Swan Dive

Jeremiah Healy
1988

For Kate Mattes and Jed Mattes

 

ONE
-♦-

A breeze on a Thursday in June rustled the papers on my desk, but I was holding the only two pieces of afternoon mail that mattered. The first arrived in an envelope with the distinctive royal blue logo of the Boston Police, a reminder of my appointment at the department’s pistol range the following Monday morning. In Massachusetts, you have to reapply every five years to retain a permit to carry a firearm, and in Boston that means requalifying on the targets. It’s a good rule, and I called a friend of mine who’s a police chief in the small suburban town of Bonham to see if he could meet me at his facility to practice. He and his wife were going away for the weekend, but he left word with the officer on duty to let me in on Saturday.

Next I read the annual form letter from the licensing section of the Department of Public Safety. It advised me that pursuant to General Laws, Chapter 147, Section 22, et seq., my present ticket as a private detective expired in forty-five days. Between now and then, I had to submit the enclosed application for renewal and accompanying paperwork.

I glanced over the renewal, my head telling me it was easier to fill it out now, my heart saying I was a little tired of playing with forms today. The liquid crystal on the cheap digital clock showed only 3:10, and my head won out.

Next to "Legal Name in Full," I block-printed "John Francis Cuddy." Above "Date of Birth," I told the truth. For residence, the Back Bay condo I was renting; for business address, the Tremont Street office with two windows and a door in which I was writing. The form for your original license has spaces to list similar prior employment, for me just the military police and the claims department of Empire Insurance. Neither form has a line for marital status, which saved my having to specify "widower."

I dated and signed the renewal, attesting separately to the truth of the statements and my honor as a taxpayer. Drawing a check for the $500 annual fee (and remembering when it was only $400), I called my surety company, getting their promise to send me a continuation of my $5,000 posted bond in exchange l for another hundred bucks of premium. Then I went to the wall and took down my current license from the "conspicuous place" where the law requires it to be displayed. After my previous apartment office had been hit by arson, I’d had to apply for a replacement certificate. Next to “Reason for Needing Replacement," I’d written "Burned out." Then I’d decided that sounded psychologically questionable and substituted "Destroyed by fire."

I turned the metal frame from Woolworth’s glassside down on my desk and niggled free the stubborn cardboard backing. I slid the license out and carried it down the hall to the nice receptionist in the CPA firm. She reminds me of aunts who bake cookies, and she photocopied the license for me when none of the accountants was looking.

Returning to my own office, I gathered up the junk mail that had blown off the desk in the draft I’d caused opening and closing the door. I put the original of the license back in the frame and on the wall. Paperclipping the renewal to the rest of the documents, I dropped the package on top of the box to await the bonding company’s certificate.

This time, the clock said just 3:45. On a Thursday in June. A warm one at that. I thought about dialing Nancy Meagher at the district attorney’s office, but I was already seeing her for dinner at her apartment in South Boston. We’d been back together, in my sense of the word, for only a few weeks, and I didn’t want to push it. I also thought about driving to Southie a little early, but I’d visited the cemetery the day before, and Beth’s hillside was just five blocks from Nancy’s building.

I decided to lock up and go for a walk. Out into the sunshine across from the Park Street subway station at the corner of the Common. Past Old Granary Burial Ground, resting place of Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, where rubbings from the gravestones had to be prohibited because the copying also eradicates. Through Government Center, the utilitarian tower of the McCormack federal building in stark contrast to the massive, award-winning City Hall designed by I. M. Pei. And down into Quincy Market, Boston’s refurbished waterfront, which has served as a model for a dozen such projects elsewhere.

The market area was vibrant as ever, the pillared and domed center building and cobblestoned walkways teeming with upscale urbanites drinking at the outdoor cafés and downscale tourists engaged in a perpetual feeding frenzy. You can hardly blame the tourists, given the variety of delights tactically placed around each corner they turn. Souvlaki stands, raw bars, fried dough counters. Mixed fruit on a stick, frozen yogurt atop a cone, shish kebab in a pita pouch. All elaborately festive and apparently successful, until you notice that a chocolate chip cookie costs as much as a loaf of bread in Omaha and that very few visitors
wearing J. C. Penney shirts are toting bags from the tony designer shops crammed into ten-by-twenty stalls.

I appreciate what the market area has done for the city, but I can take it only in small, infrequent doses. At least the folks there that afternoon were laughing and alive, which was more than I could say for many of the people I’d been around lately.

* * *

“What’s that?" I said, looking down at the kitchen floor.

Nancy Meagher closed the apartment door behind me. "A friend of mine wanted to adopt a dog, so I went up with her to an animal shelter in Salem. When I saw this little fella, I knew there was something missing in my life."

The tiny kitten, a gray tiger with too-big paws and ears, just stared up at me.

Nancy said, "Don’t you want to know his name?"

"I could never see naming something that doesn’t come when you call it."

"Oh, John. You’re going to love him. Isn’t that right, Renfield?"

“Renfield?"

“Yes. Ring a bell?"

"Not quite."

"In the Dracula movie with Bela Lugosi, Renfield is the Englishman who goes mad and begins eating small mammals for their blood."

I watched Renfield and wiggled my foot. He licked his chops and pounced, sinking his front claws and teeth into my sock, playing tug-of-war with the spandex.

"Why don’t you two go into the living room. White wine okay?"

"Fine."

I dragged Renfield into Nancy’s bay-windowed parlor and settled onto one of her throw pillows. Prying his grip off my foot, I hefted him in my palm. He was about the size and weight of a brandy snifter. He blinked at me once, then started gnawing on my thumb.

Nancy came in with our drinks. "Getting acquainted?"

"I think he senses you’re running low on parakeets."

She set the glasses down and picked up a Ping-Pong ball. She tapped it with her fingernail, which got Renfield’s immediate and undivided attention. Then she tossed it onto the hardwood floor at the edge of her rug. Renfield sprang from my hand and hit the ground with all legs pumping, catching up to the ball and whacking it till he and the ball skittered out of sight into the kitchen.

I reached for my drink and Nancy raised hers. We clinked as she said, "To a fresh start."

We cruised through the next half hour on simple, almost domestic small talk. I helped make a salad to go with the swordfish in the broiler, and we ate at her ! kitchen table. There was a persistent but erratic scratching at my pants cuff, like a determined novice lineman trying to climb his first telephone pole.

“Is it all right to feed him from the table?"

She smiled. "Softening already?"

I picked up a morsel of swordfish the size of my pinkie nail. "Just thinking of my wardrobe."

As soon as Renfield saw the treat, he sat up and begged. Well, as much as a cat will beg. I lightly dropped the food onto his nose, his pupils focusing crazily as he tentatively swatted and then gobbled it. I repeated the drill twice more.

“Why are you putting the food on his nose?"

"I like watching his eyes cross."

“Great," she said around a bite of tomato. If the behaviorists are right, in two months I’ll have a Siamese."

We finished dinner and moved into the parlor, dawdling over the rest of the wine as we watched the evening news. About halfway into the broadcast, the male anchor warned that the following scenes might not be suitable for young children. After a pause short enough to retain viewers but not long enough to shoo any kids out of the room, the female anchor introduced the videotape of a courthouse shoot-out involving me a few weeks before.

Nancy started to get up. "I’ll change it."

"No."

She looked at me questioningly.

"No, Nance. I want to see it."

The video was disjointed, the camera operator near the witness stand obviously and understandably jumping and bumping the tripod as the gunfire erupted. The tape showed the situation from an angle I hadn’t had in person.

Nancy said, "You’re studying it, aren’t you?"

I kept my eyes on the screen, the station rolling the footage in Sam Peckinpah slow motion. "Yes."

“Why?

"To see if there was anything I could’ve done, anything I missed."

"So you’re better next time?"

"ln a manner of speaking." The program dissolved to a commercial. “Think it’s crazy?"

"Yes. And no, I guess. I do the same thing after a trial, whether I get a conviction or not. I rerun the case in my head, to see if I can spot something I can use again. What I can’t see is how you can do it when you were so emotionally involved."

"I can’t explain it in words. It’s more like I don’t feel the emotion now, the incident separates from the lesson."

Nancy nodded, but I think less from being persuaded than from wanting to close the subject. To avoid her own similar memories of a wintery night in the graveyard around the comer. Instead she came over to me, resting her head on my shoulder. I said, "You know, you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in years."

She moved her face very slowly, left to right, nuzzling me softly just above the collar. "I’d like to be more than that."

I tilted my head back just enough to see her. Bangs of short black hair and freckles sprinkled just right against a field of widely spaced blue eyes. "If our luck holds out, I think you’re going to be."

"Would the smart money be on tonight?"

I sighed, and Nancy went back to my neck, where she pecked me once and said, "I didn’t think so."

"Nance—"

"No." She pulled away, a little sheepish. "I’m sorry, I keep doing that. I meant that no, I understand. I was just looking for a status report, not trying to put on any pressure."

"I know. And I appreciate it."

She put both her hands on my shoulders and squeezed. “Boy, I just hope we’re both worth waiting for."

We laughed. I said, “How about dinner tomorrow?"

A frown. "I can’t. I promised a friend of mine from New York that I’d fly down on the shuttle tomorrow afternoon and stay the weekend with her."

"Monday then?"

"Sounds great."

"I’ll pick you up at your office, and we can eat at Locke Ober’s."

“Percy Plunger. Are we celebrating?"

“Anticipating."

She smiled. "Make it about six-fifteen. Whenever I break away early on a Friday, things pile up."

After the network news, I kissed Nancy goodnight and drove home to the eight-unit brownstone on Beacon Street. I parked my Fiat 124 in the assigned space behind the building, the lamp pole’s light supposedly discouraging the car strippers that are a constant of downtown living. A couple of years ago, our state legislature passed a Home Defense bill, which basically gives a resident the right to shoot an intruder who the resident believes might cause serious injury or death. Now some of the gentry wanted a Blaupunkt Defense bill, which would allow the owner of a BMW to shoot any thirteen-year-old breaking into the car for the radio. I wouldn’t bet against it. Walking around to the front of my building, I got my mail from the entrance foyer and climbed the stairs to the condo. My landlord, a doctor on a two-year residency program in Chicago, had decorated the place with Scandinavian Design furniture. In daytime, the pieces were cheerily set off by the ultraviolet rays flooding through the seven living room windows. Now, however, I had to use the lights.

My home answering machine glowed one message in fluorescent green-on-black. I rewound the incoming cassette while I called my office answering service. The service said a friend of mine from college, a lawyer in Peabody, needed to speak with me. He was on the tape too as it replayed.

"John, Chris Christides. Jeez, I hate these things, you know, you never know how much . . . Anyway, they had you on the news, from the courtroom thing again. I’m in kind of a tight spot with one of my cases tomorrow, and I’d really appreciate your giving me a call tonight, anytime. Thanks."

I hadn’t seen Chris in maybe four years. He was a third-string offensive guard on our Holy Cross team back when ability and heart meant a little more than size. He was only about five nine, but at two hundred he hit like a bowling ball with legs, blocking on sweep plays and specialty teams. Dialing his number, I thought also, and painfully, about his wife, Eleni.

"Hello?" said a familiar accented woman’s voice.

"Eleni?"

"Yes? Who is this?"

Her words were more slurred than I remembered, but only a little more. A good sign, I hoped.

"Eleni, it’s John Cuddy. Chris called me."

"Oh, John! It is good to hear the voice. How are you?"

"I’m well, thanks."

"John, I know Chris need to see you, but he is not here now. Can you come his office tomorrow, nine o’clock?"

"Do you have any idea what it’s about?"

"No. I know Chris is very worried on this case, and if he talk to you, he could tell why."

I thought of asking her to have Chris call me back, but then I pictured her, the way she looked the last time I’d seen her, and pushed away an image of what further progression of the multiple sclerosis had done to her by now. "I’ll be there. He still in the building on Lowell Street near the courthouse?"

"No, no. He give that up, John. He have the office here in the house now. We fix up the garage."

I caught myself estimating mentally what Beth’s last few months with the cancer would have done to our finances without Empire’s hospital plan. I didn’t want to think how Eleni’s illness might have drained them. She gave me directions I half recognized, and we said good-bye.

Talking with her on the phone had quashed most of the good spirits left over from dinner with Nancy. I read more bad news in the New York Times for another hour or so, then went to bed early.
 

TWO
-♦-

I was up by 6:30, thumping over Storrow Drive on the Fairfield footbridge by 7:00. I headed downstream, favoring the waterside path over the roadside one. People who say they can’t stand running must never have jogged along the Charles River. I passed the giant layered bust of Arthur Fiedler, the late conductor of the Boston Pops. The mustached granite face eternally watches the Hatch Shell stage from across the field where thousands, over half a million at Fourth of July, would cheer for the orchestra and him. Near a scullers’ boathouse, I almost collided with Robert Urich, practicing a firing stance with his .45 while filming a "Spenser for Hire" sequence on location. In the water, geese were landing, mallards were swimming, and cormorants were diving. What more can you ask from a sport?

I forded the river courtesy of the Museum of Science and turned upstream on the Cambridge side, recrossing at the Massachusetts Avenue bridge. I went in the Bildner’s food emporium near Commonwealth for muffins and orange juice. Back on the street, I saw a throng of well-dressed office workers waiting outside a shuttered video store. The air was chilly, and they were stamping around, flapping their arms and checking their watches like a line of addicts outside a methadone clinic.

At the condo, I showered, shaved, and debated what to wear. When I was an investigator at Empire, I talked with another classmate in Legal about throwing some simple cases Chris’s way. Unfortunately, Chris was the kind of lawyer that dressed in nubby polyester sports jackets and ill-matched slacks. His files were coffee-stained and never contained the right documents in the proper order. In the words of the guy in Legal, it was one thing to wish Chris well but quite another to refer him an insured as a client.

I rummaged through the closet. While I didn’t want to outshine Chris by wearing a suit, I also figured there was at least a chance I’d have to be in court with him that morning. I pulled out gray slacks, a blue blazer, and a conservative striped tie.

I drove to Route l and followed it north, mercifully opposite the choked, honking traffic crawling southbound into the city. Route l is a mixed bag of wholesome family restaurants, space-devouring businesses like fence companies and lumberyards, and pornographic adult entertainment centers. As I passed one, its marquee read: ALL NEW! "A HARD  MAN IS GOOD TO FIND” AND “EVERYBODY COMES BETWEEN ME AND MY CALVINS."

I turned northeast at the Route 128 interchange, and then shortly thereafter took the exit for Route 114. After a mile and a half of suburban forks, I found the Christideses’ house.

It was a small ranch on a quarter of an acre. I remembered when they bought it, to be their “starter" home. Back when her inability to conceive was thought to be a temporary aberration in an otherwise healthy woman. Then Eleni began to suspect that the infertility might be related to the occasional tremors she experienced in her legs. She nearly didn’t mention them to her doctor, "they was such a small thing."

After the tests and the retests came the confirmation. There was no relationship between the unsteadiness and the infertility, but the tremors were just the first signals of MS.

I left the Fiat curbside, even though the driveway had been widened to simulate a parking area for the converted garage. The new office appeared makeshift from the outside, not exactly the kind of facade that would inspire confidence in the professional working behind it. Chris’s old sedan, a Pontiac that had two years on my coupe, slumped over the macadam abutting the space where the overhead door used to hang.

I knocked on a human-size entrance and heard Chris’s voice say, "Yeah, come in."

