Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy (5 page)

"My husband . . ." She almost smiled. "I
must stop calling him so. Roy is a bad man to push like that."

“
Just what kind of man is he, really?"

She hooded her eyes. “The kind you don’t tell to
do
things unless you can beat him."

I considered asking her a lot about old Roy, but I
had hired on as bodyguard, not psychotherapist. We closed out lunch
by my promising to press Chris to get a second appraisal of the
marital home.

We got a taxi on the corner and rode to Chris’s
house. The cab had no sooner pulled away than Vickie came bounding
out the front door, laughing and calling, "Mommie! Mommie! Wait
till you see what Eleni and I made!"

Inside the kitchen, Vickie proudly displayed the file
folders they had assembled and the tray of baklava they had made. We
each had a slice of the sweet pastry while Hanna kept her daughter
focused on the morning with Eleni and away from the conference in
Marblehead.

As Hanna went with Vickie to gather her things for
the ride home, Eleni tugged on my sleeve.

"Things, they go well?" she said, without
much confidence.

"No violence. A tough negotiation, but I’m no
expert at judging lawyer talk."

Eleni rested her forehead in the palm of a hand.
"When the husband come here, I see him. He smile at me when he
leave. Not a nice smile, John."

"I’ve seen it."

“
And not a nice man, John. Not just bad. He have
the look."

“
The look?"

"The look of the men I leave Greece to get away
from. A man who does the gambling, visits the whores, beats the wife.
The look of a man who like to hurt."

I could hear Hanna and Vickie coming back into the
room behind me. Eleni said, quietly but insistently, “Watch good
for them, John. Chris, he . . .cannot."

We got in my car, Vickie pleased with the ancient
bucket seats fore and aft. She babbled on the way kids do, about her
friends in Swampscott ("There’s Ginny, and Karen, and Fred,
but nobody ever wants to play with him"), her cat ("I know
Cottontail’s kind of a funny name for a kitty, but she’s all
white all over, and. . ."), her starting kindergarten in the
fall ("I hope Fred’s not in my class, but I don’t know how
they do things like that"). Ordinarily, I can’t abide
kidnoise, but it was nice to have something filling the air.

We arrived at the dilapidated three-decker and Vickie
said, "Oooooh, wait till you see Cottontail! You’ll love her,
too."

Before I had turned off the motor, Vickie was out of
the car, urging her mother to hurry. Once in the building foyer,
Vickie ran to their apartment door.
 

"Cottontail? Cotton? We’re home!" She put
her ear up to the discolored wood and concentrated. "I can hear
her crying. She must have missed us. It’s okay, Cottontail, we’re
coming."

Hanna put the key in the lock, and Vickie burst in,
calling the cat’s name and getting a mewling sound from the back.
"Oh, she must have got all tangled up again." She darted
down the hall.

Hanna said, "You like something to drink,
maybe?"

"No, I--"

The screaming cut me off. Hanna veered and raced the
way her daughter had. "Vickie! Vickie!"

I caught up with them at the entrance to a rear
bedroom. Vickie’s face was burrowing into her mother’s stomach,
her screams muffled by Hanna’s dress. Hanna’s eyes were closed,
and she was saying, “Don’t look, don’t look."

I pressed by them into the room. Although the
wallpaper was dingy and scaly, there were some bright yellow curtains
around the window and a yellow blanket covering the twin-size iron
frame bed. The window itself had a pane of glass missing, and the
broken shards were scattered on the sill, bed, and floor. But that
wasn’t the major damage.

Centered on the bed was a stained white kitten. The
stain was red, from the blood that was still seeping into the
blanket. Someone had taken a knife to the creature, peeling back its
fur to expose musculature, bone, and an organ or two where the blade
had slipped.

Cottontail looked up at me, squeezed its eyes shut,
and let out a heartrending yowl.
 

FOUR
-♦-

I called the Peabody police emergency number. The
sergeant on duty said he thought the closest animal I hospital was in
Saugus. I dialed the hospital and was told to bring the kitten in
immediately. Hanna wrapped Cottontail in the blanket, and l drove
with flashers and horn while the cat cried on Hanna’s lap in the
front seat and Vickie cried in the back.

A veterinarian with long brown hair and warm brown
eyes met us at the door. She pointed toward an admissions desk and
rushed the cat into a back room. Hanna tried to comfort Vickie in the
reception area while I filled out the paperwork. The woman behind the
counter graciously allowed me to use her phone. I called the Peabody
police back and provided some details on the break-in. They said
they’d send someone that evening. Then I got the number for the
Middlesex North Registry of Deeds in Lowell and punched it in. I told
the paging operator there that it was an emergency.

About a minute later, Chris said, "This is
Christides. Who is this?"

"John Cuddy, Chris."

"What the hell's the emergency?"

I told him.

"Jeez, John, I don’t know what I can do about
that."

I must have looked at the telephone receiver as if it
were an alien artifact. "What do you mean?"

"Well, from what you said, there’s no real
proof that Marsh did this."

“
Proof? Chris, we were just with the guy for two
hours, remember? He did everything but pull a gun."

“
Yeah, but I doubt that’ll be good enough for the
cops."

"Why not?"

"Look, if Marsh did it, he’s smart enough to
use gloves and all. There won’t be any physical-type evidence at
the scene."

I ground my teeth. "What about the divorce
court, then?"

"It’s like I said before about the court,
John. It doesn’t have any jurisdiction because we haven’t filed
anything yet."

"Which adds up to what?"

“
Which adds up to there’s no order of the court
yet that Marsh violated. Assuming he did the cat."

"Jesus, Chris, you’re the lawyer, not me.
There must be something you can do about this."

"Well, I can call Felicia and put her on
notice."

