So Like Sleep

by Jeremiah Healy

  I drank, changed the subject. “How did you come to be in Dr. Marek’s therapy group?”

  She sipped again, then played with her glass. “After my divorce—it was final two years ago—I felt pretty down. This place wasn’t open yet, and I didn’t like going into Boston. My ex was a real shit. A computer whiz at one of the Route 128 companies. You know, home late, sometimes not at all. Running new programs, he said. Why you? I said. He was needed, he said. Why can’t somebody else push the buttons? I said. Because he pushed better, he said. Then I found out the buttons he was pushing were on some nineteen-year-old secretary. I got the house, and fortunately my aunt was in the real-estate business. The interest rates were coming down, so I refinanced and starting working with her.”

  “As a broker?”

  “Salesman first. Takes a while to get your broker’s license.” Bishop paused. “You do much divorce work?”

  “You mean following husbands for wives, that kind of thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Too bad.”

  “I thought you said you were already divorced?”

  “Oh, I am, I am. But in my business, well, it’s a real help to get referrals. Like if you knew that a couple were busting up, and they had a big house, I could sort of …”

  “Be the listing professional who helps them sell, for six percent.”

  “That’s right. That’s my business. And I’m very good.” She lowered her eyelids to half-mast. “At all sorts of things.”

  I downed more of my screwdriver and asked her again how she came to be in Marek’s therapy group.

  “My aunt had heard about him. So I gave it a try. The hypnosis stuff is incredible. It drives out all the bad vibes, lets you really relax and relate. At first, I thought the group was pretty … well, strange. All different kinds of people with different kinds of problems. But Cliff is very good at bringing people together.”

  “Like Jennifer and William?”

  “Yeah, but Jennifer didn’t need much help. She did just fine on her own.” Bishop tossed off a third of her drink. “People will tell you she was kind of spoiled, from being rich and all. I never knew her ’til the group thing, but all Jennifer really needed—Oh, just a second, there’s somebody I have to talk to. Be right back.”

  Bishop got up with her drink and quick-stepped over to a slim black man in a conservative three-piece suit. She passed two other males coming our way. One was stocky, with blond hair and a mustache. He looked like the kind of guy who’d buy a BMW with an automatic transmission. The other, taller but skinny, had thinning black hair in a surfer cut. They both swiveled their heads obviously to watch Lainie go by.

  “Nice bod,” said Mustache to Surfer.

  “Nothing face, though,” said Surfer.

  “You gotta picture her with the lights out,” said Mustache.

  “You planked her?”

  “Not yet, but she’s a regular here. Let’s just say her next banana won’t be her first.”

  They moved just past me to survey the dance floor from the balustrade of the loft.

  “Check the ta-ta’s on that brunette,” said Mustache.

  “White dress?”

  “No, red top. The one doing the stress test.”

  “Oh, yeah. Kind of chunky, though.”

  “The bigger the cushion, the better the pushin’.”

  Surfer laughed appreciatively.

  “See that one, with the long hair and no sleeves?” said Mustache.

  “Yeah.”

  “I rang her chimes a coupla times. Screwy broad, though.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, her name’s Bliss, and she thinks she’s still a hippie.”

  “Boy, a bummer, huh?”

  “You ain’t heard the half of it. We’re in the sack, at her place, her husband’s outta town. Well, what they’ve got is a mattress on the floor, sheets filthy. I don’t know how the guy stands it. Anyway, this fuckin’ cat hops in with us.”

  “I hate cats in bed.”

  “Yeah, me too. So I’m puttin’ it to her, and this cat hops in, and he’s only got one ear, like the other one got bit off or something. And Bliss says to it, ‘Not now, Vincent,’ just like that, like maybe the cat was next after me.”

  “Vincent?” said Surfer. “That’s a funny name to call a cat.”

  “Yeah, I thought so, too,” said Mustache.

  Surfer looked down to the dance floor again. “What do you think of the two in the corner over there?”

  “By that fuckin’ whale?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not bad, but it’s still kinda early to pounce yet.”

