Gypsy Sins

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  McGuire began to speak, to ease the conversation back to Cape Cod and Terry Godwin and the death of Cynthia Sanders, but Tate raised one hand in a feeble gesture to silence him. “This is all part of the sentence, you know.”

  “What sentence?”

  “Mine. They gave me, the judge and the smug prosecutor in Miami, they gave me five to ten years.” His head swung to meet McGuire’s gaze again, his eyes looming large and brilliantly white in his graying face, reminding McGuire of peeled hard-boiled eggs. “You know about that stuff?” He dropped his voice and wagged his head from side to side, a mockery of someone concerned with decorum. “My shady past and criminal record?”

  “That’s how I found you.” McGuire crossed his legs. “Your parole records show Louisburg Square as your address. Which you donated to the nuns.”

  A cold smile. “Betting the long shot. The sisters say prayers for me three times a day. An easy choice. I give them the house, they pray for my soul, transfer me here in privacy and everybody treats me like a king. As opposed to a queen. Better off here than alone on Louisburg Square.” Tate shifted his body and McGuire thought he heard the grinding together of bone ends. “A week, two weeks ago, she wouldn’t have told you. Sister Sophia wouldn’t have said a thing. But now . . .” His tongue explored one sunken cheek. “Now she knows how close . . . And, um, it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference, I guess.”

  For a moment McGuire expected the other man to dissolve into tears but, after several deep breaths, Tate resumed speaking, his voice growing stronger.

  “Five to ten years, sentence suspended if I tell them the name of my supplier. That’s what the son of a bitch gave me in Florida.”

  “Naming your source would have been a death sentence,” McGuire said.

  Tate nodded. “My lawyer passed the word to me. The deal, he got it from, um, some of my friends. Keep my mouth shut and there’d be a bonus when I got out. A few million. Listed as an inheritance from some relative in Europe. All the papers in place so the DEA couldn’t seize it as ill-gotten gains. The feds, they already took my house in Boca, my boat, my plane, everything. Said if I had a cache they didn’t know about waiting for me when I came out, they’d take that too. So my friends, my partners, we were all close in that thing, you know? Made each other a shit-pot full of money, partied a lot. It was more than business, these were my buddies.

  “Anyway, my friends, they did a quickstep for me with this inheritance thing and my lawyer, he laid it all out. You keep your mouth shut, you come out a millionaire, might even be a place waiting for you, wherever you want. Switzerland, Bali, name it. I said Boston, somewhere on Beacon Hill, and he said okay. Other thing is, you open your mouth, you don’t come out at all. I mean, they were my buddies but they sure as hell weren’t going to risk spending thirty years to life on me being a genuine good shit. So they played it both ways. Positive and negative enforcement we used to call it in New York. Play the game, I eventually win. Screw up, and I definitely lose. I’d get put on the ghost chain. You know that term?”

  McGuire nodded. He had heard the phrase from ex-cons and prison guards who traded convict jargon among themselves like baseball cards. The ghost chain. Prisoners who were selected to die in jail, for whatever transgression, were said to be on the ghost chain.

  “You get on the ghost chain, you’re marked,” Tate continued. “If I talked, sooner or later I’d walk into a knife, leading with an eye maybe. Or have my limbs rearranged with a baseball bat.”

  “Not a difficult choice to make.”

  “Except for door number three.”

  “When did you learn you were positive?”

  “Four years ago. I’d just qualified for my first parole hearing. Had a physical the month before. The DEA sent somebody to the hearing, said I should stay inside until I gave them names. But my lawyer made them admit that I . . . I, uh . . .”

  “You got AIDS in jail.”

  “I was, uh . . .” Tate cleared his throat. “I’m not a homosexual.”

  “Pretty hard to get a sexual disease from a woman in a men’s prison.”

  “I was raped three times my first month there.” A torrent of words, like an effort to flush out the pain and humiliation. “Gang raped.” Then a shrug, conveying much, concealing nothing. “It happens.”

  Footsteps sounded in the hall outside Tate’s room, quick and urgent, and low voices called to one another. “Did it happen often?” McGuire asked.

