Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  "So now the lawyer believes me?"

  "No."

  "No?"

  "No. The lawyer believed you about halfway through. When you kept telling me what you thought happened without stopping to find out what I already told the police."

  "For the lawyer that makes sense. But I have to know that Nancy believed me from the beginning, from when I just said I didn’t do it."

  She kneeled down next to me on the cushion. She hugged me and I hugged back.

  Kissing me on the ear, she said, "You are the most aggravating man I have ever met," but I think she was smiling when she said it.

  * * *

  I left Nancy’s a few minutes later. I was nearly to my parking space behind the condo when I realized I hadn’t even thought of stopping to see Beth. At Nancy’s, I was only a few blocks away, and it never occurred to me. No big thing, but . . .

  I was still thinking about it when I got out of the car. There was a real stink coming from over by our trash cans. It was nearly dark, and I’d had about enough of garbage for a while. Then I heard the groaning.

  Hurrying toward the cans, I started to gag from the smell when I saw the feet, with shoes and socks still on, wiggle a bit. I bent down, covering my mouth and nose with my hand. A barrel-chested black man was lying on his back, eyes closed in a face like a clay mask formed by a clumsy child. Then he opened his eyes and smiled with both his remaining teeth. He brought a .45 from down the side of his leg up into my chest. Another black, tall and spiffily dressed, came out from the shadows leveling a chromed Colt Python with a six-inch barrel. The second man spoke, his Caribbean accent thick and lilting. "Terdell, they tell us the mon was a true child of God."

  Terdell said, "They right, J.J ."

  THIRTEEN

  -♦-

  The Mercedes sedan rode smoothly over the potholes as Terdell guided us out of the city. I was sitting in the backseat with J .J., his Colt cocked and just out of lunging range.

  Braxley wore a continental-cut, double-breasted suit, with a linen shirt, silk tie, and matching pocket hankie. His short hair converged to form the most pronounced widow’s peak I’d ever seen, a Madison Avenue Dracula. A nasty scar began at the middle of his left cheek and arched elliptically back toward his left ear before trailing off at his jawline.

  Unfortunately, I realized that the stench that made me gag at the trash cans came from Terdell. Even in the roomy car, his body odor was overwhelming.

  I said, "Hey, Terdell, they ever make you file an environmental impact statement?"

  J .J. laughed. Terdell swung his head around, his features bloating into a smile, then turned back to watch the road.

  J .J . said, "Mon, you think it bad now, you best pray Terdell, he don’t fart till we in some fresh air."

  Terdell chuckled, saying, "Which one you want me to hit him with?"I

  I said, “Which one?"

  "Terdell, he name his farts, so I can pick one. His favorite is the Doctor J fart."

  "The what?"

  Terdell said, "The Doctor J fart. On account it hang in the air so long."

  I said to J.J., "How do you stand him?"

  "Terdell and me, we the perfect team, mon. The candy, it just about wipe out my sense of smell, and Terdell, he just can’t help himself, that the way he is."

  We were riding along Columbus Avenue, roughly paralleling the transit system’s Southwest Corridor I subway construction effort. "Where are we going?"

  "Don’t be too anxious to find out."

  Terdell left Columbus and started using streets whose identifying signs were long gone. A couple of the blocks looked like news footage of West Beirut. The traffic around us began to lighten. After another ten minutes, I was pretty sure we were past the city limits. Then Terdell swerved onto a dirt road that had a lot of deep ruts, like heavy trucks make. After two hundred yards of bouncing and yawing, we pulled into a construction area and Terdell brought the Mercedes to a halt about twenty feet from a poorly lit drop-off Terdell got out, drew his weapon, and opened my door. I climbed out my side, J .J. out his.

  J.J. looked around, smiled, and said, "Start walking," gesturing with his Colt in the direction of the slope.

  I moved to the brink, stood sideways, and started down the incline in that hopping, stable way they teach you in basic training. My shoes immediately began to fill with dirt and pebbles. At the bottom of the slope I could see huge concrete pipes, six or eight feet in diameter, some connected with each other at forty-five or ninety-degree angles, some just lying separate, as though a giant’s child had tired of the game. Terdell followed me down while J.J. drew a bead on me from up top. When Terdell could keep his gun steady on me again, J .J. came down. Careful and professional. Bad omens.

