I looked for traces of the laughing, dancing woman of eighteen that Chris had introduced as his “arranged” fiancée. A black-haired, green-eyed immigrant whose independence wasn’t much tempered by an almost complete inability to speak English. She’d come to America to avoid the restrictions of the old ways on what women could do and what men could do to them, but the disease had bowed her in a way that millennia of tradition hadn’t.
“John,” said Eleni.
I leaned over and took her hand, kissing her lightly on the cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered into my ear.
Chris said, “Although it’s pretty obvious, I guess, John Cuddy, Hanna Marsh.”
“And me,” said Vickie.
“And you,” I said, looking down at Vickie as I shook Hanna’s hand. It was dry, but trembling.
“Mr. Cuddy,” said Hanna, her voice husky and catching, “I am sorry, but I want to thank you for coming with us today.”
“Mrs. Marsh …”
“Hey,” said Chris, “What’s with this Mr. and Mrs., huh? It’s John and Hanna, right?”
“And Vickie,” I said, beating the child to it by just a bit, which seemed to please her.
“Where are we going, anyway?” said Vickie.
“Not you,” said Eleni, gracefully, “You and me stay here and make the files. Remember?”
“Oh, right,” said Vickie. She looked up and beckoned me to squat down to her level. “John, when you and Mommie get back, I want you to meet Cottontail.”
“Cottontail?”
“Yes, she’s my little kitty and she’d like to play with you.”
“She would, huh?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, we’ll see if we have time afterwards. Okay?”
Vickie was crestfallen. “That’s what my daddy always says. ‘We’ll see.’ ”
Chris said, “Hey, let’s get rolling here.” He moved to Eleni and bent down as if to kiss her, but I don’t think they made actual physical contact. “We’ll probably be there awhile, so be sure to give her lunch, huh?”
“Don’t worry about us. Me and Vickie gonna be office people together. Right, Vickie?”
“Right.”
Making the files and office people together. As Chris, Hanna, and I walked out to his car, I wondered whether the temp-being-late line was the only white lie he’d fed me.
Three
WE DROVE EAST ON Route 114, through the city of Salem, where witches were tried and burned, and past the state college. I rode in the backseat, listening to Chris and Hanna in the front. He was shooting disconnected questions rapidly; she was answering them as best she could. Based on what I knew about lawyer-client relations, most of the financial, custody, and even more personal topics Chris asked about should have been covered much earlier and without a third party like me present.
Chris had scrawled some directions to Felicia Arnold’s office on a yellow legal pad, but once in downtown Marblehead itself, we got lost anyway. As Chris inched through the traffic patterns, the scenes out the windows supported my memories of Marblehead. One-way streets and narrow alleys, flanked by huge clapboard houses on postage-stamp lots.
Once the home port of ship captains, the town was now headquarters for at least three distinct populations. One was the old-towners, enjoying substantial ancestral money and spectacular homes across the sheltered harbor on a spit of land called Marblehead Neck. The second group consisted of established, blue-collar families involved in commercial fishing or boat servicing. New-towners comprised the third population, mostly professionals who worked in Boston but had tired of city life and come to Marblehead to enjoy the sights and smells of a suburb on the sea. Word had it that some folks had done very well in the import business, specializing in a certain brown-green, vegetablelike substitute for tobacco.
Chris finally found Arnold’s address, a beautifully restored two-story mansion on a high hill overlooking the harbor. Outside the car, the sea breeze lifted the high, metallic singsong of the masts and stays of thousands of pleasure sailers moored below us. At an average length of twenty-four feet and an average cost of $15,000, there was probably more seaworthiness there than we lost at Pearl Harbor.
A receptionist greeted us inside the heavy brass-knockered front door and led us upstairs. I was last in line, and as I reached the top of the steps, I saw off in a desk area to my right a svelte woman, fortyish with auburn hair clipped in a not-quite-punk style. She arched an eyebrow and smiled at me. A younger, lawyer-like man with tinted eyeglasses and a beard appeared beside her. She said something to him out of the side of her mouth while she watched me. I had the distinct feeling of being inspected and assessed as her smile became a smirk. The young man glared at me and turned away from her.
“Sir?” said the receptionist at my left.
“Yes?”
“The conference room is this way.”
“Yes, thank you.”
She showed me into a lushly carpeted arena with a glass-walled vista of sails so bright I had to squint. Chris and Hanna were already seated. Chris had both hands in his battered briefcase, coaxing a slim file past a bulging one. Hanna fidgeted next to him.
The receptionist said, “Ms. Arnold will be with you shortly” and closed the door.
Chris slapped a form in front of Hanna that had a slew of dollar figures in pencil, some of them with question marks and others crossed out and rewritten. “This is your financial statement.”
Hanna’s mind took a moment to click in. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Your financial statement. Weekly expenses and stuff you need like we talked about on the phone. It’s just a draft, but we’ll be using it today and you gotta make sure it’s accurate.”
Chris turned back to his file, madly flipping through it for something. Any fool could see that Hanna, who spent all of five seconds on the financial statement, was in no shape to verify anything, especially without her checkbook and bills for comparison. I also couldn’t believe that Chris intended to show an opponent the uncertainties the hand-scratched form suggested about Hanna’s, and Vickie’s, needs.
