Speak Ill of the Living (17 page)

Chapter 22

Back in Detective Orr's sedan—Eddie in the back seat, Orr and Brill up front—Brill gave Eddie the squeeze:

“So you wanted to give Jimmy Whistle some payback for helping put your brother away all those years ago, is that it Bourque?” Brill said. “So you two decided to meet up here, to hash it out?”

Eddie stared at the dome light and tried to delete the mental image of Jimmy Whistle in the grave. He thought about Whistle's son, Jimmy junior, who didn't yet know that he had lost the father he barely remembered. It was another tree-falls-in-the-woods question. If he hadn't seen his father in thirty years, would his murder matter?

“What about it, Bourque?” Brill demanded.

Eddie had conducted enough adversarial interviews as a reporter to know that using logic against crazy scenarios was no way to win. “My statement from before stands,” he said. “I found this place on my own. I dug the floor. Discovered a skull. Got jumped. Fought for my life. Called you guys as soon as I found help.”

Brill looked away for a moment. As he turned, Eddie watched the bulging trapezoidal muscle at the base of his neck squirm under his shirt like a cobra getting comfortable. Brill turned back and came at Eddie with a new tactic. “Look Bourque, everyone knows Whistle was a punk,” he said. “Nobody does thirty years in prison unless they deserve it. If a piece-of-shit like Jimmy Whistle came after me, I'd fight back hard. Who wouldn't?”

“Jimmy wasn't here with me last night.”

Brill shrugged, too deliberately, like an actor in a high school drama. “Jimmy was wearing a ski mask.”

“It wasn't him,” Eddie insisted. “Whistle was a broken down old man. The guy in the mask last night was
strong
.”

Brill got angry, leaned over the seat and shook a finger at Eddie. “Dr. Crane, Lew Cuhna and now Jimmy Whistle—there's three bodies in your tracks, Bourque.”

Was that a question?

Eddie said nothing. Orr hadn't made a sound during the interrogation. Eddie couldn't remember even seeing her blink. Was this supposed to be good cop-bad cop? Or something else? Mute cop-asshole?

Brill asked, “Is your brother calling the shots here?”

“My brother is in the federal pen.”

“Yeah, in upstate New York. You were there recently, according to their visitor logs.”

He had already checked the logs?

“So what?” Eddie said. “I visited my brother in the can.”
Don't you visit your mother in the whorehouse?
He almost said it, but caught himself in time.

“There's blood evidence in that basement,” Brill said. “Maybe that's
your
blood down there.”

No maybe about it, and no sense denying what a few simple tests would confirm. “I told you guys I fought for my life down there last night,” Eddie said. “I probably dripped blood from here to New Hampshire.”

“Stay with me here,” Brill said. “You visited your brother in the can, and then the doctor who testified against him dies on a rope. Next, you lead us to the body of your brother's old partner—a street punk who testified against Henry Bourque at his trial. Not to mention that the body is in a shallow grave you admit you dug yourself.”

Wow, when you put it all together like that…

Eddie sputtered, “But how would Lew Cuhna fit in?”

Brill frowned, grim. “Don't know, Ed. Why don't you tell us how Cuhna fits in?”

Goddam it!

Eddie had fallen for the trap of applying logic to Brill's crazy hypotheticals. “Like I told you guys,” he repeated, “my statement stands. Obviously, somebody removed the bones during the night, then whacked Jimmy and dumped him here.”

“Probably the guy in the ski mask,” Brill offered, obviously patronizing him. “But not Jimmy—it's the
other guy
in a mask.”

“I see why you made detective,” Eddie answered, icily.

Brill smiled. He said, “No more trips to New York until we get to the bottom of this, Bourque.” He got out of the car and slammed the door.

Orr got out, closed her door gently and had a hushed conversation with Brill.

Eddie struggled to hear what they were saying—no luck.

