Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  "You don’t see that much, man. Mostly you hear and you smell. Madrén, you think Terdell not nice to be near, you try some of the holes the dinks live in for months. I hit a tunnel had some rotten rice once, thought I was gonna die. Mostly you listen, though. You hear something, you stop everything, moving, sweating, breathing. Usually be some fucken animal, like a snake. Shit, you got so you could hear centipedes and spiders, it was so quiet and they was so big."

  "And if it wasn’t an animal?"

  “Turns out to be a dink, man, you try to take him with the knife first, so maybe you get another one without the other one getting you. Sometimes it’s a cold hole, no dinks, but you hit the jackpot, on weapons, medicals, all that good shit. Man, you think you a king, the king of the fucken tunnel rats. Other times you crawl three fucken miles and don’t find nothing."

  Nino stopped and took a breath. "Ain’t talked about those days in a long fucken time."

  "Some of them are hard to forget."

  He looked over at me, confidingly, hands lying easy and capable on the wheel of the Olds. "You always be what you was then, you know it? You had the cojones, the balls, then, you got ’em now. You chickenshit then, you the same now."

  "What did you want to talk with me about?"

  “Huh?"

  "When you called me. What did you want?"

  "Oh, yeah, right. The Angel, she was a good worker, man. She free-lance a lot, but that’s the way I run my ladies. Nobody got a slave collar on her."

  "You the one introduced her to Marsh?"

  "No. The ladies, they pick up the free-lance dudes on their own. She make me good money, though, and I looking for a little re-im-burse-ment."

  "I didn’t kill her. Or Marsh."

  "Man, I believe it. I check you out. You so straight, the nuns take you back right now, no questions asked."

  "So what’s your angle?"

  "Marsh have some of J.J.’s shit on him when he cooled. I could do some things with that stuff, move it somewhere it don’t wreck no school kids while I make my profit."

  "If I didn’t kill Marsh, I don’t know what happened to the cocaine."

  "Yeah, but you per-sis-tent, man. Word is you a fucken bulldog."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning, I think you gonna find the stuff, but it might take a while, and I can’t follow you ’round every day."

  "So you get me away from Terdell and J.J ., hoping I’ll tell you if I find it before they do."

  "Hey, man, I figure you owe me a favor for pulling you dick out of the fire." He took a card from his pocket and handed it to me. Just his name and a telephone number. "So maybe you pay me back with a little tip when the time come."

  "To make up for you losing Angel."

  "Fucken A."

  "My friend, I’m not about to tip you about any drug stash. I’m just interested in finding out who killed Marsh and the Angel so I can get off the hook."

  "Hey, so maybe I can help you there. You want to talk with some of my other ladies, maybe they can tell you things about the Angel."

  I thought about it. Couldn’t hurt. "When?"

  "As they say in the Hollywood, let’s do lunch."

  "Jesus."

  "Tomorrow. Say late, ’round one-thirty."

  "Okay. Where?"

  "I got a favorite place. La Flor. On Sommer off Appleton."

  "South End?"

  "You got it." Nino looked at me again. "You talk with her girlfriend yet?"

  "Girlfriend?"

  "The Angel, she like to see all the life can offer, man. She have this butch chick, name of Goldberg, Reena Goldberg."

  "How do I find her?"

  "South End. Just a coupla blocks from La Flor. She in the book."

  "Thanks."

  Nino scratched under his chin. "You didn’t know about the girlfriend, you ain’t seen the Angel’s place yet either."

  "That’s right. The cops aren’t exactly sharing notes with me."

  He started to say something else, then stopped and said, “I got a key. To her apartment. You wanna see it?"

  "Yeah."

  "Tomorrow night, maybe. We talk about it at lunch."

  He pulled up two blocks from my building, saying, "Sorry about the service, but if J.J. watching you place again, I don’t want Terdell making me as the one who put him down."

  "Your secret’s safe. And thanks."

  I got out of the car gingerly, then left my door open.

  "You looked pretty professional, sapping Terdell tonight."