"Notice? Chris, the guy’s a nut! Understand?
Normal people don’t do things like this. He’s obviously trying to
scare Hanna into giving in on the house. If he gets away with this,
he’ll just escalate till he gets everything."

"John, you—what?" I could hear Chris
saying something off the telephone, then, "Jeez, John, I gotta
get back to this closing here, the bank’s attorney is gonna—"

"I don’t give a rat’s ass about the bank’s
attorney." I lowered my voice. "I’m sitting in an animal
hospital with your client and her hysterical little girl who just saw
her first pet flayed alive."

"All right, all right. I’ll call Felicia right
now. Just don’t expect much, okay?"

He hung up. The receptionist looked at me with a
sympathetic shrug. I apologized to her, and she said it didn’t
sound like it was my fault.

We waited for another forty minutes. I hadn’t been
in many places less conducive to passing the time comfortably. I
asked the receptionist if I could use the phone again. This time the
paging operator couldn’t raise Chris. I depressed the cutoff
button, called directory assistance, and tried the number they gave
me.

"Law offices of Felicia Arnold. May I help you?"

"Let me speak to her, please."

"I’m sorry, Ms. Arnold is in conference. May I
take—"

"Interrupt her and tell her that it’s an
emergency."

"May I ask what the nature—"

“
Sure. The life of one of her clients, Roy Marsh,
is at stake."

Hesitation. "Is this Mr. Marsh?"

"No. Now please get her on the phone."

I waited maybe thirty seconds before Arnold’s voice
said, "Mr. Cuddy?"

"Good guess."

"Mr. Cuddy, Chris Christides has already—"

“
Look, Ms. Arnold. Let’s cut the ‘proper
channels’ bullshit, all right? I’m calling from an animal
hospital because your boy Marsh took a skinning knife to a kitten."

"I’ve already spoken to Roy, Mr. Cuddy. If
you’d allow me to continue?"

"Go ahead."

"Mr. Marsh is shocked at the incident. He was at
his home in Swampscott when I reached him, and he had driven directly
there after our conference here."

"He have somebody backing him on that?"

"If you mean corroboration for what you
evidently assume is an alibi, yes, yes he does."

“
Who‘?"

"I’m not sure that’s any of your—"

“
Let me take a wild guess then. A certain nurse
from Samaritan Hospital?"

"I can neither—"

"You really think she’ll stand up? Credibly, I
mean."

"Mr. Cuddy, you strike me as the sort of man who
will do what you will. I can only advise you to seek independent
counsel on your potential liability before you act."

"Liability for what? Malicious prosecution?"

She said, "Do call again when you can be a
little more sociable," and hung up.

I handed the telephone back to the receptionist, who
said, "Try counting to ten."

“
There aren’t enough numbers for this."

Just then the door to the back area opened and the
veterinarian who had taken Cottontail came out. She pushed a hank of
hair that looked stringy from sweat off her forehead and back behind
her ear. She motioned to me without smiling as she crossed the room
to where Hanna and Vickie, who now looked up, were sitting.

Hanna said, "Please . . . tell us?"

As I approached them, the vet hunkered down to
Vickie’s eye level on the bench. "Honey, I’m so sorry. But
your kitty was just too little and lost too much blood."

Vickie responded with that Kabuki-mask slant that
kids get to their eyes and mouth when they’re about to shriek.
Vickie whipped her face into her mother’s breast and wailed, "She’s
dead, she’s dead, she’s dead . . . ," as Hanna, crying
freely, said, "I’m so sorry, Vickie, I’m so sorry,"
then some phrases in German that I cou1dn’t understand.

The vet straightened up and used the edge of an [
index finger to wipe a tear from her own cheek. In a ; subdued voice,
she said to me, “Can I see you for a minute?"

We moved toward the desk and well away from Hanna and
Vickie.

"My name’s Mary Vesch."

“
John Cuddy."

"You realize I have to report this?"

"Jesus, I should hope so."

"The police will want to know if there are any
kids in the neighborhood who might have problems."

"I don’t know, but I doubt that’s it. I’m
betting on her father."

"Her father? The little girl’s, you mean?"

“
Yes. He and the mother just split up, and this
fits what I’ve seen of him."

Vesch huffed and shook her head. “I wish I hadn’t
given up smoking. I could really use a cigarette? "

“
Doctor, what happens now?"

"Mary, please." She looked past me toward
Hanna and Vickie. "Probably not much."

"I’m sorry, Mary, but you’re going to have
to explain that one to me."

"I’ll try. I report this as an obvious case of
animal abuse. If there was some kid on the block with a twisted
streak, then maybe through the juvenile authorities we could do
something, like therapy or at least counseling. But with . . ."
She broke off and changed gears. "The father, I take it nobody
saw him do it?"

"No indication yet that anybody even saw him in
the area."

"And he’ll be paying support, I suppose?"

"With his job, he can certainly afford to."

She shook her head again. "Then I can’t see
much happening to him. The maximum jail term under the statute is
only a year, but the last time I remember a judge sentencing someone
even to that, it was overturned on appeal. And here we’ve got a
father that a judge isn’t going to want branded with killing his
little girl’s pet and isn’t going to put away because the guy
can’t work to pay support from a cell."

"So where does that leave us?"

"With a fine, but the most the law allows is
only five hundred dollars." The errant ringlet of hair slid
forward again, and she tucked it back into place. "Not much,
huh?"

No, not much. And not nearly enough.
 

FIVE
-♦-

As we drove back to Peabody, Hanna caressed Vickie,
making reassuring noises about cat heaven. Vickie’s crying became
lower and thicker until she dropped off to sleep in her mother’s
arms. I asked Hanna about Vickie’s seeing a doctor in case of
insomnia or nightmares. Hanna said she would call a pediatrician to
see if the child should have some medicine for sleeping.