell coffee, but the rich, fizzy scent of rum hits me as she lights herself a Parliament. Must hit Harry too.
“Little early for the sauce, huh?” he says. H.P. knows who not to make nice with.
She lets her lighter clatter to the table. “Got my reasons.”
“Maybe,” I concede. “How’s it been for you?”
“Not easy,” she says, picking a piece of tobacco off her tongue with a fingernail. She likes me a little better for asking. “But it wasn’t ever gonna be easy, was it? Not with those two. Not after Wayne left us. One day here, next day gone, like that.” She makes a motion vaguely reminiscent of a leaf in the wind.
“Husband been gone how long now?” I ask.
She squints, thinking, then half shrugs. “Jakey was just a little brat at the time. God, he made it hard on me. Not Jakey—I’m talking about Wayne. Jakey wasn’t ever trouble till he started getting ideas from his brother.”
“Where’s Jakey’s brother now, Mrs. Culligan?” I ask, encouraged.
“Pruddie,” she says to me. She shoots Harry a look to signal that he shouldn’t presume that he’s in on the first name invitation. “Dylan’s out in Concord again. Breaking and entering, intent to burgle. Facing a max of five. You want to know what? I don’t care if they toss the key. Kid’s in for one mistake, I’m all full of a mother’s rage.” She taps her chest to signify where these emotions lodge, then takes a moment to adjust her breasts in her bra. “Kid goes in a second term, I’m finished wringing my hands and talking about lessons learned and that nonsense. Guy’s determined to be a felon, so be it.”
“Hard for you, though,” I say.
She shakes her head stubbornly. “Not anymore it isn’t. I’m through with that one.”
Harry decides to get to the point. “Anything going on with Jake, Mrs. Culligan?”
She sighs angrily. “Look, what’s it to you? Like that snot they sent over from the law firm said, that stuff’s between me and them, and there’s not one reason for you or anyone else to be involved. They want to contact me, they can go ahead. I got a phone, don’t I?”
“Sure, we hear you,” I say, no idea what she’s talking about. “Where is Jake, anyway?”
She breathes down. “I put him next to his father, down in Calvary. That’s done and, frankly, it’s all I got the energy for right now. The hell with the rest of it, got me?”
Harry and I exchange a glance. “Look, whatever it takes to cope,” I say.
“Exactly how long’s Jake been gone, now, Mrs. C?” Harry asks.
She looks down into her mug. When she raises her eyes I see the same hooded expression she’d used on me at her front door. “Month or so. I don’t know—it’s all a blur.”
“But you must know,” I say without thinking. “I thought Jake lived here.”
She moves in her seat. Out in the living room, a shrill argument gives way to an ad—some loudmouth trying to fast-talk viewers into phone-ordering the latest piece of junk—and guess what, you get “much, much more” if you dial up in the next five minutes. “Jakey lived here, sure,” she says. “But that don’t mean I go running upstairs all of the time. I got a back thing, a disc. So when the man comes by from the lawyers, I’m as surprised as anyone the kid turns up dead. Guy said it looked like he’d been dead a couple of days. I’d been coping with the arraignment and all the crap Dylan got himself in, and Jakey was always okay. He—” She pauses for a breath. “He was always okay up there."
I go to say something sympathetic, but she cuts me off. “You know they took Dylan straight into custody? No trial, nothing.” She eyes us resentfully. “Thought this was supposed to be a democracy or something.” She lets it die out, heaves a sigh, shrugs. I see her slide a glance toward the sound of the TV, but I have a feeling it’s something else out there she’s after.
Harry sees, too. “Mind if we go upstairs to Jakey’s room? Need to take a look around. Death scene—you know how it is.”
She makes a feint at rising, but sinks back to her seat readily when Harry tells her we’ll find our way. “Suit yourselves,” she says, cupping her hands round her mug.
Upstairs the place is far less of a mess than downstairs, probably attributable to Pruddie’s bad back preventing her from getting up there much. They’d had a stair rider installed, but the piles of junk that block its track make clear that Jakey hadn’t been going downstairs much near the end, either. As another part of the conversion, they’d opened up doorways between the various rooms, removed all doorsills, and covered the floors in a smooth grey linoleum, so that the bathroom connects to a jacuzzi room—clearly a former bedroom—and from there you can cut through to what must have been Jakey’s bedroom, all without a bump or a hitch. Handy
for a wheelchair, a couple of which are lined up, folded, in the hallway. I peek through a door to the outside world, where a switchback ramp ends at the chain link gate to the sidewalk. Nice to know the guy had some access to sunshine. Bedroom’s got a hospital bed, built-ins for various monitoring devises, and a largish flat screen angled from the ceiling. Another former bedroom is set up with a shiny silver weight machine that would allow a guy in a chair to do various upper body exercises. There’s also what looks like a massage machine in here. The last room’s a mini-kitchen with printed medication schedule taped to the refrigerator door. Got red checkmarks penciled down the days. The checkmarks end about three months ago.