  “Not after the third time.” The cold smile returned. “Never after the third time. Told my lawyer about it. Fingered the two leaders. They were street guys, they had no protection.”

  “And?”

  “My lawyer told my friends what happened to me. Gave ’em names, all the stuff they needed. The two street punks got themselves on their own ghost chain. One was pushed from the fifth floor catwalk outside his cell. The other woke up in the middle of the night to find his throat cut.”

  “And you were nowhere around.”

  “Never.” Tate managed a weak grin. “He who laughs, McGuire, lasts. I laughed. I lasted. For a while. Then comes delayed revenge in a blood vial.”

  “Anything I can get you?”

  His face darkened suddenly. “Don’t lay bullshit on a dying man. I know you won’t get me a goddamn thing unless it tells you something you want to know.” The sudden anger was palpable, so substantial that it could be measured and weighed, and it settled itself around Tate’s withered body again.

  “Like who killed Cynthia Sanders. And maybe who shot me a few nights ago,” McGuire said.

  “Maybe.”

  More footsteps in the hall. “How long can we talk in here?” McGuire asked.

  Tate raised his wrist. The diamonds circling the face of his gold Rolex played with the light from the window. “Dinner’s not for another hour. Highlight of my day.”

  “Sonny,” McGuire began, but Tate interrupted him. The anger surfaced again, and he spoke with venom in his voice.

  “You know, any time, any time at all, I could hit the button here and have your ass dragged out on the street.”

  McGuire nodded.

  “You want me to say it’s unfair, don’t you?” Tate demanded. “You expect to hear me say that what happened to me in Ocala was unfair.”

  McGuire nodded again.

  “Well, you’re goddamn right it was,” Tate said. He tilted his head up to stare at the ceiling and to stem an expected flood of tears. “You’re goddamn right.”

  Let him talk, McGuire told himself. Let him deal with his problems. Then maybe he’ll deal with yours.

  Tate blinked several times, lowered his head and looked at McGuire with an almost embarrassed expression. “You ever been to Africa?” he asked.

  McGuire said no.

  “Let me tell you something I think about in here. Stuff that runs through my head, helps me deal with it. See, I went . . . went to Africa ten, twelve years ago, I don’t know, when I was younger anyway. With a girl I picked up at a party. Nice girl. Good family. University of Florida, business major.” He looked down at his hands and McGuire knew he was losing himself in his own private thoughts, among the demons and angels of his life.

  “Anyway,” Tate began again, “we went on safari. Kenya. Big pricey resort out on the savanna. Good food, good wine, hot showers, birds flying past, lions roaring in the afternoon, jackals cackling all night. And it was near a water hole. Where all the animals would come down in the morning to drink, crossing the savanna like pilgrims to get to it. Springboks and kudus and impalas and gazelles, herds of zebras and buffalo. They’d gather at the edge of the water hole while the sun was still low and the grass was heavy with dew. And there we would be, all us tourists, standing in a blind among them. You reached the blind through a tunnel leading back to the lodge. We would walk to the water hole at dawn, full of orange juice and coffee and banana cake, t
o stand in the blind and wait for the animals.”

  “Sounds interesting,” McGuire said. He’s a dying man, McGuire told himself. Be patient. Then: But we are all dying . . .

  “It was dull as hell,” Tate said dryly. “Three mornings of standing there, barely breathing, to watch these animals drink and piss and crap from a few feet away. Until,” Tate turned his head to face McGuire. “Until the fourth morning, the last day before we were to leave for Nairobi. That was the day the lions came to feed.”

  Tate’s eyes shone and drifted away to a distant focus. “The guides in the lodge, they told us to watch for the lions feeding in the morning. That day we saw them for the first time, in thick grass beyond the water hole. Four or five females, couple of fat lazy males. One of the females, she looked older than the rest, there was something wrong with her jaw. It hung funny, it looked twisted. One of the guides said she’d had it broken by a zebra’s hoof and it hadn’t healed correctly. The zebras do that when they’re being chased down from behind by a lion, they kick back and sometimes they connect with their hooves. They can break a jaw that way. A lion gets its jaw broken too badly, it can’t feed anymore, so it dies a long slow death until the jackals show up to finish it off.” Tate glanced over at McGuire. “Am I boring you?”