The cramped reception area was paneled in bottom-of-the-line imitation pine that was already starting to yellow. I stepped around three molded plastic chairs of different colors and a low veneered coffee table with some ragged magazines. Chris stood at a desk that seemed secretarial but had no one behind it. He once told me that he was the first member of his family to go to college, much less law school. From what I remembered of his professional stature four years earlier, he was losing ground.

* * *

"John, John! Jeez, it’s good to see you."

He hustled over to shake my hand, clutching and crushing a manila folder in his left list. His curly black hair looked home-cut. Wearing a shirt whose collar points were a decade too long, he’d also put on thirty pounds that he didn’t carry well.

"Chris, it’s been a while. How’s Eleni doing?"

His broad, mobile face drooped. "The best she can. With the MS, sometimes it’s the muscles, other times the breathing or the voice. What can you do?"

He began to walk backward toward a half-opened door. “Come on into my office so we can sit. I got a temp that was supposed to be here twenny minutes ago, but you and I gotta talk quick if we’re gonna be on time."

I figured he’d tell me for what.

"Chris, I don’t do divorce cases."

"This isn’t like a divorce case."

"Chris, you’re representing this woman, right?"

"Hanna. Her name’s Hanna Marsh."

"Hanna. And she’s got a five-year-old daughter?"

"Right. Victoria. Vickie."

"And in an hour you’re supposed to be in Marblehead at the office of the attorney for Hanna’s husband to discuss things like custody, support, and division of property?"

"Well, yeah, of course things like that, but—"

“Chris, that sounds a hell of a lot like a divorce case to me."

Chris whoofed out a breath and held up both his hands. “Jeez, John, will you just let me tell it all the way out first?"

"All right."

"Then you can make up your mind."

“I said all right. Go ahead."

"All right." Chris collected himself, opened the file, then closed it again. "Aw, I don’t need the details to tell you the way it is. This Hanna, she and her husband live—lived, the husband’s still there—in Swampscott. She moved out on him and took the kid with her. Somehow she ends up at the doorstep of this woman that I represented some years back in her divorce but never charged."

"Never charged?"

"Billed, billed. Never billed. I used to do a lot of kinda courtesy stuff for family and friends in the Greek community here and there, you know? You’re in solo practice, you gotta do those kinds of cases to get the better ones, the bigger ones later."

"Go on."

"Anyway, this former client’s got an apartment to rent, and I guess Hanna musta seen it in the paper. Hanna’s from Germany, met her husband when he was in the army over there, and she hasn’t got any relatives over here. Truth is, she ain’t got a pot to piss in, but Nerida—that’s my former client—she sees Hanna and the little kid and, well, she takes ’em in, cat and all."

"Cat?"

"Yeah. The little kid, Vickie, she’s got a cat, kitten, whatever."

"I don’t see—"

"So, Hanna and Vickie are in the crummy first floor of the three-family here while the husband, his name’s Roy, Roy Marsh, lives in a waterfront contemporary he had built over there in Swampscott."

"And you’re representing Hanna against him."

"We already established that."

"Chris, it still sounds like a divorce to me."

"Just wait, just wait a minute, okay?"

I looked at him but didn’t talk.

"You see, I don’t need you to do any investigating here. I mean, like assets or peephole stuff or like that. This guy Marsh is loaded, and I’ve got him dead to rights on at least one solid affair with a nurse who works Samaritan Hospital. This nurse, you wouldn’t believe it, is off Mondays and Tuesdays yet, perfect for screwing around, huh? Plus Hanna says he’s done God knows how many pickups, hookers even."

"You’ve got him financially and morally, where do I lit in?"

Chris shifted his eyes down and away from me, fiddling with a ballpoint that had printing on its side, a giveaway advertisement from some bank. "He scares me, John."

I watched Chris until I realized I was making him uncomfortable. "What do you mean?"

"Just that. You think it’s easy for me to say?" Chris squirmed in his chair, rubbing his left knee. His “civilian-preservation" knee, he called it senior year of college, the injury that kept him out of the draft’s chilly grasp. "The guy scares me."

"Has he done something?"

"Not exactly."

“Well, threatened you, what?"

Chris glanced up at me, not liking this at all.

"Nerida, this former client, she calls me and pours out Hanna’s sob story. Then Nerida calls Eleni, and tells her, and so Eleni nags at me till . . ." Chris gestured at the folder. "Look, I’m not complaining. This is a good case. Jeez, maybe a dream case, the guy’s earning power. But this Marsh, as soon as he hears I’m gonna represent his wife, he comes in here, to my office. Nobody out in reception that day, he comes in, stands in that doorway there, and just looks at me."

“Looks at you?"

"Yeah, just looks at me. I know he was doing it before I looked up from what I was working on, because I could feel the guy staring down at me. Anyway, he looks at me, and when I ask him what he wants, he says, ‘I just wanted a look at you. I just wanted a look at the man who thinks he’s gonna take away everything I’ve worked for.' He wasn’t yelling. Jeez, he didn’t even say it angry or nothing. Just low and even, like he was some gunslinger in a western. He stared and said that, and left. He didn’t even tell me his name, like automatically I’d know who he was."

"Did you?"

"Did I?"

"Did you know it was Roy Marsh?"

“Oh, yeah, Hanna described him to me. She’s afraid of him, too. Along with everything else, it seems he was a little free with his hands."

"Can’t you get the court to order him not to bother you? Or Hanna?"

"In a general sort of way, yeah. But we’re not at that stage yet."

"I don’t follow you."

"Well, we haven’t filed for divorce yet, so there’s nothing for the court to order him on."

"Why don’t you file?"

"There’s a thirty-day separation requirement, and Hanna only moved out a coupla weeks ago. I could go to court and get that waived, but in these things it’s usually better over the long haul to avoid ruffling feathers."

"Meaning, don’t make the other side mad in the short run by having court orders against him?"

"Right."

"And try to settle out of court first."

"Yeah. Well, kinda. See, if we can negotiate a fair settlement out of court, then we can put all the kinds of things I’d want the judge to order in our written agreement, and then we just pass it by the court at the final hearing."

“So everything looks like a consensus, not a command?"

Chris beamed. "Couldn’t have put it better myself."

"Okay, let me get this straight. You’re afraid of Marsh, but you don’t want to tick him off by going to court first. So you want me to do exactly what?"

"Come with me, with Hanna and me, to the settlement conference over to Roy’s lawyer."

"And do what?"

"Nothing. Just sit there."

"Chris, you want a bodyguard."

He winced. "I wouldn’t call it that."

"I would. Why don’t you hire an off-duty cop?"

"Because the coupla guys I know on the Peabody force would be out of their jurisdiction in Marblehead. And I don’t know anybody on their force."

"Then why not have the settlement conference here?"

Chris slouched back in his chair, placing his palms behind his head and grinning. "Because, as a negotiating tactic, I let her persuade me to have it in Marblehead."

"Hanna?"

"No, no. Felicia Arnold. She’s Roy’s attorney. Heard of her?"

"No."

Chris closed his eyes and spoke blissfully. "She’s big-time, John. Used to do a lot of criminal defense work, then got religion and does world-class divorce stuff. It proves that this guy Marsh is the real thing, financially speaking."

I thought about Chris and how much this case probably meant to him and Eleni, "financially speaking." I thought about how I had lost Beth, a day at a time over months, while Chris was losing Eleni, a day at a time over years. I had agreed to do dumber things for worse reasons.

"Okay, I’m in."

Chris came forward, wringing his hands like a big winner about to rake in a poker pot.

"Great, great."

“Are we meeting Hanna there?"

"Naw, her car’s on the fritz, so I picked her up this morning. She and the kid are with Eleni. In the kitchen. C’mon."

As Chris grabbed his coat off the hook behind the door, I said, "By the way, what does this marauder do for a living?"

Chris balked. "Marsh?"

"Yeah, Marsh."

Chris turned away and began walking. "He sells insurance."

* * *

She looked worse than I could have imagined. A Hanna Marsh stood up when Chris and I entered the kitchen. She rose a good inch taller than Chris, even in flat shoes. A sturdy figure that childbearing had made a little fleshy. She wore her platinum hair short enough to show dark roots if there had been any. A blond girl clutched the woman’s right leg at the knee with both arms, causing Hanna’s simple blue wool dress to bunch up. The child first buried her face in Hanna’s thigh, then looked up at me bright-eyed and said, "My name’s Vickie, and this is my mother."

I tried to manage a convincing smile at both of them, but Eleni’s appearance had shocked me. A doctor friend once told me that multiple sclerosis waxes and wanes. For Eleni, it looked like straight-line deterioration.

I recalled her first with a cane, then metallic polio braces. Now the MS had shoved her into a wheelchair. The hands and arms looked normal, but whatever was left of her legs was hidden in folds of a long black skirt, and there was an intermittent twitch in one of the muscles in her left cheek, creating the bizarre impression of a woman caricaturing a flirtatious come-on. The hair had grayed unevenly and seemed dried and pulled. Had you seen her from the neck up, and without the twitch, you might have called her a striking woman of sixty. If I had my dates right, she’d just turned thirty.

I looked for traces of the laughing, dancing woman of eighteen that Chris had introduced as his "arranged" fiancee. 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 bumed, 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 A 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, lawyerlike 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 live 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 list 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 résumé, 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 on him.

Arnold said, "Roy, I believe the only person you don’t know is Mr. Cuddy. John Cuddy, Roy Marsh."

Marsh sniffed 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 sniffed 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 ofiice.

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 estate 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, "lf 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?"

Marsh let her save face for him, sagging back into his chair and folding his arms. He looked up at the ceiling as he said in a low voice to Hanna, "You really ought to take the fifty-five, honey."

Hanna said, "I want the house. The house itself."

Marsh bolted forward and I got ready. He yelled, "You what?"

Hanna’s voice quavered but she pressed on. "That is the home that Vickie knows. Where she has grown and has her friends. This divorce thing is already hard for her. She should get to stay there with her mother." Marsh slammed both his palms on the table and rose halfway out of his chair. "You fucking greedy bitch!"

Arnold said, "Roy, please-"

"The fuck you letting her get away with here? That house is mine! Goddamn it, I built that house. Every fucking board and nail came from money I earned, busted my ass for while she sat around trying to learn English off the soap operas and embarrassing me in front of my friends and contacts." He sank back down and refolded his arms. "No fucking house, and no fucking appraisal by Mr. Shitface here."

Arnold said, "Why don’t we move on to—"

"Move fucking on all you want. The house stays with me, and the offer just dropped to fifty, and it’s not looking too steady there, either."

Chris said, tentatively, gaugingly, "Hey, hey, we can come back to the house, all right? Felicia, how about the temporary support now?"

Hanna was crying Not making any more noise than labored breathing requires, but both eyes were pinched closed and tears were sliding down her cheeks and onto the table. Arnold pulled open a drawer in the console behind her and lifted out a box of Kleenex. Daintily setting the box next to Hanna, Arnold touched her arm to suggest taking some.

Hanna stabbed at the box. Felicia, pretending to read Chris’s handwritten financial statement, said, "I’m afraid the support’s going to be a tough one, Chris."

* * *

"I’m really sorry about this, Hanna, but I already postponed this closing thing twice, and the bank attorney’ll kill me if I’m not at the Registry by two-thirty."

Chris rolled up the window and pulled away, leaving Hanna and me standing on a street comer in Salem. We were only a short hop by cab from Chris’s house in Peabody, and I wanted Hanna to get a chance to compose herself and have something to eat before she saw her daughter. On the ride from Marblehead, it had been decided that I’d give Hanna and Vickie a lift home. Chris had spent most of the ride gloating over what a great deal he’d worked out on everything but the house, which he thought Hanna should "rethink." l was a less than objective observer at the conference, but in my opinion Arnold had stolen Chris’s pants without undoing his belt. The problem was it was Hanna’s, and Vickie’s, future that was on the line.

We found a small French restaurant called the Lyceum. With exposed-brickwalls and high windows and ceilings, it was a pleasant and airy place to hold a postmortem. It being the end of the lunch hour, a few words whispered by me to the hostess got us a nice table away from the boisterous Friday hangers-on ordering one more carafe of the house white. I was pretty sure that if things couldn’t be settled, Hanna and Roy would be litigating their differences in the Essex County Family and Probate Court a few blocks away.

I tried to make small talk for a while, but received only nods and one-word replies. Finally Hanna said, "Thank you for trying to help."

"You handled a difficult time well."

She nudged the remains of a large spinach salad around with a fork. "What do you think I should do?"

"Change lawyers by sundown" was what I thought, but it wasn’t my place to say it. "It seems to me that the house, even without seeing it, is probably worth more than the appraisal said. I also think you’re right to want to have it all, especially for Vickie’s sake."

"My husband . . ." She almost smiled. "I must stop calling him so. Roy is a bad man to push like that."

“Just what kind of man is he, really?"

She hooded her eyes. “The kind you don’t tell to do
things unless you can beat him."

I considered asking her a lot about old Roy, but I had hired on as bodyguard, not psychotherapist. We closed out lunch by my promising to press Chris to get a second appraisal of the marital home.

We got a taxi on the corner and rode to Chris’s house. The cab had no sooner pulled away than Vickie came bounding out the front door, laughing and calling, "Mommie! Mommie! Wait till you see what Eleni and I made!"

Inside the kitchen, Vickie proudly displayed the file folders they had assembled and the tray of baklava they had made. We each had a slice of the sweet pastry while Hanna kept her daughter focused on the morning with Eleni and away from the conference in Marblehead.

As Hanna went with Vickie to gather her things for the ride home, Eleni tugged on my sleeve.

"Things, they go well?" she said, without much confidence.

"No violence. A tough negotiation, but I’m no expert at judging lawyer talk."

Eleni rested her forehead in the palm of a hand. "When the husband come here, I see him. He smile at me when he leave. Not a nice smile, John."

"I’ve seen it."

“And not a nice man, John. Not just bad. He have the look."

“The look?"

"The look of the men I leave Greece to get away from. A man who does the gambling, visits the whores, beats the wife. The look of a man who like to hurt."

I could hear Hanna and Vickie coming back into the room behind me. Eleni said, quietly but insistently, “Watch good for them, John. Chris, he . . .cannot."

We got in my car, Vickie pleased with the ancient bucket seats fore and aft. She babbled on the way kids do, about her friends in Swampscott ("There’s Ginny, and Karen, and Fred, but nobody ever wants to play with him"), her cat ("I know Cottontail’s kind of a funny name for a kitty, but she’s all white all over, and. . ."), her starting kindergarten in the fall ("I hope Fred’s not in my class, but I don’t know how they do things like that"). Ordinarily, I can’t abide kidnoise, but it was nice to have something filling the air.

We arrived at the dilapidated three-decker and Vickie said, "Oooooh, wait till you see Cottontail! You’ll love her, too."

Before I had turned off the motor, Vickie was out of the car, urging her mother to hurry. Once in the building foyer, Vickie ran to their apartment door.
 

"Cottontail? Cotton? We’re home!" She put her ear up to the discolored wood and concentrated. "I can hear her crying. She must have missed us. It’s okay, Cottontail, we’re coming."

Hanna put the key in the lock, and Vickie burst in, calling the cat’s name and getting a mewling sound from the back. "Oh, she must have got all tangled up again." She darted down the hall.

Hanna said, "You like something to drink, maybe?"

"No, I--"

The screaming cut me off. Hanna veered and raced the way her daughter had. "Vickie! Vickie!"

I caught up with them at the entrance to a rear bedroom. Vickie’s face was burrowing into her mother’s stomach, her screams muffled by Hanna’s dress. Hanna’s eyes were closed, and she was saying, “Don’t look, don’t look."

