Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy (21 page)

"The expression is ‘escrow,' Braxley, and I
know what it means."

He sat back, even more pleased with himself. "You
got the benefit of a fine stateside education, my friend. I just a
poor immigrant, but I catch on fast. This here an open society,
anything possible for a mon who willing. You believe it."

I believed it.

* * *

I waited in the bar for half an hour after J .J.
left. Then I looped around the blocks the long way and drifted toward
my building from the river side. No whiff of Terdell or sign of
anyone else. I went inside and upstairs.

I called the Christideses’ home number.

"Who is this?"

It sounded like one of Eleni’s cousins, so I said,
"My name is John Cuddy. Eleni wanted to see me yesterday."

I heard some muffled talk in Greek, then the voice
came back to me with "Wait, wait, she come." I waited.

“
John?"

"Yes, Eleni. Is everything all right?"

"Yes, fine, fine. You want Chris?"

"Please."

"He not here, John."

"I really need to speak with him. Do you know
when he’ll be back?"

"He gone to a meeting two hours already. Can he
call you back?"

"Yes. I’ll be home."

"I tell him."

I thanked her, pushed down the button, and called
Murphy again.

"Murphy."

"Lieutenant, it’s me, Cuddy."

"Hold on. Holt’s right here."

"Lieutenant, wait—"

“
Cuddy, this is Holt. Just what the hell you think
you’re pulling here?"

"Lieutenant, I’d like a meeting with you and
Dawkins tomorrow."

"You fucken asshole. Where do you—"

"In the morning, if possible. Your office would
be fine."

"How about I send a cruiser right now?"

"How about I call Senator Kennedy and tell him
how you’re violating my civil rights?"

“
What rights?"

"You want to send a cruiser, line. You want me
to tell the papers and TV in a few days how you and yours were
responsible for botching a double murder and getting a child hurt on
top of it, go ahead."

"What child? The fuck are you talking about?"

"I’ll explain it tomorrow. How about ten
A.M.?"

The gnashing of teeth. "You be here. If we are,
too, we’ll hear what you have to say."

I put the receiver down
and turned on the news. I sat through sports, weather, and Tom
Brokaw. Then I went downstairs, backed the car out of the space, and
drove to the waterfront.

* * *

Most of the residential housing on the harbor
consists of condominium flats in redeemed warehouses. The warehouses
themselves sit on wharves, huge stone and beam intrusions into the
water and from another century. Before Boston’s renaissance fifteen
years ago, the wharves were abandoned, and only the intrepid would
wade through the muddy moats the filled land around them had become.
Ten thousand cash at a tax title auction would have snagged you a
whole structure. Now, the same money would just about cover two years
of property assessment on a single two-bedroom unit.

I slowly drove by the address Nino gave me. Teri’s
place was in one of the newly constructed towers, rising floors above
even the elevated, six-laned Central Artery that still separates the
docks from the commercial downtown. As I pulled over to come back
around, I saw Nino get out of his parked Olds across the street and
incline his head toward the building entrance. Five minutes later, I
found a parking space and joined him.

He nodded approvingly. "Punc-tu-al-ity, man. At
lunch and tonight, too. Important quality for professional men like
you and me."

Nino was wearing brown suit pants with cuffs and Hush
Puppies shoes, but it was the top half of his outfit that caught the
eye. Blue dress shirt, pencil-width leather tie, and a starched white
coat with "Dr. Rodriguez" stitched over the chest pocket.
The ear-pieces of a stethoscope protruded from a side pocket.

"Career change?"

"You like the getup? Shit, man, this here a
condo building. Half the units owned by fucken docs as tax shelters,
you know it? I walk in like this, we blend in. Rent-a-cop figure,
‘Big-time médico, too fucken cheap to have some agency show the
place to a new tenant.' C’mon."

Nino pulled the door open
for me, then moved in quickly and got ahead of me, marching along in
that self-absorbed way you see in hospital corridors. The guard said,
"Evening, doctor."

* * *

Nino half saluted but never broke stride. I shrugged
at the guard and whispered, "Famous surgeon."

The guard winked to show no offense taken.

Nino eased the door closed, pushing the police bar
back into the slot on the floor.

I said, "That was easy."

"The cops, they don’t post no round-the-clock
shit for a dead hooker, man. Besides, she killed someplace else."

The room was a large L-shaped studio, sleeping alcove
off to the right, bathroom and kitchenette to the left. Sweeping view
of boat moorings and airport runways through the picture windows, a
small telescope set up near the glass.

Nino walked toward the telescope, saying over his
shoulder, "Do you thing, man. Just don’t break nothing, okay?"

I started with the alcove. Cherrywood four-poster
bed, frilly comforter, the collar of a flannel shirt just visible
under one of the pillows. On cold nights, Teri probably slept in it.
Beth used to do that all the time. Matching nightstands flanked the
headboard. On one of them sat a telephone and a tape machine
identical to the one in my apartment. An "O" glowed in the
message portal. I pushed the side button which releases the lid. Both
outgoing and incoming tapes were still there. I moved the lever to
"Answer Play," the device immediately rewinding the short
distance with no noise. That meant the "O" wasn’t
kidding, buddy, there really were no messages. The machine
automatically clicked to "Play" anyway, nothing but silence
coming from the speaker. Stupid to think the cops hadn’t already
tried it.

"Hey, man, come look at this!"

I went into the living room portion, Nino bending
over the telescope and adjusting some knob near his squinting eye.
"This little mother is powerful. Planes, luggage carts, shit, I
can see right into the terminals almost."

"Teri ever mention anything about the
telescope?"

"Not to me. But she was weird that way. She give
me the key to this place ’cause she trust me and somebody gotta
have it, case she get the slam and all."

