Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy (19 page)

Sal said, "Maylene, grow up or shut up."

I said, "Nino doesn’t mind you all branching
out?"

"No." This time Salome glanced over at him
and couldn’t quite hide a crinkle of genuine affection. "No,
Nino’s good that way. Steers us the business, takes his cut but
lets us keep the lion’s share. And, he doesn’t muscle in with the
free-lancers. He understands how it is."

"Any of Teri’s clients go in for rough stuff?"

"No way. First of all, Teri had the looks, way
too good to need the rough boys. Plus, you don’t keep that kind of
action as a free-lance. You need your man around to keep them in line
sometimes."

"So Teri didn’t talk with you about her
free-lancers."

Maylene seemed eager to contribute. "Well, she
did, sort of."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, she talked about her sources."

"Her sources?"

"Yeah, where she got the free-lances from. Like
sometimes one client refers another to her. And then she had this
lawyer who did a lot of divorce stuff, the lawyer would send the
husbands to Teri for, well, kind of like that Masters and Jones
stuff?"

Salome said, "Masters and Johnson."

Maylene said, "Yeah, them."

"Teri ever mention the lawyer’s name?"

"No, just that it was a girl. A woman lawyer, I
mean. Teri never mentioned names or anything, but she’d talk about
some of them like that."

"Like what?"

"Like give them made-up names, you know?"

"Like street names?"

"No, no. More like . . ."

Salome said, "Labels. Like ‘the Senator,' ‘the
Wizard’—"

"He was like a computer genius, the Wizard—"

"—‘the Producer,' and like that."

I thought about sister Sandra mentioning Teri’s
interest in the movies. "What did she mean by ‘the Producer’?"

Salome said, "Not the real thing. Not Hollywood,
I mean. She just had some guy liked to look at himself getting done.
He took movies of it."

"Movies of him and Teri together?"

"That’s what she said."

"Videocamera?"

Salome took a cigarette from Maylene’s pack and lit
up. "How else you gonna make them?"

"Did Teri ever mention anything else about this
Producer?"

Salome blew a cone of smoke sideways from her mouth
and away from me. "No."

Maylene said, "But Sal—"

"She didn’t say anything else, Maylene."

"She did, though." Maylene turned to me and
elaborately away from Salome’s glare. "The Producer was her
candy man."

"Drugs."

"Right. As much as she wanted, although she
never used a lot."

"She ever describe him?"

"Like what he looked like and all?"

"Yeah."

"No—yeah, wait, she did! She said he had these
tattoos. Like of a tank or something."

No question we were talking about Marsh now. "Did
she see this guy on a regular basis?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Same time and place each week?"

"Oh, I don’t know about that. She did say . .
. Sal, when did we have lunch with her that last time?"

“
I don’t remember."

"Sure you do. It was . . . no, no, it wasn’t
here. It was down at the Market."

"Quincy Market?"

"Yeah, yeah. Right down by the water. And she
said . . . no, no, it wasn’t lunch, it was brunch. Remember, Sal,
we couldn’t get served our drinks cause it wasn’t twelve noon
yet?"

"I don’t remember."

"Sure you do. We wanted Bloody Marys, and the
waiter said we had to wait, and Teri joked about taking care of him
if he’d take care of us, but you could see he was a fag so he
didn’t think she was funny."

"What did she tell you?"

"About the Producer?"

"Yes."

"Just that she was going to do a screen test."

"Screen test?"

"Yeah, you know, like an audition, only for the
movies. She thought the way she could get into the movies was to be
in one of those porno things, and the Producer told her he knew
somebody who did them. He was the candy man, so maybe he did, I don’t
know."

"And he was going to introduce her to this real
movie guy?"

"Yeah. Well, no. No, I think what she said was
that the real movie guy would want a sample of what she could do."
Maylene put her hand to her mouth and giggled. "I don’t mean
that way, in person. I mean on him. How she’d look doing it."

"With one of the guys she free-lanced?"

"Yeah. Or one of the girls."

"One of you?"

"No, no. I mean one of her girl clients. Some of
the lezzies, they really go for somebody as beautiful as the Angel.
And even the straight ones, they like to try some new things, if you
get me."

"So the Producer was going to arrange some kind
of screen test for Teri."

"Right."

"When?"

Maylene frowned again, straining to remember. "I
don’t think she said, but I think it was supposed to be real soon."

"Soon?"

"After we were talking. She said she’d seen
the Producer like the night before."

"And when was that?"

“
At the brunch, like I said."

"Yes, but when was the brunch?"

“
When?" She looked at Salomé, then back to
me. "On Sunday. When else do you have brunch?"

"You mean this past Sunday?"

"Yeah, yeah."

The day before she was
killed.

* * *

After I was finished with Maylene and Salome, the fat
man bowed to me graciously and said he hoped I’d enjoyed my meal.
On my way to the door, Nino told me he’d meet me outside Teri
Angel’s apartment house at 8:00. He gave me the address, a building
down by the waterfront.

I climbed into the Fiat,
drove across the MassPike interchange and into Back Bay. Heading
downtown, I wended my way through the construction on Boylston Street
and then quartered over past the New England School of Law and Tufts
Medical and Dental complexes. The Barry Hotel stood a bit farther
toward the Fort Point Channel and near South Station, railroads being
the principal mode of transportation back when the Barry was Queen of
the Hub.

