The Dorchester Five

by Peter Manus

“Agreed,” Harry concedes. “Plus, I do get that you’re about to call around to every Falmouth boatyard until we’re satisfied that the Jane Guy is chewing its cud at its mooring.”

  “If we’re supposed to keep a protective eye on Van Ness, we do want to know where he is,” I say practically.

  “Uh-huh,” Harry says. He’s not buying that I’m giving him everything.

  “Before I start that, take a listen.” I peruse the online encyclopedia app that’s replaced my long-term memory. “It’s exactly like I remember it from SparkNotes. This Arthur Gordon Pym is the most surreal, hallucinatory downer of a sea voyage book ever written. Every ship in the thing, including the Jane Guy, meets with disaster. The narrator, turns out, might already be dead while he’s telling the story, so, like, yikes to that. But here’s what I was looking for: at one point a captain abandons his son onboard a ship during a mutiny—there’s some suggestion the old man thought the son was in on it, though the kid was not—and the son ends up starving at sea. Oh, yeah, that’s the key to Brewster’s naming his boat. Very telling.”

  Harry shrugs. “I bet there’s some messy family junk in The Fog that we could claim was behind your brother’s choice to name his boat Lizzie Dane.”

  “No, that was about Adrienne Barbeau’s ass,” I say. “Nikos doesn’t do family junk. When I came out, my parents were all freaked about whose ‘fault’ it was and offering to pay for therapy, in case I needed to figure out whether I was really gay. Nicky gave me a list of women from high school he thought I should try to bed.”

  Harry chuckles. “His hottie list?”

  “No, that’s just it. These really were the chicks he figured were gay.”

  “Was he right?”

  “Not the point.” I start looking up numbers for boatyards in Falmouth, then relent a little. “He was right. In one case, anyway.”

  “A man with girl-on-girl gaydar. Very handy,” Harry says idly. Then he meanders back to subject. “So, uh, you didn’t have some other reason to jump all over the boat issue?”

  I glance at him. “Like I said, I just thought it might prove useful,” I say opaquely.

  He looks at me for a long beat while the highway lights paint his face yellow. I’m busy listening to my phone when I hear him say, half to himself, “It will.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Marina Papanikitas’s Personal Journal

  About last night—nothing like a midnight beach walk to clear the head. I know you were exhausted and the last thing you were up for was a windy stomp over frozen mountains of pebbly sand, listening to me grumble at the stars. So, Zoey, you think it’s just me, or are all female cops closet wusses who spend their lives failing to prove the opposite? And why try? The world is kind to wussy women. I myself am extremely considerate toward the gentler members of our sex—and toward the wimps from that other sex, too, for that matter. I like gentle! Sure beats the alternative. So why can’t I tolerate it in myself?

  Case in point: Bruno Myeroff—’scuse me, that’s “Brewster Van Ness” now that the old man’s dead and can’t disown him. Not that I got anything against a man bucking patriarchy by owning his mother’s name, but something tells me that Brewster made the swap because he prefers the timbre of his maternal great-granddaddy’s label to the mercantile clank of his birth name. First clue? Man wears an ascot, and it’s Hermes. His only excuse—I am giving the dude every benefit here—is that having the neck tattoo removed, the one I recall seeing in the video of his rock and roll days, probably left a scar that the ascot covers. I’d have opted for the scar, but that’s me.

  H.P. and I arrive at the Van Ness antique shop well before opening time—silly us, thinking a Cambridge shop might pop the lock at ten, but apparently it’s shades up at half past for the Brattle Street crowd. Being the way we are, we rap and rattle on the pretty iron bars until we get a special entry from some little monkey with fancy moustaches and a comb-over who apparently thinks you get to respond to a couple of badges through the window by mincing up your face and pointing at the little dangling clock that says “Open at 10:30.” Harry’s natural way with words clears up that little misapprehension, and soon we’re standing in the dark while our host flips light switches and rattles off his coffee order to the monkey, who scurries out the back way. So at last we meet the fifth of the Five.

  The Van Ness place is a typical high-end antique shop, maybe a little less cluttered than some, so I’m not coping with that break-it-and-buy-it paranoia you sometimes get. Brewster’s clearly put two and two together after having heard from Yolie, so our news isn’t surprising. He’s wise enough to act like he’s taking us seriously, although he’s got this sort of “we’re all men of the world” bluster that I can tell H.P.’s not enjoying. Me neither.