I pressed by them into the room. Although the wallpaper was dingy and scaly, there were some bright yellow curtains around the window and a yellow blanket covering the twin-size iron frame bed. The window itself had a pane of glass missing, and the broken shards were scattered on the sill, bed, and floor. But that wasn’t the major damage.

Centered on the bed was a stained white kitten. The stain was red, from the blood that was still seeping into the blanket. Someone had taken a knife to the creature, peeling back its fur to expose musculature, bone, and an organ or two where the blade had slipped.

Cottontail looked up at me, squeezed its eyes shut, and let out a heartrending yowl.
 

FOUR
-♦-

I called the Peabody police emergency number. The sergeant on duty said he thought the closest animal I hospital was in Saugus. I dialed the hospital and was told to bring the kitten in immediately. Hanna wrapped Cottontail in the blanket, and l drove with flashers and horn while the cat cried on Hanna’s lap in the front seat and Vickie cried in the back.

A veterinarian with long brown hair and warm brown eyes met us at the door. She pointed toward an admissions desk and rushed the cat into a back room. Hanna tried to comfort Vickie in the reception area while I filled out the paperwork. The woman behind the counter graciously allowed me to use her phone. I called the Peabody police back and provided some details on the break-in. They said they’d send someone that evening. Then I got the number for the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds in Lowell and punched it in. I told the paging operator there that it was an emergency.

About a minute later, Chris said, "This is Christides. Who is this?"

"John Cuddy, Chris."

"What the hell's the emergency?"

I told him.

"Jeez, John, I don’t know what I can do about that."

I must have looked at the telephone receiver as if it were an alien artifact. "What do you mean?"

"Well, from what you said, there’s no real proof that Marsh did this."

“Proof? Chris, we were just with the guy for two hours, remember? He did everything but pull a gun."

“Yeah, but I doubt that’ll be good enough for the cops."

"Why not?"

"Look, if Marsh did it, he’s smart enough to use gloves and all. There won’t be any physical-type evidence at the scene."

I ground my teeth. "What about the divorce court, then?"

"It’s like I said before about the court, John. It doesn’t have any jurisdiction because we haven’t filed anything yet."

"Which adds up to what?"

“Which adds up to there’s no order of the court yet that Marsh violated. Assuming he did the cat."

"Jesus, Chris, you’re the lawyer, not me. There must be something you can do about this."

"Well, I can call Felicia and put her on notice."

"Notice? Chris, the guy’s a nut! Understand? Normal people don’t do things like this. He’s obviously trying to scare Hanna into giving in on the house. If he gets away with this, he’ll just escalate till he gets everything."

"John, you—what?" I could hear Chris saying something off the telephone, then, "Jeez, John, I gotta get back to this closing here, the bank’s attorney is gonna—"

"I don’t give a rat’s ass about the bank’s attorney." I lowered my voice. "I’m sitting in an animal hospital with your client and her hysterical little girl who just saw her first pet flayed alive."

"All right, all right. I’ll call Felicia right now. Just don’t expect much, okay?"

He hung up. The receptionist looked at me with a sympathetic shrug. I apologized to her, and she said it didn’t sound like it was my fault.

We waited for another forty minutes. I hadn’t been in many places less conducive to passing the time comfortably. I asked the receptionist if I could use the phone again. This time the paging operator couldn’t raise Chris. I depressed the cutoff button, called directory assistance, and tried the number they gave me.

"Law offices of Felicia Arnold. May I help you?"

"Let me speak to her, please."

"I’m sorry, Ms. Arnold is in conference. May I take—"

"Interrupt her and tell her that it’s an emergency."

"May I ask what the nature—"

“Sure. The life of one of her clients, Roy Marsh, is at stake."

Hesitation. "Is this Mr. Marsh?"

"No. Now please get her on the phone."

I waited maybe thirty seconds before Arnold’s voice said, "Mr. Cuddy?"

"Good guess."

"Mr. Cuddy, Chris Christides has already—"

“Look, Ms. Arnold. Let’s cut the ‘proper channels’ bullshit, all right? I’m calling from an animal hospital because your boy Marsh took a skinning knife to a kitten."

"I’ve already spoken to Roy, Mr. Cuddy. If you’d allow me to continue?"

"Go ahead."

"Mr. Marsh is shocked at the incident. He was at his home in Swampscott when I reached him, and he had driven directly there after our conference here."

"He have somebody backing him on that?"

"If you mean corroboration for what you evidently assume is an alibi, yes, yes he does."

“Who‘?"

"I’m not sure that’s any of your—"

“Let me take a wild guess then. A certain nurse from Samaritan Hospital?"

"I can neither—"

"You really think she’ll stand up? Credibly, I mean."

"Mr. Cuddy, you strike me as the sort of man who will do what you will. I can only advise you to seek independent counsel on your potential liability before you act."

"Liability for what? Malicious prosecution?"

She said, "Do call again when you can be a little more sociable," and hung up.

I handed the telephone back to the receptionist, who said, "Try counting to ten."

“There aren’t enough numbers for this."

Just then the door to the back area opened and the veterinarian who had taken Cottontail came out. She pushed a hank of hair that looked stringy from sweat off her forehead and back behind her ear. She motioned to me without smiling as she crossed the room to where Hanna and Vickie, who now looked up, were sitting.

Hanna said, "Please . . . tell us?"

As I approached them, the vet hunkered down to Vickie’s eye level on the bench. "Honey, I’m so sorry. But your kitty was just too little and lost too much blood."

Vickie responded with that Kabuki-mask slant that kids get to their eyes and mouth when they’re about to shriek. Vickie whipped her face into her mother’s breast and wailed, "She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead . . . ," as Hanna, crying freely, said, "I’m so sorry, Vickie, I’m so sorry," then some phrases in German that I cou1dn’t understand.

The vet straightened up and used the edge of an [ index finger to wipe a tear from her own cheek. In a ; subdued voice, she said to me, “Can I see you for a minute?"

We moved toward the desk and well away from Hanna and Vickie.

"My name’s Mary Vesch."

“John Cuddy."

"You realize I have to report this?"

"Jesus, I should hope so."

"The police will want to know if there are any kids in the neighborhood who might have problems."

"I don’t know, but I doubt that’s it. I’m betting on her father."

"Her father? The little girl’s, you mean?"

“Yes. He and the mother just split up, and this fits what I’ve seen of him."

Vesch huffed and shook her head. “I wish I hadn’t given up smoking. I could really use a cigarette? "

“Doctor, what happens now?"

"Mary, please." She looked past me toward Hanna and Vickie. "Probably not much."

"I’m sorry, Mary, but you’re going to have to explain that one to me."

"I’ll try. I report this as an obvious case of animal abuse. If there was some kid on the block with a twisted streak, then maybe through the juvenile authorities we could do something, like therapy or at least counseling. But with . . ." She broke off and changed gears. "The father, I take it nobody saw him do it?"

"No indication yet that anybody even saw him in the area."

"And he’ll be paying support, I suppose?"

"With his job, he can certainly afford to."

She shook her head again. "Then I can’t see much happening to him. The maximum jail term under the statute is only a year, but the last time I remember a judge sentencing someone even to that, it was overturned on appeal. And here we’ve got a father that a judge isn’t going to want branded with killing his little girl’s pet and isn’t going to put away because the guy can’t work to pay support from a cell."

"So where does that leave us?"

"With a fine, but the most the law allows is only five hundred dollars." The errant ringlet of hair slid forward again, and she tucked it back into place. "Not much, huh?"

No, not much. And not nearly enough.
 

FIVE
-♦-

As we drove back to Peabody, Hanna caressed Vickie, making reassuring noises about cat heaven. Vickie’s crying became lower and thicker until she dropped off to sleep in her mother’s arms. I asked Hanna about Vickie’s seeing a doctor in case of insomnia or nightmares. Hanna said she would call a pediatrician to see if the child should have some medicine for sleeping.

Then I needed some further information.

"Hanna, I know this isn’t going to be easy for you, but Chris mentioned that Roy had been seeing a nurse?"

She stopped stroking Vickie’s hair and gazed out through the windshield. "Yes."

"From Samaritan Hospital?"

“Yes."

“Do you know her name?"

Hanna didn’t reply for a minute. I didn’t prod her.

She said, "Sheilah Kelley."

 "Can you describe her?"

"Tall, red hair, very red." Hanna looked out the side window. "Good figure, like me before Vickie."

"Do you know when she works there?"

"From four o’clock to midnight, I think."

I left it there, and we rode in silence the rest of the way.

* * *

The Seaway is one hell of a road for views. Driving north, first you see Swampscott harbor, then just open ocean. Finally, as the shoreline curves eastward, the jagged horizon of the Boston skyline rises ten miles south and west.

Number 13 was on the waterside of the street. The BMW 633i was black inside and out. It stood sleek and taut in the driveway. closest to the garage doors. Behind it sat a little brown Toyota Tercel, nestled close but still blocking the sidewalk a bit. The Teroel had a Samaritan Hospital parking decal on its rear window.

I pulled fifty yards past the driveway, executed a three-point turn, and looked at my watch. Almost 3:15. I studied the house while I waited.

It was a tri-level contemporary, with a faked cupola and widow’s walk at the third floor. The exterior sported cedar shake shingles and a deck on my side of the house that seemed to sweep around behind it and toward the ocean. I guessed it at four bedrooms, three baths, and way, way over the $150,000 appraisal. For my purposes, I especially liked the deck; they usually had sliding glass doors at the back leading into the living room.

At 3:25, a tall redheaded woman blew through the front doorway and hurried toward the Tercel. She wore nurses’ whites and was fastening the two top buttons as she fumbled for her car keys. She jumped in, backed out, and sped off I waited fifteen more minutes, then strolled over to the house.

The view from the deck ran the gamut from harbor to skyline. I didn’t see the speed racer, but it probably was berthed at one of the clubs where Marsh had a membership. The deck boasted a gigantic gas grill, chichi lounge chairs, and art deco drink stands. Real class. The glass doors were there, too, just a little ajar. Even better.

I slipped into the living room, cool and dark with a cathedral ceiling. A deer’s head was mounted high over the fireplace, crossed hunting rifles between it and the mantel. There were framed photographs of Marsh in various terrains, ritle butt resting pretentiously on a cocked hip and a dead animal’s antlers being propped up unnaturally by various guides. The size of the creatures in the photos surprised me. I thought Roy was more the kind of guy who’d spend his summers clubbing baby seals.

A five-foot projection television screen such as you’d see in a proud sports bar dominated one corner of the room. Around it, I could see a lot of high-tech consoles on black-lacquered shelving. Both audio and video equipment, including a hand-held camera in an unlatched carrying case, a tripod, and at least three video-recorders. I didn’t bother to look for the cassettes memorializing his favorite hunts. When I got to the base of the staircase, I could hear stereo noise drifting down from the second floor, mixed with the sound of water running and drumming intermittently. My boy was taking a shower. I climbed the steps carefully, not wanting vibration to give away what the hi-fi cooperatively covered. The water sound got louder as I entered the master bedroom suite. The sheets on the king-size bed were rumpled and dirty, a fresh, oval stain on them near the center of the mattress. The accordion louvers on the closets were arced outward, clothes tossed everywhere. The door to the master bath was open, probably to allow the music coming from the large speakers on customized stands in two comers of the bedroom to be heard. There was a forty-five-inch television screen in a third corner, with two more VCRs on shelves beneath it. I walked to the threshold and peered in.

Marsh was behind a frosted-glass shower door. I could make out his movements as he lathered and scrubbed himself On the rung of the metal border was a large blue towel. I carefully tugged it off, then stepped back and underhanded it into the bedroom. I eased against a clothes hamper in the corner and waited.

Twenty seconds later, Marsh turned off the water, made a blubbering sound, and slid the door a third of the way on its track, fishing his hand out for the towel. He slapped perspiring glass a few times, and said, "Shit!" Then he yanked the door all the way open. Naked he looked almost starved, about as much fat on him as you’d find in a stick of cornoil margarine.

He had an armored division "Hell on Wheels" tattoo on one bicep and “Born to Kill" on the other. He saw me and jumped, losing his balance in the slippery tub and having to grab and somewhat dislocate the glass door to keep from falling. His genitalia shriveled up to nothing.

"What’s the matter, mighty hunter, Sheilah wear you plumb out?"

He worked his mouth once, then caught his breath. "What the fuck do you—"

"I wanted to have a little talk with you. About your latest safari."

"What?"

"You know, to deepest, darkest Peabody."

Marsh started to come out of the shower, slinging his left leg over the tub wall and making a fist with his right hand. Before he could cock it, I took a quick step forward and jabbed with my index finger hard into the little half-moon hollow we all have just above the breastplate. That tends to scratch the windpipe and made Marsh clumsily step back, tripping on the tub wall and nearly falling again.

His voice croaked. "You . . . got . . . no right . . ."

"You’re a funny guy to be talking about rights, pal. After what you did to your daughter’s pet."

"I got . . . alibi . . ."

"You think old Sheilah’s going to back you when she finds out what you did?"

"Get out."

"Not yet."

Marsh started to come forward again, then his brain took over and he stopped himself.

“You’re learning, Marsh. And so far the tuition hasn’t been too costly. Just a little sore throat."

“What do you . . . want?"

"I want you to behave yourself. I don’t mean about the nurse and all. I mean you leave Hanna and Vickie alone, and leave the divorce stuff to the lawyers to work out."

His voice was returning, and Marsh regained a little vinegar along with it. "Or else what? You’ll break my . . . writing hand, too?"

I walked up to him. He tried, God knows why, to slam the glass door shut in my face. I jammed it with the heel of my shoe, and the glass, unable to stand the torque and impact, shattered, big and little pieces falling down into and around the tub.

Marsh at least had the presence of mind to freeze. I put my hands in my pants pockets and shook them, making the fragments sift down off my legs and onto the floor.

Marsh looked at the bottom of the tub. He had only some small cuts with little springs of blood popping up on his feet and shins, but he was literally surrounded by splinters. "Jesus Christ, how am I supposed . . . to get out of here?"

I backed up. "Good question."

"Come on, man. You gotta get me some shoes . . . or something. I can’t walk out of here in my bare feet."

"Take up your wounds with the nurse when she gets home."

"I’ll get you for—"

"You’ve got a mighty short retention span, Marsh. Let me spell it out for you. Doing the cat today, you stepped outside the rules. You step outside the rules again, boyo, and I’ll play like there are no rules. Understand?"

He didn’t say anything until I was down the stairs. Then he started yelling, “Ow, ow! Goddamn fucking—Ow, ow—You son of a bitch—"

I left by the deck door and whistled on my way back to the Fiat. Just to avoid tempting fate, though, I started right up, made another three-point turn, and drove out the other end of the Seaway so as to avoid going past Natty Bumppo’s front sights.
 

SIX
-• -

“Jeez, John, Felicia Arnold is nipping at my balls over this."

Trying not to picture the metaphor, I put my feet up on the landlord’s coffee table and cradled the phone receiver against my shoulder. "Chris—"

"You saw the kinda guy he is this morning. What the hell were you thinking ot`?"

"Chris, the kinda guy he is we call a sadist, get me? He tortured his little daughter’s pet. Besides, I didn’t do anything to him."

"Felicia says he was covered with cuts."

“Chris, as far as Felicia is concerned, I was never there."

"What?"

"I said as far as Felicia, or anybody else, is concerned, I was never at Marsh’s house. I’ll level with you, but deny it to anybody else."