* * *

"Hope there’re no hard feelings about
yesterday?"

The little guy in the bellboy outfit had a sincere
look I in his remaining eye, the patch on the other one tied on
jauntily with black, woven cords. The man with the pop-bottle glasses
was dozing behind the registration desk across the lobby.

"No hard feelings," I said, resting my
elbow on the top of the wooden captain’s stand. "Thanks for
not I identifying me as the bad guy."

"Hah," he said, unnecessarily shuffling
some blank forms on the writing area in front of him. "You ain’t
exactly the sort we cater to nowadays."

He moved his head around, sweeping quickly over the
tattered carpet, worn upholstery, and sallow wallpaper. He made a
clucking sound with his tongue against his teeth. "You also
ain’t old enough to remember her in her glory, but this dowdy bitch
was a hell of a hotel once."

I stuck out my hand. "John Cuddy."

"Name on my discharge papers is Norbert, Olin C.
But everybody calls me Patch. Bet ya can’t guess why."

I laughed politely and let him go on.

"Lost the eye right near the end of things, when
the Japs were trying to kill us and themselves with the kamikazes.
Hit the ship, but we managed to save her. Didn’t have no medical
attention for six hours, but the doc said six minutes wouldn’t have
made any difference. Fire flash seared the lens part right off But I
got no complaints, the VA takes care of me, and the disability
pension plus this place pay me as much as I’ll ever need."

"How’d you come to be here?"

"The hotel, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"We was here on liberty once. Boston, I mean.
First time I ever seen a real city, being from Indiana bottomland
originally. Also, right here’s where I first got laid. Room
seventeen-oh-four. Never will forget it. I thought about this place
afterwards, while I was in the hospital. After I got out and all, I
come here and they signed me on."

"Since the cops had you in for the show-up, I’m
guessing you were on when Teri Angel was killed."

"Shit, son, I’m on pretty near every day."

"You remember her that night?"

"Nope. I knew which one she was, though. You
ever see her?"

"Just a photo." '

"Well, she was a beauty, that one. Not just the
body, she had the face, too. Didn’t look the same as the others
somehow, like she didn’t have the same hardness to her or
something."

A black woman in a blond wig and purple hot pants
plowed past us, towing a fiftyish guy scratching his forehead to keep
us from seeing his face clearly. They didn’t bother stopping at the
registration desk.

Patch gave me a look that said, "See what I
mean."

"The police told me that somebody here
recognized Roy Marsh as one of Teri’s regular customers."

"That was me."

“
You know her other regulars, too?"

"To be square with you, no, I can’t say for
sure. You. see, I come on at three usually. I like my days off, go
for walks, especially this time of year. So there could be a lot of
guys—some women too, if you can believe it—who coulda been
regulars and I’d never see ’em, or just see ’em coming or
leaving and never with any particular girl."

"See any other regulars that night?"

"Of hers, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Nope."

"But you knew Marsh was one of hers for sure."

"Yeah. Well, I didn’t know his name till the
cops told me. It ain’t exactly the sort of thing we wanta keep
track of, get me?"

"You saw her with him?"

“
Once. And I’d see him sometimes on days I knew
she was entertaining?

"You the one who saw him with the suitcase?"

"Right. Both times."

"Both times?"

"Yeah. I saw him with it maybe six, eight months
ago, then again on Monday night."

"Eight mouths ago?"

"Give or take."

That was way before any of the divorce stuff. "Any
idea what was in the suitcase?"

Patch smiled knowingly. "Nope. And around here,
you don’t ask."

"What are my chances of seeing the room?"

Patch crossed his arms, doing a slow-motion dance
with his feet. "No chance at all. The cops are pretty good about
not bothering us here. So when something happens, we cooperate like
goddamn boy scouts. They say nobody goes in the room, nobody gets
in."

"What does a room rent for here?"

"Ten bucks."

"An hour."

"Uh-huh."

"There another room like the one she died in?"

"Sure. Any of the oh-twos."

"The what?"

"The oh-twos. Like nine-oh-two, ten-oh-two, get
it? She was killed in twelve-oh-two, and all of them are like
identical above and below."

"How about I reserve eleven-oh-two upfront for a
coupla hours, but use it only for about twenty minutes?"

“
Alone?"

"No. You as my tour guide."

He smiled and said,
"Elevator on the right. Watch your step, please."

* * *

"Anything different?"

Patch looked around 102. Swaybacked double bed,
bureau that looked like the backstop at an archery range, a couple of
faded prints on the wall, one in a frame with cracked glass. "Can’t
swear about the prints, but the furniture is all like
twelve-oh-two’s."

"In the same relative position in the room?"

“
Yup."

I walked to the window. The sill was old-fashioned,
beginning just above my knee, the glass rising nearly six feet high.
Patch said, "That’s where he went out. Up a floor, of course."

The view was the South Station coupling yards, two
locomotives desultorily warming up or cooling down. Must have been a
damned impressive sight in the forties, though I doubted Marsh
appreciated the historical perspective.

In addition to the entrance, there were two big doors
off the room, one next to the bed, the other past the footboard. Each
looked to be of solid wood with glass knobs.

I looked into the one at the footboard first. Just a
hopper and a sink within the loosely tiled walls. "Only a half
bath?"