  “Man, you small as me, you gotta learn how to stop guys like him. Without killing them, I mean."

  "Mind telling me where you were when I got hit Monday afternoon?"

  He laughed and nailed the gas, using his acceleration to close the door as he moved out.

  * * *

  I walked toward the condominium building slowly, partly because of my aching body and partly because of watching for J.J . and Terdell. Aside from a couple walking hand in hand, I didn’t see anybody.

  When I reached the front stoop, a shadow began to move in the shrubbery. I registered a black face and started before I recognized him.

  "Sergeant," I said.

  Dawkins nodded. "You looking a little ragged, Cuddy."

  I brushed at some of the mud, now caking dry here and there. "Want to come up?"

  "That’s what I’m here for."

  He climbed the outside and inside stairs behind me, waiting patiently as I fumbled with the keys at each door. I motioned him into the living room. "I’m going to change before I sit on my landlord’s furniture. Help yourself to the refrigerator if you want."

  I went into the bedroom and eased out of the clothes I was wearing. I found some loose-fitting sweats and carried them into the bathroom.

  I had a purple bruise swirled with red at each place where Terdell pasted me with the two-by-four. The skin under my chin from his last shot was broken, but closing over already in that regenerating, reassuring way skin has. I killed the light and went into the living room.

  Dawkins was sitting back in a deep, comfortable chair, legs stretched out straight, arms spread-eagled, with a bottle of Molson’s in his right hand. He was wearing a silk dress shirt and silk suit, sleeves pushed up to his elbows.

  I sat on the couch, leaned back, and closed my eyes.

  After about two minutes, Dawkins said, "Murphy said you a cool one."

  "Look, it’s been a long day, and I hurt like hell. What do you want?"

  "Picked up a ripple that J.J. and his man Terdell out to talk with a guy tonight. Looks like you not their idea of good conversation."

  "Word travels fast."

  "Like the wind, babe. Like the wind."

  "Just get to it, okay‘?"

  "Okay. Marsh’s stuff hasn’t hit the street yet."

  "How do you know?"

  "J.J. deals in smallish quantity, but high quality. If shit that good appeared in somebody else’s merchandise, I’d know about it."

  "Couldn’t a big dealer kind of hide it in his volume?"

  "Yeah, and if he stepped on it enough times, nobody’d know the difference. But a major player ain’t likely to deal with whoever did Marsh."

  "Couldn’t a major player have taken out Marsh himself?"

  "Not the way it was done. Just be three holes in the head behind a building somewheres. No need to send him through the window and mess things up with the Angel."

  "You said a major player wouldn’t have dealt with the killer. Why?"

  "Too much risk and no need. The big guys, they have import and distribution networks make Toyota go green with envy. Besides, if it did go down that way, we don’t hear about it, ’less we bust the player with some goods, and the player roll over and give us the hitter to go easy on the drug charge."

  "So where does that leave you?"

  "Pawing the ground. A minor player, he’d have a hard time sitting on the stuff, follow?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Small fry does Marsh and the A
ngel, he must have need of money real bad. Maybe ’cause of a rip-off, maybe partial to the dog races and into a shy’, whatever. Little guy can’t afford to just sit on the stuff. He’d have to move it, or at least put out some feelers to the other small ones, who are sniffing around for the stuff anyway."

  "And nobody’s smelled anything."

  "Right."

  I stopped for a minute, thinking.

  Dawkins said, "Now I bet you wondering why I been so forthcoming here tonight."

  "After our session with Holt, that’s exactly what I was wondering."

  "Holt don’t know about this little visit. And he ain’t gonna."

  "Because you’re not going to tell him and I’m not going to tell him."

  "That’s right. This little visit is my own idea. I understand from Murphy that you just done him a favor."

  "More like a return favor."

  "Don’t matter. He thought he trusted you, now he not so sure."

  "I don’t see Murphy sending me messages through you."

  "He ain’t. Like I said, I’m here on my own."