  “Yeah, but how about if we check ’em out?”

  “Sure, sure. I hate to waste time on a broad I haven’t heard talk yet.”

  They turned away and headed for the staircase. They missed Lainie Bishop’s approach back to me as The Lovin’ Spoonful came through the speakers.

  “Sorry about that,” she said, settling back onto the sectional. “Terry’s wife is bitchin’ him up over their joint-custody agreement, and it’s been tearing at him something fierce.”

  Bishop’s glass was empty. “Let me get this round,” I said.

  She clamped a hand on my knee. “Already ordered. So where were we?”

  She left her hand there. I refocused on the job.

  “You were telling me about Jennifer Creasey.”

  “Right, right. Not a bad kid, really, though she did kind of dazzle poor William. Flashing her WASPy ass at him, you’d think he’d know better. But I guess enough people told him he was smart. And William was too, but smart in the brain sense, not in the mind sense, you know?” Her hand ventured up from my knee a few inches. “Book learning, not worldly wisdom.”

  The cocktail waitress arrived with our drinks. She carried a tray with eight indentations around the edge, into which the eight filled glasses fit snugly. A truly great invention.

  Bishop reached the knee hand up for her drink. A tactical mistake, as I was able to shift my leg away from her. The waitress left.

  I said, “Can you tell me what happened that night?”

  “Sure,” she said, “except for finding her … her. I don’t want to talk about that.”

  Bishop related basically the same sequence as Linden had. I thought of a question that I’d forgotten to ask Homer. “Would there have been any reason for Jennifer to see Marek outside the group?”

  She clouded up. “What do you mean?”

  “Any reason she’d be seeing Marek?” I said as neutrally as possible.

  Bishop shook her head, maybe too hard. “No. Cliff … Dr. Marek doesn’t fool around like that.”

  I would have liked to pursue the subject, but she seemed sensitive on it, and I wanted other information from her.

  “Did you have any reason to think William would harm Jennifer?”

  “Nope. Oh, he was wound pretty tight, pressure from the college and Jennifer and all. But I never would have guessed he’d hurt her.” Bishop put the accent on the “he’d.”

  “Who would you have guessed would hurt her?”

  She gave me a dreamy look and slid closer, hand to my thigh this time. “I’ve been thinking. If I answer all your questions now, you won’t have any reason to see me again.”

  “Oh,” I said, with the obvious next line, “I wouldn’t say that.”

  Bishop drew her nails firmly across my thigh and leaned over for a kiss.

  “I prefer to separate business and pleasure,” I said.

  “I don’t,” she said, kissing me on the lips, head moving left to right seductively. I didn’t respond.

  She pulled back, surprised. “What’s the matter, I’m not attractive?”

  “I think you’re attractive. That doesn’t mean I find you attractive.”

  Bishop lowered her voice. “You’re not gay, are you?”

  “No, just working.”

  “Christ,” she said. “Whatever happe
ned to Mike Hammer?” She took a drink and looked at her watch simultaneously. “Look, honey, it’s been terrific, but I think I’m gonna move on.”

  “I’d like to ask you a few more questions,” I said, Bishop standing and I following.

  She gave me the head and curls roll again. “Sure. Sometime when you’re not working, huh?” She turned.

  “One question, please?” I said.

  Bishop sighed. “Okay, one.”

  “Who would you have bet would hurt Jennifer?”

  “Oh, what’s his name, the guy she tossed over for William. Richard something. At Goreham. Listening to her, he was a real bastard.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Ciao,” Bishop said, walking back toward Terry of the Bitchin’ Wife.

  I hate wasting a drink, so I downed half my new screwdriver. Which made me look for the men’s room. There was one on the second level. When I came out, Lainie Bishop was sitting next to Terry, clasping her hands on his and talking very seriously. An image came to me, an image of her consoling a similarly troubled, but younger guy.

  Like William Daniels.

  I climbed down the stairs and yielded sideways at the bottom to a couple moving up. I heard Mustache’s voice behind me at the bar. “Baby, all I can say, is this hombre thinks you are muy beautiful.”

