Deep Pockets (33 page)

“ ‘Live Free or Die,’ ” she said matter-of-factly. “Was that Gianelli’s car?”

“It was, and I don’t want to talk about it. I want you to get all the insurance crap together on my car. You’ll need a copy of the police report — Epping, New Hampshire — but first I need everything you can get on this woman.” I handed her Wiseman’s slim report on Donna Barnette, my copy of his Polaroid.

“But what about Dorothy Boyd?” she asked plaintively.

I rested my head in my hands. “I give up. Who the hell is Dorothy Boyd?” I was thinking I’d need to find sunglasses before venturing outdoors.

“Just a girl who won a trophy on Harsha Lake.”

The battered silver and gold cross-oared trophy. The first hint that Denali was not who she seemed to be.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Well, I started with FISA.com, which is the world rowing Web site, but I shoulda gone right to USRowing.com, because
lake
is, like, an American word, and sure enough, Harsha Lake is near Cincinnati, Ohio. The Cincinnati Junior Rowing Club is there, and they’ve been hosting the Junior Invitationals forever. They attract rowers from everywhere, nationally and internationally. They do eights, lightweight eights, fours with coxswain, coxless quads, singles, doubles—”

“Roz.”

“Yeah, well, I had to go through a lot to find this out. I want you to appreciate my research.”

“I appreciate it.”

“I had to go from person to person to get to somebody who remembered back to the 1987 race. Mrs. Belden sent me to a Mr. Harris, who sent me to—”

“Roz.”

“Finally, I got to this Felicia Giddings woman, who could talk the ear off an elephant. She thought I was doing a magazine article on the competitors in that race, what happened to them later on in life, that kinda shit. Isn’t it great what people believe? Like who’d care about some old race? And did she remember the singles, because her daughter was supposed to win.”

“But Dorothy Boyd won.”

“Yeah, and old Mrs. Giddings holds a grudge. The girl shouldn’t have been allowed to enter.” Roz stood tall, stuck her nose in the air, and imitated Mrs. Giddings’s snottily languid tone. “Really, she didn’t belong. She’d just turned up at the high school a few weeks earlier, registering at nearly the end of the year. A transfer student, but really, Mrs. G. didn’t know where she’d come from. She was with her father, and old Mrs. G. left no doubt that she didn’t think the man was Dorothy’s father at all, more like a funny uncle. She wouldn’t come right out and say it, but she thought the man was sleeping with the girl, no doubt about that.”

“And?”

“Girl won the race going away. She was a fabulous rower. Even Giddings wouldn’t take that away from her. Left town right afterward, and little Heather — that’s Giddings’s girl — came in second, totally upset about losing. Didn’t enter another race for like a year. I had to listen to it about ten times.”

“Did Mrs. Giddings remember the man’s name?”

“Mr. Boyd.”

“Great.”

“Hey, that’s all she could remember.”

“Sorry. Nice work. Now you need to do both of them, Donna Barnette and Dorothy Boyd. Same person. Run them through Merlindata.com and SearchAmerica.com, all those places, then get onto someone in the police department, like your pal Burkett, and sweet-talk him into running the names through NCIC. I have a hunch there’s a criminal record.” As I finished speaking, a horn started beeping outside.

“Okay,” Roz said.

“And tell Leroy to cool it. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

First, I found my sunglasses. Then I looked up Helen Orza’s phone number, the one Wiseman had given me, in the cross-referenced directory. A Somerville address, not much of a detour as the crow flies. We could hit it on the way back from Medford. Last, I unlocked the bottom drawer of the file cabinet that supports the left side of my desk and inhaled the sharp scent of oil. The black case that contained my S&W .40 still looked new. I opened it, swallowing a bitterness beyond aspirin residue. I remembered going shooting at the police range with my dad; cherished the memory of his pride at my skill. I recalled the man I killed when I was a cop, a bad day in a lousy part of town. I remembered being on the wrong end of a bullet, lying helplessly prone, the sound, the flash, the pain and shock, the welling blood. I ran my finger over the raised scar on my thigh and fitted the weapon carefully into the waistband of my jeans.