  “Over there," said J.J .

  We walked to an area near the apparent entrance to the pipe system. There were some makeshift benches, with broken tools, pieces of lumber, crushed tonic cans, and other debris lying around.

  I glanced back at J.J. The car was out of sight I behind the top of the slope. "I think Terdell forgot the picnic basket."

  J .J. said, "Word on the street say you in good with the Boston police. Wouldn’t do for us to have our talk where they got sway."

  Terdell edged around to my right, still holding his gun.

  I said to J.J., “What was it you wanted to talk about?"

  "Mon, you can’t figure that out, you in for a long evening."

  Terdell kept moving, now just out of my peripheral vision. I heard him bending and scuflling with something on the ground. I pivoted, but Terdell was already swinging a tive-foot section of two-by-four that caught me on the right side, belt high. I went down like the knight in Ivanhoe who’s supposed to lose.

  I inhaled deeply. No pain yet, just numbness on the side. I tested my right leg. It seemed to flex normally.

  J.J. said, "You ready to talk with us now?"

  "Ask your questions."

  "Why you do my mon Marsh?"

  "I didn’t."

  "Terdell."

  I was up a half-count too slow, expecting Terdell to go for the home run stroke again. Instead, he used the wood the right way, jabbing like a riot baton into my solar plexus.

  I fell backward, staring up at the night sky and making oomph noises while I tried to remember how to get the breathing muscles working again.

  J .J . said, "Terdell, he can do this all night."

  "All week," said Terdell.

  "Now, why you ice my mon Marsh?"

  "Set up . . . don’t know who . . ."

  J .J. shook his head. "Before I turn Terdell up another notch, let me explain to you what it is, slick. Marsh, he a piece of shit. He snort like a pig, and fuck like a goat. But he my piece of shit. And he have my stuff on him like two hours before he got the deads. I know, because I give it to him. And that means the dude who did him has my stuff now. And I want it."

  "You want to . . . hear me out . . . or just raise blisters . . . on Babe Ruth here?"

  J.J. uncocked the Colt and scratched his ear with the front sight. "Talk. I like what I hear, might be you get a break."

  I levered up on one elbow, which seemed to open my lungs a little more. "I never met Marsh till Friday morning .... A lawyer I know asked me to bodyguard against him .... "

  Terdell giggled and spit.

  ". . . Marsh killed his little girl’s cat, and I called him on it .... I left him at his house on Friday afternoon, alive and well .... That’s the last I ever saw of him."

  "Street say your gun was in the hotel room."

  "Somebody mugged me that afternoon. Took cash and the gun .... I was never in the hotel room and never even met . . . the girl he was with."

  "I’m supposed to believe that?"

  “If you’re smart."

  "Why?"

  “Because if you’re right, if I did kill Marsh and take the coke, I’d sure as hell . . . have planned it better and cleaner. And I would have had twenty-four hours to come up . . . with a better story t
han this."

  Braxley slapped the barrel of the Colt lovingly in the palm of his off hand. "Mon, you know what that stuff worth, street value out in the ’burbs?"

  "Where the users can get it without risking a drive into . . . the wrong parts of the city?"

  "You got it. Two-fifty easy, maybe three, if Marsh know his customers and step on it different for each."

  "Why is that your problem? . . . You can get another delivery boy up there, can’t you?"

  Braxley fumed. "It is my problem—shit, Terdell, hit this mon another one."

  I wasn’t near ready. I stumbled on the way up, and took a solid thump just at the tricep-shoulder intersection on the right side. It spun me around, with Terdell thrusting to my stomach as I squared up with him again. I dropped to all fours, quelling the shudders I felt starting inside me.