  “Eight years ago you were pretty young, Mr. Van Ness,” Harry explains. “Going through your twenties brings a lot of change, it’s true. I can also see why you’d want to get as far as possible from your Dorchester days.” Here, Harry indicates the guy’s fairly convincing metamorphosis from shit rebel punk to pukka sahib. “But let’s not overestimate the amount of water that’s gone under the bridge. From Jake Culligan’s perspective, life hasn’t moved along too swiftly since he got tipped in that car. For Terence D’Amante, it’s been on hold while he’s served out a term in Walpole. Something that happened eight years ago can be a pretty fresh memory when the good times haven’t rolled.”

  “Agreed,” Brewster says airily, taking a cigarette from an inner jacket pocket and tapping it hard a few times against his case. “And I suppose the list of possibilities for who could have killed three out of five of us is fairly endless.”

  “How do you figure?” I cut in. My turn to be dumb cop—again.

  He lights up, then trains an eye my way for the first time, through the smoke. Dislikes me. I can’t really gripe, though—I started it. “I would think it’s obvious,” he says. “It could be someone as close to the case as Culligan’s brother. Other hand, it could be some psycho who saw C. W. Morley at a podium somewhere and came up with an elaborate ruse to obscure his simple motive for killing a black politician on the rise.”

  “Huh,” I say. “Sounds like what Morley’s wife was talking about, don’t it, Harry?”

  “Well, there you have it, then,” says Brewster. “Every political spouse’s fear.”

  Harry shoots me a look to not play it as dumb as all that, but I’m on a roll. “So, Mr. Van Ness,” I say, “you mentioned Culligan’s brother. Dylan, I believe is the guy’s name. Why would someone like that wait until now to start taking on his brother’s revenge? Any ideas?”

  Brewster sits himself on the edge of his desk and neglects to bother meeting my eye. I’m playing it too dumb, and he’s onto me. “Endless number of reasons, all of which you’ve undoubtedly identified,” he says patiently.

  “Humor me,” I drop the naive intonation.

  He smokes, apparently considering whether it’s worth blowing me off, and then decides it isn’t—shrill dyke who imagines she rates your respect, no telling how she might lash out if you put her in her place too, too openly. He sighs. “Maybe he was waiting for D’Amante to get out. Maybe he had a hard time locating Petrianni or the priest. Maybe he’s a slow boil, or a slow planner, or has been in prison himself. Maybe it just took him this long to get bored with the other sordid pastimes that occupy his time.”

  “Like what?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Like what sordid pastimes?” I push.

  He levels me a look. “I could not know less about the activities of Jake Culligan’s lowlife brother. I’m actually somewhat surprised to discover that I’m aware he exists.”

  “But you are aware,” I say. “And you’re aware he’s a lowlife.”

  “Meaning?” he says.

  “Just seems like you’ve been keeping tabs on the Culligans. Have you, Mr. Van Ness?”

  “I have a lawyer for that. The one who doles out the support my family provided.”

  “
Elliot Becker. Ouch—another unlucky fellow. Who takes over managing the Culligan family trust now, by the way?”

  He flutters an eye in my direction. “I’m afraid I do not know, detective. Forgot to even consider it.”

  “It’s a lot of money, even for a Van Ness,” I say skeptically.

  He laughs silently, then speaks as if to himself. “I’m being interrogated.”

  “No, but that’s an idea that’s crossed our minds,” Harry cuts in. “I mean, there’s just you and the one other guy left.”

  He frowns and shakes his head. “Why on earth would one of us want to murder our fellow defendants? We were ‘in it together’ and all that, weren’t we?”

  “Maybe one of you felt you didn’t belong.”

  He blows smoke abruptly. “Oh, well then it’s definitely the priest. Sanctimonious little deviant.” He glances at me. “Sorry.”

  I shrug, not getting why I rate an apology—later I realize it’s the gay thing. “Wasn’t he the one you worked with? I mean, at St. Brigid’s youth center.”

  “Yes, but he was there voluntarily,” he explains, “while I’d been naughty at school.”

  “So when you call him ‘the priest,’ you actually know his name,” Harry clarifies.

