Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy (26 page)

"You knew the room number?"

"Teri had some kind of arrangement with the
hotel. I never asked, nobody there knew me from Adam and I wanted to
keep it that way. But she was always in the same room, with the good
view."

"What happened?"

"I knocked, she opened up, she was wearing . . .
one of those teddy things, you know? All lace and black and
see-through. Usually, we’d have a drink, talk a little first. This
time, she wants me to come right over to the bed, maybe five feet
from the closet there. The Barry, it’s so old, they still got real
closets you can walk into, and the door’s open maybe three inches.
Well, she’s got some kind of Walkman thing she wants me to put on.
I think it’s screwy, but she’d said she wanted to try something
different, so I went along. It was like piano and lute or something,
just continuous instrumental shit."

"To cover any background noise you might have
heard."

Chris looked down. "That hit me later. Anyway,
she puts these earphones on me, has me hold the little tape thing,
and she undresses me. Slowly, kissing me and rubbing against me,
everywhere, with everything. Then she . . . she takes me into her
mouth, and goes wild on me. Jeez, John, all the other times with her,
she never did anything that made me feel like that. I was saying
things, I don’t know what I was saying, but every time I’d go to
turn, or try to touch her, she’d nudge me back, sort of sideways to
the closet."

"For the camera angle."

Chris just continued. "As I’m . . . getting
ready to finish, the closet door bangs open and there’s Marsh,
dressed in nothing but skivvies and some kinda doctors’ gloves. I
can see a camera on a tripod thing behind him, and he’s smiling and
holding a gun on me. I thought I was gonna shit."

"What happened then?"

"Teri jumps up and starts screaming at him.
Something like, ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you? You’re fucking
up my screen test.' He’s moving around the bed toward the window,
kind of getting away from her but also kind of . . . I know this
sounds weird, John, but kind of like he was trying to look at
everything from a different angle, like he was trying to figure out
if he shoulda had the camera somewheres else."

"Go on."

"Well, I didn’t know what to think. I mean, my
brain’s just about dead. Then he waves the gun at me and says to
get down on the floor, at the foot of the bed. On all fours, like . .
. like some kind of animal. So I do, trying to figure out what I’m
supposed to do, what the fuck is going on."

“
What’s Teri doing all this time?"
 
"She’s still screaming at him. He yells back.
‘This fuckhead wants my house. Well, he ain’t gonna get it. What
he’s gonna get is sorry he ever tried to fuck with me. How do you
suppose his wife will like your debut?' That’s the word he used,
too, ‘debut,' like he’d thought all this through and planned out
his speech."

"What did Teri say to that?"

"She went crazy. She said something like, ‘You
bastard! You didn’t say nothing about that. You just said we needed
an ordinary guy for the porn people.' Marsh says to her, ‘You
stupid cunt, you’d believe rain ain’t wet.' "

"Then what?"

"Then . . . " Chris dropped his head till
all that kept his jaw from his chest were the chins underneath. "Then
she said, ‘Well, you ain’t doing this with me,' all defiant-like,
then she stomped up and across the bed, and made to go in the closet,
like after the camera. And Marsh, that, that . . . pig says, ‘Even
better,' and shoots her. I mean, he just points and
shoots,
no warning or nothing."

Chris paused, and I thought about Holt, playing me
along. Marsh was wearing the gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints and
to fool a later paraffin test on his hands. Which means that since
Marsh fired the gun with the gloves on, there would have been
evidence of that on the gloves themselves. Which Holt conveniently
neglected to tell me.

Chris said, "You sure you want to hear all of
this?"

“
Yes."

He closed his eyes, but continued. "I go crazy,
I mean, I’m already down on all fours, and he’s treating me like
shit and just shot the girl and probably’s gonna shoot me. So I
come up in a three-point stance, John, like back on the team, and I
go at him, pumping like the coach said, all with the legs, not the
head, the legs. I’m watching his stomach, so I can hit him solid, I
don’t see his face, but I pop him good and hard and I hear the gun
go off again but I don’t feel nothing and then I realize glass is
breaking and I look up and he’s . . . he’s not there anymore."
Chris shook his head vigorously, as though groggy after an impact.