"John, you broke in!"

"No, I didn’t. The door to the deck was open, and I walked in."

"She says there was blood everywhere."

"The blood came from him slamming the glass shower door on my foot, Chris. I pushed him once, that’s all, and no damage from that."

Chris stopped for a minute, then said, "How come this is just between you and me?"

“Because I don’t like the idea of Marsh doing the cat and then being able to get away with denying it. He’s somebody who doesn’t believe things you just tell him. If I pay him a visit, then deny what I did too, I maybe he’ll get the idea that it’s a two-way street, that if he can go into Hanna’s place anytime he wants, I can do the same to him at his house. Active deterrence, you know?"

"Yeah, well, I just hope you haven’t made matters worse."

"Speaking of making matters worse, what are we going to do about that second appraisal?"

"Just what I need right now."

"I saw it, Chris. The house, I mean. Have you?"

"No. Well, the photos from the appraisal there and all."

"It’s a palace. The Vanderbilt mansion done up in hardwood."

"So?"

"So it’s worth a fortune."

"Yeah, well, is it worth getting a nutcake like Marsh going again?"

"Also the insurance, Chris."

"The insurance?"

"Yeah, on the guy’s life. If I were you, I’d check on that policy with the company that issued it."

"John, how the hell am I supposed to do that? Those kinda records are confidential, at least without going to court."

"Felicia Arnold can have the home office of the insurer itself send you Marsh's coverage."

Chris exhaled noisily. "Okay, okay, I’ll think about it. You got any other marching orders for me?"

I hung up with Chris still a friend, then dialed the Boston police headquarters on Berkeley Street.

"Homicide, Detective Cross."

"This is John Cuddy. The lieutenant in?"

She said, "You haven’t caused enough problems for a while?"

"The courthouse thing?"

"It’s what comes to mind."

"Look, that wasn’t my fault."

"Save it for him."

A gruff gravelly voice, a mixture of Dorchester tough and street black, came on. Not his usual telephone manner. "Somebody post bail for you?"

“Not funny, Lieutenant."

We went around on that a bit, then at a convenient break point I said, “Could you check somebody out for me?"

"I guess so. Name?"

"Roy Marsh. Insurance agent, lives in Swampscott."

"You got anything in particular in mind?"

"I’m thinking he might be partial to the nose candy."

"You talk to the Swampscott PD about him?"

"No."

"How come?"

"Because I don’t know anybody there."

Murphy grunted. "That all you want on him?"

"The guy’s a bad actor." I briefly described what we found at Hanna’s house. Murphy and his wife had always wanted but never had kids of their own.

"Cuddy, I’ll ask around Narcotics, but you come up with anything, I don’t want to see or hear about any vigilante stuff. Dig?"

"I’m just investigating a divorce here, Lieutenant."

He gave me his home number again and told me to call him tomorrow or Sunday.

I put the phone down and did my best to forget Chris’s remark about my maybe having made things worse for Hanna. Just to be sure, I tried her number in Peabody. She was all right: no Roy, no incidents, not even harassment by telephone. I told her that was good news, probably meaning Roy had gotten the anger out of his system. She said she hoped so and thanked me again for helping at the conference. I didn’t mention my trip to Swampscott, and we hung up.

I settled deep into the burlappy couch that is so unexpectedly cushiony and enveloping, it seems to eat people. If I were Roy, and I were going to visit Hanna in retaliation, I’d wait until the nurse was off duty so she could give me another alibi. That left me about six hours, plenty of time for a nap and a drive to Samaritan Hospital.

* * *

Samaritan is located in a North Shore community and treads a tough line. Not supported by state, city, or church, it is always in need of the kind of funding that has no strings attached. It doesn’t usually get what it needs, as is made clear by its fissured parking lot, kiltered sidewalks, and warped linoleum. Having passed the security desk with the last surge of patients’ visitors, I spotted Sheilah Kelley a few minutes later as she pushed a medicine cart toward the children’s ward.

“Excuse me, Nurse Kelley?"

She lurched around, flagging already at the three-quarter point of her shift. Up close, I saw she had brown eyes and more freckles than pale skin around them.

"Can I help you with something?"

"My name’s John Cuddy."

She stiffened and pursed her lips.

"Miss, you know who I am and why I’m here. Is there someplace we can talk privately?"

"Lemme see your badge."

"We’re not allowed to carry one."

"What?"

"In Massachusetts, all we can carry is identification, no badge. Here."

" She looked at it, buying time more than reading or checking anything. Then she turned away, shuttling the cart forward again. As I was about to speak, she said over her shoulder, "End of the corridor. There’s a small playroom. I’ll be with you in ten minutes."

I found it and went inside. The walls were done in early Bozo the Clown. Even stepping carefully, my shoes crunched the innumerable pieces of unnamable board games that lay scattered near a short-legged table. I gently swept a Barbie doll and a G.I. Joe from a Sesame Street floor cushion. Sitting down, I tried not to feel too foolish as I wondered whether Sheilah Kelley was calling Roy Marsh for guidance.

She came in just as I was about to get up to search for her. She leaned against the wall, staying near the door. "Five minutes."

"Why don’t we skip the preliminaries, then. Tell me, did Roy actually have you hold the kitten down, or were you just the wheelman?"

She swallowed hard and tried not to blink. "Roy was with me all afternoon."

"In Swampscott."

"Right."

"In nursing school they must have made you cut into animals, anatomy class and all. Were the animals usually dead first, because Cottontail sure—"

"Stop it!"

She couldn’t stop blinking now, and the tears came even as she brushed them away angrily.I

I spoke more softly. "You work with kids. It’s your job. How could you cover for the guy after what he did?"

She shivered and sank a little, then slid down the wall until her rump hit the floor. She used her arms to hug her knees, lowering her face into them like a sleeping sentry. "He was with me."

Time for a different tack. "How did you meet Marsh?"

She raised her head. "Why do you want to know?"

"Look, I’m not after you. You want to be loyal to Marsh, fine. The truth isn’t going to bring back the cat or make Vickie feel any better. I just want to understand what happened so it won’t happen again."

She said, "It won’t," a little too quickly, then put her head back down.

I said as gently as I could, "You may love him, but you can’t change him."

"Change him." She took a breath, then said, "I met him a few months ago. He drove himself in here, all beat up. I was covering in Emergency, and he was nice to me, sent me flowers for helping him. Then lunch, a drive to the beach. He . . ."

When she didn’t continue, I said, "Ms. Kelley?"

She shook herself all over, like a dog just out of the water. "Look, Mr. Cuddy. I can’t keep you from thinking what you want to think."

“No more than you can keep Roy from doing what he wants to do?"

"I said, nothing more’s going to happen."

"How do you know? What if next time it’s the wife?"

"Look, do you know . . . ? I’m twenty-nine years old, and I feel like ninety-nine. I work myself to sleep five nights a week here. Six years at this place, and I still get Mondays and Tuesdays off How are you supposed to meet people that way? I know Roy has other girls. Plus, my father hates him, hates him for what he’s doing to me. ‘A married man, Sheilah, your mother, God rest her, we never taught you any better than that?' "

"What if next time it’s the child, Sheilah?"

She scrunched her face, like a grotesquely older version of what Vickie had looked like at the vet’s. "There’s nothing I can do! I love him, can’t you see that?"

Unfortunately, she looked so hopeless that I could. I got up and left her, head bobbing slightly as she cried.

I found a pay phone in the lobby and told the Bonham cop who answered that I wouldn’t be at their firing range the next day. The scarecrow at the hospital security desk told me to forget the cafeteria and gave me directions to the nearest diner, where I bought eight Styrofoam cups of tea. I set the bag of cups on the passenger-side floor of the Fiat and drove to Peabody.

At the police station, I spoke briefly with the detective who had responded to the break-in earlier that evening. He said there wasn’t much hope of anything official happening. Not exactly news.

I told him what I’d be doing that night, and he said, "It’s your time, pal." Then he cleared me with the patrol supervisor in case anybody reported my car.

In the darkness, it took a while to find Hanna’s house.
 

SEVEN
-♦-

One thing that must be said for tea: When you’re not used to drinking the stuff, the caffeine really keeps you awake. It also gives you the shakes and urges you to relieve yourself. Often. For the last symptom, the Styrofoam cups are reusable.

I sat and watched Hanna’s place until my eyes glazed over. I perked up when somebody else’s cat scooted into the shrubbery and came out a few seconds later, thrashing something in its mouth and proudly prancing in that successful stalker way. I lost track of him, but thirty minutes later he was back, nosing around the bushes again.

At fifteen past midnight, a car wandered down the street and jumped the curb at a driveway four houses away. A woman stumbled out, obviously drunk. She wore a dark dress that flashed purple in the car’s courtesy light. A guy got out from behind the wheel, playfully fighting her for the front door key and almost forgetting to come back and close the driver-side door. They laughed and groped each other a little too frantically as they finally crossed the threshold.

A few hours later, I jumped when two birds zoomed by the windshield, so fast and so close they could have been a 3-D special effect. I couldn’t remember anything but owls flying at night. Maybe the questing cat had spooked them.

An elderly lady in a bathrobe watched me from a third-floor window across the street. She was peering around a shade, but she had a hall light on somewhere behind her, producing a stark, clear silhouette. When I waved to her, she abruptly let the shade fall back. I expect she went to call the police.

At 3:10, the man who drove the purple dress home came hustling out of her house, trying to knot his tie, put on his jacket, and check his watch all at once. He hopped in, fishtailed out, and took off the way Sheilah Kelley had earlier that afternoon in Swampscott.

Perhaps with equal reason for feeling guilty.

The rain began at 4:15, drops the size of dimes pelting the bugs on the windshield. I tried the wipers once, but I would have had to use them continuously to do much good, which would have been a bit conspicuous. I did my best to peer between the veins of water pulsing down the glass.

At 5:30, the showers abated, and the sky started to lighten. At 6:00 I saw a light go on in Hanna’s apartment. Leaving the car, I disposed of the reused cups in a storm drain and creaked stiffly around the puddles to her door.

* * *

“You should not have stayed in a car all the night."

"I was afraid Roy might be back."

"On the telephone, you tell me he would not."

"I didn’t want to chance being wrong."

Hanna set a glass of milk next to me: She reached over the counter and absently pulled a box of dry cat food from a cabinet. Shaking it like a dinner bell, she caught herself, said, "Oh," and put it in the trash.

She said, "At least you could knock on the door and come inside here."

"Roy was mad enough at you already. I didn’t want him to think there was something else he should get even about."

She added milk to her coffee and joined me at the table. "Vickie is still asleep. From the doctor’s pills."

When Hanna raised her eyes to me, I thought I saw a glimmer marked "invitation." I thought of the guy with the woman in the purple dress. I said, "How is Vickie doing?"

She sighed. "The same. She wakes up and she cries. A little less each time, maybe."

"Time will heal it."

"Yes. Time." She stirred her coffee unnecessarily.

"Can I ask a question?"

"Sure."

"Chris said he would help me without any money."

"That doesn’t sound like a question."

"I called two lawyers in Swampscott before I . . . left. They both say they would not talk to me without money."

"A retainer?"

"Yes. A retainer which I don’t get back if I don’t have them as my lawyer."

"And?"

"I don’t want to be . . . She stopped stirring, fixing me with an unhappy look. "John, do you think Chris is a good lawyer for me? And Vickie."

Uh—oh. "Why?"

"Yesterday. In the office with Roy and his lawyer. I got . . . I think maybe Chris was not so willing to fight for me. Us."

"Hanna, I’m pretty ignorant about divorce. It does seem to me you ought to get a lot from Roy, but how much is right, or enough, I don’t know."

"Yes." She went back to the coffee. "I’m sorry."

"There’s nothing to be sorry about."

"Chris tries to help me for no money, and I worry he’s no good. You try to help me for no money, and I try to make you tell me about Chris." She got up and ran tap water into her mug. "I’m sorry."

I floated out a change of subject. "Hanna, I think I know a faster way than time to cheer Vickie up."

She turned around, canting her head to the side.

* * *

"Oh, Mommie, she’s so cute!"

Vickie was sitting on an aluminum folding chair, next to a honeycomb of cages, each one containing three or four kittens. The one on her lap had rolled over onto its back, writhing and purring in ecstasy as Vickie stroked its belly. Long hair of half a dozen colors, gene pool courtesy of Cuisinart. It was about as unlike Cottontail as it could be and still be called a cat.

Hanna kneeled down to scratch between its ears. Remembering Nancy’s comment about an animal shelter in Salem, I had called the vet who’d helped us yesterday, and she’d given me the name and address. The shelter volunteer we’d met at the door came over to us and said, "You’re welcome to take any of the other kitties out of their cages, too."

Vickie lowered her torso protectively over the tiny animal. "No, no! This is the one."

The volunteer smiled. I said, "Looks like we’ve got a sale."

"The IRS says we have to call it a ‘donation.' Why don’t you stay here while I finish with someone else at the desk? I’ll just be a minute."

As she walked away, my eye was caught by a dog in one of the larger cages. He was some kind of terrier cross, maybe with a pointer. His legs were too long, his body too short, and he had a coarse, off-white coat with uneven orange blotches and scraggly whiskers. It was the look on his face that got me, though. A look that implied he knew he was an orphan, but not cute and cuddly, and therefore doomed to remain one. I turned away and hoped the volunteer would hurry.

I drove Hanna, Vickie, and replacement cat "Rocky" (don’t even ask) home. Hanna insisted I stay for dinner, and through the kitchen window I watched Vickie play with her new pet in the small backyard. Nerida, Chris’s former client who owned the building, came out and cooed and dangled a length of yarn that Rocky batted incessantly. Vickie was delighted.

"Thank you," said Hanna, cutting some vegetables into a steaming pot behind me.

"She’s going to be all right."

"Soon."

Half an hour later, Hanna called Vickie for dinner, and the three of us sat down to family-recipe soup and bread. About midway through Hanna said, "You were in the army, John?"

"Yes."

"Overseas?"

"For a while."

"Germany?"

"No, Vietnam."

"Oh." She didn’t say that it was too bad that Roy hadn’t gone there and I to Germany, but she was thinking it.

After supper, I tried to reach Murphy but got no answer at his home number. I slept for about five hours on Hanna’s couch. She tried to convince me to
stay in the house this time, but I insisted on the car, calling the Peabody police to let them know I’d still be there.

By 11:30, I was back behind the wheel of the Fiat. Hanna had fixed me a thermos of tea with lemon, which I stood upright on the passenger’s bucket. On the floor near the pedals was an old tin saucepan that she wordlessly had handed me on my way out the door

Purple dress rolled in with a different guy, but he was too short to be Marsh in disguise. Aside from that diversion, Saturday night made Friday look like New Year’s Eve.
 

EIGHT
-♦-

I had Sunday lunch with Hanna and Vickie, Rocky mauling a catnipped cloth mouse in the corner of the kitchen. By then, I was fairly sure that Marsh had decided to take the hint I’d dropped at his house, and I left Peabody around 2:00 P.M..

Driving into Boston, I circled my block a few times to be sure old Roy hadn’t decided to shift his aim to me. I parked behind my building and trudged up the stairs. I tried Nancy’s number first, but apparently she wasn’t back from New York yet. I reached Murphy’s home, his wife calling to him to leave the grill alone for a while and come talk to me.

"Cuddy?"

"Hi, Lieutenant?

"We got company for barbecue, so I don’t have too much time."

"Shoot."

"Your boy Marsh, Roy M., stirred some interest."

"How so?"