Boston cabbies are required by law to wear
shirts with collars. Leroy wore a Hawaiian number, open like a jacket, over a vivid gold basketball jersey. Heavy silver chains circled his massive neck. He wore sunglasses, too, huge wraparounds you’d have to call shades. I wondered what Gloria had told him about my New Hampshire off-road driving adventure. I wouldn’t have put it past her to know every juicy detail of Gianelli’s rescue mission.

We made good time into Medford. I couldn’t imagine Señorita Moros Santos choosing to unburden herself in front of Leroy, so when we turned onto her street, I asked him to stay in the car. He grunted and I considered how many of Graylie Janitorial’s crime-conscious neighbors might spot him idling in the cab and instinctively call the cops. I advised him to visit the nearby doughnut shop and keep a low profile.

Fidelia Moros Santos opened her front door before I had a chance to knock, her porcelain complexion blotchy, her single long braid twisted into a lumpy knot on top of her head. She’d aged since the last time I’d seen her. She wasn’t wearing mourning black, but her gray suit was shapeless and wrinkled, as though she’d put it on without glancing in a mirror, as though she no longer cared how she looked.

“So,” she said, taking my hand and clasping it briefly, “you are no cop.”

“I am a cop, a private cop.”
Investigadora privada
.

“
Madre de Dios
, but you are hurt.”

I’d shoved my sunglasses up over my forehead, forgetting the shiner. Well, what else could I do? I couldn’t wear sunglasses indoors without blundering into chairs, not to mention looking like an addict. “I’m okay,” I told her. “It’s nothing. What’s so urgent?”

“If you are like you say,
privada
, why you come here before?”

“The English-speaking man who worked here, your boyfriend, was involved in something I was working on.”

“
Ai
, my Ben.” She sank into the chair behind her desk with a heavy sigh, nodded me into a guest chair. The office had been cleaned since the break-in. The plants were back in the pots, but no new posters hung on the wall. She hadn’t bothered to open the blinds. The photo of Benjy Dowling, the one I’d snapped near the old powder magazine, was taped to the side of her computer screen. Stacks of paper and file folders piled near the monitor made it look as though she’d fallen behind in data entry. “He is dead, no?”

“You told the police that he’s dead?”

“
Ai
, no, I don’t say that. I tell them nothing about Ben.” She looked so astonished by my assumption that I decided she was telling the truth. Someone else had told the police that Dowling and Dennison were one and the same. Who? An anonymous adviser?

“I do not know what to do,” she said. “Almost, it is funny. In my family, I am the clever one, you see? The one who knows. Also the old maid, no? The one who will never marry but who will take care of everything, of the old people, of the money worries. I think it will always be like that, getting dressed up for my sisters’ and my cousins’ weddings, and then I meet a man and I give my heart. He is not one of ours, and I should know better, but what can you do?”

I said nothing, but I thought about Sam.
He is not one of ours
.

“Now I think he must be dead.” She shrugged and tried to force her lips into a smile. “He does not come back, and I have not heard from him. My family has not heard. Maybe he is just gone away, I think first, but I know in my heart he is dead. I found something at my apartment that makes me even more sure he is gone, but I don’t know what to do with it. I — I don’t know,
la polícia
, they have been good to me, but I worry that if I give them this thing—”

“What worries you?”

“
Ai
, maybe there is something inside that will ruin my business. Before this terrible week, I have two things — I have my business; I have my Ben. I am a happy woman. If I no longer have Ben, I must have something. To lose both, it would be too much. I don’t know, but I am uneasy. I cannot sleep, and I go to church, and I decide I will do what you say.”

I hoped her priest hadn’t advised her to put her trust in a stranger who’d bought her a doughnut when she was distraught.

“What is it?” I asked. “What did you find?”

She groped in a huge satchel, beige cloth covered in embroidery, and withdrew a thick envelope. She stared at it for the count of five, then passed it solemnly across the desk. It was sealed, but it wasn’t stamped. It hadn’t traveled through the mail. Across the front in a bold scrawl, it said “Open in case of my death.”

“Do you know when he left this?”

“
Ai
, no. I know nothing. I understand nothing, except that he is gone away. He did not come back here for work. No one knows where he has gone. My younger sister, she says he made a fool of me, but I know he would be here unless something terrible happened.”