  McGuire shrugged, and before he could speak Tate said, “Too bad,” and grinned mischievously.

  Sonny Tate shifted his position again. “Anyway, this female lion, the one with the bad jaw, she came out of the grass first. Went right for a gerenuk, it’s a long-necked gazelle, beautiful animal, all honey and ivory coloured. She picked out one of the gerenuks. I don’t know why, nobody knows what makes the lion target one healthy animal, choose it over the others.”

  “Some people think the prey sends a signal,” McGuire said.

  Tate nodded. “Yeah, I’ve heard that. A kind of body language. Kill me, I’m ready to die. Something like that.” The flash of a smile. “Anyway, the animals scattered, all of them. The gerenuk took off, the lion behind it, the two of them tear-assing for the long grass. But the gazelle spotted the other lions ahead of it in the grass, and made a U-turn. Headed right for us, in the blind. Came right toward us, eyes bigger than saucers, tongue tasting the wind. Jesus, you’ve never seen such fright. Never.”

  He paused and looked down at his hands. They were trembling slightly, like tree leaves in the morning.

  “The lioness, she took the angle and caught the gazelle not ten feet away from us. One big paw clamped over the gazelle’s neck and she rode it down into the mud. Then she grabbed the gazelle’s neck in her jaw, searching for the jugular, looking for the kill.”

  Tate began breathing faster and his fingers scrubbed the palms of his hands with excitement at the memory.

  “But she couldn’t do it.” He looked at McGuire, wanting the other man to visualize the scene as clearly as he had seen it. “She had this loose jaw and she couldn’t bite through to the vein. She had to gnaw her way through. And while she’s doing this, her weight on this, this graceful long-legged gentle gazelle, the gerenuk is thrashing around and its legs are kicking out, kicking out, its little hooves hitting the lion on the side of the head, over and over.”

  He licked his lips and turned away.

  “So the lion, right there in front of us, the lion takes her free paw and she swipes at the gazelle’s legs, pinning the hooves to the ground, and then with the other paw she puts her weight on the upper part, her whole weight, five or six hundred pounds on those long graceful legs. And she breaks them. Like matchsticks, McGuire. It sounds like matchsticks and now the gazelle is lying there with the bones and sinews of its legs showing, with blood running and agony in its eyes, still as conscious as ever, and the lion goes back to gnawing for the jugular. Except there’s not so much urgency this time. Because the gazelle can’t kick, can’t fight back. Just lies there with its legs snapped, feeling the lion’s teeth searching for its vein.”

  Tate lay back in his bed.

  “The girl I was with, she screamed and threw up right there in the blind. Pissed off the guides, they had to clean up after her. The lion didn’t even look over when she screamed.” He breathed deeply, released it slowly. “Most amazing thing I ever saw.”

  McGuire waited for Tate to continue. When he didn’t, McGuire asked, “What’s the point?”

  Tate glanced at him, then away. “The point is, the lion did it totally without malice. It wasn’t anger or viciousness. It was something she had to do. Something normal. Something the goddamn gazelle had to accept.” A grunt, almost a laugh. “As if the poor son of a bitch had any choice.”

  “That’s how you feel,” McGuire offered. “About what you’re going through.”

  Tate nodded. He was somewhere beyond the room.

  “How often have you told that story?” McGuire asked.

  “A thousand times,” Tate muttered.

  The intercom next to Tate’s bed made a noise like an electronic hiccup and Tate barked, “What?”

  A woman’s voice asked if he was all right.

  “I’m fine,” Tate responded. “Just leave me alone.”

  “There’s a man in the building,” the woman replied. “He’s dangerous. He assaulted Dwight. We’re doing a room by room check.”

  “Well, stay the hell out of my room,” Tate snapped. “Put a guard on the door to keep him out of here if you have to. But don’t come in. When I want somebody, I’ll buzz. Got it?”