Orr got back into the car. “Are you in shape to ride that awful bike?” she asked “Or do you need a lift?”

“That's it? I'm not under arrest or anything?”

“Brill knows you didn't kill Jimmy,” she said. “He was just trying to rattle you. I told him it was a waste of time.”

“But…how?”

“A driver reported a madman fitting your description wandering some back road in New Hampshire this morning. She was pretty scared and called right away from her cell phone. That was more than four hours ago.”

Eddie brightened. “I remember that woman!”

“The medical examiner says there's no rigor yet, and body-temperature loss has been minimal, even in that cool basement,” she said. “He guesses that Whistle died less than three hours ago, though he can't pinpoint it any better than that. You also left an obvious track through the woods when you ran from here last night—blood smears, footprints in the mud, broken branches—so that part of your nutty story checks out.”

“So why did Brill strap me to the rack?”

“Because he thinks you know more than you're telling, Eddie,” she said. “And so do I.”

“Lucy—”

“Stow it!” she interrupted. “I want to know why you're obsessed with the Roger Lime case, and what you thought you were going to find in that basement.”

Eddie massaged the welt on his chin. “It's for Henry,” he admitted with a sigh. “And my sister-in-law.”

“Since when do you have in-laws?”

“Her name's Bobbi—Bobbi Bourque. She tracked me down in Lowell after Dr. Crane died. She's convinced that Henry is innocent of murdering those armored car guards, and she asked for my help to prove he didn't do it.”

“That was thirty years ago.”

Eddie shrugged. “You can't discourage this woman—I've tried. Look, Lucy, it was a circumstantial case against Henry.” He looked down to his borrowed high-tops and wondered from where his sudden wave of mournfulness had come. “I think Bobbi's right. Henry was a screwed-up kid, mixed in a stupid holdup scheme, but he didn't kill those guards.”

Eddie suddenly recognized he had lost an important opportunity in the basement of the old house. Frustration boiled up in a froth. “I had found real evidence, the bones!” he shouted. “And I let them slip away.”

“The way you tell it, you didn't let anybody do anything—you fought.”

Eddie wouldn't hear it. Tears were not far off. “I let that assassin in a ski mask take my brother from me.”

***

Eddie was barely capable on the motorcycle when healthy, and didn't dare ride it after getting choked, beaten up, and nearly drowned. By the time the flatbed tow truck reached Eddie's house in Lowell that evening, the neighborhood's barbeque grills had perfumed Pawtucketville with charcoal and roasted meat.

With the bike stowed in the driveway, the tow driver thanked and tipped a fiver, Eddie grabbed the dirty clothes from the saddlebag, picked an intact
Washington Post
off the lawn, and went inside.

“What the hell…?”

For a moment, he thought the place had been ransacked—a snowstorm of shredded paper covered everything: the carpet, the furniture, the windowsills. He was about to phone for help when into the mess strode General VonKatz, the ripped remnants of a cardboard paper towel tube in his jaws.

Eddie groaned, “I know you've missed a couple meals, but that was a brand-new roll!”

The cat dropped the tube, dug in the mess to gather shredded paper into a little pile, and then pounced on the pile and scattered the paper again.

Eddie muttered, “I gotta clean this place with a rake.”

He fed the General a can of chicken hearts and liver, and then inched the sofa across the room and in front of the door. He skipped dinner, flopped onto his sofa barricade, and tried to sleep. He saw an image of Jimmy Whistle in his mind, in the grave, rubbed raw around the neck. Eddie turned over and ordered his brain to think about baseball. The players had rope burns around their throats.

The moment you feel safe, that's when I'll appear.

Eddie didn't feel safe. Did that mean the man was not coming? The question twirled in his mind as he fell into fitful sleep.

Chapter 23

Eddie felt pressure on his neck and woke with a start. He grabbed for his throat and felt fur. The General screeched in surprise and bolted from the sofa.

“Sorry!” Eddie called after the cat.