There was a polite tap at the door, and my inspector/assessor came in. Up close, she seemed nearer to fifty and as carefully restored as her offices, with taut facial features, a glowing tan, and flattering highlights in the auburn hair that I somehow didn’t think came from the sun. She smiled at all of us, lingering on me before saying, “Hello, Chris. And you must be Hanna. I’m Felicia Arnold.”
Arnold extended her hand, with long, lacquered nails, to Hanna, who shook, both figuratively and literally. Arnold turned to me and said, “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure?”
I stood and said, “John Cuddy. I’m—”
“He’s my new associate,” Chris blurted.
I tried to keep the anger off my face as Arnold took my hand, then drew a nail along my palm as she released it, saying, “I’ll have to follow your recruitment technique more closely, Chris. I hadn’t realized you were expanding.”
He said, “It was kinda sudden.”
Before I could think of an acceptable way to tell the truth, Arnold swung her head around to bring everyone into the conversation. “I’m afraid I’ve just had a call from Mr. Marsh. He’s been delayed and won’t be here for approximately forty-five minutes.”
Chris said, “Jeez, Felicia, I told you when we set this up that I’d be pressed if we ran late. I got this closing up in Lowell …”
Arnold acted heartbroken. “Yes, Chris, I know. And I reminded Mr. Marsh of that and he promised to be just as quick as he could be. But I really am reluctant to start anything substantive without his being present. So …” She opened the door and backed through it. “… I’m going to try to get some other work done. Please feel free to use the library. Just buzz five on the intraoffice phone if you’d like coffee.”
After the door closed, Hanna said, very quietly, “I told you this would happen.”
“Now, Hanna, I’m sure …”
I said,
“What do you mean?”
Hanna looked up at me, her gray eyes hard and sad at the same time. “This is Roy’s way. To hold everybody up so he can be the center, the control of everything.”
“Well, at least this way you and Chris have more time to prepare. I’ll be in the library so you two can talk confidentially.”
I was scanning the library shelves for anything remotely interesting to read when I heard Arnold’s voice behind me. “John, could I have a word with you? In my office?”
By the time I had turned around, she was already walking away from me with that long, vibrating strut of a leggy woman in high heels. I felt like a fourth-grader being summoned by the principal.
Arnold’s office was a little larger than the conference room and even more tastefully appointed in Orientals and leathers. On the corner of the building, one large window captured the harbor while the other offered a more specific view of a couple of magnificent homes across the water on Marblehead Neck.
“Please, sit down.”
I sat and watched her ease into the large swivel desk chair. She had a dancer’s body and a ballerina’s absolute control of it. I decided to wait her out.
“Well?” she finally said.
I just watched her.
She dissolved to disgust. Picking up the telephone, she pushed one button and said, “Paul? Now, please.”
She hung up and seconds later a door on a side wall opened. The bearded man I’d seen earlier came through it, pad in hand.
Arnold said, “Mr. Cuddy, this is my associate, Paul Troller. Paul?”
Troller spoke without reading from his pad. “The Board of Bar Overseers lists no ‘John Cuddy’ or variation thereof licensed to practice in the Commonwealth. The Board of Bar Examiners shows no such name or variation sitting for any of the last three bar exams.” He regarded me in a superior way. “I haven’t had time to research the penalty for impersonating an attorney.”
I said to Arnold, “His batteries expensive?”
She toyed with a grin as he clenched his free fist and bent the pad lengthwise in the other. “I wouldn’t upset Paul if I were you. He was a finalist in the Golden Gloves before enrolling in law school.”
I reached for my identification as Paul took a step toward me. “I’m a private investigator. There was some concern about Mr. Marsh’s good behavior here today. If Chris had seen a copy of Paulie’s resume, I’m sure I wouldn’t have been necessary.”
Troller’s next step was cut short by her saying “Paul,” stretching out the syllable with an authoritative lilt at the end. She leaned forward and took my identification, seeming somehow relieved as she read it.
“You were the one involved in the shooting at Middlesex last month.”
“Correct.”
She glanced down at the ID again as she returned it to me. “That still your address?” She was leering at me and peripherally checking for Paul’s reaction. Lovely woman.
I stood up. “Just call us when Marsh arrives.”
He didn’t look like an insurance salesman. What he looked like was a snake.
Marsh came into the conference room dressed in old corduroy pants and a windbreaker with a chamois workshirt underneath. He had black hair, short but shaggy, with the kind of wispy mustache that insecure nineteen-year-olds affect just after basic training. In his thick-soled “tanker” boots, he was three inches over my six two plus, but he was too lean and bony, as if someone had siphoned the flesh off him.
Arnold said, “Roy, I believe the only person you don’t know is Mr. Cuddy. John Cuddy, Roy Marsh.”
Marsh sniffled and said, “Who’s he?”
I’d already prepared Chris for Arnold’s reply. “Mr. Cuddy is a private investigator looking after Hanna’s interests.”
Marsh looked at me and sniffled again. “You got any ID?”