I thought about what Sandra had asked me. I’d
gotten the impression that Teri had told her about the apartment and
given her a key. Would Teri have given keys to both of them?

I went back into the sleeping area and toward the
other nightstand. A Harlequin romance facedown, marking her place the
hard way, binding nearly broken through. An ashtray, some kind of
nail strengthener, china cup with coins and subway tokens in it.
"Nino, did Teri drive a car?"

“
No. She knew how, but she didn’t want to keep
one in the city. She need one, she borrow mine or see the Hertz
counter."

On the walls, a couple of Natalie Wood publicity
stills, framed professionally. Below them, a bureau with an overload
of cosmetic enhancers, most of which I couldn’t identify without
reading the fine print.

On either side of the cosmetics, two photos in
stand-up Plexiglas functioned almost like bookends.

One was a staged pose of a young, dark couple dressed
in the style of the early sixties. They stood behind two little girls
sitting on a piano bench, party dresses, white socks, shiny black
shoes with straps, and ankles crossed. The younger Sandra and
Theresa, Sandra’s smile shy, Theresa’s bold. The other photo was
a yearbook shot of Sandra, smile still shy, features unformed like
the first sense I’d had of her outside the house in Epton. No
yearbook photo of Theresa.

I opened each drawer in tum. The police would already
have searched pretty thoroughly, so I just poked and peered a little.
Mostly different kinds of strappie and tube tops with short shorts.
Lingerie ranging from the erotic to the ridiculous. Some regular
clothes too, though. Sweaters, polo shirts, Reebok sports shorts.

Behind me I heard, "Ooh, foxy lady, keep that
light on! Hey man, you wanna catch some of this?"

I guessed he’d swung away from the airport. "No
thanks."

"You missing academy award shit here, man. Ow,
yes, yes."

I came into the living room area. Sectional
furniture, nice rug, three-tiered coffee table of brass and glass.
"Teri decorate herself?"

"She pick—oh, mama, I didn’t know it could
bend that way!—she like picked it out, but the landlord, he pay the
freight."

"You know him?"

"No, just some dentist, pillar of his
com-mun-i-ty somewhere in the suburbs. He rented the place to her
himself. I think maybe she let him stick something in her mouth
beside the little round mirror, you know it?"

I opened the sliding door to a wall-length closet.
Lots of flash and sparkle, but also a tweed suit, a nun’s habit,
and a nurse’s uniform. "Pretty varied wardrobe."

"Some of the johns, man, they like the ladies to
dress up, fantasyland."

I thought about her coming home, hanging up an outfit
after spending the day and most of the night with Nino’s clients
and her free-lances. I shook my head and walked into the bathroom.
Typical modern job, clean and impersonal. "You have any idea
where she kept her paperwork?"

"Paperwork?"

"Yeah. Bills, checkbooks, that kind of thing."

"The Angel, man, she was cash-and-carry. Fucken
cops got all the papers she have, and probably stuffed in their
wallets."

I came back into the living room area. "She must
have had light bills, phone bills.

Nino ignored me and began futzing with the lens
again. I walked over to a sectional corner piece and sat down.

Nino said, "You just about done here?"

When I didn’t answer him, he looked up. "Man?"

"I was just thinking."

"About what?"

"Teri, this apartment. Seems kind of an empty
place to call home, and even this she paid for in kind."

Nino’s face contorted for just a moment, then
resolved. " ‘In kind.' You mean by hooking, right?"

"That’s what I meant."

"Look, let me tell you one thing, okay? The
Angel, she never hook in here, not even for the dentist. She do him,
she do him out in the ’burbs, his last appointment for the day. She
keep this place outta the fucken life, man. This the best place she
ever live, but it still like her tunnel."

"Her tunnel?"

"Yeah. Like in the Nam. The fucken dinks, man,
they knew those tunnels were safe. We could chase ’em around all we
wanted on top, ’cause we own the air. But they get too pressed,
they just drop down a hole and they knew we couldn’t get ’em."

He shook his fist at the picture window. "You
think living space cost a lot down here, with the harbor and the
marketplace and all? Shit, nothing cost more than those tunnels, man.
They sweat and they dig and they got little bugs eating them and they
die to make them tunnels and make ’em safe, and space was a
pre-mi-um item. Most of the fuckers didn’t have a change of fucken
clothes, man, but they bring what they had into the tunnel."

Nino gulped and talked faster. "Times you go
into a tunnel, and you don’t hear nothing but you own heart
beating, you know it’s a cold fucken hole, but you can’t take the
chance. So you go slow, and maybe you find where they sleep and their
shit. Their personal shit, I mean. And it’s like maybe one book in
dink writing, and a piece of junk jewelry, and a picture. A photo
like of their family, all blur ’cause the camera cheap. And all
dirty and cracked and mildewed, too, ’cause the tunnel do that to
everything. And you hold this fucken photo in you hand, and you sit
there like a fucken dummy with you light on it, like you was in a
museum staring at the Mona Lisa or something. And you know that
fucken dink weigh less than most dogs we got over here and eat a fuck
of a lot worse and the only thing that dink fight for is the tunnel
you in and the memory he got someplace of the family in that photo
that probably got all shot to shit before you even in-country. And
you know that dink just like you, man, only he ain’t going home
after no three hundred sixty-five days. And you hold that fucken
photo, and you start to cry. You cry like you was a little baby and
mama’s tits all dried up, because you hate the little fuckers so
much but you see why you ain’t gonna beat ’em, not up on top
where we trying to fight ’em."

Nino looked hard at me, a look I hadn’t seen since
I climbed gratefully on the plane that took me back to The World.
"Well, this here was Teri’s tunnel, man. This was where she
hide from the rest of us. And now you gone through her shit and know
all about her. And now you gonna find the motherfucken turd who did
her, and you gonna tell me, and then I square things all ’round."