"Seems my friend in Narcotics has some photos of Marsh in the company of one J. J. Braxley."

"This Braxley a cocaine dealer?"

"Call him a distributor."

"Big-time?"

"Dawk—that’s my narcotics man, Ned Dawkins--he didn’t seem to think so. Braxley’s a Crucian."

"As in Saint Croix?"

"Right. Come up from the island in the early seventies, set up shop. Not oversmart, but enough careful and enough lucky to stay out of the big shit so far. Probably deals with a white dude like your Marsh just to spread the snow line a little farther north without a whole lot of risk."

"Thanks, Lieutenant?

"Cuddy, you remember what I said to you. And don’t you be messing with Braxley, either. Old J .J. like to use the muscle, and his hired help’d scare the Fridge off the football field."

"Good to know."

"I got a round of drinks to make here. Anything else?"

"Yeah. I’ve got to requalify at the range tomorrow. Can you put in a good word for me?"

I think he was laughing as he hung up.

The couch felt so good I figured I’d doze off for a while. I woke up at 9:15 P.M., hungry but still blurry after my two nights sitting upright. I heated some canned chili and put half of a frozen French baguette on top of the pot lid to defrost. I washed things down with a couple of Killian’s Irish Red ales, tried Nancy again without success, and went to sleep in a real bed for a change.

* * *

To get to the Boston Police Revolver Range, you drive south on the Expressway to Neponset Circle, then over the bridge to Quincy Shore Drive. At a traffic light, you turn onto East Squantum Street, bearing left all the way and enjoying an unusual aspect of Dorchester Bay and the city behind it. You feel as though you’re driving on a deserted causeway, winding toward some abandoned lighthouse. Then, just after several large water locks, you see the range compound, technically on a harbor chunk called Moon Island. I parked next to the one-story bungalow with the police department’s blue-on-white sign.

Inside, the range officer took my name and told me to have a seat. He was about fifty-five, with curly gray hair and a soft-spoken manner. Handing me a duplicate of the instruction sheet you get at the licensing unit back at headquarters, he suggested I review it while he got some ammunition.

In Massachusetts, the right to carry a concealed firearm is governed by the police of the municipality in which you reside. You have to have reasonable grounds for needing a permit, and Boston’s live-fire test involves shooting thirty rounds at various distances. All in the bull’s eye would be a perfect 300. To pass, you need 210 points, a 70 percent score. Basically, that means hitting a roughly chest-size target with most of your thirty bullets. The problem is, if you shoot less than 2lO, you have to wait six months before you can try again.

The officer came back to me with an old tomato can in his hand. He took me out through a rear door, passing under the large-print sign that spelled out Boston Police Rule 303 ("The Use of Deadly Force is Permitted: . . ."). We walked toward the numbered asphalt firing stations at the close edge of the range.

No one else was in sight. The blue target holders were posted about twenty-five yards away against a high reddish brown barrier and an even higher earth berm behind it.

The officer placed the can on the ground and unholstered his revolver. After checking to be sure the cylinder was empty, he stuck his fingers into and through the gun’s frame to keep the cylinder swung out and safe. I slowly drew the four-inch Combat Masterpiece I had carried.

He said, “No, sir. You’ll use my weapon. I’ll be handing you the cartridges as appropriate. Please keep the barrel pointed downrange at all times and deposit the spent casings in the can."

I returned my piece to its holster and took his, keeping my fingers through the frame as he had.

"We’l1 move downrange now to the seven-yard line. You’ll be firing twelve rounds from there."

We came to a stop at the target distance from which over half of the actual police gun battles are fought.

"All six shots have to be fired one-handed, double-action. Do you understand what that means?"

"Yes."

"You can practice a few dry-fires with the weapon if you want."

"No, thanks." He doled out six bullets to me, and I loaded them.

"You may fire when ready."

I put my left hand in my pants pocket, assumed a bent-L arrangement with my feet, and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. I inhaled again, aimed, and began to exhale, pulling the trigger without cocking the hammer. I repeated the procedure, including the deliberate breathing, five more times.

"Make it safe."

I swung the cylinder out, and we walked to the target.

He said, "Four tens, a nine, and an eight."

Back at the seven-yard line, I fired another string of six. Five tens and a nine.

As we moved to the fifteen-yard line, he said, "You have any prior experience?"

"With guns?"

"Uh-huh."

“Military Police. Mostly forty-fives."

He nodded.

"Weapon as finely balanced and maintained as yours would make anybody look better."

Another nod.

I fired my next three strings single-action, two-handed, with my feet spread wide and my shoulders and trunk hunched down in what’s usually called the combat stance. My point total came to 289. We returned to the bungalow, and the officer certified my score in a logbook.

He handed me the necessary paperwork and shook my hand. "Hope we’ll be seeing you again in five years, Mr. Cuddy."

I said thank you and decided it was the first time he’d actually smiled since I’d met him.

* * *

After the second ring, I heard, "Nancy Meagher."

"As a watchful taxpayer, I’d like to know why you’re not guarding the common weal in court."

"Oh, hi, John. As a matter of fact, I should be, but after I broke my neck to catch the dawn shuttle back from La Guardia, the judge I’m trying before was in a fender bender this morning and still hasn’t arrived."

"Wil1 this screw up dinner tonight‘?"

"No way. Just drop by a little after six-thirty and see the guard in the first-floor lobby. I’ll come down as soon as he tells me you’re here."

"See you then."

“Oh, John?"

"Yes?"

“Thanks for calling."

“Don’t thank me. It’s good to hear your voice."

“Bye, John."

I hung up the receiver and looked at my watch. Plenty of time for a quick lunch and a visit before going in to the office.

* * *

I’m glad about Nancy, John.

"Me, too. I think."

There’s always going to be some uncertainty, you know.

"I know." I laid the baby tulips, mixed yellow and white, longways to her, just outside the shadow the marker threw.

You’ve seen enough of people who won ’t move forward with their lives.

I thought of what Roy was doing to Hanna and Vickie and said, "I’m working on a miserable case, kid. Divorce."

I thought you didn’t do them.

"So did I. But it’s a favor for Chris Christides."

Chris. Chris and Eleni.

"Right. She’s no better, though. In fact, she’s much worse. In a wheelchair now and so old, old and worn." I squatted down beside the flowers. The topmost bud had opened a little, and the wind off the harbor bent the petals, like a moistened finger on the page of a book. "Remember how Chris used to revolve around her, spend all his time describing what new American thing she’d seen or learned?"

My mother used to say that.

"What?"

That you know you love people when you think of past times in terms of events in their lives rather than your own.

"I’m not sure Eleni and Chris qualify anymore."

Oh, I ’m sorry.

"Yeah, me too."

I looked down the slope to the water. Two people with nothing better to do on a Monday than sail seemed to be racing each other as a low-slung, enormous freighter of some kind, black except for the rust patches, sloughed past them. The sailboats, probably twenty-five feet each, looked like tiny moths fluttering around a shambling old dog.

John, do you think Eleni is close?

She didn’t have to say close to what. "I don’t know much about MS. Just that it takes a long time to take you."

A minute passed, then: If there’s a time you think it would help, tell Eleni that afterwards isn’t so bad.

* * *

I backed and hauled, a half-turn of the wheel at a time, into the pitiful parking space in the alley behind my office building on Tremont Street. I could barely open the driver’s door because of the Dempster Dumpster and the fringe of near-miss trash around it. In downtown Boston, however, a manageable slot for a car is nothing to get mad at. Plus, with the Fiat there, I could drive to the condo to shower and change before picking Nancy up for dinner.

I used the stairs to my office, which smelled musty when I unlocked the door and scooped up the mail. I left the door open and pulled up one of my windows, enjoying the bustle of the Common and letting the refreshing air cross-ventilate the room. I’d let slide two reports on insurance scams, so I wrote them out longhand; the claims departments involved would have them typed and returned to me for signature. After the reports, I read a letter request from a concerned mother in Kentucky. She believed that her Marbrey, aged fifteen, had run off to Boston and would get in more trouble than a rooster at a fox farm. Finding my name in a telephone directory at the library in Lexington, she trusted me because she once knew an honest storekeeper over to Clay City named Cuddy who came from back east somewheres. Enclosed was a weathered family photograph (with a penciled arrow pointing to a boy who couldn’t have been older than ten) and a postal money order for $100. She didn’t include a telephone number. I wrote her back a polite letter, returning the photo and the money order and suggesting that she contact me if she could assemble the laundry list of information I requested.

I called Hanna, who said that she’d seen no sign of Roy and that Vickie really loved her new kitty. I told I her I thought the worst was over and that the divorce would probably go as smoothly as those things could. I hung up, tried Chris’s number, and got him on the third ring.

"Christides."

"Chris, John Cuddy."

"Jeez, what have you done now?"

"Nothing, Chris. That’s why I was calling, to see if you needed anything else."

"Anything else? Listen, I got plenty now. A driving-under tomorrow morning with a guy whose Breathalyzer shoulda belonged to a beer vat, another closing with that bank—"

"Chris, Chris, nice and easy. Any progress on Hanna’s case?"

"No, and if I don’t have anything better to tell Felicia Arnold than what you gave me on Friday, I don’t see any."

"What do you mean?"

"Marsh is still saying you roughed him up."

"Believe me, I barely touched him. His wounds are a self-inflicted."

"Yeah, well, you gotta remember that I’m telling Felicia—to cover your ass at your request, remember—that you weren’t even there."

"That’s right. Just like Marsh wasn’t there at Hanna’s house."

"Jeez, John, enough with the cat, all right? Anyway, Felicia says that while her client would have been, quote, ‘reasonable and flexible,' your ‘unprovoked V attack’ has changed all that."

“Chris, what are you saying?"

"I’m saying she’s saying they’re gonna litigate it now, understand me? No settlement, trial all the way."

And no easy ten thousand for Hanna’s lawyer.

"Chris, first ot` all you’ve got to see this for what it is."

"For what what is'?"

"Felicia Arnold’s ‘let’s litigate’ talk. For God’s sake, you said yourself you’ve got him on adultery."

"Yeah, but—"

"And I’ve got him even tighter."

"You do?"

"That’s right."

"On what?"

I thought about whether I wanted Chris to know exactly what I had. "No details, yet. Just take my word for it. Marsh can’t litigate this case. You push for the house, and they’ll fold on it."

"Push for the house." He made a gargling noise. "John, do you have any idea how much paperwork I’ll have to do on that? Jeez, I can get my client a quick fifty-five, plus probably a car and enough furniture to set up in a nice apartment, maybe—"

"Chris, your client doesn’t want an apartment. She wants the house, for her and Vickie, and I don’t blame her. Look," I said, stretching a point, "I told her you were a tiger in these kinds of cases. You push the other side, and push hard. They’ll give in, hell, they’ll beg you to take the house and probably pay you twice. the fee they trotted out on Friday."

"Twice?"

"Guaranteed."

"I don’t know."

"Trust me, Chris. They don’t dare fight. And if they keep giving you trouble, I’ll call Marsh—"

"Jeez, John———"

"——I said I’d call him, and have a little talk with him about stuff he doesn’t want aired in court. No more trouble unless he starts it."

The conversation wound down from there. Replacing the receiver, I tried not to think about the pulling guard I’d known in college.

I worked for another hour or so, doing bills and the assorted other trivia that had piled up. At 5:10, I closed up and went downstairs. The rush hour crowd was just filling Tremont as I walked around two corners and into the little alley. My car was the only one left. The building threw a deep shadow, and my eyes were slow to adjust, as though I were plunging into a tunnel on a sunny day. Digging into my pocket for the car keys, I heard a little shuffling noise in the ground trash next to the dumpster. I thought, "Rats, I knew we’d get rats." Then something hit me just behind my right ear and night fell somewhat early.

* * *

The sweet scent of Creamsicle. Actually, somewhat turned Creamsicle. I started to sit up, but lost my balance and banged my head on something metallic and heavy. A wave of nausea swept over me, and I rolled over instinctively. I threw up two good ones, then followed with some dry heaves as the complex stench of the surrounding air caught up with me and my other senses kicked in. My face and hands felt wet and sticky and the support under my palms and knees was uncertain, here sharp and unyielding, there soft and mushy.

I was lying in garbage.

I slowly braced my legs, got a good purchase with one arm, and strained until I got up. I was next to the dumpster, grabbing the lid and causing it to clang against some chain-restraint. It was twilight. I looked at my watch: 9:10. Shit, Nancy—wait a minute.

I still had my watch. I reached for my wallet. All there but the cash. My ear and house keys still in the other pocket. Around the back—uh-oh. No gun. Cash and firearm. A mugger, but a pro.

The Fiat was still where I’d left it. I gingerly probed the back of my head and brought my hand around for inspection. Lots of refuse colors, but no bright red. If I’d been cut by whatever hit me, it was closed and dried.

Playing a couple of coordination games, I could make all my limbs work, and I was seeing only the right number of fingers. I drove the ten or so blocks home like a fastidious drunk, taking double the usual time to get there. Up in the apartment, I tried to call Nancy, but her line was busy. Twice.

I considered reporting the missing gun. Then I thought about the details the cop who answered would want. Chewing four aspirin, I decided tomorrow would be plenty of time.

As things turned out, it wasn’t.
 

NINE
-♦-

Ironically, I was awakened by a garbage truck clanking and grinding its way down the alley behind the condo. I had focused on calling Nancy when I heard the pounding at my front door. I got up, just dizzy enough to have to use both hands to guide me through the bedroom doorway.

"Who is it?"

"Murphy. Open up."

I unlocked the door. There was a youngish guy in a cheap suit standing behind Murphy. The young one eased his hand out from under his coat when he saw I couldn’t be carrying. He had a ruddy complexion and that unformed, almost larval lack of features that some cops have.

Murphy said, "Cuddy, I ever ask you to do something without a reason?"

"Not that I know of."

"This is Detective Guinness. He works Homicide with Lieutenant Holt’s squad. They want to talk with you."

"What about?"

"Now, pal," said Guinness.

Murphy spoke to him without turning his head.

"Guinness, I hear you talk one more time before I’m finished . . ."

"Sorry, Lieutenant."

"Why don’t you two come in and sit down while I get dressed?"

I half expected Guinness to check my windows for a fire escape. I left the bedroom door open as they went into the living room. Putting on some comfortable clothes, I tried to think things through. I didn’t like Murphy’s being on edge. I especially didn’t like his showing up with a cop from another lieutenant’s squad.

Murphy was sitting on the couch, Guinness standing close to the front door, hands in pockets. I said, "Now, what’s this all about?"

Murphy said, "There’s been a killing. They want to talk with you."

"Who was killed?"

Murphy addressed Guinness. “You listen to what I tell this man so Holt hears it the same from both of us." Then to me, "Roy Marsh ended up dead last night. With a hooker."

I shook my head.

Murphy said, "When Marsh’s name came up, I told Holt that I checked around on the guy at your request. Including my talk with Ned Dawkins from Narcotics." Guinness seemed about to speak when Murphy said, "That’s all I can tell you."

"Can I make a phone call first?"

"When we get there," said Guinness.

* * *

Murphy left us at the elevator. Guinness took me down the hall, slowing his pace near a couple of older guys who watched us from a bench. One wore thick glasses and seemed washed out and boozy. The other one had a black patch tied over one eye but appeared alert.

Guinness shunted me into an interrogation room. Green metal table, three chairs, no window. A tall, slim black lolled in one of the chairs. He was dressed in street clothes, as in living-on-the-street clothes. Guinness said, "This is Sergeant Dawkins. He’s gonna be present while we talk. Wait here till I get the lieutenant." Guinness closed the door behind him.

