Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy (23 page)

"I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"The vagaries of memory. I’m sure the probate
court appearance docket and Teri’s phone bills will refresh yours
when the time comes. We could probably even find some folks at the
Barry who could prove you knew her socially, too, but for now, let’s
try the drugs. Remember them?"

Her eyes were glittering, but the voice was still
steady. “I thought the police hadn’t found the drugs Marsh was
supposed to have had with him."

"Let’s say they haven’t. Let’s also say
that the stuff hasn’t shown up on the street."

"It would be hard to tell if it had, you know.
One package of it is pretty much the same as another."

"According to my sources, this package is
distinctive and it isn’t being pushed."

"And therefore?"

"And therefore, we find ourselves in something
of an illogical situation."

"How so?"

"Somebody mugs me, uses my gun to rip off Marsh
and kill Teri Angel, yet the drugs aren’t being marketed."

She looked at me. I said, "Any ideas?"

"No."

"Oh, Ms. Arnold. Not very lawyerly of you. One
thought certainly comes to my mind."

She just kept looking. I said, "How about a
little home consumption?"

"l don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Well, let me spin it out a bit. Marsh is a
distributor for Braxley Cocaine Incorporated, okay? Old Roy has the
perfect cover for visiting a lot of people each week. So to make him
look plausible, his customers buy bushels of insurance, coverage they
don’t need and never claim on. That means they pay a premium to the
insurance company over and above the cost of the junk, but hell,
that’s a small price to avoid the inconvenience of driving into the
seedier areas of our metropolitan area to score a few lines. Marsh
makes out on both ends of the deal, the drug margin and his insurance
commissions. But Roy is a greedy kind of guy, angry at a nickel
because it isn’t a dime, you know?"

"Picturesque, but a trifle tedious."

"We’ll cut to the punch line, then. You turn
out to be one of his insurance customers. You don’t strike me as a
heavy user, but Paulie-boy’s so stoked he’s got to wear shades to
brush his teeth. Maybe the drug connection is your way of keeping
pocket stallions like him in the stable."

"You contemptible—"

"Then something goes wrong, and maybe Marsh
starts thinking what I’m thinking."

"Do you realize the potential liability you’re
incurring?"

"I’m judgment-proof. Prove what you want,
there’s no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. Anyway, Marsh
starts thinking that a blue-chip lawyer like you might pay to protect
her license from embarrassing probes about drugs and hookers."

"And so Marsh starts blackmailing me?"

"It would explain how a schmuck like Roy could
get a lawyer like you for his divorce case. It would also explain how
you might know when Marsh saw Teri Angel at the Barry."

"l’m really disappointed in you, Cuddy. Even
though I’m an established attorney, you just subconsciously assume
that since I’m a woman, too, I’d either have to accept whatever
Marsh tried to pull or set up the clumsy frame you claim you’re in
with the police. Well, look around you. I’ve worked a lot of years
to build up what I’ve got here, and I’m not about to give it
away." She hit a button on her phone and barked "Paul!"
into it.

The door to the adjoining office flew open and
Troller burst into the room. He was wearing suit pants, a
long-sleeved oxford shirt, sleeves rolled up, and a handsome
regimental tie. He grinned at me and started bouncing on the balls of
his feet and shaking out his shoulders.

"I think Paul’s been looking forward to this,
Cuddy."

American-trained boxers have two major strengths.
They are used to dishing out punishment until the other guy falls, so
you have a tough time coming back against them once they get in the
first licks. They’re used to taking punishment, too. In Saigon, I
remember seeing a good MP stunned to find that a nightstick to the
collarbone wouldn’t stop a welterweight with a few drinks in him.

Boxers have a weakness, too, however. They tend to
think they’re invincible in close. Even wearing a tie. I gambled
Paulie’s first punch would be a feint. He jabbed with his left at
my eye, then pulled it short, instead driving a good right up and
into my body. I caved, keeping my elbows and hands tight to protect
the ribs and face. He followed with a left to the body, stepping
forward to really bury it. I folded so that most of his force was
spent in the air, leaving him near enough for me to grab his tie. I
yanked the shorter end down with my right hand, my left forcing the
knot high and hard into his throat. His face bulged, both his hands
scrabbling to the front of his collar. I let go of the knot, clamping
both my hands on the insides of his wrists and pulling his hands
apart to benediction width. I had a feeling my grip would outlast his
air. Arnold probably couldn’t tell what I’d done, but as Paul and
I danced around, she could see that he wasn’t getting the best of
it. She let it go on for a while, Paul’s face and motions growing
more grotesque by the moment. He started to buckle at the knees, and
she said sharply. "Enough, Cuddy, enough!"

I let him go, and he wobbled down, enough
consciousness left to allow him to loosen his own tie. He wrenched in
fitful breaths, an asthmatic at a flower show.

She said, "That wasn’t pretty."

"Neither is what Braxley’ll do to Hanna and
Vickie if he doesn’t get his drugs back. I don’t want them hurt
anymore from all this, but I can’t guard their house twenty-four
hours a day. That leaves me with Braxley’s drugs as the lesser of
two evils, Ms. Arnold, and if you can help out with that, you’d
best do it soon."

Troller wheezed out some words. "Chris . . .
tides . . . is her lawyer . . . Go talk to the . . . bastard."

"I wouldn’t be bad-mouthing your alibi,
Paulie-boy."

Arnold said, "What do you mean?"

"Christides told me he saw the Great White Hope
there at some lawyer dinner up here while I was being slugged down in
Boston."

Troller pulled himself into a chair. “He’s
lying."

I turned to look at him. "What?"