  I turned my head in time to see Mustache tapping his chest in front of a chubby woman with the weary face of a nurse working double shifts. Surfer was nowhere in sight.

  “In fact,” said Mustache, slouching nearer to her, “in the event of a nuclear war, I hope you’d be the last chick on earth.”

  “Pal,” she said, not giving ground, “if I were the last woman on earth, you’d be standing near the end of a very long line.”

  I walked to the double doors. Simon and Garfunkel clicked on. The baby-boom generation hits middle age.

  Groovy.

  Ten

  I TURNED THE key in the Fiat. It wasn’t even dark yet. I took out my list and saw that group member Donald Ramelli lived in Wellesley, on my way home. I drove to Wellesley center, got directions from a gas station attendant and followed them to Ramelli’s house.

  It was an old wide-bodied ranch on too small a lot. The hedge was scraggly and the lawn rough-cut, with big brown patches. There was a late-model Cadillac sedan in the driveway. However, as I walked to the house, I noticed the left front of the Caddy was staved in. There were also a couple of deep scratches beginning at the driver’s door and traveling nearly to the rear fender.

  I rang the bell. No answer.

  I rang again. From inside the house, a male voice: “Awright, awright. Coming, coming.”

  The man in the doorway carried a tall glass, half-full of clear liquid. He was early forties and medium height, potbellied, in a golfing shirt and Bermuda shorts. His features were thin and red-lined, his still full head of black hair too much for the face it framed.

  “Mr. Ramelli?”

  “I don’t vote, I don’t buy, and I don’t contribute, even at the office.”

  It sounded a practiced line, so I laughed. He laughed too.

  “I’m John Cuddy, Mr. Ramelli. I’m investigating the shooting in Dr. Marek’s building, and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  He rocked back, but pushed open the screen door for me. “Sure, sure, come on in. The Sox are on the tube, downstairs.”

  We descended to a basement that, unlike Linden’s, was mostly bar, a little den, and no gymnasium. A forty-eight-inch projection television was at one end, Jim Rice flexing a bat. There were water stains on the ceiling and an odor of mildew masked insufficiently by a pine-scented air freshener.

  Ramelli moved behind the bar. “What’ll you have?”

  Not “Would you like a drink?” The dented car, sunburst complexion, and opened bottle of vodka on the counter painted a pretty complete picture.

  “Screwdriver?”

  “Sure.” He opened the refrigerator. “Shit, she forgot the o.j. again. How about a vodka tonic?”

  “Fine.”

  Ramelli made it quick and strong. No lime. He paused to freshen his. About three ounces’ worth. No mixer.

  Ramelli came back around, gave me the drink. “Sit down, sit down.” He gestured toward the TV. “Twi-nighter, to make up for the rainout. The score’s already three to one, Oakland.”

  I watched Rice send the next pitch towering toward the left-field wall at Fenway. It caught the screen halfway up. Nobody was on base in front of him.

  “Christ, he’s something, isn’t he? Fucking eight other guys like him, though, they’d still lose ten to nine every game. No pitching. Never had any pitching.”

  I remembered Jim Lonborg and Dick Radatz and half a dozen others, but said, “I understand you were there the night Jennifer Creasey was shot?”

  “You ‘understand’? Aren’t you a Calem cop?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Which department you with, then? Not ours.”

  “No, no department. I’m a private investigator.” I dug out my ID. Ramelli studied it from several angles, then handed it back.

  “Who you workin’ for?”

  “Willa Daniels, William’s mother.”

  “Hoo, you’d better be Magnum, P.I., buddy. They got Daniels so wrapped up, Houdini couldn’t get out of it.” He drank from his glass as though it were lemonade. “Poor shit.”

  “Did you know William well?”

  “Just through the group,” said Ramelli, answering me but watching the game. “C’mon, Tony. Lose one, lose one.”

  “What’d you think of him?”