"John Cuddy," I said to Dawkins.

"No surprise there." He tipped his head back till the top ridge of the seat supported his neck, then let his arms hang limply.

A long two minutes later, Guinness swung open the door and held it for a shorter, thickset guy in his late forties. He had steel gray hair cropped so short that it seemed to be growing upward over his ears. “He had his rights?"

"In the car, Lieutenant."

Looking at me, the new arrival said, "My name’s Holt." He laid a file folder on the table. Some documents were in it but there was no labeling on it. It appeared he wasn’t going to wait for a stenographer. A good sign, meant to show me we were all just allies here, debriefing each other informally. Right. Holt said, "I hear Murphy told you that Marsh and
a hooker are dead."

"No."

"What?"

"I said, no. All Murphy told me was that Marsh was found dead with a hooker. Nothing about her being dead, too."

Holt squared his shoulders. "I’m tired, Cuddy. And I don’t want any shit from you."

"You want anything from me, you better talk nicer."

Guinness came forward, Holt stopping him with a palm on the chest. Dawkins looked as bored as an usher at a long-running movie. '

"Murphy says you’re a wiseass but that you’ll cooperate."

"Ask your questions."

“Where were you last night, seven to nine P.M.?"

"Sleeping against a Dempster Dumpster."

"What?"

I explained about the mugging.

Guinness said, "Who saw you?"

"Far as I know, nobody."

Holt said, "Let me get this straight. You leave your office at five-ten, when Tremont Street looks like fire drill time at the fucken anthill, and nobody sees you get hit?"

"Like I said, my car was parked around back, in the alley, in the shadows."

"The only car there when you got to it."

"Right."

"And this mugger was waiting for you."

"Right."

"Only one car there, the guy musta been waiting for you in particular."

"Maybe. Maybe just for the one person he could nail at that time of day without attracting attention."

"Why didn’t you report the gun?"

"I told you, I was punchy, still a little sick. When I got home, I just fell into bed."

Guinness said, "You didn’t go to the hospital."

"No."

"Or call a doctor."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I’ve been hit before. My coordination and all seemed okay."

Holt said, “Let’s have a look at the head."

I touched my chin to my chest as he examined behind my ear. I jumped when he hit the spot. Holt said, "Not much of a bruise."

"It did the trick."

"Pretty easy to whack yourself there, you know I how."

"So?"

"So why should we think all this went down the way you say it did?"

"Look, you think I killed Marsh and the prostitute, right?"

“So far."

Holt said, "When we found out who Marsh was, we called his house. His girlfriend answered. Before she went nuts with the crying, we got his lawyer’s name out of her."

"And Felicia Arnold told you Marsh and I didn’t exactly hit it off at the divorce conference."

Guinness said, “She told us more—"

Holt cut him off. "It goes a little deeper than that, Cuddy." He fished in his folder, came out with a mug shot, and spun it by a corner over to me.

I looked down at it. Front and profile of an attractive, dark-haired woman in her late twenties. She was wearing a garish red-and-white-striped blouse and an exasperated expression.

Guinness said, "Know her?"

"No."

"Street name’s Teri Angel. Pimp’s name is Nino, but he says she was free-lancing last night."

"And Angel’s the dead hooker?"

"Let’s just say she was known to blow more than kisses."

"I still don’t know her."

"You don’t know her."

"No."

"She was found dead in the Barry Hotel."

The Barry was a run-down joint near South Station. “Their restaurant’s really slipped the last
few years."

“Yeah, only she didn’t order nothing from room service. Shot, she was. Near naked."

"Dissatisfied customer?"

"We don’t think so. Bellhop tells us Marsh was one of her regulars. Saw him coming in that night with a suitcase."

"Suitcase?"

"Uh-huh."

“Was Marsh done with the same gun?"

"No, he wasn’t shot. He took a swan dive from the window."

“Didn’t strike me as the suicide type."

"You tell us."

"Lieutenant, I wasn’t there, all right? Any marks on him?"

Guinness laughed. "You kidding? The guy went through the glass on the twelfth floor. Somebody hits the ground from that high, if it wasn’t wearing clothes, you wouldn’t know it was human."

Holt said, "Except it wasn’t."

"I don’t get you."

"Marsh. He wasn’t wearing clothes. Just bandages on his feet, briefs, and a pair of those latex stretch gloves.".

"Lovely."

"Yeah. We figure him and the Angel were doing beautiful things together when somebody interrupted them."

I said, "Look, Marsh came on like a piece of shit, but I wasn’t about to kill him."

"Your gun, Cuddy."

"What?"

Guinness said, "Was your gun did the Angel."

"How do you know?"

"Registration number, you stupid shit. Computer matched you right off."

"You mean you found the gun at the scene?"

“On the floor, by the window. But we didn’t find Marsh’s clothes."

"His clothes."

"That’s right. No clothes, his or the Angel’s. And no suitcase."

I thought for a minute. "If` he didn’t have any clothes, how’d you ID him?"

Guinness said, "Thought you might wonder about that."

I turned back to Holt. "Lieutenant?"

"We found his wallet. On the floor in the closet, like maybe it fell out of his pants when they were hanging up."

"Before his pants pulled the disappearing act."

“Yeah."

Guinness said, “We also didn’t find his stuff."

"What stuff?"

Holt said, "His cocaine stuff."

"That’s where I come in," said Dawkins, speaking for only the second time. "Homicide here like to know why you killed Marsh and the fox. Me, I’d like to know what you did with a quarter-million street value of J. J. Braxley’s snow."

I put my head down, taking a couple of deep breaths. "Somebody set me up."

Guinness said, "Sure they did."

"Think about it, will you? I get knocked out, they take my gun, kill Angel here and Marsh, and leave the weapon there to link me with a guy I already didn’t like."

Holt said, "Or you fake the hit on the head, toss Marsh through the window, and lose the Angel as a witness."

“And leave my righteous gun at the scene?"

Holt and Guinness exchanged glances, Dawkins kept his eyes on me.

Holt said, "You don’t have a righteous gun anymore, my friend."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you didn’t report the loss of your gun like you were supposed to, and the commissioner has pulled your license to carry."

“Just like that."

"The statute says he can do it ‘for cause’ and ‘at his will’."

"I told you why I didn’t report it."

"The statute also says ‘forthwith.' You lose it or get it stolen, you’re supposed to report it ‘forthwith,' not when you fucken get around to it."

Guinness said, "That means we catch you with a piece, you’re gone for a year, pal. No deal, no parole, no way 0ut."

I said, "Your theory is I do those things with a registered weapon instead of a throwaway, then leave the registered piece on the floor somewhere?"

Guinness said, "You got surprised, and—"

"I had a date scheduled with Nancy Meagher last night."

Holt said, "The assistant D.A.?"

"That’s right. Because of getting hit, I stood her up. Tried to call her but never got through."

"You try to call her, but you’re too punchy to report the gun, is that it?"

"That’s it."

"So?"

"So your theory is I plan to ace Marsh, and do this Angel in the bargain, leave my traceable gun at the scene, then don’t show up for a date with an assistant D.A. and don’t even warn her."

"You panicked. Didn’t think it through till this morning? '

I jerked my head toward the door and immediately regretted it. Massaging behind my ear, I said, "And what about the little show-up outside there?"

"What show-up?"

"The two pensioners on the bench. The ones you brought in from the Barry. They live there or what?"

No response.

I said, "Either way, Lieutenant, they didn’t make me, did they? You had a little talk after Guinness al waltzed me past them, and neither one ever saw me before."

Guinness picked at his teeth. Holt and Dawkins just watched me.

"C’mon, Lieutenant. Somebody set me up, somebody who wanted Marsh dead."

Dawkins said, "Or the Angel."

Holt said to him, "The Angel?"

Dawkins said, "Yeah. Somebody wants the Angel dead, he just have to appreciate how Cuddy here have it in for Marsh." Dawkins treated me to a sugary smile. " ’Course, I’d still like to know where J.J.’s stuff got to, and so will he."

* * *

Holt let me go, warning me to stay available and not to call Nancy until they had checked my story with her. I went up the hall and by the corner to Murphy’s office. Nobody I recognized was around, so I walked up to his door and knocked.

"Yeah."

I entered, closing the door behind me.

Murphy looked up from a file he was reading. "Get out."

"Lieutenant, I wanted to thank you."

"I’m not supposed to be talking with you."

"You must have told Holt I wouldn’t have done Marsh that stupidly. Otherwise, with what he had on my gun, he would have held me awhile."

"Cuddy, I will not talk with you about another squad’s case. Now get out."

"This mean I can’t get a look at the jacket on this?"

Murphy snapped the folder closed and came up out of his chair, shoulders hunched. "You fucking asshole! You did me a favor, fine, I do you one. Ask around on this guy Marsh. But then the guy turns up dead, and it smells so much like you I’m afraid to shit. Things develop, it does look too stupid for you, but how am I supposed to explain that to Holt, huh? Am I supposed to say, ‘Nah, couldn’t have been Cuddy, man. I seen Cuddy set up a killing, even covered him on it, and it was nothing like this’?"

"Lieutenant, I promised you something that time. I promised you I’d never do anything like that in your jurisdiction. Believe me, I didn’t."

Murphy sank back down in his chair and reopened the file, trying to find his place."‘Get out. I’m not gonna say it again."
 

TEN
-♦-

I hiked home to clear my head. Once there, I called Nancy’s office, but the secretary said she was in court. I asked if Detective Guinness was there, and the secretary said, yes, would I like to speak with him? I told her no thanks and said I’d try again later.

Chris answered on the second ring.

"Chris, this is John Cuddy. I have to see you."

"Jeez, John, the cops already called me. l heard about Marsh on the late news."

"Can we talk if I get there in the next hour?"

"Oh, John, I’m up to my ears . . ."

"I’ll be there by noontime, Chris. Don’t go anywhere I can’t find you." I hung up, cleaned up, and went down to the car.
* * *

I pushed open the door to Chris’s waiting room. Sitting in one of the plastic chairs was a man with black wavy hair and a dark complexion. He wore a crudely cut suit with a narrow-collared white shirt and no tie. He watched me, collapsing a tissue-thin, crinkly newspaper with headlines in what looked like the Greek alphabet. As he was about to say something, Chris stuck his head out from the office.

"C’mon in, John. I hope this won’t take too long. I’m really up to my—"

"It won’t take long." I followed Chris into his office as the man in the chair followed me with his eyes.

* * *

“His name’s Fotis. Eleni’s cousin."

"He doesn’t look too good for business, glaring in your reception area like that."

"What can I do, John? She’s really rattled by this i Marsh thing, not that I blame her. I’m in and out a lot, I so she feels safer with Fotis and Nikos here for a while."

"Nikos another cousin?"

"Right. He’s with Eleni. In the kitchen."

I didn’t respond, so Chris said, "So, what can I do for you?"

I settled back in my chair. "You can explain why you didn’t let on that Marsh was into the drug trade when you hired me."

Chris moved his tongue around against the inside of his cheek. "John, I didn’t have any proof of that. Just the wife’s say-so, for chrissake. I might have tried to use it if things went bad at the settlement conference, but the way we were going . . ."

"Chris, you asked me to bodyguard because you were afraid of the guy. It might have been nice for you to warn me about what you suspected instead of giving me that 'insurance salesman’ line."

"John, I’m telling you, I didn’t know for sure. Christ, you’d think I’d been a customer of his or something."

"Were you?"

"Oh, John, c’mon .

"Look, Chris, somebody set me up, understand? Somebody who knew enough about Marsh, and me, to see me as a good patsy. Now that isn’t a whole lot of people."

"What do you mean, set up?"

I explained about the mugging and the cops’ visit to my door. When I got to the gun, Chris said, "Holy shit."

“Now do you see what I mean?"

Chris kneaded his hands. "Jeez, John, I’m sorry. When the cops called, they didn’t say anything about the gun." He looked away. "So somebody hits you and then plants your gun in the room. God in heaven."

"Chris, who knew about my blowup with Marsh at Felicia Arnold’s office?"

"Aw, I don’t know. Felicia, Hanna. I told Eleni a little bit about it."

“What about that guy in Arnold’s office?"

“What guy?"'

"I think his name was Paul Troller."

"Oh, he’s . . . Look, I don’t know him too well, you understand? But he isn’t the first young stud lawyer Felicia’s hired, if you get my drift."

"Any reason he’d have for doing Marsh?"

"Jeez, John, how would I know? Wait a minute. When did you say you got mugged?"

“Maybe five-fifteen, give or take a couple of minutes."

Chris shook his head. "No, that lets Troller out."

"Why?"

"The county bar association dinner was last night over in Salem, and they always, do a cocktail thing beforehand. Troller was on line, a couple people in front of me, ordering a drink."

"And what time was this?"

"No later than five-thirty. I remember thinking that if the bartender didn’t speed things up, I’d never get another round in before dinner."

"What about Felicia?"

"Didn’t see her. But I talked with her this morning, and I can’t see how she could have anything to do with it."

"What did you talk about?"

"What do you think? Marsh’s dying kinda screwed things up for me, you know."

"I don’t follow."

Chris spread his hands on the desk. "Couple decides to get divorced, even if the papers are filed and everything, it isn’t effective till it’s final."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning Marsh’s dying like that ends the divorce action."

"The law makes sense after all."

“You’re not getting it. Hanna doesn’t need me anymore."

"What about the settlement?"

"It’s off. She doesn’t need it now."

“Why not'?"

Chris made a face. "Because she gets everything anyway. Felicia told me this morning Marsh was too fucking cheap to make a will, like to try to disinherit her. You can’t really do that in this state, and some of it is gonna have to go into the kid’s name, but basically everything goes to Hanna like she and Marsh were still lovey-dovey."

"Hanna gets the house?"

"Like I said. Everything."

I thought about somebody putting Marsh through the window and shooting Teri Angel. Then I thought about Hanna’s broad, sturdy body and her determination about the family hearth in Swampscott.

I looked up at Chris, but he was already standing and shrugging into a sports coat that hung very lopsided on him, as if there was a great weight in his pocket. '

"John, I’m sorry, but I really got to get on the road here."

"What’s in the coat?"

"Huh?"

"The pocket."

"Oh." He reached in, then withdrew his hand again. "I got a permit to keep one in the house a long time ago, back when Eleni first . . . got sick and couldn’t move around so good. For burglars, you know? Now this thing’s got Eleni so scared, with drugs and all being involved, that I just carry it around the place, make her feel better."

I tried to catch Chris’s eyes. I’d have bet money he would scare before she would. But all he said as he brushed past me was "Hanna gets everything and I lose a ten-thousand-dollar fee. Jeez, if I went into the hat business, kids’d be born without heads, you know?"

When we walked back into the reception area, Fotis was standing, the paper folded and stuck in one of his jacket pockets. Something else weighed down the other pocket. The partisans’ mountain stronghold. Fotis said, "Eleni want to see you."

Chris stopped. "Hey, Fotis, I gotta get going here."

Fotis said, "Not you. Him."

* * *

Eleni and a not-quite-twin of Fotis were watching a game show on a nine-inch black-and-white in the kitchen. As I drew near, Eleni said, “Nikkie," and the twin reluctantly stood up, clicked off the set, and walked out of the room.

"Sit."

I rested my butt on a stool across from her. She said, "I told you that Marsh, he was a bad man."

"Eleni, somebody made it look like I killed him."

"Why somebody do that?"

"I don’t know."

She let a wise smile crease the side of her face that didn’t twitch. "I think different."