Troller worked his head around on his neck and
swallowed like a kid taking castor oil. "The dinner . . . got
wrecked. Fire alarm . . . Barely had drinks before. . . everybody had
to get out . . . Christides didn’t come back in for dinner."

"What time was this?"

"What?"

"When the fire alarm went off?"

"Don’t know. . . The president. . . started
some long-winded welcome . . . maybe six-fifteen, six-thirty."

Arnold said, "What difference does that make,
Cuddy? You told me you were hit a little after five."

I looked from one to the other. "I don’t
know."
 

T
WENTY-0NE
-♦-

By the time I walked to my car, the adrenaline from
dealing with Troller was fading, hunger rapidly replacing it. I
settled for a touristy place on the harbor and had a mediocre burger
with great french fries and two frosty drafts.

I pulled up at the curb in front of Chris’s house
at 1:45. His old Pontiac was parked at an angle in the double
driveway, almost a warning to potential clients not to bother
knocking on the office door. I pushed into the reception area.

Cousin Fotis nearly drew down on me, reluctantly
bringing an empty hand out from under his jacket and newspaper. He
said, “Office closed today."

"Chris is expecting me."

He was trying to decide what to make of that when
Nikos appeared in the connecting doorway to the house proper. The new
arrival muttered something in Greek.

Fotis said to me, "Eleni say to wait here. He
come."

I sat down, and Nikos disappeared into the house. I
watched my friend read his paper for about five minutes before Chris
nervously bustled through the doorway and headed straight for his
inner office.

"Jeez, I’m sorry about not getting back to
you, John, but I been swamped here."

I swung my head slowly, taking in the empty office.

"I can see it."

Chris didn’t react to the sarcasm. "So, what’s
up?"

"You heard from Hanna recently?"

"Hanna?"

"Yeah, Hanna Marsh. Remember, the widow of the
guy I’m supposed to have killed?"

"C’mon, John, don’t start foaming at the
mouth, huh? I told you, I been up to my—"

“
Look, Chris, cut the shit, okay? I’ve been kind
of up to my ears in this, too. We’ve got a major problem."

He moved his lips around a little, then said, “This
guy Braxley?"

"This guy Braxley."

"Christ, John, he caught up with me yesterday."

"He did?"

"Yeah, coming out of court. I park in the lot
around the corner, two bucks cheaper, you know? Anyway, this guy
Braxley and some other one smells like a rendering plant grab me,
nobody else around, nobody’s ever around when you need them. They
say Marsh had these drugs on him and now they’re gone and what did
I think was going to happen to the guy who’s got them. They scared
the shit out of me."

"Chris, they beat the shit out of me. And now
they’re threatening Hanna and Vickie. And you know what? I can’t
even get Hanna’s lawyer to return my phone calls."

"John, I said I was sorry about that. Eleni . .
."

I lowered my voice. "Eleni?"

"It’s the MS, the sclerosis, you know? She has
the good days and the bad. Lately, it’s been mostly bad."

I thought she’d sounded fine on the telephone each
time, but I said, "All right. We’ve all been under a lot of
pressure here. But it’s up to you and me to cover Hanna."

"You and me? What about the police?"

"The Boston cops are after bigger fish than
Braxley. They’ve got reason to want him on the street for a while,
not away in a cell somewhere. They’re playing down the killings
until they make the bigger score."

"Jeez, I never . . . what about Swampscott?"

"You know anybody there?"

"On the force, you mean?"

"On the force, in the politics, in the PTA, for
God’s sake. Anybody who might care what Braxley would do to Hanna
and Vickie."

Chris flinched. "Nobody, John. I don’t really
deal in those kinda circles much, you know?"

"Terrific."

"How . . . how long before this Braxley stops
talking and starts doing other things?"

"I don’t know. He’s thrown scares into a lot
of people, but as far as I know, I’m the only one he’s roughed
up. My guess is that he’s going to give me a little more time to
try to solve things for him, but I’d hate to bet on it."

"I don’t know what to tell you, John. The
system, it don’t deal too well with crud like this Braxley."

"Or Marsh."

"Right, right. Or him too. It works pretty good
ninety, ninety-five percent of the time. But something like this.

"What about the courts?"

"Aw, John, what courts? The probate court, the
family court, there’s no more husband so there’s no more divorce.
Sure as hell no jurisdiction over some drug dealer from the city.
Plus, like you say, he hasn’t really done anything criminal yet."

"He broke into Marsh’s house, ransacked it."

"Which probably wasn’t reported over there by
anybody, right? Not the nurse, not Hanna, nobody."

"So where does that leave us?"

"I don’t know. We can’t get him locked up
for what he’s thinking, you know."

"He said he was going to force Hanna to sell the
house to cover the drugs if he didn’t get them back."

"Look, John. He tells her that, she decides to
sell, she sells, she gives him the money, what am I supposed to do,
huh?"

"Oh, Chris, for chrissake, that’s duress.
There’s got to be something you can do."

"John, John. I gotta admit, it sounds bad to a
layman like you, but she’d have to resist the sale, and then she
risks Vickie getting hurt. Or she goes through with the sale and
won’t give him the money. Guys like this Braxley, they got long
memories, John. And even longer arms, get me?"

"Meaning he waits till the heat’s off, then
settles things."

“
Right. Even if she sells and skips, guy like
Braxley’s got contacts lotsa places. One of them sooner or later
gets to her."

"Unless the cops make their big move first."

"Which you say they ain’t about to do. Think
about it, John. The cops are willing to let two killings go by for a
while, must be something big enough to carry another couple for the
ride."

Which was what I’d told Holt and Dawkins myself. I
wriggled in the uncomfortable old wooden chair.