  “Think of him? Shit, that was way outside, Ump, way out. Think of him, huh? Well, I thought William was a pretty good kid who was getting sucked in way past his depth.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well”—drinking—“here he is, a kid who would probably be a top-ten-percenter in his element, at U Mass, you know, and instead he comes out here. And look.” Ramelli spread his hands, sloshing a little liquor. He changed hands, licked the wet fingers. “I got nothing against the colored, they never took anything from me, but one look at that Jennifer, and you knew old Willie wasn’t going to be her ‘one-and-only,’ you know?”

  “Did she have somebody else on the string?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. Jennifer was a real”—he looked at me, trying to gauge something—“she was like a blond-haired Katharine Ross, from The Graduate? Refined like that, but a hooker at heart. She had plenty before old Willie, if I’m any judge.”

  “Do you think she had somebody along with William Daniels, though?”

  “Like I said, wouldn’t be surprised. Never saw her with anyone, but you never know with kids these days. Not like us, you know?”

  I said I knew. Over the next two innings we covered Ramelli’s profession (selling wholesale auto parts) and avocation (watching any sport involving a ball). Regarding the night of the killing, Ramelli was a little fuzzy on certain points, but said nothing to contradict what Homer and Lainie had given me. I didn’t bother asking him why he’d joined the group.

  I glanced at the set. Jim Rice was back up, which seemed an omen. I stood to leave. Ramelli and his booze escorted me back upstairs.

  “Thanks again for the information and the drink.”

  “Hey, no problem. Sorry about the o.j. Fuckin’ Bliss, I don’t know where her head’s at anymore.”

  A cat scooted across my path and out of sight. A cat with only one ear.

  Ramelli closed the door. I got into my car and out of town as fast as I could find my way.

  Between Cointreau’s and Ramelli, I was too depressed and tired to drive to Goreham College and hunt for Richard McCatty. He’d be easier to find through a student directory the next morning.

  When I got in the apartment, the tape machine’s window showed one message. I called my answering service as I rewound the tape. My service said Lieutenant Murphy had called and that I had the number. I thanked the woman and played back the tape. It w
as Murphy also. “Call me tonight.”

  I dialed his home number and got a mellow female voice.

  “Yes?”

  “This is John Cuddy returning Lieutenant Murphy’s calls.”

  “Just a minute, please.”

  I waited. Murphy came on. “Just a second,” he said.

  I waited again. “Okay,” he said, “what’ve you got?”

  “Lieutenant,” I said, as gingerly as possible, “I’m returning your call to be polite, but my client is Willa Daniels, not you. All I’ll say is that so far the police report checks out down to the commas.”

  “Now look, mister—”

  “Lieutenant, before we get so mad we can’t sleep, let’s be straight on what the dispute is. If I find out something, you want me to tell you. I’m saying I won’t. Since there’s nothing to tell yet, there’s nothing to fight about.”

  Murphy stayed silent. It must have been very hard for him.

  “Call me if you need anything,” he said in a businesslike voice, and rang off.

  I stared at the telephone. I wondered why Murphy didn’t blow up.

  I dialed Mrs. Daniels. I summarized my day for her, and she said she would try to persuade William to talk to me. I told her that the lieutenant wanted to be kept abreast of what I found out and that my doing so probably couldn’t hurt William. She agreed that I could tell Murphy anything I thought could help.

  I hung up and thought about calling Nancy, even on a pretext. Instead, I broiled a steak with some canned mushrooms and drank two Molson Golden ales. I carried my landlord’s color portable into the bedroom and watched two fires, one robbery scene, and three traffic accidents on the eleven o’clock news before drifting off to dreamland.

  Eleven

  I HATE WAKING UP to Sunrise Semester. I shook the pins-and-needles sensation from my right leg and turned off the set. The clock radio said 6:35 A.M. A little early for investigating.

  I did calisthenics for about an hour, including maybe a quarter as many sit-ups on the horizontal as I had watched Homer Linden perform on the slant. Before I went in to shower and shave, I poured milk on a half bowl of granola, which I then put in the fridge. Twenty minutes later, I watched Jane Pauley interview some weather expert about the jet stream while I sat down to breakfast. Granola may be good for you, but even tenderized it’s like eating a dirt road.