The clock read seven-thirty. Eddie had slept thirteen hours. He rolled sore off the sofa and peeked through the blinds. Bright sun. Kids choosing sides for a whiffleball game in the street.
Washington Post
, intact once again, on the lawn.

Eddie brewed hazelnut coffee, pushed the sofa out of the way, and got his newspaper.

The General sat at attention next to his empty food dish. The cat's message would not have been clearer if he had typed it in headline font. Eddie threw a handful of crunchy food in the bowl, which attracted one sniff and an incredulous
are you bloody kidding me?
meow.

“Okay,” Eddie said. “No sense us both starving.” He fed the cat a can of chopped chicken parts in savory gravy, which stank like a landfill.
Cripes!
What “parts” of the chicken did they grind up and pack in these cans?

General VonKatz seemed to like the bouquet. He nosed into the dish.

Eddie hadn't read the paper for three days, maybe the longest dry spell since he had entered the news business. His obsession with his brother's case had consumed him. He had lacked the processing power to digest a world's worth of news. But Eddie and the General had to eat, and Eddie needed another writing assignment.

He wiped shredded paper towel off the table and sat down with black coffee. He scanned the morning's mayhem on the front page and then flipped to the classified section.

The phone rang.

Eddie reached for it, and then hesitated.

What if it's HIM?

He shook off the thought as ridiculous and answered, “Bourque.”

“It's Lucy,” said Detective Orr.

Eddie laughed with relief. He said, “Are you just seeing if I'm all right?”

She was all business. “I've been doing some checking. How much do you know about this sister-in-law of yours?”

Checking? On Bobbi?

“I know she married Henry about six months ago,” Eddie said. “I know she takes eight sugars in her coffee.” What
else
did he know about her?

“The records show that her marriage to Henry Bourque was filed in Essex County, New York state last spring.”

“Sounds right.”

“That was the day after her divorce from her second husband.”

“The next day?”

“Yup—after fifteen years of marriage she got a divorce and remarried the very next day.”

Eddie thought it over. “Well, sure,” he offered. “She was probably separated when she met Henry, and they had to wait until her divorce was official before they could get married.”

“Have you heard from her today?”

Eddie double-checked his answering machine. No blinking light. “I have not.” Should he have? He felt a flicker of worry. “Huh.”

“I'm sure she's fine,” Orr said. “The next time you hear from her, have her give me a call.”

“Why? You don't think—”

“I don't think she did anything wrong,” Orr interrupted. She lowered her voice: “But somebody is killing the people connected to you, to your brother, and the Roger Lime investigation. I need to know who your sister-in-law has been speaking to around Lowell. She could be in danger, or she could be unwittingly stirring up old secrets and putting other people into harm's way.”

Orr wouldn't lie to Eddie, but Eddie didn't believe she was telling him the whole truth. What did Orr suspect Bobbi was up to?

“I'll tell her to call,” he promised.

They chatted a few minutes about Eddie's recovery from his night in the well. Orr told him: “Keep your nose out of trouble.”

“No problem there.” Eddie had no leads, nowhere to go, nothing to do but wait for the police to catch the man in the ski mask, or for the man to catch Eddie.

They hung up.

Eddie gave a glance to the chessboard, the pieces frozen two moves into an imaginary game with Henry. He forced his eyes to the classifieds.

There has to be some work in here…

An advertisement halfway down the first column stopped Eddie hard:

Attention EDDIE B.

Trouble for me. I trust only journalists. Left the key with the two giants, you know the duo. Don't send the cavalry; follow the Union rider to General Lee's surrender. —LEW

Eddie read the item three more times.

Was this a message from Lew Cuhna? A message from the grave?

How was that possible?

The last two days of the
Washington Post
rested intact and unread on the table. Eddie tore them open, found the classified sections—the same odd advertisement was there, in both editions.

