The meat exchange is nestled in a noisy bunch of hangarlike buildings just off the Southeast Expressway on the southern outskirts of Boston. It was nearly 10:00 by my watch, which meant that the man I wanted to see had been on the job for five hours already. I parked the rental and walked into the biggest of the structures. I was struck by the cool, nearly overpowering atmosphere of fresh but dead animal meat. I turned two interior comers before I saw Al raising his cleaver.
Al Bufone is five-five in height and three-five in width. When he picks up a meat cleaver, it looks like an old-fashioned straight razor in comparison to his hands. He sports three navy tattoos from the South Pacific on his right arm and a few wispy black hairs in a clump at the top of his forehead. He looked up and saw me.
"John, boy, whaddaya say?"
"Not much, Al. Yourself?"
"No complaints." He whacked twice with the cleaver. "Rose and me hit the doggies Monday. Missed the double by a nose, but we did awright otherwise. Hey," he said, hefting a veal leg, "can you use some?"
"No, thanks, Al. Could use some information, though."
Al set down the veal leg and wiped his hand on his apron as he looked around carefully.
"B and E or hijack?" he asked softly.
"Neither," I replied, reflexively looking around too. Some people don't like other people talking to insurance investigators about certain transactions. "I'm looking for a fourteen-year-old boy."
Al laughed. "I heard you went out on your own. Where's the kid from?"
"Meade."
Al laughed harder.
"Oh, yeah, sure John-boy. He's in the fuckin' back room sweepin' scraps. This was the first place his guidance counselor referred him."
"He's a runaway, Al. I thought he might try to cop a ride from here to the Berkshires on one ofthe trucks." I showed him Stephen's photo.
"Nah," said Al. "I've never seen him before."
As I drew the photo back, he said, "Wait a minute."
He looked at it again. "Y'know, there was a kid here, mebbe two weeks ago. But he looked older than fourteen. He also had blondish hair, y'know. But his eyes looked like that kid's eyes. Sorta deep 'n' sad, y'know."
I felt hope rising.
"Did you talk to him?"
"No. I remember Vinnie sayin' somethin' about the kid writin' an article for his school paper on somethin'."
"Where's Vinnie?"
"I haven't seen him today. But I'm pretty sure Sammy DiLeo talked to the kid too. Sammy just got in from Pittsfield a half hour ago."
Pittsfield, the major city in the Berkshires. "Where can I find Sammy?"
Al gestured toward the loading docks. "He should be checkin' on the load he's takin'. Probably Dock Two."
"Thanks, Al." I started walking.
"Oh, John-boy. Mind Sammy now. He's kind of a weaselly bastard."
"Thanks," I repeated, and kept walking.
Dock Two was off by itself, a large overhead garage door that opened to the sunshine. As I approached it, I could see two men arguing in the open mouth of the back of a refrigerated trailer truck. The air grew warmer and the smell of meat less striking as I moved toward the truck.
"Sammy, you goddamn thief, I'm not fuckin' short and you know it. Every case on that invoice is in this fuckin' truck."
"Look, George, either you reduce the fuckin' bottom line on this invoice or I make you unload this fuckin' truck and recount on your fuckin' time."
George was getting redder and redder, shaking his clipboard like a war shield.
"Every time you do this, Sammy. Every fuckin' time."
"Refigure or unload," said Sammy with a smirk. George turned and stomped away. "I'm gettin' Al."
"Al can't change the union contract, George," smiled Sammy as George passed me. Sammy reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys as I approached him.
"Shouldn't you wait for Al?" I said.
Sammy gave me the defender-against-invader look. "Who the fuck are you?"
"John Cuddy," I said. "I'm looking for a young boy."
Sammy sneered. "Whasamatter, wife got lockjaw?"
I decided where I was going to hit him, but not when. "I'm a private detective." I showed him Stephen's picture. "His hair would have been blonder," I said.