I open one of the few hallway doors that remain and find the bare stairs to the attic. I’m drawn to see where they circle round to, and start getting my premmie tingle as I hit the landing. Not happy about this, but I follow my instincts. It’s hot up here, and the ceiling’s at a slant, but, in the way of old row houses, it’s useable space. Ancient bathroom’s got a rust-streaked tub tucked under an eave. The largest amount of space, behind a door, is attic storage. That leaves room for one smallish bedroom with a single bed, rumpled like someone expected to return. There’s a bureau, empty except for the contact paper, and a through-the-wall air conditioner above it. I open the closet and pull the swinging cord to get the bulb, and suddenly I’m confronted by an insanely vivid vishie—I see this wriggling creature all tied up with duct tape. At first I think it’s an animal being tortured, but then I realize it’s a naked man. He struggles to look over his shoulder at me—not really, of course, because I’m not wherever he is—and seems to be keeping his knees folded up in an effort to shield his genitals, but from what I have no idea. There’s blood on his face—it’s not pretty to see his bulging eyes rolling around, surrounded by all that wet, red stuff. He bellows something incoherent through the tape that’s stuffed in his mouth, his cheeks puffing from the effort. He screams again as I shut the door. It fades slowly.
I stand for a long moment, hand on the crystal knob, waiting for my senses to return. When I can hear Harry’s tread on the stairs, I reach in with one arm and pull the light cord without looking again, although I know that the man won’t be there anymore.
Harry finds me. “Seen the family ghost?”
I force a laugh. “If it was Jake Culligan, I’d have asked him his date of death.”
“So you’re thinking what I’m thinking.” Harry keeps his voice low. Not that we’re worried that Pruddie Culligan’s going to light-foot it up there to eavesdrop.
“Loving mother is hoping there’s a way to slip a death through the cracks and keep the care deposits coming?”
“One too many social security scam stories gave her some big ideas,” Harry agrees. “Although you’d think she’d catch the fact that they all end badly. Her luck, actually, someone coming over to check on the situation when the body’s still relatively fresh. Hopefully that will keep her from being exposed in a couple of years as the mother from hell. Question one is why this guy from the law firm—which I assume handles the care arrangement—hasn’t stopped the money tap. Question two: you’d think there’d have been a nurse who’d tie off the benefits once he’s deceased.”
“Maybe there’s a bunch of paperwork that has to happen before the gravy train stops. Might even need a magistrate to sign off on it.” I gesture around. “We’d have to know what type of arrangement it was. The set-up downstairs looks like someone put some real thought and funding into Jakey’s care—that suite was not what I’d call government-funded. And as for nurse, could be they were between. I hear it’s hard to keep them.”
We tramp down, and Harry gestures me back into the room with the hospital bed. “Thought you’d want to see these. I know you’re into—what do we call it?—genre films?”
There’s an old video cover on the meal tray. On the front, a monster about to lock lips with a babe. “Man alive, this is literally one of my fave flicks of all time. No disc, though. I bet it’s in.” I pick up a grimy remote and power up the entertainment unit. Sure enough, the movie starts to play from where it was abandoned. I see a sleek, dark-haired woman dressed in an otherworldly get-up, including a cap with antennae, dancing in a cavernous hall. The orchestra is made up of mechanical men. An old guy in gloves and a mask sweeps in to join the girl for a waltz. His mincing, eerie voice begins to narrate.
Harry snorts. “Vincent Price did some real schlock.”
“Don’t I know it,” I say. “This, however, is what we call a schlock classic. That’s the abominable Dr. Phibes you’re watching, dancing with his lovely accomplice Vulnavia.”
“No message in that name,” Harry remarks.
“You’d like her. All guys do. She’s hot and mute.” I find myself drawn to the wall of videos. “Nine have killed and nine must die,” I murmur, more to myself than to Harry.
“Pop?”