  Dawkins came forward, setting his now empty bottle down deliberately. "Now you listen up. You ask Murphy to run a guy down. He runs him down with me. Then the guy turns up dead, your gun at the scene. You got a fairy tale for it stinks worse than Terdell’s asshole, and all of a sudden some white cops at our level start slipping the word to some white cops above us that maybe the Murphy and the Dawkins pulling something cute."

  I thought about it. "Especially when Dawkins, the narc who knows everybody, can’t account for why Marsh’s goods haven’t hit the street yet."

  Dawkins barely moved his head up and down. "You think you smart, Cuddy. I hope to God you smart enough to follow this. Murphy got to be a lieutenant by being smart and straight. I made sergeant by just being smart. Him and me draw good salaries, benefits, I even got this next weekend off. We got too much into the department to get shoved into the shit by whatever it is you think you’re doing."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning you got a file on you now, boy. File marked ‘Narcotics.' You fuck up the Murphy and me in this, we may be out of the department, but before I go, I see to it that you found with dealer-weight snow in your absolute possession and control. And then you a long time gone to Walpole."

  "I thought the Corrections Department called it ‘Cedar Junction’ now."

  "A rose by any other name, babe." Dawkins stood and walked to the door. "There’s something real hinky here. If you straight, you just might find Marsh’s stuff yourself. That happens, I’d best be the first man you call."

  He closed the door behind him. I thought about J.J ., Nino, and now Dawkins. If I ever did find Marsh’s stuff, I’d better have a roll of dimes on me for the phone.

  FIFTEEN

  -♦-

  After Dawkins left, I marched ice over the bruised areas, then went to bed. I slept until nearly nine the next morning, the hours washing away some of the pain but replacing it two for one with stiffness. I tried to limber up a little, running or any other real exercise being out of the question. I found Reena Goldberg in the White Pages. Her street in the South End was walking distance from me, but I remembered the block as being nothing but abandoned, burned-out factories and warehouses. I dialed her number. After five rings, a strong female voice said, "Hello?"

  “Reena Goldberg?"

  "Yes?"

  "Ms. Goldberg, I’m investigating the death of Roy Marsh and—"

  "Oh, please! I’ve already told you guys everything I know. Twice."

  Riding the cops’ coattails, I said, "I’ll be over to you in an hour. Unless this afternoon would be easier for you?"

  She exhaled loudly. "All right. An hour. You know the address." She hung up before I could ask her what apartment number, but you can’t have everything. I chose a short-sleeved sports shirt and some running pants with pockets and elastic waist to spare the need for a belt. For ten minutes, I watched out my windows, front and side. My car looked the way I left it, and I couldn’t see anyone I didn’t want to meet. I hobbled down the stairs and out the door.

  After three blocks, the walking began to loosen up my injured parts. I felt nearly good by the time I hit Copley Place, an extravagant hotel-shopping mall complex that helps demarcate established Back Bay from the transitional South End. Just inside the Westin Hotel entrance is a magnificent fountain area, with contrived twin waterfalls that delicately and perpetually drop shimmering walls of wetness into the retaining pool below. As I got on the escalator that splits the waterfalls, I saw a man with torn, rolled-up pants carefully place the last layer of stained outerwear on the edge of the pool. He waded in, scooping up the coins that the tourists had tossed in, presumably while making their own wishes.

  A middle-aged woman in designer clothes was standing in front of me on the escalator. Watching the man and wagging her head, she said, "Can you imagine anyone actually doing that?"

  I said, "Maybe he hasn’t eaten for a while."

  She looked at me as though I’d just accused Ronald Reagan of pedophilia, then turned away and clumped up the steps until she reached the backs of the next highest bunch of people. By the time I reached the top, a security staffer in a golf blazer was calling for backup on a walkie-talkie, and I wasn’t feeling so good anymore.

  Goldberg’s block stood basically as I remembered it, though less of it was actually standing since the last time I was there. Her address was a gray brick building with a veneered steel front door someone had tried peeling back without success. Ignoring an old, jammed buzzer, I pushed a bright nickel one. I waited two minutes, then pushed it again. There was a clanking noise, then the door opened. The woman behind it was perspiring and she said, "Don’t be so impatient. I had to come down from the loft, you know."