As Sammy looked at the picture, a faint flush spread up to his neck, then faded. "Nah, never seen him. I gotta go." He half-turned and fumbled with his keys.
"I'm told you and the boy had a talk two weeks ago."
He turned back and tried to stare me down. "Oh, yeah? Who says?"
"A man you'd best not suggest is a liar."
He blinked. "Fuck you. I gotta go."
I caught his arm and spun him into some stacked crates nearby. His momentum led him to sit down awkwardly and heavily on one of them.
"The boy is missing. You're the last one to see him. How does a morals charge strike you?"
"You haven't got shit. Whaddaya mean morals charge? You caIlin' me a fag?" He flexed for me.
"No, but I'm suggesting the boy might be gay. Where do you suppose that leaves you?"
Sammy thought about that and didn't like his position. "I thought his hair looked a little funny."
"What happened?"
"Look, man, nothin' happened. Just nothin'. He asked me for a lift to the mountains so he could go on some kinda reportin' trip. He had a backpack and everything?
"Where in the mountains?"
"Granville. It's a little town way northwest, maybe four miles off the Pike, Lee exit."
"Where did you drop him off?"
"About a half mile before Granville Center."
"If he was going on a reporting trip, why didn't he ride all the way into town?"
Sammy sneered again. "He didn't fuckin' say."
I leaned over. "Sammy, I think you tried to shake him down."
Sammy swung a left at me as he rose. His left was a little slower than it should have been. I deflected it and him to my left with my left palm and gave him a moderate cupped-hand dig in the back, near his left kidney. He sagged down, doubled over.
"What did you try to charge him for the lift, Sammy?"
"Jesus… I think you ruptured… somethin'!"
"Sammy, answer my question! How much?"
"Twenny bucks. I saw… he had plenty… when he paid… one of the tolls."
"He paid up, did he?"
"Yeah, yeah."
I lifted his chin up gently. "Sammy, I don't believe you. And I don't think the cops will either."
"Awright, awright. He didn't pay. But I didn't make him… He just hopped out and… ran."
"With a pack he outdistanced you? Do you figure your kidney needs a little more massage, Sammy?"
"No, no. He… ah, listen, man-you gotta keep this quiet. Around here, I'd be laughed at. I'd be-"
"Come on, Sammy."
"Okay, okay. He had a piece."
"A piece?"
"A gun, man. A long thing like outta Star Wars. He fuckin' went into his pack for the twenny and come out with the piece. I thought the fuckin' little screwy was gonna shoot me. I backed off, and he took off across a field."
I straightened up. "Thanks, Sammy. You've been a swell guy and a great panelist."
As I walked away I heard the telltale click. I wheeled around as Sammy was coming off the crate with a big clasp knife open for business. His face was still contorted in pain, but a vengeful determination shone through.
The booming voice behind me interrupted our little melodrama. "Sammy, you drop the knife or it's the last piece of anything your fingers'll ever go 'round."
I glanced over my shoulder at Al with his cleaver hanging at his side and a somewhat calmer George next to him.
Sammy didn't close the knife, but he visibly stood down. I walked toward Al and thanked him.
"I told ya he was a weaselly bastard," replied Al as I passed on my way out.
NINETEENTH
– ¦ "I'm not sure how far it is to Granville, but I expect it's going to be
an overnighter. You know how I hated to travel without you. And I can't very well call you, you know."
The carnations weren't there anymore. The kid in the jeans had probably scoffed them as soon as I'd left the last time. I squatted down and arranged Mrs. Feeney's red roses on the spot where the carnations had been.
"The grandmother hasn't played straight with me, Beth. I think I know where the kid is, or at least where he was headed, because one of the ranger stations is only four miles from Granville. But I have to check out a few things first."
A puff of wind came off the harbor and ruffled the roses. I foraged a rock to hold them down.
Off to the left, at another grave, I noticed an elderly man. He wore an old gray suit and held a Homburg in his hand. He was motionless, standing to the side of a headstone and staring at it.