  The woman was appropriately servile. “Yes, Mr. Tate,” she said, and the intercom died.

  “I can be a bit of a tyrant sometimes,” Tate said. “They know how much money they’re getting from me every month through the nuns. And how much more they’ll get when I’m gone. So they put up with my horseshit.”

  “Any ideas on how I can get out of here?” McGuire asked.

  A grin spread across Tate’s face. In spite of his sickness, Tate’s teeth were strong and white. “Not a one,” he said. “Any ideas on how I can get out?”

  “Tell me about Cynthia Sanders,” McGuire said.

  “What’s your hurry? You got more time than I have.” Tate held his empty glass at arm’s length. “Pour me another cognac first.”

  “I was eighteen when I met her. She was twenty-eight. An older woman.” Sonny Tate stared into his glass of cognac, turning it in circles within his hands. “That’s a joke to guys like you and me now, isn’t it, McGuire? An older woman. Hell, twenty-eight. Her prime was still years away.”

  McGuire sat back in his chair, a drink in his hand. Just how the hell am I going to get out of here? he wondered.

  “She was, um, funny. Unusual. Maybe just scared. She could act like a little girl sometimes. When her husband died, I think she didn’t know what the hell to do, how to act. All the old farts on Nickerson’s Neck, especially the married ones, the guys from the golf club, they pounced on her. All of them were married, naturally. Just after a piece of widow’s ass. I think she saw herself coming up to thirty, she saw herself having one last chance maybe at young guys. Because we were safe. No jealous wives, no risk. A hard body, no gray hair, no wrinkles, no bald heads. She, um, she was a very healthy woman. Sexually. Very healthy.”

  “I picked up most of this stuff,” McGuire interrupted. “From files. And from your buddies. Leedale, Gilroy, Stevenson.”

  “How are those guys?” For the first time, Tate seemed genuinely interested in them. Relating his safari story, describing the lion’s unfeeling cruelty, had released something in him.

  “They’re doing all right,” McGuire responded. “Leedale’s a lawyer. Not very happy, I think.”

  “What’s bugging him? He was pretty relaxed when I knew him.”

  McGuire shrugged. “His age, his marriage, I don’t know.”

  “He and Junie still married?”

  “Yeah, that’s his wife’s name. June. Nice woman. Slim, dark hair
. . .”

  “Junie Ryder.” A nod of the head and a smile. “You see her again, tell her I said hello. Tell her I was asking about her. How about the others?”

  “Blake Stevenson seems a bit stiff.”

  “Always was. Can’t stand the idea that he’s basically a mediocre bastard. Who’d he marry?”

  “Someone named Ellie—”

  A small eruption of laughter. “Ellie Boitch? You’re kidding. Dark hair, turned-up nose? Chunky body? He married her? Ellie Boitch. Or Ellie bitch, as we used to call her. And she’s with Stevenson now? Well there, McGuire.” Tate grinned and sipped his cognac. “There’s a bit of poetic justice for you.”

  “Stevenson says he was a good friend of yours.”

  “Stevenson says he doesn’t have shit for brains, too.” Tate licked his lips. “He was Terry’s buddy, not mine.”

  “And Mike Gilroy . . .”

  “Decent guy. Was when I knew him, anyway.”

  “You’re a hero to them, you know,” McGuire offered.

  Tate looked away and smiled. “Christ, that’s rich. When I was a kid, my old man driving a truck, my mother slinging scrambled eggs at a diner on the highway, I thought those guys had it all,” he said, avoiding McGuire’s eyes. “They had family up and down the Cape going back five, six generations. Their fathers played baseball with them on weekends, their mothers stayed home and baked pies. Me, I was from a bunch of losers and I was going to stay a loser unless I was different. Sometimes that’s all it takes, you know. Just being different.”

  McGuire began to speak, began to explain that he had once felt that way about his cousin Terry, about the envy he felt for Terry’s respectable family. But he stopped and frowned at the floor. Something had sent his instincts buzzing. Something Tate had just said. About what? Families? Family names?