He rifled through the paper until he found the telephone number for the
Post
's classified department, and then snatched up the telephone and dialed it. He negotiated the automatic answering system until he found the human he needed.

“Classified—accounts payable,” answered a woman with southern flavor in her voice.

“Hi, my name is Lew Cuhna,” Eddie said. “I'm afraid I have a paperwork problem. I placed a prepaid classified ad for my company recently, and I can't remember the dates it was to run, so I don't know when to renew it. My boss is on my case about it.”

“Oh my!”

“Yeah, he's a stickler for record keeping.”

“Just give me a second, Mr. Cuhna.” She rapped a keyboard. “We don't want out customers in hot water with the boss.”

“No ma'am.”

“Oh, there it is,” she said. “You're all set, prepaid for three more weeks.”

“And you're sure the name on that ad is Lew Cuhna, of, um…”
Where the hell did Cuhna live?
“…of Massachusetts?”

“Yup—Chelmsford, Mass.”

“Very good, thank you.” He hung up.

Eddie thought back to the recent trouble with his morning delivery, when the paper was torn apart every day. He never did find those classified sections.

His paper started getting messed up after Eddie spoke to Cuhna. But the
Post
had arrived intact each day since Lew had been murdered.

Those weren't raccoons that were rifling through Eddie's paper every morning.

It was Lew.

Eddie slapped his palm on the table. Of course! Insurance!

Lew was in some kind of trouble and Eddie was his insurance. Cuhna knew that Eddie studied the
Post
's classifieds every day—they had spoken about it at the cop shop. Cuhna placed a message in the paper that only Eddie would recognize, prepaid in case something happened to him. And each day Cuhna detoured through Pawtucketville on his way to his office, stopping early in the morning to swipe Eddie's classified section.

As long as Lew was healthy, Eddie would never see the message. It wasn't the sort of arrangement Cuhna could have expected to keep up for long—you can't steal a man's paper forever. He must have thought the danger would soon pass, whatever it was.

Eddie cursed himself for not reading the
Post
the first day he had found it intact. He had already lost two days. But at least he had found the message. He read it over again. Now what the heck did it mean?

Trouble for me.

That much was obvious.

Lew had placed the ad because he suspected someone might be after him, yet he did not go to the police. Why not? Perhaps Lew had gotten mixed up in something illegal. If he had been dabbling with the bookmakers or the heroin wholesalers, he would have been reluctant to ask the cops for help.

I trust only journalists.

Eddie tried to remember what Cuhna had said to him at the police station. Something about Eddie being a newsman, and that Lew trusted a good newsman. Maybe that was Cuhna's way of telling Eddie that he had chosen him to receive the message. Christ, Eddie thought, he could have been more specific about what he was entrusting to Eddie.

Left the key with the two giants, you know the duo.

Made no sense. They key to what? A lock? To the mystery of Cuhna's murder? Or the key to this riddle? Eddie couldn't think of any “giants” who formed a duo. He thought for a moment about the tallest people he knew. Two giants? Two big cops who were partners, maybe? Naw, this line had to be allegorical. Two giants…a duo…This message was so goddam cryptic! For all Eddie knew, Cuhna was talking about the duo of peanut butter and Fluff.

Don't send the cavalry; follow the Union rider to General Lee's surrender
.

The cavalry could be the cops. Why wouldn't Lew want Eddie to call the cops? Especially if he knew the message would only be seen if he were abducted or killed? Eddie rubbed his eyes. No cops…hmmmm, could there be a leak in the Police Department? Eddie read the line again.

Was Cuhna afraid of a dirty cop?

The last part of the message seemed nonsense.

Union rider? General Lee?

Civil War General Robert E. Lee had surrendered to the Union at Appomattox. Eddie couldn't imagine that Lew Cuhna had meant for him to ride The Late Chuckie's rat bike to Virginia. It seemed to be another metaphor. But for what?

Dammit Lew. Why couldn't you have just spelled it out?