  "Like I was saying, it is my problem because I give Marsh the credit. I ought to kill you now, letting you hear that, damage it would do to my reputation, word gets out. But Marsh, even with all his shit, he been steady for two, three years, which is a long time in this business, and the one time he step out of line, Terdell, he put Marsh in the hospital and Marsh, he learn his lesson. So when Marsh tell me he going through the divorce shit, and ask me for credit, I get the dumbs and let him have the stuff without the buy-money. Now I don’t have the stuff which I have paid for, and I don’t have Marsh’s buy-money. I have suppliers that expect me to take on more stuff next week, and I was counting on Marsh to pull me through." Braxley recocked the Colt and pointed it at me. "Now I’m counting on you."

  "I don’t have the stuff . . . and I don’t know who does."

  "You still got it wrong, mon. I don’t have the stuff and I expect you to get it for me."

  "Somebody ransacked Marsh’s house .... "

  "Stuff wasn’t there. Video case he carry it around in gone, too."

  That didn’t sound right. "What about the camera?"

  "Terdell?"

  I braced myself, but Terdell just talked. "I was looking for the case, but I don’t remember seeing no camera, neither."

  J .J. said, "Detective mon, you blowing smoke. That camera case was with Marsh when I seen him Monday before he got done. He put my stuff in it, like always. I didn’t see no camera with him."

  "What about a suitcase?"

  "Suitcase?"

  "Yeah. Cops said one of the hotel people . . . saw Marsh come in with a suitcase that night."

  "They did, be the first time anybody ever check into the Barry with luggage." J.J . and Terdell laughed.

  Then J .J . said, "Terdell, I’m going up to the car for a toot. Then we going to find out just how much more he know. Give this mon another tap, hold him while I’m gone."

  Braxley holstered his piece while I tried to straighten up and parry. Terdell was already over me, this time using the wood just to push me onto my back. Then he put the end of the two-by-four squarely in the center of my chest and leaned into it. My breastbone bowed with the pressure, and I thought crazily about biology class and how the butterfly must feel when the needle is going in. Then Terdell eased off, suddenly driving the end of the wood to my jaw. I almost lost consciousness, and the stink from his being so close wasn’t helping any.

  I heard Braxley open and close the car door above us. Terdell said, "Honkie, you make it through this here, and somebody ask you what the closest you ever come to dying, you tell ’em about tonight, huh?"

  Lifting my head was the best I could manage, but through the parade-rest space between Terdell’s legs I saw a mirage. Or better, a hallucination. A short, skinny man shot out of the pipe mouth behind Terdell, approaching in silence despite his legs chuming at insect speed. He held a snub-nosed revolver, and rapped the butt just to the rear of Terde1l’s right ear. The big man let out a breath, but no noise, sinking to his knees as he reflexively held onto the wood. The little man sapped him again, and Terdell fell flat forward, breaking his nose on the edge of the two-by-four that preceded him to the ground.

  The little man whispered, "Can you walk?" His Spanish accent was so thick it came out, "Khan jew wok?"

  I said, "With some help."

  He got me up, tugged my arm around his shoulder, as if I had a leg wound, and hustled and dragged me into the concrete pipe. He shifted and adjusted my weight, and we hopped and scraped through the pipe, then took a junction to the right and one to the left, after which I stopped noticing or caring.

  FOURTEEN

  -♦-

  Dios mio, man, you a fucken mess."

  The numbness from Terdell’s stick work was melding into that throbbing pain that says it’s bruised, but not broken. I rolled my head slowly and watched my savior drive. The lights we passed by and under flickered strobe-like over his face, which belonged on an olive-skinned twelve-year-old. He had short, kinky hair and delicate features, smudged here and there with grime and sweat. On his right hand near the knuckles were two homemade tattoos, faded blue crosses with the initials "H.R."

  After we had wound through the maze of pipes, he had led me back out into the night, across a deserted road to his car. He’d helped me into the conservative white Oldsmobile 98, and I was dripping mostly mud and a little blood onto the white leather upholstery.

  “I’m gonna be three days with the Armor-all, you know it?"

  "Sorry. And thanks for getting me out of there."

  "Oh, man, you with turdball Terdell for like an hour, was the only human thing to do."

  "Mind me asking how you came to be in that pipe?"