  "If I hadn’t called first, how would you have known who it was?"

  "If you hadn’t called first, I wouldn’t have come to the door at all. You want to talk down here or upstairs?"

  "Down here" looked like a bombed-out German aircraft plant. "Let’s try upstairs."

  She secured things behind me, including a bolt like the one the natives used to keep King Kong on his side of the wall. "Come on then."

  We went up a central, industrial-strength spiral staircase for the equivalent of four floors, then through a scalable trapdoor into her loft. The windows, or more accurately, the skylights, angled sixty degrees away from the roof, bathing the huge studio with sunshine. There were a dozen pieces of hewn furniture, in varying stages of completion, scattered around the room. She seemed to specialize in hardwood kitchen and bath cabinets.

  Goldberg walked toward a thickly upholstered but gut-sprung armchair that was obscured by a nearly finished floor cabinet that must have weighed fifty pounds. She bent over and hoisted the cabinet to chest level.

  "Can I give you a hand with that?"

  "I can manage." She moved it off to the side without apparent effort and then flopped into the chair. Pushing forty if not past it, she was wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves unbuttoned and old army camouflage pants. Both were as covered with sawdust as the floor around her. Her hair was short, parted in the center and combed to the sides like an 1890s judge. She said, "Homicide or Narcotics?"

  "Neither. My name’s John Cuddy. I’m the guy the cops thought was the killer."

  Tugging on an earlobe with her left hand, Goldberg slid her hand down the chair’s fanny cushion. She came up with a survivalist knife about a foot long.

  "You have another gun, I’m dead. You don’t, you are."

  I lowered my rump onto the third rung of a ladder beyond threatening range. "Nice trick, but if you think somebody’s going to try to take you, it’s usually better not to be caught sitting down."

  "What do you want?"

  "Somebody set me up for the killing. Mugged me beforehand, took my gun and used it. I want to find out who and why."

  "The cops still think it was you?"

  "Reasonable people seem
to differ on that."

  She laughed, but the knife didn’t waver. "Like I told you on the phone, I already talked to the cops. Both Homicide and a black guy from Narcotics. They didn’t seem to think I knew anything that mattered."

  "Mind answering a few questions for me anyway?"

  She brought the knife down to her lap. "Go ahead," without enthusiasm.

  "I already talked with a man called Nino. His real name is—"

  "I know who he is."

  "He’s arranging for me to talk with some of Teri’s . . ." I stopped.

  "What’s the matter, you can’t say the words? I can. Some of her ‘hooker friends,' you mean."

  "It’s not that. I just realized. All the police and Nino ever told me was her street name. I never heard them use her real name."

  Goldberg bit her lower lip. She looked down at the knife and said, "They never bothered to. Not even the cops when they were talking with me. Always just ‘the Angel,' like she was some kind of car model you referred to like that."

  I waited. She finally looked up and said quietly, "It was Teri, actually. Or Theresa. Theresa Papangelis. That’s where she got the Angel part from."

  "Tomorrow I’ll be seeing some of the other women she knew through Nino. Can you tell me something about her they won’t?"

  "I don’t know. We met at . . . this bar for women. Meeting is easier now than when I was younger. Back in high school my mother was always pointing me toward guys, especially the smart ones. But it’s kind of hard to care about the president of the biology club when you have your eye on the captain of the cheerleaders, you know?"

  "How long ago did you meet her?"

  "About a year. When Teri walked in that night, she was spectacular. Every head in the place turned to watch her. She came right over to me and sat down and said, ‘You have kind eyes.' Just like that. We came home here, and I’d see her maybe every two weeks or so."

  She stopped, so I said, "Did she talk much about her life?"

  "No. Not if you mean ‘the life.' I didn’t even know . . . No, that’s not fair. She didn’t tell me for a month or so, but I guessed it from her clothes and the fact she would come to see me but I couldn’t come to see her. At first, I thought maybe she was married, but then she finally told me, and I wasn’t surprised?