Eddie knew the answer—Cuhna had hidden something of great value and didn't want to lose it to the wrong people. So he had created a cipher he thought only Eddie could break.

Eddie drained a full pot of coffee while experimenting with Cuhna's words. He assigned numbers to the letters, jumbled the characters, read things backward, tried to decipher anagrams. No luck. Either Lew Cuhna had typed his classified ad with the Enigma machine, or this message was somehow simpler than it seemed.

The phone rang.

He glanced to the clock as he answered; he had been working on Lew Cuhna's code for two hours.

Bobbi was on the line.

“I was getting worried about you,” Eddie said.

“Some worry lines would do you good,” she said. “So you won't look young enough to be my baby.”

“You don't need an under-employed kid in his thirties.”

“I'd take one if I could,” she said. She suddenly shifted the topic. “Have you seen the paper—this guy they found dead in Dunstable, James J. Whistle? He testified against Henry at his trial thirty years ago. Did you see that?”

Eddie frowned. “I didn't see the paper yet, but I, uh, heard about it.”

“That guy could have helped us, but now it's too late.”

“He may help us yet,” Eddie said. He pulled a topic switch on her for once. “Have you and Henry ever talked about having a family?”

She laughed. “You mean kids? This just reminds me that I've never touched the man I married. Closest I've come is touching his letters, which I know he had in his hands—oh, gawd, look at the time!”

“Wha?”

“Forget all that because this is
important
. I'm hanging up now, but don't go anywhere—not even to the bathroom.”

“Huh?”

Click.

Eddie shrugged and stared at the cordless phone. His sister-in-law was as puzzling as Lew Cuhna's message. She had called for something
important
, so she had to hang up? Maybe it was best that she and Henry couldn't have kids.
Oh, dammit!
Eddie had forgotten to tell her to call Detective Orr.

The phone rang in Eddie's hands.

He answered sharply, “What
now
?”

A man's voice asked, “Mr. Edward Bourque?”

“Oh! Sorry. Yes, this is he.”

The man explained that he was a counselor in the federal penitentiary system, working at the facility holding Henry in New York.

Eddie felt a flash of terror. He was speechless. What had happened to Henry?
Stabbed. Hanged. Shot trying to escape.

“You there, Mr. Bourque?” the man said into the silent telephone.

Eddie cleared his throat. “Yes, yes. What's the matter with Henry?”

“Nothing, sir—hold please.”

Classical music came on the line while Eddie was holding.

Eddie felt relief. This was
strange
—it was odd to worry for his brother. He had rarely thought about Henry before his brother's letter had arrived. And now Eddie was getting heart palpitations over a phone call from the prison.

The line went quiet a moment and Eddie thought he was disconnected, then another man got on the line:

“It's not my voice you hear, of course, it's only an approximation.”

“Henry?”

“My voice exists in the physical world as a disturbance among molecules of air. The telephone replicates the disturbance on your end.”

“Sounds like a good copy, Henry.”

“The real magic is in your mind,” Henry said. “After the air molecules play a beat on your eardrum, the rhythm becomes electrical and goes to the brain. That's where the mind, the larger part of you, in between man and God but much more like the latter, interprets those electrical pulses and gives you the music of my voice. It's no different if there is no phone and we are speaking in person. It's still not my
voice
you hear, only the simulated echo of an idea that starts in my mind and ends in yours.”

Henry's brain was like a rocket with no wings, twisting wildly in the stratosphere at a thousand miles an hour. If Eddie could only help him focus his thought…

“I think you ought to fight for your freedom,” Eddie said, pulling a topic switch on Henry, too.

“Did you find my five-sided table?”

“I'm closing in on it,” Eddie said. “I saw Jimmy Whistle.”

A pause. “How is that son-of-bitch?”

“Fine when I saw him, but now he's dead—murdered.”

“They know who did it?”

“Nope.”

“And here I am, locked away without an alibi.”