I looked down at Beth. Funny, I almost never looked at the stone. Probably because the stone wasn't her, wasn't where she was for me.
"This boy I'm looking for, Stephen, must be some piece of work. His teachers think he's at least exceptional and a doll in his class thinks he's a genius and is crazy about him. His father seems not to care about him, his grandmother seems not to care about much anything else. He's apparently shy around most kids, but he has perseverance enough to search his father's house for a gun for four years, and then balls enough to take off and use the gun to stand off a shake-down artist twice his size."
Something was wrong there. Like always, Beth sensed it before I did. But I couldn't quite put it into a thought, and she couldn't put it into words.
I needed to get something else off me and squared away, anyway. I took a breath and hunched down again.
"I did a necessary thing this afternoon, Beth. I roughed up a cheating, lying trucker. He was the shake-down artist. But I did a stupid thing before that. I spidered a big, bullying college kid into a short fight and humiliation. It wasn't just my overeager sense of righteousness, Beth. I was showing off. Showing off for somebody I was with. Valerie. Sort of the way I showed off for you. But not quite. For you I showed off for you. For Valerie, I showed off just to see that I could still show off for somebody. Pretty dumb, not to mention a pretty boring description of being dumb. But then, you always put up with dumb, boring me much better than most."
I laughed for her, then got serious again. "Valerie took offense, but I apologized and it's okay now. Except that she's invited me to dinner, and I'm afraid she's getting the wrong impression, that she thinks that I'm-"
I stopped because Beth and I had come to a decision. It certainly seemed the only fair thing.
I stood up. The mini-yachts of the well-to-do who lived on the renovated waterfront were tacking and running in the harbor below. I looked down at the grave. Mrs. Feeney had done a nice job with the roses. As I walked out of the cemetery, the elderly man with the Homburg was still standing over the other grave. Still motionless.
TWENTIETH
– ¦ I stopped at the apartment. My tape had two hangups. I reset the machine and changed my clothes. I figured it would be colder in the Berkshires and I wasn't sure when I would be able to change again. I put on a flannel shirt and a pair of khaki pants. I strapped my Chief's Special to my inside left calf and bloused the pant bottoms into the tops of a pair of L. L. Bean Maine hunting boots. I slung an old army pack (with a jacket, canteen, and candy bars) over my shoulder.
There was some plain white bond paper on my desk. I took a piece and wrote a short note, marked the envelope "Personal," and put a return address under the name "Pembroke." I mailed it on my way back to the car. Then I headed southwest.
The sun was still high, and children were out sunning and playing ball in seemingly every yard and field I passed. There was a constant gentle breeze of the kind that I remembered kept you from getting thirsty. The flannel shirt was making me thirsty. I took the exit that would bring me to Bonham Center first. Since Cal was a six-days-a-week cop, I stopped in at police headquarters and was told Chief Maslyk would be back in an hour. I had a late lunch at an uncrowded pub with a jukebox that played country-and-western. I returned to the station, and still had to cool my heels for twenty minutes until Cal Maslyk could see me.
I told him about my planned trip to the Berkshires. He asked me why I was telling him, and I said because I might need someone to come looking for me. He said he had some vacation time coming in September and that if I weren't back by then, he'd swing by Granville to check on me. I thanked him and left. It was only 4:00 and I couldn't see dropping in on Val that early. I decided to drive over to the Swan Street bridge. Thomas Doucette had already poked a lot of holes for me in Blakey's version of Diane Kinnington's accident, but a law professor of mine always had stressed that we actually should visit the scene of any incident.
I crisscrossed Bonham roads for thirty minutes without hitting Swan Street. I ended back in Bonham Center. Too proud to stop and ask directions, I took a road with a sign that said "Meade Center 3." Just past the center I came upon Swan Street. As I prepared to turn north onto it, a Meade police car drove through the intersection heading south. Officer Dexter was in the passenger's seat. He seemed to recognize me. I waved to him, but he didn't wave back.