  Brewster waves the air. “Simon something-or-other. Anyway, we all called him ‘the priest’ because he was holier than the rest of us.”

  “Well, he was also in seminary school at the time,” Harry points out.

  “That bastion of moral behavior,” Brewster says, snorting a laugh. “All I remember about Simon was that he always seemed to be behind closed doors with one young weepy thing or another. Boy or girl—didn’t seem to discriminate.”

  “Thanks for grossing me out,” I throw him.

  “You asked,” he says. We hear a rap out back—the monkey must be back with his coffees, and it’s his turn to be locked out. “Be a mo. Hope you don’t mind?” Brewster says, stepping through the curtain.

  “Not at all,” Harry says. He motions at me with his forehead and we follow Brewster, just to bug him. To my mild surprise, it turns out the back is actually this mini warehouse space with a corrugated ceiling about three stories above this complex of exposed metal scaffolding, most of it occupied by cardboard boxes, crates, and some larger items of furniture wrapped in huge swatches of plastic. Couple of boxes that sit between us and the back door Brewster is just pushing through are open, their mouths foaming with bubble wrap. Brewster pauses to give some instructions to his little minion, Armand. You think there’s ever been a “Bob” or a “Bill” in the antiques trade? I’m guessing not.

  “Would you look at this beauty?” Harry whistles. Sitting in one of the open boxes is a glossy wood crossbow. “Mother of pearl, this thing must be valuable.”

  “Please be careful with that,” Brewster calls out.

  “Calm yourself,” says Harry. “Won’t say I’m an antiques hound, but I think I’m up on weaponry etiquette enough to keep my hands off other people’s crossbows.”

  “Other people’s is right,” Brewster says, rejoining us. “There’s been some sort of mix-up. I never ordered the thing. And it’s not valuable, incidentally. It’s a reproduction, probably made in the sixties. You can see that the handgrip in the stock isn’t chiseled. The string is twisted; an authentic string for one of these would be braided.”

  “Authentic one of what?” I ask. “I’m vaguely familiar with a crossbow, but this is odd.”

  “Ah, well that’s of some historical interest,” Brewster admits. “This is a copy of a Chinese repeating crossbow, circa 1894. Would have held ten to twelve smallish arrows.”

  “The Uzi of its day,” Harry comments. “But with all due respect to Chinese ingenuity, it don’t look all that deadly.”

  “Poison-tipped arrows,” Brewster says over his shoulder. “Anyway, it makes no sense that it showed up here. Addressed to a Ms. F. Nightingale, and we don’t have anyone with a name even vaguely resembling that. Damned delivery people just don’t think.”

  We follow him out front.

  “So, look, Mr. Van Ness, we won’t take up too much more of your time, but can I ask if you’ve noticed anything suspicious lately—someone watching the shop or following you, maybe a car parked out back or near your home?”

  He shakes his head, frowns, then shakes his head again.

  “You want to go with either one of those?” I prod him.

  “It’s nothing. There was just this woman…” he says.

  I exchange a glance with Harry. “What about her?”

  “This would be days, maybe even a week ago. I was sitting here, I looked up at the window, I saw a woman, and she ducked out of the way. End of tale.”

  “Want to describe her?” Harry says, sounding casual, like we’re just being routine.

  “We’re not worried about a woman,” he says dismissively.

  Harry starts to throw him a line about how women are often used to case a place by men planning crimes. I cut him off. “Why not? Why aren’t we worried about a woman?”

  Brewster looks at me patiently. “I thought it was common knowledge that there are male crimes and female crimes. Don’t mean to be expose my gender bias, but your sex does comes out on top in this area. Now, a female maneuvering a cretin like Elliot Becker off the edge of building I could buy. He was a fool for women, like…” he snaps his finger, searching.

  “Miles Archer,” I give him. “Maltese Falcon. Spade points out that only a woman could have gotten close enough to shoot a lech like Archer at point blank range.”

  Brewster chuckles. “Exactly,” he agrees. “But shooting that felon D’Amante, execution style, right out on the street? And Petrianni was also just a tic up the food chain from a gangster, as I recall. How was he killed? Don’t bother telling me—whatever it was, these are not the murders of a woman. When someone spikes the priest’s tea, I’ll start worrying about some dowdy female I spied peeking in my shop window.”