"What do you mean?"

"A bad man, that one. You saw what he done. His own child, a poor little animal. He deserve to die."

"And the girl?"

"A whore."

"They were still people."

Eleni’s chin jutted forward defiantly. "A whore is a whore, and that man, he got what God would do."

"What do you mean?"

"I understand you, John. I know you. If you kill him, I understand."

"Eleni, I didn’t."

She called out "Nikkie," then a few Greek words. She looked up to me with the smile again. "He got what God would do. Nobody should blame you."

* * *

I drove to Swampscott and spotted the STANSFIELD INSURANCE AGENCY sign centered over the doorway of a large white house on the main drag. I parked on the road and admired the condition of the exterior, down to the green shutters and brass hardware. It looked as if fanatic maintenance had prevented the need for extensive restoration.

Just inside the door was a waiting area covered with an intricate Oriental rug and proud captain’s chairs, polished and positioned stiffly. It took a minute to register that the setting looked like one of those rooms in a museum that the public can view only through a sashed-off doorway, "A Typical Sitting Room of the Late Nineteenth Centu1y."

"Can I, uh, help you?"

I turned around and saw a rangy, fortyish man in a button-down oxford shirt, wool Rooster tie, and twill slacks. He looked harried, with one of those long, almost horsey faces that you see in some of the North Shore towns, too many generations of inbreeding around the polo iields. He did exude a sort of rawboned physical strength, the kind that would never look good but never go to fat, either.

"I’m sorry," I said. “I didn’t see any receptionist, so I came on in."

"I’m afraid the agency is, uh, rather closed for the day. We’ve had a, uh, death in the firm."

"I know." There was a kid in my third-grade class who stammered. I extended a hand to try to help him feel at ease. "My name’s John Cuddy."

We shook, his eyes blinking absently. "Cuddy, Cuddy? I’m sorry, but you’re not, uh, one of our insureds, are you?"

"No, I’m not, Mr .... "

“Oh, sorry about that. Stansfield, uh, Bryce Stansfield’s the name."

"I wonder if I could talk with you, Mr. Stansfield."

"I’m afraid—"

"It’s about Roy."

"About Roy?"

"Yes. I’m a detective from Boston, and I’m looking into his murder."

"Uh, well, then." I expected him to ask for some identification. Instead he said, "Come in."

I followed him into a low-ceilinged office with a bay window looking onto the street from behind discreetly filtering curtains. His desk was covered with an avalanche of paperwork. I recognized some application forms moshed in with slim binders and bulkier policies. A word-processing station with a high-backed leather swivel chair dominated a wall where an executive credenza might otherwise rest. Stansfield swung the chair around to its designed position behind his desk and flipped a switch on the station, causing the monitor screen to sigh and implode the chartreuse-on-black lettering like the dying of a soul.

"Sorry for the clutter."

"Secretary on vacation?"

"No, actually I initiate most of the paperwork, and, uh, the absence of staff substantially improves the confidentiality of our work."

I shoveled my way past that and said, "I’d like to know if Marsh had any enemies you’re aware of?"

"Enemies?"

"Yes."

He rubbed his chin with a bony index finger and thumb. "Well, no. No enemies."

"I’m told he made a lot of money through the agency here. That can sometimes lead to bad feel1ngs."

"Roy’s family situation had, uh, deteriorated rather badly recently. But he was an excellent insurance salesman. I don’t believe I, uh, ever had a complaint about him."

"What, about the other salesmen in the agency?"

"Others? There aren’t any others."

"Just you and Marsh?"

"Yes. Well, uh, actually just Roy. He was sort of the outside, customer relations man. He was marvelous at that sort of thing. A lot like my, uh, uncle." Stansfield swung the chair and plucked an old photo in a stand-up frame from a table behind the desk. It showed a man in his fifties, with Stansfield’s features but somehow stauncher, sharper. "My uncle Mark, Dad’s oldest brother. Dad, uh, died in Korea, and Uncle Mark took me in. Raised me, especially after Mother passed on." The frame wavered in Stansfield’s hand. "Uncle Mark, uh, built this agency from nothing in the forties. Of course"—Stansfield waved his free hand around as he replaced the frame on the table—"the family already had this, uh, house. The Stansfields were an old whaling family, and this was the mansion of Captain Josiah Stansfield who—"

"I wonder if we could get back to Roy Marsh?"

"Uh, yes. Sorry. When my uncle died, I . . . well, I was going through a, uh, divorce, and the agency was in need of a good outside chap, to meet the customers, renew old contacts, that sort of thing. Roy came along, and I was quite, uh, impressed with his enthusiasm?

"He got along well with your customers?"

"Yes. Well, uh, not all of them, of course. But that was hardly Roy’s fault. Many of our customers had come to rely heavily on Uncle Mark and just couldn’t, uh, imagine dealing with a newcomer. But Roy quickly made up for that, and more."

“How?"

"By establishing new business. You could hardly, uh, believe how successful he was in attracting clients. I could hardly believe it, and I’d already been in the business for umpty-ump years. And once he’d brought new clients into the fold, they were always, uh,
increasing their coverage and adding riders." He moved his hand over the muddle on his desk. “Trust me, this is just the tip of the, uh, iceberg."

"So Marsh would beat the bushes and bring in the business, and then you’d execute the paperwork?"

"Well, uh, basically, yes. Our relationship is, uh, sorry, was amazingly symbiotic. You see, Roy didn’t care that much for the technical side of the insurance game. Matching the right, uh, rider for the right peril and so on. That’s my forte."

Most of which is done by the insuring company, anyway.

"I understand that Marsh maintained a pretty substantial life policy on himself."

"Uh, you do?"

I felt a little muscle in my stomach go "ping." "He represented during the divorce negotiations that he had a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar face-amount policy in favor of his wife and daughter."

Stansfield looked uncomfortable. "Is the wife a, uh, suspect in his . . . death?"

"Mr. Stansfield, is there a policy or not'?"

"Well, yes. And no."

"Maybe you’d better explain."

He looked around his desk for help, but didn’t act as if he saw any. "Roy did have a policy on his life. Uh, in fact, two policies. One was what we call ‘key man’ insurance. Are you familiar with it?"

"Where a partnership or corporation takes out a policy on an important employee?"

"Correct."

"And there was such a policy on Marsh here?"

"Right. For, uh, two hundred fifty thousand."

"Payable . . ."

“Oh, to me. I mean, uh, the agency, technically, but Roy and I were so, uh, indispensable to each other, it’s practically the same thing."

"And the other policy?"

"That’s the problem, I’m afraid. You see, Roy is, uh, was such an impulsive fellow."

"Impulsive how?"

"Well, it was some months ago, I assume when things, uh, began to go sour at home, he came in one morning and told me to cancel the policy on him for, uh, his wife and child."

Great. "And?"

"And I tried to talk him out of it, of course. I, uh, told him I thought it irresponsible and that he certainly should sleep on it."

"What did he say?"

"He told me to go . . . uh, he told me it was none of my concern, and that the policy had best be canceled by that day, with a, uh, return to him of any unexpended premium, or else."

"Or else what?"

Stansfield made a noise that actually sounded like "ahem."

"Mr. Stansfield, or else what‘?"

"Roy didn’t, uh, elaborate. He didn’t have to. He could be quite . . . uh, imposing at times. Of course, I’m certain he wouldn’t have . .

"Swung on you?"

Stansfield just slanted his head.

I said, "Any chance that the insurance could still be in effect?"

“For the beneficiaries to, uh, collect, you mean?"

"Yes."

"No. No, I’m afraid that is, uh, out of the question. I could give you the technical reasons if you need them for your, uh, report, but any grace period would have expired some time ago."

“Did you ever let Hanna know about the cancellation?"

"Hanna, his wife?"

"Right."

"No, I’m . . . uh, I didn’t really know her that well, you see. We weren’t, that is, Roy’s and mine was really only a, uh, business relationship. We really didn’t see each other socially."

No doubt. Unfortunately, though, that meant Hanna would have had no reason to believe that Roy’s death wouldn’t leave her and Vickie with $250,000.

"Let’s get back to Roy’s customers if we can."

"Certainly."

"Was there ever anything out of line about his claims ratios?"

"Uh, no, not at all. In fact, Roy’s clients had very low claims rates."

"Any exceptions?"

"Exceptions?"

“Yes, any type of policy—casualty, theft, whatever—that seemed to have more than its share of losses?"

"Well, uh, certainly not that I noticed."

“How about any individual insureds?"

"No, not really. In fact, I often had so few calls that . . . uh, well, off the record?"

“Sure."

"Well, Roy chose his, uh, customers so carefully that some months, we had almost no claims to speak of I mean, you’d, uh, almost have to wonder why a lot of these people were even buying insurance in the first place."

I thought I could guess.
 

ELEVEN
-♦-

I had a quick lunch at a waterside clam shack and called my answering service from a pay phone. I had a message from somebody named Hector Rodriguez, who declined to leave his number but said he would call back. No message from Murphy, which I didn’t find surprising. No message from Nancy either, which I did find disappointing. I hung up, got back in the car, and drove to Marblehead.

Felicia Arnold’s receptionist smiled up at me.

"Yes?"

"My name’s John Cuddy. I was here last Friday."

“Yes?"

“I believe Ms. Arnold wants to see me."

"She didn’t—"

“It’s about Mr. Marsh. Roy Marsh."

"Oh." She seemed more confused than upset. "I’m sorry Ms. Arnold isn’t available."

"Look, I’m not trying to make your job any harder than it has to be, but Mr. Marsh was murdered and I really think Ms. Arnold will want to talk to me. Can you call her somewhere?"

The receptionist started to say, "She said . . . ," then motioned me to a chair. "Please have a seat while I try to reach her."

She dialed too many numbers for an inside line, which relieved me. I had no desire to dance Paulie the Pugilist around the Kurdistan rug.

The receptionist hung up. She stood and beckoned me to her, then turned and led me ten steps toward the conference room. "Ms. Arnold wants to see you at home."

She pointed through the picture window to an understated but perfectly positioned villa across the harbor on Marblehead Neck. "It’s that one."

I thought about the view Arnold’s own office would have as well. “She can watch her house from here or her desk."

"She says it gives her something to work for." The woman suddenly blushed and asked me to excuse her.

* * *

There was a Mercedes sports coupe, top down, in the driveway. A fieldstone path led around to the back of the house and a large in-ground swimming pool. Felicia Arnold lay stretched out on one of two chaise lounges that had never sported a Zayre’s price tag. She wore a European-style string bikini and Porsche sunglasses, which she tilted down ever so slightly as I approached her. On the cocktail table next to her was a portable telephone and two bottom-of-the-glass water rings.

"Mr. Cuddy. Good timing. The afternoon was just growing tiresome."

"Last night not enough for you?"

She slid the glasses back into place. "Was it for you?"

"Plenty." I sat down on the other chair. The surface was slick, sweaty. Up close, her legs appeared waxy smooth, no varicose veins or blemishes of any kind. She had striking muscle definition, even in her upper arms and shoulders. "The police said you directed them to me."

“My duty as an officer of the court."

"You don’t seem too crushed by your client’s death."

"Perhaps I’m not the sentimental type."

"Maybe—"

"What the hell do you want!"

I stood up and turned to the voice. Paul Troller, coming out of the house. He wore a leopardskin bikini bottom with a desk-job spare bulging over the front and a lot of baby oil catching the sunlight. Even so, I pegged him as a light heavyweight. There were two tall drinks in his hands, and a match for Arnold’s sunglasses rode up above his hairline.

"I said—"

"I heard you, Paulie. This your house or hers?"

Troller thought about throwing the glasses, but instead set them down near the pool’s edge, clinking them a little and sloshing some booze in his rage. He started to stride manfully over to us.

Arnold said, "Paul, I don’t want any trouble."

"He has no right barging in here."

"He’s not ‘barging in,' Paul. I asked Mr. Cuddy to come over."

"You . . . asked him?"

"That’s right. And I would like to confer with him privately now."

"Felicia, my God, he’s wanted for a murder."

"Two murders," I said.

Troller’s eyes seemed to have the same problem with light as Marsh’s had. He looked at me as if he needed just one more little push.

Arnold saw it too. "Paul, please. Leave us alone."

Troller just about bit it back. "Give me your car keys."

"No."

He looked down at her, but behind the glasses I couldn’t read her eyes.

"Felicia, you drove me over here, remember?"

"Like it was only an hour ago, Paul. It’s a beautiful day. Why don’t you jog home?"

She had the same control over her voice that she did over her body. I couldn’t say the same for Troller, whose lips were as blue and shivering as a five-year-old’s after a day in the surf. He turned and choked out, "See you tomorrow at the office," before stomping back into the house.

I sat down again. "You ever hear of the National Labor Relations Board?"

She smiled. "Paul’s position isn’t exactly unionized."

And my next line was supposed to be "And what exactly is Paul’s position?" but instead I said, "You and Paulie there are among the few people who knew Marsh and I had mixed it up."

"And therefore?"

"Somebody who knew that set me up to look like his killer."

"Oh, John—"

"I prefer ‘Mr. Cuddy.' "

She took her glasses all the way off and stared at me.

"Why?"

"Maybe I’m not crazy about the way you treat people you call by their first names."

“You are a bit different, aren’t you?"

"Let’s talk about Marsh instead."

"Why bother? He’s dead, so the divorce case is over."

"The murder case isn’t."

“Oh, a lot of people could have known about you and Marsh. His girlfriend the nurse, his friends--"

“Assuming he had any--"

"——the police, Christides, Hanna . . ." Arnold stopped.

"Because Marsh had no will, Hanna gets everything, doesn’t she?"

"Roy was rather stupid in a lot of ways, Mr. Cuddy."

"Tell me about them."

"Look, anyone who lives on the coast up here tends to hear stories."

"What kind of stories?"

"About fishermen whose insurance rates have gone so high they can’t pay the premiums. But the banks that lent them the money to buy the boats won’t let them leave the docks without full coverage. The real estate developers are bidding wharf space so high God herself couldn’t keep up with it. So one night, one dark, rainy night, the lobsterman brings in a few bales instead of a few pots and clears in five hours what it’d take him five years to earn legitimately."

"Marsh wasn’t exactly your overwhelmed fisherman."

"Everybody has pressure on them. Marsh gave me a handsome retainer, Mr. Cuddy. In cash. Drugs? I didn’t ask. He would have settled, and I . . .Christides would have gotten Hanna a nice nest egg to start a new life. So instead you have to play El Cid with Roy, and he looks for love in at least one wrong place and ends up dead. Forever. If you just could have waited till he was over the spouse-lock, nobody--"

"The spouse-lock?"

"Yes. It’s a term some pop psychologists throw around. It means being fixated on the spouse you’re about to lose, or already have lost through death or divorce."

I couldn’t avoid thinking about Beth as Arnold went on.

"Roy didn’t care about Hanna in the loving sense anymore. Maybe he never did. But he wasn’t about to let her go. Not until he was finished with her. I was like that with my husband. He died, out drinking with the boys and killed in a car crash. I was twenty-one years old. Fortunately we hadn’t started a family yet, and I damn well wasn’t interested in starting one without him. He had a whole-life policy that saw me through law school without any debts. That way I could start on my own, instead of for some potbellied lecher who was the only lawyer interested in hiring a ‘female associate’ back when I graduated. But I couldn’t get my husband off my mind for months afterwards, even though it was his fault that I was alone and without him."

I was still thinking about Beth when Arnold said, "Are you all right?"