I tumed onto Swan Street back toward Bonham and drove a little over a mile before seeing the bridge ahead. I was surprised. I had expected the bridge to be around a corner or curve, but it was clearly visible along the straight road for nearly four-tenths of a mile. Diane Kinnington, or anyone else, would have had no corner or curve to negotiate that night.
When I reached the bridge, I slowed and checked my rear-view mirror. There was no traffic behind me. I slowed to a crawl and went across the bridge as Blakey told Doucette he had done that rainy night. As Doucette had described it, there was a rock maybe twenty feet out whose crest was eight inches clear of the water line. There were replacement railings where Diane's car must have gone through, but the car couldn't have been going very fast to land so close to the bridge. I studied the spot where the Mercedes must have rested. When I reached the other end of the bridge, I stopped and got out. Again I looked to where the Mercedes must have been. Then I checked for traffic, backed across the bridge, and angled my car in the way Doucette had placed Blakey's cruiser. I tried to keep my eyes focused on the rock and the placement of the Mercedes as I sidestepped down the embankment. I stood at the river's edge and stared across to the other bank. If Doucette was accurate regarding the Mercedes's reclining angle against the rock in the water and the compass angle to the far shore, there was no way that Blakey could have seen a license plate or even a hood ornament to know it was the Kinnington car out there.
I heard a car crunch to a stop above me. I turned and looked up as a second car pulled alongside the first. Both were Meade police cruisers. Dexter and a big officer I hadn't seen before got out of the first cruiser. Chief Smollett and another big cop got out of the second cruiser. All came to the upper edge of the embankment and stared down at me. I stared back. Smollett put his fists on his hips and broke the stand-off. He wore a uniform parade hat, but civilian gray shirt and pants. "I thought I told you to get out and stay out of this town."
"Sorry to have to correct you, Chief," I replied as good-naturedly as possible, "but you told me only to get out of your office. You said nothing about town or about staying out, for that matter."
The two big cops turned expectantly to Smollett. Dexter looked down at his shoes. Smollett looked down at me.
"You been bothering our citizens," Smollett continued, not raising his voice. Now everyone was looking down at me again.
"Just which citizen or citizens am I supposed to have bothered?"
Smollett's jaw worked a little before he answered. "Harold Sturdevant for one. He says you were in his house upsetting his daughter."
"I was in his house with his wife's permission talking with her daughter."
"Hal said she was crying."
"She was. Is he prepared to sign a complaint about it?"
"He don't need to
sign a complaint."
"Sure he does," I replied. "If you receive any complaints, I'd be happy to review them with you and the Department of Public Safety when my license comes up for renewal."
The two big cops had been following our exchange with their heads, like sideline spectators watching tennis volleys. Now they had their heads toward Smollett, and Dexter was still examining his shoeshine.
Smollett changed neither his pose nor his expression. Just his voice grew strident. "I don't like wise-ass private detectives," he said.
My neck was actually getting stiff from looking up at them. There was a boulder nearby about knee high. I walked to it, sat down, and leaned back. The rock's surface was still warm from the June sun. "Maybe if we pooled our information on Stephen Kinnington, we could be more civil with each other."
Smollett began to tremble, his uniform hat rocking slightly over his head the way a pot lid does as the water boils beneath it. "Bring
… him… up… here," he said, each word enunciated like a separate sentence.
The two big cops started sidestepping down immediately. Dexter reluctantly started down too. I said, "You know, Chief, there isn't a snowball's chance that Blakey could have identified that Mercedes that night."
Dexter and the big boys stopped dead and looked from me to the chief. Smollett said, "I said bring him up here," this time all in one sentence.
Just as the troops resumed their advance and I searched futilely for another delaying line, a car came barreling down Swan Street from the direction opposite the way I'd come. The troops halted again as Smollett looked over to the car. It stopped on the bridge and two car doors opened and closed.
"Afternoon, Will," said a welcome voice.
"Your car is blocking traffic," growled Smollett in reply.
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