"The window’s broken and he’s gone."

"You left the gun there, Chris. My gun."

He opened his eyes and raised his hand. "John, I
swear to God, I didn’t know that. He didn’t say nothing about it.
And, anyway, I thought it went out the window with him."

"What did you do next?"

"I went over to Teri, to see if she was . . .
but she was dead. Jeez, John, I could see her brains, like they were
leaking .... In the closet, he’s got the camera, some clothes, and
a suitcase. All I was thinking is, ‘He’s got me on tape,' but I
don’t know nothing about those cameras, so I just yanked out the
suitcase and opened it up. He had some kinda camera case in there,
but it was closed and I didn’t care, I just wanted to get out. I
pulled his clothes off the hanger, hers too, I think, and I stuffed
the clothes, the camera, and everything in the suitcase. I think I
must have busted the legs on the tripod just to make it lit. I closed
up the suitcase and threw my clothes on and got the hell out. I heard
the elevator moving, so I used the stairs, but by the time I’d gone
down maybe five flights I was breathing so hard I was afraid I’d
pass out, so I went back into the hall on whatever floor it was and
took the elevator back down to the lobby. Nobody was in it by then, I
guess everybody was out and around the corner, gawking at the body. I
just walked out and kept walking till I got to my car."

"What did you do with the suitcase‘?"

“
I put it in the trunk and started driving, driving
home, I mean. When I got partway, I realized I’d have to get rid of
it, so I stopped at Revere Beach, the stretch with the wicked
riptide. I ran out onto the sand with the thing and waited for two
big beauties to roll in together, in the moonlight you could see them
real clear. Then I heaved it as far as I could. It rode out but it
floated at first. Jeez, John, I never fucking thought of that, it was
so heavy, with the camera and all. But then it sank, lower and lower
as it washed out, till I couldn’t see it anymore, even with the
moon. Then I went back to the car and drove home."

"Chris, you’re the lawyer, but it seems to me
that what happened in the room was self-defense. Why did you pack and
run like that?"

"John, jeez, look at things the way they are,
willya? I’m with a prostitute, and she gets shot, and I send the
guy through the window. You think they’re gonna believe me?"

“
Maybe."

"So okay, so even if they do, the truth’s
worse than a good lie. I lose my ticket, John. The Overseers have to
pull my license, which is the only thing I got going for me. Also,
the truth is that I’m everything that Eleni hates the most, the
Greek husband who whores around, the difference being that she didn’t
just let herself go or something, she’s sick and crippled in a way
she can’t control."

I stood up. "Chris, like I said, you’re the
lawyer. There are a lot of people screwed up in this, including me.
You and I both know what you’ve got to do."

Chris brought the heels of
his hands to his cheeks, then started rubbing under the eyes.
“Right," he said quietly.

* * *

I drove toward Boston, finding it harder and harder
to accept what Chris had told me. I parked the car behind the condo
and walked the two blocks to Daisy Buchanan’s, a popular sports bar
on the corner of Fairfield and Newbury. I got there just early enough
to get a seat, and I knew the bartenders who were on. They had some
good new stories I hadn’t heard, and the screwdrivers felt healthy
as they raced one another down my throat and jostled in my stomach.

At some point, I had to wave for another drink,
surprising because they’re usually so attentive, the best in the
city. I remember telling them that, that they were the best in the
city. One asked me if I was walking or driving, and I sort of said
walking. He said even so, just one more. I finished the drink, then
had the pleasure of being escorted gently through the crowd of
postcollege jocks and those who wished they were. They spared me the
bouncer, telling me to be sure to come again. Place treats you with
respect like that, of course you’re going to come again.