I said, "Yeah, fine."

"You look a bit weary. How about a drink?"

"No, thanks."

"Oh, come on. I’ll bet we have a lot in common."

I looked at her a little too long. "No, I don’t think so." I stood to go.

"At least bring me the drinks that Paul made."

I walked toward the pool edge. She said, "You know, Paul really couldn’t have had anything to do with ‘setting you up,' as you say."

I thought about Chris giving him an alibi, but said, "And why’s that?"

"Well, for one thing, he’s too proud of his boxing prowess. If it had been him, he would have made sure you had seen him, so you’d know that he had beaten you."

I bent over and picked up the drinks. "Any other reason?"

"Yes. I litigated a lot of criminal cases before I gravitated to divorce practice. His attitude is all wrong. If he had done it, he already would have tasted his revenge and acted smug, not angry, toward you this afternoon."

I walked back, setting the glasses on her table. She said, "I liked the way you handled yourself with Paul today."

“Macho posturing."

She laughed, deep in her throat the way some older women can. "Macho posturing can have its place. And charms."

Her left hand had been lying relaxed on her flat stomach. Now the fingertips slowly began strumming near her navel. The spider, mending a weak spot in the web.

"You know you ought to be more careful around Paulie, Ms. Arnold. There’s no worse enemy than one you’ve trained yourself."

"Really?"

"While you think you’re teaching him everything he knows, he’s learning everything you know."

Her expression hardened. "Mr. Cuddy, I’ve kept myself looking like this and feeling fine by learning a lot myself. Over the years I watched plenty of women slide from bombshells into craters. I do aerobics and Nautilus three times a week, and I can recline-press as much as the average fifteen-year-old boy. When I need your advice, I’ll ask for it."

I turned to go and went about ten steps before I said, "Oh, one more thing."

She’d pulled off half of one of the drinks already. "What is it?"

"How’d you happen to know Roy Marsh?"

"Oh," she said, thumb and index dipping toward the slice of lime in her drink and voice supremely casual, "He was my insurance agent."

* * *

From Marblehead I drove south, angling toward the Marsh house. I wanted to have a talk with Sheilah Kelley, and I remembered Chris mentioning she was off on Tuesdays. There was a car in the driveway, but it wasn’t her little brown Toyota. The brightly polished red Buick was at least ten years old. I pulled to the curb three houses down and walked back up, ringing the bell in front this time.

A burly older man in a lumberjack’s shirt yanked open the door. He had bushy eyebrows, a longish crew cut, and unfashionable muttonchop sideburns. He gave me a disgusted look and said, "We don’t want any," as he swung the door closed.

I put my foot at the jamb and used the palm of my hand to cushion the door’s arcing momentum. My greeter balled his right into a fist and was setting himself when I heard Nurse Sheilah’s voice from inside call, "Who is it, Dad?"

He yelled to her but kept his attention on me. "Just some salesman who’s gonna need new teeth."

I shifted my rear leg for balance and reached for my identification, saying, "Your daughter knows me, Mr. Kelley. I’m a private investigator."

Sheilah came up behind him. Her eyes were bleary, her nose so red it looked windburned. She said, "What do you want now?"

Kelley wedged himself between her and me.

“You’re the guy the cops wanted. The one who killed Marsh and the hooker."

"Mr. Kelley, I didn’t kill them. But I was involved, and I want to know why. Now we can stand here like this till the leaves turn, or we can talk quietly inside. Your choice."

Kelley wanted to tty a punch, but his daughter slid her hand inside his free arm and then tightened her fingers over his bicep. "Dad, it’d be easier if we just let him in for a while."

"We got a lot of packing to do yet. I wanna be clear of here before the traffic starts."

"C’mon."

"I don’t wanna be sitting on four ninety-five all day."

"Dad, please."

Kelley let go of the door and shook his daughter off as I came in and followed them down into the sunken living room. It looked disordered, but not as though somebody was packing. More like somebody had only half straightened things after a wild party.

Kelley stayed standing, ready to brawl. Sheilah crumpled into a chair. "Roy’s dead. What can you possibly want with me now?"

I sat too, in order to appear less confrontational. "Ms. Kelley, I know you’ve been through a lot, and I haven’t made it any easier so far. But somebody mugged me, then used my gun in the killings, and I intend to find out who."

"I don’t know anything about that."

"Maybe if——"

"Sheilah said she don’t know anything. My daughter says that, it’s true."

"Maybe your daughter’s a little scared."

Sheilah tensed, then tried to feign with a head shake. "I don’t have anything to be scared of."

"The room looks ransacked. Were you here when they did it?"

"She already told you, she don’t know anything. Why don’t you just—"

"Dad, please." Sheilah raked her hair with her fingers. "Look, Mr .... "

“Cuddy, John Cuddy."

"Mr. Cuddy, Roy was into some bad stuff, with very bad people out of Boston."

"Sheil, for chrissake, you don’t have to be—"

"Dad, stop! Please?"

Kelley glowered, folding his arms across his chest. "Like I was saying, Roy was in with people. But I wasn’t. I never had any part of it, and I sure don’t want to be part of it now."

"Like it or not, Ms. Kelley, you are part of it. Or at least they think you are. Did they get what they came for?"

"How the hell would she know that?"

"Dad!" She turned back to me. "Mr. Cuddy, I don’t know. I got here a few hours ago, and it was all torn apart. I ran out right away and called my dad from a pay phone. He drove down, and we came back in. I tried to pull things together again, so she . . . Roy’s wife wouldn’t think I’ve been trying to get away with something."

"She’d better not, or I’ll—"

"Anyway, I can’t see that anything’s gone except the videotape things."

— I looked around the room. The television and VCRs were still where I’d remembered seeing them. "You mean from the bedroom?"

"No, no. Not the playback stuff. The camera Roy had. He was . . . crazy for the stuff. Camera case, tripod. All that’s gone."

It didn’t add up. A burglar should have taken all the portable, fenceable equipment. Even conceding a more particular searcher, why take the camera? Kelley rocked a little, heel to toe. "Those all your questions?"

"No. Ms. Kelley, when was the last time you saw Roy?"

"She already told all this to the cops."

"I last, Jesus, I last saw him Sunday night, when I got home from work. We . . . went to s1eep."

"You didn’t see him yesterday morning?"

"No, I was still asleep. He was gone by the time I woke up."

"What else did you do yesterday?"

"It was my day off, you know? I got up, drove some errands and so on. I went—"

"Lookit, she had dinner with me last night at home. In Tullbury, awright? She wasn’t anywhere near that hotel. She didn’t have anything to do with it."

"Mr. Kelley, the cops said they called your daughter at this house."

"I was just in the door here when they called. Then I drove back to my dad’s house."

"Why didn’t you stay here?"

"I . . ." She stopped, resignedly reaching a decision. "All right, I was scared, okay? I knew the kind of people Roy was in with could have killed him, and I was scared they’d be around to see me."

"Did you know where Roy was going last night?" Kelley uncrossed his arms. "The hell kind of question is that to ask?"

"Mr. Kelley, she was going to have dinner with you. That suggests that your daughter knew that Roy wasn’t going to be here for dinner. That suggests—"

"If you’re saying my daughter knew that bum was hanging around with a hooker, I’ll bust your face like—"

"Dad!" The tears started to flow; she wiped her forearm across her face just once, violently, then turned to me. "Roy was a bastard. He two-timed his wife with me, and me with her . . . the prostitute. He didn’t deserve all the things he had, but I loved him, mister, I loved him and I’m miserable he’s gone."

"Honey, how—"

"Dad, shut up!"

"Sheilah, in front of—"

"Just please shut up!"

Kelley’s face fell. He looked at me. "She’s upset. She don’t know what she’s sayin’."

"Ms. Kelley?"

I could have poured a beer in the time it took her to say, "Yes?"

"The Boston police tell me Roy’s connection is a pretty rough character. I think it’d be a good idea for you to stay out of sight for a while. Especially if they didn’t find what they were looking for here."

"She’s gonna stay with me. Back home in Tullbury. I was in the department twenny-seven years. Leo Kelley, Engine Company Number One. I got friends all over town. They can’t touch her there."

Sheilah Kelley chewed on her lip. She didn’t look too sure.
 

TWELVE
-♦-

I detoured back to Peabody and found Hanna’s street after only one wrong turn. The lights were on in her apartment as I walked up the path.

She pulled back the door, surprised to see me. "John Cuddy. You are all right?"

"Yes."

"The police, they said you were . . . hit?"

"Mugged. But I’m all right. Can I come in?"

"Oh, sure, sure." Hanna turned away. "Vickie is taking the nap now."

Since I couldn’t see Hanna’s face, I just said, "I’ll be quiet."

I followed her into the living room and sat down across from her.

"The new kitten you got for Vickie, it is doing so much good."

"I’m glad. Hanna, the police have questioned you?"

"About the . . . Roy and the woman?"

"Yes."

"They come here this morning. They want to know about me."

"Where you were?"

"Yes. I was here with Vickie all the night."

"The police seem to accept that?"

"Yes. They say, ‘Who can tell us this?' And I say, ‘Nobody.' I did not see Nerida, and Vickie was asleep. But there is nothing I can do about that."

"Hanna, I’ve been to Roy’s house."

"My house now."

"So Chris tells me. The nurse, the woman Roy was seeing, she’s moving her things out."

Hanna sighed. "You know, I cannot blame her. Roy was, I don’t know the English for it, but the women always like him. For the wrong reason."

“Some people are that way."

“Tell me. Do the women like you for the right reason?" She didn’t smile at me, keeping her expression even and open, showing me assurance I don’t think she felt.

"There’s one in Boston who I hope does."

Hanna nodded, a little too vigorously. "That is good. That is the right way."

"Hanna, the house, your house in Swampscott, was searched by somebody."

"Burglars? I hear they watch the newspapers for the dead, then . . ."

“No. At least I don’t think so. I think it was somebody looking for something."

"Money?"

I didn’t answer her. She looked down and twisted her lingers. She said, "The drugs."

"Why didn’t you tell me?"

"I told Chris. He was my lawyer. He didn’t say to tell you. I thought you knew from Chris. I’m sorry."

"That’s not the problem now. The problem now is that if Roy’s playmates didn’t find what they were looking for, they may think of other people to ask."

"I think I knew that something like this would happen to him. He was such a little boy about life. He really thought he could do anything and not be punished .... "

"The police think Roy had some drugs he was supposed to distribute. If you have any idea where they are . . ."

She almost laughed. "With the insurance from Roy, we have enough money now I don’t have to sell the drugs."

"Hanna, there is no insurance."

I wanted to say it that way, directly and suddenly, to see her reaction. Her heart seemed to stop, but her eyes stayed steady. She swallowed and said, "No insurance?"

I told her what Stansfield told me.

She hung her head. "Such a little boy. My God, my God, I cannot pay to bury him."

I waited a moment, then said, "Hanna, I’m sorry, but I really have to know about the drugs."

She looked up, very tired. "I don’t know to help you."

"Any idea at all where they’d be?"

"The nurse maybe. She might know better than me. When Roy and me were together, he used to carry them around in his case."

"His briefcase?"

"No. Roy had a lot of the . . . video things. He carried the drugs around in the case for the camera to fit in."

* * *

As I drove back into Boston, I tried to draw a profile of my mugger, at least by minimum physical requirements. Hanna had the strength to send Roy through the window, and a questionable alibi. Firefighters, even retired ones like Kelley, are strong as bulls, but
Sheilah said her father was with her for dinner.

Lawyer Paul had the muscle and sophistication, if not the inclination, to stage it, but Chris covered him. Felicia Arnold might have been able to force things with my gun, but Marsh would have tried to rush her rather than take a chance with a twelve-story drop. Maybe strength wasn’t a factor at all. Whoever rapped me left me where I fell, and maybe Roy just tripped. So much for the process of elimination.

I took the Central Artery, skirting downtown on the harborside, and got off at South Station. I followed Summer Street into L Street to Nancy Meagher’s address.

I rang her buzzer, the top one of the three-decker. I heard her coming down the stairs. When she recognized me, she said over her shoulder, "It’s all right, Drew." The door to the second-floor apartment clicked shut.

“Still have Drew Lynch as house security?"

"Yes. You could have called first."

“I wanted you to be able to tell the cops I dropped in without waming."

She turned and started climbing the stairs. Maybe I should have said "without welcome" instead. I trailed behind her into the kitchen.

Nancy said, "Drink?"

"Yes. This remind you of anything?"

"What?"

"You and me. The last time you thought I’d done something wrong."

She paused with the glass she had taken down from the cabinet over the sink. "The last time I thought you’d done something wrong you’d killed a man."

"That was then. This time I was set up."

She pulled open the freezer door and plopped two ice cubes into the glass. "Pity the police don’t agree with you."

"C’mon, Nancy—"

The glass crashed into the sink, shattering, as Nancy wheeled around. "Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare try to explain this away. We had a date, remember? You were coming by to pick me up. Well, I waited, and no call from the guard downstairs. So I tried your office. Nothing. Condo. Nothing. Then I waited some more. John’s the kind who always shows, Nancy. The kind who always comes through."

"Nancy—"

"Then I thought, my God, he’s had an accident. I tried the hospitals, Boston City, Mass General, even Beth Israel though it was the wrong direction. Then I got mad. Then I went home. Then I don’t hear from you, I hear from a homicide cop—"

"They said not to call you."

"You were set up? I was set up, John! I was set up to be some kind of alibi you decided to discard." She put her hand to her mouth.

"Is that what you think?"

"That’s what the cops think."

"Not my question."

Nancy said, "What happened?"

"Can we go into the living room? I don’t need the drink."

"I do."

She built two cocktails and we carried them to the front of the apartment. She sat on the couch, legs and arms crossed. I took a floor cushion.

“No Renfield?"

"He’s downstairs. Mrs. Lynch has taken a liking to him."

Nancy’s tone said no more pleasantries. I told her everything I could think of about what had happened. Halfway through she uncrossed her legs. Near the end, she dropped her arms, too.

"John, why would somebody go through all that trouble to mark you as Marsh’s killer?"

"I don’t know. There are plenty of people who have pretty direct motives for wanting him dead. I assume I was just a convenient deflector for somebody."

She shook her head. "John, it doesn’t make sense. The real killer should have been planning this kind of thing for months to pull it off right. You say you only met Marsh on Friday, three days before the murders."

"That’s right."

"So how could anybody work that fast, take care of you so perfectly, then bungle the killings themselves, shooting only the woman and not both of them?"

"Nancy, I swear to you, I don’t know."

"You don’t even have a plausible theory. I can see why Holt and the boys wouldn’t buy your story."

"That doesn’t bother me. What would bother me is your not buying it."

She looked at me for a minute. "What does Murphy think?"

"He won’t talk to me. I saw him after Holt questioned me, but there really isn’t anything he can do. To use his words, how can he tell Holt I didn’t stage things to kill Marsh when Murphy’s way of knowing that is how much better I handled an earlier killing."

"Maybe I ought to call Murphy and commiserate with him."

"Is that a lawyer’s way of admitting she believes me too?"

She set down her now empty glass. "You know something, John? I spend all day anticipating answers and revising questions to keep witnesses enough off balance that maybe they tell something close to the truth and not their convenient version of what happened. But I guess that has to be the difference here, doesn’t it? I can’t assume you’re lying, because that would mean you set me up to alibi you and that would mean that everything I want to believe about you and me has gone up in smoke. On the other hand, your story makes so little sense that somebody as smart as you are would have done it better if he was trying to deceive anybody."

"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 .... "