I crouch in front of the shelves, looking at titles. “Dr. Phibes’s pledge to his dead wife. Always loved a countdown slasher. Mostly because my mother thought it inappropriate for a girl. Jesus, this is like my brother Nikos’s entire collection. The Screaming Skull, Peeping Tom, Dead and Buried—that’s with a pre-Freddy Robert Englund—Dark City, Bay of Blood, Dawn of the Dead—can you believe I know every frame of these sick pieces of misogynist propaganda?”
“All because Mom said ‘no?’”
“You’d have thought she would have learned to play me. Down here are the oldies. I Walked With A Zombie—I love a good nurse-versus-jungle-voodoo tale, don’t you?”
“I mean, doesn’t everyone?” Harry says.
“And here we have Carnival of Souls, Vampyre—oh, wow, remastered! Fury, M—early Peter Lorre, can you beat that? These down here are original European horrors from the ’30s. Couple of additional French entries: Un Chien Andalou—God, the eyeball scene alone—and, hey, look, an old favorite, The Bride Wore Black. That’s early Truffaut and a serial kill flick but in my view not a horror—ah, but I see Leave Her to Heaven and Laura, so evidently we’re shading into a classic noir shelf here. I love it. Oh, and lookie here—Rashomon—that Kurosawa with four radically differing viewpoints on a horrific rape-murder. Definitely not schlock. You must know it—no? And, yep, here’s the Vincent Price collection—The Fly, Theatre of Blood—you know that Diana Rigg was in that one? Phew! Kid had some upscale taste in his slasher entertainment, anyway.”
“Pop?” I look over and Harry is watching me funny. “Kid was brain-damaged.”
I stand up, feeling myself color. “Well, he’d have to be to watch some of this crap.”
Harry laughs. “I swear I’ve never seen you quite so—I don’t know—animated.”
“Blast from the past, is all.” I try not to sound defensive. “Look, my mother wanted a girlie-girl. Actually used to urge me to tattle. You believe it?”
“Well, you got her back.”
“Damned straight. Watched every sick blood-fest I could lay my hands on.”
“Oh, you got her back better than that, Pop.”
I give him my dry look. H.P. can be a hole like the best of them.
Mostly to change the subject, I give the remote a random thumb squeeze. A home video flickers into view in place of Vincent Price. We watch a dark-haired kid, young, skinny, shirtless. Doing his silly best lip-synch dance to an oldie.
“Ah, Numa, Numa,” Harry remarks. “The original YouTube anthem.”
“Kid was truly cute,” I remark. “Dimples for days.”
“Looks like a wise guy in the making to me,” Harry says. He reaches over and pops the pause. “Guess Dimples forgot to check what was in the background. That or he’s advertising.” Harry points. If the plastic bag of yellow-brown moss sitting on a desk behind the frozen boy isn’t clear enough, the one-hit bong propping it up is. “How much he got there, you think? That a pound?”
“Half-gallon bag,” I concede. “Think he’s doing his Numa number here in the house?”
“Could be, if i
t’s pre-rehab. Now they got the double-glazed storms.”
I hunt about further, find a couple of additional lip-synch vids the kid made of himself. Either no one bothered to load up a lot of personal pictures or someone scoured them. Can’t figure why—it’s the type of stuff you suddenly cherish when your kid dies.
Pruddie Culligan’s parked at the kitchen table, biting off smoke rings, reading what looks like an old library book through drug store half-specs. She marks her place with her finger and tips the specs off her nose so they fall against her chest as she slides an eye over at Harry.
“You know, you look just like that cop on TV. Anyone ever tell you? No? The good looking fellah they’re always putting in the shower. The hell’s his name again?” She taps a fingernail. “It’ll come to me.”
“Mrs. Culligan, just curious, were there any women in Jake’s life?” I ask.
She looks at Harry like I’m crazy. “You’re not quite getting it, hon. Jakey was burned—half his face was, like, a mess. And he didn’t have hardly any brain function. He’d bang a cup and yell to get attention, you know, like a baby. Sure, before it happened all the neighborhood girls were stickin’ their hands down his pants, but not after.”
“What about a nurse? He must have had one of those?”
She shrugs. “So?”
“What happened to her?”
“You notice anyone in need of nursing while you were up there just now?”
“What home health aide service did you use? We might need to talk to them.”
She pauses. “There wasn’t, like, a service company, per se.”
I’m surprised, mostly at the sudden display of Latin. Somehow I’ve gotten her back up. “You’re kidding.”
“I did a lot of the caregiving myself. What, you think it was such a hard gig?”
“No, except for the fact that your charge was a grown man with severe brain injury and burns over half his body, right?”