I showed him. His mannerisms were herky-jerky. I couldn’t read his eyes because of the opaque lenses on the aviator sunglasses he wore, but I had a pretty good idea what I’d see in them, especially if I could check for cartilage holes up his nostrils as well.
Cocaine. And lots of it.
Handing back my identification, he grinned at Hanna, who looked down. “How you plan on paying for him?”
Chris reddened but didn’t say anything. Marsh said, “He sees those stretch marks, he won’t be too much interested in your interests anymore.”
Chris coughed and said, “Felicia, I really gotta make that closing. Can we—”
“Just hold on, boy! This is my financial future we’re going to be talking about, and I want things done nice and slow and right. So we all know where we stand. Got it?”
It was pretty obvious where Hanna stood. But Chris was the lawyer, not me.
Arnold said sweetly, “Roy, why don’t you pull up a chair and we can get started.”
Marsh having seized the initiative, Arnold exploited it. In detail, she went over Roy’s financial statement, all typed out with elaborate exhibits. She even managed not to laugh when Chris produced his version of Hanna’s financials. As the talk centered on Marsh’s income, Roy looked bored. I don’t think I would have been bored.
According to Arnold, Marsh made over $200,000 in each of the last three years working for the Stansfield Insurance Agency. That built the waterfront house at 13 The Seaway in Swampscott, for which Arnold had a written, certified appraisal of $150,000 against an outstanding mortgage of $40,000. The appraisal seemed low to me, but there was more to come: the BMW 633i that Marsh leased; the Escort station wagon, purchased for cash, that Hanna had taken; a twenty-six-foot inboard motor racer bought entirely on time; a snowmobile and trailer; and thousands of dollars of video and stereo equipment, hunting rifles, and club memberships. Rampant consumerism, but no real investments. Life in the fast lane.
Chris looked at his watch and wanted to start talking about more immediate things, such as temporary support, but he had let Arnold set the conference agenda and now she insisted, gently but firmly, on sticking to it. I suspected Marsh’s late arrival had more to do with negotiating tactics than any business commitment he had, and Arnold’s approach confirmed it. She was forcing Chris, because of his other appointment, to plod through the property stuff first, getting those long-term important matters resolved to Marsh’s advantage before even considering the short-term issues.
Arnold represented that Marsh was maintaining $250,000 in life insurance payable to Hanna for the benefit of Vickie. Chris didn’t scrutinize the certificate Arnold waved at him. Stupid. A guy in the business like Marsh could easily hoke one up. Chris should have realized that and insisted on a letter directly from the insuring company itself, postmarked at home office.
Then Arnold committed Marsh to paying Chris’s legal expenses (“Would ten thousand be satisfactory, Chris?” “Ten … oh, yeah, sure, so long as we don’t gotta go to trial over anything.” “Oh, I’m sure we won’t. We’re all reasonable people here”). Roy was getting more bored, and impatient too, I expect because he had other things elsewhere that he wanted to deal with now that he didn’t need to worry about Chris’s efforts on his wife’s behalf.
Marsh, however, had underestimated Hanna.
Just as Chris was about to agree that Hanna would trade her half of the house for a cash buy-out of $55,000, Hanna spoke for the first time. “No.”
Chris and Arnold stopped talking. Marsh’s head snapped to attention.
Arnold said, “But Hanna, the fifty-five thousand represents a fair share. It’s half of the hundred-fifty fair market value minus the mortgage of forty.”
“Yeah,” said Chris, “See, it’s half the equity in the house.”
Hanna stared down at her hands, clamped together and whitening on the table top. “No. The house is worth more, much more than that.”
Arnold said, “But Hanna, we have an appraisal.”
Hanna said to Chris, “Do we have an appraisal?”
“Well, no, we don’t. But jeez, Hanna, this here is from a reputable real estat
e firm.”
Hanna said, “You ever have business with them before?”
“Well, no … but—”
“Then I want an appraisal, too.”
Marsh started to say something but Arnold said, “Certainly, Hanna. If that’s what you want, I can easily commission another firm to do one. I must say though—”
“No.”
“No?”
Hanna motioned at me. “No, I want the other appraisal from somebody Mr. Cuddy picks.”
Each person turned to look at me, and I thought, “That’s just swell.”
Marsh said to me, “Just who the hell do you think you are?”
Arnold said, “Hanna, I’m sure Mr. Cuddy wouldn’t be familiar with—”
“I trust him.” No missing the implication there.
Marsh glared at her and started to say, “If you think …”
I said, “What harm could it do?”
Marsh whirled over to me and ripped off the aviator glasses. His pupils contracted from tea saucers to pinpoints. “The fuck asked you?”
I said, “Marsh, which hand do you write with?”
“What?”
“Which hand do you use when you write?”
Nobody else said anything. Marsh put his glasses back on with his left hand.
I said, “My guess is you’re a lefty. That right, Hanna?”
“Yes.”
“The fuck you want to know that for?”
“Because my dad always told me never to break the hand a man writes with. Especially here, since that’d restrict your making money and signing support checks and all.”
Marsh started flexing his fingers, then caught himself.
Arnold said wearily, “Could we all drop this macho posturing for a while and return to business?”
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