“You didn’t open this? Read it?”

“
Ai
, no. How can I read it? When I don’t truly
know
that he is dead, not really, not for sure.”

Okay, Carlotta, I thought, this is where you leave. This is where you take the envelope and lie to the poor woman. Say you’ll give it back to her if it turns out her fears are overblown. I found myself fumbling for the Spanish, my mouth shaping different words.

“
Señorita
, you are right in your heart. He is dead. I am sorry to tell you like this, suddenly, but your feelings are true. The man in that picture is dead.”

“Thank you,” she said with enormous dignity. “It is important that I know.”

I reached across the desk and touched her icy hand.

“Now you read,” she said.

I considered taking it to the cops unread, considered it for maybe ten seconds. Then I took a letter opener from a mug, slit the top of the envelope, and spread the pages on the desk.

Handwritten. Five pages long. Three feet away, Fidelia Moros Santos sat as though she were carved out of stone, except for the tears that ran slowly down her round cheeks.

To whom it may concern:

I’m starting like that because I don’t know who’ll be reading this first, but I hope sooner or later it gets to the cops. She thinks she’s so smart. I told her I was going to do this, write it all down so she’ll have to leave me alone, but she thinks she’s so damned smart, she probably thought she could find it at my place, or at work, but she didn’t know jack about Fidelia and me. Thinks she’s so smart. Ha.

Well, if you’re reading this, I guess she was smart enough. I saw it coming but not till it was too damn late, and then this was the only thing I could think to do, so I’ll have my revenge, but I sure wish I’d got away and managed to grab a big chunk of the money. I don’t think she was playing square with me from the start.

She is Denali Brinkman, and don’t believe for a second that she is dead, because she isn’t.

I read the last line twice.

“I have to go,
Señorita
,” I said, standing, holding out my hand to shake hers. “Thanks you for trusting me with this. You were right to do it. If there is anything in here that compromises your business, I’ll try my best to keep it out of the hands of the police.”

She stood as well, took my hand. “He is dead?”

“Yes. You did the right thing. The absolutely right thing.”

I half-ran, half-walked to the doughnut shop, rousted Leroy from a table, where he sat with half a dozen doughnuts on a platter. The waitress bagged them while I waited impatiently. I gave Leroy Helen Orza’s Somerville address, read the rest of Dowling’s letter in the car, speeding toward what I knew would be an empty house.

It went great, at first. She had that fool Chaney eating out of her hand while we waited for him to finish off his patent stuff. We’re almost ready to grab it, when the shit starts falling. See, first, Denali gets hurt, so she can’t row. I mean, she’d been having trouble with a few classes before, not turning shit in and stuff, but who cared, with her being such a great rower and all? But that stupid Chaney keeps delaying, and now she’s worried about people nosing around, asking questions, kicking her out because she can’t row. So she comes up with this idea about how it would be better if she were dead. I kinda laugh it off at first, but I think she’d been thinking about it for a long time, starting over clean, ever since she got arrested in NH.

She asks me to drive her to some shit town up there. I’m suppose to wait in the car while she hangs around the jail, but not looking like her, in a black wig and fat-girl clothes, and then later she changes to her cleaning overalls and I do, too, and we go to this dentist office place, wait till dark. I never busted a dentist office before. Easy. A favor for Denali is all, and she came out smiling like a cat.

A dentist’s office. Someone else had mentioned a dentist’s office. Yes, the only time Denali had ever started a conversation with her roommate, Jeannie St. Cyr, she’d inquired about a local dentist.

Then later, she asks me to call this number in NH and tell this girl Helen that she can find “Donna” easy in Boston, give her a hint or two where. This Helen, she even stayed at my place for a while. I bet sweet little Denali, “Donna,” whatever, saw her when she was posting bond, not the same looks, not drop-dead pretty like her, but same height, same shape, kinda gave her the idea.

Helen Orza, Wiseman’s unlucky employee, must have been working at the bondsman’s office that day. Maybe she was the one who’d snapped the Polaroid of Donna Barnette, posing against the grid that showed her height. Wiseman himself might have commented on the similar size of the two women. Possibly Donna/Denali alone had noticed, filed it away for future use.