  "Long story, man. I call you office, but you not around, and I couldn’t leave no number for you ’cause I was covering my territory, and I don’t believe in no phone in the car like some fucken bloods think they exec-u-tives fooling the people watch them go by, you know? So, I stake out you house, wait for you, and I see J .J. and the Godzilla setting something up. I figure, lay chilly, see what happen. When they put the grab on you, I just follow along."

  "I had a message from a Hector Rodriguez."

  "That’s me." He extended his hand. "But you ever got to find me on the street, you ask for Nino, huh?"

  We shook. "You pimped for the dead girl."

  He returned his hand to the wheel, frequently checking side and rearview mirrors. "Oh, harsh word, man. More like a broker. You gotta win the ladies’ respect but let them keep some of it. No rough stuff, no dom-i-na-tion shit from me."

  "You seemed to dominate Terdell pretty well back there."

  "That was different. Coming out the pipes, it was like being back in the Nam." He looked at me, judging something. "You over there?"

  We were winding down some of the same streets Terdell had used on the way in. "For a while."

  "Thought so. You got the look. Who you with?"

  "MPs. Mostly street patrol."

  "Combat?"

  "Some."

  "You there for Tet?"

  "Yeah."

  "Bad shit."

  "It was."

  "I was before that. Iron Triangle with the Hundred Seventy-third Airborne. You a Cubano grunt and come in at five-five and maybe one twenty-five with ammo, they call you Nino and make you a tunnel rat. You ever go in one?"

  "Not till tonight."

  "Oh, walk in the park compared to the dinks underground. They dig miles of tunnels, man, they fucken lived in the tunnels. It was like that movie, you know it? Science fiction thing with the foxy Yvette chick?"

  "The Time Machine?"

  "Yeah, yeah, it was like that. We was the beautiful people, the boo-coo beautiful American soldiers, man. But we was living on top of all these ugly dinks, digging their way to Saigon."

  "Last I heard, they made it."

  "Not while I was there, man." Nino warmed to it.

  "One of the bro’s, he’d hear digging, see? It’d happen like that, you be taking live, next thing you know, it’s like the fucken earth itching itself inside. The bro’ would call me over, we wait it out, then punch through into the tunnel. We short on time
, we just frag it. Took us months to see that didn’t do no good. Fucken tunnels stronger than iron, man, after that gook gunk bake in the fucken sun."

  He seemed to want to talk about it. "What if you had more time?"

  "Oh, if we long on time and heavy on equipment, we blow some smoke into it, see what happens. We long on time, but short on equipment, I go in."

  "With a forty-five?"

  "Shit, no, man. Too much noise, fuck up you ears. I had a thirty-eight, some guys even go down to a twenty-two, but that was too fucken small for me."

  “You wear a flak jacket or what?"

  "Neg-a-tive. Too hot. You take off anything that clinks, leave you in the tee shirt, fatigue pants, and boots. Then you take the thirty-eight, a flashlight, and a stick. You tie the light to the stick with some commo wire or det cord, let you hold it out from you, trick the dink into shooting first where you ain’t. Then you take the knife so you can feel around in front of you, find the booby traps before they find you."

  I said without inflection, "Sounds great."

  “Man, it was . . . it was like going back inside you mama, you know it? You move real slow, hands and knees, ’cause the dinks, they wasn’t building no indoor tracks. The tunnels maybe a yard by a yard and a half, max, unless you got into one of the chambers."

  "Chambers?"

  "Yeah, you wouldn’t believe it, you didn’t see it. Some of the tunnels go down into dormitories, hospitals. I even heard some guys in the Big Red One found some kinda stage thing, like a theater, down one of their holes."

  "How the hell did you keep track of where you were?"

  "You fucken counted, man, counted and mem-o-rized like the teachers in second grade want you to, ’cause you forget how you come in, you ain’t coming out next to your squad. You maybe coming out into some other outfit, who sees this little guy covered with dirt and sweat and shit. They see what looks like a dink coming out of a hole they didn’t see a GI go into, they fucken open up on you, don’t give you no chance to show ’em you speak the English with a nice Cubano edge on it."

  "You actually see many enemy in the tunnels?"