I ricocheted off three trees and a lamppost covering
the roughly two hundred yards back to the condo. Anybody messing with
me would have been one sorry fella, yessir. I got the keys out of the
pocket on the third try and into the lock on the fourth, doing a
little better upstairs at the apartment door. I kicked it shut, made
it to the bedroom, and passed out across the mattress.
 

TWENTY -FOUR
-♦-

I woke up Saturday morning, but just barely. The
clock part of the radio said 11:40, meaning I must have slept through
an hour’s worth of alarm earlier. The head pounded, and my insides
had that airy, rafting sensation you get from drinking on an empty
stomach. I had no energy for running, so I toasted a couple of
English muffins and drank a quart of ice water to rehydrate my
system.

I showered, shaved, and dressed in clean
sweatclothes, then went down to the car, started up, and drove to the
Jamaicaway and around the trout pond. When I was with Empire, I did a
lot of driving, and I found it could clear the head and focus the
thinking. After five miles, my thinking was focused all right, but
not helpfully.

My talk with Chris solved the killings, but Hanna and
Vickie were left hanging in the breeze. Felicia had the money to buy
off J.J ., but Chris sure didn’t and was on his way to definite
disgrace and probable imprisonment. J.J. wouldn’t understand why
his drugs were backstroking to Portugal, and the cops weren’t
interested in restraining him.

I jammed on the brakes just in time to avoid a guy in
a utility truck cutting into my lane. I hit the horn, and he threw me
the finger as he turned, without any other signal, into a
construction project. As I resumed speed, I watched him jounce over
the rutted dirt driveway past some huge circular pipe sections that
looked awfully familiar. I got my bearings and realized it was the
same place J.J. and Terdell had taken me on Tuesday night.

That’s when I got the
idea. An idea that grew like Topsy.

* * *

It took me a while to
measure time and distance by car. I ran each twice, then got back to
the condo by 3:00. I dialed two numbers and got slightly different
versions of "He’s not here, you wanna leave a message?" I
emphasized how important it was for each party to be available to
hear from me at 8:00 PM. I hung up and removed the phone jack from
the wall to frustrate any premature return calls. Raiding the fridge,
I ate all the absorptive foods I had. Then I nicked the nearly empty
bottle of scotch from my landlord’s liquor cabinet. I don’t drink
the stuff anymore, but it has a very recognizable smell. I carried
the bottle down to the car.

* * *

The first place I hit was a foundering blue-collar
bar in Chelsea, the city just above Boston that those in favor of the
manifest destiny of gentrification now call the "Near North
Shore." I had three screwdrivers, listening to the owner
describe the trouble he was having with his stepson. When I asked how
bad he was, the owner said, "Let me put it this way: he’s the
kinda kid, you saw his face on the side of a milk carton, you
wouldn’t feel so bad." I convinced him that it was the
lawyers’ fault, helping kids avoid juvenile detention and making
them think they can get away with murder.

Next stop was a glitzy joint along the water in
Revere, where a porky bartender with slicked-back hair and no
sideburns told me I couldn’t get in after six dressed the way I
was. I explained to him that it was because of the lawyers,
especially the young ones, pushing their noses into good old
neighborhoods that had stood on their own for six generations. He
agreed, treating me to one drink but then telling me I sounded like
I’d already had enough for one afternoon. I thanked him for the
drink if not the advice, and left. The third place was a
sticky-floored dive in Lynn, a city that’s suffered so much arson
that it’s probably burned down three times over in the last ten
years. The old woman working the wipe cloth said the flames nearly
got her place twice, and she couldn’t get no insurance and what the
hell was she gonna do if they did torch it, anyway? I pointed out to
her how the lawyers had manipulated it all, padding claims and
sucking off what good people sweat their lives to get. She joined me
in splitting half a bottle of Old Boston vodka on the rocks; I was
able to dollop most of my share onto the floor when she wasn’t
looking. Exaggerating my departure, I gave her a kiss on the cheek
that made her cackle. She said that I’d better watch for the cops
if I was driving.