  “You know, it’s pretty clear there’s no love lost between you and the rest of the Five,” Harry observes. “Occurs to me that when someone remarked before that one of the Five didn’t feel like he belonged with the set, maybe you’d have been a better choice than the priest.”

  “Oh, I belonged with the set,” he says, “but not in the way you mean.”

  “Care to explain?”

  Brewster lays a fist on his desk and leans on it, observing us eye to eye, the supercilious drawl forgotten for the moment. “Look, the police—your colleagues—arrested maybe twenty-five men that day. They made a judgment about whom to charge based on their usual assessment criteria. Fortunately, because my family has resources, a jury of so-called peers was never allowed to ply its collective stupidity in order to carry out further injustice. Now protect me from this vigilante freak if you will, whoever he or she may be, or occupy your waking hours in some other way if you prefer. But don’t condescend to me, threaten me, or preach to me about anything to do with Dorchester. I owed society and the Culligan trash nothing more than any of the other hundred losers on the street that day. And because of what happened to me and did not happen to most of them, today I actually owe far less.”

  I can’t stop myself. “Why you, then? Why were you charged? I mean, look, we’re not here to challenge whatever rationale you’ve constructed for yourself on why you five were singled out back then, but since you bring it up yourself, I’m truly curious as to your reasoning. Because I want to tell you, Mr. Van Ness, I’ve watched the video. The five of you were up against that car, and if there were any mistakes about who was attacking and who was defending, you weren’t one of those mistakes. You went at the window with a brick.”

  “Maybe I was trying to help the kid get out. That’s what the suddenly sainted C. W. Morley kept claiming.”

  “He had the body burns to back him up.”

  “I’d wager the underside of a running car is hot if you press against it while turning it.”

  “Okay, so let’s he
ar it, then. How’d the five of you get picked for charges?”

  “Let’s see,” he muses stagily. “Two niggers, a second gen wop, a drugged-out fag, and a rich punk. I think the crowd that day was a little more average than that, don’t you?”

  “So it was all based in police prejudice? But there are plenty of African-Americans on the force,” Harry points out. “Italians, too.”

  “And gays as well, oh, sure,” he agrees readily, slicing me a look. “But not among those who were positioned to decide who got charged in such a politically dicey case at that particular time.” He pauses. “I’ve checked. It was white Irish, all the way up. And we know how clannish that sort can be.”

  “Eight years ago don’t seem that far back all of a sudden, even for a chap like you who’s moved along so nicely, huh?” Wasn’t Harry’s words—it was more his tone that shut the dialog down right there. Must say, I never saw H.P. display his hostility toward a law-abiding citizen quite as openly as he did toward Brewster Van Ness at that moment. That’s usually my area.

  Getting in the car, I hear him mutter a couple of choice words about the ascot.

  “Aw, give him a break, partner,” I say, just to rag on him. “It’s a fashion statement. Goes with the antiques turf. Or, hell, maybe the guy’s gay and wants to dress the part. Gonna hold that against him now?”

  “That guy ain’t gay.”

  “Think not? All that over-the-top hostility toward ‘the priest’ hints otherwise.”

  Harry gives me a knowing look. “Brewster Van Ness hates women too much to simply coexist with them. He needs to fuck them to feel fulfilled.”

  “Huh,” I say.

  Every once in a while, Zoey, I come in contact with the fact that H.P. thinks more about these social psychology issues than he gives off.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Marina Papanikitas’s Personal Journal

  Seems like old times, standing around amid all that burled cherry. Can’t say I was surprised to find that Roger Coburn would be in the office with a full schedule on a Saturday afternoon. Surprises me a little more that the whole place seems to kind of buzz quietly. So, like cops, lawyers work weekends, just without as much chatter. I catch glimpses of a couple in designer ripped jeans and ponytails. Something tells me that ol’ Roger doesn’t dress down for those weekend hours, and I turn out right. First I think that maybe he’s left his top button undone behind his tie knot, just to be daring, but it turns out he wears his shirts one neck size too large. Harry and I are dying to make it a quickie, as we’ve got a ton going on and no time on our hands. Ol’ Roger is apparently of the same mind. Starts our interview while we’re still treading the corridor carpet.